The “Southstar” by Josh Goldberg and Glen Duncan is a 9 foot tall LED sculpture shaped like an asterisk with 5, 6 inch panels of 36 LEDs on each spoke. The panels alternate between orange and blue colors and are controlled by a VU meter circuit, gating power to the LED panels depending on the strength of an audio signal sent to the circuit. Check out the video for the full explanation of this project.
This video shows a site specific film called the “Image Mill” projected onto 81 individual grain silos that are each 30 meters tall. The film was shot in such a way so that the contours of the silos are integrated into the picture to create a more realistic image landscape. Watch the video and you will understand.
The “CordWrap” is a simple addition to any wall power outlet. Simply replace your current outlet cover with a cut metal fitting with its ends protruding from the surface of the wall. Use these protruding ends to wrap the extra cord around it so that it doesn’t clutter your floor. Another benefit of this design is that your cords wont be accidentaly pulled from the wall.
Unplggd has two articles on shopping for cheap tech in Asian markets and how to haggle down the price on the stuff you want.
Do your research. One of the first steps in haggling over a sale in Asia is to do proper research before making a purchase. It’s easy to find out what the retail prices and market value prices of items are in Asia beforehand. For example, you can check out the listings on Yahoo! Auctions in Taiwan. I use Google Translate to get an idea what a page says.
Yahoo! is really big in Asia, bigger than eBay in my opinion. Almost everyone uses Yahoo! including Asian retailers and vendors. They aren’t really used as auctions per se, but rather as an e-commerce site. These auction lists give you an idea of how much an item retails at different vendors. These prices are almost always lower than the retail price. I’ve bought cell phones, laptops and desktop computers this way. I just call up the retailers and get their location.
Bring a local. The best way to get a better deal is to go with a local friend or acquaintance. They will be able to haggle better and faster than you ever will. However, they do need to know a bit about what you want.
Every GSM cellphone user is familiar with the annoying Bzzzhtzttt noises that tend to emanate from random electronics anywhere you take your device. The iPhone is no exception, but the problem is exacerbated since most people have it sitting on their desk with a speaker close by playing music at reasonable amplification. It sucks.
Mac Life has a solution that may work for you. Just yank the ferrite beads from an old usb cable—they are inside the plastic bulge near one end of most cables—and place them around or taped in-line with your speaker cable. There are a few stories of success with this method, and nobody has mentioned an impact on audio quality, so it’s a cheap fix that’s worth a shot.
Shades of Soylent Green — G.V. Rao has built a pedal powered refrigeration unit that can be pedaled to nearly freezing in about 25 minutes using human power rather than a motor to run the compressor. A little more information here & here…
The Sketching in Hardware ’08 conference was held a RISD in Providence, Rhode Island this year. Both RISD and Providence were very welcoming and I think we had a lot of fun. Once again, Mike pulls off an awesome conference.
For my talk, since I didn’t have one big thing I’ve been working on this last year, I decided to shotgun blast a bunch of different topics out there, arranged roughly on the topics:
- Good Hardware APIs – about the evolution of BlinkM’s layout),
- USB not on Rails – an update to a previous Sketching talk of mine, and
- From 2D to 3D – experiments in 3D shapes from 2D lasercutter output…
On Ben Heck’s forums, this modder shows how he managed to cram an Xbox 360 wired controller inside the shell of a PS3 Dual Shock shell.
This mod is done with the PS3 board (original version) stripped of almost all of its parts and the controller’s daughter board kept intact (mostly) and the CL board cut to about the size of the battery in a PS3 controller.
Guest Starring today was ITP’s own Resident Researcher Kate Hartman. There’s two days, and therefore two projects per person remaining. A wrap party is planned, with rumors of a custom and probably toxic 5-in-5 cocktail concoction.
As part of her research at the MIT Media Lab, Anita Lillie did some investigations of her own sleep habits recording motion sensor data via Arduino -
I outfitted myself with sensors that would help me determine how my position changes over the course of a night’s sleep. I used three accelerometers as tilt sensors, placed on three different places on my body: my forehead, my forearm, and my upper leg.
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All my processing and analysis was done in software I wrote in Python and Pygame, which parses the data set and creates graphs that categorize the sensor readings into sleep positions, and highlights them accordingly. The graphs show raw data, smoothed data, and color-code positions automatically.
WebUrbanist posted a collection of impressive building conversions – the most eye-catching entry of the list is Joanne Ussery’s very sweet Boeing 727 turned luxury living quarters -
What could be better than an amazing house made out of an airplane? A cheap one. The plane itself cost just $2000, though moving it cost $4000 and renovating it for habitation took another $24000 – but that’s still just $30000 for a truly amazing and unique home. The original airplane fold-down stairs were kept and are operated by a garage door opener and one of the original airplane restrooms still works as it always did. And the cockpit suspended over the lake below? Her own personal jacuzzi of course.
Even when they’re relatively small scratches in an LCD monitor can be an ongoing nuisance. If you’re willing to try reworking the display surface yourself, then consider this strategy using paper mask and spray lacquer – DIY How To Fix a Scratched LCD Monitor
