Why is it that the vast majority of USB cables are 6 feet long? The majority of my time, I need a 1-footer to connect random gadgets to my USB hub. Heck, even a 6-incher would be nice, but a USB cable that coils like a phone handset cord isn’t a bad alternative.
instructables’ user, Plusea, has a comprehensive walkthrough on how to make one of these puppies. All it requires is a usb cable, a handset cord, snipes, shrink wrap, and a solder gun. It doesn’t look very hard — maybe a one beer project — and suddenly, your desk could a retro, but feel to it.
Just got a leaked photo and information on the new DreamArcades Octane 120, a video game cabinet with joystick control panel, driving wheel, and, as you see here, a beer tap for standard kegs. Where’s the screen you ask? It uses an HD video projector and 5.1 stereo sound to fill the room with drunken video gaming goodness. The best thing? Quoth our tipster:
It is hard to see in this photo, but there is a beer tap right next to the steering wheel as well as the one on the back, behind the seat.
No pricing or availability yet but this is basically the finished design and it should be available for the holidays.
Reuters is reporting that an Australian man recently convicted of his 7th drunk driving charge revealed that he’d been spending around $1,000 per week on beer. That’s funny, sad, or both, depending upon how you view everyone’s place in the Universe.
What I find funny and sad is that the dude broke up with his girlfriend FIVE YEARS AGO. Get over it, man! Live in the now! Newsflash, Bub: Crying inside a public bar isn’t a turn-on for most girls.
An Australian magistrate banned the man, Michael Leary, “from buying or even holding a beer for 12 months.” The magistrate also made fun of Leary for drinking Melbourne Bitter, which is made by Fosters, saying that it’s “poor judgement on two counts there – drinking that much and drinking Melbourne Bitter.”
If there was a fan club solely for people who like items that pay for themselves after one use, I’d be president. Maybe secretary, actually, since I type a lot for my day job. No, president, actually. I have a lot of good ideas and it’s time to enact change around here. This fan club has been going down hill ever since it never started.
Anyway, this is the Beer Belly Cooler. It’s like a fat suit that holds 80 ounces of beer. That’s five pints or just under seven 12-ounce beers. Now let’s do some math.
At Fenway park here in Boston, I believe that domestic beer is $6.75 per pint and premium beer is $7.25 per pint. I like the good stuff, so this $34.95 Beer Belly apparatus would save me $36.25 over the course of one evening, minus the cost of the beer I’d buy at the store beforehand — and that’s assuming I can’t talk my wife into wearing one too and letting me sap off it all night (actually, this same company makes a $29.99 wine-holding sports bra for the ladies).
The major obstacle here is that if you already have a real-life beer belly, you might not be able to double-up with the Beer Belly Cooler without looking a little lumpy.
But I’d gladly get into the best shape of my life if it meant more beer. The standard cooler is $34.95, but there’s also a deluxe kit for $49.95 that includes something called “The Pleasure Extender” (not sure if that has to do with drinking, going number one, or something else altogether), and some sort of cleaning solution.
Beer Belly Cooler [coolerfun.com] via GearDiary
You’ve all seen the Coors Light bottles with the color changing mountains by now, but if you haven’t then you’ve been living under a rock or you like warm beer. I hear there’s a heat wave in NYC and I’m not looking forward to coming back to that tomorrow, but at least I know my beers will be cold since the mountains will be nice and blue. The plastic bottle cooler box is pretty rad too. Perfect for the beach or BBQ. Forget the Busch Light and pack that Bierstick with some Coors Light. Truth be told, I was a rabid Busch Light fan in college. Who could pass up a six-pack of pounders for $4?
Here’s to summer!
Straight out of my hometown of Minneapolis comes the Bierstick, a $20 apparatus that you fill with two cans of Busch Light, prop against a wall, then use to propel said Busch Light down your gullet in less than two seconds. I’m overflowing with pride.
