I would like to make Yoichi Kobayashi’s cold-flaming crystal skull the executor of my estate.
Tag: technology
FLASHBACK FRIDAY: This is your reminder that Mars is now populated entirely by very lonely robots…😢🤖
… and hungry, hungry sandworms (presumably).
These are fun on your computer, and absolutely immersively astounding on your phone/tablet. The future is here, but unevenly distributed—with some portions dune-buggying around Mars, picking at rocks and wrecking up the joint.
from “360º Views from the Surface of Mars(!!!)” (with immersive VR video doo-hickey!!!)
I’m a lifelong Michigander, I’ve been to Isle Royale, and I can confirm that this is a true and accurate assessment of that stony archipelago…
…and, in fact, one of its most charming aspects:
This artist is living her best life, in my humble.
so, so, sooooothing 🎄
I understand that this is a stressful time of year for many of you. Get a sweet, milky coffee, sit in a comfy chair, and just watch this over, and over, and over again. You will feel better.
Listen: You Aren’t Hearing a Martian Sunrise, but Please Listen to this “Martian Sunrise”
I sorta love things like this, not because it’s the “sound of a Martian sunrise”—because it isn’t. It’s a composition humans made, using an express (and consciously expressed) scheme that’s inspired by a Martian sunrise.
No, I love this art because it sounds pretty and pleases and soothes me, and I love projects like this because artists always and forever operate based on formulae—they just usually aren’t able (or willing) to consciously and explicitly formulate those formula. I like it when we engage with our formulae outright.
Also, I really like Mars. Our relationship with that planet has changed substantially since I was a boy, and that always fills my heart with Hope.
Toledo Mini Maker Faire Coming this Fall!!! CALL FOR MAKERS IS *OPEN*!
The Imagination Station in Toledo (where I was helping folks find the Good Noise™ all last December) is hosting their very own M
ini Maker Faire this September. Great folks down there, and a great location along the river. I’ll be there all day with the Loud Lab (amplified Slinkies, simple DIY synths, electric diddley bows. and more)—so mark your calendar. And, if you’re a maker sorta a person, consider applying and showing off what you do (the application deadline is fast approaching).
See you in September!
At first glance this seems both stupid and nuts…
… but Imma level with you: It gets both saner and more brilliant the longer you watch.
(source with further details)
Hamish Trolove’s Hobopunk Lap Steel Guitar (with Active Electronics!)
I love hearing from folks who read my DIY books, because they are always up to something that I never imagined, and yet love on first sight. Case in point:
Last December I got an email from Hamish Trolove, a Junkyard Jam Band reader who mentioned he was building his own riff on a Shane Speal 2×4 lap steel with a build-in Mud-n-Sizzle pre-amp (project 12 in Junkyard Jam Band) and dual LFO box (translation: It’s a junkyard lap steel electric guitar with a built in pre-amp—so things might get loud—and an automated modulator, allowing him to dial in anything from a little honky-tonk tremelo shimmer to a big pulsing metal wobble).
As Hamish explained:
The instrument uses waste cargo palette wood, and TIG welding wire to mark the “fret” spacings. I find that old palettes often have extraordinarily hard wood with some amazing colours when planed down, sanded and varnished. Hopefully by the end of the project I’ll have something that looks fairly tidy-ish in a hobo/steampunky kind of way.
“Fairly tidy-ish” is such an understantement. Check this thing out:
Oh daaaaaaamn! I love everything about this! He also included a schematic of his expansion of my old Universal LFO (Junkyard Jam Band project 13), for folks interested in doing something similar:
Hamish also put me on to Frescobaldi, a powerful, pretty, and free sheet music text editor that looks amazing. (For every 100 of you who are wondering why you’d ever need such a thing, there is one musical geek who is gonna click that link and weep with joy. Trust me, for I have been that very geek.)
Incidentally, while you’re clicking links, don’t miss Hamish’s Baddest Mountain Dulcimer Ever.
Reminder: Dropping a few bucks on the Makerspace Humble Bundle gets you $200+(!!!) in DIY/Maker books…
… while supporting Art, Free Speech, and other Good Things™
Check it out: Humble Book Bundle: Makerspace by No Starch Press (pay what you want and help charity)
(Need details? Here’s my spiel from a week ago.)
Support Art and other Good Things™: Get $120 in DIY/Makerspace Books for $1!
The Humble “Makerspace” Book Bundle from No Starch Press is live an insanely good deal! Pay a buck, and get six rad DIY-ish books (including my first book—Snip, Burn, Solder, Shred—as well as a few of my No Starch favorites). Pay $8, and get another six books (including my second DIY book, Junkyard Jam Band). Pay a bit more…well, you get the picture. All in, you can drop $20 and get more than $400 worth of DIY while supporting excellent charities. 
There are so many books I love in this one! Yoshihito Isogawa’s LEGO Technic books are both amazing and agelessly inspiring, Carlos Bueno’s Lauren Ipsum has been huge for my son (he read it twice in a row when it first came out, and still hits it again a few times a year now—it’s like the Information Age’s Phantom Tollbooth), No Starch’s Scratch and Arduino books are rock solid, and Jason R. Briggs’s Python for Kids is an excellent intro to Python for everyone (i.e., it’s how I learned enough Python to work on a documentation project with a U-M roboticist last year).
Also, I’ll level with you: These bundles (and book/game bundles in general) are a huge boost to authors/creators, both in getting our names and ideas out there, and in getting money into our pockets. When you buy a bundle like this, you’re doing a Good Thing™ for the dissemination of new art and human knowledge, in addition to getting a good deal.
Humble Book Bundle: Makerspace by No Starch Press (pay what you want and help charity)