Make: Online: August 2009 Archives

« July 2009 | Main | September 2009 »

Archives: August 2009

August 2009 Home | Next >

August 31, 2009

Austin Art Outside call for participation

Here's a great opportunity to get involved in Austin at Art Outside:

Hushed galleries. White walls. "Inside" voices. That's one way to experience art. But Art Outside 2009 is looking to change that. If you are a visual artist, performer, musician, dancer, comic, filmmaker, crafter, fashion designer, or a creative spirit of any sort - we are looking for you to participate this October 9-11th.

One of Texas' most anticipated annual art events, Art Outside is a three-day experience for art lovers, families, DIY junkies and avid concert-goers. You'll perform or display your work in the environs of Apache Pass, located just East of Austin and centered between Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. With over 100+ participants across all media, it's also an opportunity to meet and network with artists from all over the country, from under-the-radar newcomers to today's art icons.

Just some of this year's participants include carnivalian collective Art of Such N' Such, fresh off their 2009 Bonnaroo performance, eco-chic fashion designer Rene Geneva, recently named Best Local Fashion Designer at the Austin Fashion Awards, blues/vintage rock outfit The Golden Animals, Fort Knox Five, Freq Nasty, DIY workshops by The WonderCraft, Comedy by Reggie Watts and Adira Amram, food by Ararat and Happy Vegan Baker and many more. *visit website for full line-up/line-up is subject to change.

We look forward to reviewing your wild, wonderful creations. With a tradition of showcasing groundbreaking talent on breathtaking grounds, Art Outside has hosted artists and art appreciators since 2004. Founded at Austin Enchanted Forest, Art Outside began as a small gathering of creative souls, and expanded into a destination event for visitors near and far. We pay homage to the Enchanted Forest as we spread our wings over a new landscape, Apache Pass, where we can host more art than ever before. An inspiring expanse of beautiful central Texas landscape, Apache Pass will offer music performance areas, a cantilevered stage, artist tents, camping grounds for full-weekend participants, food and drink vendors. A limited amount of advance 3-day passes are now available for purchase on the website. To learn more, please visit Art Outside-www.artoutside.org.

Following The Trail Of Toxic E-Waste @ 60 Minutes

Updated story on CBS - Following The Trail Of Toxic E-Waste @ 60 Minutes...

(CBS) This story was first published on Nov. 9, 2008. It was updated on Aug. 27, 2009. 60 Minutes is going to take you to one of the most toxic places on Earth -- a place that government officials and gangsters don't want you to see. It's a town in China where you can't breathe the air or drink the water, a town where the blood of the children is laced with lead. It's worth risking a visit because, as correspondent Scott Pelley first reported last November, much of the poison is coming out of the homes, schools and offices of America. This is a story about recycling - about how your best intentions to be green can be channeled into an underground sewer that flows from the United States and into the wasteland.

LEGO playsets that never were... DUNE

Tell me of your homeworld Usul, LEGO sets that never were but should have been... DUNE @ Brickself...

Rescue some walkmen from Marin

Max writes in:

My former employer who does audio tours is emptying out their warehouse and is throwing out a couple hundred walkmans. They are already in a dumpster by their office and will probably be picked up sometime tomorrow. I send you this information in the hopes you know someone close to Marin (Sausalito) who might have interest enough to dig them out and save them from the landfill for mello-tronic projects and the like.

They're located out at Fort Cronkhite in the Marin Headlands.

More:

Ann Arbor Mini Maker Faire: Success!

Congratulations to the Ann Arbor Mini Maker team for a successful Faire! Over 1100 attendees blew smoke rings, rode the worlds largest (claimed) bristlebot, piloted robots, made music, silk-screened t-shirts and had a great time! Missed it? Be sure to check out the Flickr pool, or read the excellent writeup at the Ann Arbor Chronicle!

Photo credits: Matt Mets, Dug Song

Rocketboom visits Adafruit

In this video, Rocketboom Tech correspondent Ellie Rountree visits with Limor at Adafruit!

Ready-made pedal-power

Here's a clever reuse of a plastic pedal boat as a ready-made power plant for a mechanical washing machine.

