Serious Eats' latest Meet and Eat features Todd Barricklow, creator of the Taco Bike, an eco-friendly alternative to the fast growing food truck industry. The 200+ pound bike is equipped with a propane tank, three sectioned griddle, water tank, heat exchanger, wash sink, wastewater hold, ice holder and sectioned food area, trash can, napkin holder, table, money drop, chopping boards and more.
Jersey Shore's pickle-loving, drunken little ball of fun has captured the affection of many, as well as a fair share of haters. According to today's Wall Street Journal, Snooki and other Jersey Shore characters have surpassed Lady Gaga in popularity for Halloween costumes of 2010. Go Snook. (Not too surprising. For lots of ladies out there, the more revealing the costume, the better.)
Ew, yes, you read right. Owl Pellets: masses of bone, teeth, hair, feathers and exoskeletons of various animals preyed upon by raptors, or birds of prey (re: spitballs of nastiness). For the lighter stomachs out there, have no fear, this Halloween party favor tutorial is from yuppie central, Martha Stewart's craft department, so all bones and other indigestible matter are completely faux.
What do you get when a musician (who also happens to be a pyromaniac) has too much time on his hands? A WonderHowTo hero and mastermind behind the hack of the ages.
Sure, store bought microwave popcorn is cheap. But according to Hoopajoo Labs, you can get 50 bags of popping corn out of a $0.99 bag of kernels! Watch the video below or click through for the Instructable.
The DrinkShield is not quite as dirty as the picture above may convey. Circuitry nerd Craig Smith (who also happens to love drinking) has developed a breathalyzer that can be turned into a potentially naughty party game.
Amazing vertical wall gardens with succulents and tillandsias by couple Flora Grubb and Kevin Smith. Inspired? Pick up some HowTo tips to get you started, or learn about the supplies you'll need here. Or try this vertical trellis moss project from Lowe's.
F.A.T. (Free Art and Technology) presents a project in celebration of F*ck Google Week, F.A.T.'s protest against Google's totalitarian rule of the web (read more). F.A.T. Lab built a fake Google Street View car and canvased the streets of Berlin, posed as Google.
When John Ivers grew tired of the long lines at amusement parks, he decided to build his very own roller coaster - in his backyard. Called the Blue Flash, the roller coaster is said to have the same safety standards as official park coasters, and even has a 360 degree loop.
Ever wondered how a digital combination lock works? Instructables member Nino123 is kind enough to demonstrate the inner workings, with a step-by-step HowTo on building your own.
Tesla coils are totally insane, yet undeniably captivating. And they can be used for many things, from electric painting to dueling musical battles. But one trigger happy fellow has a different use for Tesla's lightning shooting coil. A weapon.
Snowflakes aren't much to look at during a storm, but when you look real close, you can see just how marvelous they really are. But winter is over and most of us can no longer enjoy the intricate nature of ice crystallization, unless you're sticking your head in your freezer. Or unless you build your own snowflake cultivation machine, which shoots 2,000 volts of electricity through a cold, moist chamber.
You're hellbent on taking over the world, but one race of robotic minions isn't enough for you. With your hexapod robots acting as your ground forces, it's only natural to take to the skies. These cardboard quadcopters are the perfect air force for you. Combined, you are mere steps away from starting your evil takeover. Now you just need some water bots. The cardboard flying quadcopters are built around the MultiWii platform with the twin power of Processing and Arduino, so they are actually ...
What would MacGyver do if he was stranded on a trash dump in the middle of the ocean? If he had the right supplies, chances are he'd come up with something very similar to this PVC and duct tape boat. C'mon, we all know MacGyver always has duct tape on him!
When it comes to coffee, some people just like perfection. Most would agree that the best cup of coffee comes from home, after roasting your own green coffee beans. But not everybody has the time or money to have complete control over their coffee's flavor. Roasting via stovetop or oven produces mélange (not quite perfection), and home roasters can be pricey.
The holidays are a wonderful time for people to get together and celebrate another year gone by. With all of these parties and gatherings being thrown, a "photobooth" is always a fun addition to the holiday festivities. Why not make some props to bring some extra life to your photos? In this week's Phone Snap Holiday Challenge, we are giving one lucky winner a chance to win a set of Photobooth Props from Etsy store, LittleRetreats just in time for the New Year. But if you've got some extra ti...
This is probably the least "Mathy" thing I will ever post. In my opinion, it's impossible to have architecture that isn't mathematical in some sense, so I am posting it anyway. Two years ago, I made a papercraft version of a cathedral in Christchurch New Zealand (It was severely damaged in an earthquake earlier this year) and cut holes for all of the windows and lit it with LED lights. I gave it to my Mom as a Christmas gift. I thought it made for a pretty amazing "Christmas Village" piece.
I have to admit that I am an environmentalist wacko. That may sound strange, considering my life is tied up in PVC, which is considered one of the most poisonous materials on earth... but it's true. I love this planet, and I want it to be inhabitable for as long as the sun is in this phase of its life.
A few months ago, we showed you a pretty awesome light painting project that visually captured invisible Wi-Fi signals around town using a Wi-Fi detecting rod filled with 80 LEDs. With some long exposure photography, the results were pretty amazing. This project was inspired by those crazy Norwegians, but this build lets you do something even more amazing—capture pictures of colorful written text and drawn images, frozen in midair.
