Opensource Boat Block

 

Max at Reversing Entropy, has created an open source boating block because he was tired of expensive, not so strong boating blocks.  He came up with the design for a 5 in 1 "modular sailing block designed to replace snatch blocks, triples, sheeve blocks and more".  

He describes what he came up with on a YouTube video.  If you don't want to make them yourself, he has a page where you can purchase them.   Or, you can download the step files to make them yourself.  

Long Live the TIX!

The Tix Clock was an awesome timepiece by late inventor and native San Franciscan James Scott Thompson.

Unfortunately the clock stopped being available in 2014, and there has never been something even similar out there since.

Until NOW!! 
(Well... not now..  It's been available for a while now...  Since Sep 2018)

A kiwi hobbyist decided to build his own Tix clock, and now started manufacturing it for the public (It sounds like the blessing of the Thompson family).  He's calling it TIX2, and unlike the original with the all plastic frame, the TIX2 has a nice wooden body which I think makes it look even nicer.

It's full of stars!

Obviously, NASA has a great image library you can use for background screen images.  Luckily, the The Art Institute of Chicago has also put 50k high-res images online! (news) The Smithsonian has some stuff too, but it only highlights how Chicago did a fantastic job.

Coolest thing in desktop computing I've seen in a long while

LunaDisplay: No idea why Apple hasn't either bought these guys out, or just reproduced this on their own.  I have a friend who has this and it is soooo cool!  He uses his ipad as a second monitor to his laptop.  The total solution is incredibly portable, and he gets to have an ipad rather then just a dumb 2nd monitor.

Water Cooled 72,000 Lumen LED Flashlight!!

Hats off to Samm Sheperd for making the coolest flashlight ever!  (so cool as in water cooled and beyond crazy bright!)

Laser Replacement (Aero)

sailingscuttlebutt has a good article about the replacement for the laser and what he thinks of the new Aero boats.

Drone fillmed fireworks show

Slashdot noted of a fireworks show in West Palm Beach FL, that was filmed with a quad copter and a go-pro (somewhat illegally).

Nikola Tesla rocked and Thomas Edison was a douche

Matthew Inman from The Oatmeal wrote a great comic outlining Why Nichola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived.

As pointed out in NPR, this caught the eyes of Jane Alcorn, the president of the nonprofit group The Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe who is trying to save Tesla's laboratory and turn it into the only museum dedicated to Tesla. She asked Inman for help with great success. 

Now The Oatmeal is running Operation Let's Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum, where they asked for (and got) $850k to be used to purchase Tesla's lab.  It was a HUGE success and  now they are looking for more money to actually build the Museum from individuals and businesses.

Murphy's Law - A History

Improbable Research has a fantastic primer on this history of Murphy's Law, were it came from, and why rocket sleds are cool. (Note that you can also buy the book "A history of Murphy's Law" that discusses this in more detail.)

Cool Weather Maps!

Couple of cool new ways to see what the weather is.

Wind Map: Fernanda Viegas and Martin Wattenberg over at hint.fm came up with a very cool way to present how the wind is flowing over the US.

Weatherspark: James Diebel and Jacob Norda have put together a fantastic (the best I have ever seen) weather site. It allows you to view combinations of graphs to better understand the data that comes out of NOAA and all the other online weather services.

Thanks to Robert Krulwich for pointing out NASA's world wind animation video (unfortunately, it's just a video, and not an interactive page. )

Swarm Builders

IEEE Spectrum discusses how a swarm of quadcopters were able to build an 18 foot tall "tower of foam bricks". Great example of automated construction and swarm tech. Note: Robert Krulwich also writes about this.

Hobbit Home

Simon & Jasmine Dale have built a fantastic Low Impact Woodland Home in the Wales. It took him (and friends) four months to build and a total of 3k in cash! Fantastic job, and wonderful place (I only wonder how the site will age over time. Things like rotting, sagging walls/ceiling, etc.) His site is fantastic with a very good writeup on how he put everything together.

VI Hart

"VI" produces these great stop motion videos that explain all sorts of math stuff in a really fun way!

Cool Lego

When folks with legos go nuts. (to be continued...)

• Crawler Town (by DeGobbi)
• Seven foot long Serenity Model (by Jeff Stevens)
• Lego Mindstorms model of the Mars Curiosity Rover (by Doug Moran and Will Gorman) 
• Star Blazers Yamato  
• Great Ball Contraption: Also see some of the details of the pieces at his website.   
• WW2 Tanks: And Stijn Oom's other fantastic creations!
• HMS Hood: What a ship!

Conflict History Map

akg1330 tweets about the Conflict History Map. It's a google map that lets you scan to a specific time and see where all the conflicts were during that time.

Printrbot

PCWorld (and Kickstarter) has a nice brief on Brook Drumm's Printrbot, a low cost ($200), DIY 3d printer.

The Periodic Table of Videos

David Bradley notes the Periodic Table of QR codes by Martyn Poliakoff and Brady Haran.

Each QR is basically a link to a video in the PToV from Nottingham Uni’s chemistry department. Point and shoot and up pops the appropriate Youtube clip.

(BTW, here's the direct link to the image you need to download and print out )

Money

Randall Munro did it again.

(you can buy a poster of it here)

Lightning Foundry

Here's an idea: build two 10 story tall Tesla Coil towers and watch them go off! That's exactly what Greg Leyh and The Lightning Foundry wants to do and he needs your money.

Its a cool idea, and what could go wrong?!?!!!

more lego goodness

Lego CD/DVD Ripper: See Engadget (Nov 1, 2011)



Robot CubeStormer II record breaking 5.66 second Rubix's Cube Solver! (See slashdot Oct 19, 2011)