"All beautiful and some obviously magical"

November 16, 2005 11:27 PM

Wonderful toys for geeky girls and boys. A collection of unusual and intensely desirable science-based gewgaws and gadgets. Don't miss the lucidly written articles that explain the underlying principles. (via)
posted by ottereroticist (29 comments total)

this reminds me of the stuff you see in american science surplus. neat.
posted by TechnoLustLuddite at 11:31 PM on November 16, 2005

Teresa Neilsen Hayden gets the props for the link, and the apposite title for this post.
posted by ottereroticist at 11:33 PM on November 16, 2005

Great link, thanks.
Alot of fun.
posted by Espoo2 at 12:51 AM on November 17, 2005

Good Fun.
posted by toma at 2:31 AM on November 17, 2005

we think there is a viscous liquid and a smaller ball which is very heavy.

I like how vague they are about that.
posted by graventy at 3:23 AM on November 17, 2005

Fantastic site... I love geeky toys like this!
posted by antifuse at 3:37 AM on November 17, 2005

Those prices are really high, though. £15 for three stereogram postcards? £20 for a pack of talking ribbons?
posted by Leon at 3:53 AM on November 17, 2005

If they weren't so expensive, I'd have no money left for food, so it's a wise price range.
The "rattlebacks", dragon forks and snail balls: winners

They don't seem up to date with modern magical methods though...
"our site does not yet include SSL security. If you are worried about sending an unencrypted credit card number over the web, one option is to send the number in two halves, in separate e-mails. Alternatively you can send the details by FAX or letter."
posted by NinjaPirate at 4:58 AM on November 17, 2005

As an old-school tabletop gamer, I'm always interested in novelty dice. I just might have to order these.
posted by Faint of Butt at 5:19 AM on November 17, 2005

this has to be wrong, I mean you can't tell me there won't be a green channel if I load that image into Photoshop.
posted by snoktruix at 5:44 AM on November 17, 2005

Well if you want to be the really unique present-giver this Christmas, I guess you gotta pay the price.
posted by fungible at 5:49 AM on November 17, 2005

Snok,

I just loaded it into Photoshop, and thus far there actually is no green on the damn thing. Amazing.
posted by glenwood at 7:05 AM on November 17, 2005

we think there is a viscous liquid and a smaller ball which is very heavy.

Mercury and plutonium for all good boys and girls!
posted by sourwookie at 7:28 AM on November 17, 2005

bizarre
posted by snoktruix at 7:51 AM on November 17, 2005

OMG, just my cup of tea! Great link, thanks ottereroticist.
posted by nickyskye at 8:18 AM on November 17, 2005

Somebody please buy me a Nema machine!
posted by LordSludge at 9:05 AM on November 17, 2005

snoktruix: No green channel. I promise you because I've made them myself. This is one of my favorite articles about the process and discovery of retinex photography (note that this is also called the Land effect, as it says on the page you linked, after Edwin Land, founder of Polaroid.)
posted by whatzit at 9:14 AM on November 17, 2005

No green channel.

Could someone explain this in terms of examining the image in photoshop? It looks to me like the cup, for example, has roughly equal parts red and green with a significantly lower amount of blue, adding up to what I'd call a greenish beige or something.

If there was truly only grayscale and red information in the image, wouldn't the green-channel and blue-channel values be pegged together, with only the red channel free to vary on its own?

Was green perhaps introduced when the image was compressed to JPEG?
posted by nobody at 9:42 AM on November 17, 2005

Wow, you could make a great FPP just on the Magic Mirrors that they sell.

i had no idea things like that even existed.

Nifty.
posted by quin at 10:37 AM on November 17, 2005

I'll take one of each! Thanks ottereroticist.
posted by firstdrop at 10:59 AM on November 17, 2005

That land effect photo - wierd.

I'm cool with the land effect but I'm not sure that photo is a good example.

I split the photo into three channels (RGB), combined G&B, greyscaled, then combined the red channel output with the grescale G&B. Here's the result.

Not as striking, but that green apple in the basket is definitely greyscale.
posted by PurplePorpoise at 11:10 AM on November 17, 2005

No, wait, nevermind. The way I did it isn't valid.
posted by PurplePorpoise at 11:14 AM on November 17, 2005

Hey, cool. I had a Yoshimoto Cube when I was a kid, although I never knew it by name, and have no idea where it came from.
posted by Gamblor at 11:57 AM on November 17, 2005

Take *that*, brain
posted by Sparx at 12:56 PM on November 17, 2005

Heh, the principle behind the magic mirrors was described in more detail in some pulp adventure novel I read years ago. A couple of what everyone thought were antique metal bowls were in fact a treasure map to inca gold or something, when used as mirrors.
posted by -harlequin- at 5:56 PM on November 17, 2005

"we think there is a viscous liquid and a smaller ball which is very heavy."

Do not taunt happy fun ball.
posted by gd779 at 6:36 PM on November 17, 2005

Commendable post...first rate. Thank you....
posted by Muirwylde at 11:49 PM on November 17, 2005

As in anyone is gonna read this... but anyway. I understand now. The images on the web are not really showing this effect (neither is the image you can buy from the shop). You have to make it with a projector and filters. It seems that the spectrum of light produced by the actual experimental setup with projectors is special and not reproducable with the normal RGB colors of LCD monitors. So you're not going to see this effect on your computer screen or a normal photo (of course, the green looking areas in those images just ARE green as Photoshop proves). I'd be interested to see the real effect sometime, it sounds quite impressive.
posted by snoktruix at 12:01 AM on November 18, 2005

I figured as much, snoktruix (though I had thought I may just be missing something basic about color analysis). Thanks for the update.
posted by nobody at 8:33 AM on November 18, 2005