Peter Shortland

Human Powered Washer & Spin Dryer

2012-08-05T11:44:00.001+01:00

The GiraDora is an interesting design for a foot powered washer and dryer that costs less than $40. More HERE

The Concrete Lathe Project

2012-04-15T15:50:00.001+01:00

"Metalworking lathes are necessary to the production of almost
everything but are very expensive. In 1915, special lathes made from
concrete were developed to quickly and cheaply produce millions of
cannon shells needed for World War I.
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All an Engineer needs

2012-04-14T19:01:00.000+01:00

Kaufmann's wonderful Posographe

2011-12-31T12:34:00.001+00:00

Kaufmann's wonderful Posographe

Kaufmann’s Posographe is nothing less than an analog
mechanical computer for calculating six-variable functions.
Specifically, it computes the exposure time (Temps de Pose) for
taking photographs indoors or out (depending on which side you use).

The input variables are set up on the six small pointers; the large
pointer then gives you the correct time. The variables are very
detailed, yet endearingly colloquial. For outdoors, they include the

setting -- with values like “Snowy scene”, “Greenery with expanse of

water”, or “Very narrow old street”; the state of the sky --
including “Cloudy and somber”, “Blue with white clouds”, or “Purest
blue”; The month of the year and hour of the day; the illumination
of the subject; and of course the aperture (f-number).
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Travel mug with built in temp gauge

2011-12-25T19:45:00.001+00:00

What a good idea, a Travel mug with built in temp gauge

Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre

2011-12-11T16:13:00.001+00:00

Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (18 November 1787 – 10 July 1851) was a French artist and physicist, recognized for his invention of the daguerreotype process of photography.

Online Color Challenge

2011-09-13T20:25:00.001+01:00

Online Color Challenge: How well do you see colour?

The Studley tool chest

2011-09-10T16:41:00.001+01:00

Born in 1838 in Massachusetts, Henry O. Studley is best known for
creating the so-called Studley Tool Chest, a wall hanging tool chest
which cunningly holds some 300 tools in a space that takes up about 40
inches by 20 inches of wall space when closed.

Fully Working 4×5 Camera Made Of LEGO Bricks

2011-08-21T12:13:00.001+01:00

Fully Working 4×5 Camera Made Of LEGO Bricks

The camera, named Legotron, uses a 4x5 film back and took over a year (with lapses) to build. Images are quite impressive.

Its equipped with a $40 127mm ƒ4.7 "ebay lens", and can focus by sliding the two boxes that make the camera back and forward.

LEGO 3D Milling Machine

2011-08-19T18:03:00.001+01:00

Lego milling machine

LEGO 3D Milling Machine - "3D Printer"

Chess board made from lenses

2011-07-24T17:21:00.001+01:00

Chess board made from lenses
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Canadian photographer Todd McLellan's latest series "Disassembly"

2011-05-10T21:19:00.001+01:00

HUH. Magazine - Todd McLellan

Canadian photographer Todd McLellan's
latest series "Disassembly" captures relics of our past in a unique,
dismantled and exposed form. Disassembled items include a typewriter, a
push lawn mower and a rotary phon; each have had every part meticulously
re-arranged - by type, size and function - on a beige surface in an
almost OCD-like manner, resulting in a portrait of an era now left
behind.

It's back... and better than ever! The new Commodore 64

2011-04-10T18:17:00.002+01:00

http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_C64.aspx

It's back... and better than ever! The new Commodore 64 is a modern functional PC as close to the original in design as humanly possible. It houses a modern mini-ITX PC motherboard featuring a Dual Core 525 Atom processor and the latest nVidia ION2 graphics chipset. It comes in the original taupe brown/beige color, with other colors to follow.

Books2Barcodes

2011-04-01T20:56:00.001+01:00

http://wonder-tonic.com/books2barcodes/index.php

Books2Barcodes is an ongoing effort to convert all the world's great books to QR codes (2D barcodes). Each work featured here is the entire text of a piece of classic literature translated into several thousand barcodes. With a mobile device equipped with a camera and a barcode-scanning app, you can experience the joy of a great book as read through 800-character fragments on your cellphone.

