Jan 04
It’s that time of year when everyone starts coming down with some kind of plague. Unfortunately there is no cure for the common cold, or whatever they say. But everyone has some kind of fail-safe home remedy. More »
Jan 04
Did your Christmas tree take off like a rocket? No, I didn’t think so. If it did, you would have a hole in your roof and a large cleanup bill. Anyway, I’m sure that your tree was lovely, but here’s the thing. What do you do with the tree when Christmas is over?
Well, you could throw it by the curb with the trash or just keep it up all year and decorate all year round as it drops all of its needles on the rug. Here’s a better idea. Put some rocket engines on your tree and launch it into the air.
I’m sure your neighbors won’t mind. Unless it ends up sticking out of their roof after touchdown. Anyway, the awesome folks in this video made their tree into a rocket (dubbed the XMS Mistletoe) and it looks like they had a literal blast putting their tree out of its misery.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsDZbRankCs
Let the annual launching of our trees commence next January 1st! Rocket-tree is fun and easy!
[via Obvious Winner]
Dec 31
Remember that season of Doctor Who when there was a crack in Amy Pond’s wall? Well, now you can have a crack in your wall that looks just like it. Let’s just hope it doesn’t cause the universe to explode. Or implode. Whatever.
This Crack in the Wall is a custom made, battery powered LED array, set into a metal frame. It’s not only a cool modern design, but it makes for a stylish way to illuminate your wall, while keeping things true to Who.
If you want to try and build one for yourself, there are a few pictures here that might help you create one like it. Just make sure that you do it right. I don’t want to be erased from history because of your shoddy craftsmanship.
[via Obvious Winner]
Dec 30
There’s something about repetitive motion that’s just hypnotizingly relaxing. This DIY, laser-cut marble machine is a perfect example. Crank the handle and the tiny marbles bounce up their little escalator, swirl down their track and start all over again. I could watch this all day. More »
Dec 27
Twitter Roach Is Some Gross Tech
Posted in: Today's Chili
I am one of those who think that cockroaches are one of the grossest things alive, and these critters do not seem to die no matter what you do – bug sprays, roach traps, the works. In fact, it is said that if you kill one, there are plenty more of its brethren that remain unseen. Here is an amalgamation of the old and the new, in the form of the Twitter Roach, where it “wears” a small backpack which receives customized wireless signals, followed by transferring the received signals into a stimulus that is sent straight to the critter’s antennae. I guess you can say that it works in a similar manner as that of other robotic cockroaches, although this time around, an Arduino processor is at work, where it receives input from Twitter.
Artist Brittany Ransom is the one behind the Twitter Roach, and this project will explore whether insects are able to respond to an overabundance of external signals in a way that humans do. Will cockroaches be able to develop the same type of selective response as us? Hopefully not, or they will in the end be smarter than us, and I’d loathe a world that is over-run with roaches.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Foursquare Offers Curiosity Explorer Badge To NASA Fans, Steve Jobs’s Yacht Captured In Video,
Dec 27
There are cool dads and there are awesome dads. Redditor JeremiahGordon is the awesome type. You see, he built this cool spaceship his son Finn’s fifth birthday – and it is completely amazing.
He made a loft platform for the bed, with portals that look out into space, and then created a spaceship control room in the space below the bed. Most dads would have stopped at the loft platform. Dad pieced together the master control board from junk he found in a television station’s dumpster. They weren’t using the stuff anymore.
It has so many switches and levers that this kid will never go to bed on time again. I hope he grows up to be an Astronaut, or at least do something this cool for his own kids when he’s older. Though he could just grow up to be a TV director.
Check out more pics of the build over on imgur.
[via Gizmodo]
Dec 27
I admit, despite e-books being all the rage these days, I still love a good old-fashioned book in my hands. The problem becomes one of storage since they take up room. We need something that is bigger on the inside, like this Doctor Who TARDIS bookshelf.
This amazing TARDIS bookshelf was created by Tumblr user bowtiesandginghamshirts. As far as I can tell and it can hold the entire library of Gallifrey. I need a bookshelf like this one.
It even lights up and plays the Doctor Who theme. Wanna know how to make one? He has posted a How-To, so you can build your own. Just don’t expect it to hold as many books as THE Library.
[via Nerd Approved]
Dec 27
I’ve gotten used to my computer rig making lots of noise, when it’s totally quiet, it usually indicates some sort of a hardware failure. Some computers run 24/7 and generate a lot of heat because getting work done. While there are certainly some machines out there that have no fans and are pretty quiet, Redditor DeFex wanted to build a rig that was completely silent, by doing away with fans, and all other moving parts.
His DIY silent computer features a 65W Intel Core i5 Ivy Bridge processor, so it’s powerful enough to handle all his media center needs. A solid state disk replaces a traditional IDE drive, which gets noisy. SSDs also generate less heat. This system also has no DVD or Blu-ray drive. In order to cool this computer, DeFex picked up a large 10″×7″ heatsink from HeatSinkUSA, which draws away heat from the motherboard.
The case includes some parts that were 3d-printed using a MakerBot 3D. The overall project is pretty cool, though it’s still a work in progress. You can check out more pics of the build over on imgur.
[via Liliputing]
Dec 27
Man Builds Spaceship For Son
Posted in: Today's Chili
If you have a young boy in your home who has an overactive imagination, then you might want to brace yourself to be a superdad after reading this. Five year old Finn is one blessed kid, as his dad took the time, trouble and creativity to use discarded TV broadcast equipment in order to conjure this unique spaceship bed, which is more than ideal to send a kid’s imagination soaring as he figure out just what he is going to be when he grows up.
The panel is a Grass Valley video switcher, which is a piece of equipment deemed as useless since it was fished from of a dumpster that is behind a local TV station. When new, the video switcher was most probably crazy expensive, but the force of time and advancements in technology has probably made it worth nothing today. Jeremiah Gorman, dad extraordinary, decided to take this video switcher and turn it into a spaceship control panel. Additional lighting is added to the mix for dramatic effect, and all he needs to do now is make sure that he has the time to figure out how to make some robots to move around.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Dog Elevator For Your Home, HiSense Pulse Google TV Going For $99 ,
Dec 26
If you are a huge fan of the sci-fi Doctor Who series, then you will be well pleased to hear that a fan based in the US has come up with a model of the Tardis which was specially designed to look bigger on its inside compared to the outside. Greg Kumparak decided that he is no match for the laws of physics, and decided to rely instead on the wonders of augmented reality (AR) to get the job done. The actual interior of his DIY Tardis wooden model features a zebra-striped fabric which is downright weird, but when you hold up a smartphone in front of it that runs an AR app, it will show off a rather spacious interior that has been specially modelled on the ninth and tenth Doctors’ time machine.
The exterior of this DIY Tardis has been lovingly carved out of wood, followed by a blue coat of paint (you did not expect red, did you?), alongside a working light that has been attached to its top, before he decided to embark on something different by creating the illusion that the inside was huge. Greg said, “There’s a running gag in Doctor Who, wherein new characters are always dumbstruck by the Tardis being bigger on the inside than it appeared on the outside. Once I realised I had a rough idea of how to pull that off, I couldn’t not do it.”
Good for you, Greg!
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: The GravityLight is an affordable lamp powered by gravity, Toshiba 20 Megapixel Image Sensor Targets Point-And-Shoot Cameras,
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