It's hot here in Sebastopol. So hot, that the PG&E substation across the street blew a transformer and knocked out our power yesterday afternoon. So.... Under the category of anything is a good excuse for a promotion, we'll do the "dog days" promotion now through midnight Sunday, August 31. Visit MakerShed and enter "dogdays" as the promotional code and get 20% off everything in your shopping cart. Offer expires midnight PST this Sunday (9/1).

Get Ready to Rumble!

MakePhilly's own 3rd annual Art Buggy Derby (www.ArtBuggy.com) is being held on October 19, 2008 and this year it is an official event of Design Philadelphia! So grab your foot powered buggy... race it, create art with it, and win $500 CASH!

What is the Art Buggy Derby?
It is the world's only live event that mashes together interactive art making, MacGyver style craft, and creative materials reuse. The idea is pure insanity and fun:  Build a foot powered 'buggy' that creates art as you race it against another team's buggy.  Wow the crowd with your artistic creation and win $500 cash or one of many other cash & prizes!  See video of last year's derby here: www.ArtBuggy.com

Register Now!
ANYONE can build an Art Buggy! You don't need to be an artist or engineer... just take everyday items (especially those destined for a landfill) and assign them a new role in life. Use an old skateboard or tricycle for the Buggy base or recycle wallpaper for a canvas. Register here!

What are the Prizes?
1st Place: $500 CASH!
Runner Up: $250 CASH!
Plus: Cash & Prizes in at least these 8 other categories!

What Qualifies as a Buggy?
Anything powered by your feet - scooters, wheeled things, or make your own....

What Qualifies as Art?
Mark making that captures the journey of the race (without your assistance!)

Tell Me More!
Visit www.ArtBuggy.com

Make Magazine has portrayed the work of thousands of makers across America. Now we're looking to discover the most innovative makers whose work has the potential to benefit others. We've created a new event called American Maker that will debut September 20th at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago as part of the launch of Science Chicago.

Organized by the editors of Make magazine and the producers of Maker Faire, American Maker is a live, day-long program that highlights grassroots innovation in local communties around the country. Editors from Make magazine and a panel of judges will be at the Museum of Science and Industry to look at the work of a select group of twenty makers. These makers will be judged on the originality of their concept, the design and craftsmanship behind the work, along with the potential for others to benefit from this work. The winner of American Maker in Chicago will receive a $500 prize along with publication in an upcoming issue of Make magazine.

If you're a Chicago-area maker, and you've created a cool new project that has the potential to benefit others, submit an entry here.

The goal of American Maker is to showcase grassroots innovation from Chicago-area makers. We're looking for makers who are are working on cool projects and whose work has the potential to benefit others. We believe that makers are a leading force in grassroots innovation -- where individuals see a need to create something new. American Maker is a friendly competition and the winner will be awarded a $500 cash prize plus publication in a future issue of Make.

NOTE: American Maker will take place as part of LabFest, which is the kickoff of Science Chicago on September 20th. The hours of LabFest are 9:30am to 4:00pm. Admission to the museum is free.

Willoughby and Baltic, founded in 2001, became home to DorkbotBoston in January 2005. Since then, the former gallery has been bursting at it's seams while juggling robotics classes, hacker meetings, and exhibition planning. In October 2008, Willoughby and Baltic will acquire two additional locations to support the growing hacker and maker communities in Boston. This volunteer-run initiative is a result of our growing community, and will serve as a center in the Somerville/Cambridge area for like-minded tinkerers and builders.

Willoughby and Baltic
195g Elm Street
Somerville, MA 02144

Phone: 617-501-0197
Fax: 617-904-1741

Read more about Willoughby and Baltic

More information about the Information Session

Official shot of the complex (above). From Shawn's Flickr set (below).

Living roofs with skylights. They are heat sensitive and open automatically when they reach a certain temperature to get a breeze going inside

Bloggers and Bay Area journos were invited on a behind-the-scenes, not-quite-ready-for-primetime tour of the updated Steinhart Aquarium and California Academy of Sciences recently. It's all slated to re-open the end of September. Shawn Connally, MAKE's Managing Editor, jumped at the chance to go on the hour-and-a-half long tour and snapped some pics along the way. She says she's definitely ready to sign up for a membership!

