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March 31, 2009

How bi-metallic coins are made

Core77 has a neat walkthough of the process required to make bi-metallic coins; how interesting! I agree with the author, I think the mistakes are possibly even more attractive than the originals!

MAKE classified ads and Maker Shed give-aways

Don't forget, folks, MAKE classified ads are closing soon for Volume 18. We've extended the deadline to this Friday, April 3rd. So if you want to place an ad, here's your chance (and to be eligible for the $100-worth of Gift Certificate giveaways).

We're excited about our Make: MINImarketplace section, which premiered in MAKE, Volume 17. Got something cool you want to sell, have a service to offer fellow readers, looking for some precious widget that only another maker might have stashed away in the garage? The Make: MINImarketplace offers a place for you to reach the maker community for a very reasonable price.
MINImarketplace Classified Ad Specs:
Ads are $40 per line
40 characters per line
Minimum 4 lines, Maximum 16 lines

If you're interested in placing a MINImarketplace ad in MAKE, Volume 18, send email to classifieds@makezine.com. You will be returned instructions on how to sign up for an account at the Maker Shed, and from there, you'll have access to our Classified Ad Order Page.

Our first deadline for materials is April 3rd, so act quickly, if you want a spot.

And we have a drawing to encourage folks to sign up for more information. If you email classifieds@makezine.com and ask for more info on classifieds, you'll automatically be entered to win one of three Maker Shed gift certificates. We will be giving away two $25 Maker Shed Gift Certificates and one $50 Certificate to three people drawn from the list. Our ad deadline is fast approaching -- April 3rd -- for placing the ad and for the Gift Certificate giveaway. Act now! Robot operators are standing by!

Giant flame-throwing robo-babies

Gamara bless the Japanese, that's all I have to say about this pic.

Gigantic Fire-Breathing Robot Babies Have Taken Over Roppongi

Happy Birthday, Crustaceous Bionaut!

One of my favorite projects in the magazine over the past five years was the Tabletop Biosphere in Volume 10, written by Martin John Brown. I think the interns enjoyed building the project as well — they had to go out and scoop scum out of a pond, plus they got to visit the cute girl at the tropical fish store, even if she did tell them their little project would never work.

For me, I really enjoyed the biological aspects of the project, and the touch of philosophical dilemmas was an interesting addition to a tech publication (Was it right to start this world? Do you abandon your creations to their sealed fate if things go wrong?). As I write this post, I'm glancing out the window and then at the very biosphere the interns tightly sealed back in 2007. And I'm wondering if a ghost shrimp has a preference in flavor of birthday cake. Because it was exactly two years ago today that our little ghost shrimp, George, was sealed into his Mason jar, and he's still alive! So, Happy Birthday, George the Ghost Shrimp! No one's ever opened the jar to let in any oxygen, and in fact, the jar has been turned upside down by rowdy school children, been shuttled off to at least two Maker Faires, and inspired a second biosphere, which was built for a KQED television program, Quest.

We're not really sure what the Guinness World Record is for longest living crustaceous bionaut, but we do know that the life expectancy of a ghost shrimp is about a year, and the biosphere was predicted to thrive for 3 to 6 months. We're thrilled that it's far exceeded our expectations. As is fitting for such a momentous occasion, I asked editors, interns, and others acquainted to offer their thoughts about George the Ghost Shrimp as he continues his odyssey into the third year.

Here's what people said:

Make Editor-in-Chief Mark Frauenfelder expounded: "In these challenging times, this plucky and resourceful shrimp is an inspiration to us all. Long live George!"

Former MAKE intern Matthew Dalton got a little emotional when we told him about the anniversary: "Go George!! We're all rooting for you!!! That makes me sooo happy ... he's my little baby. *sniffs* I remember picking him out of all the other ghost shrimp, cause he looked like he needed a loving home ... He's such a good shrimp!"

