This morning I spent ten minutes making the motor from the Howtoons cartoon in the first issue of Make. It consists of one AA battery, two safety pins, a magnet, some Scotch tape, a piece of telephone extension cable wire, a pad of Post-It notes, and a little nail polish. It’s been spinning for four hours so far. I like the clickety clickety sound is makes. I shot a little movie of it in action. (It’s an MP4, so you might have to download it to watch it.) Link
My wife got me these “Moon Shoes” from one of those toy store going out of business sales. According to the literature, they absorb about 60% of the impact while running. I’m not ready to try a 2 mile clip yet, but I think after some modifications these might be fun to go grocery shopping at the mega-mart. Here are a couple pictures. There are some pro-level versions of biped enhancers I’ve seen at conferences with a trained team that does flips and stuff- seems kinda interesting.
About a year ago my pal Chris special ordered a bike with no brakes, and one gear. It’s called a fixed gear or track bicycle. When I saw it in person, it was a work of art. It’s only contains enough to be called a bicycle, nothing more. They’re popular with bicycle enthusiasts and now punk rock crowd. KATU news in Portland has a neat story about them. The weather here in Seattle has been so amazing, I am thinking of getting one. Anyone have some suggestions? I guess it’s possible to make one too.
Okay, this is what my friends call a “Torronesque” project. This is where I usually come up with something and build it, and it really has no purpose or usefulness- but on further inspection it’s kinda neat. This is the iPod shuffle hand charger, actually recharger. There are many “crank powered” accessories floating around, so I thought I’d try a few and figure out if the iPod shuffle can be recharged with one. Well, it can, sorta. Here it is in action! I am still working out the best voltage regulator and wiring, as I figure it out, I’ll post the details, I don’t what to screw up everyone’s shuffles. What I’d really like to do is add little power generating motors to more things. Imagine getting a little power charge everytime you press a key or open your or phone laptop, maybe it wouldn’t matter that much, but multiply that by a billion people and perhaps it would…
There’s a secret “stealth mode” which allows Prius owners to put their cars in all-electric mode. While it’s not functional in the USA, it does work in Japan and Europe. Some Prius hackers have already enabled the button and added an extra battery. There’s a bit about it here and you can order the kit here ($45). If you’re willing and able to do this on a 2004-2005 Prius, please let us know- we want to feature this in an upcoming issue of Make! email, AIM/iChat or Skype me.
I’ve had a web camera on top of whatever computer(s) for years, but until recently I really haven’t used them that often. Lately, more applications have me dusting off these cams and trying some stuff out. My favs on the Mac– Delicious Library and iStopMotion. On the PC side, I use TinCam on some of my XP based robots running around the house. And, while this isn’t out yet, I really like this way to cheat at jigsaw puzzles using a webcam and Python. I don’t have the EyeToy for PS2, but it apparently works well as a web cam on a PC. As a project for the magazine, I’m looking in to looping the last 10 seconds of video from my iSight and projecting that on to a wall as a time delayed mirror. When you try on clothes you can see what you look like from behind. So, if you have a web cam- what are the apps you use? Or what would you like to have webcams do that they do not now? Post up in the comments.
I love reading stories like this one on NewScientist. Nils Schneider reverse engineered the iPod’s firmware to access the LCD, clickwheel and hard drive. We use a Linux’ed iPod for MAKE:audio to do most of our recordings in 96khz. Reading about some of the history as well as the details of this remarkable example in creative problem solving is a treat. Speaking of iPodLinux if you use Apple’s latest update on your 3G iPod you’ll lose your Linux boot up ability, but don’t fret- according to everythingdigital.org you can re-install it. I’ve yet to update mine, so this is good news.
