When I was a kid, Natas Kaupas was one of the kings of street skating and absolutely one of my skating heroes. In fact, he was one of the first skaters to take to the street, mixing freestyle moves with vert skating tricks, riding the concrete as if riding waves and pulling off amazing moves on ordinary street objects while the skating world were too busy worrying about how much air they could get off a half-pipe. Recently, a short documentary was made on the life of Natas Kaupus (in a series on street skating), which, naturally has made it’s way to YouTube (but probably not for long).

Watch an excellent four-part documentary on Natas Kaupas after the jump..

Read more of “Video documentary on the life of skater Natas Kaupas“

Heroes is without a doubt one of the most exciting shows of this newish television season. Now that Lost is beginning to fizzle out a little, Heroes is here to continue the charge, providing pounds of excitement and suspense every week as well as one of the coolest characters on television to date (HIRO!!!! Who else?). As a way of extending the story (and their advertising revenue), NBC is offering small Heroes graphic novels every week, which serve to push the storyline of each episode slightly farther, giving us a little more insight into the large amount of characters on the show. The novels are available to read over the web OR available as PDF downloads, which is of course the true way to read a comic folks!

Read more: Heroes online graphic novels

“Googlespotting” or, sight-seeing via Google Earth in order to discover unique little images throughout the world via Google’s satellite maps, is a growing hobby among map surfers. With companies already taking advantage of Google Earth for marketing purposes (just look for the large Wal-Mart, Target, and Home Depot logos painted on the roofs of some of the newer stores), artists are beginning to find unique and interesting ways of using the system for spreading their message, or creations. Such is the case in the area of Thuringia, a small rural area in central Germany where artists recently cut a Semacode which when decoded translates to “Hello, world!”.

See more: Hello, World! Semacode for Google Earth

If you’ve ever wanted to retire in the south of France (and rule your own town), here’s your chance and it’s an amazing one. Built into the ruins of an ancient Roman settlement on the border of the Drome Provencale, this ancient village is up for sale and the price is stunningly amazing. It’s small, only 5 buildings in total, with a total of 5,000 m2 land but “only” 150m2 of living space, it’s a complete miniature village in the south of France, offering a unique level of privacy and charm. Each of the 5 buildings have their own nicknames: “La Cantinette”, Le Pavillon “Nid d’Amour”, “Le Rocher”, “La Grotte” and “La Cuisine d’ete”. Anyone have a spare €257,525 ($327,00) they can loan me?

Read more: Own a miniature village in the south of France

Want a flash-based MP3 player that not only let’s you jam your christian rock, but also show the world what religion you identify with? Then the Saint B MP3 player will be perfect for you. Only a prototype for now, this is most certainly a product I see being mass produced and selling quite well. A flash-memory based MP3 player in a chrome-plated steel frame, shaped like a cross, the Saint B also features an OLED display covered by a semi-transparent piece of plastic. Charging and login are done via USB and the overall size is 92×64x11mm. Star of David coming soon?

Read more: Saint B mp3 player

Leonardo Da Vinci’s drawings have been brought to life via animation as part of a new gallery exhibition showcasing the notebooks of LDV which contained all of his hand-drawn and written research notes. Using traditional hand-drawn and computer generated techniques, choice selections from Da Vinci’s notebooks are brought to life with few compromises. In total there are 9 brilliantly rendered animations, all showing Da Vinci’s brilliant drawings and studies brought to life.

Read more: Leonardo Da Vinci’s drawings animated

I’m not only saying this because I’m on a Mac. I used to hate Firefox under OS X, but, I have to say, Firefox 2 is looking and feeling quite right. Firefox 2.0 is now available and trust me, you should be using it (in case you already aren’t). With IE 7 proving to be a royal pain in the ass (uhh, security warnings when trying to open notepad.exe? why?) and Windows Vista proving to be an ugly mess, there’s no reason to stick with Internet Explorer for browsing the internet.

Read more: Mozilla Firefox

For those of us who still listen to the majority of our music on vinyl (or have transferred all our vinyl to MP3), we know the only turntables we can own are those made for hyper-active kids, usually with dreadlocks, who like to wave their hands in the air while standing still and scratching up their favorite records. But thankfully, the reign of the Technics SL1200 is slowly coming to an end. With the upsurge in vinyl sales and the aging indie-kid demographic, turntable design is once again focusing on aesthetics and visual design. Rega Research Limited, the grandfathers of turntable excellence, are creating some of the most beautifully crafted space age bachelor pad worthy turntables this side of mars. Their low profile and unique designs are belt-driven, featuring a high quality synchronous motor with ultra-low vibration and one of the most famous tone-arms in the world, the RB300. Vinyl that sounds great, while not sitting on a leftover piece of industrial equipment? Yes please.

Read more: Rega Research Limited

David Watanabe, the creator of the great NewsFire RSS reader has done it again (and again) with his brand new torrent client, Xtorrent. This man definitely knows how to design a piece of a software. The user interface is elegant and simple, with the multi-source searching a breath of fresh air compared to searching the dredges of the internet trying to find a torrent file. I’m sure David will keep up the great work, but he’s already won me over, Xtorrent is already my torrent client of choice for OS X, not that I’d use such an evil and illegal technology.

Read more: Xtorrent

Though I wouldn’t recommend recreating a snow-capped mountain on top of your couch, this miniature snow machine will let you turn your backyard into a mini alp as long as the temperature is around 0 c to -3 c (27 – 30 degrees f). Specifically for personal, hotel or event usage, this mini snow machine lets you create nice, dry flakes of snow using cool water, perfect for your kid’s birthday party or to add a little spice to your party.

Read more: Home Snow machines