Thermite-based data security

These days, companies are losing hard drives and other storage media packed with tons of recoverable data. Well, here's one way to keep that from happening: nuke 'em. Concord, NC maker Brian Little and some friends stacked up hard drives recovered from Davidson College machines and melted them with thermite. Brian described the project:

Four guys and one intrepid GF use roughly 40lbs of thermite to incinerate (most of) a stack of used hard drives. The results weren't quite what we hoped for in terms of destruction, but for sheer pyrotechnic effect, a big bucket o' thermite is hard to beat.

Note: Thermite "recipes" are available online for the googling. I'm lazy, and also not stupid, so I just bought mine. Again, Google is your pal here. Also note: Thermite is relatively dangerous. It is intensely energetic and burns out around 2500°F. Once it starts burning, it is going to finish, and will laugh wickedly at your pitiful attempts to extinguish it. I can play with it because I am an adult with insurance and a healthy sense of self-preservation. If you elect to play with this stuff and burn down your parents' home, land yourself in the hospital with third-degree burns or incinerate your grandmother's car, that's your own lookout. I'm not responsible for you.

Here's a fun video of the burn:

As well as more pix.

What is the most radical data security measures you've ever used to protect your own or someone else's data?

Ham Radio 101: Getting Started Without a License

There's plenty of fun to be had with ham radio even if you don't have a license. You can get a handheld radio to listen in on what's going on while you are out and about or get a base station/desktop radio. You can listen to activities on local repeaters. Repeaters allow ham radio operators to talk locally, they send a signal to a repeater and it transmits the signal to other radios in the area. You can listen in to their conversations or to Nets, regular ham meet us on repeaters that discuss a certain topic. A larger desktop radio with a longer antenna will also be able to receive amateur HF communications sent directly from ham radios around the world, you can listen to conversations from places like Germany, Kazakhstan, or Japan.

1. Local repeaters can be found by location at this website, tune the frequency of your radio to the output. Even though the repeater is on, it might not be in use meaning that you might not hear anything. You can program several frequencies into your radio, then tune the radio to the different frequencies until you catch a conversation.

2. You can find a schedule of nets and their frequencies on the ARRL website which lists all nets registered with the ARRL. If you have a handheld, select "local nets" and select 2m or 70 cm for the frequency. You will find nets discussing topics ranging from emergency safety (ARES, RACES) to women in ham radio (YL).

3. If your radio can receive HF (high frequency) communications, you can tune around to different stations to listen in. Or you can check DX clusters online which spot operators from rare locations and post their frequency. The call signs of operators from rare locations are listed under "dx". You can mouse-over the call sign to see where the operator is located.

When you are listening in on ham radio, chances are you will hear a lot codes such as 73, cq, qsl, these are abbreviations that were originally used in Morse code and are now used when speaking. You can find a list of them here.

Most ham radios can tune in to frequencies that aren't on the ham bands. At the airport you can listen to air traffic control. In the subway, you can listen to the local transit station and hear what is going on behind the scenes. A lot of handheld radios are waterproof so at the beach you can listen to lifeguard stations or the coast guard. You can listen to Nascar raceways and speedways, zoos, police stations, fire stations, short wave radio, subway and public transportation radios, space shuttle reentry, weather, etc.. All you need is a radio and a guide to the frequencies to tune in to.

1. Local fire department, police department, transit, school safety, sanitation, hospitals, zoos, parks and lifeguards. When you listen to the police stations, you will notice that they use a lot of codes, "we have a 11-24 on Greene and Fort St.". You can learn what those codes mean here.

2. Airport frequencies
Type in the airport code (i.e. JFK) and learn the frequencies for control tower, approaching flights, departing flights, pre-taxi clearance, etc.

3. Nascar raceways and speedways
Free list of frequencies
List of frequencies that you must pay for

4. Local weather

5. Space shuttle frequencies are only transmitted locally. But you can find retransmissions on your local frequencies toward the bottom on the page.

A handheld radio is a really fun thing to bring out with friends to a bar or party. There's always something interesting happening on the radio sure to spur conversation and help you meet new friends. Just program some frequencies into your radio and you will be all set to go. I've found that the police and fire station radios are most exciting to listen to. You can bring earphones and a splitter if you are going to a quieter place like a coffee shop where you might disturb the other patrons.

