The Hayden Planetarium, with ongoing support from NASA, has assembled the world's largest cosmic atlas, extending from Earth to the greatest distances yet charted by astronomers. Join us on the first Tuesday of each month for a fully interactive tour of the universe that surrounds us—the longest trip you can take while staying in New York. Download a home version of the Digital Universe at www.haydenplanetarium.org.
The fine folks behind Maker Faire Africa have announced that their 2010 faire will take place in Nairobi, Kenya on August, 6th and 7th, 2010, and have put out a call for makers. Last year's Faire was in Ghana and was by all accounts a huge successes, and we look forward to seeing what happens at this year's event!
Maker Faire Africa 2010 Friday, August 6, 2010 - Sunday, August 8, 2010 Nairobi, Kenya
The Woodworks Library has a bunch of PDFs of woodworking books, mostly public domain materials from the late 1800s or early 1900s. However, some of them are more modern, like this US Army Corps of Engineers carpentry manual from 1995. [via open materials]
During the time that we were brainstorming ideas internally for DIY Movie Making month, a link to this video gem got circulated. It brought back so many memories of the beginnings of HBO and this amazing opening sequence. I've always had a special soft spot in my heart for miniatures and model-making of all sorts. And this opening was sort of a model-maker's paradise, as this making-of video will attest. Who knew that the flying H-B-O where physical models? [Thanks, Lish Dorset!]
March is a time when spring is dawning and we (at least those of us in colder climates) can't wait to bust out of our cabins and break the fever of breathing our own exhaust all winter long. Spring offers newfound possibilities for making things, for being creative. Combine the desire to get out and circulate, with the itch to create, the fact that it's also the month of the Academy Awards and the world focusing its attention on movie making, and... well... we thought it was as good a time as any to launch DIY Movie Making Month here at MAKE.
There are so many incredible tools now available to consumers with even the most modest budgets to create shockingly sophisticated videos, from viral YouTube prank vids to animation/claymation/stopmotion wonders to satisfying sci-fi fan films to serious low-budget feature fare that give Hollywood a run for its money. Over the coming month, we'll be rounding up site content on various aspects of DIY movie production, recommending tools for movie making, talking to some of our favorite no-budget/low-budget filmmakers, showing you some of our video-making process here at Maker Media, and more.
And, we'd love to get you in on the action. If you have a cinematic masterpiece you'd like us to see, or have used some technique of animation, stop-motion, claymation, digital compositing, etc. that you'd like to share with us, please email me (gareth@makezine.com) or post to the Comments below. And please share some of your favorite no-budget wonders and movie making-related how-tos.
Yesterday, February 28, 2010, Linus Carl Pauling would've been 109 years old. And we'd all be better off he were still with us since, by all accounts, even a doddering Pauling could've run rings around most folks intellectually. One of four human beings ever to have been awarded multiple Nobel Prizes, and the only one ever to have won both the Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1954) and the Nobel Peace Prize (1962), Pauling's 1939 Nature of the Chemical Bond remains one of the most influential chemistry texts ever published. And his 1947 General Chemistry, available in its classic 3rd edition through Dover Publications for a song, remains one of the best-written and most readable introductions to the subject. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded for his instrumental role in scientific activism to end above-ground nuclear weapons testing. A complete list of Pauling's accolades could, and has, filled several books, but I can't resist mentioning, in closing, that geek ubermensch Linus Torvalds is reportedly named after him.
A few weeks ago in a galaxy far, far away, Rebel Troops and the Empire decided to put down their starships and fight out their epic battle like men, in a foosball game. Or, at least that is what I'm guessing is going on in this impressive Lego Star Wars foosball table by Flickr user 2x4. Said to be playable, the table should allow you to settle any dispute you might have with your mates (epic or not), or at least be a fun leisure activity.
Amazingly, this isn't the first Lego foosball table that we've seen around here, however however it does appear to be the first one to stand on it's own brick-laden legs. [via technabob]
Clock Loop's BlackBox 2.0 sequencer project uses 4 Parallax Propeller chips driven by a single 5MHz crystal to create some sweet electro rhythm. The above-seen demo shows off what two of the devices can do together - one handling sound synthesis, while the other's on sequencing duty. Have a look at the project's schematic & source code over in the Parallax forums.
