Wow. This is a thing of great beauty. A giant 3D topographic wood map of Westeros, the world of Game of Thrones, by IMGURian @ARUNK55. It's 60"x35". Read the rest

Seattle maker Brennen Johnston wanted his friends to play Animal Crossing with him but they couldn't get their hands on a Nintendo Switch, a scarce commodity amid COVID-19 lockdowns. Enraged by the prices scalpers were charging for a Switch, Brennen set out to build one himself from individual components. The Internet fell in love with the build notes he posted to Imgur and now he's released the above video documenting the project! Brennen writes:

The support I received from my original Imgur post has been overwhelming. I never imagined so many people were interested in my project or had thought of doing something similar. I with I was able to answer everyone's questions but I just couldn't keep up with all the requests.

Most of the private messages asked me to do a version for the Joy-cons so I went ahead and made you that you can find here:

https://www.unorthodoxtech.com/#/blog/5ecc7e3157d93d0017683e23

"How To Build A Nintendo Switch From Scratch - Building With Brennen" (YouTube)

• Previously: "'How to build a Nintendo Switch' for coronavirus #StayAtHome gaming" Read the rest

You know how in movies where there's a mad genius tech-wizard/hacker (often a precocious teen) who can make the most fantastical creations with seemingly no effort? It's such a great fantasy with little analogue in the real world. Sam Battle, he of Look Mum No Computer strikes me as a character from one of those films, except he is very real. Read the rest

My friend Nik Shulz (aka L-Dopa) creates beautiful designs and illustrations. I hired him when I was an editor at Wired and at Make. In recent years Nik has branched out into furniture making, and his work is just as beautiful as his illustrations. Read the rest

Delightfully weird and lovingly crafted. I love this. Read the rest

May 16 marks 30 years since Jim Henson passed away. To remember his delightful legacy, here's a public access video of him and Don Sahlin (who went on to create and voice Rowlf) from 1969, teaching kids how to make puppets out of random household objects like tennis balls and socks.

h/t OpenCulture

Image: Blake Handley / Flickr (CC 2.0) Read the rest

The best solutions are sometimes the simplest ones: "I've been topping off a leaky tire for weeks and staring at my garden hose wondering if I could use it instead of my compressor. The answer is YES!!!" Read the rest

This is an awesome woodworking project gallery -- making a table out of dowel rods. You can follow the creator Make Things on YouTube and IMGUR. Read the rest

Some people take their libations and isolations very seriously. Read the rest

It's beautiful pic.twitter.com/uDI9nlnI4A

— beef (@shittyfriend) May 13, 2020

Image: Evan Swigart / Flickr (CC 2.0) Read the rest

Brilliant. Read the rest

An ingenious and practical invention shared by IMGURian @GuzziGuy. Read the rest

Okay, now THAT is a selfie.

This is such a cool photography/biology experiment. Read the rest

On his Pluralistic blog, Cory Doctorow writes about a $3 router rebooter. This DIY gadget connects between your home router and its AC outlet. It pings Google periodically and if it doesn't receive a response, it cycles the power on the router to reboot it.

From creator Mike Diamond's website What I Made Today:

How it works In layman's terms, the process is simple. The ESP [ESP8266 01, an  Internet of Things WiFi module board] periodically pings Google through the modem. If it gets a reply, it does nothing; the relay stays closed and the modem stays on.

If the ESP does not get a reply, it will "understand" that the modem is down. When this happens, it turns off the relay, waits 30 seconds, then turns it back on, thus power-cycling the modem.

So real, I can smell it! Read the rest

A few years ago I decided to piece together my own Peloton-compatible stationary bike, it has been a fantastic investment in me. Building your own is easy and significantly cheaper than buying the bike Peloton sells!

Ironically placed in a window overlooking the Pacific for its first few years of service, my Sunny Bike was in storage for the last 12 months and I ached to get it back. When I packed my life into storage last April I thought I would be living in a new home by the end of summer, and haphazardly packed stuff into boxes as labeled by a madman. I did not take my cycling shoes, shorts, heart-rate monitor with me.

Of the 11,000lbs of crap I had in storage, I spent a year missing 3 cardigans, my espresso machine, and the fakey-Peloton. I was thrilled when I saw the movers haul it out of the truck and bring it into my home. It took three days to find the espresso machine.

In the months before going into storage, my physical therapist told me I had to stop riding the Sunny Bike as often as I had been. I was riding 5-6x a week and he suggested some of my back problems might be alleviated by riding less and doing more core building strength exercises. I find that riding the bike not only helped me burn calories, and maintain a better level of cardio fitness than I had in years, it was a huge emotional release, and frequently as I pedaled my heart out, I would just start to laugh or cry. Read the rest

Creativity has no bounds when you're shut in your house for weeks on end. I only wonder how he has three rolls of toilet paper to spare. Read the rest