Brad Litwin sent us this video of his latest kinetic sculpture, on display at the "re.action" exhibition at the Annmarie Garden Sculpture Park and Arts Center in Solomons, Maryland, starting on June 1st.

More projects from Brad [BradLitwin.com]

Instructables has posted a great little how-to on creating your own Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy...

This Instructable will set out how to construct what I believe to be a unique implementation of Wikipedia in an offline, portable device. It involves installing a stripped-down distribution of Linux on a Psion 5mx handheld, and installing a static HTML version of Wikipedia for use with one of two browsers. Most importantly, you do not have to be a Linux wizard to achieve this. I will assume a basic familiarity with computers, but you do not need experience with the intricacies of filing systems, compiling source code and the stuff that traditionally puts people off using Linux.

I'd prefer the Encyclopedia Galactica myself, but hey...

Wikipedia in your pocket, aka Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy v1.0 [Instructables]

At last weekend's awesome MAKEr Faire — where everything was steampunk, apparently! — steampunk / goth band Abney Park debuted this fantastic violin mod on stage for the first time. Modified with vacuum tubes and blinking LEDs, the violin was designed by Molly "Porkshanks" Friedrich, and the vacuum tubes pulse with color as the strings vibrate. But I'm going to re-echo Slashgear's question on the sound quality: don't violins require a certain form for optimal tonality?

Abney Park Violin [MAKE]

Bomi Kim's DIY clock-making concept, The Meaning of Time, has a certain Korokova Milk Bar minimalism to it. Essentially, it's just a plastic screw, with minute and hour shafts horologically rotating according to the usual standards of time-keeping. You simply smash it into a planar surface, stuff two objects through the holes, and voila: your own clock. I think, though, that the real possibilities of such a device will only become apparent when someone on Modblog hammers one into his pineal gland, tattoos his face with digits and inserts his fingers through the holes whenever someone asks him for the time.

Making Your Own Clock [Yanko Design via Wired]

Dune fans rejoice: you can now indulge your dreams of soaring over Arrakeen toward the shield wall by constructing your own mini-ornithopter. You could even put a little mouse inside it!

Build an Ornithopter [Metacafe via Make]

The soul of gadget lust is to want something the moment you see it, before you have any idea what it does.

Crunched together from two generic walkman-style cassette players, the tape delay device works by recording on one side and then spooling the tape through both cassettes to the pickup on the other.

"A single tape loop runs through two modified cassettes (each which have had one of their left or right sides removed). The players themselves have had there walls (the two in the center, respectively) filed down, so the tape runs fluently. ... the tape (which moves counter-clockwise) travels through the left player (Realistic) where it's internal microphone records sound, and then travels to the Memorex which plays back the sound about 3 seconds later. "

Frankly, I have no idea what I might do with it. But the likelihood of me turning up at the old electronics shop and losing a few hours to this is high.

Xalent's photostream [Flickr via Make]

Over at the OQO Talk forums, neonatal member TRF's initial claims to have successfully hacked his OQO to run OS X Leopard was met only with scorns and cries of hoax. But a couple of days later, TRF seems to have silenced the nay-sayers, and proven to their satisfaction that it isn't simply a skinjob.

TRF's Leopard-running OQO boots in 2 minutes and 30 seconds, which would probably sound more atrocious to me if my current Leopard install didn't take just about the same amount of time to boot (I need to reinstall). Better yet, everything seems to work, including WiFi, sound, power management and Bluetooth. The only thing missing is WWAN, which may be within reach.

Whether running Vista or OS X, the OQO's always going to be so small as to be useless in my eyes. But there's no doubt I irrationally lust for one more when it's on Leopard.

OQO is the world's smallest Mac [OQO Talk via Engadget]

Charlie Sorrel at Wired's Gadget Lab notes that Everett Bradford, the creator of this contraption, is "a young man already working on winning a Darwin Award."

YouTube [via Gadget Lab]

It used to be that one could simply look up a walkthrough at Gamefaqs. Guitar Hero, however, is an actual game of skill rather than a glorified puzzle, mashfest or grind. How, then, to cheat? David Randolph takes a show controller—typically used to control museum exhibits and the like—and rigs it up to record and play perfect runs of the title's songs.

Programmed through the serial port, it costs $210 and can't be ordered online. Moreover, you have to get a relay board for another $200, or thereabouts, to adapt its output to a controller, which must itself be hacked to high heaven to get it all working.

