News: Write With Light
LIGHTFAKTOR is a Cologne artists collective experimenting with the "possibilities yielded by bulb (long-term) exposure and painting."
LIGHTFAKTOR is a Cologne artists collective experimenting with the "possibilities yielded by bulb (long-term) exposure and painting."
Who wouldn't love an indoor swing? The upcoming cold winter season is one good reason to build one, but truly, an indoor swing is just plain fun all year round. Luckily Apartment Therapy has posted a How-To on building a simple wooden plank swing.
Brickfilms. Michel Gondry brought LEGOmation into the spotlight with his "Fell in Love With a Girl" music video (White Stripes). However, LEGOmation has been around since the late 80's, the first known brickfilm being Lindsay Fleay's The Magic Portal.
The Panzerbike. A monster bike like no other. The Frankenstein of all motorcycles. This big boy has an 800-horsepower engine, and weighs in at 4.74 tons.
When you think about car customization, you think about installing a stereo or a turbocharger or something like that, but Joe Harmon and gang have gone a step further and built their own custom car - literally woven out of wood.
Slacklining is an *extreme-nut* sport of balance. It is a version of "tightrope walking" across great heights (note: distinct difference from tightrope: the rope is not as taut, but more elastic, trampoline-like).
You can try and try, but all the practice in the world can't compete with this robotic hand's pen spinning skills.
Yuto Miyazawa kicks ass at electric guitar. Seriously, this kid is out of this world. What other nine-year-old is invited to perform Crazy Train, on stage, with Rock-n-Roll God Ozzy Osbourne?
Behold, Kent "Toast" French, the Guinness World Record holder for fastest clapping. You might say, fast clapping? What kind of feat is that? Well, just watch. The video below gets pretty intense... Kent can clap 721 times in 60 seconds. That's 12 claps per second.
Evolver is a fun little piece of architecture with an incredible 720º panoramic view of Zermatt, Switzerland. The structure was built by second year students of the ALICE Studio at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL).
Replace that flimsy, plastic Guitar Hero axe with a soccer ball. These DIY freestyle-footballers play their full-sized, wall-mounted "Football Hero" with skill, achieving a 76 percent accuracy rating after only 17 games.
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.
Remember the magical LED graffiti video "paint"? Here's another cool LED graffiti design by Aissa Logerot.
Make Magazine presents UC Berkeley's professor of architecture, Cris Benton.
Napalm Dragon has an incredible video of super slo-mo fire breathing. "There is no super imposing. This is 'as is' (Low Res) footage captured at 1,000 fps and 2,000 fps
Todbot offers instructions for making your own Arduino shifty-googly Halloween eyeballs. Perfect to pop inside a pumpkin or skull.
Forget the Segway, you don't even have to stand anymore thanks to Honda's U3-X. This self-balancing unicycle relies on an inclinometer instead of gyroscopes to keep the rider balanced. The personal transporter even allows the user to travel forward, back, left, and right thanks to the Honda Omni Traction (HOT) drive system. This automatic unicycle gives a whole new meaning to taking it easy. Check out this CNN video for a further demonstration of the Honda U3-X.
Playing Super Mario Bros 3 with a giant controller on a projection screen = nerd nirvana. Giant NES controller/coffee table/storage box made by Kyle Downes. This piece of furniture actually connects to the system, and works as a real controller. Scroll down for video demonstration and images.
Just like magic - incredible new project from Sweatshoppe in which video is "painted" onto a wall. Video demonstration below, (don't miss it! absolutely visually amazing).
What makes vortex cannons so super cool? Is it that they're the perfect blend of weaponry and science?
Ok, first there's the common practice of adhering false eyelashes, and moving quite a bit further from "the norm" is the
According to Wikipedia, "Sympathetic Resonance is a harmonic phenomenon wherein a formerly passive string or vibratory body responds to external vibrations to which it has a harmonic likeness."
What will they think of next? iDriver is an incredible iPhone application that enables the user to remote control a car (essentially drive an unmanned vehicle with your iPhone). The project is a collaboration between Spirit of Berlin and Appirion.
YouTube user Talapz has built a LEGO Pop-up Buddhist temple. Jaw dropping construction. Made from 4500 bricks, the structure is a representation of actual temple Kinkaku-ji (video below): Previously, Lego Mindstorms Puts the Fun Back Into Number Two.
The Perpetual Storytelling Apparatus is a project developed by Julius von Bismarck and Benjamin Maus. The drawing device illustrates a never-ending story through the use of 7 million patent drawings (linked by over 22 million references). Scroll past the instructions to go straight to the video demonstration.
Gliding + falconry = parahawking, a unique and exhilarating experience. Birds (vultures, eagles, hawks) are trained to "guide" a paraglider
Using a combination of technology and animation techniques, two students at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design have created a visual model of RFID fields.
There are many NES mods on the internet, but this one is pretty awesome. From Ben Heck forum:
UC Berkeley (funded by DARPA) has created cyborg beetles guided wirelessly via laptop. These spy beetles were created with the intent of bugging actual conversations, literally acting as the "fly on the wall". The beetles range anywhere from 2 to 20 centimeters.
Joshua Allen Harris' work is ingenious. An incredibly simple, common household item (garbage bag) makes use of disgusting subway toxins (exhaust) to create inflatable street monsters.
University of Tokyo and MIT join forces to create a high speed, three fingered, robot pitcher. From Pink Tentacle:
From Wikipedia, "Falconry is is a sport which involves the use of trained raptors (birds of prey) to hunt or pursue game for humans."
Dutch artist Theo Jansen creates incredible kinetic, wind powered sculptures, resembling the skeletons of ambiguous beasts.
A brand new Japanese prototype offers users the ability to manipulate real 3D forms, employing a touch interface with a squeezy, rubbery feel.
iRobot released their new soft blob morphing robot this past Tuesday. The amazing shape-shifter has the ability to squeeze
Allegedly the world's smallest model train, Stan's Trains' TY-Scale train is built at the scale of 1:900.
Beatboxing flutist, Greg Pattillo, burst onto the YouTube scene circa 2007, racking up over 20 million views for his performance videos. Patillo has garnered world recognition for his skills, as well as attention from the New York Times:
Created by a now discontinuted John Deere subsidiary Plustech in Finland, this walking tractor is weirdly alien-monster-insect-esque. Reminiscent of Big Dog and Little Dog, but way bigger... This belongs in a sci-fi movie, not a farm. Amazing. Several videos in the gallery below.
Real life transformer, OmniZero, can climb a ladder, perform somersaults, jump rope, crack eggs, battle other robots, and best of all, carry a person. Witness all of these actions of the various OmniZero prototypes in the video gallery below.
From Wildwood Survival, how to make fire with a condom and water. Okay, so article author Rob Bicevskis doesn't use a condom (he suggests any kind of "plastic wrap"), but I think a condom makes it a little more fun. Nicely photographed how-to, click through for the text steps. Additional fire-condom How-To video further down.