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Fetch-O-Matic: Automatic Ball Launcher

Fetch-O-Matic: Automatic Ball Launcher

Several years ago I watched a viral YouTube video that starred Jerry the Dachshund, whose engineer owner had built him his very own automated ball launcher. I had two dogs at the time, and was also unemployed with some time on my hands, so I decided to try my hand at building one. After a […]

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Gravity Catapult

Gravity Catapult

I have long been enamored of catapults. Invented around 400 B.C., they were used until nearly A.D. 1300. So for 1,700 years, catapults were arguably the largest, most expensive, and most powerful machines on the planet. Today, people build catapults for fun: Scout troops, historical reenactors, fathers and daughters, beer-stoked college students. Having built more […]

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Pinhole Panoramic Camera

Pinhole Panoramic Camera

I bought a new scanner recently, and soon found myself spelunking through drawers of old photos from my many misspent years in photography. Some of the most interesting shots were the pinhole camera experiments I had done as a teenager. With ghostly outlines from multi-minute exposures, and shapes warped into boomerangs by curved film, these […]

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Guitar Strap Gamepad

Guitar Strap Gamepad

If you’re playing Rocksmith (and I think you should be), and you’re playing standing up (ditto), you have probably run into the “where do I put the controller” problem. The gamepad is required to navigate the menu system between songs, and if you play in a standing position you have to keep a stool or […]

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Better Nerf Gun

Better Nerf Gun

Like most geek-filled offices, at my workplace we have several Nerf guns and similar toy weapons floating about. Not impressed with the performance of my colleague Lester’s Nerf Maverick, a mainstay of Nerf’s suction-cup-dart-firing “N-Strike” series, I decided to build a better Nerf gun myself. Here’s the result: a simple weapon, single shot only, but […]

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