Just download, print, cut out and assemble this robot-on-a-rampage for hours of attacking and mauling with your new friend (of the somewhat gentle sort, seeing as he’s made out of paper).

The Splatterbot has a waist that twists, the arms can move up and down, and the claws can be swapped out so the ‘bot can hold different weapons. Pop off the head and you can see the eyeball-creature sitting at the control panel of our friend the robot. What a fun way to spend a Sunday!

Sam Garfield and Jake Haglund run the DIY:happy site–an extensive list of projects that pretty much anyone can do, be it electronics, explosives (really!), toys, paper crafts, rockets, mods, or knitting. Here’s a few of our favorites:

Homemade EKG
Curious how your heart is responding to your web-surfing habits? Why not make your own electrocardiogram and watch your heart-waves on your computer screen?

Film canister home planetarium
Don’t feel like shelling out 25 bux to watch lasers and stars-projections zoom around to a classic rock soundtrack at the planetarium? Just hang onto a film canister (you’ve got to know someone who still has a film camera, right?), punch some holes, grab a flashlight, and invite some friends over for some low-tech science nerdery.

Matchstick Rockets
And while said nerdy friends are assembled in your living room, why not bust out the matches and shoot them all over the place? Everyone like fire and shooting, and this is a low cost way to get some cheap thrills.

Fast-food container airplane
It’s so much easier to create a sweet glider from a styrofoam hamburger clamshell than from a wrinkled, greasy paper wrapper.

Make your own Batphone
Wow, talk about insta-cred! Having a direct line to Bruce Wayne’s mansion sitting on your desk would certainly send a message to your co-workers and higher-ups.

The popular gadget that allows you to have fanatical control over your credit credit card storage and retrieval procedures is now available in red, blue, and black.

These feature the same brilliant design as the original silver  model, but with a rubberized polymer coating. Each of six of your credit cards has its own slot, keeping its magnetic stripe away from those of the others’. Just push the corresponding switch forward and your card nudges forward just enough to grab its edge. A thoughtful design touch is that all of the buttons are removable, and a card comes with it with more button choices, so you can fully customize how your cards are organized. There’s also a money clip on the back, and with the colored models, the finish actually grips loose bills and receipts much better than the silver one.

Drag that Speak-N-Spell out of storage, grab a soldering iron, and head to NYC in April! The Bent 2006 festival will showcase the fine art of circuit-bending, or “the creative short-circuiting of low voltage, battery-powered electronic audio devices such as guitar effects, children’s toys and small synthesizers to create new musical instruments and sound generators” [via Wikipedia]. There’ll be performances, installations, and hands-on workshops, so you can get a C-B guru to walk you through the process of getting that plastic kid’s piano you got at Target to sound like a psychadelic banshee in a food processor.Excellent circuit bent instruments are available from Pete Edwards at Casperelectronics (see photo) and Robotspeak in San Francisco.

We just added an entire spectrum of photovoltaic backpacks & messenger bags by Voltaic systems.
I’m thinking these would be *perfect* at something like Burning Man, Coachella, M3, Fuse-IN / Movement / DEMF, the Muteks, or any other outdoor festival where you need to keep your gadgets charged and there’s not an AC outlet in sight. And (at Burning Man, specifically), you could make all sorts of new friends with your excellent charging-powers as long as the sun’s out.

In honor of the Alcohol Appreciation Day, I would like to share my recipe for a nerdy drink:

NERD COCKTAIL
- 1 oz melon liqueur (Midori, DeKuyper etc)
- 1 oz Blue Curacao liqueur
- 1 oz lemonade or bar lemon mix

Fill a highball glass with ice cubes. Pour in the melon liqueur and Blue Curacao and then top it off with the lemonade. Garnish with a lemon flag–that’s a cherry skewered between two ends of a thinly-sliced lemon (like Lemonade-Coated Wild Cherry Nerds, get it?). Imbibe!