All Entries in the "To Do" Category
Literally Chill In The South Pole With Kensington Antarctica
Can’t decide where to take that next vacation adventure? You may want to consider Kensington Tours’ Antarctica expeditions, which take you to customizable luxury safaris right in the South Pole.
Not for the cheap, these luxury holidays take you on a five-hour flight from Cape Town to Antarctica, flying over masses of icebergs littered across the Southern Ocean. Upon landing, you’re taken to the one and only luxury safari camp right in the interior of Earth’s southernmost continent, where your unique ice-filled adventure begins. Perched along a 200-ft ice cliff overlooking a spectacular scenery , the camp runs entirely on solar energy and adheres to strict ecological guidelines.
Each tour ranges from two to twelve days, with a maximum of twelve guests each to ensure personal attention from the five veteran guides. Combining the adventurous spirit with homely comforts, you’ll room inside a luxury tented camp with insulated canvas chalets, soft warm [...]
Snow Transformation Pack Turns Your Windows Desktop Into OS X Snow Leopard
Do you love the Mac’s desktop, but can’t stomach the Apple tax? Forget those lame themes and install the Snow Transformation Pack, a free Windows software that makes your entire system look like OS X.
Created by WinXSoft, the freeware does more than change a background, use different fonts and add new icons like typical themes. Instead, it recreates the entire Snow Leopard UI, making your Windows 7 or Vista desktop feel legitimately like a Mac computer. Plus, you can still play games and not rave like a fanboy, which are always awesome qualities to have.
The Snow Transformation Pack replaces a whole host of components, such as system icons, system sounds, graphics, wallpapers, login screen, shutdown dialog box and system branding logo. It also throws in additional applications to emulate Snow Leopard features, such as the Dock, Spaces, Shadow and more. Simply put, it goes above and beyond what OS X [...]
Palletways Dragon Is A Hot Air Balloon With A 2-Inch Thick, See-Thru Bottom
I’ve never been in one, but riding a hot air balloon looks downright scary. The glass-bottomed Palletways Dragon hot air balloon, which opened festivities at the 2010 Bristol International Balloon Fiesta, should take the panic attacks to an even higher level.
Piloted by Christian Brown, who has been flying balloons for 18 years, the air-powered vehicle is said to be the first of its kind. Understandable, since seeing the a clear view of the world underneath you while you’re thousands of feet above the ground should be enough to trigger anyone’s “WTF am I doing?” instinct. According to Brown, they’ve done tethered trials of the same balloon before and majority of passengers ended up shrieking in fits. “Ordinarily, you would look over the edge of the basket to peer at the ground below,” he surmises, “but there is something very disconcerting about seeing it right beneath your feet.”
The Palletways Dragon was [...]
Modernist Cuisine, A Cookbook For Kitchen Scientists
Sous vide, the technique of using vacuum-sealed plastic bags to cook food at precisely controlled temperatures (to maintain the integrity of ingredients) is relatively new to most kitchen dabblers. It’s especially unheard of in my household where cooking involves either pouring oil in the pan or lighting up charcoal in the grill. So far, there have been little documented work in its processes. That’s about to change with an upcoming book called Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking.
Yes, it’s a cookbook. More than that, however, it’s a technological manual, detailing the application of scientific processes for creating sublime-tasting meals. Created by former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold, Chris Young and Maxime Bilet, the lavish guide details how pioneering chefs have applied science and technology to advance modern culinary arts.
Modernist Cuisine is a six-volume book, totaling a hefty 2,200 pages. It claims to be the “most comprehensive guide” to cooking [...]
MyStudio Puts Some Polish In Your Amateur Videos
Ever seen one of those kiosks at the mall where you can make CDs of yourself singing karaoke? No? Yeah, I don’t know about it either. It was some guy I know who recorded himself singing there every night of the week and kept all the optical discs for his personal collection. Oh yeah, the guy just happened to scrawl my name with a marker on the discs and dumped them at my house too.
Anyway, with that chapter of my life over, it’s time to turn over a new leaf. Like shooting videos of myself for later uploading to YouTube. And MyStudio, a self-service video recording kiosk, offers a heck of a way to do it, capturing you in HD video with studio-quality sound and a hefty lot of choices in both background music and scenes.
Want to film yourself singing You Belong With Me with a naked Taylor Swift in [...]
A Life-Size Papercraft Honda NSX Race Car
Where’s the ideal place for a papercraft enthusiast to work? Screw the art supply store and get yourself over to a printer manufacturer. Why? Because you can use office resources to build giant papercraft projects like this: a full-sized cardboard Honda NSX Race Car.
