When you can't quite figure out what to get someone for Christmas, turn to your inner creativity for a more personal, homemade holiday gift. To help give you some ideas, here are some DIY presents that never fail.
I finally got around to making the pentakis dodecahedron from the instructions in Math Craft admin Cory Poole's blog post. It's not tightened/straightened up yet because I just noticed that I have two black and white and two blue and green compound modules next to each other (but no purple and pink modules next to each other—to the math experts, this is a parity thing, as you can only have even numbers of modules paired up next to each other).
Now, I know what you're thinking... "I need an extra sexy coffee table that is like no other."
With the increase in pollution levels, Union government has planned to put around 7 million electric vehicles on Indian roads by 2020. It is speculated that the sum of investment required to do so will be around Rs 22,500 crore as per the report submitted by Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM).
Welcome to Minecraft World! Check out our advanced tutorials and come play with us on our free server.
Although most religions have inspired a variety of art, Buddhism seems to have a special relationship with the arts. Something about the endless circle of birth and rebirth seems to intrigue the minds of artists. Of course even if the art is not directly related to Buddhism, the Buddha has always been a fan of art. The Buddha has been quoted several times speaking about art, and most of his sayings are truly profound:
I decided I would make those earrings I alluded to in Monday's Post on orderly tangles. I had to shrink the templates down so that the triangles are about 2 cm on a side. I used 110 lb cardstock and and painted them using metallic leafing paint in gold, silver, copper, and brass. I would put up a tutorial, except I think that this project would be too frustrating for most people. All I can suggest is that you make the orderly tangle of 4 triangles multiple times and just keep shrinking the si...
Since today (11/11/11) is the last 6 digit binary date this century, I thought we should look at some kinetic binary calculators.
Andrew Lipson builds sculptures based off of Mathematical objects using standard Lego bricks. He has built models of knots, Mobius strips, Klein bottles, Tori, Hoberman spheres (using Lego technic pieces), and recreations of M.C. Escher works.
The initial idea for this project was to use magnets in the tips of the stellated octahedron and the intersections of the metal rings for either suspension or even a sort of weightless rotation. This turned out to be a bit too ambitious considering I'm working with found mirror and hot glue. So instead, I scrapped the magnets and went with simply mounting it on a skateboard bearing so it can freely rotate and not be bound to the base.
Reuben Margolin builds large scale kinetic sculptures based off of mechanical waves. Some of his sculptures contain hundreds of pulleys all working in harmony with each other to create sinusoidal waves and their resulting interference patterns. He designs them all on paper and does all of the complicated trigonometric calculations by hand. Everything is mechanical; there are no electronic controllers.
Richard Sweeney is an incredible artist whose body of work consists mainly of sculptures made from paper. His art is often related to origami, and much of his work is related to geometrical forms. I personally really love his modular forms in paper. Many of them are based off of the platonic solids, which have been discussed in previous posts this week. Below are a small number of his sculptures, which are very geometric in nature.
Minecraft is the ultimate creative tool. Countless worlds filled with fantastic projects have been built to extraordinary scale in single player and SMP. This Saturday, we will be recreating some epic builds and going over things like scaling, design, detail and organization.
The NPD Group is a market research firm that issues the most trusted sales numbers for video games. They just released their second quarter 2011 report, and the trends it reveals confirm much of what we here have been speculating here at Indie Games Ichiban (and what we've been hoping for): downloadable games have risen, while full-box retail games have fallen—that is in the US, at least.
Where did PC games begin?
You're never going to see a project from me that involves straight pipe. You would have when I was a kid, but after too many years in the construction industry, I need to see a good finish. If the project doesn't look slick, I don't want to say I did it.
The official trailer for the 1.8 release. It's suppose to be released later this month right? I remember reading sept 18th somewhere.
For an art-project I'm currently working on I want to design a Gun. As I was trying to figure out how to so this, I stumbeled upon this model. A simplye tube with an L shape. I folded it from one A4 sheet. This is my first attempt, so please forgive me the imperfections of this fold. What I like about this model is the fact that it isn't flat and the way I made it hold itself together. Also it should be easy to make S and U shaped tubes with the same aproach.
Welcome to Pizza Perfect. I'm a novice pizza maker with one goal: to master the art of the homemade crust. The cheese (fresh mozzarella), the sauce (endless options or super basic), and the toppings (the sky is the limit) are all easy. But the crust I've found to be somewhat elusive.
If you've ever used a font editing program to create a font, you know that one generally shapes the various forms by arranging points on a screen with a mouse. But what if those points were controlled by something other than fine motor skills? Andy Clymer of high profile type foundry Hoefler & Frere-Jones was interested in exploring alternative methods for how a typeface is developed; hence, "font-face" was born. Font-face employs facial recognition to control the design parameters of a font....
+Tyler Neylon, a programmer and mathematician currently specializing in iOS app development, recently posted a fun project to his Google+ profile: 50 designs with 50 LEGO pieces, a set of 51 photos. Given a small 50-piece Lego set this past Christmas (well, Tyler admits: "...58 [pieces], actually, but many of them are very small, as you can see"), he craftily stretched his imagination to create 50 different models, though the kit included instructions for only 3.
Game Developer Magazine is a prominent periodical for game industry folk to read up on their craft. For those who don't work in games, it can be a little dry, but every year they release a Game Career Guide devoted to welcoming other people into their world. Best of all, it's free! You can view the newest issue just released here in your browser, or download the PDF version.
