Bre Pettis I Make Things |
My daily video journey continues. Today I show how to create a flying spaghetti monster on the lazzzor. I will be teaching how to do this in the class I will be teaching at NYCR!
If you’re feeling friendly and would like to leave a review of this podcast, you can leave a review on iTunes! This iPhone video file will sync with your iphone of ipod. Or if you like you can examine all the pixels in luscious HD.
On Saturday, November 22nd, you can harness the power of an Eplilog 35 Watt Laser! In this class you’ll learn everything you need to know to make the ideas in your head become a reality with a laser.
In this two hour class, we’ll walk through all the steps from idea to pressing the “go” button on the laser. We’ll cover safety and basic design skills in Inkscape, the open source vector editor and you’ll learn how to do a burninate test to find out if something is laserable.
After learning the basics, each student will create their own design and lasercut it on the laser! A $10 lab fee is included in the ticket price and covers 12″ x 12″ of 1/8″ acrylic and time on the laser cutter to cut and etch it. Bring a laptop if you’ve got one and design ideas for your own holiday decorations.
Because this class starts insanely early (10AM) I will also be providing bagels and cream cheese. Give me a heads up if you are a vegan and I’ll make sure to have some jam or tofu cream cheese!
Last night at midnight, my pals Phooky, X, Eric, and his brother Ian decided to build a robotic arm.
Phooky and Eric started working on the gripper, X started working on making the sanguino talk to 6 servos with an atari joystick, Ian did research and I started mocking parts up in Inkscape for the lasercutter. Our vision is to make a chess playing robot and when it’s done, we’ll publish all the files so you can make your own!
I’m working on my robot for Roboxotica and researching robotic arms for my Cherrytron 2000.
I might have to make the robotic arm tell time somehow! Enjoy this video of robotic arms telling time.
Update: Tutorial!
Sometimes I have to make something, ANYTHING. So I dug out some Optik Acrylic and lasercut it into a shape I like. Then I held it over a flaming torch until it became flexible and I bent it just right.
Want a piece of the action? If you’ve got a lasercutter, here is the svg file to make your own. (Released under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License.)
If you don’t have a lasercutter and you want to buy a pair off me, I’ll make you a pair. Just give me a shout and I’ll hook you up.
For History Hacker, my fellow resistor Raphael Abrams helped prototype some projects with me. We were at NYCR working on making an AC Generator out of a bike when Adam had the bright idea to hook the two ends of the coil to a speaker to listen to the sound of music. Bonus points for anyone who comments with a cunning and subtle reference to that movie, the sound of music.
My show is coming in a week! If people watch the pilot and the Nielsen ratings are good, I’ll be able to make a whole season of History Hacker and get to investigate inventions and inventors in history and show you how to make them!
History Hacker
Friday September 26th
8PM and Midnight
History Channel
(Right before and right after the first presidential debate)
You can join the History Hacker facebook group where folks are discussing their favorite inventors of yesteryear and I set up a History Hacker flickr group because I’d actually like to see the people who are watching my show as they are watching the show with me on the tv. (I think it will be cool to see who is watching the show!)
The show will live or die based on ratings and feedback from folks.
The history channel has message boards to talk about the show. They are tracking what is said there.
And if you feel so moved to write a message to them, I’ve set up an email for History Hacker feedback that forwards to the people at the History Channel who need to know.
Earlier today I was drooling over the Red camera. They are freaking HOTT. They look like some cross between a mad max car and a space satellite. The story I heard was that the guy who started Oakley sunglasses basically said something to the effect of, “The sunglasses were just a way for me to build up enough money to make awesome cameras.”
The cameras look really great and have got some amazing optics and are basically everything I’ve been craving in a camera. The Scarlet, even though it’s the smallest one, looks completely wonderful.
On the flipside, over on Steve’s blog, I found this contraption. I’ve seen a few of these kinds of things around, but this is the cleanest one yet. What they do is make a lightbox kinda thing so that you turn the lens into a slide viewer with a fast old school photography lens and then you throw a macro lens on a video camera and point it at the screen on your viewer and you’ve got an effect that you can really only get with really nice and big 35mm film cameras… well, and now probably, the Red.
Fifty People, One Question: Restored from Benjamin Reece on Vimeo.
This set up allows for a very thin focal plane so that only a few inches will be in focus. The thing that I like about this video is that even though the focusing effect is a major player in the video, instead of distracting us from the people, it serves the message and brings us closer to the people who are the subjects in the video.
I made a bunch of franken-cameras for shooting stills, but never made a video franken-camera. I’m going to put this one on my todo list!
Bill’s magnifying glasses with lights., originally uploaded by bre pettis.
This weekend I worked on projects non-stop.
Friday night I stayed up late making this blog look all snazzy. Then As I was falling asleep, a storm came up and dumped approximately 5-10 gallons of water through the plaster ceiling into the middle of my dining room. Fun!
I had a goal this weekend. By Monday night I wanted a prototype designed and hacked together to go into production using the laser. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, but I knew something was going to happen if I had a deadline. I made a pact with a friend to do the same. Peer pressure works on me too, I guess.
I slept a bit and then banged my head against the laser for Saturday at NYCResistor. I tried out a few ideas and I ended up making a clever contraption called “Extreme Torture.”
Being at NYCResistor is really great. Today it was like, “Let’s break this in so many ways then let’s go get ice cream!” I saw some friends work on some amazing projects this weekend that are in process and I can’t wait to link to them when they are done. I really like being a part of a creative collective. I can’t live without it now.
On Sunday, I got inspired. I found my idea! Once I got it, I was fired up and spent 14 hours working on this new project. Then I slept and woke up today and went and worked on that same project for another 12 hours.
This idea is one that I want to polish before setting it out into the world. I’ve got prototypes that need refinement and I need more materials, but I predict that by the time the cupcake championship rolls around, I’ll be ready to let this idea out to see if it can stand on it’s own two feet.
I got to know Inkscape better this weekend. I’m still figuring a lot out and I’m sure I’m only using like 15% of it, but it turns out that I like it more than QCAD and it’s open source and FREE!
Bre Pettis I Make Things |
