The ‘design-led’ tents from FieldCandy inject color, creativity, and fun into the camping experience by taking the standard tent design and giving each one a fun story to tell.

Don’t let the designs fool you though; these are also high performance tents, made to keep you dry in the rain, warm in the cold, and comfortable in the wind. Plus, the cotton inner tent doesn’t attract condensation the way that most modern tents do.

I’d imagine the one downside is that they don’t look quite as picture-perfect when you pitch one at your local camping spot as they do on the website, but even if it’s just good for a few good laughs every time you set it up, I’d say that’s reason enough to give FieldCandy a try.

[FieldCandy]

Featuring a veneer wooden handle and embossed logos, it’s got more street cred than most wines can manage.

[DQM x Cliché Corkscrew]

Can you figure out the trick?

Enter: The Velopresso

The Velopresso is a coffee cart on wheels, designed to stay off the grid while enabling a single barista to run the entire operation. The cart itself was designed from the ground up around a custom rear-steer tricycle, a unique pedal-driven grinder, and a robust gas-fired lever espresso machine. The result is a fusion of human power, sensory pleasures and technology – old tech meets new tech, pedal power meets caffeine power, and engineering meets aesthetics.

And since there’s no motors to run or electricity needed, the Velopress doesn’t make a lot of noise, meaning you can have your coffee in relative silence as you enjoy the scenery around you.

If you’re interested in buying your own Velopresso, they’re taking pre-orders in early Summer of 2013, though the company is based out of the UK, so you may need to factor in some shipping if your coffee dreams take you elsewhere.

[The Velopresso]

It sounds like an oxymoron, but don’t tell that to Spencer Watson, a competitor at the Open Individual Indoor Unlimited, which has been going on for 12 years now.

Yup; that’s right. Spencer isn’t alone in his passion for windless kite flying. There are enough people that do this as a sport/hobby that there’s actually a championship to figure out who can do it the best:

Sometimes I wonder if there’s anything that doesn’t have some sort of championship attached to it.

[Via: Kottke]

The ThinkGeek iCade 8-Bitty is a classic styled, pocketable D-Pad style controller for your iPad, iPhone, or Android device.

With 4 face buttons, select, start, and two shoulder buttons, plus the D-Pad for movement, the 8-Bitty also features Bluetooth connectivity for gaming on the go.

It’s fully compatible with all iCade games, so there’s plenty of gaming options right out of the box, and as more and more people buy these external controllers for their mobile gaming, expect even more game developers to add support.

[ThinkGeek iCade 8-Bitty]

Called the MEGLug, it’s a full-sized go-kart made entirely of LEGOs, using MINDSTORMS to both power and control the vehicle.

Notable features include 48 MINDSTORMS NXT motors providing 100% of the power, working head and tail lights, a four-point safety belt, and a bottle holder, all made of LEGOs.

Check it out in motion:

[MEGLug]

Jason Freeny‘s latest work, and possibly his most realistic, is an Anatomical Barbie Model, showing what the inside of the famous toy might look like if it was real.

[Jason Freeny]

Since it debuted as a promotional item, people have been clamoring for the Vans Waffle Sole iPhone Case, and paying upwards of $200 for one on eBay.

Thankfully, if you’re interested in adding a little extra grip to your iPhone, curtsey of the iconic sole design, you won’t need to spend nearly that much, as Vans is now selling them on its site for just $28.

[Vans - Waffle Sole iPhone Case]

While I’d argue that the ‘largest’ Rube Goldberg Machine is most likely the Life Size Mousetrap, it’s still impressive to see all 300 steps work in order to perform one simple task!

If you ever find yourself surrounded by zombies, make sure you have the Map of the Dead bookmarked for quick reference.

The zombie apocalypse survival map includes vital resources like gun stores, pawn shops, military locations, gas stations, hospitals, and cemeteries. It also highlights danger zones, and offers a few suggestions for where you’re most likely to survive.

[Map of the Dead]

The Chaos Crew wanted to show off what they could do with a tattoo gun, so they took the most important events of 2011, and tattooed them onto a giant calfskin ‘poster’.

Their motto for the project was fitting: “We get history under your skin.”

What’s better than a 20,000 piece LEGO set that depicts Tatooine, Endor, Hoth, and the Death Star from Star Wars?

A 20,000 piece LEGO set that depicts Tatooine, Endor, Hoth, and the Death Star from Star Wars, and also plays the Star Wars theme:

It doesn’t get much better than that!

For a look at how they did it, check out:

And to play it yourself, visit Builders of Sound.

What do you get when you gather up a bunch of folks who are determined not to let a lack of snow keep them from their snowmobile?

A (surprisingly not so new) sport called watercross, which the Wall Street Journal recently discovered:

With enough speed, the snowmobiles skip across the water like a rock skipping across the surface of a lake. And thus, watercross was born.

[Wall Street Journal - Watercross]

“The Global Pursuit of Happiness, or: The Army of Luck” is an impressive piece of installation art by Boris Petrovsky, Georg Nagel, and Nina Martens.

The work is based around the Maneki Neko (aka Beckoning Cat; aka Lucky Cat/Money Cat), a common Japanese figurine which is believed to bring luck, attract customers and bring prosperity.

520 of the shiny, golden, XXL Lucky Cats are arranged in 40 rows and 13 columns on a ramp-like stand made of aluminum.

The Lucky Cats form a dot-matrix display, which consists of 520 waving paw grid points as its pixels. A servo motor in each cat controls the paws, and moves them exactly in position and speed.

Words and sentences up to 40 characters long can be entered into an attached keyboard, and are displayed with the paws, letter by letter, as a sliding text marquee. The Lucky Cats are also able to perform spontaneously as well, showing 25 different salutatory and signalizing gestures, as well as mass movements like the Mexican Wave or an ecstatic hyperkinesis.

It’s something that truly must be seen to be believed:

[The Global Pursuit of Happiness, or: The Army of Luck via Laughing Squid]

Rube Goldberg machines are frequently featured here on DYH, so when one appears that fits into two suitcases, and has a name like “Melvin the Magical Mixed Media Machine”, you can pretty much guarantee it’s going to get featured.

The machine, by a design studio called HeyHeyHey, was built in response to their first Melvin the Magical Mixed Media Machine, which was such a success that groups all around the world requested its availability for shows and festivals. Since it didn’t travel well, HeyHeyHey decided to build another Melvin, but this time, they wanted to make it portable.

The result is a Rube Goldberg machine that’s specifically built to travel the world, and even acts like a tourist when he gets there, ‘sending’ its own postcards and taking pictures of those around it.

It’s an impressive work of interactive art, and the website does a great job of detailing each step in the process, and documenting the journey that Melvin takes, so I highly recommend you check it out.

[Melvin the Magical Mixed Media Machine]

But what if you could turn each page turn into an event?

That’s what Joseph Herscher has done with The Page Turner, a Rube Goldberg machine that lets you sip coffee while waiting for the page to turn, and let the machine take care of the rest.