I've had Malcolm for a year now. He's a little dog. He's a good boy although kind of a moron, but Lisa and I love him. As a puppy, he chewed on a good variety of things, as puppies do. Pens probably reminded him of bones, and he'd sneak up onto Lisa's chair to her desk to grab a pen and prance away to a quiet corner with his prize to crunch away to get at the inky marrow. He'd attack shoelaces with the enough fervor you'd think they were spaghetti with meat sauce. Eyeglasses, too. He likes biting up the ear pieces so they are jagged and painful to wear, and putting cracks into the lenses. But now that he's a bit older, he's developed a primary affinity for eating gadgets.

TV remotes are fun for him, but only rectangular ones and mostly on the corners. The Toshiba remote has a little bit of chew on the corners, but the AppleTV remote, made of that soft plastic and chicklet looking, is his favorite. If I leave it on the coffee table, I will find it under a couch cushion 2 days later looking more worn. The black IR cap is broken off and the battery case is popped out. I'm lucky he didn't swallow the batteries. Or get shocked the one time he chewed through a 110v cable for a heating pad. I'd unplugged it that morning!

But Malcolm's favorite thing to chew on is an animatronic lion cub. Someone sent it to me last year, unsolicited, and it turned into a dog toy. It's basically a little robot cub that growls and moves its eyes and mouth. The size of a teddy bear. Malcolm used to be scared of it, but now he just unleashes all the hell a 9 pound dog can on it. I think he hates it. After all, he's flesh and blood dog, and the lion is a robotic cat. Not only is the conflict inter-species, but its a battle between a biological being and a robotic one.

At first, he'd drag it across the floor, by its limbs. After awhile, he learned to grab it by the nape of the neck and shake it. After 2 months, the neck opened up and the plastic spine, surrounded by various cables that powered the mouth and eye servos. He chewed through off of them, killing the robot, and gnawed on the neck bones. Sometimes he humps it, but it's pretty clearly dominance, not cross species homosexual technophilia. I think.

I don't have a point here. I just find it amusing and fun to watch nature's greatest machines destroy primitive man made replicants. Oh, how far we have to go.

*Yes, I spray things down with bitter apple now.

There's something awesome about this mini-arcade machine and I want to build one so badly that I even ignored the fact that this video was filmed in a bathroom. [YouTube via Boing Boing]

These two drives are spittin' images of the AKAI MPC2000XL sampler and the EMU SP1200 drum machine—devices that made hip hop music what it is today. Both drives come in 4GB capacities and can be pre-ordered now for $40. They are expected to ship in June. [Product Page via Crate Kings]

What may have been good enough then (the first British-made washing machine), is a horrible piece of crap now. But of course, that's true for most types of machines ever made. [Science Museum]

The Mypressi Twist has a pneumatic engine—which works with CO2 cartridges that get you eight cups each—that allows you to brew a fresh espresso with no need for external power. You only need hot water and coffee to get your caffeine fix.

It will arrive to this country in the fall for $129, so the survivors from the swine flu can have espresso with their human bacon anywhere and at any time. [Mypressi via Single Serve Espresso via Engadget]

They're also quicker. A human's muscle fibers can contract 10% per second, but these can contract 40,000 percent.

I had no idea synthetic muscles materials have come so far. A few years ago, when I was covering JPL's robotic arm wrestling challenge for Wired, the materials had a fraction of the potential of organic muscles. [Wired]

The graphics and the music are just spot on, the controls simple, and the purpose is clear: Kick goons' ass either as the good old shortie-panties of Nightowl or the sex-queen-on-two-long-legs Silk Spectre, who is like a superhero version of Virginia Bell, without the pasties.

The game is not a masterpiece, but it has plenty of charm. Enough that I wish the Watchmen production team actually released a version of this for the iPhone, Android, and Windows Mobile. [Kotaku]

Think about it. The more all these people work in all those weird countries, the more clothes there will be, and the cheaper the manufacturing will result. That means increased profit margins for manufacturers, free entertainment for those workers/slaves/kids slaves no matter where they are, and exactly the same quality for your jeans, shirts, jackets, and sneakers, at the same price.

See? Everyone wins! [The Onion]

His mom said: "He's watching a molecular process happening here, he's creating a climatic event. It's incredible." I don't know what's more incredible: her mom being cool about Forest creating a huge mountain of snow in their backyard or the fact that she's talking about it all as "molecular process."

Forest, if you are reading this, contact us. Brian needs a ski slope to practice his snowboarding on in San Francisco. [Katu and Oregon Live]

The device can take you through six different regimens for better sleep, improved concentration, memory improvement and relaxation, each running at about 15 minutes. The inventors say that doctors at University of Pennsylvania and Thomas Jefferson University—both in Philadelphia—have put the MC Square through real clinical tests. Some studies have shown a 14% increase in memorization after about a week. That is, as long as the thing doesn't give you a seizure: since it is a device that emanates light pulses, MC Square says those who have suffered from seizures in the past should stay away. Ditto for kids under 13. Everyone else should pay $400 for it, in their opinion. [MC Square]

Called King of the House, the pinball game is simple. Left-hand flipper controls the parents' wishes for their kids (school, church, museums, books), while the right hand is all about what the kids want. TV, interweb and video games. It's on show at the Palau de la Virreina in Barcelona for another month. [Flickr via Boing Boing Gadgets]

We're not sure how useful this is—who spends all 40 minutes of the cycle standing in front of the washer?—but LG apparently has other ideas in mind. Oh crap, that reminds us that we left a wet load in the washer last night! – Jason Chen

A Washing Machine with Mp3 player by LG [Unwiredview]

Product Page [Via Nerd Approved]

Last time I was in Akihabara, I'd found a 7-story sex store filled with the usual DVDs, mags, fetish gear and cosplay outfits. After floor 2, my eyes just glazed over, senses overloaded. But you don't start hiking up Everest with the intent of half-assing, so I kept on going. On floor 5, I noticed what looked like a bright pink projector in the store window. But instead of a lens, the machine had a faux-flesh orifice with "Heaven" scrawled across the side. And instead of a lightbulb, it seemed to have a motor churning away, tirelessly. Then I noticed lots of disposable looking canisters around with different textured interiors. Aha, a bright pink japanese blowjob machine. Cool.

One geek thought occurred to me after the typical male ones: I bet this could be rigged into an automatic cellphone cleaning mechanism.–Brian Lam

Simple and unethical. Just the way you like it. – Jason Chen

How to: Hack a Vending Machine? [TechEBlog]

The balls are launched between 20kph (12.4mph) and 70kph (43mph), which isn't that fast, but is good enough for practice. Seriously, as a guy who's been hit in the nuts more than once by a tennis ball machine (ball me once, shame on you, b..ba....I'm not gonna get balled again), I can say this is a good invention. – Jason Chen

Product Page [Astro-r via Seihin World via BNCRanking (japanese)]