On Monday, ElectricPig's Mark Cooper became something of an Internet sensation when he posted a video of playable Angry Birds birthday cake he made for his son Ben's 6th birthday. Now, with a little help from this step-by-step guide by Mark himself, you can make an Angry Birds cake to call your own! It's said that the original took 10 hours to build and 2 minutes to destroy. With the benefit of Mark's experience, however, you should be able to peel some time off of both those numbers.
Want to keep an eye on your home while on vacation? Terrorize your family pet while at work? A homespun telepresence robot might be just the ticket! Luckily, thanks to shrinking hardware costs and the efforts of renowned hardware hacker Johnny Chung Lee, building a physical avatar has never been easier! Lee's robot has two important parts: an iRobot Create and a lightweight netbook running Skype. Notable extras include a wide-angle lens and a plastic stand to raise the computer to tabletop he...
Push-ups, crunches and gyms are fine for building bigger muscles and stronger bones. But can you meditate your way to a bigger brain?
If it takes a village to raise a child, you can imagine what it takes to raise a village! In brief: a whole lot! Thanks to the folks behind the Open Source Ecology movement, however, starting your own self-sufficient community has never been easier! Taking free software as a model, the group is working on what they call the Global Village Construction Set—"a fully integrated [and freely reproducible] set of machines for creating a self-sufficient modern life from the resources of a small amou...
What better place to brave the Snowpocalypse than in a snowy simulacrum of a human skull? For those of you old enough to remember He-Man, yes, that's Castle Grayskull. And, oddly enough, the artist, Kilroy III, has actually done this before—nearly 20 years ago:
No two snowflakes are alike. The same goes for people. But a snowflake can easily compliment one's own individual charm, although finding your perfect soulmate snowflake is quite a challenge. Or... it was.
Watch surfer Mark Visser take on a 30-40 foot massive wave off the famous Jaws reef break on Maui in nearly total darkness. Guided only by the LED lights built into his life vest and board, helicopters hovered overhead, filming the event. "It wasn’t until I saw the pictures I realized how big it was. This project has been two years in the planning and it was the scariest, but most exciting thing I have ever done. Riding in complete darkness meant I had to go off feeling. I had to zone out fro...
Angry Birds finally hits LEGOs. It was only a matter of time before some LEGO maniac constructed Angry Birds from those popular little plastic building blocks. Stop motion brickfilms are sure to follow.
A testament of man vs. machine will air on February 14th, 15th, and 16th when IBM's supercomputer "Watson" is pitted against the world's fiercest Jeopardy players, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, for a chance to win a cool $1 million. It took researchers four years to build Watson, a machine mastermind the size of ten refrigerators and equipped with complex algorithms capable of decoding the complexities of the human language (no small feat). Watch below as Watson kicks ass in a practice round ...
Joystiq reports, "Mattel is working on a board game adaptation of Rovio's mobile hit, Angry Birds. The game looks like a pretty authentic recreation of its source material; players draw 'Mission Cards' depicting structures of bricks and pigs, which they then build using plastic models included in the game. Oh, and then they shoot birds at those structures using a tiny slingshot."
Lady Gaga made an appearance at this year's CES to present what she claims to be "the camera of the future": a pair of photo and video capturing sunglasses, designed by Gaga for Polaroid. Though more of a novelty gadget than a useful camera, the GL20 camera glasses could potentially turn your face into a real life facebook feed.
Dear Fellow Glass Lover, last summer I wanted to build my own website with Drupal to create a glass art community. But just now I found out it is not necessary. WonderHowTo.com has it up and running already. All we have to do now is fill it with content. Please become a contributing member, upload your videos, how to tips in the Blog and pin your glass art related events on the Corkboard. This is not my site - this is a glass art community site.
Snow fort + Star Wars = coolest dad in the world. Says Redditor jabo27 : “I actually measured out my son’s big toy AT-AT to get the different parts to the right ratio, but then that all went out the window when I actually started building it in the yard. At least you can crawl into the head (from the back side), through the neck and up a deck on the body. and then slide down it’s ass.”
Artist Michael Jones McKean has harnessed nature with his DIY rainbow machine, a mechanism that uses reclaimed rainwater and solar power to shoot man-made rainbows across the sky at whim. High powered jets and fountain nozzles shoot a heavy wall of rainwater into the air, creating a faux rainstorm. Sunshine does the rest.
Gizmodo's interactive breakdown of the iPhone 4, Blackberry Torch, Nokia N8, and Google's Nexus One examines the wholesale cost of hardware versus the end retail price, as well as how each company prioritizes each category below:
Australian racing organization V8 Supercars have built an oversized skateboard equipped with a V8 engine for Tony Hawk. Hawk was scheduled to ride the beast last week, but it appears no video footage has been posted yet.
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.
The release of Tron: Legacy is just two weeks away, and if our in depth guide to Tron-a-Sutra didn't get you revved up, perhaps the street legal Tron Light Cycle will. Via Wired:
Modernhuman of WonderHowTo's Canon EOS 7D World posts a simple HowTo for making your own DSLR Helmet Cam for approximately $150 in parts:
Check out the new FarmVille Limited Time Crafting Recipes! There is one recipe for each of the crafting buildings and they all use the limited edition White Pumpkins!
