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Frank made the coolest clock, ever. He writes -

A while ago, while surfing the web I found an interesting idea for an oscilloscope clock. I have spend some time thinking about it first, and finally decided to make one myself. First I made a crappy version with a R2R resistor ladder network for a DAC to test the idea. The next improvement was to use a real DAC that works a lot better. The results were so good that I decided to make this project available as a kit.

The idea is to display a working clock on the surface of a CRT tube as used in most oscilloscopes. It’s not easy to find large numbers of identical CRT tubes, so I only made a kit that provides the x-y signals. You can connect this kit to any oscilloscope that supports x-y display. Practically any two-channel oscilloscope can handle that. There is no need for Z-modulation (intensity of the beam) as the trace moves very fast between the various parts of the picture. Credits go to the fast settling dual DAC, the most expensive part of the design. The image is very crisp, but remember to put the input channels in DC mode for the best result.

ck (schematics on the site) - Link.

Oscilloscope Oscilloscope Oscilloscopes!:

• Vector-based Pong on an Oscilloscope - Link.
• Oscilloscope alarm clock project… - Link.
• PIC Based Oscilloscope with LCD - Link.
• Low cost oscilloscope - Link.
• HOW TO - Using an oscilloscope - Link.
• Using an Oscilloscope - Link.
• HOW TO - Making a hard drive laser oscilloscope - Link.
• Single-digit Nixie, Oscilloscope CRT a Weston … - Link.
• ScopeOnPC - Turn your PC into a an oscilloscope - Link.
• What’s the cheapest way to get an oscilloscope? - Link.

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Originally from MAKE Magazine on April 10, 2007, 11:00am

trebuchet03 sent in his lastest video on large scale mold making…

Making tools from the tools you already own… This almost sounds incestuous - almost.

This is the next phase of our fairing construction for the University of Central Florida’s 2007 Human Powered Vehicle. Here we will take a positive male mold and begin making a female negative “tool.” We call it a tool because it can be used to make many duplicate copies. This tool is in fact a negative female mold.

To reiterate, this whole project is daunting. However, each individual step is not too scary and within the capability of most people handy with a few simple power tools. On the other hand, the price tag is scary. For this half alone, we used 5 gallons of polyester resin (circa $130).

21 minute Video - Lots of Time Lapse (now with captioned instructions).

s : [Video] Large Scale Mold Making - Making the Negative “Tool” - Link.

Related:

• HOW TO - Large scale mold making - Link.
• Plastic you can mold in your home for DIY projects - Link.

From the pages of MAKE:

How the pros replicate objects. MAKE 08 - Page 160. Subscribers–read this article now in your digital edition or get MAKE 08 @ the Maker store.

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Originally from MAKE Magazine on April 9, 2007, 11:00pm

We have a new kit for sale in the Maker store, the Cellular automata video synthesizer kit. This easy to contstruct kit is a fun way to play with cellular automata and video synthesis. When complete you will be able to uncover endless visual and sound patterns on any TV with a composite NTSC video input. The kit provides a pre-assembled, pre-programmed Video Critter Mini board, three potentiometers, and a push button. Just solder up the potentiometers and button to the circuit board, add an enclosure, and you’re done!

Note: You will need to power the kit with a 6 - 9 VDC power supply. A standard 9VDC wall-wart works well.

Get it here @ the Maker store - Link.

Related:
Cellular Automata video synthesizer (tutorial, source code available too) - Link.

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Originally from MAKE Magazine on April 9, 2007, 11:08am

MedCosm writes -

I thought it would be a neat to build a toy that records and plays back beats like a simple drum machine. For those who are musically inclined, it provides endless hours of entertainment and even has practical purposes in learning and practicing music. Even better if it used less than $5 worth of parts and could be built in 30 minutes.

Here is such a toy.

Turn it on. The LED glows indicating it is in record mode. Tap out a beat and the controller records your beats. After sample memory is filled up (about 5 seconds), the LED goes out and the beatbox goes into playback mode, endlessly looping playback of your sample. Press the drum pad again and you’re back in record mode again. Finally, a chance to put that finger-drumming to good use. And if you continue finger-drumming along with this $5 beatbox, you can easily tap out some very complicated rhythms.

machine, Thanks Chipwich! Link.

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Originally from MAKE Magazine on April 10, 2007, 8:36am

Russ writes -

Another one of my USB drives broke, so I made a very small aluminum case for it with #0-80 hex screws. I’m looking to get it anodized, so if any MAKER has a suggestion, comment here!

Aluminum USB drive project Link.

Related:

• DIY Home aluminum Anodizing for a hobby - Link.
• Anodizing aluminum - Link.

