Fun & Games

The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for bikes, rockets, R/C vehicles, toys and other diversions.

Tattooed Lego minifigs

Tattooed Lego minifigs

This is a viral marketing campaign for some kind of extra-fine point Pilot pen. I love the minifigs themselves, but the campaign bugs me for a couple of reasons: 1) I’ve been Googling around pretty hard and can’t seem to figure out exactly which of Pilot’s many pens these photos are promoting, and 2) nowhere does it explicitly state that the art on the minifigs was actually done with whatever pen they are advertising. So even if I could figure out which one that was, it’s not at all clear that I could actually use it to tattoo my own minifigs. In any case, any kind of super-fine-point permanent maker would probably work. [via Boing Boing]

How-To: Simple rolly bot

How-To: Simple rolly bot

Randy Sarafan writes: This Simple Bot was inspired by a work by artist James Rouvelle called Colony in which a bunch odd shaped ovals self-propel around their environment. It is my understanding that his bots were made by placing a vibrating motor freely inside of a Styrofoam ball that was then coated to give it […]

Remote controlled shoulder puppets

Remote controlled shoulder puppets

My significant other was recently given one of these Woodbaby shoulder puppets by a friend of hers who frequents renaissance faires, where the Woodbaby is a popular commodity. The puppet features a strong magnet in its base that mates with a curved metal “shoulder plate” that goes under your clothing and keeps the figure firmly perched on your shoulder. The mechanical control cable (which, per this thread discussing a DIY version, are R/C airplane control surface push-rods) runs to a simple controller that can be concealed in a pocket and manipulated to make the figure turn its head and look around in a surprisingly life-like manner. More elaborate versions have additional controls like wings and blinking, light-up eyes. Flickr user JeffreyWiden made his own. Would be cool to see an electronic version with a wireless control fob.

OpenCV for face detection on the iPhone

O’Reilly author Alasdair Allan (Learning iPhone Programming and the upcoming Programming iPhone Sensors) talked about using the OpenCV framework for face detection at OSCON in Portland, Oregon. In the video above, Mac Slocum interviews Alasdair from the expo floor of OSCON. For more information on Alasdair’s talk, check out his summary and slides.