California Academy of Sciences

Austin's Treasure City Thrift is having their annual recycled fashion show in October, and they're looking for creative types to model, design accessories, and do other generally helpful things. Here's the form to apply; they've already filled the spots for clothing designers, so those interested should get to it. But, as the photo above clearly shows, you're in for some stiff competition:)

Update: The protesters (including James Powderly) will spend 10 days in jail for the illuminated LED "Free Tibet" sign.

When Eric Wilhelm finished his PhD in mechanical engineering at MIT, he and three friends started Squid Labs, a consultancy based in Emeryville, CA, that finds fixes for clients' technical problems (how to make solar-collecting concrete, for example). But Squid Labs was also founded as a place where the colleagues could explore their own projects and ideas--funding them through their consulting jobs. In 2005, Wilhelm had an idea for a how-to website where people could share step-by-step visual instructions for original projects. The team spun the site out into its own company, and Instructables was born.

Wilhelm had hit upon the idea at the right time, just as the spirit behind open-source software began permeating other technological fields. Instructables offers its growing community of more than 300,000 registered users an easy way to document do-it-yourself technology projects and share ideas with others. --Kate Greene

As mentioned before, we're doing a Best of Instructables book. Instructables ran a contest on the site to find the 50 best Instructables, as voted on by the users. The results are now on the site. Congrats to the winners. Their projects will be listed in the book (some of them will be featured as full projects) and they'll each get a copy of the book when it's published.

We want to add value to the book by having some material that's not on the Instructables site (or anywhere else). We plan on running sidebars on some of the projects with tips from folks who've built them and can offer interesting tips, alternative build techniques, or just cool, amusing, or cautionary tales about the project. So, to collect some of these, Maker Media is running a contest.

Write up your tips/stories and send then to me at gareth@makezine.com. The submission can be about any Instructable, not just the ones we're running in the book. The Make: Books team will look over all of the submissions and award three winners. All three winners will get copies of The Maker's Notebook, MAKE rubber bands, and Maker's Notebook sticker sheets. The winning submissions (and other entries) will be considered for inclusion in The Best of Instructables. If we use your submission, you'll get a comp copy of the book it when it comes out.

In the Maker Shed:

Pick up The Maker's Notebook ($19.99) for all your ideas, diagrams, patterns, and great references in the back.

And who better to choose what makes a good Cylon than two people who’ve lived the experience? Battlestar's’s Tricia Helfer and Grace Park (Cylon numbers Six and Eight, for those keeping track) looked at each and every entry sent in and came up with a list of their Top 10 favorites.

No more waiting. See all the winning entries @ DVICE's site!

On October 15, the Discovery Channel will debut its new show, Prototype This! The show is centered around the efforts of its four hosts, from left, Zoz Brooks, Terry Sandin, Joe Grand, and Mike North, to conceive of, design, test, and build prototypes of new robots, gadgets and other machines. Here, the four co-hosts pose on a giant water slide they built that was based on the concept of a perpetual water slide.

Luke Iseman lives and makes in Austin, Texas. Having escaped from his cubicle just in time to maintain a bit of creativity, he works on assorted projects all day and drives a bicycle taxi by night (really). His favorite completed project is the Honeybike, a GPS cell phone married to a stun gun to prevent further theft of his bicycles. This photo is from his attempt to make an electric motorcycle at Maker Faire Austin last year (it worked for 15 glorious minutes before the motor melted). 'Coming someday soon' projects include a guerrilla urban farm, robot chicken tractor, greywater vegetable garden, and humanure composting system. He's really hoping the last one works better than his average project:)

Dorkbot-psu is holding their next meeting on September 3rd and is trying to get some idea of how many people will be attending. Overlord Pete Marchetto writes:

dorkbot-psu meeting: Sept. 3rd, 6-9p, State College, PA
We are a chapter of dorkbot, an international organization of people doing strange things with electricity. We'll be meeting at Webster's Bookstore Café on S. Allen St. on Wednesday, Sept. 3rd from 6-9p in the Sci-Fi and Fantasy section. Come one and all, and bring your questions, projects, and/or appreciation for the weird. Some of us will be showing our current projects, and some of us will be working on new ones. A raffle or game may be held with prizes for the winner. Please send a message to this e-mail address if you wish to come, as we need an approximate number beforehand.

