You read it right: amaze all of your friends by answering a banana! And if you’re feeling really geeky, throw in the banana phone holster for an extra eight dollars. I’m not sure I’m proud admitting that I might buy this rare banana/holster combo…

They’re calling him “MacGyver Chef.” Gizmodo’s Dan Nosowitz is attempting to cook ordinary meals in not-so-ordinary appliances – ie all meals are prepared without an oven/range. Poached chicken and couscous in a coffee maker? MacGyver Chef did it, but unfortunately his dishwasher steamed salmon with cilantro sauce didn’t come out so well. How about a vegetarian option, MacGyver Chef?

Via Gizmodo

Bored at work and looking for that perfectly harmless and sometimes amusing link to send around to accounting? Then Fodey’s newspaper clipping generator is exactly what your figures and numbers-stuffed brain is looking for. Create silly, abusive or downright ridiculous newspaper clippings about your boss, the company or that creepy dude in the mail-room. Print them out and post them in the lunchroom or just pass them around viral-like through your company email. Work? Never heard of it.

Read more: Create your own newspaper clippings

Being a North Carolinian I couldn’t resist mentioning this. I always find it fascinating when cargo containers fall off ships, causing whatever they were transporting to either sink to the bottom of the ocean or float until it meets land. We saw it years ago with the rubber ducky tests which oceanographers used to track ocean currents, and we’ve all heard of everything from cars to Nike’s being washed overboard on the high seas. This time a cargo container carrying a shipment of Doritos brand chips fell off of a ship and cracked open, leading to hundreds of bags of Doritos to float freely through the Atlantic Ocean. The container, along with the Doritos washed up on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, with most of the Doritos packages still in-tact thanks to the airtight packaging. What followed was a minor small-time news storm, as scavengers descended upon the cheesy goodness, the media swarmed into to film those filling shopping bags full of chips while a handful of scrooges gave interviews complaining about the American way and stealing and season of giving, but everyone is taking and blah blah blah.

Read more: Doritos container spills, washes up on North Carolina beach

Those daring bloggers over at underGoogle has put up an amazingly funny little Google Maps mash-up, featuring an extremely extremely long white board documenting Google’s plan for world domination as dictated to us via a free-for-all board hidden deep within a Google lair somewhere. Warning, this quite a time waster for the hardcore nerds, so, look at it off of company time (har har).

See more: Google master plan revealed!

Ok, it’s not the *only* thing I want for Christmas (there’s also this, this and this on my list), but damn if this isn’t in my top-5! The Donut Robot 42 belongs to the very lucky Derrick (adw3345) who documented his wonderful robot sidekick on his LiveJournal, teaching us some amazing facts on his vintage robot, such as it’s ability to make 384 donuts per hour, automatically. That’s about 4 more than I need! Per hour.

Read more: Get to know the Donut Robot 42

Feel like a member of the undead at work and want to print out your bosses name spelled out using zombies? Now you can, thanks to the minds behind the large Flickr Zombie group, Zombie Army. E-Zombie is a simple little script, spelling out whatever you want using special zombie font type created by Len Peralta of Jawbone Radio fame.

Read more: Spelling with Zombies | Zombie Army Project | Jawbone Radio

Created by Flash games developer Mark Caswell-Daniels, Goggles is a brilliant browser-based flight simulator built using Google Maps images and Flash technology. In the game, users are able to fly a top-down 3d biplane rendering through major cities around the world, such as New York City, San Francisco, Tokyo, London and even the Planet Mars, using images captured from Google Mapping services. The developer seems to have gotten a little flack from people concerned about the games’ ability to allow ‘terrorists’ to crash the plane into buildings, but, common sense hopefully prevails and people see it for what it is, a fun an innovative use of web technology to create a neat little casual flight sim.

Read more: Goggles – Google Maps flight-sim

I recently came upon this video of a monkey (can anyone tell me what type?) playing(?) with two young tiger cubs in what looks to be a jungle setting, so I’m not sure if these are in captivity. The monkey is jumping all over the place, teasing the cubs by pulling their ears and tails, while dodging the cubs’ arms as they try and pounce on the monkey as he jumps from tree to tree. This little dude is in insane, really, I can’t imagine what would happen if the momma tiger came in and saw this little monkey going crazy. This seems to have come off of one of those feel-good home video shows that are on in every country around dinnertime, complete with cheesy ‘kapow!’ sound effects and dopey music.

Hit mute and watch the video after the jump…

Read more of ”Crazy monkey with a deathwish“

Google Europe imagineer Douwe Osinga has created an interesting project where, through user-input which manipulates the palette of a GIF image on the fly, a user is able to create a map of the countries (or states) that they’ve visited. Users are then able to copy the resulting image onto their webpage or MySpace profile and show off to their ‘friends’ where they’ve been! Be sure to check the amusing arguments in the comments section over the validity of the maps project itself, as certain countries are left off due to the rules of inclusion set by the creator. Douwe actually has quite a few interesting projects, including a US states map generator, a low-budget aerial photography system using a cheap digital camera and a high-pressure helium balloon and a very fun collective novel where users are able to vote on which sentences should be added to the story next, thus manipulating the direction of the storyline. Keep up the good work Douwe…

[Visited countries | Douwe Osinga's projects page]