Now that's true love, true, chest-bursty love.
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HR Giger wedding cake
Posted: February 3rd, 2010, 10:00pm MST
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Make the web "quieter" with shutup.css + get Richard Feynman quotes instead of YouTube comments...
Posted: February 3rd, 2010, 9:00pm MST
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.
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Flashback: The Florence Siphon Arabica Brewing & Extraction Apparatus
Posted: February 3rd, 2010, 7:00pm MST
I thought I was really into coffee until I met John Edgar Park, host of Make: television, contributing writer to Make: Online, and author of several MAKE magazine articles. John takes his coffee seriously. Seriously. Case in point was when he devised and wrote a how-to for his Florence Siphon Brewing and Extraction Apparatus for MAKE Volume 17, our Lost Knowledge issue. This apparatus is sure to raise eyebrows (and spirits) next time you invite someone to your workshop for a cup of blessed joe. Check out the whole project in this week's Flashback, and pick up a back issue of MAKE 17 over in the Maker Shed.
Make your own mad-scientist coffee machine.
By J. Edgar Park IIAboard the dirigible Aeroship Phaedrus, two men are seated at a table in the onboard Laboratory:
"Doctor Liepold, would you kindly prescribe something to lift my depressed spirits?"
"Why of course, Captain Heffernan. What is it that ails you?"
"My mind feels sluggish and there is still much work to be done before daylight. I am drawing up charts for the expedition."
"Ah, yes, I have just the thing. Sit a moment while I extract the invigorants from these wondrous beans."
"Very good, thank you. What is that strange device, Herr Doktor?"
"I call it the Florence Siphon. It is an arabica brewing and extraction apparatus. Allow me to demonstrate. First, I fill this boiling flask with a quantity of pure spring water. It is a vessel of my own devising that can withstand great heat and pressure. I heat the flask, which causes the water to vaporize, passing through this tube here, through a filter, and into the beaker to my left. Here, the water commingles with precisely roasted and ground fruit of Coffea arabica. I give the slurry a rapid stirring to fully saturate the grounds, then wait.
"As my boiling flask cools, a vacuum is created, causing the very atmosphere of the Earth to push the liquid through the filter, leaving the grounds and all unsavory particulate matter behind. Thus the liquid, now filled with essences, oils, solubles, flavors, and vital invigorants, is returned to the flask. Allow me to unstopper it and pour you a dose."
"Doctor! You have outdone yourself! I feel revitalized by this most miraculous potion."The vacuum siphon coffee brewing method dates back to the 1840s. It produces some of the cleanest, smoothest-tasting coffee of any method. Commercial vacuum pots are available, but I wanted to heighten the drama of vacuum brewing by taking it into the realm of the mad scientist's lab. Thus the Florence Siphon was born!
After studying original patent drawings and existing devices, I identified these key features:
• Water is heated in a boiling flask that has a tube leading to a second vessel containing ground coffee.
• The tube must have a filter, to allow the water to flow through but not the grounds.
• The filter must be submerged during brewing, so as to maintain a seal with the boiling flask.
• The second vessel must be accessible for stirring the slurry.
• The boiling flask must be large enough to create a sufficient vacuum as it cools to "pull" the coffee back through.One drawback to early vacuum brewers was the constant danger of exploding glass. Today, we have plenty of high-quality borosilicate glassware that's up to the task — it just happens to be found in the lab, not the kitchen.
Filtration was another challenge. I tinkered with a few options (including an unfortunate foray into shower heads) before arriving at an inverted thistle tube. This is a type of bulbed funnel that's easy to cover with filter cloth. (Thanks to Dr. Jim Callan from Avogadro's Lab Supply for this suggestion.)
I assembled my funnel, stopper, tubing, filter, and a beaker for the grounds. I filled my flask with preheated water (small burners can take a while to boil 500ml), poured 38g of medium-ground coffee into the beaker, donned my goggles, and lit the burner.
The water began to bubble quickly, and soon went straight up the glass tube and over to the grounds. After about a minute, the flask was nearly empty and I extinguished the flame. At this point, there was an abundance of expanded water vapor (steam) inside the flask, which prevented the water from returning.
I stirred up the slurry with a stick and then waited with great excitement. Would the siphon be able to draw the coffee back up? At just about the 2-minute mark, I saw the gorgeous brown liquid begin its ascent. This is due to the vacuum created by the cooling and contraction of water vapor in the boiling flask. It was tentative at first, but as the boiling flask continued to cool, the coffee started to move quickly up the tube, over and then back down to the flask below. Within another 20 seconds, the journey was complete: 420ml of coffee made it back, leaving 80ml of water behind with the grounds.
I removed the stopper and poured myself a cup. It was perfect! Smooth, bright, clear, and clean. Vacuum coffee is a step above a French press, and leagues above drip. Plus, when you brew with the Florence Siphon you get to don your lab coat and cackle maniacally. What more could you want from a cup of coffee?
Here's how to build your own Florence Siphon.