dorkbot-psu

Our pal I-Wei Huang, of Crabfu Steamworks, has issued a challenge on the Trossen Robotics Forums. It's a contest, judged my I-Wei, to find the most "characterful" robot. He writes:

To bring a bunch of hardware the illusion of life and character. This is NOT about AI or fancy software or hardware. It's not to achieve real character or personality, but the ILLUSION of it. Autonomous robots can enter too, but this isn't a contest of the smartest robot, but a smartest "looking" and "moving" robot could win. This is about the art of breathing some charm into a bunch of electronics.

The prize is a $100 gift certificate from Trossen.

CONTEST: The Crabfu Challenge

image courtesy Douglas Filiak

Dorkbot Austin is now seeking makers to present at our monthly meetings. Past presenters have included:

• ArcAttack! and their Singing Tesla Coils


• The Robot Group's Mechanical Flowers, Robo Spin Art, Screaming Babyhead Band, and more


• John P. Funk's awesome miniatures and cozmic sounds


• Eric Wilhelm from Instructables: "How to Start Companies to Live Your Dreams - or trick yourself into thinking you're living your dreams..."

No project too big or too small, so long as it's interesting and involves you making something weird (we interpret "with electricity" loosely here).

We're looking for 15-minute presentations as well as quicker "Open Dork" speakers. To present, email us details on your project. And, watch the Make calendar for our upccoming Dorkbots!

The Buckminster Fuller Institute has an annual Buckminster Fuller Challenge, a $100,000 prize for "comprehensive solutions that radically advance human well-being and ecosystem health." The 2008 prize was awarded in June, in NYC. Check out their Challenge webpage for a list of submissions and winners. The 2009 Challenge will begin this fall.

Welcome to the Buckminster Fuller Challenge Idea Index [Thanks, Ron!]

More:

• The Buckminster Fuller challenge

Each week, Make: television will showcase the best projects from Makers who submit their videos, a segment of the show we call Maker Channel.

This segment features the videos made by Makers themselves - a showcase of the "best of the best" of YouTube-style videos. We think this is a great way to see the people behind the projects and we feel it's important to give a little control of the show back to the viewer. To do this, we need your help!

If you've built something inspired, useful, imaginative, ingenious, or just plain clever, share your genius with the world. Produce a one to three minute long video that shows the best thing that you've made and send it to us. If it's really good, we'll use it on Maker Channel and you'll revel in glory and admiration, plus you'll receive a gift certificate to the Maker Shed and a subscription to Make: magazine.

More details at the MAKE: Television & project submissions page!

Circuit City headquarters has ordered their stores to "destroy all copies" of the latest issue of Mad Magazine, according to an anonymous tipster. The retailer apparently isn't amused by the 4-page spoof of "Sucker City." Inside, Mad's 1-page preview and headquarters' response.

If you're a MAKE subscriber, you get the digital edition for free - MAKE Digital Edition is a vivid replica of the print edition of MAKE, it offers an experience very much like the print magazine plus many additional benefits, such as online searching, embedded multimedia and printing. Please note that MAKE Digital Edition can be viewed from any web browser (i.e. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari etc.) and requires NO DOWNLOADING of software NO weird DRM'ed PDFs - you get instant access to your entire MAKE collection!

Click any of the links below and start reading MAKE now. Or subscribe and get started a little later! Use the code CMAKE to get $5 off (USA only).

Living Room Baja Buggies by John Mouton. With wireless cameras on board, these radio-controlled racers give you virtual reality telepresence. Page 96. Living Room Baja Buggies.

Scanner Camera by Mike Golembewski. Mod a flatbed scanner to take photos that decontruct time and motion. Page 78. Scanner Camera

Page Yourself by Brian O'Heir. When you want to put up your own website, how free can a freebie be? Page 88. Page Yourself.

