Members of the American Chemical Society show you how a pop-up turkey timer works.

The Chemistry of Thanksgiving

More:
Lots more chemistry on MAKE in the Make: Science Room

A reader named Jim from Arizona sent us an email a while back about his nine year old son, Schuyler, aka "Doctor Professor," who wanted to join the Make: Money program to fund his DIY, robotics, and electronics projects. At nine, the kid is already teaching Arduino to 4-18 year olds in the Phoenix area.

We were so tickled by the letter, and the precocious Doctor Professor, that we decided to send him a little Maker Shed surprise package. The above video is Schuyler opening the package and gushing over the items inside (and plugging them as great holiday gifts!). Hey, unlike most adults we know, he actually knows how to pronounce "Duemilanove" (or close enough).

That is one enthused kid! We're going to go ahead and imagine that every recipient of a Maker Shed package gets this jacked up over it. (Dad Jim did tell us that he might have withheld the box for a few days to get as much best-behavior out of Schuyler as possible... So he was charged to full anticipatory capacitance by the time the video camera rolled.)

Thanks to Jim for sending us the video. And thanks to the good Doctor for being such a cool kid and spreading the word on open source hardware to a new generation of makers. Let us know how your Make: Money program is going and what sorts of projects you make with all the loot your acquire.

Enjoy! And Happy Thanksgiving from all your pals at Maker Media!

You can find out more about the Make: Money program here.

Want to get some hacking in after your Thanksgiving feast? Here are some fine maker events to check out, from The Maker Events Calendar. Wish your event was on the list? Add it to the calendar!

Coming up this week:

Hack Friday @ HackPittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA
Friday, Nov 27, 2009, 6pm +

Electronics 101 @Freeside
Atlanta, GA
Saturday, Nov 28, 2009, 2pm - 4pm

Make:KC - Show and Tell
Parkville, MO
Tuesday, Dec 1, 2009, 6pm - 8pm

Project Lab with Expert Included
Berkeley, CA
Tuesday, Dec 1, 2009, 3pm - 6pm

Drop-in Arduino and Electronics classes
Berkeley, CA
Tuesday, Dec 1, 2009, 7pm - 9pm

Intro to Welding @Willoughby and Baltic
Somerville, MA
Tuesday, Dec 1, 2009 to Tuesday, Dec 22, 2009, 7pm - 9pm

Woodshop Fundamentals @Willoughby and Baltic
Somerville, MA
Tuesday, Dec 1, 2009 to Tuesday, Dec 22, 2009, 7pm - 9:30pm

Build your own lightsaber! @Bug Labs
New York, NY
Wednesday, Dec 2, 2009, 1pm - 4pm

Start planning for:

Guitar Effects 101 @Hive 76
Philadelphia, PA
Monday, Dec 7, 2009, 7pm - 10pm

Sound Experiments and Experimental Sound @Bug Labs
New York, NY
Wednesday, Dec 9, 2009, 5:45pm - 7:30pm

Introduction to the AVR Micro Controller @Hive 76
Philadelphia, PA
Saturday, Dec 12, 2009, 5pm - 8pm

GO-Tech (Ann Arbor, MI) December Meeting
Ann Arbor, MI
Tuesday, Dec 8, 2009, 7pm - 10pm

Event Photos (from left): Show and Tell, Artumnal Gathering, Screen Printing, Robogames Benefit, Installfest

Ever since you made one of those turkeys out of an outline of your hand in kindergarten, you've probably been aware of the fact that Thanksgiving might not be the preeminent maker's holiday. Unless your forte is food. Or turkey papercraft.

But being thankful, taking stock of ourselves and our world, is something we should all be able to get behind as makers, even those of you who don't live in the States and aren't celebrating this particular holiday today. The subtitle of MAKE magazine is "technology on your time." It's about slowing down (likely), taking stock of your physical world, your technology, figuring out how it's made, and figuring out how to improve it, and by extension, how to improve the quality of your life in the process. So, in some ways, the ritual notion of Thanksgiving is kind of encoded within the mission of MAKE itself. That was also part of the idea behind the "ReMake America" theme of Maker Faire this year. Taking stock of what we have, the bounty we still enjoy, even during an economic crisis, and then figuring out what we can do to creatively improve the quality of our lives, using the resources at hand. It's a mission we're still on.

So on this day, we at Maker Media will slow down, sit down, take stock of what we have, of what we've accomplished (okay, and eat and drink like just-rescued castaways). And we'll think about the coming year and what we can do to better document and celebrate "technology on your time." We'll hoist a glass to all of you in the process.

