With all of the crazy awesome stuff to see at the World Maker Faire in New York City this weekend, you’d have to put on quite the spectacle to draw a line. Mark Perez and his roaming crew of clowns, human-sized mice, one-woman band, and a guy in a gorilla did just that.
The San Francisco-based crew assembled its Rube Goldberg-esque machine on a lawn outside the Hall of Science in Queens, NY. The contraption has sixteen major pieces that weigh a total of 30,000 lbs. The mousetrap is based on the 60s board game Mouse Trap, substituting bowling bowls for marbles–the bathtub, on the other hand, is still fully in tact.
All of it leads up to the crushing of a junk car with two-ton safe–in honor of the big apple, the car was a New York City yellow cab this time out.
There’s also tap dancing mice, a musical intro by the aforemention one-woman band, Esmerelda Strange, and some good, old-fashioned carnival barking. Check out videos, after the jump.
The iPod nano iWatch? That’s so last week. Apple’s sixth-gen PMP has found a far better home in one fellow’s old Dreamcast VMU (Visual Memory Unit). It takes a bit of work to get the 1.5-inch screen and headphone outlet aligned just right, but when it’s all said and done, you get one of the best and quickest homages to old school gaming around. And hey, it also acts as a big plastic fortress to protect your touchy music player. Video after the break.
OK, we’re calling it: Computers are more than a passing fad. We’re so convinced of this, that we’ve teamed up with Sparkle Labs to teach you about electricity and electronics prototyping with series of interactive video classes. More »
Digg It’s been well over three years since we saw OS X hacked onto Sony’s VAIO UX, meaning that it’s just about time for yet another of yesteryear’s best tablets to receive the OS that Apple refuses to place on its own tablet. Thanks to dedicated code junkies over at xda developers, HTC’s ill-fated Shift is getting a new lease on life by proving its ability to run OS X 10.5.6. Sadly, it looks as if an upgrade to Snow Leopard is out of the question due to some file changes between 10.5 and 10.6, but the biggest killer is the current build’s inability to provide WiFi and Bluetooth support. The instructions to follow suit are right there in the source link, but good luck making good use of this without cordless access to the world wide web.
World Maker Faire is happening this weekend–right now in fact–at the Hall of Science in Flushing Queens, NY, nestled next to the 64 World’s Fair site, in the shadow of Citi Field.
This is the first time the Make Magazine-run event has ever hit the big apple, and it’s a doozy. The event is probably best described as a cross between a kid-friendly Burning Man, a science expo, and a craft fair. It’s the perfect convergence of, well, freaks and geeks.
I got plenty of shots and video out of my trip to Flushing. I’ll be posting about some of the exhibits in the near future. In the meantime, check out this massive slideshow from the event.
Benjamin “Ben Heck” Heckendorn popped by the PCMag offices today to talk up his brand new Element14 Web series, The Ben Heck Show. Those of who are familiar with Heck’s work (which I assume applies to a large chunk of the folk who regularly go out of their way to read gadget blogs) pretty much know what you’re in for–mods, mods, mods (and not the kind on scooters).
Heck’s best know for his console mods, of course–making portable versions of the Atari 2600, Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, and newer systems like the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo Wii.
Heck’s mods–and his new show–go beyond that, however. In the first episode, Heck modifies an Xbox 360 controller for a gamer who lost control of one of his hands. In fact, Heck told Gearlog that he would love to get into the prosthetics field at some point.
As for future shows? A multi-episode series showing users how to build their own pinball machine? Yes please.
Episode two debuts next week. Heck promises lots more explosions to come. Check out the first episode, after the jump.
If you live in the New York area, meanwhile, you can meet Heck at the Maker Faire in Queens this weekend.
The technology behind Words is an intricate solution to a simple task. And that’s what makes it so captivating to watch. Various gears and robotic fizzimajigs work in unison to arrange a set of fluorescent lights to form a changing list of different four-letter words. The machine runs through a list of words based on an algorithm developed by the University of South Florida that takes into account meaning, rhyme, letter sequencing, and association.
Living up to its name, Four Letter Words often veers into negative or scatological territory, which the artist attributes to the influence of various language studies used in the development of the algorithm. Crap, rape, kill, spit, among other visceral words come up in the course of this sample video.
So, be on the look out for any sudden changes in the gadgets in your life. Now that machines have finally mastered profanity, can drinking and smoking and talking back to teachers be so far behind?
An artist by the name Charlie Bucket (if that’s his real name or a nom de internet ode to Roald Dahl, I’m not sure) constructed a sculpture that thrusts liquid dyes through a mesh of interwoven plastic tubes. The result is a mesmerizing piece of visual candy. It’s like if the sky from Starry Night was animated and molded into the shape of Abe Lincoln’s top-hat. It starts off somewhat slow, but the fireworks start banging around the 1:00 mark.
He’s used the same fluid construction method to create a wearable techno-colored skirt. It is ridiculously impractical, but really cool to take in. In other words: art.
At some point in the future, many more everyday objects will have tiny embedded chips that can communicate with networks. But just as we’re debating net neutrality and the value of the open web vs closed client applications, we will have to decide who will control the internet of things, too.
The goal of mbed is to make building prototype objects and programs easier for people who aren’t necessarily used to writing programs or hacking at the guts of electronic devices. It has two main components: a simple $59 microcontroller, and an online drag-and-drop program compiler. This user video by steveravet shows mbed in action, rewiring a Billy Bass novelty talking fish to say funnier things:
Ultimately, though, the idea is to create practical applications to help users in the field. ARM’s Simon Ford told the Times: “I want to see how you get people to experiment. Maybe a washing machine repair man will figure out how to get the machines to report back to him and revolutionize the machines to get a competitive advantage. The point is that I don’t know what they’ll be used for.”
Now, at Adafruit Industries’ blog, DIY-engineering all-star Limor Fried counters the Times’ warm enthusiasm for ARM’s approach with some ice-water skepticism: “mbed requires an online compiler, so that you are dependent on them forever. You cannot do anything without using their online site, ever.”
Fried adds: “We like the hardware in the mbed, the cortex series is great (it’s why we carry an ARM Cortex M3 board now) – but the ARM compiler used with mbed costs about $5,000 so maybe it will never be anywhere but online.” Adafruit notes that similar ARM boards are available with entirely open-source libraries.
Free and open-source vs. ready-for-anyone-to-use out-of-the-box: we’ve been down this road many times before. I doubt this argument will have a clear winner and loser, but it’s important that it’s clearly framed and articulated now, before any one approach gets locked-in as the default option.
“Danger! High Voltage. Do Not Touch. Death or Serious Injury May Occur,” reads the yellow sticker on the side of this 1.25 Kilojoule DIY coilgun. Watching this video of it in action, that sounds about right: More »
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