Timothy and the Chocolate Factory by David Pescovitz. How a space shuttle technologist and the founder of Wired magazine hacked together a homebrew chocolate lab. Page 28. Timothy and the Chocolate Factory.

Yabba Dabba DIY by Ed Troxell. Bill LeMaster built the Flintstone car for his grandkids' Halloween costume. Page 22. Yabba Dabba DIY .

Lensless Microscope by Tom Zimmerman. A webcam's image chip is an ultrafine shadow-imaging stage. Page 64. Lensless Microscope.

Status: Stinky by Bruce Stewart. Want someone to know how many times you applied deodorant today? Neither do the creators of Zero Privacy. Page 20. Status: Stinky.

Wireless Motion Sensing Made Easy by Tom Igoe. XBee radios track every hit in roller derby action! Page 125. Wireless Motion Sensing Made Easy.

Covert Spy Sunglasses by Kip Kedersha. Record what you see and hear with these low-cost stealthy sunglasses. Page 138. Covert Spy Sunglasses.

Ten ITP students are doing 5 Projects in 5 Days:

"5-in-5 is a group event based on the New York University ITP resident researchers' project "7 in Seven" that took place the second week of June 2008. The premise goes something like this: Do a creative project every day for five straight days, starting Monday, July 28th 2008 Projects must be completed in a day, so they need to be as compact as they are creative. Each project needs a name and documentation posted by the end of the day. It should be a stand-alone accomplishment."

The original event has been enhanced with Guest Stars, daily meetings and snacks. I'll be blogging about each day here and on my own site.

From Left to Right: Armanda, Vikram, Andy, Adam, Corey, Josh, Christian, Kristin and Rob. My head is poking up behind Corey's shoulder.

Days: 1 2 3 4 5

For now, here's our test with LegalTorrents, a 500mb HD version of Citizen Engineer & torrent.

More:

Volume 12 - Remake Your Own Hollywood Movie (Page 76).

Tomorrow night, Thursday, July 24, as part of its week-long grand opening celebrations, HacDC is holding a town hall meeting to discuss hackerspace, the open source community, and the future of hacker/maker orgs in the metro area. I will be a member of the panel, representing MAKE, Alberto Gaitan will be representing Dorkbot DC, and Nick Farr will hold the fort for HacDC. I hope to see you there if you can make it.

Other Grand Opening events:

• Friday, July 25: HacDC invades The Brickskeller!  Come by and enjoy great beer with your favorite group of hacker space members! (The Brickskeller, 1523 22nd St NW, 8:30 PM - 2:00 AM)
• Saturday, July 26: Paying homage to Grace Hopper.  Come join us for Lunch in Columbia Heights and an afternoon outing to Arlington National Cemetry to pay tribute to "Amazing Grace".  (Meet at HacDC at Noon).  Then join us back at HacDC as we prepare for our Sunday opening!
• Sunday, July 27: OUR OFFICIAL GRAND OPENING CEREMONY! Join us for our official grand opening ceremony!  At 8:00, join us as our members receive their Black Lab Coats.  Our "commencement" address will be given by Jens Ohlig, one of the key figures behind the Global Hackerspace Movement.  Lots of projects and other things shall be on display throughout the day.  (HacDC opens at 3:00 PM, Ceremony at 8:00 PM with reception to follow)

HacDC

The next Dorkbot SoCal is this coming Saturday, July 26, 2008, at Machine Project (1200 D North Alvarado Street, Los Angeles, CA).

Presenters:

Steven Gentner
Steven Gentner will be speaking about a robot project built using RoboRealm, a powerful free computer vision based application for use in machine vision, image analysis, and image processing systems.

Gil Kuno
Through careful social conditioning, the mind is guided to think within certain patterns. Gil Kuno tries to redirect the flow of the mind outside of the set patterns we are taught by society to construct. Most of his works displace natural activity from its context, revealing an otherwise hidden level of metaphorical absurdity within the ordinary patterns present before our eyes. Much of his work revolves around the experience of sound. Gil Kuno is based in Tokyo and Los Angeles.

