The fine folks at BoingBoing managed to find a link to a 360-degree tour of the flight deck of Space Shuttle Discovery, in all of her glory. The images are fantastic – so much so that you can read the panels and switches and see what controls what aspects of the Space Shuttle. You even get to see the control panel in the back of the shuttle where Astronauts control the robot arm (hint: it’s the panel labeled “Canada”) in the shuttle’s cargo bay, and…an oddly placed Dell laptop.

I don’t even know what that Dell laptop is for. Everything else though – absolutely stunning to look at. Here’s hoping they let us peek into the flight decks of the shuttles when they get to their final resting museums.

[ 360VR :: 360-Degree Tour of Shuttle Discovery's Flight Deck via BoingBoing ]

Following up their hilarious Mario with a Portal Gun video, this Link with a Portal Gun video form the folks at Dorkly simply takes the cake. After all, this is totally how I would have played Link to The Past if I had a portal gun on me at the time. Props to The How-To Geek for finding this!

[ Dorkly Bits: Link to The Past With a Portal Gun ]

This is probably the most hilarious thing I’ve seen in a very long time.

I mean, I think everyone understand how a bad case of swamp ass can be, but this is a whole different thing. Honestly though, the hair dryer trick is pretty interesting…

[ Nerd Machine :: Swamp Ass PSA starring Nathan Fillion ]

I love Android, I really do – and I especially love how imminently customizable and tweakable it is, regardless of how sometimes carriers and Google itself will try to arrest some of that tweaking and hacking. Still, it’s probably the most open mobile OS out there, and clearly the one that most people are experimenting and toying with.

And above, one group of researchers have come up with a 32-inch multi-touch display running Android. The results are astounding to see. I kind of wish I could get one of these for my wall, frankly.

[ Make Magazine :: Large 32-inch Multi-touch Display Running Android ]

One of the beautiful things about Angry Birds is that it’s all about basic mechanics. Parabola, arcs, gravity, force and acceleration. It’s all there. It would make for a great teaching tool if you’d let it be, and one Atlanta teacher has decided to make it one.

After all, you can easily apply some scale to an Angry Birds map, draw a force diagram, and come up with how hard you’d have to fling a bird to get one as far as you fling them in Angry Birds:

“What are the laws of physics in the Angry Birds world?” John Burk, a ninth-grade physics teacher at the private Westminster Schools in Atlanta, put that question to his students and gave them the chance to “be among the first to find the answer.” Burk became interested in using Angry Birds in the classroom last winter, and began blogging about teaching with it. Given that the birds are catapulted into the sky, it was the perfect tool for teaching students the laws of projectile motion. In about 30 minutes, the teens were able to thoroughly understand, as Burk wrote on his blog, “the two big ideas of projectile motion: the horizontal component of motion is constant velocity, while the vertical component is constant acceleration.”

Honestly, if Angry Birds were available as a teaching tool when I was in high school, or even when I was an undergrad studying Physics, it would have been wonderful. Thankfully a new generation of potential physicists will have the opportunity to learn at the side of a bright, red, angry bird.

[ Good Magazine :: Atlanta Teacher Uses Angry Birds for Physics Lessons ]

Rumor has been flying for a long time now that the original Thundercats would see a reboot of some kind, and sure enough it’s coming true, over at Cartoon Network. The reboot isn’t coming in the shape of a movie, but instead in the form of a new original series where many of the characters names are the same but the situations are very very different.

If you’re not sure how you feel about it based on this short description, this leaked 9-minute video of the new cartoon may or may not help:

Now then, what do you think? For me, the jury is still out, and I’ll have to see it on television. I do like the touch of getting the original Lion-O to voice King Claudus, the new Lion-O’s father, but I’m not sure if I like the whole “coming of age in a family” story that we have going on here. But it could be a good thing. We’ll have to see.

For more information, head over to ScreenRant, they have a bigger breakdown on the new series, and more information about it:

[ Screenrant :: 9-Minute Preview of New ‘ThunderCats’ Cartoon Leaks ]

While I can’t say that as a red-blooded straight male I’ve ever horribly complained about the state of female armor in fantasy games, movies, books, and virtually every other medium, but I can say that I’ve more than once pondered exactly how ridiculous it really as. Especially in games – I love the duality in games like World of Warcraft where a male’s armor will cover his entire upper body, but the same item on a female character will gleefully leave the midriff exposed.

To that point, this hilarious video from CollegeHumor says out loud everything that I think we’ve all been thinking on the matter, with a satisfying ending.

[ CollegeHumor :: Female Armor Sucks ]

It would be enough if this beautiful Steampunk watch over at Instructables just kept time, but it also has the mechanical retracting iris that makes this watch a piece of art. The YouTube video of it in action is below, but it’s safe to say the thing is absolutely gorgeous.

Best of all, since it’s Instructables, you get to see how the thing is made, from start to finish.

[ Instructables :: Steampunk Wristwatch With Mechanical Iris Cover ]