I want to see a pumpkin keg at every Halloween party this month. Seriously, it’s the most festive, tastiest way to spice up the alcohol. Here’s how to make one. More »
Hey, when you have a new baby you have to make some major sacrifices. Less video games, maybe free up some room in the home. Stuff like that. IKEA Hacker Ian from Los Angeles had to give up his home office when a new baby was on the way. Well, he took it as a challenge and created an impressive mobile home office built out of IKEA pieces.
Ian took an IKEA stainless steel kitchen work table, some IKEA computer tower desk trays, two steel tabletops, and two grated steel shelves and made a mobile “office” that could be packed away into a closet when not in use. Judging by the images, he did an awesome job. You can check out a more detailed image of the entire build here.
Well done Ian. How much do you want to bet this thing turns into a diaper changing table as well?
[via Geekosystem]
If you’ve ever wanted your own miniature hairy Wookiee, check out this handy instructional video by Paul of That’s PS!. It’s not as hard as it might seem. And it isn’t as if he is going to be large enough to pull a droid’s arm of of it’s socket, so it is safe to have around as well. Just be careful with your tools.
You’ll need a furry material, some polyfill, cardboard, some red and white felt, some paper for your pattern, cutting instruments, a hot glue gun and a few other supplies. No actual Wookiees or Domokun are required though.
The video takes you through the whole process and when you are done, you’ve got a mini wookie buddy to keep you company. It takes about 6 hours to complete.
[via Geeks Are Sexy]
I love flipbooks. They just have this classic and nostalgic feel to them that makes them so special, both to the creator and to the spectators of the moving art that they hold within their pages. Now bringing mechanical flipbooks to the mainstream are kinetic artists Mark Rosen and Wendy Marvel.
Mark and Wendy created a series of motorized flipbooks last year, which became such huge hits after they were released to an adoring audience. Now they’re back with their flipbooks, but this time they’re giving everyone a chance to create their own masterpieces using this unique art format through FlipBooKit. These little mechanical wonders are available in either hand-cranked or motorized versions.
FlipBooKit is currently up for funding on Kickstarter. For a minimum pledge of $43(USD), you can get your very own kit with includes a vintage-looking flipbook shell, 30 flip panels, you-print-it printer sheets, a pre-printed trotting horse animation, a single hub, and assembly tools and on-line step-by-step instructions and flipbookit creation tools. A pledge of $66 to $76 lands you one of the first of the motorized versions of the FlipBooKit, dubbed the MOTO-FLIP. (Doesn’t that sound like a phone from the 1990s? – Ed.)
They begin shipping out this December, so they’d totally make a cool Christmas gift for both budding artists and art enthusiasts.
Last year around this time, a NASA JPL engineer blew us away with a Halloween costume that used two iPads to create the illusion of a gaping hole in his chest. Cool, if you could afford two iPads. For the 99 percent of us that couldn’t, he promised that his 2012 costume would be equally awesome and infinitely more affordable. More »
When I was in high school in the late 1970’s, we had workshop class as part of the “Industrial Arts” curriculum. It wasn’t quite clear why this was a required credit—we lived in suburb of Washington, D.C., and there were no factories around and most of my friends’ parents were lawyers and government workers. But learning how to use workshop tools—band saws, table saws, drill presses, and the like—was just part of a mid-twentieth-century American education. The bad kids made ninja throwing stars; the worst made bongs. I made a crude magazine stand that my parents tolerated until I left home; I was lucky to have kept all my fingers through the process. Meanwhile, girls were steered to “Home Economics” to learn about sewing, cooking, and painting, which was, in a sense, another form of required crafting and DIY education. More »
Calling tech support is generally just about the worst thing you could put yourself through. Since you’re not a masochist, you can avoid the pain with FixYa, an app tells you how to repair your broken belongings. More »
If you’re the DIY type that likes to whip up projects using different components and an Arduino, you’ll like the new ArduinoLCD from EarthMake. This device is an integrated color LCD that fits everything you need to add a screen to your projects in one package. The little screen measures 3.5-inches and supports touch control.
The display has an integrated 16-bit GPU and comes with a mounting bracket for easy integration into your projects. The display can be programmed using EarthSEMPL making it easy to design your own user interface. The resolution of the little color screen is 320 x 240 and it supports 65,000 colors.
The display has a 500:1 contrast ratio and can operate on 6 to 9 V of power, drawing less than 200 mA. The screen has 4 MB of integrated flash memory and can operate using USB 2.0 or Arduino Shield interfaces. The ArduinoLCD is available right now for $79 (USD).
Cold brew coffee has recently gained a massive following for its incredible smoothness and delicious flavor. Irish coffee, being caffeinated and alcoholic, has been popular for even longer. Too bad Irish coffee usually tastes like an 80-proof mug of acid. More »
The Spirograph completely revolutionized doodling as we know it, and Narcélio Grud hopes it can do the same for street art which is commonly looked at as nothing more than graffiti. His machine lets anyone who’s unskilled with a can of spraypaint make complex patterns with a spin of its wheel. More »
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