Thanks for making 2009 such a great year for the maker community and thanks for supporting us in all of our Maker Media endeavors. We couldn't do it without you!

Now, if you'll excuse us, we have some hand-print turkeys to cut out and glue.

Thanksgiving project to help you work off lunch:

DIY Thanksgiving roundup 2009
CRAFT Thanksgiving roundup 2009
Thanksgiving papercraft redux (above image)

Taking inspiration from popular culture, Tim Burton (American, b. 1958) has reinvented Hollywood genre filmmaking as an expression of personal vision, garnering for himself an international audience of fans and influencing a generation of young artists working in film, video, and graphics. This exhibition explores the full range of his creative work, tracing the current of his visual imagination from early childhood drawings through his mature work in film. It brings together over seven hundred examples of rarely or never-before-seen drawings, paintings, photographs, moving image works, concept art, storyboards, puppets, maquettes, costumes, and cinematic ephemera from such films as Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Batman, Mars Attacks!, Ed Wood, and Beetlejuice, and from unrealized and little-known personal projects that reveal his talent as an artist, illustrator, photographer, and writer working in the spirit of Pop Surrealism. The gallery exhibition is accompanied by a complete retrospective of Burton’s theatrical features and shorts, as well as a lavishly illustrated publication (MoMA).

Admission is free for all visitors during Target Free Friday Nights, sponsored by Target, every Friday evening, 4:00–8:00 p.m. Tickets for Target Free Friday Nights are not available in advance. The line for Target Free Friday Night tickets can be long, so consider arriving after 6:00 p.m.

Kari Byron is currently Twittering live during the MythBusters epidode they're airing tonight.

MythBusters Official on Twitter

From MAKE magazine:

Want to know how to build a hydrogen rocket? How about a laser light show in a lunchbox? Or a simple remote-controlled videocam car? Or maybe you want to go old-school and build a wooden mini sailboat or toy car launcher? All this and tons more, plus revealing photos of Adam Savage's maker childhood, can all be found in MAKE, Volume 20, "For Kids of All Ages." Get your individual copy in the Maker Shed, or subscribe now.

With the Thanksgiving holiday nearly upon us here in the States, I suspect there will be a lot of beer drinking and watching television happening over the long weekend. For those of us who know that life is not a spectator sport, there's this week's flashback from the pages of MAKE Volume 07. Bill Barminski shows us how to drink beer on C-SPAN, or at least give the impression that you are.

MAKE Volume 07 is no longer available in print, but the juicy information in it is accessible by all subscribers. Subscribe to access all back issues digitally. Also, check out Bill Barminski talking about drinking beer on C-SPAN in the Trouble Maker section of Make: television episode 103.

How to Drink Beer on C-Span
Put yourself into somebody else's video.
By Bill Barminski

OK, you're not really going to drink beer on C-SPAN or Larry King Live. But you can make it look like you did on video. I don't know why you'd want to, but let's just say you do. I know I did.

The method used to achieve this effect is called compositing. You will need a source video recorded from a television show, a replacement video you will shoot yourself, and a static matte — a shape cut out of the source video with Photoshop to hold the new video.

Ian Lesnet, who used to write for Hack A Day, did the Bus Pirate project, and now runs Dangerous Prototypes, has this cool little hackable LED holiday card/ornament (don't tell Adafruit). The ATtiny13A-driven card comes in two flavors, an already-assembled version, for $15, and a not-for-the-weak-of-heart surface-mount soldering kit, for $12. The cards are currently being manufactured and Ian hopes to have them out by Dec 18th.

Prototype: Hackable LED Christmas card & ornament

In the Make: Online Toolbox, we focus mainly on tools that fly under the radar of more conventional tool coverage: in-depth tool-making projects, strange or specialty tools unique to a trade or craft that can be useful elsewhere, tools and techniques you may not know about, but once you do, and incorporate them into your workflow, you'll wonder how you ever lived without them. And, in the spirit of the times, we pay close attention to tools that you can get on the cheap, make yourself, or refurbish.

One might think that a geek, a techie, a maker, might not be that particular about what he or she wears. We're certainly not likely to be paying attention to what the latest fashion crazes are or what's sashaying down the runways of Paris and New York. But ask said maker/geek about what he or she is wearing and carrying in his or her pockets, and you'll likely get a very long, precision rant on the functionality, durability, and methods of everything. Geeks might be no less particular about clothing, accessories, and personal items, they're just likely more focused on substance than style (or have a very unique take on style). We asked a bunch of folks in the maker/hacker community to tell us something about what they wear and carry and why. Here's a sampling of what they had to say.

