Lenore at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories writes: As part of our continuing quest to experiment with every possible fabrication technology, we recently came across an opportunity to try fabric printing services while outfitting our new office with curtains. Roller blinds are a nice alternative to curtains with their simple appearance. However, most roller blinds are […]
Raise your hand if you are a child of the 80s who wore loads of these floating glitter bangles on both of your arms. If you’re feeling nostalgic or just want a special sparkly accessory for your holiday parties, Katie of I Go By Katie shows you how simple it is to make your own […]
Extreme maker and all-around bare metal hacker Jeri Ellsworth cobbled together this DIY TSA-like body scanner using a feed horn from a surplus satellite dish, an optical mouse, some components, and copious amounts of hot glue.
Over the weekend I participated in a group led by Jeff Warren of MIT’s Design Ecology group to build DIY spectrographs using recycled materials. It was a fun weekend citizen science project that’s perfect for families. The spectrographs we made weren’t as nice as what you can build for $20, but then again they were built using trash.
Awhile back, I wrote about co-opting the awesome glue used to mount rear-view mirrors for hobby projects. An interested reader e-mailed me a couple weeks later asking if I knew how to remove a rear-view mirror button from a windshield, which I didn’t. Several people have reported that trying to forcibly remove the metal button from the glass can actually break a divot of glass out of the windshield. I was therefore not optimistic, but we talked a little about the idea of using an organic solvent combined with sharp lateral pressure parallel to the glass. She experimented a bit, and, what do you know, eventually succeeded! Here’s her report:
I found this cool light blacksmithing video from YouTuber SgtViktor at How to History, an online clearinghouse of traditional handwork tutorials. To be fair, the bucklemaker in question uses all kind of modern power tools and abrasives, but the site is nonetheless a great resource. Other personal faves include How to Build a Coracle, How to Set a Copper Rivet, and How to Make Handmade Nails. [Thanks, Matt Fedorko!]
…and a pretty sweet Minority Report-esque dynamic infographic (“infomotion?”), to boot. The point? The world today has more than its share of problems, but we can all be thankful it isn’t the world of 200 years ago.
The charming Swede is Hans Rosling–physician, statistician, and host of BBC 4’s The Joy of Stats. Pretty much everything about this video makes me happy, not least of all that the Brits have a TV program celebrating statistics itself. [Thanks, Dad!]
P.S. If you’re feeling cynical, check out the equally-cool-but-way-less-uplifting Animated Map of Nuclear Explosions, 1945-1998 by Isao Hashimoto.
