PC Case For Hamsters, EZ Bake Oven in a Drive Bay

ResQuad noted that Slashdot's OSDN Sister site ThinkGeek is selling some exciting new products including a PC Case for Hamsters and an EZ Bake Oven that fits in a 5.25 drive bay. They also have a limited run T-Shirt with a s3kr1t message on it. Lots of other fun stuff too.

Comments

T-shirt super secret message

[thelenm]

By the way, the super secret message on the T-shirt says, "I shopped at ThinkGeek on April Fools Day, and all I got was this lousy shirt!"

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[Jonboy X]

Nifty cross-platform Java implementation:

public class DecodeMessage {
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
StringReader sr=new StringReader(data);
StringBuffer message=new StringBuffer();
while(true) {
char[] binaryDigits=new char[8];
int bitsRead=sr.read(binaryDigits,0,8);
if(bitsRead==-1) {break;}
byte b=Byte.parseByte(new String(binaryDigits),2);
message.append((char)b);
}
System.out.println(message.toString());
}
static String data=
"010010010010000001110011011010000110111101 1100000 11100000110010101100100001000000110000101110100001 00000010101000110100001101001011011100110101101000 11101100101011001010110101100100000011011110110111 00010000001000001011100000111001001101001011011000 01000000100011001101111011011110110110001110011001 00000010001000110000101111001001011000010000001100 00101101110011001000010000001100001011011000110110 00010000001001001001000000110011101101111011101000 01000000111011101100001011100110010000001110100011 01000011010010111001100100000011011000110111101110 10101110011011110010010000001110011011010000110100 1011100100111010000100001";
}

Re:T-shirt super secret message

[Chembal]

You forgot your imports, you insensitive clod!

import java.io.*;

Having a good time today?

[hlh_nospam]

I'm guessing that the PC hamster cage was suggested by this news article: Fat Hamster in Printer Sparks Rescue

Apr 1, 7:45 am ET

BERLIN (Reuters) - A hamster called "Teddy" sparked a police rescue mission after he climbed inside a computer printer and got stuck because he was too fat to get out again, authorities said Wednesday. (rest of article can be found on www.iwon.com)

Given the date, I gotta wonder if either is for real.

Re:EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[SandSpider]

In fact, you aren't the first person to think of this. I present to you: GE's Advantium oven.

The people who claim Microwave Ovens are the successors are Fools! Fools! The reason being that the EZ Bake works off of light bulbs. (Incidentally, you would have wanted to rig a better lightbulb into the EZ Bake Oven to make it more powerful - I suggest Halogen.) The Advantium cooks with, you guessed it, Light.

But, sadly, your joke has, in fact, been brought to, um, light. Sorry.

=Brian

I am actually building the hamster cage

[xThinkx]

OK, so no lie, I have made several (failed) attempts to build, and will one day successfully build a similar hamster case.

For everyone who's wondering why there are several attempts consider the following.

• Habitrail tubes aren't solid, they have holes for ventilation (which will be addressed later). Hamsters urinate alot, and not in the same place, which led to the first case with junk parts smelling like hot piss in almost no time. Also urine corrodes things quickly.
• Hamsters need bedding, which gets everywhere, they chew it up or scratch it into minute pieces that will clog fan intakes, etc. Bad stuff
• Hamsters need some sort of open air ventilation to survive (and breathe). If this ventilation isn't above where they can reach they'll throw bedding/poop out of it somehow. If the ventilation is too high, it won't work and the hamster is done for. If you use even a low cfm fan to add to the ventilation, hamster will avoid it like the plague, causing general health and discomfort to the hamster
• Hamsters chew...A LOT. One nearly unfortunate hamster chewed a hole big enough for him to get out into the case, he was working on the insulation of a 12V line when I cought him.

So, there's the trials and tribulations of the Hamster case. Can't belive someone stole my idea...

Re:Almost useful...

