Bennett Williamson at FATLAB writes:

The default Mac OS X (I'm on version 10.4.11) screensaver picture slideshow function can read an alpha channel in a .gif file. That is to say, as the slideshow plays your images, a .gif with an alpha channel will appear to be "on top" of the previous image, and as the slideshow goes on, the .gifs will continue to "layer" on until an image of a different format is displayed, which has a default white or black background.

Take advantage of the randomizing function to create some home-made screensaver machinima art! The animation above is a sample implementation: The NEW Office Party Screensaver from FATLAB.

In the spirit of Men of the Internet, this screensaver is a series of carefully-sliced 800×600 .gifs, sourced from the faces of the hardest working local board members, regional vice presidents, administrative assistants, and other fruitful regular-dude-generating search terms on the internet. The .gifs layer over one another to hybridize these generic gentlemen into a randomly-generated ultimate budget-balancing force of suits.

Folder of gifs and screen saver configurations settings included.

This weekend at Maker Faire Instructables brought their laser cutter and was laser etching laptops, phones, and other things for free. My favorite is Alex Schlegel's fractal-etched Vaio (source image included). If you had your gear etched, add a picture to the MAKE Flickr pool!

Today's episode of BBtv has excerpts from Graffiti Research Lab: The Complete First Season. GRL are the controversial artists behind the wildly popular LED Throwies, featured in MAKE Volume 06 and all over blogspace, and the amazing L.A.S.E.R. tagging system.

Graffiti Research Lab, the movie

Related:

• Throwie mania on Make: Blog
• Graffiti Research Lab » L.A.S.E.R. Tag (and HOW TO)...

These floating globes called "Bubble Bobbles" have an embedded tri-color LED that changes its color based on the tilt of the globe. Meant to be placed in a lake or a pool, every passing gust of wind or disturbance in the water causing a resulting color change.

Bubble Bobble, [via]

I made this nifty little wide angle and fisheye camera lens adapter out of a door peephole and one of the world's most versatile materials, PVC pipe.

On today's BBtv, Xeni talks with Marc Owens about his Avatar Machine, a camera rig that turns you into a gaming avatar in the real world.

Howstuffworks details how the Avatar Machine is built, which as Owen says in the interview, is basically a camera tripod mounted on your back.

Avatar Machine - Marc Owens' wearable simulator of virtual worlds
How the Avatar Machine works

I tied a disposable camera to a bench with a sign that read:

Good afternoon,
I attached this camera to the bench so you could take pictures. Seriously. So have fun. I'll be back later this evening to pick it up.
Love, Jay / The Plug

When I retrieved the camera that night, I was happy to find that the entire roll of film had been shot.

Great project to do in your local area!

Dr.photon is exploring the world DIY video panoramics -

[...] a parabolic mirror would be ideal. However, I had a christmas ornament on hand and the software function I was using to unwrap the image was based on a sphere (polar distortion). as it turned out my camera is too low-res. You wind up blowing the central portion of the image up a bit too much and the resulting image is a bit pixelated. I plan to try again with a better camera. As is though, works pretty good for an afternoons work.

Related:

HOW TO - Inexpensive Panoramic Video
&
"Ghetto 360° video experiment"

After quite a bit of real world usage, I've concluded that most users of the Raynox DCR-250 aux close-up lens will be well served by this simplified version of my styrofoam cup ringflash emulator. The stronger 32 ounce cup makes it sturdy. The use of a single cup makes it easy to construct. Using velcro dots to attach the contraption to the Raynox universal clip-on mount makes it easy to change and provides a break-away connection to keep the cup itself from breaking if you hit it on something.

Kipkay has some decent video tips in his Video Tips & Tricks Volume 2.

Kipkay's Video Tips & Tricks 2

Related:

• Kipkay's Video Tips & Tricks

Member Jiskar built this sweet night vision scope -

Finished nightvision device. XX1080 image intensifier tube @ 10kV, powered by two 9V battery blocks, ccfl inverter and voltage multiplier. All mounted in plumbing pipe. Adapter for pentax lenses. IR flashlight mounted on top for small distance illumination.

Related:

$35 Night vision scope, from a CVS camcorder

Technical details on Spy Gear Night Vision Goggles

It's 3 a.m. and a phone rings in the White House...

Or actually, it was about 3 p.m. and a phone rang in my pocket. By chance the phone happened to be mine and on the other end of it was 3ric asking if I'd be able to help with a project that evening. Seems he had acquired about 10 liters of liquid nitrogen and, among other things, was hoping to use it to do some high-speed flash photography of frozen things shattering into a million pieces upon being shot with a pellet rifle.

