Make: Online: September 2008 Archives

« August 2008 | Main | October 2008 »

Archives: September 2008

< Previous | September 2008 Home | Next >

September 30, 2008

Generate house music with the number Pi

The "Pi House Generator" by Texas-based artist Paul Slocum is a software system that randomly generates house music using the number Pi. The software calculates the sequence of digits in Pi and feeds the resuls into an algorithmic music generator containing the structural driteria or recipe for house music.
The resulting music is pretty funky and you can listen to a sample here.

Pi House Generator

Build a simple LED caselight

This tutorial shows how to build a basic LED caselight from 5mm high intensity LEDs. Check out the link for details on the build and where to get the parts.

Building an LED caselight

DIY: Fish tank stand

This is a cheap and simple solution for making a stand for you fish tank. It looks like you could easily scale it to any size you need. Just remember 1 gallon of water is about 8 lbs, so your 125 gallon fish tank is going to weigh at least 1/2 a ton or more.

More about a DIY: Fish tank stand

Decorate your room with a Sharpie Marker

Who says decorating has to be expensive? This room was completely covered in amazing illustrations, all drawn with a Sharpie Marker. It's a cheap DIY project, but it's going to take a lot of time and talent to complete.

When Charlie Kratzer started on the basement art project in his south Lexington home, he was surrounded by walls painted a classic cream. Ten dollars of Magic Marker and Sharpie later, the place was black and cream and drawn all over.

More about Decorating your room wit a Sharpie Marker [DRAWN!]

In the Maker Shed:

Maybe you could start with a DIY Laptop Bag by Skooba

Back-to-School Sale - 10% off every order, free Maker's Notebook with every order of $25 or more.

Use code CRZYDAN for the discount, the Maker's notebook will be added automatically. Ends 9/30/08 midnight PST

Star Wars Pumpkins

October is only a day away, and you know what that means? Time to start planning your pumpkin carving! If you need some inspiration, Trend Hunter has a great photo set of some amazing Star Wars pumpkins.

More amazing Star Wars Pumpkins

In the Maker Shed:

Animated Ghost Kit

MAKE projects - Volume 11

In each volume of MAKE we have "major projects" these project pages are meaty step-by-step articles with start-to-finish photos, precise instructions and how-to learning that can range from making a VCR cat feeder to ariel kite photography. In MAKE volume 11 the projects are:

Retro R/C Racer by Frank E. Yost. Using scrap sheet metal and pop rivets, you can construct a model 1930s British Midget racer with modern radio control capabilities. Page 94

Kitchen Floor Vacuum Former by Bob Knetzger. Mold light, durable, and cool-looking 3D parts in your kitchen. Page 106

Spin The Birdie by Larry Cotton. Get awesome avian photos by moving your camera closer to the birds -- and rotating them for the perfect pose. Page 116

Purely Platonic by Charles Platt. Have fun with classic Platonic geometry while building your own dodecahedron table lamp. Page 164

You can subscribe to MAKE to get in on this project action (use code CMAKE for $5 off) and you'll also get access to the MAKE digital edition, it's exactly like our print magazine, but online (no DRM), shareable, printable and can be accessed from just about any computer. Back issues of MAKE are also available in our Maker store.

September 29, 2008

Laura Marsden's knitted street signs

Now that I know how to use a knitting machine, my neighborhood is going to get a lot more festive. Canadian artist Laura Marsden made the ones above. Via Craft.

Made in Japan - 9/29/08

This week:
A 31-port USB Hub "Mansion", Workshop Collection - Children's Video Playground, Very Miniature Parfaits, Interactive Textbook Graffiti, Nintendo DS Made to Look Like a VAIO, iPhone Icon Cookies, Silent Zoo Calendar, Haruo Suekichi: Steampunk Watch Maker Interview, A Jig for Making Things Look Huge.

Read full story

Road To Maker Faire, Literally

Hot off our inboxes, from Mikey:

We are driving to the Austin Maker Faire from the SoCal area.
We're planning on taking our time on the drive there -- I was wondering if there's anyway I can ask the blog.makezine.com collective intelligence to suggest some places to stop at along the way that would be fun/interesting to makers.

