Make: Online: Shawn Connally Archives

Archives: Shawn Connally

Decade of homemade kid costumes

For years I didn't consider myself very creative. Sure, I always decorated the house for holidays, did crafty projects with my kids, refinished furniture, loved to try new recipes, and shunned store-bought costumes for what I think are way better homemade creations, but a crafter? Not really.

These days I'm trying to convince myself that I am indeed a crafter. And when you're surrounded by knitters, crocheters, professional seamstresses, painters, and soft-circuit mavens, you need lots of convincing! I recently went back through photos of the kids in their Halloween costumes that I've made, and gosh darn it, I am a crafter (of sorts). Enjoy the photos after the jump!

PS: Two of the costumes shown were store-bought, or mostly purchased at a store and then embellished with homey touches.See if you can spot them. And one of the boys is a former intern, not one of my kids, exactly.

Read full story

Posted by Shawn Connally | Oct 22, 2009 07:00 PM
Halloween, Holiday projects, Kids | Permalink | Comments (1) | Suggest a Site

Cool cars cast creatively from cans

Sandy, from Hamilton, New Zealand, has created an entire fleet of amazing cars, hot rods, and buggies, all made out of aluminum soda and beer cans.

From his website:

I have always religiously recycled but often spent time looking at the graphics on the can and looking at the shape of the bottom thinking "That could make a really cool wheel". After having an accident which left me with some time to use, I decided to put pencil to paper and try and make a racing car using the bottoms of cans as its wheels, and the graphics as the decoration for the body.

He's devoted a page to each creation, and offers photos, plans, and details on each build, including how many cans each took, and sometimes, who drank the beer ("This is my wife's favourite one. She drank the Guinness, I made the car!!")

Posted by Shawn Connally | Aug 27, 2009 01:00 PM
Crafts, Kids, Made On Earth, Makers, Mods | Permalink | Comments (6) | Suggest a Site

Robots don't know comics ...

Robots don't know zines ... Or do they? We're in the midst of celebrating robots this month, with our new issue of MAKE magazine featuring DIY drones, rovers, and bots of all kinds. So imagine our delight when we saw Doctor Popular's robot zine at last weekend's San Francisco Zine Fest.

The graphic zine is actually a 24-page comic book, with each page drawn by a different artist, all in 24 consecutive hours. Doc Pop was even nice enough to sign a copy and then gift it to the office. Thanks much, Doctor Popular!

In MAKE, Volume 19: Robots, Rovers, and Drones, learn how to make a model plane with an autopilot and a built-in robot brain. We'll also show you how to make a comfortable chair and footstool out of a single sheet of plywood, a bicyclist's vest that shows how fast you're going, and projects that introduce you to servomotors. All this, and plenty more, in MAKE, Volume 19! Subscribe to MAKE, or log in to check out the Digital Edition.

Posted by Shawn Connally | Aug 26, 2009 01:00 PM
Paper Crafts, Robotics | Permalink | Comments (1) | Suggest a Site

Make a cardboard dragon

I love this elaborate cardboard dragon posted by Creativeman on Instructables. In fact, upon further inspection you'll see that he's got about 11 cardboard projects uploaded to the DIY site. Fun stuff!

Posted by Shawn Connally | Aug 20, 2009 11:00 AM
Arts, Instructables, Paper Crafts, Something I want to learn to do... | Permalink | Comments (0) | Suggest a Site

Elephant fitted with prosthetic leg

(Photo by AP)

A 48-year-old elephant who lost part of her front left leg a decade ago was fitted with a prosthetic last week and is reported to be doing great. The artificial leg was made by the Prostheses Foundation, which also makes artificial limbs for human amputees.

Let the witty naming begin -- Robo Dumbo has been used, and I'm thinking someone more creative than me can come up with a nifty Steampunk version of Elephunk.

More:

Report on Treehugger
Report by Associated Press with more photos
Nice chronology here

Posted by Shawn Connally | Aug 18, 2009 05:30 AM
Announcements, Biology, Mods, Robotics | Permalink | Comments (1) | Suggest a Site

Designs to deal with the rising tides

The terrific blog Inhabitat has an intriguing article about the winning entries in the Rising Tides competition, wherein entrants came up with ways to deal with what could be a 55" rise in the San Francisco Bay waters in the next century.

From Inhabitat's recap:

Another mind-boggling solution to the high-water mark is Folding Water, by Kuth Ranieri Architects. The proposal is an alternative to the traditional barrier dike: this one placed in the middle of the bay, maintaining current water levels with a series of pump walls and artificial estuaries. It looks invisible: reminiscent of what we hope our future impact to be: undetectable.

The competition ended up with 6 winners sharing a $25,000 prize, and there were a handful of Honorable Mentions highlighted as well. The whole thing -- the competition, the plethora of entries, the thoughtfulness and cleverness of the entries -- was a great reminder to me that makers hold the key to surviving the next 100 years and beyond.

