We had a great contest this year, with tons of awesome projects, and frankly we had a heckuva time picking winners. But the votes are all in now, and with the scores finally tabulated, I am pleased to announced the winners of the Make: Halloween Contest 2009.

The envelope please....

Third runner-up: Everett Bradford's "Prometheus Device"

Everett has won an F1 Evaluation Platform (valued at $39.99), plus a $50 Maker Shed gift certificate.

Second runner-up: Eric Kingston's "Silly String Shooting Pumpkin"

Eric has won a PICKIT 3 (valued at $69.99), plus a $50 Maker Shed gift certificate.

First runner-up: Ian Fagan's "Ghostbusters Proton Pack"

Ian has won a PICDEM Lab (valued at $124.99), plus a $50 Maker Shed gift certificate.

Grand Prize Winner: Jared Martin's "Mr. Bones and the Gourditos"

Jared has won a Microchip Starter Kit Bundle (valued at $600.00) which includes a PIC18 Starter Kit, a PIC24F Starter Kit, a dsPIC DSC Starter Kit, a PIC32 Starter Kit, a Memory Starter Kit, an F1 Evaluation Platform, and a PICKIT 3.

Congratulations to all our winners and, indeed, to everyone who entered! And thanks to our sponsor, Microchip Technology, for making the whole thing possible!

Happy Halloween!

As a special preview for our upcoming Alex Rider Dream Gadget Contest, we're giving away two copies of Eagle Strike by Anthony Horowitz, part of the Alex Rider series! Just leave a comment in this post and tell us why you or your kid(s) needs one of these books. That's all you need to do to enter! Please make sure you include your email address in the comment form field (it won't be published). All eligible comments will be closed by Noon PST on Sunday, November 8th. The winners will be announced next week on the site. Good luck!

More:

• Alex Rider's Smokescreen Bike Pump
• Alex Rider's Geiger Counter Game Console
• Alex Rider's High Tensile Yo-Yo
  

For folks interested in the intersection of arts and science, the PBS series Independent Lens is presenting a fascinating in-depth look into origami titled Between the Folds. The film documents "a determined group of theoretical scientists and fine artists who have abandoned their careers and scoffed at their graduate degrees to forge new lives as modern-day paper folders."

Featured in the film are MIT's youngest-ever tenured professor Dr. Erik Demaine; mathematician, sculptor, puzzle maker, and self-taught computer scientist Marty Demaine; master free-style folder Vincent Floderer; pioneering Israeli educator Miri Golan; mathematics professor Dr. Tom Hull; trained artist and instructor Paul Jackson; one of the most technically accomplished folders in the world, Eric Joisel; one of only a few handmade origami papermakers in the world, Michael LaFosse; origami "hyper-realist" and physicist Dr. Robert J. Lang (who was profiled in CRAFT Volume 05); material artist with a masterful understanding of patterns and geometry, Chris K. Palmer; and the father of modern origami, Akira Yoshizawa.

Screenings are part of the Independent Television Service's (ITVS) Community Cinema series, which are free, followed by discussion panels and access to resources.

Between the Folds will be showing in the Bay Area in Oakland on Tuesday, November 17 at 6:00 p.m. at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center and in San Francisco on Wednesday, November 18 at 5:45 p.m. at the San Francisco Main Library. For a list of screenings taking place across the country, check out the film site.

Here are a couple of interesting excerpts from the documentary to get a flavor for it. The following clip features Paul Jackson, an origami artists and art teacher living in Tel Aviv, Israel, speaking of the "one fold":

And this clip shows Michael LaFosse, a master artisan who not only makes origami, but is one of the only handmade origami paper makers in the world, providing a window into his workshop and processes:

As a special preview for our upcoming Alex Rider Dream Gadget Contest, we're giving away two copies of Eagle Strike by Anthony Horowitz, part of the Alex Rider series! Just leave a comment in this post and tell us why you or your kid(s) needs one of these books. That's all you need to do to enter! Please make sure you include your email address in the comment form field (it won't be published). All eligible comments will be closed by Noon PST on Sunday, November 8th. The winners will be announced next week on the site. Good luck!

