This beautifully conceived and executed chess set was made using vintage Russian Nixie tubes. The tubes are illuminated without visible wires; they glow when at rest on the gameboard surface. Kudos to Tony of Lasermad for producing what, IMHO, is quite clearly a masterpiece.
I’ve been writing about DIY electronics for almost four years, and reading about it a lot longer than that, and I can say without hesitation that this freeform headphone amp from Briton Rupert Hirst is the best-looking homemade device I’ve seen in all that time. I see a lot of projects that are longer on technical skill and shorter on design and aesthetics, and its nice to see someone making waves by taking the opposite approach.
Kiwi master craftsman Sören Berger is a woodturner, teacher, and inventor with 35 years at the lathe. It shows. In this amazing and slightly terrifying video, you’ll see him turn a giant tree trunk section that starts with the bark still on it, inside and out, until it’s perfectly smooth and translucent-thin. Inspiring and wonderful. […]
Extremely clever trick from designer John Leung, who’s put a coffee table with an optical grill on top of a rug patterned with a few “hashed” frames of a simple, looping animation. The net result? As you move around the room, the patterns on the rug, viewed through the table, appear to move.
Karol Łuszcz is studying electronics at Poland’s Gdańsk University of Technology. I’d say he’s on-track for an impressive career. This vector-graphics laser projector, his third prototype, includes three laser modules at 650, 532, and 405 nm wavelengths (making it more of an RGV projector, really). Many parts were salvaged, for instance, from a DVD burner, a printer, and a “disco ball.”
Sometimes, I get this feeling like I’ve seen it all – that nothing that comes along is ever going to inspire or delight me the same way that certain ideas, systems, inventions, and/or artworks did when I was younger. It always passes, sooner or later, but while I’m under that spell it can be…well, it can be a bit depressing, honestly. So I feel like I ought to thank International Man of Mystery Nirav Patel, somewhat more personally than usual, for making and sharing this wonderful thing. I am inspired.
I first wrote about Denver puzzlemaker Kagen Schaefer’s gorgeous purpleheart butcherblock benchtop two years ago, and now Kagen’s knocked me out again with this nigh-unbelievable desk. It features eight working wooden organ pipes that play notes when when you push in the various drawers, and also a pneumatic computer that records the sequence of notes and, when the right melody is played, opens a secret compartment. The pneumatic lock can be reprogrammed to recognize any melody. Holy smokes.