It’s perfect for people who find shotgunning a single beer in five seconds to be too time consuming. I mean, come on, everyone’s so busy nowadays. “I can meet you at The Lodge after work for exactly 24 ounces of beer, but I can literally only stay for two seconds.” The Bierstick costs $19.95 plus tax and shipping. You can buy it here.
As a bonus, if you happen to be somewhere without walls, you can also use your friend’s chest. You’ll both have to take your shirts off, though, so keep that in mind.
via LiquorSnob.com
Space beer. It’s right up there with space wrestling as something that’s long overdue, but the wait will soon be over. Sapporo will launch a beer in November that’s brewed from International Space Station-grown barley. Initially, only 100 bottles of the space brew will be made, and none of them released commercially, and it’s unlikely that the beer will taste any different. But that’s irrelevant. Sapporo could slap a “SPACE BEER” label on a bottle and it’ll sell out everywhere.
There’s a scientific reason for the beer, and it’s to determine the effects of space on growing edible plants. Not that you care.
via Popular Science
We had a foosball table in one of the houses I lived in during college. We all chipped in $40, times six of us, and boom — a nice $200 never ending source of entertainment. The problem was that the minute we bought the table, we found out we had a bunch of new friends; new friends who happened to love foosball and loved not chipping in for beer even more. I wish we’d had the foresight to build a table like this, because we probably would have been able to charge people to play, which would have covered the cost of the table, beer, and then some.
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I betcha one of these would fit quite nicely into a golf bag. Maybe load her up with some barley pops and let’s get going.
The Chill Stick costs a measly $11.98 — a pittance compared to what six beers in a cooler would cost you on almost any golf course.
It’s made of neoprene, which is basically God’s gift to beverage enthusiasts and it comes in assorted colors that are chosen by the Things You Never Knew Existed store, so that oughta be a thrill-ride in and of itself.
On a slightly unrelated note, isn’t anybody concerned about what happened to the rest of Green Shirt Guy’s body? Poor fella probably never saw it coming.
Product Page via DVICE
I don’t know about you but back in college when I used to drink enough beers in a row to necessitate some sort of accounting system, I’d simply slip each bottle cap into my pocket and count them the next morning.
If I’d had the BeerTracker — with convenient LCD display that increases in numeric value with each bottle that’s opened — I could have littered my bottle caps to and fro like everyone else.
Know what a smart use of this thing might be? Using it at weddings or anywhere else there’s an open bar. Show the BeerTracker to the host at the end of the night, multiply by $5 or $6, and there’s your beer bill.
The BeerTracker costs about $10, plus whatever it costs to ship something like that from Germany Denmark (oops).
BeerTracker [Gadgets.dk] via GeekAlerts
I’m not quite sure where the beer goes in here, but this is apparently a steampunk casemod that allows you to brew beer AND play UT3 using the same device. For extra fun, read the comments at the bottom featuring a brewery war between the US and Europe.
Personal Computer into Brewery [EnglishRussia via Make]
Product Name: I call it “Beerbot”, but it’s the RC Cooler
Description: Remote controlled robotic beer keg
Price: N/A
In-store date: N/A
Site: http://www.interactivetoy.com/2008/products-page.htm
Why it’s cool: It is a robot that brings you beer. Who needs a girlfriend?
Bill Gates now owns 3-percent of the world’s second-largest Coke bottler and Mexico’s second-largest brewery. I say good for you, Mr. Gates. Cascade Investment LLC, the asset management firm that Gates owns, recently purchased almost 11 million shares of Monterrey, Mexico’s Femsa.
Femsa has a soft drink unit (Coca-Cola Femsa), a beer subsidiary, and a retail unit that runs Mexico’s popular Oxxo convenience stores.
Bill Gates buys stake in Mexican brewer Femsa [Reuters]
Thanksgiving is over and some may still be recovering from our annual day of gluttony in which the food was plenty and damn good, but, I ask, were the libations up to snuff? Yes, this has nothing to do with our usual meanderings of gadgetry, but we all enjoy a glass or two of some form of alcohol so I deem it fit for the ole Crunch.