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

There's still time left to enter the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Deadline is 11:59 PM PST, November 3rd. Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

Starting on December 5, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will award $40,000 to the first registered team to correctly report the location of ten eight-foot-diameter red weather balloons distributed randomly across the continental United States. From the challenge website:

To mark the 40th anniversary of the Internet, DARPA has announced the DARPA Network Challenge, a competition that will explore the role the Internet and social networking plays in the timely communication, wide area team-building and urgent mobilization required to solve broad scope, time-critical problems.

Personally, I think 99 red balloons would've been better, for marketing purposes, than 10. I guess that would take way too long. [via Hack a Day]

Don't forget, we're now publishing a monthly Make: Newsletter. The November edition will be emailed out this coming week. The newsletter covers news and happenings around Maker Media, what's going on here at Make: Online, and contains original material, such as my new "Maker's Dictionary" column, a growing glossary of perennial tech terms and cutting-edge DIY, science, and tech-related jargon and slang.

You can sign up for the newsletter here.
Here to see last month's edition.

Our pals at ThinkGeek are having a contest to see who can design the coolest/geekiest pumpkin-carving template. You can view/download the entries at their contest page.

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

As a special preview for our upcoming Alex Rider Dream Gadget Contest, we're giving away two copies of Skeleton Key by Anthony Horowitz, the third book in the Alex Rider series. Just leave a comment in this post and tell us why you or your kid(s) needs one of these books. Please make sure you include your email address in the comment form field (it won't be published). All eligible comments will be closed by Noon PST on Sunday, November 1st. The winners will be announced next week on the site. Good luck!

More:

• Alex Rider's Geiger Counter Game Console
• Alex Rider's High Tensile Yo-Yo
  

The giveaway frenzy continues. Note that the prize bundle has changed slightly this time. Now it consists of one Microchip Technology PIC10F Cap Touch Demo Board and one MCP1252 Charge Pump Backlight Demo Board.

Beginning at noon PDT today, and closing at noon PDT tomorrow, we will be accepting comments, below, describing the Halloween-y use (or uses) to which you would put said bundle.

For this giveaway, the prompt is: "How would you use the prize bundle in a Hack-'o-lantern?"

The winner will be announced tomorrow afternoon at the bottom of the comment thread. Be sure to include a valid e-mail address.

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

There's precious little time left to enter the Alex Rider book Giveaway! Get your comments in on the giveaway post for your chance to win a copy of Stormbreaker or Point Blank. This giveaway is part of our upcoming Alex Rider Dream Gadget Contest, which will launch the same day as MAKE, Volume 20 and the new Alex Rider book, Crocodile Tears.

Tomorrow, Friday the 23rd, at noon Pacific time, we will be giving away another prize bundle consisting of one Microchip Technology PIC10F Cap Touch Demo Board and one MCP1650 Multiple White LED Demo Board.

This time, the winner will be selected from among our Twitter followers. Send us an @reply containing the phrase "Microchip Technology giveaway theta" and your name will be in the hat, too.

The winner will be announced Friday afternoon through our Twitter feed. If you enter, please be sure to check your Twitter account promptly after the contest is over; DMs are the only way we have to contact you if you win!

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

On November 17th, we'll be launching the Alex Rider Dream Gadget Contest, to coincide with the release of the next chapter in Alex's adventures, Crocodile Tears. The book comes out the same day that MAKE, Volume 20 (the kid-themed issue) hits newsstands! In case you're unaware, Alex Rider is a young spy whose exploits are chronicled in a popular series of teen spy/adventure books. Alex uses all sorts of crazy high tech contraptions, made from things in his school backpack, to get out of sticky situations.

MAKE is teaming up with the Penguin Group to present The Alex Rider Dream Gadget Contest.

Attention all adventure-seekers, gadget lovers, and closet inventors. You are invited to join in the fun! If you were Alex Rider, what gadget would you want in the upcoming adventure Crocodile Tears? Design your Alex Rider dream gadget, inspired by an everyday object (i.e. an iPod, a toothpaste tube, a pen). The winning gadget will be built here at MAKE Labs. Send us a schematic, tell us what your gadget is made from, and how it works. Your entry can be a schematic, sketches, and/or an explanation by you. Remember that the winning gadget should be inspired by an everyday object that one could realistically build (as much as we wish we could create a pair of scissors that fly us to the moon)!