Brett Doar
Brett Doar is a "paratechnologist" who creates "idiosyncratic electro-mechanical creatures out of inappropriate materials."

Dorkbot SoCal

Austin Children's Museum
201 Colorado Street
Austin, TX
(512) 472-2499

According to slashdot, the most recent named dwarf planet is "Makemake". It's Polynesian, so I'd imagine it's "Mah-kee Mah-kee", but still, what's better than your blog's own tiki-god named planet???

Jim and Scott invite all potential TechShop members and "makers" from the Durham and surrounding area to join them for the "TechShop Durham Pre-Opening Celebration". You'll have the chance to check out the new (empty) building, talk with Scott and Jim about what you want to see at the TechShop Durham facility, and find out what the plans are during an open Q/A session.

Date and Time:
Saturday, July 12, 2008 from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM

Location:
TechShop Durham
4022 Stirrup Creek Dr
Durham, NC 27703

You will also get to meet Ted Hall from ShopBot (makers of the cool ShopBot CNC router that is standard equipment at every TechShop location), and Mike Drummond, editor of Inventors Digest magazine, at this event.

Jim and Scott ask that you please RSVP by filling out the form on the TechShop Durham web site if you plan to attend.

TechShop Durham web site.
TechShop Menlo park web site.
TechShop Live Class Catalog.

Jim and Scott invite all potential TechShop members and "makers" from the Durham and surrounding area to join them for the "TechShop Durham Pre-Opening Celebration". You'll have the chance to check out the new (empty) building, talk with Scott and Jim about what you want to see at the TechShop Durham facility, and find out what the plans are during an open Q/A session.

Date and Time:
Saturday, July 12, 2008 from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM

Location:
TechShop Durham
4022 Stirrup Creek Dr
Durham, NC 27703

You will also get to meet Ted Hall from ShopBot (makers of the cool ShopBot CNC router that is standard equipment at every TechShop location), and Mike Drummond, editor of Inventors Digest magazine, at this event.

Jim and Scott ask that you please RSVP by filling out the form on the TechShop Durham web site if you plan to attend.

TechShop Durham web site.
TechShop Menlo park web site.
TechShop Live Class Catalog.

If you're a MAKE subscriber, you get the digital edition for free - MAKE Digital Edition is a vivid replica of the print edition of MAKE, it offers an experience very much like the print magazine plus many additional benefits, such as online searching, embedded multimedia and printing. Please note that MAKE Digital Edition can be viewed from any web browser (i.e. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari etc.) and requires NO DOWNLOADING of software NO weird DRM'ed PDFs - you get instant access to your entire MAKE collection!

Click any of the links below and start reading MAKE now. Or subscribe and get started a little later! Use the code CMAKE to get $5 off (USA only).

Living Room Baja Buggies by John Mouton. With wireless cameras on board, these radio-controlled racers give you virtual reality telepresence. Page 96

Yabba Dabba DIY by Ed Troxell. Bill LeMaster built the Flintstone car for his grandkids' Halloween costume. Page 22

Too Much Time on My Hands by Cory Doctorow. All creative endeavor begins with just fooling around. Enjoy it. Page 14

Scanner Camera by Mike Golembewski. Mod a flatbed scanner to take photos that decontruct time and motion. Page 78

My Homebrew 3D Scanner by Tim Anderson. Imagine a camera that captures the shapes of things, and a printer that prints out those shapes. Page 192

Earth, Wind, Inspire by Linda Permann. Page 16

Status: Stinky by Bruce Stewart. Want someone to know how many times you applied deodorant today? Neither do the creators of Zero Privacy. Page 20

Musical Engineerity by Peter KirnWant - robots to be musical, creative, and expressive? Better brush up on your engineering. Page 18

MAKE is on "FriendFeed" - on one page (or RSS feed you can see our Flickr photos, twitterings, YouTube'ing and more. Visit our MAKE FriendFeed page to bookmark, add as a friend or to just check it out (is MAKE the only magazine up there so far?). "Subscribing" isn't actually subscribing to the magazine, it just adds you as a friend :)