Islamic Pattern Lasercut Box
If you know me, you know I love lasers. And patterns. And lasercut patterns. Hirmes on Thingiverse made this lasercut Islamic pattern box. Stick an LED inside and it would make a great ornament or lantern.
Year: 2009
Discover The Magic of Mesquite: No-Knead Mesquite Bread Recipe
Around this time of year one might notice that their local variety of mesquite tree is littering the neighborhood with odd figured legumes. These curly, hooked and sometimes pom-pom shaped pods (screw bean, honey and velvet) offer up a nutritious treat to the creative forager. With a bit of mastery, the pods can also become high value products – flour and sweetener that sell for 30X their white flour and sugar standards. Mesquite’s sweet, dark taste makes it a great match for pancakes, breads, molasses and a host of baked goods.
The Belonio stove
Alexis Belonio is an associate professor in agricultural engineering at the Central Philippine University of Iloilo City. In 2008 he received a Rolex Award for Enterprise for a rice-husk-burning stove he designed. Belonio’s stove is not complicated, either mechanically or conceptually: A columnar metal burner with the addition of a small intake fan at the base to tip the stoichiometry of combustion towards oxidation, giving a blue, clean, efficient flame that leaves little or no residue. Traditional rice husk burners, by contrast, do not have this forced-air feature and produce a yellow, dirty, inefficient flame that leaves tar behind. The upshot is more efficient use of rice husk biomass and greatly reduced pollution from the many rice-husk burners in use today.
Electrocution prop par excellence
The electric chair is an old haunted-house standby, but YouTuber kenpilot’s version is really outstanding. Excelsior!
Prop art
There is in fact no evidence that this wonderful perpetually-drumming-fingers automaton by Nik Ramage was ever intended to be anything but a piece of art. But it had the bad fortune to come across my desk in the midst of the Make: Halloween Contest 2009 frenzy so I am hereby diminishing it to the status of Halloween prop. At least potentially. Personally, if I could afford one I’d leave it out all year under a spotlight. Beautiful.
Bookends for geeks
Need to keep your tech books from falling over? Lenore over at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has the perfect solution for you: DIY geek bookends!
How-To: Petite Pack
This cute wee backpack is touted as a back to school project, but I think it would be useful and fun for kids (or adults!) any time of year. See the full tutorial on Sew to Speak.