Over the next few weeks, we'll be offering excerpts from the Alex Rider books, highlighting the fantastic, clever (and entirely fictional) gadgets used by Alex. We'll also be giving away a whole pile of books from the series!

The gadgets schematics we'll be sharing with you are all from Alex Rider: The Gadgets, a special illustrated book of gadgets described in the novels. In the series, M16 agent Smithers creates these clever tools for Alex to use on his missions. First up is the high-tensile yo-yo from Stormbreaker, useful for climbing:

High-tensile yo-yo:This black plastic yo-yo, slightly larger than standard, is in fact a miracle of miniaturized engineering. When it is activated using a concealed switch, it acts as a winch, winding the cord back around the axle. It is intended to clip in an agent's belt for use as a climbing aid. One half of the yo-yo contains the micromotor array, made from super-tough carbon fiber components. A complex micromechanical gear system delivers up to 350 watts of power.

The other half houses the highly advanced lanthanum/nickel/tin battery, which supplies as much current as a car battery yet fits into less than a tenth of the space. The battery holds enough charge to let the motor run continuously for one hour. When it is due to be recharged, the agent needs only to use the device as a yo-yo; the spinning motion runs a tiny generator in its core and will charge the unit fully in approximately fifteen minutes. The cord itself is made from an advanced form of nylon that can lift weights of up to two hundred pounds. One hundred feet of it are wound around the central axle.

Because the yo-yo may have to be used as a toy, either to recharge the battery or to pass inspection, it has been designed to function normally despite the unusually long cord; this has been achieved by using a pair of axles, inner and outer. When the yo-yo is dropped, the cord pays out to a length of one yard before the outer axle locks in place. The two sides can then spin around the inner one. Pulling the cord harder unlocks the outer axle and allows the entire hundred feet to unwind.

Check out the high-res gadget schematic of the yo-yo for more details. Alex uses it to get out of a very high-flung predicament in Stormbreaker:

He was suspended underneath the plane by a single thin white cord, twisting around and around as he was carried ever farther into the air. The wind was rushing past him, battering his face and deafening him. He couldn't even hear the propellers, just above his head. The belt was cutting into his waist. He could hardly breathe. Desperately, he scrabbled for the yo-yo and found the control he wanted. A single button. He pressed it and the tiny powerful motor inside the yo-yo began to turn. The yo-yo rotated on his belt, pulling in the cord. Very slowly, an inch at a time, Alex was drawn up toward the plane.

To get a bigger taste of Stormbreaker, download a sample excerpt.

Disclaimer: Excerpts from Alex Rider: The Gadgets by Anthony Horowitz are fictional and for inspiration only. Readers should not attempt to recreate these gadgets.

Book Giveaway Time!

First up, we're giving away two copies each of Stormbreaker and Point Blank. Just leave a comment in this post and tell us why you or your kid(s) needs one of these books. Please make sure you include your email address in the comment form field (it won't be published). All eligible comments will be closed by Noon PDT on Sunday, October 25th. The winners will be announced next week on the site. Good luck!

Beginning at noon PDT today, and closing at noon PDT tomorrow, we will be accepting comments, below, describing the Halloween-y use (or uses) to which you would put the prize bundle consisting of one Microchip Technology PIC10F Cap Touch Demo Board and one MCP1650 Multiple White LED Demo Board.

For this giveaway, the prompt is: "How would you use the prize bundle in a Halloween costume?"

The winner will be announced tomorrow afternoon at the bottom of the comment thread. Be sure to include a valid e-mail address.

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

Tomorrow, Friday the 16th, at noon Pacific time, we will be giving away another prize bundle consisting of one Microchip Technology PIC10F Cap Touch Demo Board and one MCP1650 Multiple White LED Demo Board.

This time, the winner will be selected from among our Facebook fans. To enter, become our "fan" (if you're not already) and post a reply on our Facebook page in the contest thread (under the "Discussions" tab) containing the phrase "Microchip Technology giveaway gamma" sometime in the next 24 hours.

The winner will be announced Friday afternoon.

