When you're capturing video with a DSLR, not having some type of stabilization system can lead to some pretty awful and shaky scenes. Camera instability is not only painful to watch, but breaks the fourth wall. Once that the invisible barrier between filmmaker and audience is apparent, it may break down that magical relationship between the two.
These three videos will show you how to build a rustic, distressed kitchen table. I'll be walking you through the process of selecting some recycled timber from a junk pile, and with a little care and some simple joinery techniques, transform that waste timber into a distressed timber kitchen or dining table. In fact, you could use the table for whatever you wanted really.
Here's how to make a simple form of a slow burning fuse from materials around the house. WARNING: Ignition of an incendiary or explosive material may not be legal in your area, so check local laws before attempting. Use of this video content is at your own risk.
If you've spent most of your life in one geographic location, you're probably pretty familiar with the weather there (unless you're a hermit). If you live in a tropical climate (and haven't done much traveling), maybe you've never even seen snow.
While the PlayStation and Xbox models may rule the current world of gaming, there are still those who love to keep it old school. The grittiness, toughness and nostalgia that is laced throughout old gaming consoles appeals to many people. Every time I play Donkey Kong 64 (with the expansion pack of course!), I revert back to the days of Sunday morning cartoons and only worrying about homework.
Here's a way you can turn a mousetrap into a fun little handgun that shoots up to 40 feet! This is a great project because it can be made with simple materials, very basic tools, and in just a few minutes!
There are plenty of things you can use at home to make your own rocket, like sugar, matchsticks, or even trash. They may not be as impressive as a real rocket, but they can still be a lot of fun. In this video, How To Lou shows how he made a high-flying water rocket out of some basic materials like PVC and a soda bottle. As Lou points out, the bigger your soda bottle, the further it will go. He used 1/2" PVC pipe, valves, and connectors, as well as some brass adapters. He added an air compres...
Need some creepy visual effects for your alien flick, but don't want to spend a bunch of money? With some pretty basic materials, you can turn an empty aquarium into a "cloud tank," which can be used to create several different atmospheric effects. Before Hollywood started using CGI, cloud tanks were used for scenes in a lot of famous movies. Remember this one? Besides Raiders of the Lost Ark, cloud tanks also helped make some wonderful non-CGI effects in Independence Day, Close Encounters of...
If you want to make clothes for your cat, you're on your own. As I recently said in this article, cats will just totally flip out if you make them wear things. Your dog may also flip out, but I've found them to be more tolerant, personally.
With gas prices constantly digging into your wallet, biking will always be a cheap and easy alternative for getting around—and it's a perfect way to get in a little exercise. But with the fall season about a week away, it is going to start getting dark a lot earlier and that ride home might be a little more dangerous. So to save yourself an unexpected trip to the ER, take a little time to make your bicycle impossible to overlook.
Dried out markers are the worst. They take up space, and for some reason, even though they're totally useless, most of us have at least a few lying around just for the sake of not throwing them out. Luckily, Julie Finn over at Crafting a Green World has come up with a way to repurpose them into alcohol ink, a versatile type of ink that can be used on non-porous materials like plastic, glass, and metal. This is truly a tutorial for the pack rat in all of us. First, a little primer on what you ...
Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy has been one of the most successful film series of all time, so it comes as no surprise that everyone wants their own real-life versions of the Dark Knight's gadgets and vehicles.
Do you listen to a lot of music on your smartphone or MP3 player? Ever wished the built-in speaker was louder? You're in luck, because this simple amplifier can increase your volume by 14 decibels and make your device look totally steampunk while you're at it. What You'll Need
Want to build your own life-sized, working replica of WALL-E? Be prepared to take on a second job! Mike Senna spent two years perfecting his own version, working 25 hours a week and totaling somewhere around 3,800 hours for the whole project. He had no blueprints to go by, so he spent a lot of time watching the movie over and over to get everything just right. The video below shows some of the construction; skip to about the one minute mark to see WALL-E in action.
Gerridae—you've probably seen these weird bugs gliding across the surface of the water when you're out swimming or fishing. These insects are commonly referred to as water striders, or more cleverly, Jesus bugs, for their ability to "walk on water". It's a pretty cool trick, but what could it do for science, right? Turns out, quite a bit. Photo by felixtsao
Magnetic ink is generally used by the banking industry to allow computers to read information off of a check, but that doesn't mean you can't have some fun with it. The guys over at openMaterials have figured out a great recipe for a DIY magnetic ink that you can use for an interesting art project—or just to mess around.
Nothing to do this summer? Then spark things up with a little baking soda and some vinegar and make a tiny, working rocket. Best of all—you probably already have most of the materials and ingredients lying around the house. What You'll Need
Making cookies is one of the best things in life, especially around the holidays. There is nothing better than getting together with friends and family and bonding by baking cookies.
Whether you're in an airport, restaurant or waiting room, the insidious grip of televisions on human life is omnipresent. Sometimes it's nice to talk to other human beings while looking at them directly—actually hearing what they have to say.
Using only a circle and straight lines, it's possible to create various aesthetic curves that combine both art and mathematics. The geometry behind the concentric circle, ellipse, and cardioid dates back centuries and is easily found in the world around us. From an archery target to an apple, can you name these geometric shapes?