Birthday cannon

Pt 2130
Happy birthday, here's your cannon... @ Dailymail

Mike Daugherty asked his 11-year-old son Logan what he wanted for his birthday. The boy said, "I want a cannon." Dad didn't scoff at Logan's request by saying, "How about a hippopotamus instead," as a Christmas song from another era lamented. No, Daugherty is not that kind of guy. He granted his son's wish and built him a Civil War-era cannon not a model, the real deal. The howitzer fires and rivals anything seen at Civil War reenactments across the country. He said it took him about two weeks to build and is worth about $6,000. "It looks like something right out of the battle at Gettysburg," Daugherty said. The cast iron and steel 4-inch gun barrel is 36 inches long. It is mounted on a wooden gun carriage with two 36- inch diameter wheels. The cannon weighs about 700 pounds, so it is not something Logan will be able to carry to school in his backpack.

I-Swarm, real micro-sized robots!

These tiny I-Swarm (Intelligent Small-World Autonomous Robots for Micro-manipulation) robots are incredibly neat! They move by using a piezoelectric transducer to vibrate across a surface in a manner similar to a bristlebot, only controllable. Because they are vibrating at audible frequencies, they also produce pleasant sounds as they move about. Someone should choreograph a tiny performance for them! [via hizook]

Upcoming Rock Band Network let's you author tracks …

An in-house fave here @ Make: Online, Rock Band 2 for Xbox360 will soon be opening up to independent developers à la iPhone's App Sore. Peter Kirn of Create Digital Music gives an in-depth look at the what it will take to make your own music playable on the upcoming Rock Band Network. The process will require a licensed copy of Reaper audio software ($60, easily worth it on its own), a membership in Microsoft's XNA Creators’ Club ($100), plus of course an Xbox360 & copy of Rock Band 2. The Network is currently in closed beta, with a launch planned for October. More details over at CDM.

Stay tab chain maille tutorial

Back in March, Becky posted a link to a lampshade I made using this technique. Instructables user quixotiCfluX has posted a great tutorial showing the details of the process. He uses a cool trick with a staple remover to make sure all the tabs have exactly the same bend, which results in very uniform maille.

How-To: Electric maracas

Creme DeMentia of GetLoFi shares the steps he took to turn a pair of common plastic maracas into piezo-powered electric maracas! Scroll down for details here.

Welcome guest contributor John Baichtal!

Please join me in welcoming John Baichtal to Make: Online! Let him tell you a bit about himself:

I'm a nerd interested in electronics, games, building sets, art and design, toys, hacking and writing. You may have seen my posts on the GeekDad blog, where I've been a contributor for over two years. I reside in beautiful Minneapolis, Minnesota with my lovely wife and three kids.

You'll be seeing more from him this week, and if you can't get enough, you can also follow him on Twitter. Welcome, John!

Arduino Pro housing in aluminum

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Flickr member kc6qhp created this impressive enclosure for an Arduino Pro -

I made this housing for an Arduino Pro that will control my waveguide relay in my 47 GHz radio. This housing is made from 6061 billet aluminum. The cover is held on with a dozen 0-80 screws. There i a cutout for the programming connection and a filtered DC feedthrough. Later I will add other connectors for the servo and transmit/receive switch, etc.

Sturdy! - more pics on Flickr.

And I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords

David over at Boing-Boing spotted this jaw-dropping video of an experimental robot arm doing things that scare the bejeesus out of me. David writes:

Researchers from the Ishikawa Komuro Laboratory at the University of Tokyo presented this incredible video of a high-speed robotic hand at the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation. The laboratory's Web site has many more videos related to this project, called Sensor Fusion. Sensor Fusion: High Speed Robots

For my money, the most impressive stuff is around 2:22, near the end.

AR navigation system for Android

Wikitude Drive is an AR navigation system for the Android platform. Originally developed as a proof-of-concept, the app is a fully-functional navigation system that draws turn-by-turn directions over the live camera. [via AndroidGuys]

Shattering door by Leandro Erlich

Pt 2128
Pt 2129
Shattering door by Leandro Erlich...

Controlling a light with your mobile via XMPP

Using a couple computers, a PhidgetInterfaceKit with RelayBoard, and a bevy of client/server software, Matthias Wagler and friends from Intuity Media Lab built a Rube Goldberg XMPP messaging system to frob a light using an Andorid-powered mobile device. Check out this behind-the-scenes video detailing set-up.

[via hackaday]

Speaking of 'Making Things Talk"...