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) warned Texas Instruments (TI) today not to pursue its baseless legal threats against calculator hobbyists who blogged about potential modifications to the company's programmable graphing calculators. TI's calculators perform a "signature check" that allows only approved operating systems to be loaded onto the hardware. But researchers were able to reverse-engineer signing keys, allowing tinkers to install custom operating systems and unlock new functionality in the calculators' hardware. In response to this discovery, TI unleashed a torrent of demand letters claiming that the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) required the hobbyists to take down commentary about and links to the keys. EFF represents three men who received such letters.

Tomorrow, Wednesday the 14th, at noon Pacific time, we will be giving away another prize bundle consisting of one Microchip Technology PIC10F Cap Touch Demo Board and one MCP1650 Multiple White LED Demo Board.

This time, the winner will be selected from among our Twitter followers. Follow us in the next 24 hours and you're automatically entered! If you're already following, send us an @reply containing the phrase "Microchip Technology giveaway delta" and your name will be in the hat, too.

The winner will be announced Wednesday afternoon through our Twitter feed.

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

Here's by way of a can-we-still-be-friends for those annoyed by yesterday's steampunk toilet post. The Museum of the History of Science at Oxford's Old Ashmolean building is hosting an exhibit of contemporary steampunk art curated by Art Donovan. It runs from today until February 21, 2010. If you're interested in steampunk and you're anywhere near the UK during that time it's probably worth checking out.

This Thursday, Oct 15, Metrix Create: Space will open its doors in Seattle (at 623A Broadway East). It's hackerspace meets an indie coffee house. They'll have tools and equipment for building projects, 3D fabbing machines, classes on various types of high-tech makery, coffee and snacks. They even have a vending machine that'll dispense Sun Chips, M&Ms, Clif Bars, and Arduinos, breadboards, jumper wires, etc. How cool.

More:
All of our hackerspace coverage on Make: Online

In an effort to advance the cause of citizen science, Michael Wood is offering a total of $400 in prize money to anyone who can produce reliable, low-cost (<$100US) DIY scientific apparatus capable of meeting one of four design objectives:

First, we require a device capable of producing liquid nitrogen at the rate of at least 100mL an hour.

Secondly, we require a vacuum system capable of pumping down a volume of at least 10cm x 10cm x 10cm to, and holding a vacuum at, 0.01 atm (with pressure measurement).

Thirdly, we require the ability to view objects of small scale with up to 1000x magnification.

Finally, we require a functioning oscilloscope, capable of measuring at least two signals at once, and with multimeter capability, accurate in all measurements to within 1%.

Read all the details at Michael's website.

Beginning at noon Pacific time today, October 9, and closing at noon Pacific time Monday, October 12, we will be accepting comments, below, describing the Halloween-y use (or uses) to which you would put the prize bundle consisting of one Microchip Technology PIC10F Cap Touch Demo Board and one MCP1650 Multiple White LED Demo Board.

We have a lot of these to give away, and in order to keep it interesting I'm going to change up the "prompt" for ideas each time. For this giveaway, the challenge is to use the prize bundle in a device to react to trick-or-treaters who try to take too much candy from a bowl. Be sure to include a valid e-mail address when you fill out the comment form!

The winner will be announced Monday afternoon at the bottom of the comment thread.

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

The sponsors of this year's Halloween contest have sent us a bundle of, er, bundles to give away in the weeks leading up to the 31st, and we're gonna start chucking 'em up in the air pretty fast now. Beginning at noon PST today, and closing at noon PST tomorrow, we will be accepting comments, below, describing the Halloween-y use (or uses) to which you would put the prize bundle consisting of one Microchip Technology PIC10F Cap Touch Demo Board and one MCP1650 Multiple White LED Demo Board. The winner will be announced tomorrow afternoon at the bottom of the comment thread.

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

Are you one of the nine out of ten adults who purportedly believes you can tell when someone is watching you from behind? If so, does it occur to you that this is a kind of supernatural belief? Dr. Bruce Hood, Director of the Bristol Cognitive Development Centre at the University of Bristol and the latest subject of our ongoing series of interviews with notable Makers, has some fascinating theories about how such "routine" supernatural beliefs come about as natural consequences of the normal psychology of child development. He also talks briefly about how his own childhood enthusiasm for the paranormal eventually came full circle in his mature scientific interest in the psychology of paranormal belief. Fascinating stuff.

We've done the drawing for the winners of the tools that Garrett Wade so generously provided us with, namely a set of their Extra Heavy Duty Screwdrivers and one of their Push Drills.

