Improvised "Chechen" firearms Deco tiki drinks cabinet Drown, by Tora Fisher Designing for the factory: makers, machines, China, and industrial design Jonathan Coulton: Glee plagiarized my arrangement of "Baby Got Back" MIT's got form Shooped (?) (but awesome) watch gizzard Moon landing not faked Science proves that you should wear glittens The Chariot from Lost in Space: an appreciation Augmented Reality Welding Mask Man points gun at politician's face Improvised "Chechen" firearms
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 20, 2013 12:12 pm From English Russia, original source unknown, "These are the Chechen homemade guns. There is a risk that the war will never end if they use such weapons..." No way to tell how accurate that description is -- Chechens are such bogeymen in the Russian press-pantheon that I always take anything ascribed to them with a ...
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By Cory Doctorow on Jan 20, 2013 09:08 am A couple of cities back, in another century, I lived in a giant, illegal warehouse loft with tons of space, and in that loft, I built a most wonderful tiki-bar, with novelty bottles and stools that looked like bongo-drums and pennants from defunct cow-colleges, and swizzle sticks from bygone eras and more besides. I no ...
Read in browser Drown, by Tora Fisher
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 20, 2013 09:00 am From Veronica Varlow: "The story behind it is even more intense, as the girl featured in the video is Tora, who was the sole survivor of a plane crash that killed her father and step-mother and six others. ... Burke Heffner directed this brilliant video - they built a make-shift room furnished with stuff from ...
Read in browser Designing for the factory: makers, machines, China, and industrial design
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 19, 2013 10:44 pm More of Bunnie Huang's amazing series on manufacturing in China for makers (part one): today, it's a piece on understanding and designing to the constraints of the kind of manufacturing a startup can afford: Trim and finish are difficult, and therefore a point of distinction when it comes to design. The current design fad is ...
Read in browser Jonathan Coulton: Glee plagiarized my arrangement of "Baby Got Back"
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 19, 2013 09:21 pm Jonathan Coulton has publicly shamed Fox for plagiarizing his arrangement for "Baby's Got Back" on its TV show "Glee": Hey look, @gleeonfox ripped off my cover of Baby Got Back: bit.ly/WME9Ho. Never even contacted me. Classy.— Jonathan Coulton (@jonathancoulton) January 18, 2013 Writing on Techdirt, Mike Masnick has a good, nuanced view of how this ...
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By Cory Doctorow on Jan 19, 2013 05:41 pm Bunnie Huang: "Back when I was a graduate student there, I extracted security keys from the original Microsoft Xbox video game console. I still remember the crushing disappointment of receiving a letter from MIT legal repudiating any association with my work, effectively leaving me on my own to face Microsoft."
Read in browser Shooped (?) (but awesome) watch gizzard
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 19, 2013 04:32 pm Unknown source, unknown provenance, and it's gotta be a shoop, but what a goddamned thing this would be, were it real. How french watch works (Thanks, Ben!)
Read in browser Moon landing not faked
By Jason Weisberger on Jan 19, 2013 04:04 pm FStoppers has the story and the proof. "Mr. SG Collins makes a pretty compelling argument claiming that neither NASA nor Stanley Kubrick were actually technologically capable of producing a video that could stand up to modern scrutiny. Collin's photographic argument should put a final nail in the conspiracists' theory for good."
Read in browser Science proves that you should wear glittens
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Jan 19, 2013 04:00 pm They're the mullet of cold-protective clothing. Half glove, half mitten — really, fingerless gloves with a handy mitten flip-top. They are also fantastic. Now, partly, this is a matter of personal opinion. But partly, it's just good science. Before you spend your weekend outdoors, or take your next chilly commute, let's talk briefly about glittens ...
Read in browser The Chariot from Lost in Space: an appreciation
By Cory Doctorow on Jan 19, 2013 03:10 pm The TV show
Lost in Space featured a marvellous, transparent, caterpillar-tread space-rover called "The Chariot," which was adapted from a snow vehicle, but was groovily and spacily modded into something quite wonderful.
Read in browser Augmented Reality Welding Mask
By Jason Weisberger on Jan 19, 2013 02:25 pm This welding mask uses near RT HDR video to ensure you see just how sloppy that weld was.
Read in browser Man points gun at politician's face
By Rob Beschizza on Jan 19, 2013 01:58 pm *click*
Read in browser Meet SparkTruck, an “educational build-mobile” for the twenty-first century.
Dreamed up by a group of Stanford d.school students and funded through Kickstarter, SparkTruck is a mobile maker space currently traveling across the United States. At schools and summer camps and libraries around the country, the SparkTruck team offers workshops to help kids “find their inner maker” as they design and build projects like stamps, stop-motion animation clips, and “vibrobots.”
[video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmRKXqDwieY&feature=plcp]
This might seem all shiny and new. And it is—but only in part. What’s so striking (and exciting) about SparkTruck is the way it combines old and new. It does so in the tools it gets kids using, which range from pipe cleaners to laser cutters. It does so in its educational approach, which combines cutting-edge (get it?) STEM and design pedagogy with the fundamentals of an old-school shop class. And it does so in its method, which combines the iconic, century-old technology of the bookmobile with the hot new form of the maker space.
In doing so, SparkTruck joins a growing number of libraries which are combining time-tested principles (like equal access to information) with new technologies (like 3-D printers), putting in maker spaces and media production labs alongside bookshelves and meeting rooms. As I’ve argued over on bookmobility.org, these combinations make sense because reading and making actually have a lot in common. They’re both creative processes that take existing materials and combine them in new ways. Getting people engaged in those kinds of processes—through imaginative thinking, contemplation, hands-on problem-solving, and collaborative learning—is what both maker spaces and libraries are all about.
Taking that commitment on the road with scissors and hammers and 3-D printers and a great big bookmobile-like truck, SparkTruck serves as a laboratory for new approaches, as well as a reminder that trying new things doesn’t have to (and probably shouldn’t!) necessarily mean tossing old ones out.
After all, what would those vibrobots be without classically crafty pipe cleaners and tongue depressors? And what would a library be without the creative, participatory, straight-up awesome experience of reading?
SparkTruck schedule [sparktruck.org]
How to arrange a visit from SparkTruck [sparktruck.org]
SparkTruck YouTube channel [youtube.com]
Signature: --Derek Attig, bookmobility.org
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