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Archives: October 2005

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October 31, 2005

Needles and Pens - A SF DIY Goods Store

Needlesandpens
Needles and Pens in San Francisco is a combination DIY Goods, Zine Shop and Art Gallery. I recently took a visit to the shop, located in the Mission district and had fun browsing the wide variety of handmade goods.

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Trick or Treat with MAKE "virtually"!

Smallhall
While we'd love to have all our readers visit MAKE in person for Trick or Treating today, we realize it would be logistically challenging. So, if you're a resident in the 3D virtual world Second Life (free download, runs on Mac/PC). You can visit us on MAKE:land here and get a goodie bag with some special treats from MAKE Magazine! Here are some screen shots of what we're doing.

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Make Your Own Paper

Make your own paper by recycling newspaper or old paper. Embellish them with pressed flower petals or add some color with crushed grass. From this, you'll be able to create all kinds of neat craft projects like handmade journals or cards. Just in time for handmade holiday gifts. Thanks Rick! Link.

HOW TO - Vintage Polaroid camera modding

Mark writes "Here's how to convert old obsolete 1950's era Polaroid 110a cameras into semi-proffesional, full manual, large format work horses. The site describes the process of converting these cheap old cameras to accept easily available modern pack film. There are lo-fi methods and is mainly directed toward poor starving photographers or college students who can not afford a Litman 45 single." Link.

HOW TO - Make Toxic Waste (a tasty dessert)

Detailed story of making a creepy Halloween-themed jello and pudding dessert in an acquarium. Made from all sorts of gummy worms, gummy salamanders, candy eye balls, licorice and lips - along with 19 packs of Jello. It's so gross looking, I want to make this. Link.

HOW TO - Make steam engines

Rick writes "A great 'how to' making steam engines, (although most are run on compressed air). All you need to know from simple single cylinder models to V twins and more. A neat project in time for the holiday season - What a great present." Link.

DIY Telecine

Giles writes "Step by step, do it yourself, super 8 telecine - How to make Super 8 movies into digital files for the cost of an old projector, a big lens and some bits from the local electronics store!" Link.

Animated Engines

Engines Rick writes "Animated examples of many different types of internal combustion and heat engine along with an explanation of how they work. My favorite is the Wankel engine (The Wankel a triangular rotor incorporating a central ring gear is driven around a fixed pinion within an oblong chamber). Somehow it just shouldn't work." Link.

Control Freaks: Modding and the Clash with Law

Good article by Andy Oram on oreillynet "Modding is childish and eccentric and deeply serious. People are investing major chunks of disposable income and (astonishingly, in a flat-out work-obsessed society where no one has time) untold hours in modding. It's one of the fastest up-and-coming social trends in the United States." Link.

Make a cursor following flying bat

Here's how to add a javascript driven cursor following flying bat to your pages. You can download the 2.6kb zip archive, containing all you need and get startet...Good for Halloween, or if you have a goth site or something. Link.

Forrest Classic engines

Rick writes "Here are some examples of Stirling engines - An online shop for many model engines. But often existing products are the inspiration for our own production efforts. Worth a look for anyone interested in Stirling or steam engines." Link. In MAKE 04 we have an interview with Dean Kamen who's also cooking up a Stirling engine.

October 30, 2005

How Halloween candy is made (video)

Candy Addict writes "A blog from The National Association of Manufacturers where they post videos of things being manufactured commercially. There are some really interesting videos!" Here's a post (with video) on how the Just Born candy company makes their treats. Link.

LEGO barcode reader

Complete HOW TO and source code for making a barcode scanner out of LEGOs. The Barcode Scanner uses standard LEGO parts with two exceptions. The first is the laserbrick, a selfbuilt LEGO brick with a modified laser pointer connected to an output of the RCX. The second part is the barcode label from a LEGO box.Thanks Douglas! Link.

DIY Camera Obscura

How to make the sunrise in your bedroom every morning. Many artists have used the Camera Obscura over the years, now make your own. - an optical experiment easy to do, but which, in spite of its simplicity, is able to give you a continuous marvel. What you have to do is simply mount a lens on the bedroom window. In this way, when you wake up in the morning, you will admire the outside scene projected on a wall of your bedroom. Link.

HOW TO - Build a $1 compound microscope

"...construction of a very simple low-cost compound microscope. As shown in Figure 1, the microscope we describe is one that just about anyone can build and will produce a magnification of about 75 times. Microscopes may be thought of as very intricate and mysterious instruments but in reality, they are not as complicated as one may think. Building this simple instrument is not only a fun project, it will help you understand how microscopes work." Thanks Rick! Link.

Make your own Readymechs!

Readmechs are printable (8.5" x 11") little paper box creatures and novelties like UK Johnny, Astro Julie, Pal 9000, Papercut of death, Skeletron and other clever designs surely to delight a drab cubicle. Link.

Student satellite goes into orbit

"A Russian booster rocket successfully carried a satellite designed by students into a low Earth orbit yesterday for the European Space Agency under a programme intended to help to inspire and train future aerospace workers." [via] Link.

October 29, 2005

Design and build your own miniature scale aircraft for indoor flying

Excellent site for on designing and building your own miniature scale aircraft for indoor flying. This site is mainly aimed at people new to this kind of aeromodelling and those who want to design and build their own machines. Includes plans to help you get started, and you can look at the pages on indoor planes and park flyers to find something similar to what you want to build. This will give you an idea of weight, motors, rubber sizes, control systems etc based on something that works and should save you some development headaches. Thanks Rick! Link.

HOW TO - Make a radio controlled voice box

This guide will show you how to use a PicoSwitch in combination with a simple voice recorder to make a radio controlled voice/sound effect box. You can then mount this box into a radio controlled car, plane, boat, robot etc. and have fun triggering sounds at just the right moments. All you need to do is to take wires from the 'play' switch of a voice recorder, and connect them to a PicoSwitch. Link.

HOW TO - Make water rockets

This site has tons of how-tos and information on making water rockets (up to 6 feet tall!) Materials required tends to be limited to one or two pop bottles, some putty or Blu-Tack, a bicycle pump and an adaptor and making use of a sharp knife. Parachutes can be as simple as a bin-liner and still work well despite their low cost. Thanks Rick! Link.

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