Can you really make an explosive from salt, sugar and weed killer? Does glycerol and water actually recover text from burnt paper? Is it possible to develop film with a first aid kit and some orange juice? MacGyver says yes.
It'd be nice to see what a penny will buy these days. Maybe you could draw something showcasing the many uses still available today for a penny (if any). With gas prices rising, it'd be nice to know you can still get something out of one cent.
It's more addictive than Angry Birds, perhaps as relaxing as transcendental meditation, and satisfyingly simpler than GarageBand. It's Otomata, a newly programmed generative sequencer designed by Batuhan Bozkurt, a Turkish sound artist, computer programmer, and performer. But really, it's best described as an audio/visual music toy that anybody can play online—with beautiful results.
It's just what the doctor ordered: the perfect hangover cure. A time-proven, age old trick, commonly referred to as the "Hair of the Dog", asserts that downing more alcohol the morning after is scientifically proven to ease a painful hangover—well, for the short term, at least (read more here).
Calling all curious minds—scientists, anthropologists, relentless tourists: Saturday, April 9th, is International Obscura Day, the day to "explore hidden treasures in your hometown," or so says Atlas Obscura, a website dedicated to public curiosities and esoterica. If you're the kind of person who appreciates public oddities every day of the year, tomorrow is icing on the cake. Celebrate Obscura Day in one of hundreds of locales—from Los Angeles to Sydney, from Berlin to Manila.
Anybody who surfs knows there's often plenty of downtime waiting for the perfect swell to come along. So what do you do while you're waiting around? Option 1: Nothing (boo). Option 2: Fabricate your own ready-made waves, via a makeshift current pool hooked up to the Waimea River, one of the longest rivers in the Hawaiian Islands. Kudos to Stephan Figueiredo, Dennis Tihara, Gabriel Pastori, Diego Silva and Felipe Cesarano for their up-and-go-get-'em. There has been some debate regarding possib...
UK-based designer Dominic Wilcox's Speed Creating Project presents the challenge of making something creative everyday, for 30 consecutive days. Wilcox's best results are pointless in an utterly delightful way. True junk drawer resourcefulness. My 7 favorites below; click through for all 30.
Ginger ale is an American classic, particularly beloved by native Michiganders, home of the popular Vernors Ginger Ale.
While digital samplers have their merits, they're predictable in a way that can cause them to sound stiff or sterile. The solution? A return to the analog, tape-based samplers of yesteryear, which, with their inherent mechanical noise and euphonic distortions, offer a more musical take on the sampling process.
25-year-old Chen Jinmiao of rural China dreamt of one day owning his own Lamborghini. But the truth is, it was highly unlikely he would ever be able to afford one. The lorry driver then undertook an impossibly difficult project- figuring out how to build a replica for considerably less cash. A year and approximately $3,000 later, he achieved his goal.
One of the greatest innovations in the DSLR revolution is not only being able to execute shots you never dreamed possible, but you'll find it's affordable, too. I can't think of a better example than this remote controlled DSLR helicopter rig, designed specifically for the Canon 7D and 5D. Advertised as "high definition, low altitude photography and videography," HeliVideo's founder, Eric Austin combines his experience and love of remote controlled helicopters with his knowledge as a videogra...
Three Haitian brothers, with no training of any kind, have constructed a working, flying helicopter. Total cost? 45,000 Haitian dollars, which comes out to approximately 1100 American bucks. Their chopper is the first helicopter to every be produced in Haiti.
As some of you Mad Science readers will remember, we recently covered the separation of water into hydrogen and oxygen using electrolysis. Passing a current through water can rend it apart, but we can also recombine that oxygen and hydrogen to make electricity! This is the principle behind those vehicles run by hydrogen fuel cell engines.
Over the next few months, I'll be focusing on building a fully functional, long range UAV. This series will consist of several in-depth articles on my progress and the steps involved, so you can follow along and build your own unmanned aerial vehicle!
Let's face it, the world we live in is far from the fairy-tale land we want it to be, where violence doesn't exist and weapons are not needed. Our foremost goal in life out there in the scary world is simply to survive. And if we need a few tools to accomplish this, we should use them, right?
'Tis the season for Christmas tree decorations and everybody's favorite board game— SCRABBLE! Okay, that was too ebullient on my part.
The Recipe A quick search online will show you that there's no shortage of homemade laundry soap recipes: Here's one from The Simple Dollar. And we've got 10 more at Money Talks News. But below is one that seems to work pretty well. You'll need:
Hobby rockets are tons of fun. Vicarious astronaut adventures abound with every launch. What if you want to be closer to the action though? What if you want to feel what it's like to be in a rocket at takeoff? With the discovery of tiny keychain cameras, we have technology small and cheap enough to fit inside a model rocket!
Solar panels are an amazing invention. Catching energy from the Sun before it even enters Earth's food chain, photovoltaics are like an all-natural nuclear power plant. Unfortunately, the constituted parts of a solar panel are rare, valuable, and subject to the coercive forces of market competition.
Lying is awesome. From a very young age, children learn that flat out denying the truth gets you out of trouble and helps keep you calm in the face of horror. But what happens when you just have to know if someone, say, used your toothbrush? You could ask them to take an expensive and arduous polygraph test.
Defined by Urban Dictionary, Nerdtastic: Something generally not cool, but to a nerd it's freakin' fantastic. Below, a collection of WonderHowTo's top 10 favorite, utterly nerdtastic Halloween costume tutorials. The clock's ticking, so if you don't have your costume yet, peruse below and get started!