We’re excited to be attending and helping to judge robots at RoboGames this year. This epic competition includes not just combat, but also sumo, soccer, firefighting, and so many more. The event is April 3-5 and tickets are on sale now. Evil Mad Scientist readers can get $5 off with coupon code EMSL.
This week’s What-if? from xkcd answers the question of why microwave ovens heat food unevenly, and links to our article Microwave Oven Diagnostics with Indian Snack Food.
For each of the last two years, we’ve released sets of “Download and Print” cards for Valentine’s day. The 2013 set had six equation-heavy cards, and the 2014 set was a set of six symbol-heavy cards. This year, we’re releasing six new cards, bringing the collection up to a total of 18 cards. This year’s new cards feature love, hearts, and arrows (but no bows or cupids):
For when your love is complex, but not whatsoever imaginary.
For that moment when you want to express that not only is the first derivative of your love positive, but so is the second.
(Just in case there was a danger of none of these being sufficiently cheesy.)
Not sure how we missed this one in last year’s set of symbols. Alternate caption: “You light up my life.”
And what better way to say “I love you,” than with the gift of a math problem?
You can download the full set here, which includes all 18 designs from the three years (a 765 kB .PDF document).
As usual, print them out on (or otherwise affix to) card stock, and [some steps omitted] enjoy the resulting lifelong romance.
Update: New cards have been released! Please check out the 2019 set, which contains all 42 cards from 2013 through 2019.
Last January, I wrote about how to make your own traditional painted-leather “bomber” jacket, in a tutorial about how I made my Classic Lego Space Flight Jacket. Since then, several people have asked us for a future update post, to see how well it has aged after a year. And so, here we are. After a year of regular use, how well are those nifty flexible leather paints holding up?
A new version of our favorite vector graphics software, Inkscape, was just released! It’s faster and better than ever.
We’re particularly excited because Windell’s Hershey Text extension for rendering stroke-based engraving fonts is now in the set of included extensions.
It’s citrus season around here, and that means marmalade. Whole cloves, cardamom seeds and cinnamon sticks decorate this sweet orange preserve and give it an aroma reminiscent of holiday desserts and spiced cider.
Ingredients:
15 navel oranges
2 cups water
6 cups sugar
1 tablespoon whole cloves
1 tablespoon cardamom seeds
1 stick of cinnamon per container
The procedure is from our Marmalade Redux: peel the oranges and cut the peel into strips. Juice the oranges and put the strips of peel, juice and water in a pot to cook. Take the pithy pulpy parts leftover from juicing three or four of the oranges. Cut into smaller chunks and tie into several layers of cheesecloth or a cloth jelly bag (like this one) to cook in the pot with everything else.
After cooking for about 20-30 minutes, the pieces of peel should be softened. Remove the pith bag and put it in the cold equivalent of a double boiler: a bowl on top of a layer of ice that’s in a larger bowl. Turn the bag over every so often to help it cool down more quickly. When it is cool enough to handle, squeeze out a few tablespoons of the cooked pulp and pith through the cloth–this will provide the pectin that will help the marmalade to gel.
Put the pectin goo into the pot (which you conveniently left simmering on the stove) and add the sugar, cloves and cardamom. Stir regularly and cook to the desired consistency. To test consistency, put a spoonful on a plate in the fridge. If it’s too runny after cooling for a few minutes, keep simmering and test again after a few minutes. Put one cinnamon stick in each storage container you’ll be using and pour the finished marmalade over it. Makes about four and a half pints.
If you want to can it for longer storage, Ball has a nice introduction to canning (pdf), and additional resources on their website.
Other fruit preserves from the Play with your food archives:
It’s close to the holidays, which means people are pulling out their EggBots and getting creative. Last year, we posted a set of holiday designs and some tips for working with ornaments. Here are a few projects we’ve found this year.
Erin Ruppert made this lovely “First Christmas” ornament. The gold ink looks great on the clear ball.
Erin also made ornaments with ornaments on them, which somehow seems fitting.
Lotte made an ornament for her mom at FABKlas, a maker education program.
The folks at FABsterdam made this Mario ornament.
MAKE Ventura used gold Sharpie markers on a matte finish ornament to great effect. Other makerspaces are playing with their EggBots, too. The Johnson County Library in Kansas is doing Eggbot ornament tutorials in their makerspace.
Chris Lynas took the EggBot to “work and school Christmas fair raising money for charity – result: £200 in under four hours!”
Fran marked up eggs for a family igloo making craft party.
Lastly, our friend Miguel engraved glass ornaments with his EggBot.
After a recent conversation we had on twitter about edible hot glue possibilities for gingerbread houses, Ben Krasnow modified a hot glue gun to melt chocolate, adding PID temperature control. He also made a mold for making chocolate sticks of the right size for the modified glue gun.
