Notes from the Machinima Film Fest
Good overview of the Machinima film fest and making films in the virtual world, the entries are great! – “Machinima is film-making using video game engines, hybridizing traditional film, animation, and game development. Lots of fun…A full list of festival winners, nominees and presenters are up on the festival site. Big ups to Machinima Man Paul Marino and everyone who put it together. Already looking forward to next year’s fest which will have two full days of machinima.” Link.
Matt writes “I have put together some free plans for building a spider rifle. This is a device which I designed and built from pvc & cpvc pipe that uses compressed air to suck up and kill household spiders.” I don’t think you have the kill the little fellows, so this could just be used to capture and release. 
“The Musical Instrument Makers Forum, an interactive forum for the discussion of musical instrument construction, design and repair – Acoustic guitar building, electric guitar making, archtop guitar building, violin making, dulcimer making, mandolin building, banjo building, or any other type of lutherie; pickup winding and rewinding; drum making; flute and recorder making and repair; brass instrument building and repair; and more. For makers of all instruments at any skill level from expert to wannabe.” Thanks Dave! 
Go kick the tires on the new O’Reilly podcast page! “This week, O’Reilly’s audio magazine program Distributing the Future features day three from the Web 2.0 conference: Vinod Khosla from Kleiner Perkins on the overabundance of money, Scott Cook of Intuit on learning from customers, Sergey Brin on the current state of Google, Dick Hardt on identity, and Safa Rashtchy talks to five teens.” 
Interesting stories and challenges for Makers and inventors in the USA – “When James E. West was 8 years old, he propped himself on his bed’s brass footboard one afternoon and stretched to plug the cord of a radio he had repaired into a ceiling outlet. It was one of his first experiments. West’s hand sealed to the light socket as 120 volts of electricity shimmied through his body, freezing him in place until his brother knocked him from the footboard and onto the floor. Like more storied inventors who preceded him, he was quickly hooked on the juice–even as he lay shivering from that first encounter…” 
Dave writes “This site has some amazing products of fancy knots. I was looking for some more detailed info for finishing off a turks head and found this site.” Here’s a great step by step on making star knots. There’s something really satisfying about tying a sturdy yet ascetically pleasing knot. 
Brad writes “I’ve always wanted to be a proud owner of some unnecessarily large light-up outdoor sign. Specifically I wanted some old sign that used to adorn the entrance of some dive bar somewhere. The problem is these signs are “collectors items” of sorts and if they’re in any working order then they’re gonna cost you quite a bit of money. On the other hand, if they don’t work, you’re still going to end up spending your life savings trying to fix what time and weather has done to these signs over the years. You’ll also need the know-how to do the work and a team of people to help move the sign since they generally weigh more than small cars. My solution was simple. I just needed to build what I wanted.”