I heard you can make a fine living playing pachinko once you have the “hungry spirit”…The Pachinko Hakubutsukan (Pachinko Museum, more pictures) boasts 148 machines, many of them rare and historic mementos of the game’s industry. “I am really grateful for my encounter with pachinko. I wanted to say thank you to pachinko and wanted to return something” to the game, explained Tetsuya Makino, its manager. Link.
Chemical News & Engineering has a nice section on their site – all about what’s in the stuff use Ever wondered about what’s really in hair coloring, Silly Putty, Cheese Wiz, artificial snow, or self-tanners? C&EN presents a collection of articles that gives you a look at the chemistry behind a wide variety of everyday products. Link.
…a solar-powered bike light, modified from a solar flashlight. (I did find one product that is advertised as a “solar bike light”, but it’s not good: it uses an incandescent lamp rather than LEDs, and it’s a one-piece unit so the whole big thing has to mount on the handlebars). With my home-made version, the solar cell and batteries mount on the rear rack, as you see here. Link.
MAKE Flickr pool member wirehead writes “I’m bringing up the gen2 circuit board. This should be the sort of thing that a qualified electrical engineer would whip out in a matter of minutes. But, I’m a programmer who likes to mess around with technology, so things sometimes take a little longer than they ought to. Or I connect power to ground and ground to power. I do that sometimes, too. But now, I can program this board to do stuff, once I get the LEDs all soldered up. Soon, you will start seeing this board in my light art”… Link.
Please have this kid contact MAKE – A 14-year-old German boy has been ordered to pull down a 300ft long roller coaster which he built in his backyard. The boy, unnamed due to German privacy laws, from Offenburg built the 16-foot-high wooden construction over the summer holidays. He even designed his own carriage which can reach speeds of up to 30 mph. But local town planning officials say he must pull it down again because he did not ask for planning permission. They say the construction is too large and not built to rollercoaster safety standards. The boy has until mid-September to tear it down if he wants to avoid a fine. Link.
A former Hollywood stunt man now living in the Netherlands launched his greatest project to date Tuesday: a 45-foot replica Viking ship made of millions of wooden ice cream sticks and more than a ton of glue. Link.
