Gadgets & Gizmos
Bringing a Bottle Opener to a Knife Fight
Boys love to play with Balisongs, a pastime that often leads to sliced hands or puncture wounds. With one of these alternative butterfly knives, rather than a five-inch blade popping out after successful fanning, a harmless bottle opener appears. Council estates and inter-cities should take note: initiating a knife-for-opener swap is a low-cost strategy for rough neighbourhoods looking to clean up their streets. Whereas rival gangs used to go all stabby on each other, they’ll now share a few cold ones they nicked from the corner shop.
Price: RMB 130. Web: www.outdoorswarehouse.com.au
Glowbar
Another practically useless yet awesome device is this glow-in-the-dark, high-carbon steel crowbar. Using a hyper-phosphorescent, silicate-aluminium-oxide-based powder coating, this baby luminesces up to 10 times brighter than standard glowing products and up to a million times more than a typical pry bar. Tenuous uses include opening crates at a rave or burglarising very dark homes. However should the Apocalypse ever come to pass, owning this tool would show off both your foresight and resourcefulness amongst the Cimmerian ruins.
Price: RMB 450. Web: http://glowbar.myshopify.com
Robocat
Oh those eccentric Japanese have done it again! From the land of bizarre inventions that have no tangible utility comes the Necomimi, a battery-powered cat ear headset. The fuzzy ears are connected to a small device located behind the wearer’s ear that in turn attaches brainwave monitors to the earlobe and temple. The ears then perk or flatten depending on mood; think of ‘free cake’ and ‘dead puppies’ in rapid succession to get them to wiggle. Price and colours have not yet been determined, but no doubt furries everywhere have already pre-ordered.
Web: http://neurowear.net
iFashion
Gadgets & Gizmos has always been one to pander to the Cult of Apple, and now we can be classy at the same time. With these Cupertino-inspired cufflinks – machined aluminium with a pulsating white LED – Mac fanboys can now show off their uber-nerdiness in formal settings. In true Apple style, iCufflinks are ridiculously over-priced at an eye-watering US$128. But just think of the possibilities: you can wear them while answering your iPhone, surfing on your iPad, listening to music on your iPod and working on your MacBook Pro – all at the same time!
Price: RMB 830. Web: http://adafruit.com/icufflinks
VIDEO GAME OF THE MONTH
Duke Nukem Forever – PS3, Xbox360, PC
Vapourwear – noun – a computer industry term that describes a product that is announced to the general public but is never actually released or officially cancelled. Since 1997, when Duke Nukem Forever was announced as the next instalment of the raunchy first-person-shooter series, the game has been the perfect example of the aforementioned term. Last month after 14 years, against all odds, the game was finally released. The Apollo space program to send someone to the moon, from John F Kennedy’s challenge to its eventual success, took fewer years. The game’s paper thin plot of aliens once again invading Earth sets up Duke to save humanity by shooting and driving his way through the endless hordes, all the while cracking the occasional one-liner the gaming icon is known for. Unfortunately, there is nothing revolutionary about this game. Quite the opposite, it is a return to an era when games were far less dynamic and its characters one-dimensional. But the nostalgic factor, as well as the fact you can buy a copy for RMB 10, make this worth a weekend afternoon. No longer an example of something that may never be, now, when comparing it to the big titles of the past few years, it’s proof positive of just how far video games have evolved.