Posted by Shawn Connally | Aug 14, 2009 02:00 PM
Green, hacks, Makers, News from the Future, Science | Permalink | Comments (6) | Suggest a Site

Captain Yo brings the yo-yos

All photo by Ed Troxell

There are good days and bad days here at the MAKE offices. Mostly good, although sometimes the days can be long and very, very busy -- like 2 days before the next issue goes to the printer or a week before Maker Faire.

The day Captain Yo came to visit was a good day.

The Captain had read that one of our talented engineering interns, Eric Chu, was a yo-yo enthusiast and since he lived nearby, he'd contacted us to arrange a meeting. We'd, of course, invited him over to meet Eric and show us his wares.

Captain Yo (aka Don Watson) is an author, inventor and award-winning yo-yo player. His visit to our offices turned into a show-and-tell, a physics lesson, and a performance or two. At first just Eric and he were conversing, then slowly but surely more and more of us in the office came into the conversation to have a look inside his several yo-yo cases; listen to a story or two about past events and his inventions; and glimpse a fancy trick or two.

All in the name of work!

Posted by Shawn Connally | Aug 14, 2009 12:00 PM
Gadgets, Kids, Makers | Permalink | Comments (2) | Suggest a Site

Elegant wooden bikes by Renovo

A family-owned and operated company, Renovo sells custom-built frames forged from two halves of hollowed out wood that are bonded together. The result is strong and absolutely stunning!

From their website:

Some folks view these frames as works of art, too nice or delicate for daily use, but they aren't your Brigitte parks oh-so-carefully ... mom's dining room table. We chose wood for it's ride quality and sustainability, and got beauty as a bonus; but it's not a weakness. An impact that will dent and ruin a butted metal or carbon frame merely bounces off the Renovo frame leaving a small dent.

Wood is tough stuff; a good example is the walnut stock of the 1903 Springfield rifle. Used in warfare from WW1 through the Korean conflict, they were thrown from trucks,dragged through sand, rivers and hell, used as pry bars, clubs, crutches and occasionally, rifles. But after the wars, civilians bought these battle-scarred relics and refinished the stocks into gorgeous sporting rifles.

Calling them Functional Art is fine with me.

Renovo (via Inhabitat)

More:

Long Live the Bicycle

Wooden Bike

Wooden Bicycle from China

Posted by Shawn Connally | Aug 14, 2009 04:30 AM
Arts, Bicycles, Culture jamming | Permalink | Comments (0) | Suggest a Site

Do you eat the moldy stuff?

My husband and I have battled continuously for years about whether scraping the mold off the top of -- well, anything -- makes it OK to eat, or if once a spot of green invades the top of a barely used jar of jam we've got to call it a loss and toss it out. I'm always willing to scrape off the top, cut off the moldy crusts, etc., and carry on with the meal. My husband, not so much.

Well, turns out the USDA has weighed in on the argument with interesting findings. My favorite part of the Safe Food Handling fact sheets is this chart on how to handle moldy foods (very, very carefully is not one of the answers):

An article on CNN takes it one step farther, suggesting that you shouldn't eat the pizza you left out on the counter overnight (What? Even my husband finds this to be absurd). And I never would have thought about eating moldy sausage, hard or not.

In the end, experts and the USDA report both recommend throwing out most moldy foods. I admit, the idea of threads of mold weaving their way into the bottom of the container gives me a moment of pause; but if you read about what happens if you eat a slightly tainted dollop of sour cream, the most likely effect will be a stomach ache.

Sad mold and happy mold. (Photos by napalm nikki and jkuma, respectively)

I've had stomach aches from eating myriad meals over the years, made by friends, family, and fast food joints, so this news isn't likely to change my habits. After all, we all know about the happy molds found in blue cheeses and on the outside of Bries and Camemberts. Now there's some mold I can sink my teeth into.

Anyone out there have any experience working with molds in cheese-making, or have a gruesome tale that will cure me from my "just scrape it off" attitude? Tell me about in the Comments.

Posted by Shawn Connally | Aug 12, 2009 12:15 PM
Biology, Chemistry | Permalink | Comments (36) | Suggest a Site

Skateboard stools

I spotted these nifty stools on the Inhabitat blog and immediately had two thoughts -- these are super cool(!), and there's gotta be a way to use the 6 or so skateboards scattered in my yard to make one myself (or a close facsimile thereof).

After these thoughts, I immediately went to the maker's website to see how much one of the stools, just as a fallback you understand, would set me back. After all, the seat on top looks a little tricky to fabricate. I thought the $199 price tag was extremely fair for the workmanship involved, but it was just high enough to make me carve out a few hours in the coming weekend to do some experimenting. If I bring myself to actually cut the end off a couple of decks, I'll report back in the Comments. And if I prefer, I can always send my old boards to Deckstool for a custom job (and a 20 buck discount).

Posted by Shawn Connally | Aug 12, 2009 11:00 AM
Culture jamming, Furniture, hacks, Remake, Something I want to learn to do... | Permalink | Comments (1) | Suggest a Site