If you’re considering giving a dude a tie this xmas, consider making it yourself! Michele Beschen shows you how to print and sew a classy tie over on Etsy. I’m not 100% sold on the “geek power” pattern on this one, but the tutorial for sewing the tie is rock solid.
This doily garland project from Candace of Sparkle Power for Smile and Wave is so fun, I could see myself making it for the holidays and leaving it up all year long.
The indubitably cool (though possibly non-ergo) gesture interface seen in the movie Minority Report as well as amazing real-world projects like Pranav Mistry’s Sixth Sense are mirrored in his Kinect hand detection experiment by Garratt Gallagher of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Pretty sweet, and you don’t even need cool cyber-gloves!
YouTuber srobbin identifies this as a “500kV switch opening up in the Nevada desert,” but provides very little detail otherwise. Still: Holy smoke. It arcs for a good six seconds, with a sight and a sound that, even on video, is pretty terrifying. In person…well, I’m not sure I can even begin to imagine what it would be like.
Rob Cruickshank built this sweet laser microscope based, at least partly, I flatter myself to presume, on my recent project. There are more pics in Rob’s Flickr set, including one of the custom screw-fitting he made to hold down the momentary switch on his laser pointer. Rob also reports that water squeezed from an aquarium filter is an excellent source of microfauna-rich samples. [Thanks, Rob!]
Instructables user seamster wins the award for the best creative reuse of an old satellite dish I’ve seen.
My son has this totally awesome “exhaust” pipe on his bike that I covet. It’s really a resonator for the classic baseball-card-in-the-spokes trick. It makes a terrific racket, and gets people to move out of the way without necessitating a honk on your horn. I decided to build my own, using a recycled beverage bottle. Armed with a Dremel Rotary Tool, a bottle of energy drink, and a depleted gift card, I set out to make my own soda bottle bike exhaust.
