The Congo Quares Bench by Atelier Astúa looks like an attractive, but fairly ordinary bench most of the time. But when you want to play chess, you just have to hit the switch and all the pieces will appear beside the board.

Once they're on the board, you can continue sitting at either side of the bench until the game is over and cleanup is as easy as putting the pieces back in their respective holes in the bench.

The bench is not only a great way to store your chess set when it's not in use, it's also a great way to avoid losing your pieces since it is so easy to put them away and keep track of them all.

Check out more pictures over at Homes and Hues: A Stylish Bench and Chess Set In One

(Photo: theapexfan)

Well, what did you expect when you asked the galaxy's most famous bounty hunter to the prom? She's not going to wear body armor to a formal. Now step into the carbonite chamber. And don't worry. You're no good to her dead.

-via Fashionably Geek

(Video Link)

One has a wand. The other has a lightsaber. Both are champions of their mystical traditions. Who will prevail? Watch this impressive short film by Danny Philippou to find out. It's filled with great stunts and special effects. Tragically, it does not have a sensible Trekkie character to intervene and end the madness.

Content warning: foul language and violence.

-via Kotaku

(Video Link)

As video game quality goes up so does the size of the assorted files needed to play the game, and video games have gone from a miniscule hundreds of kilobytes of data to file packages too big to fit one one Blu-ray disc. However, there is one thing working behind the scenes to help keep those file sizes manageable- the algorithm.

Revision is a programming demoparty held in Saarbrücken, Germany each year that plays host to digital artists and programmers who want to show off their skills, and the standout at this year's party is this 64k intro called The Timeless.

It was created by a demoscene group called Mercury, who used procedural generation to generate the music and graphics in real time, and despite the fact that it weighs in at less than 64 kilobytes of data The Timeless sports impressively robust sound and visuals.

-Via Gizmodo

We’ve heard that Disney is planning to release a new Star Wars movie every year, once they get the Lucasfilm franchise up and running. And we’ve heard that after the next trilogy, there will be a series of movies that each tell the story of a different familiar character. The latest rumor is that Disney is having a particularly difficult time deciding on how to present Boba Fett as the protagonist of a film. Can you make a Disney movie about a bad guy? The upcoming Malificent will determine if it’s possible, but how will they make it work with the evil bounty hunter from Star Wars? /Film has an idea.

One way to do that is change the time frame. If spin-off takes place soon after Attack of the Clones, it could show Fett’s desire to try and be good, ultimately failing, which would then lead into the original trilogy. However, if the film takes places during the original trilogy, as had been rumored, we already know he’s evil.

Gamma Squad has another suggestion.

Normally, this problem would be solved by having Fett hunt down Space Hitler; whenever you want to have a bad guy look good, you put him up against a bad guy who’s even worse. It’s mostly a matter of figuring out who that Space Hitler is and making that palatable to the families showing up to see a movie starring a bounty hunter.

Disney has years to figure it out. How would you craft a story around Boba Fett and make it family-friendly enough for Disney?

(Video Link)

Film Noir and comedy are two genres that rarely play well together, but just like on a shrimp and peanut butter sandwich two totally different flavors can sometimes taste great together.

Spotter is an animated short that does a great job of combining both genres into one fun, and funny, short story.

There’s the hard bitten detective type dude, the shifty henchman, and the man(?) of mystery that ties the whole story together, and like any good Noir story there’s a mystery to solve and an explosive reveal that will blow your mind!

Spotter was created by students at the Gobelins School Of The Image in Paris, France, and like most Gobelins productions I've seen it looks great and tells a good story.

-Via GeekTyrant

Who would be the perfect match for Elsa, the Snow Queen of the Disney movie Frozen? Maybe a video game character! Here she is with Sub-Zero from the game Mortal Kombat. They could turn two cold characters into a hot relationship! These two unidentified cosplayers are featured at Geek Tyrant.

The great pancake artist Nathan Shields (whose work we've featured extensively) is back in his kitchen, now working from a geeky theme. Here are his pancakes showing several non-human creatures from Star Wars: dewbacks, banthas, rontos, jawas, Tusken raiders, rodians, and bith.

