MAKE blasts into orbit and beyond with our DIY SPACE issue. Put your own satellite in orbit, launch a stratosphere balloon probe, and analyze galaxies for $20 with an easy spectrograph! We talk to the rocket mavericks reinventing the space industry, and renegade NASA hackers making smartphone robots and Lego satellites. Of course, as usual, […]
Nick Normal @ Make: Online recently went on a bicycle tour of some different compost sites in Queens, NY. He writes: This past weekend I went on a group bike tour of five compost sites in Western Queens, NY, in the neighborhoods of Astoria, Long Island City and Sunnyside. The sites were as diverse as […]
Gearfans have gotta check out this cool video showing all sorts of crazy gears, created by Clayton Boyer. [Thanks, baz]
Bonnie Burton over at StarWars.com points us to this awesome Star Wars Serenity Prayer cross-stitch sampler project from Flickr user Steotch. Leia’s chain is actually a metalic emrboidery thread, crocheted and woven into the design; and Jabba is complete with little tiny knotted warts. You can purchase the completed sampler from Steotch’s Etsy shop. While […]
Jeri Ellsworth made this quick and dirty gas containment chamber for her laser cutter — to be able to test the gases generated from the lasing of various materials — using a silicon wafer (which the beam passes through) and a cookie tin. This rig can also be used to contain materials that might otherwise […]
SO. It turns out the 2001 monolith (in)action figure I wrote about last week is one of ThinkGeek’s prank products. You can’t actually buy one. Yet.
It’s a clever trick, really: Call it an “April Fool’s” product, then count the number of clicks on the buy link, and decide based on that info if you really want to manufacture and sell them, or not.
Me? Bitter? ‘Course not.
Anyway, reader Dan Simpson saw that post and commented that
[b]ack in the 70s, I was commissioned to make one of these. I used one inch thick black acrylic plastic, and machined it to a thousandth of an inch accuracy on a vertical mill, then gave it a satin finish. Now, around three decades later, it’s in stores. But I still have my prototype, which is a few thousandths off….
I asked, and Dan was kind enough to provide, this photograph of his prototype. If it looks a bit funny, here, it’s probably because I couldn’t resist the temptation to crop it to 400.0 x 900.0 pixels. Although I am insufficiently evolved to perceive it, Dan assures me that its hyperspatial dimension is equally precise. [Thanks, Dan!]
Since 1978, Materials for the Arts (MFTA) has supplied New York City arts and cultural non-profits and public schools with free materials that otherwise would have wound up in the trash. They supply everything from sidewalk chalk to office binders, from latex paint to furniture, spools of fabric, and even computers and lumber. And of […]
