Made On Earth

Señores y señoras…El Sr. Bones y los Gourditos!

Señores y señoras…El Sr. Bones y los Gourditos!

It looks like Mr. Bones does not actually have a singing part in this delightful orchestration of Danny Elfman’s “This is Halloween” from The Nightmare Before Christmas by YouTuber HalloweenJared. He just bobs his head and taps his foot. The anorexic front man for the Gourditos does, however, show off his famous vocal chops in their cover of Bobby Pickett’s “Monster Mash,” and also here in a smoking duet version of the elder Ross Bagdasarian’s “Witch Doctor.” There’s some how-to info here.

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan

Train an army of children to recycle bottles for you

There’s an odd synchronicity here with last week’s post about the coin-scavenging-crow training machine. This time it’s a hunt-the-wumpus style video game that you play by dropping glass bottles into the slots when they light up.

In a side note, Volkswagen’s “Fun theory award” is now definitely on my radar. Besides this project, their competition to incentivize socially-usefully behaviors by turning them into entertainment also produced the world’s deepest rubbish bin and the public staircase piano keyboard.

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan4
GPS-enabled puzzle box opens only at Île-de-Bréhat, France

GPS-enabled puzzle box opens only at Île-de-Bréhat, France

The first presenter at last Thursday’s Dorkbot Austin was a gentleman named Mikal Hart, who described his “Reverse Geocaching Puzzle.” Designed and built as a wedding gift for an old friend moving to France, the box incorporates an Arduino with a custom shield. A prominent button on the lid, when pressed, returns a distance, in kilometers, on the LCD display (if a GPS signal can be acquired), and counts button-presses up to 50 atttempts. No directional information is provided, so the box must be moved about in order to triangulate the location it wants. Mikal also included a cunningly-disguised back door to allow it to be opened in the event of battery failures or bugs.

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan9