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]
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.
You’ve got your wire strippers and your soldering iron…now what? You probably know that there is a standard set of essential tools that you need on your electronics workbench. You can find helpful lists of these tools at Lady Ada’s site and Dan’s Data.
However, real tool junkies always want just the right tool for the job. Here are five electronics tools you may not know you were missing. These esoteric tools go a bit beyond the basics that everyone should have.
Continue reading Five Electronics Tools You Might Not Know About
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!)
Come see the CandyFab 4000 in action on Saturday, July 28 at 1:00 PM (PDT) at the Exploratorium in San Francisco or live online for the Maker Saturday Webcasts.
Make: Magazine is partnering with the Exploratorium to bring weekly webcasts of interviews with makers this summer. If you haven’t been to the Exploratorium yet, use this as an excuse! It is one of our favorite sources of inspiration.
Yes, it’s that time again when we round up and post some of the cool stuff out there on the interwebs:
This camera cozy protects your LCD and keeps your lens cap on when you toss your camera in your bag or are just carrying it around. It also provides storage for a spare set of batteries as well as a location for the dead ones you’re taking out.
It was designed for the Canon S2IS and S3IS, but the pattern can be adapted for other similarly shaped cameras. Download the pattern here (160 kB PDF file).
It was inspired by a knit crocheted camera bag by Leethal. (If you like it, she has a similar one for sale right nowsold!) However, the darling lens pouch seemed rather excessive for my non-SLR, and I don’t knit (or crochet!), so this design was born.
Here’s a cheap and easy way to deal with getting rid of pesky reflections, shadows and backgrounds in your small object photography: use a lampshade for a light tent.
This $6 lampshade from IKEA is white, nearly cylindrical, and has an adjustable (removable) mounting bracket, all of which make it easily adaptable to this purpose.
Scale disclaimer: objects in this photo are larger than they appear – the cat is unreasonably large.
Continue reading Lampshade Light Tent
Here we present what is arguably the tastiest way to design and learn about electronic circuits: make circuitry snacks!
Two of our favorite things in the world are playing with electronics and playing with food, and so it is about time that someone finally got around to combining the two. We begin by gathering up appropriate snack-food building blocks and making food-based models of electronic components. From these components, you can assemble “circuitry snacks”– edible models of functioning electronic circuits. You can make these for fun, for dessert, for your geek friends, for kids, and for teaching and learning electronics.
Continue reading Circuitry Snacks
How do you compute the volume of a cat?
Dunking it in water doesn’t work– you only get the volume of the rat-like creature that lives inside the cat; much like the feeble alien within a Dalek. (And, if your answer had anything to do with contour integrals, get real.)
Here is a low-tech method that works: Using successive approximation, determine the smallest box that the cat will fully enclose itself in, and measure the size of that box. Cats tend to leave a few appendages hanging out of the corners– you may need to assist with folding the cat into the box for the final stages of approximation.
This cat is approximately 648 cubic inches in volume.
