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July 31, 2008

ProvFlux V: urban adventures in psychogeography

Similar to the popular Brooklyn festival Conflux, ProvFlux is an annual summer fun-time event in Providence, RI. From the site:

Part carnival and part conference, ProvFlux brings together artists, theorists, urban adventurers and the general public to share their visions of what the city can be, and to take action to make it a reality.

The simple premise behind ProvFlux is to create an environment of positive activity, and to continue expanding upon the ideas of what one can do in their city. It exists to invite people from all walks of life to meet on the common ground that is our city streets, in an unjuried, completely free and 100% participatory environment.

This year's ProvFlux will take place August 7-11. Pictured above is a mobile performance bike from ProvFlux 2005.

Pitch bending thumb piano

Jamoflage made this incredible pitch bending thumb piano! It sounds kind of like a steel guitar when it's plucked, then kind of like twisted steel drums. And you can change out the blades. Totally cool. Via Oddstrument Collection

Buzz Kill - stopping iPhone GSM speaker noise

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.

iPhone Buzz Kill

Ski Shelf

Neale writes in:

Here's a quick and easy DIY project to make a shelf out of a ski. It's a decent use for something people might have lying around, or can at least find pretty easily at yard sales (well, easy up here in the north).

More:

Snowboard bench

Mister Jalopy digs the "shackitecture"

Over on Dinosaurs and Robots, Mister Jalopy has been enthusiastically blogging about nifty small buildings, backyard offices, rural getaways, i.e. "shackitecture." Definitely worth checking out if Lilliputian dwelling is your idea of fun.

Shackitecture

Airplane: the house

Airplane Home

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.

Dig that cozy interior - 7 Brilliant Building Conversion Projects

More:
Planeroom
Boeing 727 room add-on

FailureBot 5

Micah Carrick has posted some really excellent docs detailing his creation of a line-following robot, now in its 5th generation. The robot project is part of a series of tutorials he's done on his site about working with AVR microcontrollers.

FailureBot 5 - A Line Following Robot [Via ladyada's ranting]

HOW TO - Fix a scratched LCD

Scratched Lcd

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

More:
How To - Revive scratched plastic lenses

Massive audio sampler of impressive bigness!

The circuit artiste known simply as "bwack" has created what is probably the most excellent sampler I will see in this lifetime (unless a giant-sized trend begins after this). Instead of taps, this things accepts punches as input -

he was commissioned by our good friends from the band family force 5 to construct the largest sampler in the history of live rock music. and, with the assistance of his carpentry proficient padre, don bwack, he has done it. there were a few necessary requirements: one, it needed to withstand much energetic punching, and kicking, and general jovial abuse from one of the rowdiest live bands on the planet. there was also the need for it to dominate space with an aesthetic presence large enough to compete with one of the more style conscious outfits on the planet; the family has panache in spades and this thing had to be classy to occupy a stage such thoughtfully coifed hair and magically coordinated garmentry.

Hmm ... a giant synth could turn knob-twiddling into a decent upper-body workout! - bwack is a genius i think - [via Creat Digital Music]

Hacking the Parallax Scribbler

Botmag, the website for Robot magazine, has a nice piece by Eric Ostendorff on modifications to the Parallax Scribbler robot to control it via a TV remote (which requires some coding, no hardware mods) and to create a charging station for it (which requires both software and hardware work).

What's Up? DOCK! Take Charge of your Scribbler Robot's IR Capabilities

Swanky cardboard cat lounger

A human at EMS Labs writes:

Although we don't claim to understand it, a cat that has installed itself in a cardboard box is a happy cat. You can exploit this mysterious fact to make a your own simple corrugated cardboard cat bed like this one, designed as a kitty-sized chaise lounge. Since it's just cardboard, it's also easy to modify this basic design to suit your own (or your cat's) taste.

Cardboard Cat Chaise

Arduino Semaphor

Rick Roll in semaphore. Controlled by an arduino and two stepper motors....

Femisapien robot review..