For making mathematical models of polyhedra, a convenient and inexpensive material is the long clown balloon. This dodecahedron (made of ten balloons) and icosahedron (made of six balloons) are two examples from a study of Mathematical Balloon Twisting by Erik Demaine, Marty Demaine, and Vi Hart.
At several Math Midway events, the Museum of Mathematics has been pleased to have a balloon polyhedron expert twist balloons into octahedra for the museum visitors. Here, Vi Hart is making an octahedron from one balloon.
Wind across a microphone causes distortion and unwanted noise for videographers and nature recorders while taping outside. The purpose of the microphone 'blimp' is to attenuate the wind noise without interfering with the desired sound. Blimps are expensive. This project came in under $40. Mics are interchangeable in this blimp (if the mic's diameter will fit inside).
Project Noah is a free mobile application that nature lovers can use to explore and document local wildlife and a common technology platform that research groups can use to harness the power of citizen scientists everywhere. Noah stands for networked organisms and habitats.
Now available worldwide as an iPhone app in iTunes [iTunes link], Project Noah aims to become a common mobile platform for documenting the world's organisms. Beyond documentation, the iPhone app offers users an opportunity to participate in ongoing citizen science research projects through specifically designed field missions and can be used as a location-based field guide as well. All contributors are connected with an online community, bridging the documentation process.
Flickr user fdecomite built this impressiverhombidodecadodecahedron (say that three times fast). Impressive! There don't seem to be any build details available, but surely there has to be a geometric figure papercraft model generator somewhere... right?
Update: Francesco chimed in to point out that he designed the model using Magnus J Wenninger's book Polyhedron Models.
Maybe I'm venturing into tinfoil hat country, here, but I'm pretty sure I once experienced a flyover by a stealth helicopter. I was camping at a lake in central Texas, during the Fall of 2003. Everyone else had gone to bed, but I was unable to sleep and was sitting up by the remains of the campfire, around 2 AM, just listening to the sounds of the forest, when I very clearly heard a distinctly unnatural sound pass across the dark sky overhead. It was very quiet, and very slow (rhythmically), but unmistakably a helicopter: whup whup whup whup whup. It was a clear night, and the speed at which the sound passed overhead meant it had to be flying at low altitude. There were no lights, just the sound, and I had a very eerie mental image of the glowing silhouette of my body, sitting beside the bright star of the cooling campfire, on a thermal imager cruising somewhere through the blackness above.
This wicked-looking rotor design is called "blue edge." You can read more about it, and hear a comparison to normal rotor noise, over at Wired'sAutopia.
Linyl Records capture audio and light information together on a single disk. It uses an Arduino to read the RGB values on the disk, which it then reproduces in ambient lighting. [via walyou]
Linyl are colored discs created from old photos or any other means that has captured light on a paper, these are then placed under a transparent vinyl disc that has special groves like the old gramophone records, this particular combo is then placed on a special record player that is capable of playing light and creating an ambiance with a nostalgic feeling.
In the Maker Shed: The Maker Shed has everything you need to get started with Arduino
Instructables user marc.cryan made this remote controlled crane arm, useful for turning your house into one giant pluckable toy pit. Watch in the video how even a small child can operate it, for maximum adorability. Now you can get back all the satisfaction lost from years of unsuccessful arcade claw games.
In case you didn't believe Louie the Lightening Bug when he said "ya gotta stay away from power lines," consider the fate of this gentle tree branch, who apparently never got to watch Saturday morning PSAs, or at least wasn't paying attention if it did. It screams, literally, for about 14 seconds before bursting into flames like a vampire in a tanning booth.
March is a time when spring is dawning and we (at least those of us in colder climates) can't wait to bust out of our cabins and break the fever of breathing our own exhaust all winter long. Spring offers newfound possibilities for making things, for being creative. Combine the desire to get out and circulate, with the itch to create, the fact that it's also the month of the Academy Awards and the world focusing its attention on movie making, and... well... we thought it was as good a time as any to launch DIY Movie Making Month here at MAKE. 
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