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MORE water rocket awesomeness
Posted: February 3rd, 2010, 5:30pm MST
We've covered George Katz and his water rocket projects here in the past. In this recent video, he shows testing of a lightweight in-line parachute deployment rig, as well as some additional footage of the group's most recent launch day.
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Awesome DIY water rockets with drop-away boosters
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In the Maker Shed:
MAKE: Volume 05
Our Price: $14.99
Homemade electric vehicles, high-powered water rockets, electricity-generating windmill, jet engine in a jam jar, and a backyard zip line!
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Toolbox: Business cards
Posted: February 3rd, 2010, 5:30pm MST
In the Make: Online Toolbox, we focus mainly on tools that fly under the radar of more conventional tool coverage: in-depth tool-making projects, strange or specialty tools unique to a trade or craft that can be useful elsewhere, tools and techniques you may not know about, but once you do, and incorporate them into your workflow, you'll wonder how you ever lived without them. And, in the spirit of the times, we pay close attention to tools that you can get on the cheap, make yourself, or refurbish.
In the next few months, we're going to be taking a more in-depth look at "Maker Business," the how-tos of turning your DIY hobby into an actual business. One of the first "brand identity" pieces that anybody going into business needs is a calling card. I know so much of our business interface is electronic these days, but everybody still needs a card for convenient exchange when pressing the flesh. I personally love business cards. I've saved nearly every one I've ever been given. I have a massive collection, going back decades. It's fun to go back through them and be reminded of the interactions that produced them, see the changing designs and typestyles, what people put on them (CompuServe and Prodigy accounts, USENET newsgroups!), etc.
Of course, the cards that get more attention, that stand out, are the ones that are truly unique and clever. In fact, I have a little display in my office with a number of the special cards covered below (Adafruit, EMS Labs, Tom Ward's dot matrix card -- and one of his flashlight cards from my demo of the same at Maker Faire Austin). As a maker, as someone who's working in a domain that's associated with innovative thinking, clever design, creative and new use of materials, embedded technologies, etc., a really stand-out card is almost expected. Today, there are so many options for cool cards you can make, materials you can use, cards of varying sizes and shapes; there's really no reason to not have a card that creates a special first impression (and hopefully a card that the receiver will want to keep, display, show off to others, etc.) Here are some interesting card ideas, mainly ones we've featured here on MAKE before.
Do you have an innovative, unusual business card? Put it in the MAKE Flickr pool and tell us about it in the comments.
Here's a card I bumped into yesterday, laser-etched onto large popsicle sticks. Lots of great possibilities here.
Business Cards - Laser Engraved Big Pop Sticks
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What Was I Thinking? Part 1: Light fishture
Posted: February 3rd, 2010, 3:08pm MST
It's "Failures!" month here at Make: Online. Throughout February, we're going to be celebrating the flip side of making, doing, and risking: Sometimes things don't work out as we plan.
On the other hand, sometimes things work out exactly as we plan, but when the passion of inspiration is gone and we look back in the cold, sober light of morning we come to a painful realization: I just made a giant piece of crap.
Thus it is that I hereby inaugurate a limited weekly series of posts called "What Was I Thinking?" in which I will be publicly cringing to recall celebrating some of my own more humbling morning-after moments. And possibly those of others. If I can get them to agree to submit to outright public mockery.
Which is why you're looking at a picture of a goldfish in a light fixture.
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Or "light fishture," which is such a bad pun that I was already apologizing for it when I first posted this project on my old personal homepage back in 2005. Let me set the scene for you... -
Control your iPhone using an Arduino
Posted: February 3rd, 2010, 2:00pm MST
Spotted in the MAKE Flickr pool:
When we last covered recotana's Open Sound Controller (OSC) library for Arduino (ardOSC), he had an Arduino talking to an iPhone using the OSC protocol. The project worked quite well, however you had to manually connect the two together by specifying their IP address. Now, by adding an implementation of Bonjour, the Arduino can link up to the iPhone automagically, allowing one to easily get on with their mixing.
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RepRap Mendel mini documentary
Posted: February 3rd, 2010, 1:00pm MST
This video, by Josef Davies-Coates, shows RepRap supreme chancellor Adrian Bowyer talking in depth about the latest version of the RepRap 3D printer ("Mendel") which has been out for some months now.
More:
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How-To: Adjustable kids' bike jump
Posted: February 3rd, 2010, 12:00pm MST
Insructables user murphtron writes:
Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Instructables | Digg this!My son started riding a 16" bike at 4 years old without training wheels. (He was first on a push bike without training wheels or pedals at about 3 1/2.) One day he decided to build a jump in the back yard. So he found a piece of 2 x 12 ramp (with random lumber laying around) and piled up some logs. He discovered it was a bit tricky to ride in the grass and hit his narrow ramp. So I said, 'hey, let's go in the street (dead end) and try this.' First one brick was used to provide vertical lift, and then a second brick. He loved it.
With two bricks, the ramp becomes a bit wobbly. Plus, a 2 x 12 is a bit narrow, and a few times he rode off the ramp's side. So I decided to build a jump with the following qualities:
- Wider ramp
- Adjustable height, so it will last for a few years as he grows
- Portable, so I could drag it to the dead end or local schoolyard playground.
