Make: Online: Online Archives

Online Archive: Online

February 3, 2010

Make the web "quieter" with shutup.css + get Richard Feynman quotes instead of YouTube comments...

Engadget disabled comments on their site because of the trolls, many other sites spend half their time battling people who chose to make others miserable - it's what the web has become in many corners of netland. MAKE will always have a vibrant community and great comments, that's a promise I know we can keep. We're going to post our refined comment policy up in the next 24 hours or so (stay tuned for a great post from Gareth on this). From the start of MAKE, 5+ years ago now, we've actively encouraged great discussions and try to jump in to resolve issues in the MAKE comments -- so far it's worked out pretty well -- MAKE is a safe place to post in the comments, it's a safe place to post your projects.

But other places are not and never will be.

This is where "shutup.css" comes in. I just installed it and I love it. It just removes the comments on many sites so you can enjoy the content and not the poop-fest.

I'm not going to pick on any specific site out there, but I think it's fair for me to say that I think the comments on some electronics-y related sites are pushing people away from sharing their projects lately. There are tons of great projects that make it to many of these sites, the editors do a great job with the sites and content, but there's just too many people who are determined to make the comments an awful place. shutup.css is now installed, I visit these site more now, even in the few short hours I've been using it - they get the page views and I don't need to accidentally glance at something awful. Eventually I think every site will work towards setting productive tones, it takes time and resources -- not everyone has a community manager for their site(s) - until it gets better on some of the sites I frequent, I think I'll use this comment blocker. shutup.css didn't come with every site I visit in the list so I needed to edit it. The sites it includes are digg, slashdot, youtube, etc... For youtube, I was using the Feynman quote-comment-replacer, that worked well - but I like this "clean" web without comments even better.

February 2, 2010

Mercury "beating heart" works with gallium, too

So it turns out, happily, that the mercury beating heart demo I wrote about a couple days ago can also be done with molten gallium, which is vastly less toxic than mercury and requires only slightly higher temperatures. The chemists at the University of Nottingham who produce The Periodic Table of Videos made this very informative footage demonstrating the process, which is slightly different from the mercury beating heart demo in that there is no iron nail present. The gallium blob "beats" anyway, but much slower than the mercury with the nail. I bet using a nail would make the gallium version beat just as fast. [Thanks Filip!]

February 1, 2010

How-To: Make a giant octopus

YouTuber bluworm took on the task of making a great big octopus puppet for stop-motion animation in a film by his friend Daniel Lennéer. Along the way he produced this informative and entertaining video describing the casting, sculpting, and armature-work that went into it, as well as showing off some of the finished animation (starting around 5:00). Besides the cool propcasting info, I gotta give it up to bluworm for his video editing chops. This is definitely one of the most watchable how-to videos I've ever seen, and I've seen a bunch of them. [via Propnomicon]

January 31, 2010

Briggs-Rauscher oscillating chemical reaction

Discussion about yesterday's mercury "beating heart" reaction post got me thinking about chemical oscillators in general. Turns out, the mercury beating heart may be the only mechanically oscillating chemical reaction that anybody knows about. It's certainly the only one I know about, and its the only one I can find on the web. But if you know of another mechanically oscillating reaction, do please drop me a comment. However...

January 30, 2010

Mercury "beating heart" demo video

This classic chemistry demo involves the use of toxic metallic mercury, so it's one of those that is best to just watch on YouTube instead of trying yourself. The pulsing action is caused by surface tension effects--metallic mercury is oxidized at the surface of the drop to form a film of mercury (I) sulfate, which lowers the drop's surface tension and causes it to flatten under its own weight. The flattening brings the drop into contact with the tip of a carefully-positioned iron nail, which reduces the mercury (I) sulfate back to metallic mercury, which in turn increases the drop's surface tension and causes it to contract away from the nail. The solution contains an electrolyte and an oxidizing agent, in this case weak sulfuric acid and potassium dichromate, respectively. Thanks to YouTuber sciencevidds for sharing it with us. [via Boing and then some more Boing]

January 28, 2010

Firefox bling

Laser your own Foxbling, created by Tobi Leingruber (pictured upper right). Show your rapper friends your favorite browser in mirrored acrylic. The file's available on Thingiverse.

January 26, 2010

Geneva wheels on Thingiverse

Apparently I'm not the only one charmed by the simple elegance of the Geneva wheel movement (Wikipedia). Thingiverse users PrintTo3D and raumfahrtagentur have created printable and laser-cut-able versions, respectively, of the classic mechanism, which converts continuous rotary into intermittent rotary motion, with positive locking of the stationary shaft between cycles. PrintTo3D has also posted a YouTube video showing the final printing, assembly, and action of his model.

January 25, 2010

Cocktail blueprints for engineers

These detailed technical drawings for various cocktails were first created, per the revision log, by one RJ DININO in 1978, and most recently updated by one J GOTTA in 2008. You can download a printable PDF at FlowingData. [Thanks, John!]

January 18, 2010

Phillip's science, tech, DIY, making and more podcast playlist...

Pt 2449
Looking for some good podcasts? Here are my picks! I try and listen or watch about an hour of science programming a day, it's usually on a treadmill or pedaling a bike or if I am in a "hostage situation" like traveling. It's a way to pass the time while keeping active or while just waiting in line for something.

A few posts ago I mentioned I listened to a lot of sci/tech, etc and some commenters were interested in my playlist. So.... This is the list for the week, I try new ones out all the time, add them, remove them - if you have suggestions post them up in the comments! I'm always interested in discovering new ones. On a related note, during the holidays I spent about 14 hours a day shipping open source hardware, for those long runs of time I listened to audio books - that's not the list I'm posting here, but perhaps I will later if there's interest in that list too.