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Originally from MAKE Magazine on April 9, 2007, 8:00am

‘ve always been a fan of the 360 degree photographs of products. Purchasing the equipment would be ridiculously expensive but creating (MAKEing) comparable equipment at home was basically free and yielded great results!
the WAREHOUSE - Link.

Related:

• HOW TO - Inexpensive Panoramic Video - Link.
• DIY Pan jig side - Link.

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Originally from MAKE Magazine on April 9, 2007, 9:00pm

The Harrison Instruments site ain’t too much to look at, but they do have the biggest selection of Theremin kits I’ve ran across. A Theremin is one of the first electronic instruments, it uses radio frequencies to make noise as your hands get closer to it… Link.

Theremins galore!:

DIY RCA Theremin Replica - Link.

HOW TO - Make a Theremin - Link.

What is a Theremin? - Link.

HOW TO - Make a Radio Shack optical Theremin - Link.

Optical theremin + soapdish - Link.

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Originally from MAKE Magazine on April 9, 2007, 9:02am

Right on time, Chuck has the week in tools -

This week we put a new lightweight mobile workstation to the test to determine whether a carefully-designed aluminum and plastic rig (that converts into a two-wheel dolly and has on-board power as well) can replace your trusty wood-and-steel clamping table. In our tests it held 946+ pounds! We also checked out a tap-and-die set with a sweet ratcheting T-handle and tried out Dremel’s on-shelves-soon Multi-Vise. (If you use your rotary tools a lot, you’ll get a kick out of how you can remove the Multi-Vise’s clamp and install a rotary tool in its place so you can hold your workpiece instead of the tool.) TM readers weighed in this week on cheap plastic miter boxes — thumbs up for value, but buy a metal one if you can afford it – and we came across a big-rig-driver’s favorite boot brush that we wish we’d have found sooner.

Toolmonger’s Top 5: The Week in Tools - Link.

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Originally from MAKE Magazine on April 8, 2007, 5:00am

David Pescovitz:

The cover story in this week’s Science news is about computational photography, new methods to capture an image that result in a profoundly different photograph than is possible using a traditional camera (analog or digital). For example, a group at Columbia University creates 3D models by putting a mirrored cone around the lens. The cone enables the camera to capture the subject from multiple points of view that are used in the construction of a 3D digital model. And my old friend Paul Debevec at the University of Southern California can accurately alter the lighting in an image after its shot by calculating how the subject would appear under any lighting conditions. The image seen here shows how Debevec uses a room filled with hundreds of flashes to capture the various lighting combinations.



From Science News:

Another alteration of a camera’s field of view makes it possible to shoot a picture first and focus it later. Todor Georgiev, a physicist working on novel camera designs at Adobe, the San Jose, Calif.–based company that produces Photoshop, has developed a lens that splits the scene that a camera captures into many separate images.

Georgiev’s group etched a grid of square minilenses into a lens, making it look like an insect’s compound eye. Each minilens creates a separate image of the scene, effectively shooting the scene from 20 slightly different vantage points. Software merges the mini-images into a single image that the photographer can focus and refocus at will. The photographer can even slightly change the apparent vantage point of the camera. The team described this work last year in Cyprus at the Eurographics Symposium on Rendering.

In essence, the technique replaces the camera’s focusing lens with a virtual lens.

Link

Originally by David Pescovitz from Boing Boing on April 9, 2007, 11:58am

Mark Frauenfelder:

Google Video has a BBC documentary about the hateful Westboro Baptist Church, infamous for their “God Hates Fags” signs. In this part, the host interviews a man who was making a documentary about the church and ended up joining it.
Link

Reader comment:

Jesse Thorn says:

The host is Louis Theroux. He was the host of a show called “Weird Weekends,” which ran simulataneously on Bravo and the BBC in the late 90s, and he was also one of the reporters on “TV Nation.” He just came out with a really fascinating book called “The Call of the Weird,” in which he returns to talk with some of the fringey-types he met while shooting Weird Weekends. Prostitutes, UFO enthusiasts, white supremacists, a pimp-turned-rapper. His work is really fascinating, funny and wonderful, particularly because he finds so much empathy with his subjects.

Also, his father is Paul Theroux.

Mike says:

f=”http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctwo/noise/?id=louis_theroux”>video podcast of Louis Theroux talking about the Westboro
Baptist Church documentary, including an incident they didn’t get on
camera, available on the BBC2 website.

Originally by Mark Frauenfelder from Boing Boing on April 9, 2007, 4:05pm

Cory Doctorow:

Just finished listening to nerdcore rapper MC Frontalot’s new album, “Secrets From the Future,” released today. Frontalot is sounding like a heavy geek version of Beck, with songs like “I Hate Your Blog” and “You Got Asperger’s” that are funny, unrepentantly weird, and goofy. With super sing-able hook.

