Deus ex Arca - A Custom Pet Salesman's Box by Jacob Petersson
“What’s that, little girl? You want a blue-eyed canary? And young master – you desire a three tailed monkey? Why that is simplicity itself for the Custom Pet Salesman! We’ve got custom ears, personalized eyes and fur of a thousand colors! Now you can have a pet that is as unique as your precious child – and we guarantee* no-one else in the playground can match it!”
*Not an actual guarantee.
Turn away now if you’re the type to run screaming at the thought of scientists and inventors meddling with things best left alone – because the E. Chromi project involves synthetic biology and the E. Coli bacteria. Go on, the rest of us will click through.
A basic egg cup model, printed on a Thing-O-Matic
An emotional roller-coaster ride ends on a metaphor-busting high note! This Saturday, I finally managed to assemble the Thing-O-Matic kit I got as my Christmas present this year. Saturday – it was assembled! Such anticipation and elation! Sunday morning – despair! Error reports and fruitless forum searches. Monday – relief and excitement! We got it all working, and a day of prints both successful and hilariously disastrous.
Eszter Burghardt's 'Wooly Magma' from the Wooly Saga series
Miniature landscapes again – I love them so. Maybe it’s the incredible detail that people, such as Eszter Burghardt manage to create with unexpected materials like wool, felt and fuzz, such as in the Wooly Magma photograph above, or perhaps it’s the age old child-like conflict that means that far away things often seem so small.
The photographs that Eszter Burghardt creates, with both foodstuffs and fiber, appeal to senses we might not often associate with scenery – our sense of touch and our sense of taste. It’s that, coupled with the beauty of natural landscapes that she’s recreated, and the desire to reach out and touch these little worlds, that appeals to me so much. That, and I love volcanic scenes, and I am particularly curious as to how the under-lighting has been achieved!
Via NotCot.
This quiet, peaceful, unassuming video shows a sweetie or candy kit available in Japan, called Popin’ Cookin’ Sushi Candy. It comes with a mixing tray, pipettes, mixers, shovels, slotted spoons, and several little foil packets containing the ingredients. Two things impressed me greatly…
Watched the video? Doesn’t it look like someone is squeezing out a brick of instant ramen noodles? Well, it’s actually a 3d printer (from Fab@Home) equipped with a syringe of masa dough, in a stochastic printing setup. Have no fear, before I read the article over at Cooking Issues, I didn’t know what half of that sentence meant either. Take a look at the article, as it explains it very well, but the short version is that it’s tortilla dough, printed too high and too fast, so it wobbles with a bit of randomness. View full article »
Starry Night by Van Gogh, modified by Serena Malyon
Never has the sleepy town, punctuated by a church and overpowered by the incredible glory of the sky above it, seemed so tiny (via a misguided Reddit post). It feels like you could reach out and pluck the building out of its setting with just two fingers, holding this human world full of tales and loves and drama in your fingers – but there’s less story in this teeny tiny version with its increasing focus, than in the seemingly over-sharp originals – here’s why. View full article »
I think, in my own build process, I’ve got as far as the 1 minute mark in this timelapse video of the people at Betaworks building a Thing-O-Matic 3d printer. I am both encouraged by this (woo! 1/3 of the way through!) and discouraged (only1 minute?). I’m a little envious of their team of clever assemblists, all working in parallel to put it together, but we’ll manage I’m sure! Lovely bunny print at 3 minutes 10 seconds – can’t wait until I can print my own!
Congratulations to Betaworks on their new, and exciting, tool/toy!
Illustration from 'First Men to the Moon' by Wernher von Braun
53 years ago, Wernher von Braun wrote a work of fiction called “First Men to the Moon”. In it, he described the training and equipment the main character John Mason goes though – and while many have written fiction on space exploration before and after, few can claim quite the expertise as von Braun – as he went on to be instrumental in building the Saturn V, and getting the United States to the moon.
The book came with amazing illustrations such as the one above, which Paleo-Future blog has been good enough to scan from this very out of print book. (There’s one more, and larger versions, at Paleo-Future). The diagrams, by Fred Freeman, speak of spacesuits of flexibility; tightly wrapped around wiry, dynamic astronauts – but those aren’t the boxy, bulky, almost comical suits that we’ve all seen. But fashion always comes around again, and maybe technology is catching up on Mr Freeman…
Marcus Wallinder's Underwater Photographs on Green
I shouldn’t post this image, but it’s only to try to get anyone looking here to look at Marcus Wallinder’s photoblog, Green. Green is his favorite color, and it’s got dozens of beautiful photographs of mosses and shrimps, bubbles and tiny leaves. They’re crisp, semitransparent, rich and entrancing images. Go look!