We got such a tremendous response that we're going to split this Toolbox into two parts. Part 1 will cover clothing, shirts, pants, footwear, and outerwear. Part 2 will look at bags, pouches, and cases, pens, notebooks, and other carried items.

Shirts (with pockets!)
One of the first things we noticed as a trend was makers telling us they only wear shirts with pockets (so they can carry pens, small notebooks, etc.). This is a particular obsession of mine. I don't want to wear anything that doesn't have a pocket (including my T-shirts). It so bums me out that, even geek-targeted T-shirts don't have pockets! Hey geek/maker/hacker community (and that means you too, Maker Shed!) -- industrious, creative, big-brained people want to carry pens, 3x5 cards, and other tools that don't live so well in pants pockets. Give us pockets in our T-shirts -- and not those matchbook-sized ornamental pockets -- real pockets!

Keith Hammond, MAKE's Copy Chief, recommended Ben Davis shirts. Jeff Casimir, of HacDC and Jumpstart Lab, also recommended these shirts. Keith Hammond writes:

I'm a longtime fan of Ben Davis short sleeve shirts, 1/2 zipper front -- bombproof, grease-resistant work fabric (great for workshop or bike commute), cut loose (that's why hip-hoppers love 'em, also great for bike commutes), and not one but two shirt pockets, with a pencil slot on the left one. Plus, the ape logo, evoking our tool-using primate superiority.

Interesting article over on New Scientist about Erin Rapacki's design for a "low-cost" robot that can be used by the wheelchair-bound to grip, turn, and push or pull on most kinds of doorknobs. Maybe my sense of how much this sort of thing should cost is way off, but $2000 still seems pricey to me, although I guess at the prototype stage it's pretty impressive. [via Popular Science]

Jim Grisanzio went to the Make: Tokyo Fall 2009 meeting and took some gorgeous photos of the event. For more, check out the Flickr sets by Yoshikawa Hiroyuki and whaleforset. Looks like it was fun! [Thanks Dale!]

Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories has released Peggy 2LE:

Peggy 2LE ("little edition") is a diminutive version of our popular Peggy 2 LED "pegboard" an open-source LED matrix display. Peggy 2 is big, designed to fit a 25x25 grid of 10 mm LEDs. Peggy 2LE is mostly the same, just smaller: it's designed to fit 5 mm LEDs.

What's New in Peggy 2LE?

Peggy 2LE supports the same basic functionality as the larger Peggy 2: it drives up to 625 LEDs of up to 5 mm size. Still open-source and hackable. Arduino compatible. Code-compatible with Peggy 2-- every Peggy 2 program can run on the Peggy 2LE.

The four main differences between the two are:

   1. Peggy 2LE is smaller-- about 1/4 the size.

   2. Peggy 2LE does not have a battery box. You can still use batteries if you want to (3xD cell) but a holder is no longer on board. Instead, it's designed to run off of an ac power adapter.

   3. Peggy 2LE does not have the breadboard-style prototyping area on board. (Did we mention that it's smaller?)

   4. Peggy 2LE can be built with a hardware serial port.

My first introduction to 3D modelling, way back in 1999, was ray-tracing with the classic freeware Persistence of Vision (POV-Ray) package. The whole point of POV-Ray was (and is) to program a virtual 3D scene that can be rendered into still images very slowly, but in amazing detail, using ray-tracing algorithms. It was never about producing models for 3D printing or other computer-assisted manufacture techniques. But what was cool about POV-Ray was that, at least in its native implementation, there was no GUI or WYSIWYG interface. To make POV-Ray models, you used a text editor to program objects using so-called "constructive solid geometry" (CSG) techniques, in which complex forms were built up as unions, differences, and/or intersections of "primitive" shapes like cubes, circles, and prisms. It was all done in a special programming language native to the POV-Ray environment. To see what you'd made, you had to render the file.

Almost a decade later, when I started messing around with modern 3D modelling software for the purpose of rapid prototyping, I was disappointed to discover that my POV-Ray CSG skills did not port. Everything was resource-hungry interactive WYSIWYG interfacing, which definitely has its advantages, but also typically has a pretty steep learning curve as you learn just to move around the virtual 3D space of the modelling environment. It can be difficult to select exactly the point you want, to snap exactly to the distance you intend, and so forth. For a couple of personal projects, I manage to kludge together some tools that would let me design objects in POV-Ray and then convert them to STL files, but it was always an unreliable and wonky process.

