Sandy, from Hamilton, New Zealand, has created an entire fleet of amazing cars, hot rods, and buggies, all made out of aluminum soda and beer cans.
From his website:
I have always religiously recycled but often spent time looking at the graphics on the can and looking at the shape of the bottom thinking “That could make a really cool wheel”. After having an accident which left me with some time to use, I decided to put pencil to paper and try and make a racing car using the bottoms of cans as its wheels, and the graphics as the decoration for the body.
He’s devoted a page to each creation, and offers photos, plans, and details on each build, including how many cans each took, and sometimes, who drank the beer (“This is my wife’s favourite one. She drank the Guinness, I made the car!!”)
Robots don’t know zines … Or do they? We’re in the midst of celebrating robots this month, with our new issue of MAKE magazine featuring DIY drones, rovers, and bots of all kinds. So imagine our delight when we saw Doctor Popular‘s robot zine at last weekend’s San Francisco Zine Fest.
The graphic zine is actually a 24-page comic book, with each page drawn by a different artist, all in 24 consecutive hours. Doc Pop was even nice enough to sign a copy and then gift it to the office. Thanks much, Doctor Popular!
In MAKE, Volume 19: Robots, Rovers, and Drones, learn how to make a model plane with an autopilot and a built-in robot brain. We’ll also show you how to make a comfortable chair and footstool out of a single sheet of plywood, a bicyclist’s vest that shows how fast you’re going, and projects that introduce you to servomotors. All this, and plenty more, in MAKE, Volume 19! Subscribe to MAKE, or log in to check out the Digital Edition.
I have to admit I enjoyed this video of Ice-T taking a hammer to an old PowerBook. I’m not exactly sure why, perhaps it’s the obvious respect Ice grudgingly admits towards his old Mac, perhaps it’s my soft spot for PowerBooks (my first laptop and a great machine), or perhaps it’s how tough the old Mac turns out to be when someone approaches it with a hammer and bad intentions. He really doesn’t have an easy time destroying the PowerBook. Don’t watch if you’re one of those sentimental Apple fan boys.
Some simply stunning photos in this year’s winners from Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photo Walk. This image is called “Caught on Tape” and was taken by Gtilute in Pittsburgh, PA. At first I thought the person in the distance in this photo was doing Tai-Chi, but on closer inspection they’re riding a skateboard. Click on over to Scott’s blog to see all the winners.
I’m not sure I agree with GeekSugar that this “solar forest” looks good, but I’m intrigued by the design concept. I’ve often wondered why we don’t see solar panels incorporated into more diverse surfaces — it sure seems like there’s lots of places we could be easily soaking up rays that we don’t. Hopefully this is a trend we’ll see more of.
I love this photo of a half-mile wide crater on Mars, taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
After a long break and a fun-filled vacation scrambling all over Europe with our kids, I think we’re ready to start blogging in earnest here. Right, Shawn? Well time will tell, but I do have a bunch of open Firefox tabs for sites I want to share and at some point we’ll weed down our vacation pics enough to actually post some online. And we’ll try not to go dark for so long next time.
I love this elaborate cardboard dragon posted by Creativeman on Instructables. In fact, upon further inspection you’ll see that he’s got about 11 cardboard projects uploaded to the DIY site. Fun stuff!
A 48-year-old elephant who lost part of her front left leg a decade ago was fitted with a prosthetic last week and is reported to be doing great. The artificial leg was made by the Prostheses Foundation, which also makes artificial limbs for human amputees.
Let the witty naming begin — Robo Dumbo has been used, and I’m thinking someone more creative than me can come up with a nifty Steampunk version of Elephunk.
The terrific blog Inhabitat has an intriguing article about the winning entries in the Rising Tides competition, wherein entrants came up with ways to deal with what could be a 55″ rise in the San Francisco Bay waters in the next century.
Another mind-boggling solution to the high-water mark is Folding Water, by Kuth Ranieri Architects. The proposal is an alternative to the traditional barrier dike: this one placed in the middle of the bay, maintaining current water levels with a series of pump walls and artificial estuaries. It looks invisible: reminiscent of what we hope our future impact to be: undetectable.
The competition ended up with 6 winners sharing a $25,000 prize, and there were a handful of Honorable Mentions highlighted as well. The whole thing — the competition, the plethora of entries, the thoughtfulness and cleverness of the entries — was a great reminder to me that makers hold the key to surviving the next 100 years and beyond.
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