Daniel Carter, MAKE's Creative Director, first expressed disbelief: "WTF? How can that little [guy] still be alive?!" But he has since decided to option the film rights on George's life. While Sam Murphy, photo editor, came up with the plot line. "I think we found our new mascot! George the fix-it shrimp! We could develop this whole heroic back story where he gets struck by an electric charge from Shawn's computer, and all the MAKE information on her computer he absorbs — and becomes super-shrimp," she wrote.

If you've created your own biosphere, or have some other tale of outstanding successes with regards to your projects, please tell us about them in the Comments.

And happy birthday, George!

Makers birthdays: Robert Bunsen

Happy Birthday Dr. Bunsen! On this day in 1811 was born a pioneer in chemistry, and a maker of tools! Robert Bunsen was a German chemist; he made many significant discoveries, including the use of iron oxide hydrate as a precipitating agent, still used as the primary antidote for arsenic poisoning. He is probably best known, however, for his co-creation of what is now known as the "Bunsen burner," which he developed with Gustav Kirchhoff as an improvement on laboratory gas burners available at the time. Interestingly enough, Bunsen never filed a patent for any of his inventions, which makes me imagine him as an early proponent for open technologies. He was a well-loved professor, and for these things and more we celebrate today! Check out his Wikipedia page for more info.

Wire scorpions

Nice tutorial on Instructables for making vicious little scorpions from twists of craft wire.

Wire Scorpion

Make: PDX, first meeting in Portland

Another Make: City group has formed, in Portland, OR. They'll be holding their first "official" meeting on April 5th, 3pm, at the local TechShop in Beaverton.

The last speaker is YOU. Bring your projects and show them off!

Please RSVP on Upcoming.org or Facebook

The MakePDX website has additional information including instructions to RSVP.

Lost Knowledge: Island tricks

The weekly Lost Knowledge column explores the possible technology of the future in the forgotten ideas of the past (and those slightly off to the side). Each Tuesday, we look at retro-tech, "lost" technology, and the make-do, improvised "street tech" of village artisans and tradespeople from around the globe. "Lost Knowledge" is also the theme of the current issue of MAKE, Volume 17 (on newsstands now)

In this installment of Lost Knowledge, we tap into the "slightly off to the side" and "street tech" aspects of our brief. The current issue of MAKE's "Heirloom Technology" column, by Tim Anderson, has a bunch of nifty tips and tricks Tim's picked up on his Pacific island travels, from tool tips to how to drink a coconut to how to make a chair out of an old surfboard. He gave us so many, in fact, we didn't have room for them all in the issue. Here are the rest of them.

Coconut Milk: Blender Style

Coconut juice or coconut water is a clear liquid that comes as-is out of a coconut. Coconut milk is different. You make it from shredded coconut meat.

Here's how to do it with a blender:

If raw coconut bothers you, cook the meat first in a microwave for a couple minutes. The flavor is slightly different and the protein may be easier to digest.
Cut the meat up into chunks your blender can handle.
Put the meat in the blender.
Cover it with enough water for your blender to be happy. If you saved the coconut juice, use that. But you probably drank that right away while fighting with the nut. It's like nature's Gatorade, only better.
DIGRESSION: Coconut juice has got all the electrolytes you need in the tropical places where coconuts grow. It's also sterile, if it's from a picked coconut. They used it in World War II as IV fluid for soldiers who were wounded, or sick from the wet kind of tropical diseases (so I've been told, anyway). A coconut on the ground is probably sterile also, but some of them crack and go sour after they hit the ground.
Blend it up. If the whole pitcher isn't churning, stop and pulse the blades or add more water. When it stops getting thicker, you're done.
Pour it into a piece of cloth. I used a pair of boxer shorts. Of course mine are always cleaner than the Pope's CPU factory in outer space.
Squeeze out the ambrosia. They call it milk but it's a lot like cream. Use it for cooking or making umbrella drinks. The mix of fats goes well with the deepwater fish you speared under that navigation buoy with your giant spear gun.
What you have left is dry, shredded coconut meat. Mix it with some eggs and fry it. It'll fluff up like a pancake and be really satisfying to eat. Just the thing for when you're done surfing, or on your way to go surfing.