So I was really stoked this morning to read this post over on the Thingiverse Blog about the advent of OpenSCAD, which does for 3D CAD what POV-Ray did for raytracing. At long last, you can program your 3D CAD models instead of sculpting them. And it's free! I can hardly wait to try it out.

What's better for a holiday gift then LEDs? More LEDs! Trick out your festivities with these blinky kits!

MiniPOV Kit ($18)
The canonical LED project, this persistence of vision (POV) kit spells out a message when you shake it. Perfect for someone learning to solder, the kit includes everything you need to build and display your own messages on a screen that you have to shake to see.

Peggy 2 LED Display Kit ($100, LEDs extra)
An updated version of the original Peggy, this board should provide all of the LED action that one can handle. Solder up to 625 LEDs into the circuit board, program in some animations, and you've got a re-usable holiday decoration or radiant gift!

Some Nixie tube eye candy courtesy of the ArduiNIX shield. More on its usage with Arduino over at Flock of Butterflies.

Wish I'd thought of this gag first. The USB pet rock from ThinkGeek has all the functionality of the original pet rock, but is USB compatible.

For those bored by the portability of thumb drives, a 14GB furniture set designed to encourage data sharing -

The sofas were made by creative design studio Cabracega for last year's International Festival for the Post-Digital Creation Culture (OFFF). As you can see (you'll have to squint a little) the sofas have USB cables coming out of them. The 4 sofas store a total of 14GB of files which doesn't seem like a lot, but I'm pretty sure no other storage device can accommodate up to 4 people

As if autonomous swarming robots weren't cool enough. SensorFly, a prototype from the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, shows just how robust the current crop really is. Knock down one of these sensor-packed hovering whirlygigs and it reorients itself to take flight again in a matter of seconds. [via BotJunkie]

The SensorFly is a novel low-cost controlled-mobile aerial sensor networking platform. A flock of these 29g autonomous helicopter nodes with communication, ranging and collaborative path determination capabilities, can be extremely useful in sensing survivors after disasters or adversaries in urban combat scenarios.

I decided to explore the more advanced features of XBee radios by building a remote temperature sensor. You can get quite a bit of control over an XBee radio without a microcontroller at all. You can configure the radio to send sensor readings at particular intervals when it detects changes on certain input pins.

The most striking feature of the H1N1 flu vaccine manufacturing process is the 1,200,000,000 chicken eggs required to make the 3 billion doses of vaccine that may be required worldwide. There are entire chicken farms in the US and around the world dedicated to producing eggs for the purpose of incubating influenza viruses for use in vaccines. No wonder it takes six months from start to finish. But we'll get to that in a minute.

To give his pepper plants some extra light during the winter months, João Silva decided to set up a solar-powered light that would charge during the day, then light a lamp after dark. Rather than simply scavenging a circuit from an old garden lamp, though, he designed his own SolarLamp circuit from scratch. It looks like a fun project, and he has a good explanation of the issues that he ran into when designing a circuit to work at low voltages. As a bonus, he used the open source circuit toolkit gEDA/SPICE/ngspice to design and simulate the circuit. Excellent work!

Related:

• Improved solar charger
Rural celly charger
• HOW TO - Make a home-made sun jar

Microsoft is running another contest for 2010 centered on embedded systems and their embeddedSPARK platform, the Windows embedded software for hobbyists. The grand prize this year is a $15,000. The theme is "Fun & Games." See the embeddedSPARK website for all of the contest details.

embeddedSPARK 2010 Challenge

The folks at Sparkle Labs have put up a cute project on their site. It's a simple LED circuit on a breadboard (built with their Discover Electronics Kit), with some Turkey papercraft attached, to create a Thanksgiving table decoration. This is a great way to get your kids involved in a basic electronics project that becomes part of the holiday festivities (er... for those of you in the States).

Thanksgiving LED Turkey centerpiece project

My buddy Jon makes these awesome little puzzle boxes from acorns. There are four shown in the video: one pair consisting of a smaller hinged acorn that nests, matryoshka-style, inside a larger one with a wire spring latch; a larger, locking nut that is opened by removing a small pin; and, finally, a large hinged version that is unlatched by knocking it against a surface from a certain angle. Besides this post, the project doesn't have any web presence to speak of, but Jon says its fine to e-mail him directly if you are interested in more information.