[Anonymous Coward]

$ while read -n 8 binary; do echo -ne `printf "\\\\\x%x" $((2#${binary}))`; done <<< '0100100100100000011100110110100001101111011100000 11100000110010101100100001000000110000101110100001 00000010101000110100001101001011011100110101101000 11101100101011001010110101100100000011011110110111 00010000001000001011100000111001001101001011011000 01000000100011001101111011011110110110001110011001 00000010001000110000101111001001011000010000001100 00101101110011001000010000001100001011011000110110 00010000001001001001000000110011101101111011101000 01000000111011101100001011100110010000001110100011 01000011010010111001100100000011011000110111101110 10101110011011110010010000001110011011010000110100 1011100100111010000100001'

ph33r my m4d bash sk1llZzzzz
I shopped at ThinkGeek on April Fools Day, and all I got was this lousy shirt!

Re:EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[Shakrai]

-shrugs- I don't know how it's done... all I know is a 15- or 25-watt halogen bulb can produce as much light as a 100-watt incandescent, if not more, but gets the entire lamp very hot to the touch. Probably not as hot as a light socket, but then again, we don't worry about those tipping over onto your bed and lighting your sheets aflame, now do we?

Our friends over at Howstuffworks have an interesting summary:

A halogen lamp also uses a tungsten filament, but it is encased inside a much smaller quartz envelope. Because the envelope is so close to the filament, it would melt if it were made from glass. The gas inside the envelope is also different -- it consists of a gas from the halogen group. These gases have a very interesting property: They combine with tungsten vapor! If the temperature is high enough, the halogen gas will combine with tungsten atoms as they evaporate and redeposit them on the filament. This recycling process lets the filament last a lot longer. In addition, it is now possible to run the filament hotter, meaning you get more light per unit of energy. You still get a lot of heat, though; and because the quartz envelope is so close to the filament, it is EXTREMELY hot compared to a normal light bulb.

Personally I'd rather use florescents. They use less energy then either solution and don't run hot to the touch. Of course I suppose they aren't ideal for all applications and if you get cheap ballasts in your fixtures they are a royal pain in the ass because the blubs keep blowing and you have no idea why.

Back in my drunk and stupid college days we used to melt floppy disks with halogen lights. Never saw one ingite sheets but it doesn't seem like a leap of faith to assume that if it can melt plastic it would ingite fabric. If I was anymore of a geek I'd look up the temperatures involved but I think I've used up my geek quota for the day :)

Re:EZ-Bake ovens and Geek childhood

[netringer]

Umm what EZ-bake would you be refering to? The one my sister had used two AA batts.

This one. Requires one 100-watt lightbulb.

The first generation original one my sister had in the olden days had two 100-watt bulbs - top and bottom....AND WE LIKED IT!
We also had a similar 25 watt 120 volt light bulb in the original first-generation Lite Brite.

Kids don't have many line power toys these days. Too many lawsuits.

Let me tell you about my Vac-U-Form which was a plastic heat pack machine (WARNING! Electric toy! Gets Hot!) and my neighbor's Kenner plastic injection molding machine (WARNING! Electric toy! Gets Hot!) that made plastic pellets (WARNING! Choking hazard!) into smaller versions (WARNING! Choking hazard!) of those little toy soldiers you see in "Toy Story."

hot dog cookers

[zogger]

you ever make a hot dog cooker when you were a kid? Easy instructions. Take a clean board (a 1 x 4 is handy size), pound two 16 penny nails through it, distance separating them approximately 3/4ths the length of a hot dog (check fridge meat drawer, hotdogs vary). Leave a 1/4 inch of nail and head showing. Snag (dad's) extension cord, cut off the female end, separate the wirez. Strip them a half inch or so, wrap one end to one nailhead, one to the other, then finish pounding the nails in. Get vice grips, bend nails parallel to board about halfway up the nails, pointing towards each other. Impale hotdog onto nails, making your circuit. Plug it in, cook to your specs. If you leave them on too long, reality will remind you of the fact....