Austin designer and garment sewing guru, Tina Sparkles shares her flair for eco-conscious fashion in her new book, Little Green Dresses. The book is filled with 50 fashion projects, all centered around using reclaimed or refashioned materials. Tina’s fun, edgy and very cool aesthetic is evident throughout the book, and her skills as a seasoned […]
Jon Cohrs and Morgan Levy made this cheeky project that comments on the rising levels of pharmaceuticals found in our urban water supplies: Alviso’s Medicinal All-Salt: Are you feeling depressed? Sick of paying exorbitant rates for birth control? Try Alviso’s Medicinal All-Salt, harvested locally in San Jose. Traditionally, medical conditions are treated through expensive appointments […]
From a scratch built 9×12 Field Camera to an early digital camera assembled on perf board, Mats Wernersson has rightfully earned the moniker of The Camera Maker. Look past the quality build and attention to detail and you’ll notice that every camera Mats has built is a rare specimen. With interests in stereographic imaging, astronomy, panorama and plenoptic cameras, there’s little wonder why Mats takes the DIY approach.
A very frustrating and often medically unrecognized result of living with chronic illness is the awful feeling that you’re alone in your struggle. Years of expensive yet unsuccessful treatment by physicians can make many patients lose hope. But for Alexandra Carmichael, out of such frustration was built a platform for people to share and track […]
Personally, I don’t know that I’d want to sit at dining room table lit by a light that’s filtered through bacterial growth, but hey, to each his or her own. Looks cool. Bacterioptica [via DudeCraft]
We’ve covered the in-space science experiments of astronaut Dr. Don Pettit before. Here’s a compilation of a number of microgravity experiments he’s conducted while onboard the International Space Station. Saturday Morning Science More: Zero-gravity coffee cup
Who makes an anachronistic-but-who-cares steampunk LED wristwatch from scratch? Eric Schleapfer does. Nice work! Yes, it’s an LED steampunk wristwatch! It uses the LED wristwatch board… The watch is constructed from a small piece of oak and pieces of brass sheet and tubing. I used hand tools, a Dremel tool and a cordless drill to shape and form each of the pieces.
Back to the watch. It keeps the time with a fairly pedestrian PIC16F628A. It has an internal timer that operates with a separate oscillator (which is the watch crystal in the lower right corner) which can run even during sleep mode. This is critical to keeping the power consumption low. When a timer tick occurs, it generates a wakeup event, and the processor can increment the internal timekeeping registers. The processor can also wake up when one of the buttons is pressed. When that happens, it turns on and starts multiplexing the LEDs so that it can display the time. After a short delay it goes back into sleep mode. I haven’t yet calculated or tested the battery life.