Know someone that is interested in photography? Or a tinkerer who wants to present their work in a better light? Then we have a guide for you! Here are some project and gear recommendations to help you find the perfect present.

Make them a photo with DIY bokeh effects (Free, if you have the equipment)
Use your leet photography skillz to make a photo that you can give as a gift, with a bokeh filter made from a piece of cardstock.

It's still way too early for holiday music and decorations, however this was too good to pass up. Robobuilder made this RoboBuilder Xmas Dance Routine to demonstrate the capabilities of their 5720t 'Huno' robotics kit. Ok, I'll take ten. [via neatorama]

Blinking an LED and transmitting text to a serial terminal is not the most exciting thing in the world, but it's very cool to breathe life into a balky computer, even at the most basic level. Also, I have worked with enough development tools to know that it can be a lot of work going from the first build to basic function. Many vendors, like National Instruments, Texas Instruments, and others, have recognized the value of making a good first impression, while preserving all the power and sophistication available to the user. I do understand that ease of use can be hard to achieve, especially with complex, powerful tools. I own a small Sherline CNC mill that I built up with 3-phase brushless motors, a custom motor controller, and optical limit switches. It was a fun project, especially building the machine and seeing it run for the first time. I use it much less frequently than I would like, but it's been very handy for many of my projects. The mill is powerful enough for small projects, and simple enough that I can ignore it for several months without forgetting how to use it. I also have a little experience running large industrial CNC mills. I could make a lot of cool devices if I had a 5-axis commercial CNC machine, but using the machine effectively would require a substantial and continuous investment of time. Given what can go wrong, improper operation resulting from infrequent practice can be disastrous.

I've experienced a similar comparison between Windows Embedded CE and other prototyping and development tools I've worked with. For simple embedded projects, I use a wide variety of tools, from Arduino to ARM and others. I like to program in C or C++, using assembly only when I have to. I have been known to slip uLinux into projects when I can. These systems are like the Sherline CNC mill. They have limitations, yet are valuable from an ease-of-use perspective. Windows Embedded CE is more like the large industrial CNC mill - very powerful once time has been invested.

Now about those XBees, check out the Microsoft SPARK site for more!

Sparkfun is giving away things for free on January 7!

You can blame it on Chris Anderson's book Free. After reading his book, I started kicking around the idea of what we can do that's 'free'. Sure, we have free bits (open-source hardware designs, available code, etc.), but we don't have free physical widgets. Now combine that with our love of creating shear havoc (AVC, C&D letter, Portable Rotary Phone), and you get Free Day.

Nobody gives away a free physical thing. There's always a catch. So up front: you have to pay shipping. Other than that, it's open season.

• $100 max per household
• You pay shipping
• Limit of $100,000 in giveaways for the day
• Starts 9AM MST January 7th, 2010
• Ends 11PM MST January 7th, 2010 (or when we hit $100k, whichever comes first)
• Rainchecks for popular items will be allowed

I am a sucker for a good SketchUp exploded view (although I think the screws shown in this one just have to be wrong). This plan comes from the usbddr project. From the readme file:

usbddr is firmware for the Atmel ATMega8 which implements a usb controller ("dance pad") for games such as stepmania. In contrast to other homebrew dance pads, it uses capacitive sensing, eliminating mechanical wear and allowing adjustable sensitivity.

There's some good discussion of the project over at Hack a Day,

Charles Pax is working on a new MakerBot extruder he's aptly calling the Paxtruder. It makes it super easy to change out the plastic filament, and can even be butted up against another one of itself for potential support material extrusion one day. Check out the plans on Thingiverse.

Haba architectural blocks (OOMPA, $16.49 - $89.99)
I was lucky enough as a kid to have a really cool set of blocks that were made by my grandfather. We made houses, mazes for our little rodent friends, racetracks, and just about anything else you could imagine. Most blocks today are standard squares and rectangles, maybe an arch or two. Haba blocks are the exception. They make an incredible variety of blocks, including Baroque Building Blocks, the Coliseum, Leaning Tower of Pisa, Castle parts, and a lot more. Be sure to click through all the pages to see the complete line of Haba architectural building blocks.

Drawdio Kit (Maker Shed, $19.50)
Drawdio is a really fun DIY electronics kit and musical instrument. It's easy to assemble, and fun to hack! Drawdio has been kid-tested at my house for many hours, and is a hit with everyone who tries it! The kit requires some soldering, but you could make that into a great learning experience for your little engineer in training.