Devised by papercraft wizards under Epson’s employ, the piece doesn’t only replicate the original in size, but brings impressive detail too. Sure, you can’t drive it like a real Acura/Honda NSX Super GT, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t trick passing strangers into thinking you have one parked in your garage.
Construction for the cardboard Honda NSX Race Car works much like any regular papercraft project, with individual sheets printed, cut up and attached together. The only difference is that they used giant printers and oversized cardboards for the thing, instead of the desktop machines you use for your own creations.
Epson posted PDF instructions for a smaller, [...]
Museum of Bond Vehicles & Espionage Will Showcase 32 Authentic 007 Rides
Museums are stuffy. James Bond’s cars are awesome. Put the two together and what do you get? A very long drive to to the Museum of Bond Vehicles & Espionage, a Gensler-designed facility housing the world’s largest assembly of 007 movie vehicles.
Why a long drive? Because they’re putting it up in Momence, Illinois, a small town 50 miles south of Chicago, with a bustling population of 3,200 super spies. Or maybe regular folks. We’re not really sure.
The town also happens to be the home of the Ian Fleming Foundation, a non-profit organization who owns the 32 original and scale model Bond vehicles (used across numerous films from 1964 to 2006) that will be housed under the museum’s roof. Notable pieces in the collection include the original Ford Mustang Mach 1 429 Cobra Jet from Diamonds are Forever, a model of the Bell Helicopter used in You Only Live Twice and [...]
Chocomize Lets You Cook Up Custom Chocolate Bars
Tired of the same old chocolate munchies you can buy off the shelf? Check out Chocomize, a service for sweet tooths hankering for a custom chocolate bar experience.
A milk bar with Cheerios and mini-marshmallows? Check. Dark chocolate with bacon? Not a problem. White chocolate topped with a heaping of beef jerky, diced ginger and curry powder? Gross, but definitely approved. Like your very own chocolate factory, the company lets you fashion treats that would have otherwise stayed in your sugar-addled imagination.
Chocomize starts you off with a simple choice: dark, milk or white chocolate bar base, all premium Belgian. From there, you get to pick from 80 default ingredients (nuts, fruits, herbs, spices, candies, decorations and others), churning out up to 30 billion different possible combinations. You can also pick from pre-selected customer favorites, such as the Berry Bar (milk chocolate with a variety of berries), Hawaiian Sunset (milk chocolate with [...]
Get Your House Cleaned By Scantily-Clad Maids…Really
Getting someone to clean your house is great. Having someone mop your floor and dust your furniture while dressed in their birthday suits is usually just stuff 13-year old boys dream about. Until now. Live like a king in your very own inane fantasy with Penthouse Maids, a cleaning service that sends scantily-clad housekeepers to take care of your abode. Really.
Available only in the Chicago area (for now – they just launched), they offer both male and female cleaning professionals duly trained to spruce up your place while playing eye candy. The maids will arrive fully clothed, but will change in your choice of risqué fashion before doing any work. Choices include bikini, lingerie, maid outfit, topless and nude, with each fantasy-fulfilling garb bringing its own price tag.
Penthouse Maids’ personnel can do all aspects of cleaning, from making your bed to washing your dishes to spit-shining your bathroom tiles. In [...]
Learn Something Useful Over The Weekend: Private Ninja Lessons
Always wanted to be a ninja but couldn’t fork up the money to pay an ancient secret ninja temple to take you in? Get your assassin training closer to home with private ninja lessons from one of New York’s oldest Bujinkan schools.
If you’re not familiar with Bujinkan, the system consists of nine separate martial arts lineages, believed to have been developed and used by Japan’s friendly neighborhood ninjas. You’ll be studying the shinobi way in a facility with affiliations to Japan’s Bujinkan Hombu Dojo, under an instructor bearing the title of Shidoshi (“teacher of warrior ways”).
The lessons will consist of training in budo taijutsu, which is based around the martial arts, strategies and tactics comprising ninjutsu. While I doubt you’ll be covertly scaling walls and soaring across roofs any time soon, the promised lessons don’t sound half bad. Ninja skills like leaping and rolling ever so slyly are being promised. [...]
DIY Book Lamp: Nice Project For Your Old, Dusty Volumes
We all have old books doing nothing but gathering dust somewhere in our homes. I have a couple I’ve chopped up for use as laptop stands, with about a boxful more rotting from years of utter apathy. If you’re the same way, you might want to look at the Book Lamp, a DIY project that lets you turn an old, unloved book into a decorative shelf lighting fixture.
