Echo Park's much loved Machine Project offers art, classes and civilized mayhem from Experimental Millinery and Bookbinding to Flame Effects (read: giant fireballs) and Sewing 101. Annually, a month's worth… Read the rest of the article: Competitive Sobriety Tests and Automotive Hot Wiring Classes Amongst Offerings at Machine Project's Benefit

Left to right: Pinball Wizard, Beer Wagon and Peanut Machine Photo: Street Rodder While George Barris and Ed "Big Daddy" Roth are household names, the comparatively unknown Carl Casper is… Read the rest of the article: The wacky show rods of Carl Casper

Andrew Alter's Pico-ITX Johnny 5 From Chicago Museum of Science and Industry: American Maker is a raucous daylong festival of homemade innovations and inventions, organized and hosted by MAKE Magazine.… Read the rest of the article: Mister Jalopy hosting American Maker at Chicago MSI, Saturday September 20, 2008

Photo: Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times Invariably, I pick up an expensive carton of brown eggs, look inside, poke the eggs to make sure they are loose and… Read the rest of the article: Deciphering the myriad of claims on a carton of eggs

Interesting article in the NYT science section on the power of approximation and how those folks who are the best at ball park guessing, may have a natural ability for… Read the rest of the article: From NYT: Good at approximation? Maybe you are the next math superstar!

Mach GoGoGo is no mere gas station, as it seems that you can purchase a used car from Trixie and have your bumper resprayed by ChimChim as you enjoy lunch… Read the rest of the article: Speed Racer Service Stations in Japan

Cosmo Lee of Invisible Oranges thinks so: On one hand, this would surely make great coffee table reading. On the other hand, it is just as surely a copy-and-paste job… Read the rest of the article: Is All Known Metal Bands a work of plagiarism?

Over at Dinosaurs and Robots, I dipped a toe into the vast world of velocars, velomobiles and other pedal powered craft. As is often the case on the interdoodles, there… Read the rest of the article: Velocars – microcars that are pedal powered

Beyond an average repairman, Tytell was an artisan of the typewriter. He built a hieroglyphics typewriter for a curator, musical note machines for musicians and recreated Alger Hiss' typewriter, flaws… Read the rest of the article: Martin K. Tytell, Typewriter Wizard, Dies at 94

Photo: Ray Dobbins (click for big) The Velosniper points us to the amazing bicycle photography of Ray Dobbins. Using consumer cameras, Ray gets tremendous results in his modest garage photography… Read the rest of the article: HOWTO: Take jaw-dropping photos with a mid-grade digital camera and worklights

Les Rita Mitsouko "C'est Comme Ça" from The No Comprendo Although Jean-Baptiste Mondino has directed music videos for huge artists like Madonna, Bjork and Chris Isaak, my favorite video of… Read the rest of the article: A brief appreciation of the work of Jean-Baptiste Mondino

From DVS: Back in April, TransWorld SKATEboarding held its first annual Skate & Create contest. In a nutshell, the contest consists of four teams of four pros, one am, a… Read the rest of the article: DVS wins TransWorld SKATEboarding's Skate & Create video contest

From New York Times: How people spend their discretionary income – the cash that goes to clothing, electronics, recreation, household goods, alcohol – depends a lot on where they live.… Read the rest of the article: "What your global neighbors are buying" – Superb interactive graph at NY Times

Daily, annually or once in a blue moon, Mr. Rintala's furniture adapts to meet your needs as your requirements dictate. Luoto by Sami Rintala

Agricultural Tree Grading Maps Photo: satimagingcorp.com The landscape architecture blog Pruned has a fascinating overview of using unmanned drones and satellites to produce maps which reveal terrific amounts of data… Read the rest of the article: Agro-veillance: Using satelites and drones for precision crop maintenence

I am not sure if we should blame the original iMac or gummy bears for the ubiquitous transparent jewel tone plastic that permeates industrial design. If you want to be… Read the rest of the article: Ortofon 2M turntable cartridge looks great – in a Bondi Blue sorta way

The mysterious Brazo Fuerte has been invited into the home of the Rich Roat family and appears to be puzzled by Rich's laissez-faire estate management. While the fence sways under… Read the rest of the article: Sweathog Living: The domestic chaos of diminished expectations

Generally, micro inspection cameras are frightfully expensive professional instruments for dedicated industrial applications with commensurately high professional fees attached. When I stumbled across the $182 Ridgid SeeSnake, I became so… Read the rest of the article: Ridgid SeeSnake Micro Inspection Camera

Sweet Queen Victoria! Why didn't somebody think of this before?! Was there some engineering issue that had to be overcome to allow such an elegant, ingenious and obvious design? Did… Read the rest of the article: Leviton gives the gift of extra outlets – a third at every wallplate