Turning the front of a building (via projections) into a pinball machine.

UrbanScreen

I recently ordered some refillable paint pens from Art Primo, and this was in the box as a freebie. It's the exact size, shape, and color as a cigarette, and among a dozen real cigarettes in a pack it'd likely pass any search completely unnoticed. It took me a minute to figure out its nefarious purpose: If you get caught in the vicinity of a fresh tag, after all, it's best not to be found with a marker on your person. They're manufactured by Germany's On The Run, but you won't find them on their website. The one I got was gold; the silver ones below were photographed by Flickr user $30,000.

I'm not normally a huge fan of graffiti, but I like Jesse Grave's this technique of using mud stencils to make temporary graffiti. It seems like a nice, low impact alternative to moss graffiti, plus you get to play with mud! He seems to be getting good results, however I wonder how well it holds up as it dries out. Anyone else try something like this? [via inhabitat]

Here's the translation of a page about a DIY TV-B-Gone inside a flashlight/torch, looks great! [via adafruit]

Happy Friday, what are making this weekend?

If you're impatient with the preamble and want to see it work, scan forward to about 0:39. [via Hack a Day]

Amphibious Architecture is a visual interface floating on the water’s surface, a veritable looking glass into the aquatic ecosystem. This manufactured point of connection submerges ubiquitous computing into the one element that covers 90% of the Earth’s inhabitable volume and which envelops New York City but remains under-explored and under-engaged.

Installed at two sites along the East and the Bronx Rivers, this project is a network of floating interactive buoys housing a range of sensors below water and an array of light emitting diodes (LEDs) above water. The sensors monitor water quality, the presence of fish, and human interest in the river’s ecosystem, while the lights respond to the sensors, creating feedback loops between humans, fish in their shared environment. Additionally an SMS interface allows homo-citizens to text-message the fish and receive real-time information about the river, contributing towards the collective display of human interest in the aquatic environment. The aim of which is to simultaneously spark a larger public interest and dialogue about our local waterways.

Distinctly moving away from the pervasive ‘do-not-disturb’ approach to urban environmentalism, the project encourages curiosity and engagement. Treating the river water as a reflective surface to mirror our own homo-image and architecture, establishing a two-way interface between the terrestrial and the aquatic. The project thus creates a dynamic and captivating layer of light above the surface of the river, making visible the invisible through real-time mapping of the new ecology of people, marine life, buildings, and public space.

In Civilization and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud contends that aggressiveness is a fundamental human instinct whose inhibition is a necessary obligation of social life: “Men are not gentle, friendly creatures wishing for love, who simply defend themselves if they are attacked, but that a powerful measure of desire for aggression has to be reckoned as part of their instinctual endowment.” Fundamentally there is a tension between the freedom to gratify these natural desires and the conformity demanded by civilization.  What results is a muted, guilty, and ultimately a discontent populous in which the possibility of a more complete happiness has been traded for a degree of security. Umbrellas for the Civil but Discontent Man combines a symbol of gentlemanly refinement—the full-sized, dark umbrella—with an element of more manly sword-bearing times.  The umbrellas offer brief psychological respite from the dictates of social amiability; aggressive fantasies are allowed and encouraged on the daily commute to the office.  The effete civilian’s grasp of the handle takes him into the world of the masterful samurai, the medieval barbarian, or the triumphant cavalryman.

Over at CRAFT, Goli posted up this moss graffiti tutorial by Helen Nodding, featured in CRAFT Volume 04. It's a fun way to spread some green around the neighborhood.

By Ed Troxell, photo intern

When I landed my internship here at MAKE it was my real break into the magazine industry. I remember telling myself that if I could just get my foot in the door, the rest would fall into place. Well, it did. Since joining MAKE over a year ago, my life has not been the same -- not only have I worked at a great magazine, I've launched my own magazine, MIX IT UP.

I was hired a MAKE editorial intern, which really helped me get a sense of what goes on when putting together a magazine: finding topics to write about, finding writers, assigning deadlines, making sure people meet those deadlines, fact-checking articles, proofing them, all while having staff meetings and conference calls with those who work in other locations.

While learning all this, I was finishing up my studies in communications at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, Calif., where I was photo editor on the school newspaper, The Star. About 6 months later, I was switched over to become MAKE's photo intern, which turned out to be perfect since I was already doing photography.

Originally made by Austrian watchmakers as decorative pocket watch chain fobs or as cufflinks, these miniature pinfire pistols are now prized collector's items. These are some from my own collection dating from 1904 to the 1970's. All of them fire 2mm blank pinfire cartridges. The revolvers are the world's smallest working double action blank firing pistols. They measure just 38mm in length and are smaller than the famous Swiss Mini Gun which measures 55mm.

Hate having to flash your chip to bring your TV-B-Gone to Europe? Well, cross it off your packing to-do list, the new TV-B-Gone turns off TVs in North America, Europe/UK, and Asia.

More:

• Weekend Project: Super TV-B-Gone
  
• TV-B-Gone hoodie
  
• TV-B-Gone design docs

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

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).

Throughout the United States, cities are deploying “smart” electronic fare collection infrastructures. In 2003, San Francisco launched a $35 million pilot program to replace approximately 23,000 mechanical parking meters with electronic units that boasted tamper resistance, payment via smart card, auditing capabilities, and an estimated $30 million annually in fare collection revenue. Other major cities, including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Portland, and San Diego, have made similar moves. This presentation details our evaluation of electronic parking meters, including hardware disassembly, smart card protocol emulation, and silicon die analysis.

