From traditional crafts to modern crafts, we’re covering news and interesting projects to educate you and keep you inspired. Design trends and pop culture related projects are here to inspire.
Dennis Stevens is a ceramic artist and thinker living in San Jose, California. His weblog, Redefining Craft always has novel takes on Craft, the Universe, and Everything. His most recent salvo involves imagining a scenario in which crafty folks actually benefit from PEAK OIL. His article quotes Robert Heinlein, references William Morris, and quotes the great craft philosopher…erm..Hank Williams Jr. Link. On a side note, extremecraft is an excellent blog.
When plain photography isn’t enough, sometimes I will resort to shooting stereo images, as was the case with my Douglas C. Newell Paperboy trophy. If you feel like really out-nerding yourself, you can apply the same camera-shifting stereo shooting technique to your VR object photography. Link.
Master chip musician Gijs Gieskes has outdone himself this time: his second Walkman tape sequencer controls the Game Boy music cartridge LSDJ via various knobs and circuitry. In other words, the sequencer he built controls both a Walkman tape deck and a Game Boy. Check out this audio sample or this one to hear what all this sounds like. The effect is quite brilliant: a madcap tape deck scratch system with Game Boy music. Forget records and turntables. Tape is the future, man. Link.
…the Iceless Beer Box, an overly complex and undeniably superfluous solution to a minor problem. The importance of the coldness of beer has been well documented. The Internet community has witnessed prior attempts to tackle the lightly-pressing issue of quickly chilling beer below 0°C. Significant advances over previous work include the capacity to chill several bottles simultaneously and construction from widely available components. Link.
A series of photos (many photos) showing how to create a fake Ferrari out of an Acura NSX. The seem to have used a tiny toy car as the model for the whole project, excellent. Link.
Dan Corkery writes “Being the geeks that we are, we always come up with some sort of project to bring up to the lake and play with. This year, two weeks before vacation, we decided to build an Underwater ROV. For those not familiar, an ROV is a Remotely Operated Vehicle. Generally “real” ROVs cost anywhere from $8,000 up to Millions of dollars. We had two weeks and a $100 budget. Usually they have high-resolution camera systems and high powered thrusters to maneuver. We had two weeks and a $100 budget. However, the results were pretty good”. Link.
Contour Crafting is a fabrication process by which large-scale parts can be fabricated quickly in a layer-by-layer fashion. The chief advantages of the Contour Crafting process over existing technologies are the superior surface finish that is realized and the greatly enhanced speed of fabrication. The success of the technology stems from the automated use of age-old tools normally wielded by hand, combined with conventional robotics and an innovative approach to building three-dimensional objects that allows rapid fabrication times. Link.
