Pendulum Pr0n

That's beautiful!

Pendulum Pr0n

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]

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The Oona: Versatile Smartphone Stand

I like this!

The Oona: Versatile Smartphone Stand

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

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Sarah Kay TED If I should have a daughter...

She is amazing!

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Japanese Gravity Marimba Plays Bach In An Ancient Forest

Japanese Gravity Marimba Plays Bach In An Ancient Forest

via Make: Online by Sean Michael Ragan on 11/04/11

This remarkably beautiful video, uploaded to YouTube one day before the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, turns out to be an ad for Sharp’s SH-08C handset. It is, nonetheless, something you shouldn’t miss: in a tranquil forest, a single wooden ball rolls down a stepped wooden ramp, continuously, for two minutes. At each step, it falls and strikes a wooden bar tuned to play a single note of the 10th movement of Bach’s Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, BWV 147, commonly known by its English title, Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring. Wait ’till you see how they handle the sustained notes. [Thanks, Rachel!]
More:
Top 10: Rube Goldberg Machines

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iPad2 Teardown

It's good to know I don't need to buy iPad 2.

iPad2 Teardown

via Make: Online by Adam Flaherty on 14/03/11

The folks over at iFixit did a number on the latest from Apple. Giving the iPad2 a repairability score of just 4/10, highlights on this teardown include a switch from clips to heavy use of adhesive and a crappy rear-facing camera. On the upside, Apple chose to stick with standard phillips screws rather the pentalobular screws introduced recently.

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Make a large display from a bunch of small ones

Interesting!

Make a large display from a bunch of small ones

via Make: Online by Matt Mets on 14/03/11

Rick Borovoy of MIT Media Lab’s Civic Media Project developed the Junkyard Jumbotron, which makes it easy to turn a bunch of small computer displays into one big one. Setting it up is as simple as opening a web browser on each device, loading their website, and taking a photo of the arrangement. After that, their software figures out which screen is where, and starts streaming data to each device’s screen directly over the web. [via boingboing]

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Polar bears get the better of spy cameras

I can't wait the DVD will come up of this! Looks great, isn't it?

Real Life “Up” House Lifted by Balloons

Real Life “Up” House Lifted by Balloons

via Make: Online by Becky Stern on 11/03/11

It took this crew the short span of two weeks to “fly the house” in this National Geographic project to create a real life version of the house in Pixar’s Up– lifted into the sky by balloons. “The real Up! Scientists recreate floating house from Pixar movie… and prove it really CAN fly” at dailymail:

The team from National Geographic have built a house inspired by the Pixar movie Up! that can really fly.
Using 300 helium-filled weather balloons, a team of scientists, engineers, two balloon pilots and dozens of volunteers, they managed to get the small house 10,000 feet into the air.
Of course it was not a real house, but a custom-built light weight one.
Executive producer Ben Bowie said: ‘We found that it is actually close to impossible to fly a real house.’
Producer Ian White added: ‘But what we can do is kind of fly a light-weight house and fly it safely with people on board.’

[via designboom]

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My families and friends in Japan are fine.

Streaming .TV shows by Ustream
I kept watching the Japanese news about the huge earthquakes ... couldn't seep well kept praying.
So far my families, reltives and all friends are fine even though some of them are having difficulties.

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Recreating a 19th century Japanese Tsuba

Fantastic!

Recreating a 19th century Japanese Tsuba

via Make: Online by Gareth Branwyn on 7/03/11

One of our readers, Jimy Soprano, sent us the links to this incredibly inspiring short documentary of classical Japanese metal artist Ford Hallam recreating a lost masterpiece by the 19th century Mito tsuba artist Hagia Katsuhira. Years ago, I went off on a Samurai sword/Iaidō kick and obsessed over every detail of Japanese sword construction, maintenance, and the “moving Zen” of the Iaidō form. This video touched that obsession again.
The “tsuba” is the decorative sword guard, and like every other piece of a samurai sword, it’s work of art in and of itself. This video documents Ford Hallam being commissioned to create a tsuba for a Katana (long) sword to match an existing tsuba created by Hagia Katsuhira for a wakazashi (short sword). The painstaking, precise nature of the work is rather dizzying. [Thanks, Jimy!]
More about Ford Hallam can be found on his blog Postcards from the Path

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Giant Bubbles on the Beach

Giant Bubbles on the Beach

via Make: Online by Gareth Branwyn on 24/02/11

In a follow-up to my recent post about Charlie Visnic’s B-Roll blog, and his recent attempts at making rigs for generating ginormous bubbles, here’s a video he posted of bubbles on Stinson beach. So gorgeous and lyrical, and something to long for as we’re teased by an imminent spring.
Giant Stinson Beach Bubbles

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OK Go's stop-motion on toast

A beautiful animation.

OK Go's stop-motion on toast

via MAKE Magazine by Laura Cochrane on 9/11/10

OK Go's latest video, "Last Leaf," employs pieces of toast as the canvas for a laser-etched, illustrated stop-motion music video. After watching the multitude of different shapes, textures, and shades of toast pass before my eyes (15 pieces of toast per second), it begins to remind me of watching an old reel-to-reel film in elementary school, with the rough texture of the toast and surrounding crumbs mimicking those telltale visual artifacts.
More:

• OK Go goes underwater at Maker Faire

Read the Full Story » | More on MAKE » | Comments » | Read more articles in Music | Digg this!

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Making fire with Ikea products

I think this is a quite expensive way to make a fire even though it's very interesting.

Making fire with Ikea products

via MAKE Magazine by John Baichtal on 1/10/10

If you're ever stuck in an Ikea store during a zombocalypse, now you know how you can start a fire. [Via Ikeahacker]
Read the Full Story » | More on MAKE » | Comments » | Read more articles in Culture jamming | Digg this!

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The $5 iPhone Microscope Mod

Woooo I love that!

The $5 iPhone Microscope Mod

via MAKE Magazine by Phillip Torrone on 4/09/10

The $5 iPhone Microscope Mod by Crabfu!



Read the Full Story » | More on MAKE » | Comments » | Read more articles in iPhone | Digg this!

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CupMate :: My new product!

I am so excited about the new product I made this time because I love it and use it everyday.
It is hard for felters to make something you can sell in Summertime. The CupMate is the one you can sell and use it all year around.
I am making a lots of color variations. This will be on the shop very soon too.

Felted Postcard + Candle Holder

I made this new product. It's a felted postcard (a felted picture sheet and a paper card are jointed together), you can use it as candle holder as well. I really like the look of the felted picture casted by flickering candle light from the back. It's bit like a shadow picture. The nostalgic feelings. What do you think?

Huge Felting Works

This is amazing!

A new product

Don't worry. though the burning candle stays in the 100% pure wool vase, the wool won't get burnt at all. Amazing!