Drawdio is an electronic pencil that lets you make music while you draw! It's a great project for beginners: An easy kit with instant gratification! Essentially, its a very simple musical synthesizer that uses the conductive properties of pencil graphite to create different sounds. The result is a fun toy that lets you draw musical instruments on any piece of paper.

Telescope (Orion, $49.95 - $300+)
I have to admit, I never owned a telescope, but that may change soon. Recently, I've been researching telescopes, both DIY and commercial versions. I plan on getting a truss tube Dobsonian scope one day, but they're fairly expensive, so I might have to wait a while longer, or try to make a DIY version. Orion seems to have a nice selection of beginner scopes, at reasonable prices. However, do your research before making any large investment.

Flickr member Giant Eye created a handcuff mechanism with his Makerbot Cupcake CNC -

3d printers are incredibly boss, cool, fantastic, and other words that mean they make me tingle. I designed these handcuffs (okay I've only printed one out at the moment) using only fdm printable parts.

Related:
Working printed handcuff key
&
CupCake CNC build, part 1, part 2, part 3, & part 4

I'm not sure if this isn't more rightly called "paper sculpture" than origami. True it uses only one sheet of paper and there are no cuts, but, well...watch the video and you'll see what I mean. Besides getting to see the mushrooms themselves, which are almost photo-realistic, it's worth it to see how a master with 20 years of experience moves his hands. [via Boing Boing]

A refreshingly different kind of mash-up -

"We Are All Connected" was made from sampling Carl Sagan's Cosmos, The History Channel's Universe series, Richard Feynman's 1983 interviews, Neil deGrasse Tyson's cosmic sermon, and Bill Nye's Eyes of Nye Series, plus added visuals from The Elegant Universe (NOVA), Stephen Hawking's Universe, Cosmos, the Powers of 10, and more. It is a tribute to great minds of science, intended to spread scientific knowledge and philosophy through the medium of music.

With so much cool stuff popping up these days you notice when something truly draws awe. Qi Pan, a PhD candidate at the Engineering Department of Cambridge University, has developed a novel approach to capturing 3D objects with a standard webcam. Called ProFORMA, Pan's software digitizes and image maps an object in 3D as the user rotates it in front of the camera in realtime. Additionally, the physical object can be used as a marker to overlay the virtual object in realtime for potential Augmented Reality applications. [via Core77]

As the user rotates the object in front of a stationary camera, a partial model is reconstructed and displayed to the user to assist view planning. The model is also used by the system to robustly track the pose of the object. Models are rapidly produced through a Delaunay tetrahedralisation of points obtained from on-line structure from motion estimation, followed by a probabilistic tetrahedron carving step to obtain a textured surface mesh of the object.

I planned on writing an entry about burning bootloaders and updating the firmware, but I just realized my kit comes ready to go! Yay! This is a major advantage to purchasing the Generation 3 Electronics kit. If you're making you own boards, be sure to check out these detailed instructions on burning bootloaders and updating firmware before going any further.

Here's the description of the Generation 3 Electronics kit [Mostly Assembled]:

This is a kit of mostly assembled electronics. All of the hard stuff is taken care of for you, and the only soldering that remains is the opto endstops which are very simple (only through hole components, no SMT). The stepper drivers, extruder controller, and motherboard all come fully assembled and ready to use. The extruder controller and motherboard have been pre-programmed with the MakerBot firmware and Arduino bootloader.

I know, I know, it's been a while since my last entry, and I apologize. The truth is, I was a bit under the weather last week, and my CupCake CNC kit had to sit and wait patiently for me to recover. The good news is, I'm feeling much better now and am super motivated to start printing parts! The next entry will be packed with CupCake building goodness. Promise!

Next up, making the pulleys and enclosure. As you can see, I chose a butchers wax finish. It's nontoxic, and nonflammable, which makes documenting it in my studio a lot easier. Also, it preserves the beauty of the wood, including the laser burns! Besides, if I don't like it, I can always cut out a new enclosure.

Ask questions! Do you want to see a better picture of a particular part, a different camera angle, a video perhaps? Maybe you have a suggestion for a cool mod or hack? Let me know in the comments. I'll try to answer them as best as I can. Thanks!

