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Co-founder of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. View all posts by Windell Oskay →

Fine print on the Bawls box

By Windell Oskay on August 14, 2007

We are great fans of Bawls Mints. Or, I should say, we were great fans of Bawls mints, because they are apparently no longer being made. They have been replaced by this visually similar but radically inferior substitute called “Bawls Buzz.” The formula has been completely reworked, and now tastes of cheap, bland candy, a little bit like pixy stix. Sugar is no longer the first ingredient.

On the other hand, the text on the bottom of the box is still there and still brilliant. Who makes packaging like this anymore? (And who makes candy like Bawls Mints anymore?)

This entry was posted in Everything Else and tagged food, humor. Bookmark the Permalink.

August Linkdump

By Windell Oskay on August 10, 2007

John Maeda made a misspeller
Earth and Moon to Scale
For reasons that are completely unclear to me, my picture of a very happy door (blogged here) got dugg. (Our circuitry snacks also got dugg this week, so maybe it’s okay.)
Bagel Throwies!
Lego AT-ATcollection. I particularly like the ultra-minature ones, linked from that page.
Fractal pumpkins
If you have kids, and live in Kansas, you might consider moving, so that your kids can get an education. [via]
Notes on growing sugar crystals.
Rock, Paper, Scissors. Like random chance. If only we had three sided dice. (Or a multiple thereof.)
Robowerk Simulator— for designing hobby robots– complete with animation. This has great potential.
There’s a new short DVD out from Bitter Films.
Free* CandyFab Stickers

This entry was posted in Everything Else and tagged linkdump. Bookmark the Permalink.

CandyFab @ Dorkbot: 8/15/07 @ TechShop

By Windell Oskay on August 7, 2007

On Wednesday, August 15 we’ll be giving a presentation about CandyFab at a meeting of Dorkbot SF, our local spinoff of
Dorkbot NYC.

Dorkbot chapters organize monthly talks and events for artists, scientists, and engineers centered around the theme of “the creative use of electricity.”

The meeting will be held at 7:30 PM at TechShop, a San Francisco Bay Area “open-access public workshop,” located just off of 101 in Menlo Park, where you can go use a wide range of tools and machines to make things. We’ll be bringing the CandyFab machine along, and– if everything goes right– demonstrating its use. So if you’re in the SF bay area, this is a great chance to come and take a close look at the CandyFab 4000, smell the caramel, and ask questions. Besides our talk and demo, there will be a couple of shorter presentations on other dorkbot-ish topics, and an introduction to TechShop. (Tours of Techshop will be available at the end of the meeting as well.)

Everyone is welcome to come to the meeting; there is a $5 suggested donation for the venue at the door.

[Link] See you there!

UPDATE: The event was great! (Read more here.)

This entry was posted in Education, Engineering, Field Trips, Play with your food and tagged candyfab, cnc, techshop. Bookmark the Permalink.

More circuitry snacks

By Windell Oskay on August 4, 2007

My old friend Kevin sent in these pictures of a massive array of tasty electronic treats that he and his family made for a group picnic at Los Alamos National Laboratory. (Nice work!) If your diet is short on precision op-amps and instrumentation amplifiers, these just might hit the spot.

You can read our own article about circuitry snacks (dated July 11, 2007) here.

This entry was posted in Electronics, Play with your food and tagged circuits, electronics, food. Bookmark the Permalink.

One minute project: Bike tube rubber bands

By Windell Oskay on August 1, 2007

Once a bike tube needs its (n+1)th repair, where nis the number of times you’re willing to fix it, you can slice up what remains, and end up with a semi-infinite stash of cool looking rubber bands.

Useful? Yup. Cheap? You bet. Quick? Yes, to the point of being trivial.
On the other hand, not only is this a fun way to recycle, but using these is the office supplies equivalent of the secret biker’s handshake– only other bikers will even notice what you’re using.
Continue reading One minute project: Bike tube rubber bands →

This entry was posted in EMSL Projects and tagged bikes, diy. Bookmark the Permalink.

Printing complex shapes: A sugar chain

By Windell Oskay on July 31, 2007

We made this chain of twelve giant links on the CandyFab 4000 to demonstrate the fabrication of a complex object, the sort that is difficult to make by conventional machining processes. You can see the 3D model and some build pictures for this monstrosity over at CandyFab.org.

This object also highlights the relatively large build envelope of the CandyFab– significantly larger than that of most other low end (i.e., under $50k) 3D fabrication systems.

PS for Chemistry geeks: insert joke about long-chain hydrocarbons here.

This entry was posted in CNC, EMSL Projects, Engineering, Play with your food and tagged candyfab, cnc. Bookmark the Permalink.

Another Flying Spaghetti Monster sighting

By Windell Oskay on July 27, 2007

It would seem that the Flying Spaghetti Monster has seen fit to bless this bag of Haribo “Sour S’ghetti” with his noodly presence. (Ramen.)

We came across this while working on the Circuitry Snacks project– they were one of the candidates that we originally thought might be good to serve as edible “wires.” Go figure.

[Related: FSM Costume, FSM Toast]

This entry was posted in Everything Else, Play with your food and tagged food. Bookmark the Permalink.

CandyFab.org : The CandyFab Project

By Windell Oskay on July 25, 2007

Today we are spinning off one of our projects and launching a new web site: CandyFab.org. The new site is intended to help foster a community around the idea of accessible, low-cost, and open-source three-dimensional fabrication technologies.

The first major goal of The CandyFab Project is to completely re-engineer the CandyFab within the coming year. We plan to produce an open reference design in hardware and software for what will become the CandyFab 5000S– a low-cost solid freeform fabrication machine that can be built with commercial off-the-shelf parts.
If you’d like to participate in designing, constructing, or using machines like this, we’d love to hear from you. Hop on over to CandyFab.org.

This entry was posted in EMSL Projects, Engineering, Open Hardware and tagged candyfab, open source. Bookmark the Permalink.

See us in Wired

By Windell Oskay on July 23, 2007

In the August 2007 issue of Wired Magazine (pictured here and just showing up on newstands now), there is a short writeup about the CandyFab.

There’s even a picture accompanying the article, which shows us with the machine. w00t!

Update: The online version is up.
(Nice of them to make that available!)

This entry was posted in Everything Else, General News and tagged candyfab, news. Bookmark the Permalink.

July Linkdump

By Windell Oskay on July 20, 2007

Yes, it’s that time again when we round up and post some of the cool stuff out there on the interwebs:

First, check out this remarkable movie of Robot Arm Clocks. The creativity and resourcefulness shown in this project is astounding– look at all the different kinds of clocks that they made– holy cow.
Those of you who are into AVRs and LEDs (you know who you are) might like to look at this page of LED games. It’s in Japanese, but worth the effort to look. (You can always cheat and translate it too.) Source code is there for the downloading, kits are available– in Japan at least– and there’s also an alpha-stage version of BASIC for AVR there too.
Those of you who are not into AVRs and LEDs, but want to be, please check out Ladyada’s new, extensive, and growing AVR tutorial.
Next, get yourself an RC Predator kit. Includes digital camera.
See also: this DIY version.
Anybody for Dust hockey?
Here is something that I thought was needed and somebody else did it so I don’t have to: It’s a list of readily available chemicals.
Neat scale models of planets and stars. (The Sun I can grok. Antares, not so much.)
Excellent Periodic table satchel at Etsy. Sold out, but you should tell the seller to make you one.
An oldie but goodie: the Britney Spears guide to Semiconductor Physics tells you, in gory detail, how laser diodes work. (I took a semiconductor laser class in grad school. This was one of the references that we were given. Really.)
Not exactly CandyFab, but this rock-candy jewelry is interesting.
Tinkerlog has more AVR-ish goodness.
Awesome FedEx Shirt
Serious Eats. Cool food blog.
Tastespotting. Food pseudo-blog for the ~~illiterate~~ visually oriented.
Kawaii Not, the web comic for cute gone bad. Link goes to my favorite strip.
Graphical resistor color calculator
A report from Julian Bleecker (techkwondo.com) about ordering PCBs from Gold Phoenix.
Cocktail Party Physics. Another sciencey blog.
There’s something odd, amusing, and slightly awesome about these dog wheelchairs. Their anti-bite collars aren’t bad either.
Fun online Crystal lattice toy
More playing with food.

This entry was posted in Everything Else and tagged linkdump. Bookmark the Permalink.