Log radio is better than bad, it’s good
A beautiful wooden radio from designers Solรยจne Le Goff and Christophe Gouache. Solar and/or wind-up powered. [via Dude Craft]
Made On Earth
Train an army of crows to gather treasure for you
Josh Klein developed a machine that trains crows to trade coins for peanuts. Literally, for peanuts. So you fill this thing with peanuts and set it out, say, in a public park, and the crows will scour the ground for loose change, carry it to the machine, and drop it in a slot in exchange for food. The project, dubbed “CrowBox,” made a big splash when he unveiled it back in 2007. Now he’s made the complete plans for the CrowBox completely available online so you can roll your own. And there’s no reason you couldn’t train your fly-monkeys-fly to gather other crow-portable objects. Twenty-dollar bills? Keys? iPods? Human eyes? The possibilities are endless. Set one up at the beach! Train seagulls to trade whole wallets for pre-shucked oysters!
Gorgeous antique pocketwatch LED retrofit
So, you may think, somebody took an old pocketwatch and fit it with a PCB and some LEDs. Ho-hum, perhaps? Seen it? Done it? Got the T-shirt? My response: there’s concept, and there’s execution. The concept here may be of the non-earth-shattering variety, but the execution is exquisite. Must. Watch. Video. To appreciate just how cool this thing really is. It ticks, for one thing, and when the minute and hour “hands” advance they sweep around the face in a visual gesture reminiscent of John Taylor’s Corpus Clock. And besides flawless aesthetics and stellar workmanship, the watch has a great story, too. Its maker, Paul Pounds, explains:
Steampunk has jumped the shark
I stole this post title and all from Tiffany of Curious Goods.
Construction equipment ballet
Anne Troake is a choreographer and filmmaker from Newfoundland. Her film Pretty Big Dig is, IMHO, the best of the many “dancing heavy machinery” videos I’ve seen on YouTube.
Atlas-F missile silo converted to ultimate survival mansion
From silohome.com:
NY’s Adirondack State Park – During the late 1950’s and early 1960’s when the Cold War was escalating, the U.S. government built hundreds of Atlas-F missile silos (each for 18 million in 1961, with the rising cost of construction today one could barely fund the excavation.) to prepare the country for an attack that never came. Today, most of these silos lie abandoned and filled with water, monuments to a bygone era of American history and left to waste. But now, thanks to two entrepreneurial cousins, Bruce Francisco and Gregory Gibbons, one of these silos located in beautiful Adirondack State Park near Lake Placid is finding new life as a luxury home safe haven getaway complex accessible by plane or car. The real estate includes 20 acres of land with approximately 78 acres available as 10 approved building lots. The home is conveniently located to Montreal, Lake Placid and Plattsburgh and boast such outstanding year round activities as golfing, hunting, fishing, boating, hiking and world class skiing.
The price, regrettably, is north of two megabucks. But when I finally marry that wealthy heiress this place is at the top of my shopping list. Bruce was nice enough to provide us with a high-resolution scan of the plan view, above, which (for the time being anyway) is exclusive to the MAKE blog. You can click on the image above to see it at 1000 pixels wide.
Dexter-themed interior decor
Bloody good post over on Mental Floss collecting some delightful home furnishings from the Lady MacBeth collection. Just don’t think you can get away with leaving them out past Halloween. The world’s not ready yet.
