Slashdot Mirror

So like this, then?

The musical instrument is played much like a theremin [...]

Clearly whoever wrote this has never seen, let alone played a theremin.

You don't play a theremin by rotating a mobile phone (or anything) in your hand. There is no notion of angle, since you play with your bare hands, only distance. The distance to the vertical antenna determines the pitch, whereas the distance to the horizontal circular antenna controls the volume. The whole point is the expressiveness of playing music with your whole body.

If you want a small silly toy theremin, you should order Vol. 17 of Japanese magazine Otona no kagaku (the whole thing is in Japanese, but easy enough to build). You can only control the pitch, the sound is pretty awful, and you cannot place calls with it, but at least it's a theremin.

I agree; you'd do better buying one of the Fine Molds plastic model kits of the Millennium Falcon (example listing on the Hobby Link Japan website), which runs around $170 and has much better fidelity to the original.

Kris you were looking for things for your son to build robot based. Are you still?

Did you ever looking at the Gundam series model kits? The high grade kits are great for kids ( http://www.hlj.com/product/BAN919249 example Freedom Gundam here or even the Super deformed kits could be fun and are very simple) or if he's intrested in something a bit more "sink my teeth into" style, theres always the Master grade kits (http://www.hlj.com/product/BAN938412). First you build the skeleton then you build up the armour and such, High grade kits lack the skeleton and are hollow inside). Plus they're not too expensive (you were willing to pay $500 for a toy earlier I saw :P ) and they give very nice working concepts of how a robot would work.

The other upside is they don't need paint and snap together. Put the stickers on for the eyes and he's also got a toy as posable as any action figure.

Could be worth looking into if he's into robots (like myself) and the great thing is the instructions are all pictured and easily labeled so the fact that they're Japanese models makes no difference. The only problem might be is he's probably a bit young to follow the plot of a series (quite a bit of political junk going on), but if you live some where like Canada Gundam should be easily avaible and entertain him with giant robots shooting each other to boot.

A bunch of Warhammer 40000 players just thought, "Holy Shit, it's a real live Space Marine!"

A bunch of Xbox owners just thought, "Holy Shit, it's the Master Chief!"

And a bunch of anime geeks scoffed and said "Call me back when you make one that's 50 feet tall."

Screw the Evas man.... how about this sweet thing?

The only place I've seen these tanks for sale is Hobby Link Japan. They looked really cool, but at ~$50US + shipping they're a little expensive. Way cooler than those little cars though.

So the real reason I'm sitting here on Valentine's night assembling Gundam is because I have Java skills and not because I lack social confidence.

Pass the whisky.

A good site to read about a recent comparision of these two remote control cars is: Micro RC Cars

I had great service from Hobby Link Japan when I recently bought a Takara Digi Q that was on clearance for half price! Another popular website that sells these and which I've read good things about is Cosmo Games.

Happy racing!

-B

Mail order! HobbyLink Japan has the Char-G, I know. Shipping charges are high, but the prices are low, and if you get a couple of friends together you can all go in on a single big order.

1. Nobody has licensed Macross: DYRL as of yet, and what with Whoremony Gold being the bastards they are, I wouldn't expect it for a long, long time. 2. That's Valkyrie, Veritech is a Robotech term. And no, it's looking increasingly unlikely that the YAMATO/Toycom MacPlus Valk's (or the upcoming DYRL Valkyries) will ever see a North American release. Blame Harmony Gold. If you really want them, import them. Get 'em at Hobbylink Japan. You pay Yen price + shipping.