Dear readers, where would you stop?

Here's an idea of what the route might be like:

View Larger Map

Please comment below with suggestions for where to stop, and if we're lucky Mikey will send us photos and more!

To get us started, I'll propose a detour to the Earthship community in Taos, New Mexico. These off-the-grid rammed earth houses are a beautiful example of architecture in harmony with nature. And, there's a really nice hot springs within 2 miles!

Controlling a Sega Mega Drive with MIDI

Sebastian's work interfacing with old Sega hardware for sound synthesis seems to be paying off - and the results sound quite nice -

In this video, the Sega Mega Drive II is controlled via the MIDI keyboard controller. Various parameters can be controlled from the keyboard, as one can hear in the video.

- Sega Mega Drive MIDI Keyboard Video

His research even brings the iconic blue hedgehog under musical control.

Nifty robot 3D vision system

Howard Gordon, of Surveyor Corp, sent us this announcement about a new, affordable stereo vision camera system for robots. I checked out the video with my 3D glasses. Pretty cool.

This past week, we introduced a new open source 3D stereo vision system for robotics and remote monitoring called Surveyor SVS. It features dual processors, dual cameras, and wifi connectivity, and sells for $550. The SVS is intended for researchers, educators and developers interested in enabling depth perception in their applications without the need for an array of active sensors (e.g. laser scanners, ultrasonics, infrared, etc).

Surveyor Stereo Vision System ("SVS")

LEGO V8, 32 valve engine

Legov8 Big

Another impressive LEGO build, nice illuminated accents -

Real working (electronic) V8 engine made from Lego Technic. This is not a Lego set, but I completely designed and build it myself. It took me about 4/5 months. Enjoy!

More pics of the build avaible on Brickshelf Gallery. [via Hacked Gadgets]

More:
Make Pt0663
1440 rpms v8 LEGO engine

Art, Science & Technology Day - Oct. 4th

Artscitechday

Sebastopol, CA area folks: mark your calendars for what's sure to be a fun family-friendly event -

Zip! Zap! Boom!
Art, Science and Technology Day
An Interactive Event for All Ages!
Saturday, October 4th, 10am-4pm
Admission: $5 per person/ $16 family

Create scrap sculptures at our “Creation Station”
See local warehouses and learn from demos in bronze pouring, toy-making, machinery & millwork
Interact with Make Magazine’s Firetruck
Visit Kidspot, see the shadow wall & marine touch tank
Enjoy Children’s Museum of the North BayMuseum on-the-go: Hopper Popper, Ned Kahn’s Wind Wall and Air Cannon
Tour exhibit Vortex: Art, Matter & Motion with a guide
Marvel at Sonoma County Art Cars including Mercedes Pens, Tumbleweed Houses, and more!

Sebastopol Center for the Arts
6780 Depot Street, Sebastopol
www.sebarts.org
(707) 829-4797

Ponoko's new Photomake service

Ponoco has a new service where you can hand-draw something, upload a photo of the drawing, and get a "real life product" of your drawing back (in various materials you can select).

Photomake [via Boing Boing]

HOW TO - OS X on the MSI Wind

Msimacosx
Wow, Jose @ Planetx64x has a nice step-by-step on installing Mac OS X on the super tiny MSI Wind, it's a pockable Mac almost - via /.

Recently I've managed to install Apple's OS X Leopard operating system 10.5.4 onto a 10 inch MSI Wind Netbook, and you can too. Let me preface this by saying that I consider myself an Apple fan, and run nothing but authentic Macs in my home studio office. If you're looking for another Mac vs. PC debate, then there's is nothing for you to see here. Move right along please.
The Victim: An MSI Wind U100 Netbook. This slick little machine comes preloaded with your choice of Windows or Linux. Armed with an Intel Atom 1.6 Ghz Processor, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB HD, built-in ethernet, wifi, webcam and bluetooth. That said, the most enticing feature is its crisp & clear 10 inch screen.

