Sean Bonner has realised a very important dream:
IMG_0858.JPG by CRASHspace on Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA
(via Leigh via Adafruit via BoingBoing)
What else have unicorns been up to? Where else have unicorns been a critical technological tool?
This is an open thread, for discussion of older posts, news, interesting tidbits and anything else that takes your fancy.
I’ve been working on a rather silly but entertaining project for the past few weeks:
It’s a hat, that’s also a compass. There are LEDs in the brim – whichever is pointed North is the one that’s on. I’m planning on adding a “party mode” which just lights them up in various patterns, but haven’t gotten around to it yet.
Did I mention that they are pink LEDs?
There’s also a secret buzzer underneath the hat so that the wearer can know where North is without asking someone else to tell her which light is on. The various parts:
Edit: I’ve pushed the source code to bitbucket; it’s fairly hacky, but will be evolving over the next while :)
Anyone else working on fun knitted things, wearable computing projects, or knitted electronics?
This is also an open thread, for discussion of subjects of general interest, things in older posts, and things we’ve never posted about.
Jie Qi is majoring in mechanical engineering at Columbia University, and as her website says, she loves to make things.
Now, sometimes adding electronics to classic kids toys just makes them obnoxious, but this popup book, done with Dr. Leah Buechley as part of the High-Low Tech group in the MIT Media Lab, is an amazing example of how electronics can enhance in a beautiful way:
Today and Tomorrow also featured some beautiful paper/electronic flowers she made, that move and open much like real flowers would.
Paper flowers blooming from Jie Qi on Vimeo.
I love how hardware hacking can be so beautiful. I’ll bet that’s not the first thing some people think of when they think of neat hardware projects, but I’ve seen a lot of really lovely things out there. Feel free to show off your own stuff in the comments: complete, incomplete, or even not quite started.
These are the voyages of the starship Adorable, presented as a unicorn chaser to yesterday’s awfulness. Last weekend at miniSoOnCon, the Southern Ontario hackerspace festival, I got to meet and work with with a couple of kids who are well on their way to growing up to be the next generation of open source hackers. Meet Amy and Zoe:
They’ve inspired me to submit a talk to Ontario [GNU] Linux Fest about teaching free software to kids with the Arduino. I’ll be posting a video of that later. Have a great weekend and Canadian Thanksgiving, everyone!
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