End Of An Era: Sony Stops Manufacturing Cassette Walkmans

2010-10-23T19:12:00.001+01:00

The company today announced it will stop manufacturing and selling these
devices in Japan – after 30 years. Sony says the final lot was shipped
to retailers in April this year, and once the last units are sold, there
will be no cassette Walkmans from big S anymore.

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rare wooden books collection

2010-10-11T18:58:00.001+01:00

This rare wooden books collection, at the beginning, was composed by a hundred pieces handmade maybe in the nineteenth century or, considering the style, maybe before.

Most of them were lost or destroyed, so that today collection consists of 56 boxes, modelled like a book, with dimensions of 19 x 12.5 x 3.4 cm, everyone made with the wood of different trees species.

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Douglas Adam fans take note!

2010-10-10T20:53:00.001+01:00

101010=42 in Binary. Douglas Adam fans take note!

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Cleaning Pennies with taco sauce

2010-10-06T19:27:00.001+01:00

Taco Bell hot sauce is made from the following ingredients:

Water, Tomato Paste, Jalapeno Peppers, Vinegar, Salt, Spices,

Dehydrated Onions, Xanthum Gum, Sodium Benzoate, and Natural Flavor.

Now I think we can rule out water, but somehow, the other ingredients
clean pennies.

Looking at the tiny amounts of Xanthum Gum, Sodium Benzoate, and Natural
Flavor,

I'm going to rule those out too.

That leaves the following things to create the copper cleaning action:

Tomato Paste, Jalapeno Peppers, Vinegar, Salt, Spices, and Dehydrated
Onions

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USLHE Traveling Library

2010-10-05T20:59:00.001+01:00

Lighthouses were often time located in remote areas and as such had no access to city services such as libraries, opera houses, entertainment, etc. that most people enjoyed who lived in a town or city. As light keeping was a lonely profession in most cases supplies were brought to them by lighthouse tender ships. One of the items the tender supplied was a library box on each visit as pictured to the left. Library boxes were filled with books and switched from station to station to supply different reading materials to the families.
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Tech Support Cheat Sheet

2010-09-05T14:27:00.001+01:00

http://xkcd.com/627/

Circuit Diagram

2010-09-05T13:13:00.001+01:00

http://xkcd.com/730/

This Was Done With a Slide Rule

2010-09-05T12:57:00.001+01:00

Digitizing Books One Word at a Time

2010-08-31T21:03:00.001+01:00

reCAPTCHA is a free CAPTCHA service that helps to digitize books, newspapers and old time radio shows. Check out our paper in Science about it (or read more below).

A CAPTCHA is a program that can
tell whether its user is a human or a computer. You've probably seen
them — colorful images with distorted text at the bottom of Web
registration forms. CAPTCHAs are used by many websites to prevent abuse
from "bots," or automated programs usually written to generate spam. No
computer program can read distorted text as well as humans can, so bots
cannot navigate sites protected by CAPTCHAs.

About 200 million CAPTCHAs are solved by humans around the world every
day. In each case, roughly ten seconds of human time are being spent.
Individually, that's not a lot of time, but in aggregate these little
puzzles consume more than 150,000 hours of work each day. What if we
could make positive use of this human effort? reCAPTCHA does exactly
that by channeling the effort spent solving CAPTCHAs online into
"reading" books

more...

Steamroller Print Festival

2010-08-04T19:36:00.001+01:00

The Camera Lens Mug

2010-07-31T20:37:00.001+01:00

A cup of joe that’ll keep you sharp, in-focus, and happy all day long…and those side effects aren’t from the caffeine.

Behold, the Camera Lens Mug, a mug that looks JUST LIKE a Canon 24-105mm lens!

It's equipped with a lens-cap lid, rubber-grip focus and zoom rings, and an auto-focus switch that actually switches

More HERE