Toys, Tricks, & Teasers — The Chinese South-Pointing Chariot
Many ingenious mechanisms are devised with no “practical” purpose in mind.
Fun & Games
The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for bikes, rockets, R/C vehicles, toys and other diversions.
Aha! Puzzle This
Cake Competition
Alt.CES – EyeClops digital optics toys
The Jakks Pacific EyeClops brand made waves back around the 2007 holiday season with their super magnifying camera toy, which set a successful design strategy they’ve since followed up on with their Night Vision 2.0 and PROJECTOR NAME toys: Take a professional piece of digital optics and make a functional $50 toy version.
I bought both their active night vision and video projector toys for my nephews this last Xmas. The older of the two, Michael, agreed to review them for us:
Awesome Mindstorms tank video
The model itself is extremely sophisticated. It packs, among its other components, a HiTechnic gyro sensor, presumably to help it stay vertical, Segwaylike. As an added bonus, the video itself is very slick and engaging. Both are the work of Greek Lego fan NeXTSTORM. [via TheNXTStep]
R/C plane from trash
Twitter user ChristineMMTTM points us to this great video record of the process of building a remote control airplane that was built from junk that could be scavenged from most household trash.
How-To: Credit card grappling hook
Noah at Instructables made this nifty office toy grappling hook with a few spare parts including a sewing machine bobbin full of fishing line.
CRAFT weekly recap
This week on CRAFT we saw: Interlocking LEGO Rings Lost Camera Digital Summoning Spell Flashback: SketchUp 101