This week’s Spotify-powered SolidSmack Radio Playlist knocks you in the pop sockets with head-boppin’ groove tuneage to help propel you through the work week in style. Whether you find yourself inking markers until they’re dry, grinding material through a bandsaw or working that 3D geometry all day, consider these tracks as a tool for your process. This week we’ll start things off with “Juniper” from New Madrid and work our way through tracks from Olu Dara, PAPA, The Amazing, Blah Blah Blah, and others before wrapping up with “The Less I Know the Better” from Tame Impala. Have suggestions? As always, let us know what you listen to, what you…

If you’re not up on the latest in regards to expensive booze, Louis XIII Cognac is one of the most coveted and priciest — with a 70 cl (700ml) bottle of Louis XIII costing as much as $3,400. At that price you probably don’t want to chuck it in a $5 novelty flask and stash it in your back pocket. No, you would probably want to store it in a fine crystal decanter made by the world-renowned crystal company Baccarat and, in a minute, you’ll understand why. The Black Crystal Decanter is truly a work of art. Before it has finished being made, it has passed through the hands of no…

Sometimes there are Kickstarter campaigns you hope will succeed, but sadly wind up failing. Noah Li is a Game Animator who launched a Kickstarter campaign that didn’t quite reach the funding goal. Maybe I’m biased because I’m a fan of both the MechWarrior universe and World War 2 technology, which is what Noah’s campaign merged together with his Deiselpunk (a close relative to Steampunk) 3D printed models. Though similar looking to MechWarrior Battlemechs, his creations were made unique by, essentially, strapping a pair of robot legs to a tank body at a 1:100 scale–smaller than most Revell plastic model kits, but awesome nonetheless. Noah’s kits, five in total, encompass several different…

Mondays might not be your favorite day of the week, but the good news is that we’re all in this together ladies and gentlemen. As purveyors of prime Grade A web content, the SolidSmack crew has done some of the heavy-lifting to make sure you get your Mondays started on the right track. Welcome to The Monday List. Each Monday, we’ll link you up with some of the most insightful, informative, and socially-relevant stories to keep tabbed, bookmarked, reading listed, pocketed, or what have you. Be sure to check in each Monday morning for a new crop of freshly sprouted words curated straight from the source of your favorite homegrown ‘Smack.…

There are literally a ton of devices on the market aimed at recharging mobile devices with the most common being power banks or battery chargers. Others (and I’ve tried a few) rely on the elements such as solar chargers (Goal Zero), water-based chargers (Estream) and even open-flame cookware chargers (PowerPot). Most of those are great, but are useless if you don’t have access to the elements. There are also body-motion kinetic energy chargers as well, such as Ampy and Sockett, but none are more unusual and perhaps more practical than HandEnergy–a ball-like device that converts hand motion into an electrical charge producing enough juice to charge a variety of mobile…

The box flaps were open, but only slightly. The air was silent, but you could see them vibrate. Normally, you don’t look into something with vibrating box flaps. This was one of those times. We would only find out later after regaining consciousness, that millions of tiny toes exploded from the box. Toes, of these links. Nele Diel – Huge, ethereal scenes, with a dragon here and there. Masterful lighting that makes her wide range of composition enrapturing the mind. Boxwood – An intricately carved set of boxwood miniatures of Old and New Testament scenes, each dating back to the 13th and 14th century from the Netherlands, currently on display at…