Friday, May 27, 2011

Alien Parasite Backpack

I would like to carry it around all the time!

via Make: Online by John Baichtal on 25/05/11

Not sure if it’s photoshoppery or not — but if it’s real… can haz!? [Via News on Japan]

Posted via email from woolhug's posterous

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Pendulum Pr0n

That's beautiful!

via Make: Online by John Baichtal on 18/05/11


Fifteen uncoupled simple pendulums of monotonically increasing lengths dance together to produce visual traveling waves, standing waves, beating, and (seemingly) random motion.
The period of one complete cycle of the dance is 60 seconds. The length of the longest pendulum has been adjusted so that it executes 51 oscillations in this 60 second period. The length of each successive shorter pendulum is carefully adjusted so that it executes one additional oscillation in this period. Thus, the 15th pendulum (shortest) undergoes 65 oscillations.
[Thanks, Andy]

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Egg coasters and bread coasters (new)

Egg01
Always so nice to do the felting when sun shine comes in my kitchen.
Egg02
I made a new coaster shaped a slice of bread, now you can make sandwiches with them.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

The new ReadingMate that can be bent.

Rm01
I put a wire in the body of ReadingMate (a felted book mark), that would make its body bent and you can have more fun with it as a reading mate!
Rm03
As you see  a half bottom of the body can be in the book where you stop reading then a half top body can lift and the cute felted eye balls looking at you saying "Come back and ready the book whenever you want to" encouraging you to keep reading.
Rm02
Rm04
It can be bent any direction.

Eyeballs for ReadingMate.

Photo_1
I use a pair of the pink rubber gloves to make eyeballs.
I like using a strainer for eyeball making.
Photo_3
and also an ice cube maker is good for organizing them.
Photo_5
putting a black in it.
Photo_6
They are ready for sale now!

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

The Oona: Versatile Smartphone Stand

I like this!

via Make: Online by John Park on 9/05/11


There are many, many phone mounts out there. This Kickstarter project called The Oona, seems more versatile than most. The designers set out to solve these use cases and more:
• A GPS on the windshield of your car
• A reference device on a white board or Refrigerator
• The ability to mount your smart phone to a tripod to take photos or video
• Hands free viewing of a movie, playing on your smart phone
• A simple stand to keep your phone in view on your desk at work

I asked Sam Gordon, one of the project founders, if they’d had better luck with their suction cups than I’d had with mine. I tried Kent K. Barnes’s Garmin suction cup iPad mount trick, but couldn’t get the suction to, well, suck for more than a few minutes at a time. Sam had this to say:
We spent a lot of time designing the right suction cup for The Oona. The ones we prototyped early on were made of a thermoplastic elastomer so they could be easily injection molded. After testing we found that low shore durometer silicone produced the best results. While testing the stand we found it secures the phone more than needed when using it properly (desk, whiteboard, car window, etc.). We’ve had problems with it when trying to secure it to a bad surface, or when we used it in applications that really rocked the phone back and forth. Moreover unlike a dedicated car phone suction mount our product is not meant for adhesion for days on end, our philosophy for The Oona is a mobile mount your phone, something you can take with you to use in different places throughout the day as you change environments.
A lot depends on the smart phone and the surface, but just from personal experience, Brad (co-designer) drove from San Francisco to LA with his iPhone 3 stuck to his windshield and it did not fall once.


Also, Sam is planning to share info about their experiences as first-time product designers:
We have a deal with a manufacturer in the US to create the low durometer silicone rubber one that we found to be best after testing. One really helpful piece to the puzzle has been MFG.com for a lot of our sourcing needs. These guys are great because they help people like us, with no existing manufacturing contacts, find the best shops to make our components.
Once (once!) funding goes through, we’re planning on getting video of all the components being made at the different production shops mixed with us talking about our experience doing the process for the first time. Based on our own experience and hearing from other makers, we feel that there is a lack of information available on how to do an independent short production run and we think other makers might find it helpful to see the steps we took.

Best of luck, guys, I hope you get enough funding to produce a run of stands!
The Oona