Build history:

• Part 1: Introduction & background
• Part 2: Unboxing
• Part 3: Electronics
• Part 4: Update & burning the bootloaders
• Part 5: Pulley & enclosure assembly
• Part 6: Y Stage Assembly
• Part 7: X Stage Assembly
• Part 8: X/Y Stage Installation

A company in the United Kingdom is about to lift the lid on a device that zaps lobster with electricity to kill them, and the inventor said Wednesday his humane alternative to boiling is about to give the entire industry a jolt.

British entrepreneur Simon Buckhaven said the CrustaStun system, developed over the past decade by his company Studham Technologies Limited, near London, kills the lobster with an electric charge, so the crustacean feels no "pain or distress."

The application of a stun (110 Volts - 2-5 amps) causes an immediate interruption in the functioning of the nervous system of the shellfish. By interrupting the nerve function, the shellfish (be it Crab. Lobster or other) is unable to receive stimuli and thus by definition, cannot feel pain or suffer distress (Dr. Dave Robb 2000 - Bristol University - paper on sentience in Crustacea, Baker 1975, Jane Smith 1991, Bateson 2000, Sherwin 2000 & Gregory & Lumsden 2000). The prolonged application of the stun causes a permanent disruption which kills the shellfish.

In short, Hathaway took the idea of providing people with pre-shucked lobster, researched it and found that the government had been looking for ways to extend the shelf life of foods without freezing or irradiation for years. He discovered there are only two companies in the world that make machines that use extremely high water pressure to process foods and give them extended shelf life. (The government applied that process to its MREs, or meals ready to eat, for the military.) About a year and a half ago, Hathaway learned that this process also separated shellfish meat from the shell and that several Canadian lobster processors were using this system. Hathaway came up with the money for a machine. He started the new business by qualifying for a block grant from the state (which had a matching fund) and through private investors. Then, instead of having an architect design a fancy, state-of-the-art building on the coast, he decided to go back to his roots. He took a space in the nearly empty, old Etonic sneakers factory in Richmond, a slightly down-at-the-heels river town in central Maine between Wiscasset and Augusta, an area with people needing work. In April 2006, he opened his new company, Shucks Maine Lobster.

Buckhaven, meet Hathaway.

Yesterday I went to Tokyo MAKE Meeting 04 with Gianluca Martino: a member of the Arduino team. He has been super popular and he really appreciated the Japanese Arduino scene. During the show Gakken displayed the prototype of the JAPANINO (Arduino clone). It will be released next spring in the Otona no Kagaku (in Japanese it means “Science toys for adults”) magazine series with a Persistence of Vision plastic Toy with color LEDs. The price tag will be less than 3500 yen (ca$35) and it will help a lot of people to get into the “Makers” scene. I’m doing consulting for Gakken on this project so I can not reveal all details but this release will definitely make the Japanese Arduino scene the biggest in the World as in a couple of months the magazine will probably sell what the original Arduino sold worldwide in the last years. As all Otona no Kagaku issues there will be also a magazine with many information about original Arduino and simple guide for beginners. There will be a Japanese IDE downloadable from Gakken website but foreign users can use the standard Arduino software.

There are woodcarvers, and then there's Gary Tatman, of Glen Burnie, Maryland. Gary explains his incredible work on Hemmings Auto Blog:

You're correct in your assumptions- these carvings start out as a block. I use the Internet motorsports archives to obtain enough photos of the project car for detailed areas such as interiors, engine compartments, suspensions etc. Once all data and photos are assembled, a ratio has to be determined for scaling (in reference to actual body size). Then all areas can be measured and used in the ratio to determine the actual size of the pieces. Once this is accomplished, the design needs to be drawn on the block, for references while shaping takes place.

Fast Wood

What could be cooler than pop-up books dioramas? How about if they were life-sized? That's exactly what designers Liddy Scheffknecht and Armin B. Wagner have created with their pop-up office. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the furniture is strong enough to use, but what fun! [via neatorama]

Mr. Obama said academics should be receiving an athletic-like focus. And as he presented a set of initiatives intended to improve the science and math scores of American students, he announced that the White House would begin holding an annual science fair starting next year.

"If you win the N.C.A.A. championships, you come to the White House. Well, if you're a young person and you've produced the best experiment or design, the best hardware or software, you ought to be recognized for that achievement, too," Mr. Obama said. "Scientists and engineers ought to stand side by side with athletes and entertainers as role models, and here at the White House, we're going to lead by example."

He added, "We're going to show young people how cool science can be."

