Retro

If deck railings, shower innards, old bike wheels, and Nike sneakers can be made into musical instruments, why stop there?

In the grand tradition of making music from unlikely materials, students at the U.K.'s University of Manchester incorporated the sounds of a giant working steam mill engine into an original composition.

Three brass players accompanied the running twin Victoria and Alexandra engines (yes, they have names) at Ellenroad Mill in Rochdale, England, at a performance earlier this month. The brass players started with a fanfare, gathering speed as the 85-ton flywheel, which measures 28 feet in diameter, gradually roared to life to play its part in a piece by Simon Joyner, a Manchester master's student in composition. … Read more

We've found the perfect coffee table for that home recording studio you're putting together. Or maybe the perfect display space for that collection of obsolete technology you're so proud of.

Yes indeed, it's the "Mixtape Table," from Jeff Skierka Designs, a 12:1 scaled replica of that cassette mix tape you gave your main squeeze back in high school to profess your love. … Read more

It's Geek Pride Day. I'm celebrating by taking a look back through time at my collection of oddball "Star Trek" props and memorabilia excavated during a recent spring cleaning.

"Star Trek" was a bunch of television shows. It was a bunch of movies. It was also a lot more than that to me. I first became fascinated with "Star Trek" through watching reruns in the afternoons when I was in fourth grade.

I was a shy, quiet child, but suddenly I wanted to become either an astronaut or an actor, whatever would get me closest to the Enterprise the fastest. … Read more

Keytars used to be cool. Then they were lame. Now they're cool again, thanks to Jeri Ellsworth and her Commodore 64 bass guitar.

The unique instrument debuted at the Bay Area Maker Faire over the weekend. It's essentially a bass guitar grafted onto a Commodore 64, creating an unholy alliance between the thudding bottom end of a rock song and the raw retro power of an iconic computer.… Read more

Forget the hoverboard. Forget the self-lacing shoes. The ultimate "Back to the Future" fan prop is a DeLorean, the stainless steel machine that zipped around through time.

When DeLoreans first went on sale in the early 1980s, they cost around $25,000. Buying a used one today will set you back about $50,000 due to their rarity and mechanical fickleness. Now you can pick up a DeLorean for just $5,500, but there is a catch. It's a bike.

The DeLorean Bicycle is a collaboration between DeLorean Motor Company and Marc Moore, a cyclist and former … Read more

Once upon a time, only the coolest (and wealthiest) people had mobile phones, and those phones were the size of a large guinea pig. This magical time was known as the 1980s.

If you pine for the days when acid wash jeans and Phil Collins ruled America, then ThinkGeek's Retro iPhone Case is for you.

Slip your iPhone into this case and lose all pretense to having a sleek, modern telecommunications device. All of a sudden, you have a brick-sized 1980s phone to go with your "Miami Vice" pop-collar jacket and gelled hair.

This honkin' huge case … Read more

Who knew pants could be so controversial? The issue of whether or not Wonder Woman should wear pants has heated up the comic book community in the past. Photographer Adam Jay of SuperHero Photography is having it both ways.

Jay's recent photo shoot features a reimagined Wonder Woman costume that has managed not to offend anybody's comic book geek sensibilities. The costumes were built by Hermes Terceiro and modeled by Sarah Scott (warning: scantily clad pole-dancing photo ahead).

The updated take on the look includes Wonder Woman's classic red, blue, and gold ensemble, but punches it up with a tough, modern feel to the wardrobe.… Read more

Here's an example of life imitating art imitating life.

And -- like the vinyl records masquerading as a digital sound file that we wrote about not long ago -- another example of the sort of real-world-meets-digital-realm mashup our culture seems so fascinated by as we all veer back and forth from the physical to the virtual.

An outfit named ADR Studio has come up with an Instamatic-like camera modeled on the icon for the Instagram app (an icon that was itself modeled on real-world Polaroid cameras and their attendant colorful branding).… Read more

It's good to be reminded sometimes that automated technology solutions can't fix everything. That reminder came recently with the announcement of the impending big-screen return of The Beatles' trippy 1968 animated film, "Yellow Submarine."

A team of specialists at Triage Motion Picture Services and Eque is responsible for the restoration effort. Sure, it's a digital restoration, but that's not all that was involved with bringing it back to life. The team couldn't just load the film into a powerhouse computer, press go, and wait for the remaster to spit itself out.… Read more