Great discussion in the MAKE forums! Leenwebb writes – “Like many of us, my house is filled with wires. And until we get the Broadcast Energy Transmitter from the GI Joe movie working, I need the wires. But here’s the thing: they’re ugly. And, often, in the way. So I am putting a call out to all Makers: What do you use for wire-wrangling?…” Link.
Scott writes “For those who don’t already know, the Gimp is a powerful, open source image editing application. For more info on the Gimp visit gimp.org. GIMPshop is essentially the same program with some cosmetic changes. The Gimp’s menu structure and naming conventions had been a constant source of frustration for me because I was so used to Photoshop. So, I did what any hardcore graphics geek would have done. I hacked GIMPshop together.” New version! Link.
News From the Future “Before he became an inventor and businessman, Ron Blum was a practicing opthalmologist. About twice a year, he would encounter a patient whose eyesight was better than 20/20. Such cases of super vision were a phenomenon that Blum and the science of opthalmology couldn’t explain. “I would just say to the person: Consider yourself blessed,” says Blum. “I never would have believed that I would be running a company 20 years later that was developing a product that could give supervision to anyone.” [via] Link.
Joe writes “I moved from Minneapolis a few years ago and miss this store so much. They resell industrial parts, wheels, motors, speakers, fabric, foam, bio-hazard suits and just about anything you can use to make. As you walk through Ax-man you’ll notice large motorized moving displays with baby doll parts and humourus descriptions accompanying there products. I bought some beautiful large hollywood style metal film cannisters there and sanded them down to make a portfolio case. I think the store owner would be a great interview for your mag. As a Make subscriber I would love to have this store listed amongst others that are great resources for “stuff”. Take a look at the tour section of the site to see this bazaar shop.” Link.
Edmund Scientific’s has a deal on kits for kids -subscription style…“Edmund’s Young Engineering Kits Program – this program consists of three fun and educational hands-on activity kits that will help the young ‘engineer’ to experience, create, and learn different aspects in the vast field of engineering! The kits will be shipped individually every other week to give you something to look forward to during this winter season. The Young Engineering Kits Program is a subtle and creative way to expose young persons to.” Link.
Amazing video of a touch screen interface – “While touch sensing is commonplace for single points of contact, multi-touch sensing enables a user to interact with a system with more than one finger at a time, as in chording and bi-manual operations. Such sensing devices are inherently also able to accommodate multiple users simultaneously, which is especially useful for larger interaction scenarios such as interactive walls and tabletops.” [via] Link.
Thomas Wilburn has a lot of great info on making music with one of my favorite “games” for the Nintendo DS he writes – “Composing with Electroplankton, part one: I started a one-man rock band for four reasons. I find the idea of one person onstage creating a lot of great noise on the fly to be very personally appealing. It has a kind of bizarre audacity…” tons of great tips and more – [via] Link.