Robotsrule has a giant review of the new Femisapien robot, for $99 it's look worth it for the parts, sensors and learning interface alone...

For me the posing interface is the most powerful and fun method of playing with Femisapien. As you can see in the accompanying video review, you can create a Femisapien dance or skit in literally seconds. You put her in Learning Mode and you simply move her at one of two different speeds, slow or fast. That's it. After each movement she will beep at you to tell you she's memorized the movement. Then just adding keep movements until you're done, up to 80 movements total. To finish the sequence just wait 4 seconds or tilt her head out of Learning mode. Any time you want to see the sequence just wave your hand in front of her face. It really is that simple. This brings us to her second interface mode, the Hand Gesture interface.

Spring constant measurement

Pete writes in...

Talk about retro. I hand coded this page (for the first time in years) describing my homebrew spring constant measurement experiments. This is really the starting point for solid material characterization. If you have something cool that you've made with that chemistry kit, you should take a look to see how you can start characterizing it, so you can model it and know what you can do with it.

Beatles music, deconstructed

If you're interested in how music is made, Kevin Futhey found this fascinating article about part of what, musically, made the Beatles be the Beatles, and helps us understand a little of why they had such a revolutionary effect on music. I've been reading Daniel Levitin's book, This is Your Brain On Music; it's really neat to learn why music affects us the way it does.

HOW TO - make piezo crystals at home

Rochellesalt

Piezoelectric crystals are fascinating - when physical stress is applied, these materials produce a voltage. The effect can be reversed as well, apply electricity, produce a stress/vibration. Rochelle salt(potassium sodium tartrate) is an easily synthesized piezoelectric substance you can make with readily available items -

500 g (1 lb) of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate)[NaHCO3]
200 g (7 oz) of cream of tartar (potassium bitartrate)[KHC4H4O6] [see note below]
Oven
Pyrex container
Jar with lid
500 mL (2 cup) glass beaker or Pyrex measuring cup
Sauce pan with water
2 mL (1/2 tsp) measuring spoon
Spoon for stirring
Coffee Filter
Filter paper or paper towelling

This could be a great way to get started making your own custom guitar pickups, contact mics, etc. Either way, tapping on a crystal you've grown and watching it produce 26 volts is pretty darn cool!

- Making the Rochelle Salt

- Rochelle salt synthesis

9780596514921-2T
Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments

Hilltop speaker lets you project your voice from your cell phone throughout the land

The "Telemegaphone Dale" by Magnus Torstensson and Erik Sandelin is a loudspeaker post on top of Bergkletten in Dale, Norway. To use the project, just call it with your cell phone and your voice is amplified and played out the hilltop speaker. The project officially opens on August 2nd and is part of a larger project called "Parafunctional Payphones" that addresses public, telephonic art installations.

Telemegaphone, via Doors of Perception

NES controller cake

3192 2713957278 C16B76528B

Aah, Chris' groom's cake is picture-perfect gaming confection -

The single most awesome groom's cake ever. Note the raised buttons made of butter creme frosting. It was delicious.

Dibs on the crosspad! - His Cake on Flickr [via Neatorama]

More:
Wedding Cakes Consoles
Gamer wedding cake on CRAFT

Darth Vader masks compose a dark symphony

This project called "Last Manoeuvres in the Dark" by artists Fabien Giraud and Raphael Siboni currently on display in Paris at the Palais de Tokyo, employs hundreds of Darth Vader masks equipped with microcontrollers and speakers and connected to a computer which spatially composes one of the "darkest" musical pieces of all time. This video illustrates the performance pretty well.

via Stunned

Hack a security camera with a helium balloon

This balloon-based anti surveillance camera project by Brooklyn-based artist William Lamson is an easy way to fool even the most sophisticated forms of surveillance technology. Helium filled rubber balloon set to the correct height and covered with enough static electricity to stick to any surface, such as a public camera. Now if only they made robotic pins for security officers to pop them.

via Kjefta, William Lamson