The winners are:

Jonathan Fulton - Who gets the "tank screwdrivers"
Matt Kaake - Who wins the push drill

Congrats, fellas! Email sent. Please take some pics of projects you do with the tools and upload them to the MAKE Flickr pool. We'd love to see what you do with them.

We had over 270 responses to our drawing, and the question of what you would do with these tools. The comment thread is worth reading. It's a fascinating portrait of the diverse MAKE readership, the many different projects you're working on, or considering, and how you relate to your tools. There are even fond reminiscences of dad's and granddad's tools. All sorts of great stuff. As our editor and publisher Dale Dougherty said: "There are any number of tool makers out there who should read through these comments." It's definitely a decent peek at how a population of makers use and relate to their tools.

Thanks to everyone who participated, and thanks to the folks at Garrett Wade for these give-away goodies.

Just a reminder that the first promotional giveaway from this year's Halloween contest sponsors is currently underway. First up for grabs is a PIC32 Starter Kit, shown above, with a retail value of $50, together with a PIC32 I/O Expansion Board, shown below, which sells for $72. To enter, leave a comment on the announcement page describing what cool Halloween-themed project you'd make with it. The winner will be announced this Friday, October 9.

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

We're thrilled to announce that MAKE pal, and Advisory Board member, Limor Fried, aka Ladyada, has been honored with an 18th annual EFF Pioneer Award. Well-deserved, we say. Congrats, Limor!

Here's the little bio from the EFF announcement:

A pioneer in the field of open-source hardware and software hacking, Ladyada helps the general public engineer and adapt consumer electronics to better suit their needs. Her do-it-yourself ethic is founded on the idea that consumer electronics are best modified for use by customers, not corporations. Fried runs her own company, Adafruit Industries, which sells unique and fun do-it-yourself kits to help consumers make gadgets such as backup iPod chargers, green power monitors and programmable displays for bicycle wheels. She also hosts an Internet video program called "Citizen Engineer" that provides step-by-step instructions to help consumers build and alter their own home devices.

Congrats also to fellow recipients Carl Malamud (of public.resource.org) and Harri Hursti, creator of the "Hursti hack," which uncovered vulnerabilities in Diebold optical scan voting machines.

Join EFF for the 2009 Pioneer Awards fundraiser honoring: Limor "Ladyada" Fried, Harri Hursti and Carl Malamud

The sponsors of this year's Halloween contest will be providing us with a number of product samples to give away throughout October. First up for grabs is a PIC32 Starter Kit, shown above, with a retail value of $50, together with a PIC32 I/O Expansion Board, shown below, which sells for $72. To enter, leave a comment describing what cool Halloween-themed project you'd make with it. The winner will be announced next Friday, October 9.

Make: Halloween Contest 2009

Microchip Technology Inc. and MAKE have teamed up to present to you the Make: Halloween Contest 2009! Show us your embedded microcontroller Halloween projects and you could be chosen as a winner.

We're sincerely sorry for any problems, inconvenience, or hair-pulling this may have caused. We'll try to make sure it doesn't happen again.

- The Mgt.

Yesterday was a big day for anthropology, seeing the first publication of some 15 years worth of analysis of a 4.4 million-year-old fossil skeleton of Ardipithecus Ramidus first discovered by Gen Suwa, then a graduate student of Berkeley paleoanthropologist Tim White, in Ethiopia, in 1992. Science magazine has made all eleven papers freely available to anyone willing to register at their site.

Just wanted to make sure that everybody knows that we've started publishing the monthly Make: Newsletter again. The new version will have some original columns, exclusive features, special deals on subscriptions and Maker Shed products, and provide a bit of a behind the scenes look at Maker Media.

One of the new columns introduced in this first, October, issue is the Maker's Dictionary, a growing glossary of technical terms, jargon, and slang of interest to makers. I'll be writing this and am very excited to be back in the jargon and slang business. I was a co-creator of the "Jargon Watch" column in Wired and edited it for 12 years. I've missed being a "professional" word nerd, although I've never stopped being an amateur one. Now I have a place to publish some of the terms I've been scribbling in notebooks for the past five years.

Here's the October, 2009 Make: Newsletter
Here's the form if you want to subscribe.