If you've never had a reason to keep some Epsom salt in your home, I'm about to give you seven good ones, some that will surely surprise you.
Sometimes an "analog" result is highly satisfying when the means for producing it is just the opposite. Enter Niklas Roy's "Electronic Instant Camera" project. The endeavor combines an analog black and white videocamera with a thermal receipt printer. The outcome is something in between a Polaroid camera and a digital camera. Like the olden days, the subject must sit still for a quite a while—3 full minutes—as their image is recorded and printed directly on a roll of receipt paper.
Transverse wave motion is the beautiful rippling effect that occurs when a moving wave causes oscillations that travel perpendicular to the direction of energy transferred. (For example, via Wikipedia: "If a transverse wave is moving in the positive x-direction, its oscillations are in up and down directions that lie in the y–z plane.")
What is the Strongest Beer in the World?? Long live the Queen and move over Sean Connery because the Scottish have done it! The strongest beer in the world belongs to a company called Brewdog out of Fraserburgh. The beer is called Tactical Nuclear Penguin and has an alcohol content of over 32% -WOW! That is more than many hard alcohols and its creator warns it should be drunk in "...spirit sized measures." This means no 12oz. bottle for this mother of all beers. Instead try a 2oz. shot glass!
Korean MOC Pages user Kyoung-bae Na, aka edulyoung, constructed this beautiful LEGO automaton of a winged Pegasus. Maneuvered with a series of mechanical LEGO gears and cranks, watch below as Pegasus "hovers", flapping her wings. Kyoung-bae Na sells his creations out of his e-shop, Studio Amida. The Pegasus automaton was previously going for $140, but is no longer listed; however, there is a clownfish currently available for the lower price of $33.50. The models are so fantastic—it makes one ...
Everyone knows who Charles Dickens is—the famous English author responsible for such iconic novels as Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol and The Adventures of Oliver Twist. But what if this Victorian era novelist (who died in 1870) was resurrected into today’s futuristic world? How would you explain the concept of a technology he’s never seen before? Even something that perfectly fits his area of expertise—books? How would you elucidate the Amazon Kindle?
If you have yet to check out the Secret Tips from the Universe DIY Contest, now's the time! The clock is ticking—you only have until Sunday, 11:59 p.m. to enter for a chance to win original artwork by Yumi.
In the past 25 years, there have been five generations of home video games systems. Since Nintendo changed the world by releasing the NES in 1987, there has always been at least two consoles competing for dominance in the wild west of the games industry. This competition— coupled with rapid advancements in technology—has led to a new generation of battling systems coming out every five years, like clockwork.
Not every DIY project is as executable as, say, making a potato gun. Occasionally, we observe a quixotic project that is just plain wonderful. Consider rich guy Philip Anschutz and his eponymous Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG). His ambition to bring an NFL team to Los Angeles is a Fitzcarraldo-sized DIY project that, if the stars align, might happen in time for the 2016 season.
DIY is a far-reaching term—though culturally it tends to refer to hacks, mods, crafts and constructions, its meaning can also extend to the ongoing trials and tribulations of the evolution of mankind: astonishing developments in technology, desperate acts of self-preservation or as in today's topic, discoveries in science that truly move the needle.
Garter Belt? Garter stitch!
The footage you're about to watch may look CG, and while it is indeed animated, the 5,600 frames used to composite this fly by glimpse of Saturn aren't fabricated—they are real hi-res photographs taken by the Cassini orbiter. Outside In—an "IMAX in a basement"—is a DIY not-for-profit IMAX project-in-progress by filmmaker Stephen Van Vuuren.
The Junkyard Jumbotron is an amazing project that allows a collection of random web browser enabled displays—laptops, smartphones or tablets—to share a single image split across the group, creating one large virtual display. Created by Rick Borovoy at MIT's Center for Future Civic Media, the app is completely free and open, meaning you can do it yourself in a matter of minutes. It works like this:
Truly spectacular and one the most breathtaking DIY endeavors to grace the front page of WonderHowTo, a recreation of Pixar's UP house was launched to an altitude of 10,000 feet in a private airfield near Los Angeles this past week. The project was executed by a team of engineers, scientists and veteran balloon pilots—(meaning, please, Do Not Try This at Home).
Too lazy to take your phone out of your pocket? If so, then here's a must-have: a customizable inPulse wristwatch that can check into Facebook Places. Created by inPulse designer Eric Migicovsky, the hacked watch uses Bluetooth to pull Facebook Places from a connected Android smartphone. The app sends real time latitude and longitude stats from the smartphone's GPS to Facebook, which then transmits nearby places to the watch, navigable by a one button interface.
It's axiomatic: if you want to know what's different, look to what's the same. And, if you want to know what's the same, look to what's different. What makes Irina Werning's Back to the Future project so amazing then is that, in matching everything that can be matched, she helps us instantly hone in on what can't. In most cases, viewers notice just one thing—the effects of the passage of time on the subjects of the photographs. It's very strange and sometimes even unsettling. But also really,...
It's early afternoon, Valentine's Day, which means today's the day to show a little loving. So, if you've got someone special and you're fresh out of ideas, not to worry, there's still time.
Love bubbles but hate the toil and trouble of using your own lungs to blow them? Allow us to introduce Bubblebot, the latest Arduino-powered toy to attain celebrity status on Instructables. It's not an easy project by any means—even the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur has fewer steps. But come on, it's an automated giant bubble robot! It's worth it!