To accomplish this procedure, you will be opening the MSI netbook to upgrade the memory and swap out the factory wifi card (which will void your warranty). So think twice if you are not comfortable doing such a thing. We need to do this bacause having more memory always helps any operating system run snappier. OS X is no different. The MSI Wind takes up to 2 GB of RAM. More importantly the factory wifi card that it comes with, does not work in OS X out of the box. So you'll need to acquire a Dell Broadcom DW 1390 or 1490 internal mini pci wifi card, which are both inherently supported in OS X.

I found both the 1 GB memory upgrade stick and a 1390 card on ebay for no more than $20 each. You'll need a special Leopard build titled “MSI WINDos x86”, of which the Hackint0sh community should be credited for assembling. It's a slipstreamed "Kalyway" build which includes all the proper Kexts, drivers, Kernel modifications, and other files necessary to achieve a fully working installation on the MSI wind. Please do not inquire about where to find this disk image, it's in all the typical shady places on the net.

Summer is over, back to Dorkiness

Lightglove: Virtual Controller

Just a reminder to DC dorks that the we kick off another fall and winter of Metro-area geeky, maker-y fun with the September Dorkbot DC meeting, tomorrow night (9/30/09), at George Washington University. We hope to see you there. Presenters include Bruce Howard with his lightglove virtual controller and Andrew Harris will talk on Functional Programming for Hobbyist-Class Platforms. Hit the link below for more info.

Dorkbot DC

More:

Dorkbot DC September meeting

Make Dragon's Lair-style games on YouTube

A Car's Life

Philipp Lenssen, author of Google Apps Hacks mentioned a really cool YouTube hack on Google Blogoscoped:

A Car's Life is an interactive Arcade-style game using YouTube. To make it through a given level, all you need to do is click a button which appears. The video makes use of YouTube annotations, which can be linked to other YouTube videos. It's a bit like the 1980s Dragon's Lair in some respects: it has animations and somewhat stretches the limits of its medium, but it also has rather low playability. Choose-Your-Own-Adventure games - perhaps like Tube Adventures - might be more interesting in YouTube (anyone wants to write a YouTube-API-based video adventure export functionality for QML, the XML-based CYOA language?)

A Car's Life

Bandai Luminodot Lite-Brite HD board

F Bandai Luminodot
A little pricey, but I really like Bandai's Luminodot Lite-Brite HD board. It's available at Audiocubes if you're not planning on visiting Japan soon...

Bandai's Luminodot is the Lite-Brite we always knew we wanted. This 70 by 50 pixelated board is supported by a bright LED backlight. With 1600 bulbs in 12 different colors, each dot is important to finish the master piece. Any type of images can be projected onto the Luminodot, from a simple 2D picture to perspective art works. Featuring a private software that helps the user to create and preview the image. Luminodot is designed with a removable front panel, which allows the user to place the printed image underneath. A one-of-a-kind interior decoration. Available only from Japan (More & videos).

Marine life videos from Gulf Specimen

Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory supplies aquariums and scientific institutions with living marine specimens (not to individuals, sorry). Their site has a lot of information on jellyfish, corals, starfish, all sorts of marine life. Look around for links to YouTube videos, like this one of an octopus egg hatching and an octopus opening a jar - it's so amazing to see it reach in and gather up all the crabs!

The Choo Choo Barn - Strasburg, PA

Tom writes in...

Dear Make, Your email of September 26 was right on! Thanks for reminding me of my responsibility to pass on my knowledge to the next generation. I've been a "Maker" all my life, evidenced in what I do for a living. I own the Choo Choo Barn in Strasburg, PA, a 1,700 square foot, animated train display that has been completely scratch-built. I make all the animated figures and vehicles and all the buildings. You can check out our web site at www.choochoobarn.com. Make sure you visit the Blog and the Backstage section. This is where I attempt to show what I do when making new things for the display. It's very easy to have 75-100 hours in a scratch-built building or animation. I spent well over 100 hours making a new 1/4" scale Ferris wheel from brass rod and styrene. I even made a master of the seats and cast them out of a low-melting point lead based metal.
I love your magazine! There are lots of things I want to venture into and make, if I could ever find the time! I'm 58 and as busy as I ever was. Maybe when I retire...