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How To: Combine Two NYC Penthouses into One

Here's a rich man's problem for you: two NYC East Village penthouse condos and the need for one combined living space. What do you do? Simply add a helical slide! When the homeowners came up with this fun idea for combining their two condos, they contracted architecture firm TCA to design and construct two separate options to descend and ascend between the two living spaces— an Italian-made "Rintal" stair (an open spiral staircase), or the much speedier and much livelier option: a stainless s...

Meeting the Dungeon Defenders: An Interview with Trendy Entertainment

I've been unreasonably excited about Dungeon Defenders (NOT DUNGEON DEFENDER!) for almost a year. Playing it at PAX did nothing to damper that enthusiasm. I had a chance this week to speak with co-founder/development director Jeremy Stieglitz and marketing diretor Philip Asher from Gainesville, Florida based developer Trendy Entertainment to find out a little more about the game, and how it came together.

SUBMIT: Your Best Double Exposure Photo by December 12th. WIN: Paper Pinhole Camera Kit

Using an analog camera to create multiple exposures is a technique that has long been in practice throughout the history of photography. Pressing the shutter button twice will superimpose the exposure of two different images onto the same piece of film. Sometimes done in an artistic manner, sometimes by accident—you never know what you'll get until you develop your roll of film.

Studio Ghibli x Minecraft: Anime Classics Recreated as Video Game World

Are you familiar with Studio Ghibli? It's the dreamy Japanese animation studio responsible for anime classics Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Howl's Moving Castle. Regarded as highly inventive, serene, and spooky, Studio Ghibli puts out internationally renown films, loaded with magic, monsters and lovable creatures, such as Totoro (pictured to the right, and above).

News: Colombian Coke Transporter Seized

This weekend in a jungle estuary, the DEA and local Ecuadorian police seized a prototype narco sub that may be the most sophisticated one yet. Complete with air conditioning and periscope, this 100 foot creation would have carried a more cocaine tonnage than any previously captured narco sub. To give you a perspective on the resourcefulness of these outlaws, consider this. A U.S. Navy Virginia Class attack submarine will run around $2.8 billion. But a drug lord in Cartagena would make you one...

The Thing-O'-Lantern: How to Build the Fantastic Four's "Thing" Out of Smashed Up Pumpkins

Of all the ways you can use pumpkins for Halloween decorations, this has got to be one of the most creative. Redditor wizardtig used pumpkin shards to construct a 6'4" replica of the Fantastic Four's Thing. Does this technically count as a jack-o'-lantern? Under the eleven pumpkins that got smashed to bits for this project is a wooden frame wrapped in chicken wire, with the pumpkin pieces attached to the wire. You can check out more photos of the build process on his Imgur album.

News: DIY Musical Maven Cannot Stop Creating Instruments

Musical instruments are lots of fun but boy, they sure ain't cheap. Dennis Havlena (the internet's true DIY instrument king) demonstrates some dedicated yankee ingenuity with his homemade alternatives (aka poor man's instruments). Dennis has created hundreds of hybrid, folksy instruments including bagpipes, banjos, psalteries, didgeridoos, hang drums, and dulcimers. 

Octodad: An Award Winning Game… From College Students

Fatherhood is difficult, especially when you're an octopus. That is the moral of the 2011 IGF Student Showcase winner Octodad, available for free from its website. This hilarious little title was created by a team of interactive media students at DePaul University in Chicago, and is the latest in a stream of successful indie games to come out of collegiate video game design programs. In fact, it's so successful that a sequel is in the works.

Minecraft: Musical Wonderland

Have you ever wanted to ride a rollercoaster while listening to Lady Gaga? Or have the Star Wars theme auto-play when you enter your house? You can with Minecraft. Search Youtube for a popular song + Minecraft, and chances are there will be a video for it!

Altruistic Hacking: The Rise of the DIY Radiation Detector

Understandably, the tragedy in Japan has substantially risen the level of worldwide radiation-related hysteria. So much so, as an alternative to stampeding health food stores for iodine tablets, crafty individuals and organizations are hacking together personal radiation detectors. Rather than relying on the government, the creation and modification of handheld Geiger counters provides a self-sufficient solution to today's questions regarding radiation. Profiled below, three admirable organiz...

News: Fossilisation Machine Cuts 1,000 Year Process Down to 3 Months

Artist Austin Houldsworth of the UK has come up with a device that drastically speeds up the process of fossilisation. Entitled Two Million & 1AD, Houldsworth is capable of creating a fossil in a few months (which otherwise might require thousands of years). Houldsworth is currently experimenting with objects such as a pineapple and phesant, but ultimately hopes to fossilize a human. Houldsworth proposes:

DIY Blacksmithing: Forge Your Own Steel at Home!

Metal is a great material to work with. It's rigid, tough, malleable and conductive, but sometimes the part we need doesn't exist in any store. In order to create custom pieces, you need to either melt the metal and cast it in a mold, or heat it until it's soft enough to shape with your hammer. Properly melting metals can be a bit dangerous in our home shop, but we can make a coffee can forge for all of our home blacksmithing needs.

News: BioShock's Libertarian 'Rapture' of the Deep Evolves into Real-Life Seastead Cities

BioShock is one of the best games of all time. It combines FPS gameplay with RPG storytelling and supports multiple systems better than any other game, that much is for sure. And the setting of its amazing story is a place called Rapture, a high-tech libertarian colony at the bottom of the Atlantic built by Andrew Ryan, a greying industrialist clearly inspired by John Galt and his creator Ayn Rand, the mother of Objectivism and modern American libertarianism in general. Ryan is a Soviet exile...

Dungeon Defenders: Heaven for Hardcore Gamers

Dungeon Defenders is the most exciting craft game on the Fall 2011 release schedule. I got a chance to play it at PAX in August and interviewed developers Trendy Entertainment last month. After more than a year of publishing difficulty and delay, the game finally came out on PSN, XBLA and Steam. I put about 20 hours into the XBLA version over the past weekend, beating all the campaign maps and racking up a huge pile of in-game money. It is not a perfect game. But it is a huge, challenging, an...