Gizmodo: pumpkins

The Great Gizmodo Halloween Roundup

Chris Jacob — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:00:00 EDT

Since I'm feeling festive evening, I thought I would leave you with some of our Halloween posts. OK, really I just can't pass up a chance to put up these masks of Chen and Blam again. Happy Halloween everyone!

• This Is Why You Shouldn't Put Drunk Ewoks On Live TV
• Next Year, I'm Time Travel Trick or Treating
• Scientifically Haunted Room Shows That Ghosts Are Only In Your Head
• Twelve Beautiful Jack-o'-Lanterns
• Ghostbuster Proton Pack Uses Real Lasers, Can Probably Hunt Real Ghosts
• 10 Of Your Geekiest Halloween Costumes
• A Spider-Bot Pumpkin Is the Scariest Way To Dispense Candy On Halloween
• Build The Spirit Radio That Creeped Out Tesla Himself
• The iMac Cylon Mask Is Both Trick and Treat
• "Working" Apple iPhone Costumes Just Plain Win
• Craigslist Ad By A Horrid Excuse for a Human Being
• Sword Illuminates a Pumpkin by Impaling It
• Ideas for Tech-Themed Halloween Pumpkins
• 10 Robot Halloween Pumpkins Provide Artistic Inspiration
• Scare the Crap Out of Trick-or-Treaters With a Rovin' Pumpkin
• Ruin Halloween For Everyone by Going as Brian Lam or Jason Chen

And please, be safe!

A Spider-Bot Pumpkin Is the Scariest Way To Dispense Candy On Halloween

Sean Fallon — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:20:00 EDT

If I wasn't so worried about traumatizing the kids in my neighborhood, dispensing trick or treat candy in this creepy spider bot pumpkin would be awesome.

It runs C on an Axon microcontroller. It uses all digital servos and can lift over twice its body weight. The software (soon to be given out open source) allows for 6 synchronous degrees of motion. Future additions will include foot sensors and a remote control option.

Based on that info, and other nuggets gleaned from the Trossen Robotics forums, you might be able to have a bot of your own ready for next year. Or, better yet, put a Santa head on top of that thing and march it out in the living room on Christmas morning. Your kids are sure to have suppressed memories of it that will bubble up to the surface years and years from now causing a dramatic and crippling meltdown. Priceless. [Trossen via DIY Drones via Boing Boing]

Sword Illuminates a Pumpkin by Impaling It

Mark Wilson — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:20:00 EDT

Obviously any jack-o'-lantern has already been mutilated mercilessly by children with knives and ice cream scoops, but something about permanently sticking a $10 light-up sword in its head just feels like salt in the wound. [Danna Bananas via Nerd Approved]

Ideas for Tech-Themed Halloween Pumpkins

Jesus Diaz — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:30:00 EDT

If you are looking for Halloween pumpkin carving ideas, here are some classic tech- and sci-fi-themes. I sure like R2-D2 more than Darth Pumpkin and Yod-o'-lantern, but the most terrifying is the red ring of death pumpkin.

You got new ideas? Start carving, because someone tells me that next week there will be a contest coming up. Head to Unplggd for the complete gallery, including the best Mario of all times: Raccoon Mario. [Unplggd]

10 Robot Halloween Pumpkins Provide Artistic Inspiration

Sean Fallon — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:40:00 EDT

I got my pumpkins the other day, but I've been debating about what to carve. Botropolis may have provided the answer—robots! The 10 pumpkins on their list are ambitious, but you might find something that inspires you. [Botropolis]

Scare the Crap Out of Trick-or-Treaters With a Rovin' Pumpkin

Adam Frucci — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:00:00 EDT

Costumes and paper cut-out witches are all well and good, but if you want to legitimately scare trick-or-treaters, why not surprise them with a pumpkin that moves around under its own volition?

The Rovin' Pumpkin uses Legos and a motor to power its travels, and it's sure to surprise the hell out of anyone standing on your porch when it careens into their feet. Plus, it's more fun to put together than a mere carved Jack O'Lantern.

Evil Mad Scientist Labs via Make

Lasers: The Only Way to Carve a Pumpkin

Mark Wilson — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:40:00 EDT

You could risk cutting yourself with a knife. Or you could buy one of those mini saw kits that always break off in the pumpkin. Or, if you really want to misuse company/lab equipment, you can requisition a laser cutter to carve your Halloween pumpkins. That's what Doug did, and he has no regrets other than that the results "smell bad."

And yes, that laser is powerful enough to slice straight through pumpkin flesh:

You can see more gorgeous laser pumpkin photos by hitting the link. [Gallery via MAKE]

Truly Scare Neighbour Kids with CNC-Carved Geek-o-Lantern

Kit Eaton — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 06:19:00 EDT

With just one day to go, the novelty Halloween pumpkins have been slowly building up: but I say none of them, none, have the scariness factor of this. It's a geek head pumpkin, geekily precision-carved using a geekily cool open-source DIY CNC machine into a genuine geek pumpkin. OK, so the last part is a lie, but the rest is real: check out the video of the carving in action. It's like a mini babyfood maker colliding with high-tech electronics.

The process basically involved converting a photograph into a grayscale image and thence to a depth-map g-code image, compatible with Lumenlab's open-source CNC mill. One suitably flatish and carefully positioned pumpkin, 20 minutes of drilling action later, a little air-spraying to push out the milled pumpkin pulp and voila: geek-o-lanterns.

Much more likely to put the wind up visiting kids than naff old triangular eyes. [Lumenlab via Hackaday]

25 Best Geek-o'-Lanterns in the World

Charlie White — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 08:38:58 EDT

It's that time of year again, and we're getting shivers down our spines just thinking about it: Halloween, the time of harvest, parties, carving gourds and getting drunk out of your gourd. And some of that gourd carving must have been done with the assistance of high technology, especially that one with Jack Nicholson from his role in The Shining. Did they use a projector? Special knives? An auto-carving machine? Add that to all the other most exquisitely created jack-o'-lanterns we could find, some of which are classics you may have seen in years gone by, and some entirely new. Our favorite? That Jack Nicholson-o'-lantern has our jaws agape. Let us know which one is your favorite, and please, don't everyone pick the goatse one. [MMOABC]
Gallery updated! Now with even more geekitude!