Pickup Bed Passengers and Hitchhiking

You see lots of people riding in the beds of pickup trucks in Hawaii. It's apparently legal. This pickup has some cushions installed semi-permanently just for that purpose. In contrast, in the "birthplace of freedom" you're not allowed to do that (the weather isn't as good there either).

Here on Maui I've seen many hitchhikers. I've been one myself and picked up others. On the mainland, one party is expected to kidnap and/or murder the other. Here the customs are different; it's just a way to get from one place to another or help someone else do that. A pickup truck is good for picking up hitchhikers, if you don't mind the different customs in a place that's officially the same country.

Instant Convertible Top

This Miata roadster in Kahului has no top. No problem. Just open up your beach umbrella when you park the car. When you're driving, of course you want the top down, so put the umbrella away so it doesn't turn into a Christo-style wind-powered javelin of death.

Ripe Pineapple Test

To find out whether a pineapple is ripe, smell it. It will smell just like it will taste.

To plant a pineapple, twist the top off and put it in a glass of water in a sunny place. After it grows roots, plant it in dirt and keep it watered. In a couple of years it will grow one or more new pineapples!

Potty Pot

Here's a flowerpot made from a toilet. I guess that makes it a potty pot. (If you planted a pot plant in it, then it would be a potty pot pot.) Seen outside the Ding King shop in Kahului. Made by Euroman?

Spare Blade for Jigsaw

My pal's jigsaw has a spare blade taped to the handle. It's still in the original packaging, so when you break it and replace it with the spare, you have the label to buy the right replacement. This Island Trick would work even on the mainland, but here I am, so here it goes.

Cut Cake with Wet Knife

Actually an ancient German trick, but Germans appreciate good climate, too. Cut a cake with a wet knife to keep it from sticking to the knife. Demonstrated by Stephanie Simpson.

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From MAKE magazine:

Check out MAKE, Volume 17: The Lost Knowledge issue!

Buy your copy in the Maker Shed
Subscribe to MAKE
Access the Digital Edition (if you're already a subscriber)

In Volume 17, MAKE goes really old school with the Lost Knowledge issue, featuring projects and articles covering the steampunk scene -- makers creating their own alternative Victorian world through modified computers, phones, cars, costumes, and other fantastic creations. Projects include an elegant Wimshurst Influence Machine (an electrostatic generator built entirely from Home Depot parts), a Florence Siphon coffee brewer, and a teacup-powered Stirling engine. This special section also covers watchmaking, letterpress printing, the early multimedia art of William Blake, and other wondrous and lost (or fading) pre-20th-century technologies.

Make: Day recap - The highlights

The first ever Make: Day was held two weeks ago at the Science Museum of Minnesota, and featured over 20 Makers, 3 musical acts, and tons of interested MAKE enthusiasts of all ages. The response to Make: Day has been fantastic, and we're hoping Make: Day will become an annual event. Check out the highlight reel to see some of our favorite moments from the day.

How-To Tuesday: Mini bike light

Photography by Trevor Shannon and Katie Dektar

Make an easy LED headlight from a garden hose adapter.

By Trevor Shannon

How-To: Light painting saber

Udi Tirosh writes in with this neat trick: use a tubular light like those found in car accessory shots as a sweeping swath light painting tool for long exposure photography. Looks way trippier than just using LEDs.

MAKE presents: The Transistor

They electronically switch and amplify signals by harnessing the unique abilities of semiconductor materials. Their invention has transformed the world of electronics and accelerated our entry into the digital age. Behold - the Transistor!