Created by Ed Lewis (nee fungus amungus in Instructables), it’s quite a simple build. So simple, in fact, that it looks ridiculously ghetto when you check the open book. Once shut and set on a shelf, however, it looks just as stylish as any piece of lighting implement you can imagine showing off at home.
The first time you see the DIY Book Lamp closed, you’d think there was some fancy lighting installed on there. In truth, though, making your own is actually sixth-grade [...]
WannaJet Offers Private Jet Luxury At Business Class Rates
Want to fly on a private jet but restricted to a business class budget? Ahhhh, quality problem – please complain to someone who cares. You know, someone like WannaJet, a new jet-sharing service that lets you skip the airline hassle without having to burn a hole in your pocket.
Offering a third option to the frugally wealthy, it brings the best of both worlds. Imagine: no more fighting your way through crowds, killing time at a security line, waiting forever in baggage claims and other unnecessary airport delays, all while staying within spitting range of business class rates.
Instead of commissioning an entire private jet by yourself, WannaJet lets you buy a seat on one. Only four to six passengers go on each flight and it comes with the usual private flight amenities, so it’s still way more luxury than you can get from any airline. All prices are fixed and are [...]
Clone Brews Show You How To Copy Your Favorite Beer’s Taste
Want to homebrew your beer, but can’t bear leaving the taste of your favorite bottled store fare? Grab a copy of Clone Brews and learn how to recreate the taste of popular brand name beers the world over.
A bible for beer drinkers with less exotic inklings, it shows you to how to enjoy homebrewing without embracing a more adventurous palate. Over 200 beers are available for your experimentation, ranging from American pale ales to strong-hopped India pale ales to wheat beers to English bitters.
This second edition paperback of Clone Brews adds 50 new flavors to the 150 recipes in the original book. Spanning 439 pages, it covers such popular beverages as the Guinness Extra Stout, Dos Equis and Foster’s Lager. Apart from straight brewing recipes, the book features mashing guidelines, extract instructions, and detailed reviews of materials and ingredients, allowing you to experiment on your own when trying to recreate [...]
Aqua Sheko’s Dark Interior Highlights Flesh-Eating, Foot-Cleaning Fish
Getting a foot spa usually means dunking your feet on a tub and having it massaged with some exfoliating chemicals. Not at London’s Aqua Sheko, though. Billed as the city’s first “fish therapy” spa, treatment consists of dipping your feet in an aquarium and having fish eat the dead cells out of them.
Don’t worry. They steered clear off piranhas and baby sharks for this beauty treatment. Instead, they’re using tubs filled with schools of Garra Rufa, also known as doctor fish, a species well-known for their habits of feeding on dead skin (especially those with psoriasis, a perennial favorite).
Aqua Sheko’s interior was designed by 7Gods, who used a dark décor to help highlight the hordes of fish swimming in lines upon lines of tanks and floor-mounted tubs. In fact, the design theme makes it look more like a night club than a beauty spa, with black class cladding the furniture, [...]
Experience Virtual Reality Inside A Hamster Ball With Virtusphere
Just when you thought 3D took over virtual reality, somebody comes up with an excellent platform for the old buzzword. The Virtusphere is a VR platform that combines sensors, a head-mounted display, controllers and a giant hamster ball to bring military-level cyber-recreations for mass consumption.
The giant hamster ball, by the way, happens to be the 10-foot sphere that acts as the primary playing field. Unlike previous virtual reality setups that hinder movement, the rotating stage literally gives you infinite space to operate – just like a hamster inside a ball. You can walk, run, jump, crawl and swing your limbs to your heart’s content, all without tripping on wires or falling off a ledge.
How? The Virtusphere ball, which is built out of the same durable plastic as Legos, is set atop a platform fitted with 45 caster-mounted wheels. It will turn in any direction with the user’s steps, making the [...]
King Kong 360 3D Ready To Bring A Prehistoric Assault Come July 1st
Want to take part in “the largest, most intense 3D experience in the planet”? That’s what Universal Studios Hollywood is promising with the King Kong 360 3D, the theme park’s newest attraction featuring the legendary silver screen primate.
If you remember, the park had a King Kong animatronic years ago, which was destroyed in a fire. Instead of reviving that, they decided it would be more fun to throw in an immersive experience – one that puts you right in the middle of an encounter with the beast, feeling his massive presence with all of your senses.
King Kong 360 3D is set on Skull Island, with its resident creatures right out of Jurassic Park, based on the same setting the original attraction was built on. Visitors get on a tram wearing 3D glasses, then enter a soundstage which projects the battle-scarred, 6000-lb silverback gorilla on two 180 x 40 feet screens [...]