I love making my own printed circuit boards. It really gives a professional look to a finished project, and having all the design files means I can whip up another batch whenever I need to. However, when I need to make, say, three thousand swarmbots or fill an order for a dozen PCBs, the traditional etching process can slow down the operation to a crawl.
Like theme music, I always feel that I need more fog in my life. Fog can be useful for many reasons—warding off smaller siblings from your bedroom, keeping curious hands out of your cupboard, and tricking your friends into thinking there's something horribly wrong with their vehicle. So, today we'll be making a very simple fog machine for small scale applications.
Welcome to Minecraft World! Check out our advanced tutorials and come play on our free server. This past Saturday we had a great turn out for the Weekly Workshop, and we even managed to get a few of you in TeamSpeak. Thanks to all who joined in, hope you learned some awesome new things!
Kylo Ren, conflicted villain of the new Star Wars trilogy, will surely be a major presence again this Halloween, with The Last Jedi fast approaching. His costume, all black and layered, complete with dark-side helmet and crossguard lightsaber, seems quite perfect for Oct. 31 — as well as your next DIY project.
Since its debut, retro thriller Stranger Things and its characters have become ingrained in our popular culture — especially the telekinetic Eleven. For cosplayers, it didn't take long before they grabbed their boxes of frozen Eggo waffles, blonde wigs (or bald caps), and pink smocked dresses to transform into El herself.
Whether scheduling meetings, events, tasks, or even keeping tabs on the weather, a good digital calendar can help you stay on top of your game in ways that a normal calendar could never do. Indeed, there are many calendars to choose from, but Google Calendar is one of the best due to Google's excellent cloud service, feature-rich web-client, and their easy-to-use Android and iOS applications.
I don't know how many of you had this experience in your youth, but when I was a kid, I used to actively think about what would happen if I suddenly woke up in a fantasy land, or were to pass through a portal into another space and time. I knew it wouldn't really happen, but when you're a kid, these can be important issues to you. So I slept with my glasses on every night, just in case. Photo from George Pal's The Time Machine.
As I said in this earlier post, there's no easy way to explain or define the Steampunk aesthetic. There are a large number of Steampunk tropes or "cues", as I call them, that bring to mind the feeling of Steampunk. These cues combine to push past the "not-Steampunk" threshold into firmly "Steampunk" territory.
Whenever a new Apple event invite arrives, the entire tech industry begins tearing the invite's graphics apart in a bid to decipher what the company may be planning on releasing in the coming weeks.
Designing and manufacturing waveguides for smartglasses is a complex process, but DigiLens wants us to know that they have a software solution that partially solves that problem.
The iPhone XR has touched down alongside the XS and XS Max, and it utilizes tried and tested materials found on the iPhone 8, while being molded in the same vein as the iPhone X. The budget-friendlier flagship comes with its own set of design elements to set it apart from its more expensive brethren, but is powered by the same SoC, making it is a solid choice if you're thinking of upgrading.
If you've ever wanted to be a graffiti artist, but you also frown upon vandalism, then augmented reality is for you.
There aren't many people who will believe that a prosthetic zipper face or gunshot wound to the eye (disgusting as they are) are real, but greyscale from Game of Thrones? That'll really unsettle people for awhile because it totally looks like an actual, honest-to-God infection that someone in 2017 could conceivably have. Which makes it very effective come Halloween, whether it's for a full-on Princess Shireen, Jorah Mormont, or Stone Man costume, or to just infect a completely different chara...
Unlike traditional backlit LCD technology, OLED screens don't use any power to display black pixels. Many manufacturers have taken advantage of this by implementing an always-on display, which only lights up a few pixels here and there to show relevant info when your phone is locked. But this leads to extra battery drain, albeit small, and it increases the risk of screen burn-in.
At the Augmented World Expo Europe press conference in Munich today, RE'FLEKT will unveil the addition of remote video calling to their RE'FLEKT One enterprise augmented reality platform, in addition to ARKit and ARCore apps that demonstrate the platform's capabilities.
Zenko Games makes no apologies for its influences. In fact, they cite them explicitly in their own promotional materials for Diamonst AR.
While the technology continues to mature, businesses from various industries continue to adopt augmented reality to improve the efficiency of business processes. In this edition of Brief Reality, as conference season continues, we see examples of augmented reality applied to logistics processes and marketing of industrial supplies, as well as the topic of discussion at another trade show.
At Next Reality, we've been following the Microsoft Hololens because of its enormous potential. Unlike virtual reality, which enshrouds the user in a complete virtual world, augmented reality melds the virtual with what's really there in front of you. And while some of us may use AR technology to stealthily surf the web during working hours, others are looking towards using AR for the betterment of society. Like putting the HoloLens in space.
Uber has been in the hot seat for awhile now, for many reasons, especially for being sued by Waymo over stolen LiDAR designs. But now, perhaps the attention will be taken off both Uber and Waymo as a new contender enters the LiDAR arena; A small, independent company called Luminar has finally let the world in on what it has been cooking up.
Apple is combining internal and external talent in an effort to give them in edge in the augmented reality market, though we still don't know what form their foray into alternative realities will actually take.
