By Xeni Jardin at 12:44 pm Wednesday, May 23
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Joaquin Baldwin, whose animated films and 3D-printed sculptures we've featured here before a number of times, has completed a new work. I love these. Joaquin explains:
I created the skeleton of a skeletal Lepidoptera. The Death's Head Hawkmoth (Acherontia atropos), seen in The Silence of the Lambs, has a skull marking on its back. I made a full human-like bone structure for the moth, with the grinning skull protruding from its back. The model is very thin, yet sturdy and flexible. Detail level is fantastic, and the natural texture of the 3d printing process gives it a bone-like appearance that works wonders. Yes, moths don't have endoskeletons, that's the whole point...
You can buy one in white, black, or red, for $15. More photos below, including details that show off the creepy little skull. Read the rest
By Xeni Jardin at 10:42 am Thursday, May 17
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A styrofoam-and-acrylic model of Osama bin Laden's compound that was used to plan the May 2011 raid that killed the al Qaeda leader has been declassified by the Pentagon.
CNN reports that the model of OBL's building and surrounding farmland in Abbotabad, Pakistan was built over a six-week period, and then was taken to the White House to brief President Obama on plans. After the raid, it sat on display in the lobby of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency in Fort Belvoir, Virginia.
Until last week, the model was considered classified and only those working or visiting the building could see it.
Now it is declassified, and agency officials wanted to bring it over to the Pentagon for a brief time to show it off to Department of Defense "customers" to highlight what the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency can do for them, according to an agency information sheet.
The to-scale diorama helped the Navy Seals literally measure the steps it would take to get to bin Laden.
More photos and background here: The very model of a successful bin Laden raid
(CNN.com, via Kristie LuStout).
By Cory Doctorow at 8:08 pm Tuesday, May 15
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Artist Carrin Welch's first foray into sculpture is a marvellous set of "Four Rocking Horses of the Apocalypse," made from wood. They're nearly finished, and eminently ridable.
My interpretation of these horsemen from Revelations in the Bible is very loose, it's an artistic idea based mostly on how I want them to look, and less on the many academic and theological interpretations. I want them to appear ominous and imposing, but the catch is that they are giant toys. They are meant to be fantastic and absurd, but also beautiful and magical. You cannot ride one of the mammoths without feeling a little joy. With this world feeling so unstable, and all the theories of its end, the rocking horses bring light to a dark time.
All four horses are expected to be completed by end of May 2012, when they will travel to Burning Flipside for their collective debut. After that I will be collaborating with fellow artists to produce some fun, fantasy images of the rocking horses, and seeking opportunities to show them and let people interact with them.
Welch completed the horses during a period of unemployment, thanks to funding provided by her fans on Kickstarter.
The Four Rocking Horses of the Apocalypse
(via Neatorama)
By Cory Doctorow at 4:00 pm Tuesday, May 15
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A nice t-shirt mod from the folks at Hurley -- the rip-skull. I don't expect it would survive a lot of washings, though.
DIY SKULL T-SHIRT
(via Crazy Abalone)
By Cory Doctorow at 4:00 pm Tuesday, May 15
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Here's a nice twist on the traditional vinyl-LP-as-a-clock craft: a cut-out AT-AT mod. From Etsy seller NotByLaser (which implies that this was not cut by a laser!).
Star Wars AT-AT: Hand Crafted Vinyl Record Clock - Made To Order
(via Neatorama)
My friend
Tara is organizing a meeting at Crashspace this Sunday for interested parties to discuss the possibility of creating a child/family-friendly hackerspace in the greater Los Angeles area. They're seeking volunteers, looking for an appropriate space, and brainstorming sustainability models. You can bring your kids to the meeting!
— Xeni
By Cory Doctorow at 12:00 pm Wednesday, May 2
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This video shows Shapeways user EYEDEA with his prototype hand-cranked programmable, 3D printed kalimba sequencer: "Pegs can be set to produce different 16-step sequences of 5 tones."
3D Printed K5 Programmable Auto-Kalimba is a Hand Cranked 16 Step Awesome Analogue Music Machine
By Cory Doctorow at 11:09 am Thursday, Apr 26
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D. Scott Williamson is a former Atari employee with a decades-long obsession with the game Star Castle, once a popular stand-up arcade game. In 1981, Howard Scott Warshaw, a well-regarded Atari programmer, gave up on porting Star Castle to the Atari 2600, calling the job impossible (Warshaw ended up making the beloved game Yar's Castle instead).
Decades later, Williamson dug out his old Atari development materials and set to work trying to port Star Castle to the now-defunct 2600 platform, trying to cram the game into 8 kilobytes, and accommodate it to the quirks of the Atari hardware and TV linkup. After a false start or two, he produced a genuinely delightful and playable port.
Having perfected his code, he undertook to produce a fitting physical medium for his game. He made his own scratch-built Atari 2600 game-cartridge, one that could show off the blinkenlights he included on the circuit-board. And to make sure those lights were visible during gameplay, he also produced a transparent perspex Atari 2600 clone. Also, he made a beautiful box to accompany his cartridge, shelf-ready and perfect for displaying at one of the many non-existent Atari 2600 retailers that don't dot the landscape.
Now he wants to mass produce his delightful atemporal anachronism, and he's running a $10,000 Kickstarter to fund the production of cast cartridge shells, custom-programmed circuit boards, CDs (containing versions of the code that can be played on modern hardware), manuals, and boxes: "I was inspired by one of the greatest and most influential game programmers of all time to make something that he said was impossible. I don't consider this a game development project, rather an alternative history art piece*, a demonstration that it could indeed be done."