Interesting urban design pops up in Toronto. A really creative approach to guerrilla gardening. The planter is made from layers of old advertising flyers!

AIDG is a NonGovernmental Organization (NGO) that helps provide low technology solutions to help address environmental and health needs to people living in communities without great access to the systems that many of us consider requirements.

Here are a few of their water-based initiatives:

Solar Hot Water:

XelaTeco, with support from AIDG's wonderful interns, recently installed a solar water heating system and water tower for La Guarderia, a childcare center in Llanos del Pinal, Guatemala. La Guarderia was started by two non-profit organizations, Pop Wuj and Jóvenes Juntos, who saw the need for daycare and after school homework assistance in a community plagued by poverty, domestic violence and alcoholism.

Jóvenes Juntos requested the hot water system to promote healthy hygiene practices amongst the children served by center, particularly in the cold winter months. The presence of hot water is expected to reduce the occurrence of skin ailments, such as scabies and other rashes. This segment of the project was funded by AIDG.

Ram Pump:

As the water runs downhill from the source to the ram pump, it gains force and velocity. When this velocity reaches a determined point, the water closes a valve in the ram pump known as the "impulse" or "waste" valve. The force of the water against the now closed impulse valve causes pressure to build inside the pump. The water sends high-pressure shock waves in all directions (the "water hammer," or "ariete" in Spanish, from which the pump gets its Spanish name, "Bomba de Ariete"). These shock waves open another valve, the delivery check valve, and water squirts through reaching altitudes of up to ten times greater than the vertical distance from the water's source to the pump. An air vessel installed in the pump acts as a kind of regulator which keeps the flow at the top steady, instead of delivered in bursts, as the pump internally functions

Sand Filtration:

Properly managed sand filters remove 96%-98% of water borne pathogens such as E. Coli and Giardia, producing a positive significant impact on the health of target users. The greatest effect is expected for young children, who are extremely susceptible to diarrheal diseases caused by exposure to contaminated water. Diarrheal disease causes approximately 2 million deaths per year among children in developing countries.

The World Health Organization has some good documentation on sand filtration technology.

To find out more about AIDG, check out their blog and their photos.

if you want to liven up a local vacant lot or other area but don't have easy access for guerilla gardening, make some seed bombs and throw them over the fence.

In MAKE Volume 15, we ran a simple 5-step project on how to acquire a bulletproof, anonymous online identity. Every day this knowledge seems to get more relevant. The article was authored by Publius, who "prefers to write anonymously about anonymity." Published in August of 2008, the intro reads:

In May of this year, a judge ordered Facebook to turn over the identity of someone who created a fake profile of a high school official. Other school officials have sued over fake MySpace profiles. Not all judges take free speech rights seriously; even fewer high school and university administrators do. Setting up an anonymous blog or website is the obvious way to protect yourself from being punished for speaking out, but is this legitimate? And if so, how can you accomplish it?

Anonymous speech has a long and distinguished history. It was part of the political debate leading to the rift with Great Britain; revolutionaries relied on it to conceal their identities from the Crown. The tradition continued with the Federalist Papers, which presented arguments for ratifying the U.S. Constitution. They were published in the 1780s under pseudonyms including "Publius." The authors of the Anti-Federalist Papers, who predicted that the Constitution would lead to a tyrannical central government, used aliases including "Federal Farmer."

Internet anonymity is something of a high-wire tightrope act: one tiny technological misstep, and you're doomed. Fortunately, technologies for anonymous website publishing are both secure and, finally, easy to use. You can create an anonymous or pseudonymous persona that's proof against not just random busybodies, but attorneys armed with subpoenas too. (You should be familiar with relevant state and federal laws, of course, and do nothing illegal.)

Want to know how? Check out the full article in our Digital Edition.

You can still pick up a back issue of MAKE, Volume 15, our Music issue, over in the Maker Shed!

I like this simple perch attached to a street sign by Ken Mori. When not in use, it rotates to vertical, to advertise it's proposed use. Via Urban Prankster.

Via WMMNA, Regine writes:

Encastrable is a series of guerrilla art residencies held inside gardening and DIY megastores in the Paris area. At no cost at all, the young artists have at their disposal a huge array of material that they can grab, move, superimpose, and organize onto temporary installations and sculptures. Authorization of the manager of the establishment is obviously never requested.

If I worked at Home Depot, I sure wouldn't like cleaning up after these guys, but they make some neat-looking stuff.

Check out the collection of photos from the use of this swing on at BART train in San Francisco. Fun! Via NOTCOT.

More:

Swing skirt

You may have seen this already, but this traffic barrel monster made me smile. Rawr!

Tech and culture jammers monochrom were selling this awesome T-shirt at Maker Faire.

New monochrom shirt: "Slacking is killing the DIY industry"

As we see more and more empty, abandoned street newspaper boxes, Posterchild converted this one into a lovely planter with a simply-shaped plywood insert.

Counting to a Billion is a device created to fulfill the desire to count. The electronics consists of a microcontroller, a speech module, and a speaker powered by a rechargeable battery. There is no/off switch. The voice begins counting at one, two, three and continues counting up until it reaches one billion at which point in time it will stop.

More about Counting to a Billion by Che-Wei Wang

In the Maker Shed:


Make: Arduino