Nicholas and Loan Gatai used to cringe when they received power bills that routinely topped $200. Last September the Sacramento, Calif., couple moved into a new, 1,500-square-foot home in Premier Gardens, a subdivision of 95 “zero-energy homes” just outside town. Now they’re actually eager to see their electric bills. The grand total over the 10 months they’ve lived in the three-bedroom, stucco-and-stone house: $75. For the past two months they haven’t paid a cent. Link.
Fun with meltable metals….Field’s Metal melts at 144 degrees F. Perfect for easy toymaking or prototyping. Better yet, break off the end of a spoon, and use a drop of Fields Metal to solder it back together. When your friend uses the spoon to stir his coffee and sees the end fall off, perhaps he will decide to cut back on the caffeine. Thanks flyboy! Link.
Painting the Myth, a new system for interactive biography, allows participants to illustrate the work, histories and stories of artists by moving through increasingly rich and detailed layers of their best known works. This unique digital storytelling experience merges form and content into one engaging look at the story behind the canvas, the secrets inside the history, and the artist in each of us. Link.
This is a web-based interactive map of wardriving data. Wardrivers upload their findings, and we draw the data atop detailed street-level maps. This project was built using a variety of free or open source software packages. Be alert that you are anonymous. Thanks Drew! Link.
If you are like me you get really excited when you find two Nintendo controllers at the Salvation Army. One was priced at $1.00 and the other at $.37 (i didn’t fight the pricing). Of course, they get home and meanwhile occupy a part of my brain that is like a broken stove. There is this back burner that is constantly on. Ideas get on there and just simmer away. So the idea for one of the controllers was to make it a card reader that i can plug my sd or compact flash cards into to transfer files. Sunday morning i came up with my idea for the second one… make it a mouse. Link.
This might be cool idea for other projects too. In this project, Home Depot is responsible for the plant in two ways: first, an unconditional guarantee to replace any plant they sell, for up to one year; secondly through an implied cybernetic contract. [
This will likely unlock a ton of cool projects…PodConsole adds a DB9 serial interface to your ipod, via the plug next to the headphone jack. This can be used for a tty console if your ipod is running linux or you can control your ipod with your computer and the ipod protocol. [