All posts by Lenore Edman

About Lenore Edman

Co-founder of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories.

Organizing a collection using flickr

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The collection, all together

Flickr is a great tool for organizing a collection. You can upload your photos and apply titles, tags and descriptions, which is a sneaky way of cramming a lot of indexed data into an invisible database. (You probably do that already, so why not reap the benefits?) The great thing about it is that you can use the indexing metadata to easily search and sort your collection by a variety of criteria. Naturally, because it’s flickr, you can also share information about your collection as well as visually share the collection itself.

An example is my super ball collection, twenty years in the making, containing 325 items (not including jacks) which I photographed and organized using flickr.

Below is an 18 x 18 mosaic of 324 pictures of the items in my collection of super balls (and closely related objects), ranging from the size of a kumquat to the size of a pomelo. Read on to learn about some of the tricks and tools (such as making mosaics) that you can use for your collections.

All my superballs in one mosaic
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A $20 hackable extruder for your artbot or 3D printer

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Fabric painter kit from craft store

Fused deposition machines are an interesting class of rapid prototyping and art robots, capable of extruding paint onto a canvas or extruding to build up complex, three-dimensional objects one layer at a time. Naturally, one of the challenging parts of designing machines like these is designing and building a system for dispensing the printing medium. So, imagine how surprised we were when we were walking through the aisles of our local Michaels craft store and saw a pre-built extruder on the shelf for $20!
Naturally, we picked one up because an extruder head might make a nice accessory for our own three dimensional printer.

So, what is it? It’s an inexpensive kit that can be used for developing your 2D or 3D printer extruder with an air-powered delivery system. For the price you can get a small air pump, tubing, syringes, tips, and dispenser. The components are simple and easily hackable, and it looks like a good set of tools for starting to build a simple extruder head for an art bot of some sort.

Quite mysteriously, this kit is not actually advertised as an arbitrary material extruder kit, but rather as “the ultimate fabric painter.” This is very strange because not only does the kit not include any fabric paint, but it’s not obvious that there’s any advantage whatsoever to painting fabric with this method. (Actually, if the picture on the front of the box is any indication, there may even be disadvantages!)
Continue reading A $20 hackable extruder for your artbot or 3D printer →

This entry was posted in Art, EMSL Projects, Play with your food and tagged , . Bookmark the Permalink.

Glenn’s Mosaic Table

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Mosaic table
Glenn made this very awesome mosaic table, influenced by our Mixed-Media Mosaic Dining Table. In the table are neatly broken tiles, marbles, dice, broken tourist-trap commemorative plate shards, and other interesting goodies. =)
Mosaic table close-upHere’s a close up of some of the materials he used. There are more pictures in his project set on flickr.

PS: Glenn was kind enough to add these photos to the Evil Mad Science Auxiliary flickr photo pool. If you’ve got pictures that are (at least marginally) related to posts and projects on evilmadscientist, add them to that group, and they’ll appear now and then in the Evil Mad Science Auxiliary flickr photo badge on the right hand side of this page.

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Duplex cookie games

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Cookie Checkers, continued
Duplex cookies bring a whole new level of literalness to the phrase “playing with your food.” These two-toned sandwich cookies beg to be used for board games such as Othello and checkers (or Go, if you have a lot of cookies). All you need are cookies, a large piece of paper and a pen.