So, ladies and gentlemen, it all comes down to exactly how much you suck, and exactly how much you want to do something about it.

Automate Guitar Hero [Hacked Gadgets]

In Terminator II, it was the Atari Portfolio that hacked ATMs. In Brazil, it is the Asus Eee.

Scallywags damaged the nearby cash machines to funnel passers-by to their rigged one, into which was stuffed a subnotebook and all the accouterments required to steal card numbers and customer details. High-tech, yes, but hardly ingenious, given that they didn't do anything to hide their own identities from nearby closed-circuit cameras.

Globo reports that the thieves, arrested in Rio Grande do Sul, are members of a card-cloning gang. They were caught when the bank manager looked at security tapes—from the original story, it appears he simply found it a little odd that the bank was ransacked and most of the ATMs rendered nonoperational during the night.

Source [GloboTV]
Machine Translation [Google]
Direct link to video

I absolutely love this frantically paint-splattered graffiti keyboard by MAKEr Divine Harvester. It makes the not-so-secret Punky Brewster of my soul squeal in girlish, color-blind delight.

K3YB04RD [Divine Harvester's Flickr via MAKE:Blog]

iHacked has instructions for making a Wifi Predator, a gadget that connects to a distant wireless access point and shares it with computers in your vicinity.

The predator is a modified wireless router connected to a high-powered antenna and running custom firmware to actively seek out open wireless connections. Once they are found, it will test them for internet connectivity and then join and repeat the one with the strongest signal to secured wireless connection that YOU control. (*Note: It is illegal to use a wireless access point that you are not authorized to use.)

Link

Keith writes: "This Kettering College student built a drivable compact Panzer tank that fires paint-balls." He sure did! Ladies love the Panzers.

The 1/2-scale model was originally built for a paintball game and uses a three-cylinder diesel engine for motivation.

Bryan Day writes:

Here's an old friend of mine from Oregon - builds Kalimbas from just about anything, they are absolutely beautiful.

I cannot disagree! (And there are many more in his Flickr gallery.)

kalimba mbira sansa likembe thumb-piano lamellaphone [Flickr.com]

Benjamin Nelson built his own electric motorcycle from parts he got on Craigslist and from a local farm store. It only has a 15 mile range, but it gets the equivalent of 300MPG (based on current prices of gas and electricity).

"Then I mounted the motor to the frame using the existing engine mounting holes and a piece of scrap aluminum plate. I found a sprocket and chain in the tractor repair isle of the farm store."

And Mr. Nelson even admits that he doesn't own any power tools other than a drill, doesn't know how to weld and only took one metal shop class in high school.

DIY Electric Kawasaki Motorcycle [Treehugger] (Thanks, Chris T.!)

Reuters has a nice profile piece on Ben Heckendorn, modder extraordinaire, who has turned his love of converting videogame systems into new creations into a healthy cottage business:

"Often someone will ask me to combine five different video game systems in one box, which is of course ridiculous. One guy wanted me to build an Xbox 360 controller attached to his rowing machine at home so he could row and play 'Uno' with his friends online. It sounded so weird I did it."

"Modder" turns hobby into career [Reuters]

The "Yellow Drum Machine" is a snazzy little hand-made robot which putters around, casting its two-camera head franticly for obstacles, then raps out a short beat on whatever it can put its sticks to. It then records its own beat, loops it, and begins to play along with its own rhythm. It's a one man robot band. It will do great for itself busking in the robot subways, especially if it can hook itself up with a troupe of robot breakdancers.

Yellow Drum Machine [Let's Make Robots!] (Thanks to everyone who sent this in, except for Gord, because he's a big jerk. [Just kidding <3])

Image: Screengrab from Goldcoast.com.au

An Australian man took his own life on the 18th by arming a "robot" with a .22 pistol, standing in front of it, and prompting it to fire. Which is, of course, a rather ingenious if overwrought way of taking one's own life.

I'm curious to figure out what exactly this "robot" was, though. The local Gold Coast Bulletin newspaper said that the man had downloaded plans off the internet, but a cursory Googling isn't bringing up anything. The footage from which the above still was captured lingers over the rubbish bin in the man's driveway for quite a while, but I can't be sure if the bin served as the housing for the mechanism or if they just didn't have anything better to film.

Anyone know where to find these plans? I'd like to check them out. Call me morbid, but I think that a man ending his life at the hands of his own device has a certain respectability; at the same time, I'm curious as to why he'd go through all the trouble when just a gun to the temple would do.

