“Most advanced quality Gives best writing features” is a great not-quite-nonsensical slogan we found on a charming little notebook from Kinokuniya’s stationery store in Japantown in San Francisco. Another is “Made of paper specially prepared in Tokyo.” Or is that “Made of paper” and the booklet is “Specially prepared in Tokyo”? In either case, we’re always on the lookout for little booklets for TGIMBOEJ and these fit the bill perfectly.
It’s a common figure of speech to say that x is worth its weight in y, where y is usually (but not always) gold. But most of us don’t buy and weigh gold very often, so how do you connect that to real life? Does “worth its weight” in pennies or $100 bills make any more sense?
We have collected here a bunch of examples for different things that represent a wide range of monetary value per unit weight, in what might make a useful
calibration chart for your future idiomatic usage.
Let’s start this off with a down-to-earth question. Which has a higher monetary density: dimes or quarters? In other words, if you had to carry around $1000 worth of either dimes or quarters, which should you ask for?
Continue reading The monetary density of things
For a late night summer party, we wanted to deploy an array of maybe 20 or so little LED garden lights along the periphery of our back yard. And since it was for a one-time event, there wasn’t much sense in buying (or building) a set of nice looking permanent solar lights. So here is an alternative: make your own ultra-low cost temporary garden lights using LEDs, lithium coin cells, and mason jars.
Continue reading Quick, easy, temporary, and beautiful LED garden lights
A broken-in pair of jeans is one of the comfiest things in the world (denim is to humans as cardboard is to cats, right?). Unfortunately, they do eventually wear out. Luckily, they leave behind the best upholstery material: soft, comfy, durable denim. Chair seats wear out, too, especially kitchen table chairs, which can take a lot of abuse. Here we’ll show you how to combine the two, reusing your old jeans and improving the chair.
Lissajous figures are interesting curves that occur in systems where oscillation happens in more than one direction, for example when a pendulum hanging from a string moves in its plane.
The “standard” way to play with Lissajous figures is on an oscilloscope, and the easy way is of course in a web app, but there is also something to be said for a demo that you can hold in your hands. In what follows, we build a simple apparatus that takes a persistence of vision approach to displaying Lissajous figures.
Continue reading A simple persistence of vision approach to Lissajous figures
Sturgeon’s Mill is a steam-powered sawmill in northern California. I had the privilege of seeing it running recently. The next demonstration dates are Sept 20 & 21 and Oct 18 & 19. If you have any cause to be near Sebastopol, California on those dates, I highly recommend a visit.
Continue reading A Visit to Sturgeon’s Mill, a Steam-powered Lumber Mill
Although we don’t claim to understand it, a cat that has installed itself in a cardboard box is a happy cat. You can exploit this mysterious fact to make a your own simple corrugated cardboard cat bed like this one, designed as a kitty-sized chaise lounge. Since it’s just cardboard, it’s also easy to modify this basic design to suit your own (or your cat’s) taste.
Continue reading Cardboard Cat Chaise
Sean O’Steen of The Fail Whale Fan Club (failwhale.com) and part time tinkerer captured the essence of the Twitter Fail Whale on his Peggy. Check out how Sean planned his peggy here. Sweet! Thanks to Scott Beale / Laughing Squid for the photo.
See also: a Fail Whale Kinetic Sculpture and cameo appearance on Laugh-Out-Loud Cats.
(Peggy 1.0 kits are available from our web store or at the Maker Shed.)
Last weekend we went to California Extreme and took along Tennis for Two, which got to sit right next to a PlayStation 3. Video games have come a long way in fifty years, but as one Tennis for Two player commented, good game play doesn’t have to have fancy graphics.
