The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for bikes, rockets, R/C vehicles, toys and other diversions.
Dave writes “Steve runs a kayak-building company but his spare-time project is designing a velomobile, that is, a human-powered, closed vehicle; technically a recumbent trike with a full body. There are a few commercial velomobile products in Europe, see links at the top of Steve’s page. His current design is just gorgeous (be sure to look at all the pictures) and makes clever, sophisticated use of hi-tech materials, and is very close to commercially practical.” Link.
Pat writes “Since all will be watching their clocks tonight, (except in Australia where the Blogger’s Apprentice has already rung in the New Year), here’s a fitting video, we thought, of how clocks are made.” Link. Stay tuned for some info about a MAKE meet up online for New Years!
Nick writes “Want an inexpensive Windows CE-based web browser, email client, MP3 player, voice memo recorder, rudimentary games machine, and home automation X10 controller that will also create and edit Microsoft Word and Excel files with handwriting recognition and 16-bit color in a package that resembles a space-age Etch-a-Sketch?…this is it” Link.
Nice project to go along with a new Xbox 360…Chuck and Sean write “How to inexpensively build your own arcade-style racing game chair. The site describes building a low-budget chair for your living room with parts from the junkyard as well as building a full-size version utilizing a 32″ TV. Lots of pictures and advice.” Link.
Hans writes “Laser Chess was created by Mike Duppong back in the late 80s, and you can find lots of software versions of the it on the web. However, a Brazilian student named Alexandre Van de Sande actually made a actual working laser version of the game!” Link.
Excellent reason to roll back any PSP, a Commodore 64 emulator! – “64psp began life as an experiment to learn how to program the PSP. No PSP C64 emulators existed at the time and the Frodo source code appeared to have a gentler learning curve. A PSP port of VICE is also in progress. Both emulators have their plus and minus points, so why not try both?” [via] Link.
There’s a new google-maps-style API for the virtual world Second Life. It’s in beta, but we made an example of what’s possible – you can click the arrows and see snap shots of the virtual edition of MAKE, our theater and the tree house. Click the navigation arrows as well as the zoom in/zoom out controls to see the rest of the virtual world. The cool thing about this is that it’s a “real” view into another world. Link.
