February 1st, 2011 by Paul Sobczak

Dale Dougherty here giving an awesome talk on makers and their place in America (Hackerspaces included)

America was built by makers — curious, enthusiastic amateur inventors whose tinkering habit sparked whole new industries. At TED@MotorCity, MAKE magazine publisher Dale Dougherty says we’re all makers at heart, and shows cool new tools to tinker with, like Arduinos, affordable 3D printers, even DIY satellites.

Share/Bookmark

February 1st, 2011 by Paul Sobczak

Ingredients:
1 Box
1 square heavy mat
180 white beads
181 black (oil colored) beads
2 bags

Directions:
Make a 19/19 grid on the mat.
Use black paint to paint top of box black.
Use white paint to paint Go and mini Go board on top of box.
Put the beads in the bags.
Put the bags and mat in the box.

To Play:
Take the board out of the box.
Take the bags of beads out of the box.
Take the beads out of the bags.

All items available, at least at one point in time, from Minnesota’s favorite Surplus Store Ax-Man.

Share/Bookmark

February 1st, 2011 by noise

There are various plans for nozzles online but I wanted something simple and a bit more elegant (if that’s possible with PVC) than what I was seeing. I also wanted my nozzles to use as few parts as possible.

Here’s what I came up with:

Parts:

* 1” PVC threaded to smooth adapter
* 3/4” PVC end cap that fits inside the smooth end of the adapter
* 12, 16 or 20 ounce plastic bottle of soda. Some caps work much better than others, look for the ones with numerous thin knurls. Regular Pepsi caps are good for instance.
* PVC cement.
* 5 minute epoxy.
* A nail or non tapered toothpick to use as a trigger. It has to be long enough to go all the way through the 1” adapter and stick out on both sides.
* String to use for the remote trigger.
* Drill.
* Drill bit the same diameter or slightly larger than your trigger.
* 3/16” drill bit.
* Hobby knife or Dremel with a spiral cutting bit.
* 2 liter bottle of Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi.
* Package of mint Mentos

(more…)

Share/Bookmark