The tip is razer sharp, easily digging far enough into a pin to hold its place. A finger's weight on the plunger keeps the probe in place; it has never once slipped to short two pins, as my multimeter's probe is wont to do.
Phun is a 2D "physics sandbox," a program created by a Swedish CompSci major as his Master of Science thesis. It's way cool; a great way for kids (of all ages) to learn physics concepts. It's available for Mac, Windows, and Linux.
"Pixel-lapse" combines the temporal nature of long exposure photography and the precise organization of the digital matrix. By creating an image one pixel at a time, each part of the image shows different captured moments. In the end, each image not only has dimension but also gains duration and velocity.
In addition to my personal gallery, the Pixel-lapse contains Mac and PC Max/MSP standalones that visitors can download to create their own images which then can be shared to an online gallery (also at pixel-lapse.com).
Reminscient of some scanner camera experments I've seen.
The software worked quite well - keep in mind that part of the software's functionality is that it uploads the lapsed pic to the online gallery - hence this lovely portrait of yours truly -
It became clear that in our poor country the chief hurdles were getting the chemicals and the right equipment. The search was on for the chemicals and after quite a treasure hunt and more than a few bribes we managed to find 4 litres of Methanol and 5 kilos of Potassium Hydroxide (enough to make a good bomb I think)...
...Actually the whole scene was quite amusing. Here we were hoping to compete with the big oil producers in the back yard of a small village and using an untried collection of old car parts, old pipes and taps attached to a used chemical container, all put together in an image downloaded from the internet. Nonetheless we were fuelled by much excitement, with much of the local community looking on, wondering what on earth we were up to.
Have a dead LCD display around? Flickr user fibra used a simple laser printout and inserted it under the casing of this one, then slapped it on the wall. Might be a nice over-the-trashcan adornment. (Thanks, Matt!)
Here's an update (and details). to the DVICE, SCIFI.COM and MAKE "Make a Cylon contest" -- the are a ton of great entries coming in, keep it up!
You know the Cylons -- that fanatical race of genocidal robots? There are a bunch of different kinds, from toaster-like automatons to human-looking androids to fighter planes, and the idea is for contestants to mod something (or create something from scratch) to make it look like a Cylon. You can put photos of your entry on Flickr or video on YouTube with a special tag or just send them in to a specific e-mail address we've set up (details after the Continue link below). Judging the entries will be none other than BSG cast members Tricia Helfer and Grace Park. The best ones will be featured on the SCI FI Channel!
Feel free to shout out "By your command."
"MAKE A CYLON" CONTEST
The Cylons were created by the people of the Twelve Colonies. Intelligent robots, they were used as slaves and soldiers to fight humanity's wars. But the Cylons became sentient and they rebelled. Man and machine fought to a bloody stalemate, then the Cylons withdrew to a remote region of space. A truce between the Twelve Colonies and the Cylons lasted for 40 tense and silent years. Then, on the 40th anniversary, a stunning blonde -- a Cylon in human form -- met the human envoy... moments before the Cylons vaporized the station and launched a genocidal attack on the Twelve Colonies.
Now DVICE, SCIFI.COM and MAKE are giving you the opportunity to create (or recreate) the Cylons for fun, a chance to win prizes, and the possibility of seeing your creation on the SCI FI Channel.
HOW TO ENTER
"Make" a Cylon: Use whatever you like: blinking lights for eyes, metal armor as a costume, toasters... anything to show the world that you're a Cylon maker. The only caveat is that it has to be something physical (no Photoshop/art entries). Your Cylon can be of the humanoid or robotic variety, real or abstract, or anything else you can think of. We'll also accept entries for creations in the general Battlestar universe (ships, devices, etc.), although our preference is for Cylons.
To enter, make your Cylon or "Battlestar-related project" and put photos/videos online. If you use Flickr and YouTube, tag your project with "dvicemakecylon" and add it to the MAKE magazine Flickr photo pool.
PRIZES
The best entry or entries will be featured on the SCI FI Channel.
Other prizes include:
Battlestar Galactica DVD box sets for seasons 1, 2 and 3
Battlestar T-shirts, posters and other exclusive swag
10 MAKE year one box sets signed by the MAKE team!
Prizes are limited by supply.
JUDGING
Cylons Tricia Helfer (Number Six) and Grace Park (Boomer) will judge the entries.
RESOURCES
You can design your Cylon any way you want, but here's an "open source" kit that makers have used to make things more "Cylon-y":
MiniPOV kit (with Cylon firmware, we can have one the code on the chip in advance)
Each week on DVICE, SCIFI.COM & MAKE we'll have examples, projects and ideas for building your own Cylon, you can enter as many times as you wish.
WHO CAN ENTER
Open only to entrants who are permanent, legal residents of and physically residing in the 50 United States and the District of Columbia (excluding Puerto Rico, Guam, US Virgin Islands and all other US territories), who are 13 years of age or older at time of entry. To be considered, all entries must include the Entrant's full name, date of birth and a valid e-mail address.
END DATE
The contest will end at 12:01 a.m. the day after the premiere of the mid-season finale of Battlestar Galactica, which will air on SCI FI at 10 p.m. on June 13, 2008. So the contest ends at 12:01 a.m. on June 14.