- Safer (while still providing ample opportunity for skinned elbows and broken bones)
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Rex the Dog: beautiful papercraft video
Posted: February 3rd, 2010, 11:00am MST
I'm digging this stop-motion music video made by British group Rex The Dog. They make it look so easy to do! Anyone want to guess how long this took to make? [via Neatorama]
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"Photo grandpa" builds mother of all homebrew laser triggers
Posted: February 3rd, 2010, 10:00am MST
A reader who saw Marc's recent post about an Arduino-controlled laser photo trigger wrote in to tell us about the amazing work of Belgian photographer and Flickr user fotoopa (which, we hear, as "foto opa," means something like "photo grandpa" in Dutch). That's him in the picture above, with the awesome homebrew laser-triggered camera rig that he uses to capture amazing pictures of insects in flight and splashing drops of colored water. I'm generally skeptical of film purists, but fotoopa makes the compelling claim that no digital camera has the shutter speed necessary to do this kind of imagery. He claims the Compur #1 shutter used in his 2008 setup has a speed of less than 5 milliseconds. Technical details about his 2009 setup are available here. [Thanks, Wilco Schillemans!]
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Crochet Saturn V rocket
Posted: February 3rd, 2010, 9:00am MST
Rachel @ CRAFT writes:
It's been well established that I'm a huge space geek, and as I prepare to head to Florida for the shuttle launch this weekend, I've got rockets on my mind more than ever. Of course, I flipped out when June shared this amazing crochet Saturn V rocket by Flickr user, Ms Premise-Conclusion. I'm in love.
Keep an eye out for Rachel's coverage of the shuttle launch next week here on Make: Online!
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Aquaport from MIT's IDEAS Competition
Posted: February 3rd, 2010, 8:30am MST
This group of students came together as a part of MIT's IDEAS competition. They decided to solve a problem that arose out of one team member's childhood experience in Nigeria carrying water. They brainstormed several ideas and wound up with design that looks simple and effective.
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How-To: Quick 'n' dirty analog pressure sensor
Posted: February 3rd, 2010, 7:28am MST
There are lots of ways to make homebrew pressure sensors, but this method from Instructables user hiskeyd is the easiest I've seen: Jam two stripped wires into a piece of static dissipative foam and bend the ends over to keep them from pulling out. Then coat the whole thing in Plasti-Dip. And you're done.
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Lathing zen - making a vaccum hose adapter
Posted: February 3rd, 2010, 6:00am MST
I don't quite know why, but viewing detailed production process vids like this one, can induce a decidedly blissful, even zen-like state in my brain - and I've heard others report similar effects. Gfixler's above video, documents some quality time he spent with a Sherline 4400 CNC mini lathe - mistakes, mishaps, and all -
I needed a way to hook my shop vac hose to the square tube aluminum extrusion I recently made into a manifold for the Loc-Line tubing I'm using as a vacuum system for my mini mill. Here's how I did it.
Some might say it's a lot time to spend producing something as mundane as a hose adapter - but the satisfaction of using your own brand of hardware makes it very much worthwhile.
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Firefox fires up on Android
Posted: February 3rd, 2010, 5:00am MST
It's not quite ready for an alpha release, but it's nice to know that development of Firefox on Android has progressed to the stage where they've actually got a screenshot. [via AndroidCentral]
You'll note that this is the full Firefox interface, and not the Fennec/Firefox Mobile UI; we're testing with the full interface because it's significantly more complex than the mobile UI and stresses Gecko much more. So, if the full UI works, then Fennec should work fine as well. Given the interest in Android on netbook and tablet devices, an updated version of the full Firefox UI might find a home on some of these. Android has been pretty great to work with so far; it's a bit unusual platform for us due to its Java core, but with the NDK we're able to bridge things together without many problems.
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Arduino powered laser trigger for your camera
Posted: February 3rd, 2010, 3:00am MST
You can make a camera trigger without a micro controller, but this system allows you to easily add sensors or variable timers, making it extremely flexible. [Thanks Haje]There are loads of reasons for why you could want to trigger your camera remotely - to avoid camera shake, for example, or to be able to take a photograph of yourself without having to rely on a timer. If you want to build more ambitious projects, however, you may have to consider getting more exotic.
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In the Maker Shed:
Make: Arduino -
Letterblocks: Alphabet blocks with a twist
Posted: February 3rd, 2010, 2:00am MST
Design collective The Design Office has created kids' blocks that feature fragments of letters, allowing children to form their own characters using multiple blocks.
Children of a young age play with small wooden blocks to learn the alphabet. Letters lead to words that lead into sentences and so on. Our oversized kraft boxes reintroduce the alphabet not as 26 distinct letters, but as the result of combining geometric parts. The 4-inch cubes may be viewed and stacked from any direction, creating unexpected shapes and letterforms. The boxes are made from recycled cardboard, delivered flat.
[via Inhabitots]
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