The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for bikes, rockets, R/C vehicles, toys and other diversions.
Right now I am sore and cranky. Brookelynn + Sore + Cranky = Horrible Whining. I am currently whining for someone to make me this adorably soothing stuffed animal neck pillow. It’s an easy recycling project with just the right ammount of easy sewing. I think it would fix everything!
I’ve been following Barcelona maker Abraham Neddermann’s Dicecreator blog for a while. True to the blog’s name, he dabbles in creating his own tabletop gaming dice, machining them out of aluminum or printing on blank dice. This time he’s outdone himself, building a laser engraver out of junk parks, a couple of stepper motor control […]
Aw, man, this is almost too good to be true: Makers Market seller John Doffing, of Philadelphia, PA, has scored a license to reprint every card in Topps’ famous 1962 trading card series Mars Attacks. John’s company, LTL Prints, has a novel full-color print-on-demand process using environmentally friendly inks, at 1440 dpi, on a 10 mil self-adhesive “fabric paper” substrate that can be removed and repositioned over and over again. He’ll sell you any card in the series at your choice of six sizes ranging from one foot to six feet on the long edge, with prices starting at $15. He’s also selling complete sets at a steep discount over the per-print price.
This simulator hoists a person up via a hang glider harness with a fan blowing in his face and some VR goggles on his head. The project website is disappointingly light on detail, but it looks like it might be fun to try. What would really be killer, and I don’t get the sense that […]
From Stanford design student Purin Phanichphant, the, er, Death Wheel 3000dx seems to be without an identifiable steering mechanism. Or brakes. Looks like fun, though!
Back in March, Louise Chavez placed a 40-cent wager at a slot machine at the Fortune Valley Casino in Central City, Colorado. When the wheels stopped spinning, the machine told her she’d won the jackpot:
People were coming up to me saying I won $42,000,000, or at least $42,000. Lights were flashing, it sounded like a fire truck, the screen said ‘see attendant.’
The casino claimed it was a glitch, returned the $23 she’d put into the machine, bought her breakfast, and comped her a free room for the night.
Now, per this story in IEEE Spectrum, the Colorado Gaming Division has completed its investigation and determined that the reported payout was, indeed, the result of a bug caused by “two Showcase Showdown awards occurring quickly after each other while the Grand Game bonus feature was already in play.” [Thanks, Glen!]
Del Hatch, who was at the Faire last year showing off his Mendocino Solar Motor, made a big splash again this year with his chess playing robot, which uses an off-the-shelf sensory chess board and robot arm together with the open-source chess engine GNUChess.
