Robolamps
Croatian designer Robert Matysiak has made a delightful array of these “robolamps” by cobbling together “a bunch of plumbing supplies and green light bulbs.”
Made On Earth
“Polaroid” mini-vase
…a small planter that recalls the nostalgic form of polaroid, with the plant becoming the focus of the “picture.” The planter is suspended with a clothespin on the end of a cord, with a small embedded lamp illuminating its subject.
Han Solo carbonite desk
From Tom Spina Designs.
Temperature regulating coffee mug
Klaus Sedlbauer and Herbert Sinnesbichler, of Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics (IBP), think coffee is perfect at 58 degrees C. So they built a coffee mug that automatically maintains that temperature, tending to cool its contents above 58 degrees, and releasing heat below 58 degrees to warm them back up. It works by use of an interstitial phase change material (PCM, Wikipedia) between the aluminum fins, which has a solid-liquid phase change temperature of 58 degrees. Above 58 degrees, the PCM melts and absorbs heat, and below 58 degrees it freezes and releases heat. Supposedly it can keep a cup of coffee at ideal temperature for 20 to 30 minutes.
Fist sledgehammer
Spotted in the online portfolio of design firm Martus & Silvio, of Grand Rapids. It’s a sculpture, technically, entitled “Early Tools,” but I’d have a hard time not using it at least once, Office Space style, on something that really made me angry.
Reductionist Jack-'o-lantern
An engineer’s solution to the Jack-‘o-lantern problem if ever I saw one. [via There, I Fixed It]
Driving a car with an iPhone. A freaking car. For reals.
John Boiles, who earlier this year showed us how to control an RC car using an iPod’s internal accelerometer (and also how to control the lights on a dance floor in more or less the same way), is a member of Austin, TX, based engineering collective Waterloo Labs, who have up-gunned his iPod technology to control steering, breaks, and acceleration on a full-size automobile. Definitely not the safest hack I’ve ever blogged, but probably the most impressive. Great work, lady and gents.