Pom-pom pyramids? Kids' stuff! When it comes to building sky-high human towers, who could ever match the skill and heroism of the castellers—or castle builders—of Catalonia, Spain? Nadie! Nobody! These colorful climbers have only one rival: They know it as la gravidad. You know it as gravity. Watch them contend with it in the video clip below.
Gotta get myself one of these walking crab tables. (Now if only it came on command. Life would be complete.) Question is, how does one build something like this? Post ideas below. Previously, Self Healing Chair Picks Itself Up Off the Floor... Literally.
Jonathan Guberman of Site 3 coLaboratory hackerspace in Toronto has created an Arduino-controlled mechanical typewriter that can type on its own, detect what is being typed on it, and run text-based interactive fiction games such as the classic (and to most, all but forgotten) Zork. Guberman says:
Outfitted with a glowing MacBook sleep indicator, this Mac-o'-Lantern gives new meaning to the phrase "sleepy hollow." Interested in making your own? The folks at Evil Mad Science Laboratories offer a complete write-up of the build process on their blog. Be forewarned, however, that, unless you use a smaller-sized pumpkin, people may just assume that you've stuffed a Mac Mini in there!
Here in Los Angeles, there are a plethora of amazing houses precariously perched on the hillsides of Hollywood, Pacific Palisades and Malibu. Striking to look at, the thought "earthquake" is never far from one's mind, however.
Sometimes going ghetto is the best route, especially when you can save about $1200 big ones. Just ask the guys over at 1 Block Off the Grid. When they needed a fancy Mac to run Adobe After Effects, they decided to Hackintosh it. Meaning they built a Mac in a box -literally (a cardboard Amazon box acts as the "case").
Below is race driver Ken Block demonstrating the sport of gymkhana. He pulls some crazy tricks, but best of all is the 360 degree donut he does inside a building. The video starts to warm up around a minute in, and gets truly nuts around 3:00. (Gymkhana is a similar to autocross, except the courses are very complex and must be memorized by the driver to achieve best time. Obstacles include cones, tires, and barrels; drivers are challenged to perform "reversals, 180 degree spins, 360 degree sp...
This panhandling robot isn't too proud to beg. In fact, it's custom-built for it. And who could refuse? Get a load of that puppy-dog eye.
Power tool drag racing is a concept that would drive many DIY nuts to salivation. Shown below: Barry Lee's mini dragster, powered by six circular saws, and aptly named Bolt Lightning.
Crafting Co-Ops let you and your neighbors work together to grow crops for your crafting buildings! There is a job for every recipe in the Winery, Bakery and Spa. Your reward for completing one of these co-ops is 3 bushel sets which you can use to help you craft goods in your crafting building.
I thought American bicycle couriers were tough. Until I saw these poor Chinese workers carrying literally truckloads of cargo on the back of their bikes. Photographs of Shanghai bicycle carriers by Alain Delorme:
I don't know how else to say it. In a word, the DTV (Dual Tracked Vehicle) Shredder from BPG Werk is just plain awesome. "Built as a first response modular platform to better equip the soldier to deal with crisis situations, the DTV is a new class of vehicle that can handle any terrain at high speed. It’s low center of gravity and rugged design make it ideal for a wide variety of applications including, reconnaissance, rescue/recovery, mobile surveillance/offensive platform, med-evac, rapid r...
Little boy gamers don't care about coffee tables. But when a little boy gamer grows up, he's gotta have some kind of furniture. Like a giant NES coffee table with a fully functionally, giant NES controller. So Matt (grown boy gamer) built one:
Don't be fooled by the fancy monocle: this servo-powered serpent is as American as Apple Computers. So American, in fact, that his creators at Carnegie Mellon decided to christen him Uncle Sam. Boasting more points of articulation than a GI Joe, Sam's hobbies include crawlin' in the dirt and climbin' trees.
Swedish interface geeks The Astonishing Tribe predict what kind of touchscreen technology we'll be using in 2014 (that would be approximately 3 years, 4 months from today): Eek, that first movement that occurs around 0:25 (he pulls the screen to the right, extending it's width) is trippy. In a great way. The Astonishing Tribe says:
Holy Bejesus! Watch as these factory workers stuff playing card decks at robotic turbo speed. Insanely fast. China is kicking everyone's ass... very quickly.
The world's first bee populated billboard features 10,000 of the insects, drawn in from a local honey bee farm, using queen bee pheromones. The billboard is a call to action for England’s diminishing bee population, which has decreased by 50% in the last 20 years.
Pigpens are here! Click ok and place your pen or look for it in your gift box.
built a removable roof either a room or a car preferably in the back of a truck when a bunch of people are sleeping in a room, open the roof very quietly. have atleast 50-100 bottles of coke and mentos ready and throw at those people sleeping.
Another sweet boat this weekend (see yesterday's Zipper Motorboat), the Seabreacher X is a high-speed sub, fashioned after a man-eating shark. Built by Innespace, the submarine has a 260 horsepower engine, can speed through the water at 50 mph on the surface and 25 mph when diving, and best of all: the Seabreacher X can jump 12 feet into the air!