We made a stop-motion video of a few minutes of playing games with the cookies, Check it out on youtube or watch it embedded here:

 


 

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Clever neon mod

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Lan's Florist

You don’t normally find clever hacks and recycling combined at the florist shop, but that is just what we have at our local strip mall. This neon sign reads “lan’s florist” but used to read “Mango’s florist.” Very resourcefully, they taped over the “g”, “o”, and most of the “M” to make it read “lan” instead. We had to work hard to get a picture that shows off their modifications, but that means that most of the time (except for the slightly awkward spacing) you don’t even notice that the sign has been altered.
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Saffron Meringue Chicks

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Saffron Peeps

Marshmallow Peeps have an amazing cult following, and it’s no wonder why: they are cute, abstract, colorful, ubiquitous, and sugary. While it sometimes seems that the entire human race is firmly in favor of performing cruel experiments on them, there is a little less consensus on whether or not one should actually eat them. Both sides of the aisle have their merits, of course, and more often than not the debate is merely over whether fresh or stale peeps are tastier. All debating aside, here’s a gourmet option for fans of Peeps that prefer to stuff their gizzards with something other than mass-produced marshmallows: Saffron Meringue Chicks!
Continue reading Saffron Meringue Chicks →

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St. Stupid’s Day Parade 2007

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St. Stupid 2007 - 07

April first is the only holiday of the world’s oldest religion and the world’s largest church: The First Church of the Last Laugh. We celebrated the holiday in San Francisco with the church at the 29th annual St. Stupid’s Day parade. The weather was lovely, and the people-watching was excellent. We took a few pictures, which are in this flickr set for your enjoyment.

Some parade highlights:

Scott of Laughing Squid was there with Justin of justin.tv and has already written about the parade and put up a flickr set, too.

Here are some more flickr sets from Steve Rhodes, solsken, dustinj, and a handful of pictures from bellboybob.

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Make a physics education video and win the Phylm Prize!

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“Phylm,” pronounced as “film,” is a portmanteau built out of the words “physics” and “film.” It’s also the name given to a new award, The Phylm Prize, aimed at spurring interest in physics and the educational use of new media. Translation: it’s a YouTube contest for physics geeks!

We’ve been invited to sit on the panel of judges for the contest, and so we’ll be looking forward to seeing the submissions. Videos up to two and a half minutes long featuring physics will be judged on clarity, accuracy, and creativity. This year’s winner will receive a check for $100 (US) to be dispersed in June 2007.

You can watch the video announcement at YouTube or (embedded) here:

We are guessing that many of you, our fine readers, already have an interest in physics and/or new media, so get started already! Let’s see your submissions! And don’t let the word “educational” intimidate you– educational propaganda is a highly appropriate diversion for evil mad scientists! (Besides, you could probably use the cash for your world domination scheme.)

Here’s some info from the rules on what kinds of things the clips can contain:

  • A critique/analysis of the physics presented in a fictional work. For example,
    could the bus in Speed have made “the jump,” or how strong would Spider-Man
    have to be to throw a car that far?
  • An analysis of physics as revealed by the examination of a real-world video clip.
    For example, what forces does a gymnast experience during his routine?
  • An explanation/presentation of some physics concept or theory. For example, what is the conservation of energy?

Submissions are due by 12:00 am (GMT) May 1, 2007. We’ll be waiting.

This entry was posted in Education, General News, Science and tagged , , , . Bookmark the Permalink.

A truly classy hearse

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classy hearse
Hearses are generally classy vehicles, but this one takes the cake. This hearse is not just olive-green, but it also matches the mortuary perfectly.

I just about passed by the Jones Mortuary in East Palo Alto (right next door to Ikea!) when I saw the hearse in the nearly empty parking lot. I have admired it before, and it seemed like a perfect opportunity to take a picture.

Jones Mortuary I stopped and got out my camera and a big guy came out of the side door to ask me what I was doing. I told him I wanted to take a picture of the beautiful hearse to share with my photo group. He told me I would need permission from the owner. I asked if the owner was in today, and was told yes, and directed to go around to the front and go inside and wait. Eventually he came out of the office (where I presume he spoke with the owner) and told me it would be fine if I took pictures.

Afterwards I realized that I was wearing all black, which does not seem like the best choice in retrospect.

I’m glad they didn’t mind my taking pictures, because I think the hearse is absolutely gorgeous. If I ever need to be taken somewhere in a hearse, I want it to be one like this.

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