I learned a lot while making this installment of the MAKE presents series. here's a few of the information resources I found helpful during my research -

PBS' Transistorized!
Transistor, History of the Transistor on Wikipedia
How Do Transistors Work? (NO, HOW DO THEY REALLY WORK?) by William Beaty
Transistors on Williamson Labs
Getting Started in Electronics by Forrest M. Mims III
Transistor Circuits on Electronics Club

Providing a clear and concise explanation of the transistor proved to be an enjoyable challenge. As always, feel free to leave suggestions, questions, corrections, ideas, etc in the comments!

Download the m4v file or subscribe in iTunes

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MAKE presents: The Capacitor

MAKE presents: The Resistor

MAKE presents: The LED

Show us your shop!

We love seeing people's workspaces. You learn so much about them, their approach to their work, the kinds of tools they use, how they organize themselves, what of their labors they choose to display, and so on. You can also get useful ideas for organizing your own workshop, studio, or office. And generally, be inspired.

Below are two radically different working spaces. The first is the machine shop of the late Bob Jorgensen, whom I wrote about a few days ago. The second is a video by Internet pioneer Howard Rheingold, who's a writer, artist, and futurist. The video is a guided tour of his "dream office," the space behind his house where he does his writing, thinking, painting, and sculpture.

We want to see your workspace. In the comments, send us links to your photos (or videos) of your shop, studio, or office, and tell us something about it, point out unique features. We'll pick our favorite and give you a copy of The Maker's Notebook and your choice of The Best of Instructables or The Best of MAKE.

JorgensenSteam.com

Howard's Dream Office

More:
Bob Jorgensen's steam projects

Snow White and the Apple

Brilliant. Although Eve would probably make even more sense.

Bookofjoe [via Evil Mad Scientist Labs' Twitter feed]

Bent Festival 4/16 - 4/18

The 2009 Bent Fest will go down on April 16-18 at The Tank in NYC featuring performances by -

In addition to performances, there'll be a launch party for the new edition of Nic Collins Handmade Electronic Music, workshops, and more. [via GetLoFi]

Chronulator mod

I was excited when the Chronulator came out and am still a fan of the kit. But I've been somewhat disappointed with what people have done with it. I expected they'd be more hacks to the circuit and lots of seriously-cool cases. Like this one -- a gorgeous construction, made of brass curtain parts, a tea box, and some other parts, by a French sculptor.

Steampunk Chronulator [via Boing Boing]

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Augmented Reality Modelling Tool

From the MAKE Flickr pool

After experimenting a bit with ARToolKit, melkaone came up with this intriguing demo for an augmented reality sculpting system with force feedback via Arduino -

As you can see, this is just a proof of concept, I only worked on it this morning, but I think it has great potential. However, I don’t have the knowledge / budget to do such work.

I can think of many ways to improve this :

Have some kind of deformable ball of clay, like what you can see in tools like MudBox or ZBrush

Use a solenoïd instead of the pager motor. This way, you’ll get a feedback in the axis of the pencil, not just a shaking sensation.

Maybe use a 3-DOF robotic arm to have the feedback, would be a lot harder to implement, but might be worth it.

Use a pair of stereoscopic goggles to get a better feeling (head “tracking”, perspective, etc…)

…

More project info available on his blog. The concept definitely shows potential, anyone care to collaborate?

In the Maker Shed:

Arduino Family
Make: Arduino

Learn to develop software for Hadoop

If you've been curious about Hadoop, the open source cloud computing software, there's a really great set of introductory lectures being provided by Cloudera. In addition to building and supporting Hadoop clusters for commercial applications, the Cloudera folks have also been providing a wealth of information on installing and optimizing Hadoop on your own hardware, as well as a set of utilities for easily launching and managing a Hadoop cluster on EC2.

In the first part of the training series, embedded above, Aaron Kimball gives an introduction to large scale data processing, its challenges, and how a system like Hadoop addresses the issues commonly encountered when performing data computation across thousands of nodes. Other lectures include installing Hadoop, writing MapReduce programs, and using Hive, a data warehouse infrastructure for Hadoop that has an SQL-like interface.

