Waiheke Island Retreat | Gallery

There’s a little child in everyone, irrespective of age. Every Christmas morning, we want to run to the living room, find our gift boxes under the Christmas tree and shake them with anticipation. As we rip open gift boxes and strew our living rooms with crumpled wrapping paper, the child, deep within, hopes they’ll get the perfect Christmas gift. But many people ask themselves, “what do I want for Christmas?...

PreFab or prefabricated houses try to give you a better experience on both ends. By crafting a new home that’s ready to go, there’s no trouble with contractors, fights with builders, and you’re not forever recovering from the sins of the past. Prefab houses rarely strive to set the world on fire, so you’re not going to find many that are really unique. What you will get is a quality new home complete with new house smell, all for less money and far less worry than you’d get trying to make it up as you go along....

Zombie Proof House On a good day, this home is a luxurious, contemporary mansion with all the amenities one could ask for. On a bad day, this home can close upon itself, lock into place in minutes, and become a nearly impenetrable fortress. The “Safe House” by KWK Promes was designed with zombies in mind and is perhaps the first of its kind. When closed, the interior of the home is protected by nearly a foot of concrete in all directions, plus a steel shutter and a retractable drawbridge that connects to a second building....

Contemporary artists have many more tools to craft their creations, and as the art and technology of wire work has progressed, so too has the ability to make ever more intricate and gorgeous pieces from wire. To celebrate this ancient craft and the stunning pieces it creates, we found 15 of the most beautiful and intricate wire sculptures of today. ‘Wishes Fairy’ by Robin Wight Inspired by a real-life encounter, this fantasy creator from Staffordshire, England has many fairy-based and mystical pieces....

If small-time land-based adventures no longer give you the chills, riding the glowing waters may just give you the much-needed adrenaline rush. But if you can’t swim like a dolphin, you better get a boat. So, what type of boat is ideal for you? Maybe a small boat, a big boat, pontoon, Kayak, or a lake boat? Let’s discuss the 15 most popular types of boats and hopefully help you find the perfect vessel....

Like large corporations who hide themselves behind subsidiaries and offshoots, the exact size of any given covert coterie who hides in the shadows is unknown, often excluding its own members from having too much information, lest they disclose it to the wrong people. To celebrate national conspiracy day – which no one knows exists because we just made it up – we’re taking a look at the 16 most infamous secret societies that we know of....

Not only should a good first scene get you interested, it should also give you just enough revelations to get you invested in what’s happening. A wicked car chase that ends in a gun battle might be great spectacle, but without context it’s nothing more than white noise, which fails to reach us as human beings. Then again, there’s times when the opening scene actually eclipses the rest of the movie....

Getting to know someone is not easy to do for all of us. Whether that’s a new friend, a new colleague, or someone you’re on a date with. Even outright asking your best friends some deep or juicy questions can seem awkward. So, where do you even start? Playing an interesting questions game might just be the ice breaker you need! And for that, we’ve rounded up some of the greatest questions designed to spark great conversations with anyone and everyone you have in mind....

If you have watched the TV series “Into the Badlands,” you know that knife throwing is a thing. And while it could take you years of practice to get half as good as the lamest thrower on the show, it is a badass thing to fish out a knife from its sheath and hit a target. Unless you’re fending off a group of deadly assassins sent by the Illuminati, you’ll want a good throwing knife for competitive sport or backyard knife throwing with friends....

View in gallery Across the world’s population, traits like brown eyes are king. Most of us come from a long line of dark-eyed individuals whereas people with green eyes are the pearls of eye color—highly desired yet increasingly rare. As with blue eyes and hazel eyes, green eyes are determined by an array of factors science is still trying to understand. If you’re part of this elusive club, then you’ll be happy to know we’ve collected 48 facts about your dazzling green eyes....

As the designers point out on Gizmodo, it’s also a great way to avoid the overpriced hotels which like to charge more when the festival season kicks into gear. “We thought, why not stack a honeycomb, not for bees, but for festival goers to offer a very comfortable, cozy alternative for the overbooked and overpriced hotels during festival times?” The interior is simple, but features a nice wooden finish, and has plenty of space to escape to for the night....

The Swiss watch group at Bell & Ross usually sticks to the program with their designs. Is that a safe bet, or a wise decision? We think both, as their original, iconic rounded-square signature is as lovely as it gets. The Bell & Ross BR 01 94 Pro Titanium Watch continues that squared tradition in titanium, one of the toughtest metals known to man. This new Bell & Ross is likely to come at a premium, although the official price hasn’t yet surfaced....

Occasionally, though, we’ll catch wind of a project or two from the top-secret division, a prototype that’s somehow sauntered into the public eye. The Bird of Prey was one such project. Visually, it looks like it’d be more at home cruising through the depths of space than it would in the skies above Earth. That’s hardly surprising looking into the plane’s history, though: the plane’s name, wrote James Wallace in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer of October 2002, were based on a class of Klingon starship first seen in the 1984 Star Trek III: The Search For Spock....

Since the original Night of the Living Dead the zombie world has been overrun with pretenders and second-string bandwagoners. These people have barraged the viewing public with bad zombie flick after unrepentant, undead terrible zombie picture. The poor monsters have been misused by every hack out there, leaving real fans to wonder where the quality zombie cinema is. Well, if you have an unhealthy fixation with reanimated corpses, here’s the 11 best zombie movies ever brought to life....

When batteries or power outlets are not available, Earl’s rear-mounted solar panel can charge the device from the light of day. Its E-ink display sips power, ensuring that the device can last long on each charge and power-up on its own under the sun. It may not have a HULU app or play Angry Birds, but that’s the whole point of heading to the wilderness in the first place. With Earl, you can gladly bring along a bit of powerful tablet technology to enrich your experience, not escape it....

I know I use that phrase a bit too much…but seriously. Just look at it, and tell me you can’t see a car like that driving on the roads of the distant future. According to EDAG, the manufacturing process they used to create GENESIS will leave traditional manufacturing techniques – including rapid prototyping- behind, adding a new and revolutionary dimension to classical manufacturing and design. With additive manufacturing, parts can be designed so that they’re “load-specific, multi-functional, and bionic,” ensuring ideal shape and thickness....

For visitors, real Miami exists on the margins — somewhere across the bridge from South Beach and Lincoln Road. For locals, real Miami is stuck in traffic — something daydreamed between bumpers on I-95. “Real Miami” is mostly intangible, but I’ve found that the best way to find it is on two wheels, not four. The freedom and pace of a bicycle makes Real Miami accessible to those who usually pass it by....

Florida Polytechnic University stands between Tampa and Orlando, a half-way marker amidst a hundred miles of farmland along Interstate 4. It seems to appear out of nowhere, an alien shape that dominates a landscape of farms, RV dealerships and theme park billboards. It is a magnet to the eye of every driver along busy I4, an advertisement of its own for bright, progressive thinking. At face value, it seems like an unlikely place to locate a bold new educational initiative, but like the building’s design, its location is carefully-calculated....

The Green Roofed Grass Cave House in Yokohama comprises 97 square meters of space on its v-shaped lot. Since the architect could not build “out”, they built “up”, using a varied split-level design that created rising forms with several exterior patches of green grass. The interior spaces of the Grass Cave are black on all sides, with black-stained wood for walls, ceilings and floors. The architect balanced the dark interior textures by bringing in plenty of exterior light through slatted windows that virtually line the entire interior....