Mr. Obama presented the "Educate to Innovate" campaign on Monday. Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, was on hand, along with students and dozens of scientists and other administration officials. After speaking for about 15 minutes, the president inspected the "Cougar Cannon," a device made by two students that is intended to scoop up and toss moon rocks.

I've been working on microscope sets for Maker Shed. Until now, the only microscope set the Shed carried was the Thames & Kosmos TK2. That's a decent set, at under $100, but it's still a toy. We wanted some better sets, so I put together three, which we imaginatively named the Basic Microscope Set, Intermediate Microscope Set, and Advanced Microscope Set. The sets differ only by microscope is included; the accessories are all the same.

I've always been annoyed by the accessory selection in typical microscope sets, which seem to be chosen for cheapness rather than usefulness. A typical set includes a few prepared slides, which are usually of such poor quality that they're not worth having. Most sets include a "cleaning kit," which again is cheap and of limited use. (If you keep your microscope covered with a plastic bag, the optics should remain clean indefinitely. When they do get dirty, you can clean them with a soft cotton cloth and a drop or two of window cleaner.) And you usually get maybe a dozen blank slides and a a few coverslips, which is barely enough to get started. In other words, the typical accessory set is pathetic, but has the advantage from the seller's point of view of being cheap to include and they make for an impressive-looking list and product image. I knew we could do better.

When I sat down to make a list of accessories to include, I realized that I didn't need to re-invent the wheel. When I started work on the forensics book, I bought a microscope (not coincidentally, the Shed now carries that model, including the objective upgrades). When I ordered the microscope, I also ordered accessories, so all I had to do was check back to see which accessories I ordered with the microscope.

First up were slides and coverslips. I actually ordered three gross of slides (six boxes of 72) and several ounces of different coverslips (at about 100 to the ounce). That's obviously overkill for a set, so I decided to include one box of 72 slides and an ounce of coverslips. Glass, in both cases. Yeah, glass breaks, but plastic slides are a pain and plastic coverslips are really poor optically. For slide making, I included plastic forceps, which are better than metal ones for handling coverslips and most specimens, a pack of ten polyethylene pipettes, and bottle of glycerol for making temporary wet mounts. I was going to include a bottle of permanent mounting fluid, but the good stuff is expensive and would needlessly boost the price of the set. A small bottle of colorless Sally Hansen's Hard As Nails from the drugstore costs only a couple bucks and works about as well. No one ever thinks about how they're going to store the permanent slides they make, so I included a slide storage box. Oh, and because a beginning microscopist needs lots of interesting things to look at, I included one of our Microbe Motel kits, so they can grow their own microorganisms. (Yeah, the name is cute, but it includes everything you need to culture bacteria and other microorganisms. Real stuff, not shoddy plastic junk.)

I dithered about which stains and supplemental reagents, if any, to include. I have more than 30 biological stains and reagents at my microscope workstation, but real biostains and reagents are relatively expensive, so including even a few of them would boost the prices of the sets for something that some people wouldn't use. Then I was struck by a cunning plan. I headed for my local strip mall.

At Walgreens, I scored one ounce bottles of iodine tincture and gentian violet and a pint bottle of ethanol for about $7 total. At the supermarket, another couple of bucks got me a box of four food coloring dyes, two or three of which are actually useful biostains, and a bottle of distilled white vinegar (acetic acid). And at the pet store next door, I picked up a small bottle of methylene blue for a couple bucks. So, for a grand total of about $12, I ended up with a pretty decent starter set of biological stains and reagents, including everything necessary to do basic biostaining and even Gram staining. Including all that stuff in the microscope kits would boost their prices by a lot more than $12, so I decided it made more sense just to recommend kit buyers make a quick trip to the local mall. Our beancounters probably hate that, but set buyers should love it.

Check out all of our microscopes and sets in the Maker Shed Science section.
Check out our Choosing a Microscope article and all of the other labs and tutorials in the Make: Science Room.

The guys at Lumenlab used one of their RoBLOKS 3D deposition printers to print white ink on a black T-shirt.

RoBLOKS 3DP **ALPHA**, 3D deposition printing; fun with goo!

Today the LHC circulated two beams simultaneously for the first time, allowing the operators to test the synchronization of the beams and giving the experiments their first chance to look for proton-proton collisions. With just one bunch of particles circulating in each direction, the beams can be made to cross in up to two places in the ring. From early in the afternoon, the beams were made to cross at points 1 and 5, home to the ATLAS and CMS detectors, both of which were on the look out for collisions. Later, beams crossed at points 2 and 8, ALICE and LHCb.