If you are a collector you can get a cartridge and play it the way it was meant to be played: on an Atari, with a joystick, in front of a TV (preferably an old one).
If you're a casual player you can play it on just about any PC. Many people prefer playing Atari 2600 the games on the Stella emulator because it's easy, convenient, the emulation is indistinguishable from the real thing, and the picture and sound are perfectly crystal clear.
If you are a developer or just interested in programming, the game comes with all the source code and art on the CD, everything you need to build your own copy of the game (you have to download the free compiler, but the link is on the CD). You can look it over if you are just curious, or you can modify it and make it your own. The game comes with Stella which includes a full Atari 2600 graphical debugger that allows you to step through each instruction, line, or frame of the game and graphically shows all of the registers in real-time.
This may be the only chance you have to get Star Castle 2600, after this Kickstarter campaign there are no plans to produce or make available any additional cartridges, CD's, or materials.
Star Castle 2600, the Story
(via Make)
By Cory Doctorow at 8:01 pm Saturday, Apr 21
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Tal sez, "Tal Avitzur has updated his website with new robot-related night lights made from scrap metal and other urban salvage: Barbiebot, Snork, Work in progress. Tal has been invited to show his work with the Applied Kinetic Arts group this year at the Bay Area Maker Faire."
By Cory Doctorow at 8:11 pm Wednesday, Apr 18
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From the Dec 1941 ish of Mechanix Illustrated, a jim-dandy shop project to make Junior his own dowel-firing machine-gun!
ANY small boy will want, and be delighted with this toy submachine gun, which holds fifteen shots in the magazine and fires them continuously, until empty, as the “tromboning” action is worked. Made entirely from wood, simple of construction, and employing no “hard to get” parts, this gun would make an excellent mass production product for any guild club doing such work for gift or sale.
The body of the gun, housing the mechanism, is built up on the side plate having the projection to which the magazine is secured. If the modeler makes up a set of full sized drawings of all the parts on light card or heavy paper and makes cut-outs from them, much of the fitting and adjusting may be done before actually cutting the parts, from wood. This minimizes the chance of error caused by working from small drawings.
The short dowels which project through the firing pin and cocking bar should slide freely, but not too loosely in the tracks formed by the small rippings, which are bradded and glued to the side plates. Punch pin holes through the full sized drawing of the side plates, at the exact location of these rippings so both plates are identical.
MODEL SUBMACHINE GUN Performs Realistically (Dec, 1941)
By Cory Doctorow at 3:00 pm Wednesday, Apr 18
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Jordan Mechner, creator of the classic bestselling video-game Prince of Persia recently discovered the floppies with the game's original sourcecode in a closet, where they'd sat for more than 20 years. He'd long believed the discs to be lost. Jubilant at their rediscovery, he's released the game as free/open code, with the source available on GitHub. The source awaits your download and remixing!
Prince of Persia Source Code Released On Github
(Images: Prince of Persia Source Code — Found!, jordanmechner.com; Original Prince of Persia game (screenshot), Softpedia)
By Cory Doctorow at 12:01 pm Wednesday, Apr 18
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Love and Lots of Sugar has documented some of the creation of a remarkable Captain America fourth birthday cake that, in cross section, displayed the stars-n-stripes. It's a really sweet bit of topology-based baking, and, judging by the photos, was a smash-hit.
The last picture I posted hit it big on Reddit. Some really nice things have been said.
(Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
A followup to the
wonderful Caine's arcade story Mark blogged two weeks back: the Internet's many users were so impressed by Caine's ingenuity that
they raised $164,000 for his college fund. The funds are matched 1:1 by the Goldhirsh Foundation, and these matching funds are earmarked to fund the Caines Arcade Foundation "which will help find, foster, and fund creativity and entrepreneurship in young kids."
— Cory
By Cory Doctorow at 10:00 am Monday, Apr 16
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Zachary Pollock is looking to raise $26,400 on Kickstarter to buy "a lot of [Lego] bricks" for use in a 780,000-piece re-creation of the entire first level of Super Mario Bros. Once completed, it will be exhibited in Portland and Seattle, with possible side-trips to PAX and SDCC.
In 2005, I rediscovered my passion for building big. I realized that as an adult I have much greater access to large supplies of LEGO bricks now than I ever did as a kid. Since then, my projects have hovered between 6,000 – 15,000 pieces. By recreating Level 1-1 of Super Mario Bros. in LEGO bricks, this project trumps all of my other work by leaping to almost 780,000 LEGO studs. No one that I am aware of has done a LEGO mosaic on this scale before. Only a small number of people have done work with this number of bricks. The final project will stand over six feet tall and over 90 feet wide.
Epic Mario
(via Engadget)
By Cory Doctorow at 12:02 pm Saturday, Apr 14
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"Everything is coming up roses" is an electrical sculpture by Robert Weschler: it's a clothes-iron that's been modified to scorch images of the Virgin of Guadalupe into any garment upon which it is rested.
The steam holes of a working iron were re machined to mirror the iconic aura of the Virgin of Guadalupe. When cloth is scorched by the iron an image of the Virgin appears in the burn. The text on the T-shirts (everything is coming up roses) accompanies the burns and refers to the Virgin of Guadelupe's first appearance when she caused roses to grown on a barren hillside for the lone peasant Juan Diego.
Everything is coming up roses
(via Neatorama)