All was well and good according to plan, except for the flash trigger, which was stuck in the mail somewhere. Could I hack one together by evening? And thus is how I got my project for the day.

A flash trigger for high-speed photography is a really simple device. Basically all you need to do is take an audio signal and use that to trigger a flash if the signal exceeds a certain level. Rather than muck about with $10 worth of op-amps, transistors, voltage dividers and a bunch of so-called "electrical engineering", I splurged for the $2 solution and threw the equivalent of a mid-1980's personal computer at it... i.e. a microcontroller. Specifically, an AVR-based Arduino board. (ok, so the arduino cost me $30, nitpicker).

Long story short and after overcoming two rather significant obstacles (#1 being not having a microphone, #2 being not having a flash) we were able to kludge together a workable flash trigger. By the end of the evening, with me manning the trigger and fellow HBL'er David behind the camera, we got some cool pics.

More photos.

Related:

High-Speed Photography Kit. Capture high-speed events -- A splash. Popping balloons. Breaking glass. Use your imagination! Adjustable flash controller triggered by light or sound.

Homemade Strobe Photography & read more in the MAKE digital edition.

Davis Remmel writes:

Code 39 is easy to recreate because it only uses two types of lines: wide and narrow. Also, each code has a beginning sequence (thin black, wide white, thin black), and an ending sequence (thin black, wide white, thin black, thin white, wide black, thin white, wide black, thin white, thin black.) To start the coping process, you need the following:

* Sheet of graph paper

* Writing utensil (pen is easier to see)

* Bar/ASCII translating tool (look at Wikipedia article for a table, format 2)

To start, look at the barcode you want to decode. On the graph paper, take record of the barcode using whatever means you feel comfortable with. I use binary, as it is very easy to read.

Davis sadly got a detention for using the decoded barcode info from his teacher's ID to gain access to his attendance records, but I think this kind of ingenuity should be encouraged, not punished - decode code 39 barcodes by hand.

Related:

• LEGO barcode reader

• Bar code quilt

• Skeleton barcode card on Hackszine

• HOW TO - Read postal bar codes

This project, which began as a class project for UC Berkeley students, uses an ordinary cell phone camera as a medical microscope meant for use in remote or undeveloped countries to diagnose illnesses. The idea is to use the camera with the microscopic lens attachment to take pictures and transmit them over the network for instant diagnosis from remote doctors and specialists. Pretty simple way to get the info you need, we're curious about the attachment and how easy it is to build.

Cell Camera turned medical microscope, [via]

Related:

Eyeclops: Super magnifying camera.

The idea of using LED fixtures with artwork has been explored in a variety of settings, but is still a fairly new area of art exploration. In the recent past, the improved availability of RGB (red, green, and blue) LED light fixtures has made creating LED based artwork much more accessible to the electronically disinclined. This accessibility will result in a new generation of concepts in creating art where old media like acrylic are combined with LED light to create more and more unique and exciting art.

We are seeing the cusp of this curve even now, as architects are including LED based lighting into buildings, and a few artists are beginning to use LED lighting in their work. The purpose of this project is to further expand and enable the use of LED lighting in artwork by providing theoretical information, and information from my own experiences producing artwork of this sort.

Ultraluminous LED Light and Art Projects [Thanks, Jon!]

Ever wondered how designers make those polished 3D PCB renderings? Flickr user Rob sheds some light on the issue with the comparison seen above -

Comparison of a virtual board and a real board, designed in Eagle and rendered using the amazing Eagle3D by
Matthias Weißer, which creates files for POV-Ray.
It's like seeing the ultrasound before you have the baby!

Both apps are free and mac/win/linux-compatible -

Eagle 3D ULP add-on for Cadsoft Eagle

POV-Ray 3D raytacer

Cadsoft Eagle freeware version

Related:

HOW TO - Turn your EAGLE schematic into a PCB (Printed circuit boards)

HOW TO - Make a custom library part in Eagle's CAD tool

This instructable shows you how to combines an LCD photo frame, stereo photo viewer, and a little woodworking to create a "DigiStereopticon" viewer. Cool combo of old and new tech -

Stereoscopic photography has fallen out of favor. This is probably due to the fact that people don't like having to wear special glasses to view family snapshots. Here is a fun little project you can make in less than a day to make your 3D pictures more enjoyable to view.

Warning: 3D pictures are ADDICTIVE. You will find yourself spending a lot more time appreciating the simplest snapshots. Next thing you know you'll be browsing ebay for old stereoscopic equipment, blathering on at dinner parties about how much better 3D pictures are than "flat" photos, and spending your weekends making weird stuff to post on Instructables. Read this at your own peril.

