Photo by Brittany Turner
Brittany recently let us know that she had made skirt guards for her bike using my instructable. She used floral wire instead of cable ties since that’s what she had on hand. The guard following the shape of the rack is a nice touch, too.
We always love hearing about your projects and seeing your photos in the flickr auxiliary! Keep ’em coming!
The retro-dork-chic-DIY D12 handbag is back and better than ever– We’ve added a zipper, a handle cord, panel stiffeners and beautiful numbers.
Comparing this side by side to the original, it looks as though the original is getting floppier. That’s partly age, and partly just how much nicer the new model is. The new version is easier to assemble and holds its shape much better, thanks to internal pentagonal stiffeners that are fused to each face. The neat and tidy zipper closure is much neater and more reliable than the original magnetic enclosure.
And… those athletic style numbers (which are the best that our local craft stores carry) just had to go! We used a neat font called BPreplay to get simple rounded numbers that look like they could have been carved into a die. But we carved them with a laser: They’re made from cotton-poly blend which fuses as it is laser cut so that it the edges of the numbers won’t fray. Finally, the new handle cord is an obvious improvement over the simple fabric strip on the first verison.
And, by popular demand, we’ve designed a d20 as well:
The d20 has the same basic design as the new d12– complete with triangular internal stiffener panels to give it the right shape.
Today we’re releasing both of these new designs along with their patterns and assembly instructions. The d12 project is documented here and the d20 project is documented here. We’re also making kit versions of both projects available here.
As always, if you are inspired to make something by our projects, we’d love to see the results in the Evil Mad Scientist flickr Auxiliary.
By popular request following the d12 bag, here it is: the d20 bag! Now you can make your very own icosahedron.
We’re making a pattern and kit for this project available in two sizes: darling and practical. The tiny one is just over three inches tall, and holds little things for you. The larger size is about five inches tall and will fit your phone, wallet and keys along with your dice.
This is the set of build instructions for the updated version of our original retro-dork-chic-DIY D12 handbag.
This accompanies an article about the new version, and the d20 bag that we designed as well.
We’ve just revved our open-source ATtiny2313 breakout boards to version 1.1.
There are a couple of nice improvements for the new version. First, we made the board single sided to match our original ATmegaxx8 board– this means that it’s relatively easy to print out the layer separations and make your own at home, if you like to etch your own boards. We also changed around the configuration of the prototyping areas, making it so that you can now fit up to two DIP-8 packages, breadboard style, on the board.
Continue reading Version 1.1 of the ‘2313 board
As they sign up for the TGIMBOEJ project, we’ve been asking participants to publish a link to their web site.
Skimming through the lists, we’ve come across quite a few interesting and entertaining projects, sites, photos, and other links, both old and new.
Here are just a few of our favorites:
One of the big projects that we launched in 2008 is The Great Internet Migratory Box Of Electronics Junk, a pay-it-forward style hardware sharing program for electronics.
Since our original article, TGIMBOEJ (pronounced Tig-Ihm-Boh-Edge) has somewhat taken on a life of its own. In that article, we set up simple guidelines for how to pass the box along, and in the interim we have taken a “laissez-faire” approach, watching and learning from the successes and troubles with that model.
Our mostly-hands-off approach to supervising TGIMBOEJ has worked remarkably well in some respects. There are upwards of 40 circulating boxes now, which have passed through hundreds of hands. And, hundreds of other people have signed up on our wiki site tgimboej.org as potential recipients.
On the down side, the mean free path of many of the boxes has been far too short– some have made it just one hop before stopping.
In talking to folks about the boxes that got stuck, we identified three main stories (all of which point us towards fairly obvious solutions):
1: “I sent it to some guy, but I haven’t heard anything since then.”
2: “Oh yeah– I’ve been meaning to ship it for some time.”
3: “I got this box and I don’t know what to do with it.”
So now, it’s time to get serious. First, we’ve been contacting the last known recipients of the stalled boxes, and trying to get more of the existing boxes back into circulation. Second, we’re relaunching the tgimboej.org wiki site with a wholly new set of participation instructions and procedures.
To keep boxes in circulation longer, we’re now encouraging that boxes should be sent to people who have specifically requested to participate— i.e., people who are familiar with how the project works. We’ve also introduced language in the revised instructions that will guide participants to keep an eye on their box, even after it leaves their hands.
To further alleviate the potential problem of people ending up with boxes but not knowing what to do with them, we’re standardizing the printed materials that go into each new box.
Gone are the cute but scrawled little notebooks, replaced by two neat PDF forms– one to log the progress of the box, and the other with detailed instructions on how to participate.
Finally, we’re launching eight new TGIMBOEJ boxes this week, which — along with the others that are coming back into circulation — will help to increase the number and rate of box exchanges.
So now it’s your turn. If you would enjoy trading electronics with like-minded individuals, this is becoming a great time to participate in The Great Internet Migratory Box Of Electronics Junk.
To get started, please read about how it works on the TGIMBOEJ wiki, and if you’re game, add your name to the list of Box Requests.
Sichuan peppercorns, oh yeah! Raven of Made with Molecules after eating them wrote, “There’s a war in my mouth.” They create a riot of numbing and tingling sensations, particularly if you can get relatively fresh ones (i.e. not stale from sitting around in a Whole Foods bulk bin). Raven links to an abstract about the particular anesthetic-sensitive potassium channels inhibited by hydroxy-alpha-sanshool, one of the components of sichuan peppercorns that make them so exciting.
Science aside, we recently found some in a local asian grocery store, and were particularly struck by the packaging. American packaging often has annoying disclaimers about how contents are packed by weight and may have settled. These peppercorns were not only weighed, but the precision of the scale is indicated! If only all packaging was so straightforward. I was going to complain that the package doesn’t say what kind of peppercorns were inside (sichuan peppercorns are not related to other peppercorns) but then realized that the Chinese characters are specific to these “flower peppers” even if the English words are more general. In any case, the reddish husks are recognizable through the bag.
We’ve turned Meggy Jr RGB into a multicolor scrolling LED twitter reader. It’s a handy external ambient data device that displays things recently written by your friends on twitter.
This project was inspired in part by the excellent Twitter LED Scroller by David Nichols. The big idea is that we use a host computer to run a Processing application, which periodically checks Twitter for updates, and then sends “scrolling” data, one column at time, to the external LED display.
Continue reading Meggy Jr RGB Twitter Reader