Cloudera's Basic Hadoop Training

March 30, 2009

Soda tab lampshade

Sean Ragan writes:

This lampshade is made almost entirely from stay tabs that are interlocked together without wires or fasteners of any type, using a kind of "chain mail" technique that I invented. Careful study of the photograph will probably tell you all you need to know about the chaining technique. Each tab is bent to approximately 120 degrees and then snipped at the top. The top loop of the tab is then threaded through the bottom loops of two adjacent tabs on the row above. Rinse and repeat to create mail.

Toolbox: What the hell is that thing?

In the Make: Online Toolbox, we try to focus on tools that fly under the radar of more conventional tool coverage: in-depth tool-making projects, strange or specialty tools unique to a trade or craft that can be useful elsewhere, tools and techniques you may not know about, but once you do, and incorporate them into your workflow, you'll wonder how you ever lived without them. And, in the spirit of the times, we pay close attention to tools that you can get on the cheap, make yourself, refurbish, etc.

I did a piece for CRAFT Volume 04, called "What the Hell Is That Thing?" It was inspired by a Fiskars perfing wheel tool that I had. I didn't even know such a thing existed, but I did some garage-duplicated CDs years ago and the musician/graphic artist who was working on the project with me recommended I get one for perforating the CD tray cards, for easier folding. I've been using it ever since for any sort of folding job. You can get razor cutting and other wheels for it, too.

For years, this tool has sat on the shelf in my office. Several people have spotted it, picked it up, and said: "What the hell is this thing?" So that was the inspiration behind the CRAFT piece, and this installment of Toolbox.

So, what are your "What the hell is this thing" tools? Chime in with Comments.

###

This device, called a Resistor Lead Forming Tool, almost went into my previous "Ten tools you won't want to live without" column. And also in "Clamps, Jigs, and Helping Hands." Definitely one of those tools that has a bigger impact on your work than you expect and you do end up wondering why you didn't get one of these in your toolbox sooner. Our pals at EMS Labs sell these in their store for $7.

I love free stuff that comes with an old house. This tool was in a kitchen drawer when we bought our place. It's called a Gilhoolie, a tool for opening troublesome bottles and jars. It's never met a lid it couldn't ratchet, grip, and leverage off with aplumb. According to Wikipedia, it was invented by a Dr. C. W. Fuller, a retired dentist from Yonkers, in the early 50s.

My friend Claire Carton recommended a bone tool, a simple tool used for cleanly and sharply folding/creasing paper, burnishing material that's been glued, etc. They come in a bunch of different shapes and sizes, but are usually plastic and look sort of like an exceedingly dull letter opener (the one above is a ball-type). When I was a graphic artist, I had a boning tool made out of wood, some sort of hardwood, with a smooth, flat diagonal surface on one end and a pin-point on the other (protected by a little cork cap). It was designed for the age of wax galleys (columns of typeset print with wax on the back to adhere to layout board). The flat end was for rubbing the waxed galleys down to the layout board and the pin was used for lifting up the galleys for repositioning. I still have the tool and adore it. The wood is patina'd from years of me handling it. A very simple, seemingly forgettable device that I've used for nearly 30 years. Bone tool. Ancient.

Claire also mentioned a grommet setter. In my CRAFT piece, I talked about the Crop-A-Dile, a bizarre looking device that's a multi-size hole-puncher and grommet-setter. My love for this thing has only grown. We had a couple of these at Maker Faire Bay Area last year, in the Maker's Notebook Modification Station, and people used them to add grommets and punch holes for studs in their books, to punch holes for ties and snaps, and other creative uses. It's actually strong/sharp enough to easily cut clean holes in the board covers of the Notebooks. This thing usually goes for $25 in a craft store. You can get in through Amazon for $15.

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