You… Are… Fags!

Now you too can get that Whammy Mania achievement in GHIII without having to resort to proper old fashioned whammying, or even sticky tape (like a big stinking Cheaty McCheater). Of course this is still technically cheating, and it’ll more than likely help you artificially inflate your score in all the other songs too, but at least it’s pretty damn ingenious.

The hack involves wiring a 555 timer chip (remember those from electronics class?) into the whammy sensor on your guitar. It gives you a constant high-speed whammy that’ll make your 360 think that you have some kind superhuman right wrist (*ahem*). I guess it’s an interesting electronics project too, and modding your own hardware is always worth serious geek points. But cheating to inflate your gamerscore?

Well, that’s not so cool.

Back in days of yore, Perfect Dark Zero was the best shooter on the 360 (not counting the backwards-compatibleness of Halo 2, of course). But I bet you probably didn’t know that this game was originally going to be out on the old skool original Xbox, before Rare were taken over by Microsoft and they needed a decent launch title for the 360.

Well, umm, now you do. And here are the videos to prove it.

50 Years Of LEGO Bricks. Joy!

Well, actually the LEGO company itself has been around in one form or another since 1932, but the humble plastic brick we all know and love was patented on January 28th 1958. Coincidentally, the minifig (those little LEGO people) are 30 years old this year, too.

So, parties all round?

Well, if your idea of a party involves PDFs and shopping, then yes indeed. They’ve released this fascinating PDF file which documents some of the more important moments in LEGO history, and over 100 new items which you can buy in their awesome online shop, with a few historical surprises.

Of course, we all know that this was actually the pinnacle of LEGO’s success. How will they ever top that in the next 50 years?

(via)

Mr. Whorf, Your Head Looks Like A Fanny!

In yet another “I’m too lazy to write any proper content so here’s something from Digg” special, I proudly present to you these 10 geeky home cinema setups. You see, some people have a £50 made in China 5.1-setup-in-a-box, some people go the massive sub and the huge-ass plasma route, and other crazy people even go for the 1080p projector and screen. But it takes an extra-special kind of person to turn an entire room in their house into the bridge from the starship Enterprise purely so they can watch films in there.

I guess it also takes an even more special person to have one of these and actually have any friends to invite over to watch movies with them.

Oh snap!

No comment…

Ever wondered what any website would look like if those crazy ‘lolcats‘ had their wicked way with it? Well, some madmen over at ‘LOLinator‘ have greated a system that will convert any website you like into a ‘lolcat’ version… Check out ‘TeamTeabag.com - The Lolcat Version‘… Or any other website really…

This Cake Is Not A Lie.

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I was just about to pack up for the night when I spotted this. Enough said.

(Via)

This Was A Triumph…

Intrepid casemodder Magnus Persson of bit-tech fame built himself this Portal-inspired casemod in just five days. Thinking about it, it’s strange that nobody has done this already - not the five day part, you wally.

This is made all the better by the fact that it has a Via EPIA inside, one of my favourite Small Form Factor motherboards. So it’s probably not got the power to actually play Portal, but at least it should never speak. If it does, I should hope that Mr. Persson would make the right choice and disregard its advice.

Just how much Portal stuff can there possibly be? The world is indeed a great place just lately.

I Asked For A Wii For Christmas But This Is So Much Better! Thanks Mom!

Here we have the 21st Century version of one of everyone’s favourite low-tech toys - the humble Etch-A-Sketch. This one plugs into a TV and emulates all of the features of the original, including those twiddly knobs and the whole “shake to clear” thing.

So, not only does it waste a perfectly good TV until your need for random doodlings is satisfied, but it’s also still a total pain in the arse to draw anything good on. Don’t get me wrong, some people can work wonders with them - but this fact only makes me all the more bitter.

(via)

Okay, so I can’t find any kind of tenuous link to make this fit in here. But so what, everyone should enjoy this video of Ferrari drivers Michael Schumacher, Kimi Raikkonen, Felipe Massa, Luca Badoer and Marc Gene sliding around an icy track in the miniscule new Fiat 500, no?

Yep, I thought so. Apparently this thing’s won the European Car Of The Year 2008, too. Looking at the previous winners, however, it’s surprising that they’ve actually picked quite a cool car for once.

…So now I’m rambling.

Well, not quite, as it doesn’t have the awesome touchscreen mod we saw a few weeks back. But this particular example of everyone’s favourite ultramobile tech toy is packing a whole heap of other truly useful mods, including:

• 2GB of DDR2 RAM
• Bluetooth Module
• 802.11n Wireless Networking
• GPS Module
• SDHC Card Reader
• Extra USB Ports
• 4GB Extra Internal Flash Drive
• FM Transmitter
• 56k Modem

Of course these mods don’t come cheap, and our intrepid hacker had to shell out $450 for everything, more than doubling the cost of the tiny Eee PC - but has he doubled the functionality?

To be honest, I don’t think it really matters, as this is a fantastic proof-of-concept for the extreme hackability of Asus’ wee laptop. I’d certainly have one if I had £200 to spend on a toy, in fact, I might have three. A bigger screen would also be nice, although apparently there is one on its’ way.

There’s a picture of the insides here, original page is here (down at the time of writing), and a good summary here.