This here is the world’s strongest beer. In a recent blind taste test, the 2007 batch of Samuel Adams Utopias beat out Frapin VIP XO Grand Champagne and Fonseca 1994 Vintage Port from Portugal, which I’m told are some of the world’s finest spirits. It’s beer, but it’s meant to be put down the hatch two ounces at a time served at room temperature. Utopias is an astounding 27 percent ABV and each 24-ounce bottle retails anywhere from $120 – $140. It can also be found at Morton’s The Steakhouse. Try and down one of these at your holiday party without getting fired. I dare you. I triple dog dare you.
Sam Adams
Where was this gadget when I was in the blur I sometimes confusingly refer to as my 20s? This thing is amazing, and I need to get one.
It’s a beer cozy with a built-in beeper. Can’t remember where your beer is? Use the included remote to page it, it responds with a burping noise, so you can locate your can like a bat locates prey, only maybe you’ll have a shirt on. Maybe.
For $20, this is a lifesaver. If you can keep track of just five half-racks of PBRs, it’s paid for itself. Look for it in the stockings of future AA member this Xmas.
Remote control beer pager [Lighter Side, via Shiny Shiny]
Maybe I should get one of those shady payday advances for this. “This” being the Gamerator, a full-sized MAME cabinet that just so happens to have a built-in refrigerator. And what else would you store in the refrigerator other than beer? Well, food, yeah, but that’s boring. There’s a small tap in the front whence beer flows into your might ROM chalice.
I mention payday advances because the Gamerator is eBay right now for $2,000. Should you place the winning bid, you’ll get the machine proper as well as 187 “licensed” games. Real games, too, like Street Fighter and not its cheap, east-of-the-Iron-Curtain knockoff Street Fighter/Spirit Crusher.
Gamerator Auction [eBay via Boing Boing Gadgets]
When money gets tough and you want to add a sub-woofer to your 1998 Hyundai Tiburon with the rims you got from that dude off Craigslist, you’ll need something on the cheap. After all, those “professional” boxes made from things like wood and plastic cost way too much for any college student. So it makes sense that some dude instead opted to pound Miller Lite all night and throw a speaker into the leftover cardboard box.
Bet it gets the ladies too.
So my question to you is: will a sub-woofer made from a 30-pack of beer and some wires actually work well? I was going to test it out myself but I kept purposely messing up the box so I had an excuse to buy more beer.
Miller Lite Subwoofer Will Get Stolen Quickly [Geekologie]
In addition to their fantastic planes, trains and automobiles, the Japanese brew some fine beer. Also, breaking news, the Japanese also know a thing or two about creating electronics, gadgets, robots, you name it. So when I saw this automatic beer-pouring machine I knew I had to write about it when I got back.
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Tomorrow is Thursday, which marks the start of the two-day BlogPhiladelphia conference in Philadelphia, PA. I’ll be speaking tomorrow at 9:30am on a panel and it should be a lot of good, clean fun. Afterwards, anyone in NJ, DE, or PA who wants to meet up is more than welcome to. I figured we could all meet at a bar and have some drinks, talk tech, etc.
If you’re interested, shoot me an e-mail at vince AT crunchgear DOT com and let me know if you’re coming. We’ll meet during the lunch break tomorrow at 1PM at Moriarty’s:
Moriarty’s Pub – CrunchGear Meetup
Time: 1PM EST
Where: 1116 Walnut St (between 11th and 12th Sts)
Google Maps: Link
RSVP: vince AT crunchgear DOT com
All official information on the conference can be found at blogphiladelphia.net/and it should be a good time for all. Be sure to RSVP so I know how many of you are coming! John is cheap so I’ll see what we can do about a gadget giveaway. See you there tomorrow!
