The knitPro tool will take any GIF, JPEG or PNG image you throw at it and make a knitting grid in PDF as a guide. Handy, it’s also part of a larger project called “logoknitting” microRevolt fiber hobbyists use the tactic of “logoknitting” for sweatshop awareness. Logoknitting means knitting a logo into a garment. They knit logos of well known sweatshop offenders, as a way to promote discussion on how advertising, labor, production and consumption relate. Link. Gallery.
Incredibly lo-fi DIY attempt in making panoramic video, with interesting results- Ingredients: Old plastic Christmas tree bauble found in the garden, Felt tip pen, Blu Tak, “Polar Coordinates” distortion in After Effects. Seems possible to make a version with a larger mirror ball, the effect is pretty neat. Link.
I’m going to try to round up some Science listening or watching each week- Science Friday: Self-Replicating Robots / Science of Sexual Abuse & Stem Cell Spinal Cord Treatment / Science and Technology in the UK. The power chat with Sir David King was really great, you can conserve resources and grow economies it seems. Subscribe to the Podcast here. Eyes of Nye has Addiction and Antibiotics as the two episodes that came over my TV recorder. It would be great to get a non-Flash version of the eyesofnye site, RSS feeds and an easy way to link to the content on the site- there’s great stuff hidden in there. Link.
Rob Cockerham makes weird things, some of them work, some of them are more social engineering pranks, and some are brilliant costumes. Check out the “How much is inside Adventure” projects and “Incredible stuff I made”…Link. I think I like the paparazzi costume the best.
NPR’s Talk of the Nation Science Friday have been delivering great science news and interviews since 1991- now you can get the shows, usually a week after they’re broadcasted on the Science Friday site via their Podcast (MP3s). We were on the show back in April and usually record shows via a RadioShark or purchase through audible- now just add it to a podcast application. Last week’s letters of Richard Feynman, and talk with Alan Lightman was great. Link.
Looking to take VR photos of objects? Here’s an interesting DIY way…“Used together with my Coolpix 990 remote control, this turntable forms an automatic studio for simple VR-object movies. It rotates the object on 360° and shoots photographs with equally spaced angles. You can then animate these images with a VR-object viewer such as PTviewer, Freedom-VR or Objplay. Remote and turntable can both be built with Lego Mindstorms Robotics Invention System (only parts included in this box are needed)”. Link.
Last week or so we mentioned there was something happening over on WhiteBox Robotics and now they’ve announced their new Model 914 PC-BOT for pre-order. The PC-BOTs come in a couple flavors, and you’ll need to add your own PC, but they’ve taken care of the hard parts- locomotion, motors, power, sensors, etc… for $1,200 or so it’s not exactly cheap, but once you add up all the components and software it’s not bad (the under $2k home robot is finally here). Link.
