In an interesting marketing move, Microsoft recently sent emails to fans at the Halo Waypoint forums entitled “Your piece of the Halo 4 puzzle.” In all, 32 pieces were collected and assembled to reveal what will likely become the box art for the November 6th release.
Needless to say, this is going to be a long, long summer for Halo fans.
(Waypoint forums via Coming Soon via Geekosystem)
Korean gamer Yoshichan has elevated his status in the gaming world after he beat Diablo 3 in a mind-blowing 12 hours and 29 minutes with “368 Lifetime Kills, 412 Elite Kills and 168,481 gold as a Barbarian on normal difficulty”.
Obviously, this has opened the doors for new competition, and according to reports, a group of Korean and Chinese gamers have already conquered the game in 7 hours on normal difficulty.
(via Geekologie)
After reading the graphic novel The Five Fists of Science, which pits Nikola Tesla and Mark Twain against Thomas Edison and Guglielmo Marconi, Rob Flickenger was inspired to create a functional Tesla gun similar to the example used in the novel. The result is a cast aluminum NERF gun equipped with a spark gap Tesla coil and powered by an 18 volt drill battery.
The housing for the primary coil and high voltage switch is made out of porcelain, and was 3D printed–it’s a pretty custom switch after all. All the power supply is housed in silicone.
The gun is capable of firing over 20k volts of electricity, which is just as deadly as it sounds. That means that any copycat projects must have a properly designed case to prevent electrical current from grounding itself through the user’s body—though it’s best to never attempt anything like this ever.
Check out a photo of the gun in action after the jump.
After starting life as a Kickstarter campaign, these Mathematician’s Dice have landed on ThinkGeek, where they are being offered as exciting substitutes for conventional dice. Instead of merely displaying the numbers 1-6, the math dice are emblazoned with the the additive identity, the multiplicative identity, the golden ratio, Euler’s number e, the imaginary number i, and the circular constant pi.
If these look like hieroglyphics to you, prepare for your board game / gambling jaunts to become infinitely more confusing and time consuming.
Product Page: ($20)
Voice actor J.K. Simmons has recorded a series of new Cave Johnson lines for the Portal 2 level-maker DLC, which players will hear randomly as they begin levels. YouTuber “ac1th” thoughtfully combined this audio into a 25 minute video that will serve as a soothing fix for gaming addicts.
Check it out after the break.
Etsy seller “Movie Guns Inc.” is offering this custom 1:1 scale replica of the Colonial Marines’ Smartgun from Aliens which consists of over 60 individual parts made from a mix of aluminum, resin and steel. The prop offers features such as grips reinforced with steel rods, a removable ammo drum, a removable top cover and a functional rear trigger handle.
Check out some additional pics after the break.
Curtis Glover gave water conservation a nerdy twist by creating a rain barrel that looks like R2-D2. Wisely, Curtis thought the droid design would be popular and help raise additional money for The Water Quality Forum’s annual contest/auction for custom designed rain barrels.
This particular barrel can be viewed at Knoxville’s Bearden Beer Market through May 24th. Check out an additional pic after the break.
Click here to view the best of Nerd Approved for the week of May 7th-13th, 2012. If you enjoy this list, be sure to to subscribe to Nerd Approved via RSS, Twitter or Facebook. And don’t forget to check out our sister sites Fashionably Geek, CubicleBot, and That’s Nerdalicious!
Now available for pre-order: Street Fighter themed Bobble Budds from Multiverse Studio Inc. Included in the release are 3.5″ versions of Chun-Li, Sagat, Blanka and Ryu – all of which will feature an exclusive bobble locking mechanism for “optimal functionality and display”.
Expect the Bobble Budds to land in in June.
Product Page: ($12 each)
As a final project for his Advanced Mechatronics class, student “kss5095″ created a functional Portal turret programmed using MATLAB and Arduino. The device is equipped with a laser sight, turret voice clips and a webcam that track targets so they can be bombarded with NERF darts.
He plans to add an exterior shell to complete the look.
Hit the jump to see it in action.
Friends: Asylum• Fosfor Gadgets• Geek Girl Diva • Geeks Are Sexy• Obvious Winner• TechEBlog• Technabob• Uber-Review•
