Not long ago, I participated in a workshop at the Institute for the Future on what they are calling Extreme Learning. They have just launched a site to provide resources for alternative learning paths and to share stories of extreme learners (like mine in the video above). On the extreme learners site, there are more stories from the workshop participants, who were a fascinating group from diverse backgrounds. This project is a part of the Future of Learning program.
Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories Valentine Projects
We’ve rounded up our Valentine projects for your last minute preparations:
- Evil Mad Scientist Valentines, 2017 Edition
- Evil Mad Scientist Valentines, 2016 Edition
- Evil Mad Scientist Valentines, 2015 Edition
- Evil Mad Scientist Valentines, 2014 Edition
- Evil Mad Scientist Valentines, 2013 Edition
- Five minute project: Heart-Shaped Hack Box
- Shortbread Message Hearts
- Conversation hearts: Stamp your own messages
- Sweetheart Sidewalk Chalk
- Melt my (conversation) heart
- The Perfect Ammunition for Valentine’s Day
If one of our projects inspires you make something, we would love to hear about it in the comments or see photos in the flickr pool!
Muybridge Carousel for Eggbot
In the 1870s, Eadweard Muybridge, using brand new photographic techniques, helped settle a bet about whether horses lifted all their feet off the ground at once. His iconic pictures of horses in motion are frequently used in arts and crafts. (Aside: we even ran into them at Maker Faire in a FlipBooKit animation.)
Amanda found a file on thingiverse of outlines of the Muybridge horses that were intended for use for laser cutting (for animation purposes). She remixed it for use with the Eggbot to make the horses go around the egg and published her Muybridge Carousel design on thingiverse.
Evil Mad Scientist Valentines, 2014 Edition
Last year we released a set of six equation-heavy “Download and Print” cards for Valentine’s day. This year, we’re doubling the size of the collection (to twelve!) by adding six more cards, this time heavy in symbols, not equations:
“You turn me on” …with an SPST switch.
“I can hardly resist you.”
There is room for a future superconductivity joke here, involving a phrase like “I can’t resist you (below a certain temperature).”
You can download the full set — including the 2013 cards — here, a 500 kB pdf document.
As with last year’s set, 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.
A Compendium of Watercolor Paint Pan Palettes
As part of the documentation for the WaterColorBot project, we’ve put together a compendium of information about commonly available watercolor paint palette sets. For each of the sets, we’ve tested to see how well they work in the WaterColorBot— in terms of physical size, color order, paint quality, brush quality, and so forth.
You can find the complete list on our documentation wiki site, here.
Vintage Telephone Bell Alarm Clock
Our friend Schuyler St. Leger added a vintage telephone bell to his Alpha Clock Five to make an alarm clock that could wake the dead— or at least a teenage boy who’s been watching late night TV.
Citizen Science: How Big is a Bird Egg?
While talking about egg sizes in the context of the Eggbot project, we realized that while we have access to a few samples, we do not have a good understanding of the normal variation in the sizes of various bird eggs.
The sizes of chicken eggs are well understood and well regulated, but for other types of bird eggs (like the emu egg above) the sizes are not necessarily so standard. If you have access to other types of eggs or eggshells, we’d like your help in gathering data about the size and variation in these other types of eggs.
We’ve set up a survey form to collect egg size data and we plan to post about our results once we have collected enough data.
Thank you!
WaterColorBot kits: In stock, and new accessories
We’re very pleased to announce some updates on the WaterColorBot project— the watercolor-painting pen plotter that we designed in collaboration with Super-Awesome Sylvia. First and foremost: kits are (finally!) available from stock at our store, now that we’ve finished shipping the rewards from our Kickstarter campaign and our other pre-orders.
We’ve also been working on a host of new applications and accessories that we’ll be writing about in the near future. The first new accessory is the Buddha Board holder pictured above, which indexes a Buddha Board (overly-interactive website link / Amazon.com link), that lets you make temporary paintings with just water. We’ve found the Buddha board not only to be one of the best tools for trying out new things on the ‘bot (without using up paint and paper) but also to be great for live demos of the WaterColorBot, so that you don’t need to provide a fresh sheet of paper for everyone that tries it out. You can find it in our new index of WaterColorBot accessories.
555 footstool in the wild
This newly minted (date code: 1403) 555 footstool comes to us via Martin on Twitter, who writes:
My 555 footstools arrived. Build by my father-in-law, based on design files from @EMSL
Here are our original project post and our design. This is the first time that we’ve seen someone else build one based on our design. Nice!
WaterColorBot with Lasers
Via @programmer1200 on twitter, “…adding a microswitch and an @arduino in preparation for a laser addition.” We’ll be keeping our eyes on this WaterColorBot!
