As for the “paradox,” well, it boils down to this: the three apparently-identical stacked gears on the end are driven by a single gear, yet move at different rates, which, of course, would be impossible if they were truly identical. News flash: They’re not. But I’m sure it was harder to fight boredom in the 18th century than it is now, and the build is undeniably gorgeous.
It looks like Mr. Bones does not actually have a singing part in this delightful orchestration of Danny Elfman’s “This is Halloween” from The Nightmare Before Christmas by YouTuber HalloweenJared. He just bobs his head and taps his foot. The anorexic front man for the Gourditos does, however, show off his famous vocal chops in their cover of Bobby Pickett’s “Monster Mash,” and also here in a smoking duet version of the elder Ross Bagdasarian’s “Witch Doctor.” There’s some how-to info here.
It’s like a pop-up book, kind of, except way more complicated and expensive and made of Lego elements by YouTube user talapz. Words fail me, too. [via The Brothers Brick]
There’s an odd synchronicity here with last week’s post about the coin-scavenging-crow training machine. This time it’s a hunt-the-wumpus style video game that you play by dropping glass bottles into the slots when they light up.
In a side note, Volkswagen’s “Fun theory award” is now definitely on my radar. Besides this project, their competition to incentivize socially-usefully behaviors by turning them into entertainment also produced the world’s deepest rubbish bin and the public staircase piano keyboard.
By deviantART user ~tallydragon. [via CRAFT]
Pretty amazing yard art by YouTuber koUNit1. [via Geekologie] Make: Halloween Contest 2009 Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.
The first presenter at last Thursday’s Dorkbot Austin was a gentleman named Mikal Hart, who described his “Reverse Geocaching Puzzle.” Designed and built as a wedding gift for an old friend moving to France, the box incorporates an Arduino with a custom shield. A prominent button on the lid, when pressed, returns a distance, in kilometers, on the LCD display (if a GPS signal can be acquired), and counts button-presses up to 50 atttempts. No directional information is provided, so the box must be moved about in order to triangulate the location it wants. Mikal also included a cunningly-disguised back door to allow it to be opened in the event of battery failures or bugs.
