Time Lapse Lunar Eclipse over the Acropolis
Time lapse video by Elias Politis, uppermost, and single image composite of same, immediately above. It’s NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day for June 25.
Technology
EMSL’s 555 Footstool
Our friends Lenore and Windell of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, have cooked up a scale model of a 555 chip that works as a footstool. We wanted a new footstool at the lab, and somehow came across the idea of making it in the shape of our hero above, the 555 timer chip. We started […]
Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments for Browsing/DL on Scribd
1960’s “Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments,” by Robert Brent and Harry Lazarus, is now freely browsable on Scribd, and can be downloaded as a .PDF after either paying $5 or uploading a document of your own in exchange.
Circuit Bent Instruments by Cavan Fyans
Make subscriber Jim wrote in to let us know about instrument maker and circuit bender Cavan Fyans and his positively retro and fully bent analog and digital noise inducers. Part exploration of constraint, part purpose-built interaction, his work has a visual aesthetic that compliments the aural assault locked within each piece. Check out his site […]
In the Maker Shed: 64 Button Shield
The 64 Button Shield not only allows you to use up to 64 buttons with your next Arduino project, it also has a hidden “easter egg” that allows it to output MIDI. This video demonstrates MIDI functionality by using a 64 Button Shield, a Midivox, and an Arduino together for use as a physical interface for your favorite MIDI compatible music program.
Light Scythe Makes Huge Light Paintings
Gavin from Sydney built this 2-meter POV staff for full color light painting. The hardware is pretty simple. There’s a 2m programmable LED strip inside an acrylic tube, which is controlled from a small receiver and battery pack. A laptop PC with a wireless Xbee link sends the image data to the scythe at a […]
Cellular Automata in Wood
I believe Los Angeles artist Jeff Cook’s medium is correctly described as marquetry (“the art and craft of applying pieces of veneer to a structure to form decorative patterns, designs or pictures”) rather than parquetry (“very similar in technique to marquetry: in parquetry the pieces of veneer are of simple repeating geometric shapes, forming tiling patterns”). But it’s an interesting question…