Related:

DIY $22 Stereo Digital Camera

From the pages of MAKE:

MAKE:06 p.143 - 3D photography Subscribers, read this article now in our digital edition

Here's an interesting kit for a PIR sensor controlled camera. Though with only a 640x480 CMOS view, you may want a higher resolution to identify stealthy intruders -

When the sensor detects movement in a room it will take a burst of 10 photos with the digital camera. Each photo is taken at 0.5sec interval. After the 10 photos, the camera waits 3 seconds for further movement and if it is detected, the process is repeated until 80 photos are taken.
The photos can then be downloaded to your PC (via the USB connection on the board) for viewing.

Related:

HOW TO - Make a "Witness camera" - Link

In the Maker store:

High-Speed Photography kit - Link

Here's the info from his website vanita phone company:

Gertrude uses two stepper motors to move an LED in a very high resolution x/y plane. The movement of the LED is photographed using exposures usually between 30 and 90 seconds. Gertrude can either be programmed to "print" a design automatically ("Christopher & Daniil", the Hell Yup!: Scanlines shots) or controlled live via a joystick (Open&Close portrait series). ...more info

II: Christopher & Daniil not talking (pt. 2 in a series of 2)

Hell Yup!: Scanlines 3 (Self-Portrait)

From the MAKE Flickr pool

Flickr user Dippold made a tiny pinhole camera, Pinholo! -

Obtained in a Pine Nut, plays on the assonance between the English term pinhole and that Italian "pinolo" (pine nut). creates microphotographies.

Related:

Homemade matchbox pinhole camera - Link

From the pages of MAKE:

Panoramic Pinhole Camera MAKE Vol.9 page 92 -Subscribers, view this article in the digital edition or find it in Make: The Third Year

Matthew Davidson figured out how to use a particular LEGO brick to make an interface with his camera mount, thus enabling the creation of quick-release photo-taking robots. - Link.

Here's a how-to on producing a stereo photography rig using a custom built remote for dual triggering of the shot. Pretty nice production details on this one.

Twin Camera Stereo Photography - Link

This particular video from "The Balloon Project" is of a flight launched in Berlin, but there are several other locations available on the on their website. I'm not too sure how the authorities feel about this project, but the results are really interesting.

The Balloon Project is a video project that started with the idea to send a video camera over the city of San Francisco - no strings attached: just the wind, gravity, and chasing it down to wherever it lands. Watch us attempt video history as we continue to conquer new locations across the world.

There is a lot more information, and videos, on their website - Link
Central park is my personal favorite - Link

Typically the creation of a hologram involves lasers and various other expensive equipment and materials. William J. Beaty figured out a low-tech way to create your own holograms using a simple abrasion technique that requires only a compass and a chunk of plastic. He came across the idea while walking through a parking lot, noticing strange hand prints that seemed to float above or deep inside the surface of polished car hoods.

Abrasion Holography - Link

DIY hand-drawn holograms - Link

Taking a clue from every Sci-Fi flick ever made, Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) has developed a method of projecting three-dimensional images in the air. The system reflects laser light off of mirrors, and focuses that light into a point in the air using a plasma emission phenomenon. The result is pretty darn cool.

Three Dimensional Images in the Air - [via], Link

This design will work with almost any camera, digital camera, or camcorder. It gives you access to all the camcorder's features. You can either look through the bag into the viewfinder or use the LCD, although most LCDs aren't any good in sunlight. I wanted mine for kitesurfing, but it'll work underwater too. If it leaks you'll be able to see water in the bottom of the bag or bubbles escaping and return to the surface before your camera is harmed.

DIY Waterproof Camera Enclosure - Link

Related:

Underwater macro photography & DIY macro photo round up - Link.

HOW TO - Make an underwater CVS camcorder - Link.

This Light-Field Camera by Adobe captures multiple angles and perspectives through its "fly-eye" lens thus finally producing blurry-free pictures. Check out the details at the link below.

Adobe Light-Field Camera - [via], Link

The Polaroid sheet camera uses the basic principle of light polarization to mimic the behavior of a camera diaphragm and shutter. LCD screens emit polarized light, which allows a Polaroid sheet in the camera to take on the diaphragm behavior.

A stepper motor controls the rotation of the camera body, from the light blocking position to the fully open position (90 degrees), in which the instant film is exposed for a predetermined amount of time before the whole camera body is rotated back to the blocking position.

The Polarized Polaroid Camera - Link

Related:

No more Polaroid... instant film - and MAKE's look at Polaroid projects - Link