Shields has labeled this image as "1," which hopefully indicates the first part of a series.

As media becomes increasingly digitized there’s one thing which will be sorely missed by fans- the cover art. VHS covers were a wonder to behold as you strolled down the aisles of the video store, and even though many of them featured artwork that had very little to do with the movie itself the cover art was often a factor in deciding which movie to rent.

In fact, many VHS covers attempted to be as lurid as possible without showing full nudity or gore to tempt viewers into choosing that particular flick instead of the one with the boring cover.

Explore the lost art of the VHS cover at VHS Cover Junkie, where it's always a blockbuster when there are Hollywood bad boys on the cover.

-Via Dangerous Minds

Lord of the Rings, which was a rather long book trilogy, generated three rather long movies. The prequel, The Hobbit, was a very short book which has generated three rather long movies. And if they decide at the last minute to split the third film into two, they’re just following in the footsteps of the Twilight saga and The Hunger Games. No one would be surprised if there were more sequels added on. A generator from UsVsTh3m can tell us the titles of those yet-to-be announced sequels, which can comes randomly or via a suggestion from you. Obviously, the title here was randomly-generated. -via the Presurfer

Those Bros sure know how to party, what with all the mushrooms, blocks breaking and wild animal shaped costumes, it’s no wonder they're the stars of one of the most celebrated franchises in the history of video games.

But how did those Super Mario Bros. get their super status? What's their backstory? And what the heck does Excitebike or Kung Fu have to do with those punch happy plumbers?

Read on to discover 20 Fascinating Facts You May Not Know About 'Super Mario Bros', brought to you by Gamma Squad.

(Video Link)

These yacht riding, top shelf booze guzzling, captain hat sporting, rich jerks in this hilarious music video love wearing Hulk hands.

They feel naked without their favorite green foam accessories, and the sense of comfort and entitlement they feel when they slip those Hulk hands on over their puny human hands makes them so proud they just gotta rap about it to whoever will listen.

If you’re listening then you’ll most likely want to know that the Hulk hand lovin’ lads are named David Ebert and Douglas Widick, aka Corporate, and their ridiculous entry into the annals of interwebs WTFism brings to mind sketches from Kroll Show, Mr. Show and Kids In The Hall. *Hulk hand dabs*

(NSFW due to language)

-Via Geekosystem

Video game characters can start to feel like old friends after a while, especially because you end up spending a really long time hanging out with them in game, doing everything you can to save their lives and help them achieve fame and fortune.

They become so familiar to us that we can almost imagine what it would have been like to attend high school with these virtual superstars, with cool guy Sonic tearing it up in varsity track and field, nerdy little Link who brings a weapon to school if you push him too far, and Kirby- the cute little social butterfly who is liked by everyone and always has a smile on his face. Sounds about right!

-Via College Humor

How To Train Your Dragon is one fantastically fun, and fantastic looking, 3D animation franchise, so it goes without saying that a cake inspired by the series would have to be mighty good looking as well.

Richard's Cakes didn't shy away from this draconian challenge, and their creation is so good that it won them first prize in the Decorative Exhibit category at the Cake International event.

With characters that look like they're ready to leap off the cake and fly around the room, an predominately green and brown color palette appropriate for dragons, and an extremely lively, animated look to the characters and overall scene this cake makes me very hungry...for animated adventure!

-Via That's Nerdalicious

(Video Link)

CGI animation is looking really good these days, and digital animators have a helping hand in the creative process thanks to motion capture technology, which allows actors to play the roles of CGI characters, making their movement far more realistic. However, mo-cap is still a relatively new tool, and some budding animators don’t have enough experience with mo-cap to utilize this powerful tool to the fullest.

Indian animators, for example, are just starting to create 3D animated features using mo-cap, and boy does their inexperience show!

Their first mo-capped film is called Kochadaiiyaan, and as much as I'd like to say India has a promising future in 3D animation this film looks like a colorful trainwreck. But don't take my word for it, watch the trailer and judge for yourself.

-Via Cartoon Brew