UPDATE
Hey folks, thanks for the entries so far. Hope you're having a great time designing your Cylons. A few good questions have come up about the contest, so we've updated information about the contest's end date and who is eligible to enter. Also, to clarify: 1) Yes, your Cylon can be modeled after a centurion (new or old), a "human" Cylon, a raider or even a basestar. So say we all.
This is a portrait I made of Abraham Lincoln's face using a Scrabble board game and following the official rules used in Scrabble tournaments in order to do it. It's also a reference to a painting by surrealist artist, Salvador Dali.
He says he's working on this piece for an upcoming show, and the idea came from the Dali painting "Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea Which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln (Homage to Rothko)."
This very low frequency radio reciever kit is sold by Nasa's Inspire project - a group based around the study radio atmospheric phenomena, aka whistlers. These pulses occur in a frequency range audible to us humans (1 to 30 kHz) - and they sound quite mysterious an interesting. Listen to some samples - Spaceweathersounds.com
"Sleep/Wake Up" by Julie Morel is a project that decontextualizes the "Sleep" and "Wake Up" keys found on typical PC keyboards into a networked control for the artist's bedside lamp. Visitors to the gallery in Toulouse, France can press the buttons which then control the lamp in Paris. A very simple binary connection, but nice implementation of the two keys on a bank wall in the gallery.
After hugely successful launches in Japan and Europe, Nintendo's Wii Fit exercise game is coming to the United States May on 19th, where it is sure to find sales success. But Wii Fit is hardly the first example of an attempt to meld videogaming and exercise -- it's not even the first fitness offering from Nintendo.
Check out all the fun and excitement at this year's Maker Faire in San Mateo, California. People from all over the world came to experience this amazing event. Here are just some of the amazing riding machines we saw.
Ok, I think we posted up a good chunk of the projects from NYU's ITP show - it's one of the few events where you can actually see some of the building blocks we cover @ MAKE taken to the extremes when tech-artists do projects, Tom Igoe (author of Making Things Talk) is an instructor @ ITP so there were a lot of new and interesting Arduino based projects and this year there were a handful of projects which use a Wii remote -- if you want a glimpse of what the art-meets-tech world will be doing years from now check out our photos, posts and videos. Here are all of them for your viewing pleasure...
It's hard to say which one was the best, but I did like "Simon Stabs" quite a bit (pictured above) - so consider this a MAKE "best of show" Aram!
Editor's note: This is part of the "mobile post" series which will appear on MAKE - sponsored by Windows Mobile. Only the links and voice that appear in the mobile post box (below) are part of the campaign on MAKE - pt.
Ever wondered how the Arduino would fair as a keyboard synthesizer? Wonder no more - the Pocket Piano kit from Critter and Guitari proves Arduino can sine and saw quite well. Features include -
25 keys and multiplexer circuitry
4 potentiometers, 1 controls output level
Microchip MCP4921 12 bit SPI DAC
Passive low pass output filter
The kit comes with all the support hardware needed to turn the versatile micro into a sweet digital sound synth ready for experimentation. Sporting 2 octaves worth of key/switches and 4 full-size pots, it's a relatively long board (over 3 Diecimilas long) - but the assembly is still quite simple.
The naked pixel is a pretty LCD panel, but it's actually doing quite a bit more... The maker writes -
The Naked Pixel challenges our notion of decency in public arenas by using the entire visual display to represent individual pixels of a nude photograph sequentially over time. By viewing the piece, the audience is not only unaware of what they are viewing, but their primary visual cortex can not mentally construct the sequence of colors into a coherent image.
Using a light sensor, the piece detects nightfall and further "undresses" each pixel's color into its binary value by displaying a sequence of ones and zeroes. This further obfuscates the representation of the potentially "obscene" image.
My intention is to convert a still image into an animated sequence of pixels. This changes our perception of the image by limiting the stream of optical information from a parallel format (all pixels at once) to a serial format (each pixel individually). Our visual system is incapable of parsing this visual information, which fundamentally changes the character of the image. Our experience of the still image becomes entirely new, even though the content of the image remains.
This project by artist Mike Rea is called "Suit for Stephen Hawking" and shows off this artist / maker's exceptional wood making skills. Check out the links below for everything from a space suit to a four piece band constructed entirely from wood.
Welcome to the 22nd century, or should that be the 4th dimension (I always get those two confused) either way your ready to blast off in our newest invention - The Aluma Rocket. OK, sure, It's really just an aluminum flower vase with really spacey Oxygen valve handles for wheels and an old shoe stretcher form as a cock pit shield but if you close your eyes and imagine a million stars, a couple of strange plants, an alien or two - 4th dimension here we come.
Here's a video of the OLPC running XP, it's from Microsoft - looks like the OLPC might be a win based system now via Engadget - post up in the comments with your opinions!
I like the idea of using an EL panel for picture illumination, and I have another use for it. I need to take pictures of glass for an upcoming project and this would be a great solution for lighting the piece. To get really nice pictures of glass you have to light them from underneath. You can purchase commercial light panels, but you might be able to make one for less.