Frontalot’s got a nationwide tour to coincide with the release — this looks like a good show to hit.
Link to tour info,
Link to album page

(Thanks, Frontalot!)

See also:
MC Frontalot: Nerdcore rapper
Nerdcore Rising documentary - trailer
Nerdcore for Life documentary - trailer
Nerdcore shows in Vegas, January 8-9

Originally by Cory Doctorow from Boing Boing on April 10, 2007, 2:11am

Cory Doctorow:
Here’s an unforeseen benefit of totalitarian states: you can use your absolute authority to require 100,000 people to form a giant human pixel-board:

100,000 North Korean residents trained for a year to perform at the Arirang Festival (The Mass Games). The state’s immense, immaculately choreographed display of culture, one of the rare events to which foreigners are invited. The huge backdrops are made from human pixels, 1000’s of performers holding sequences of coloured placards. Timed to coincide with South Korea’s Olympic Ceremonies, this was communist precision at its best.

Link

(Thanks, Jeff!)

Originally by Cory Doctorow from Boing Boing on April 10, 2007, 1:15am

David Pescovitz:

The CAVE is a bookcase that integrates a reading seat and LED lamp. The price is a staggering 8,000 Euros (US $10,728). Less expensive are the CAVE_kid’s and CAVE_pet’s, although the latter doesn’t have the LED lamp.
Link (via Born Rich)

Originally by David Pescovitz from Boing Boing on April 9, 2007, 11:15am

the US Home prices from 1890 to today, adjusted for inflation, plotted as a roller coaster ride.
[link: speculativebubble.com|via kottke.org]

Originally from information aesthetics on April 4, 2007, 5:55pm

Originally from BLDGBLOG on April 10, 2007, 12:55pm

Originally from Split Screen on April 6, 2007, 6:23pm

I’ve been a regular visitor to the Kinetica Museum in London since it’s opening. One of the things I always really liked were the automata donation boxes. For this reason I attended the Cabaret Mechnical Theatre workshop that gave an insight into the processes using cardboard prototyping (some photos).

Last night was the opening of Cabaret Mechanical Theatre’s first-ever major retrospective show, which includes over 80 automata and a number of previously unseen works from CMT’s illustrious The Ride of Life. Here are my photos. Open until 5th May.

I can safely say that this one of the most beautiful, playful and magical exhibitions I’ve been to for a long time. My photos don’t do it justice, you need to go and see them moving in real life. It has a real feeling of British crazy backyard inventor to it, mixed with detailed tiny models to large scale automata. It was surprised by many of the works, narratives that formed over time rather than simply looping playback. I can’t recommend this exhibition enough.

Artists include Ron Fuller, Arthur Ganson, Tim Hunkin, Will Jackson, Pierre Mayer, Keith Newstead, Paul Spooner and Carlos Zapata. Read about CMT and the history of how it was started.

From the site:
The Ride of Life, developed as a satire of British culture, was a large-scale project commissioned in the late 1980’s by the Meadowhall Shopping Centre in Sheffield. Designed and created by the top British automatists of the time, it was to become a huge automated theme park and ride covering a colossal 25,000 sq ft area of the shopping centre and was set to become a landmark in the history of automata. However what started as a wonderful dream in the booming 80’s had a very rude awakening with the recession of the 90’s and after 3 years of work, the project was suddenly axed. Stored in sheds and warehouses for the past twenty years, many of the sets were tragically destroyed through vandalism and theft. CMT have initiated the restoration of the surviving scenes with some of the artists originally involved, enabling segments of The Ride of Life and the only complete surviving scene to be shown publicly for the first time.

If you are interested in automata, why not attend a workshop, attend artist talks, buy instruction books or kits. I’d love to see a lot more of this kind of work coming back.

More from Kinetica Museum.
Photos of this exhibition.

Originally by Chris OShea from Pixelsumo on April 6, 2007, 8:32am

In NYC there are huge power hungry TV screens above subway entrances that play ads for reality TV shows, and well, other reality TV shows, 24 hours a day 7 days
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________________________________
Hey, great! That’s related to my TV-Filter project. And they even show a pic of my project on their site. I know there has been this groovetube.tv product. I can’t find it any more and I don’t know if they where first. Does somebody know when they startet it?
-AB

Originally from MAKE Magazine, ReBlogged by Aram Bartholl on Apr 6, 2007 at 02:50 PM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on April 6, 2007, 2:50pm

location: “Muro Torto Dove Fai il Chioppo” Roma
Photo by Franco Mapelli

Originally from Wooster Collective, ReBlogged by Aram Bartholl on Apr 6, 2007 at 02:35 PM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on April 6, 2007, 2:35pm

More on the project here and here.

Originally from Wooster Collective, ReBlogged by Aram Bartholl on Apr 6, 2007 at 02:35 PM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on April 6, 2007, 2:35pm