Man shot by killer robot [Goldcoast.com.au] (Thanks, Rossignol!)

Afrigadget has a few pictures of hand-made toys from Kenya and Ghana, including these scooters that ingeniously use spray-can tops as wheels.

African Toys - A Pictorial [Afrigadget]

"Hyena" is a new toolset/language for creating "AudioGameBooks," sort of a Choose Your Own Adventure audiobook that can be played with just a single button. Branching storylines are just one possibility for Hyena. "Lone Wolf - Flight from the Dark," the first game packaged with the Hyena download, has a simple RPG system built in with hit points, skills, weapons, and inventory, all controlled by clicks from the single button.

The game text is supposed to be read through a text-to-speech convertor but on my Nintendo DS (and DS-X flash cart), only the text appeared, which made the whole thing into a slightly clunky text adventure. (There are also Sony PSP and PC versions of Hyena.)

The concept is strong, although I must admit at first glance I thought it was supposed to be a prank. I quickly realized how engaging the single-click, audio-only concept could be with the right game mechanics and story. (No offense to the writers of Lone Wolf, but its generic monk-on-the-run theme didn't really entice me.) Playing a game while running or taking a walk could be a lot of fun. Now they just need a Hyena port to the iPod and other portable media devices.

HYENA - AUDIOGAME PLAYER [CollectingSmiles.com via Waxy]

In the pursuit of a passively cooled PC with no fans, Ville "Willek" Kyrö happened upon a solution ingenious in its simplicity: make the entire case a giant heat sink. A whole bunch of custom rigging later, his Opteron-powered machine was a success—ignoring that the case weighed over 44 pounds.

Project: Passive [Metku.net]

"Heita3" makes musical instruments from vegetables. He's made a lovely ocarina from a rather large carrot and played one of the short themes from The Ocarina of Time.

Kotaku has some more videos from Heita3, who also has made a pan flute from carrots, a radish slide whistle, and more ocarinas from broccoli and mushrooms.

Zelda Song Played ON A FRIGGIN' CARROT [Kotaku]

Previously • Vegetable orchestra [BB]

A judicious application of Dremel and gumption turned one man's slide viewer into a perfectly charming little iPod nano dock, blowing up its tiny screen into something...slightly less tiny. Too bad he has to reencode all his movies to display upside down!

[via Retrothing via Gadget Lab]

BENT 2004 from Derek Sajbel on Vimeo.

Dr. Rek writes:

I have just uploaded my Bent 2004 festival documentary to vimeo. In order to promote the art of circuit bending and the BENT festival, Absurdity.Biz has uploaded the first BENT festival dvd online in its entirety.

Shot at the first international circuit bending festival for Absurdity.Biz's ongoing Circuit Bending documentary, it later became a side-project DVD series sold at the BENT festivals.

I haven't watched the whole thing yet, but consider this my own way of bookmarking it for later.

PT is over on the MAKE blog doing a great job with actual hands-on reports of cool stuff from the New York Toy Fair. Tons and tons of science-oriented toys and project kits. I figure the intersection between BBG readers and MAKE readers is pretty large, but just in case, it bears mentioning that my handier cousin is doing yeoman's work.

Toy Fair '08 Coverage [Blog.Makezine.com]

A German motorcycle craftsman has created "Satte Literschüssel,"* a beautifully barbaric beast of bike powered by a tractor engine, sporting metal-banded ash forks and what appears to be a shovel for a seat. My only question: how would one steer with an axe in one hand and a shield in the other? (I suspect the solution involves an iron phallus sheath on the steering column.)

Project Page (Machine Translated) [Werner-Broesel.de via Jalopnik]

* Not exactly sure what that first letter is supposed to be in that script. Fixed. Thanks, guys!

Waxy has curated a nice collection of oscilloscope hacks in video form, including the above demo from Assembly 2007.

Oscilloscope Fun and Games [Waxy]

While all my home wiring is inspired by the jerry-rigged Apollo 13 replacement CO2 scrubber, others might find more inspiration in doing it the way NASA does it when time is less of a factor. Toolmonger has spotted the NASA Workmanship Technical Committee's guides to proper installation, including a full guide for "Wiring and Cabling."

I'm sold. From now on I will outsource all my wiring to the lowest bidder. (I kid because I love, Dear Space Program!)

Project Page [Workmanship.NASA.gov via Toolmonger]