Each item after the jump has a show URL, RSS (XML) feed and an iTunes URL, with the second URL you can drag it directly in to iTunes or use the 3rd link, the iTunes link. Read on for the full list!

January 14, 2010

CNN on today's 'golden age of inventors'

Todd Greene is the Los-Angeles-based inventor of the HeadBlade, shown above, which is an ergonomic razor designed specifically for shaving the head, rather than the face. It was chosen as one of Time's Ten Best Designs of 2000. Greene, who claims to have made millions selling HeadBlades, is one of several inventors and inventing "gurus" featured in this interesting article on CNN.com about the groundswell of ambitious citizen inventors in the United States triggered by the recession. The article includes lots of sound advice about getting your own inventions off the ground.

Google files patent on Streetview billboard ad replacer

Google has just filed a patent application for a method to automagically detect billboards in Streetview-type imagery and replace them in real time with Google's own dynamically-generated ads. It's just a patent application at this point, so there's no way of knowing if it's actually going to happen yet. Still, an interesting idea. [via Gizmodo]

January 11, 2010

Alternative representations of the periodic table

The periodicity of properties of the chemical elements has been represented many, many different ways since Mendeleev. The modern standardized periodic table is only one of a potentially infinite number of graphical representations of the empirical trends. If you understand the logic of the periodic table, looking through these "alternative" representations can be a lot of fun. There are hundreds of them! [via Boing Boing]

January 10, 2010

MIT wins DARPA's luftballoons challenge

A team from MIT has claimed the $40,000 grand prize in DARPA's recent social networking challenge. The prize went to the first team to successfully report the locations of 99 ten large red balloons positioned at random locations around the continental United States. MIT's strategy involved the construction of an incentivized social network in which pieces of the reward were distributed along the entire "chain" connecting the network to a person reporting the location of a balloon: the actual reporter was awarded $2000, the person who invited the reporter was awarded $1000, the person who invited that person was awarded $500, and so on up the chain. I wonder if bail bondsmen and/or police could adopt a similar strategy to locate fugitives? [via The Computational Legal Studies Blog]

More:

January 7, 2010

Swimming robot snake

Creepy-cool snakey water robot goodness. Not much info about the maker, here; all I know is that the video was taken at the Odense RoboDays festival in the summer of 2007. If you know whodunnit, feel free to enlighten us in the comments. [via Boing Boing]

More:

January 2, 2010

Chocolate guns and ammo

Your one-stop shop for chocolate guns, chocolate bullets, and chocolate grenades is ChocolateWeapons.com. I'm holding out for the chocolate suitcase nuke. [via Boing Boing]

December 30, 2009

Yours truly guest-blogs Make & Meaning

Make: Online guest contributor and all-around pal Paul Overton, of Dude Craft fame, has kindly solicited an article from me for his new creative-process blog Make & Meaning. My piece is called On The Care and Feeding of Ideas. Thanks, Paul!

December 28, 2009

Help us brainstorm Make: Online, 2010

It's probably no surprise to anyone who hangs out here that we love what we do at Maker Media and we're always looking to do it better, to reinvent ourselves, to grow and expand, while staying creative and true to our mission, which is, ultimately, to serve YOU, the greater maker community. We're now in the process of planning what we want to do on Make: Online for 2010.

Since one of our internal themes for the year is "Maker Community," and how we can expand our relationships with individuals and groups in the wider maker/hacker/DIY communities, we thought we'd ask all of you to help us brainstorm the year. What would YOU like to see more of on Make: Online in 2010?

Here are a few of the things we already have in the pipeline:

* A redesign of the website
* More guest author stints (who would you like to see guest-author?)
* More guest columns, a la George Hart's Math Mondays
* Expansion of the Make: Science Room, with more, exciting projects, videos, etc.
* More in-depth how-tos in Make: Projects
* More instructional videos, a la MAKE Presents, perhaps a series on mechanical engineering
* Support for Make: Electronics, with instructional videos, step-by-step projects, kits in the Shed, etc.

Now, tell us about YOUR ideal Make: Online in 2010...

(We'll choose three posters and give them a free Maker's Notebook, so they can sketch out their year in DIY.)

December 26, 2009

Cool maze-box on Thingiverse

Thingiverse user wizard23 designed this cool puzzle box (which he calls the "A-Mazing Box") using a custom Python script and Clifford Wolf's freeware OpenSCAD program, then printed it on a MakerBot. His script lets you import your own maze as a PNG so you can design one with a unique solution.

More:

December 15, 2009

What Matters Now: free ebook

Pt 2412
What Matters Now: free ebook from Seth Godin - Dale (publisher of MAKE) in there! Seth writes -

Now, more than ever, we need a different way of thinking, a useful way to focus and the energy to turn the game around. I hope a new ebook I've organized will get you started on that path. It took months, but I think you'll find it worth the effort. Here are more than seventy big thinkers, each sharing an idea for you to think about as we head into the new year. From bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert to brilliant tech thinker Kevin Kelly, from publisher Tim O'Reilly to radio host Dave Ramsey, there are some important people riffing about important ideas here. The ebook includes Tom Peters, Fred Wilson, Jackie Huba and Jason Fried, along with Gina Trapani, Bill Taylor and Alan Webber.

PDF here...

December 10, 2009

New Paul Overton blog: Make & Meaning

Make: Online pal/guest writer Paul Overton, of Dude Craft fame, just launched a new blog, in collaboration with CraftyPod's Diane Gilleland, called Make & Meaning, which seems to focus more on the process of creation than on particular products thereof. I feel like blogging in general, and particularly blogging in the DIY community, needs more of this "long view" type analysis. Paul's new blog may be a step in the right direction. Kudos!