Developages - Development and Technology Blog

Street Anatomy has launched a cool new sister site, Think Anatomy.

I found that reading an anatomy textbook, sitting in lecture, and dissecting in lab weren’t enough to really master anatomy. So I turned to the Internet to find resources like dissection videos, interactives, games, quizzes, etc., to supplement my study material. It took a lot of time to sift through the results and put together a list of valuable online anatomy resources. That’s where the inspiration to make Think Anatomy started. I wanted to make a site that anatomy students could use to find study aids without having to use a major search engine like Google. So after many many hours spent searching, reviewing, and categorizing anatomy sites, Think Anatomy is finally ready.

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Original post by Patti Schiendelman

Macula offers a free download of this boxy little Thanksgiving turkey papercraft - a fun holiday project for kids!

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Original post by Patti Schiendelman

After having such a great time making the Gakken Inchworm, we decided to try the Gakken Mechamo Centipede. It’s nicely packaged, too, and also comes with its own tools; it just needs 6 batteries.

This kit only had directions in Japanese - there was no English version included. Since we had experience with the Inchworm, we decided to see if we could put it together just using the pictures, but we found it helped a lot to look at the English instructions periodically. (If you decide you need the text in English, it’s available as a PDF through the Maker Shed Centipede link - you do need to download the Japanese font to view any text at all, even the English, which is odd, but it only took a minute.) There was an errata page in the kit that had corrections for steps 5 and 7, but the errata page looked the same as the page in the Japanese instructions. The online illustrations for steps 5 and 7 were missing some little spring washers, so we assumed the kit had come with updated instructions.

The little cranks are numbered; take care to assemble them in the correct order. They also have to be aligned in a specific configuration for the leg movement to work correctly.

This was definitely a harder build than the Inchworm was. So many legs! There were just more parts in general, you had to keep track of the numbered parts, and it was a more complicated build. But again, it’s a forgiving kit, you can backtrack easily if you’ve put something in backwards. One battery pack wire came loose during the build, but it just took a quick solder to fix it and we were good to go. When we put the batteries in for testing, we found that one of the leg cranks kept getting hung up on a nut that was sticking out just a hair too far - we had to take out the spring washer behind the nut to fix that.

All in all, it was a fun build - it might not be the best kit for a first project, depending on the kid and their level of patience. The motion is totally awesome! I lived in Korea for a while when I was a kid, and one morning there was an amazing many-legged bug that kind of flowed across the bathroom floor - this reminded me of that bug, the motion is very realistic (but mechanical, and slower!).

In the Maker Shed:

The Gakken Mechamo Centipede kit is available through the Maker Shed.

More:
Gakken Mechamo Crab build and mod
Build: Gakken Mechamo Inchworm

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Original post by Patti Schiendelman

Wow - a Shell oil remotely operated vehicle in the Gulf of Mexico caught footage of this amazing squid!

Based on analysis of videos not unlike the one captured at the Perdido site, scientists know that the adult Magnapinna observed to date range from 5 to 23 feet (1.5 to 7 meters) long, Vecchione said. By contrast, the largest known giant squid measured about 16 meters (52 feet) long. And whereas giant squid and other cephalopods have eight short arms and two long tentacles, Magnapinna has ten indistinguishable appendages that all appear to be the same length. “The most peculiar structure is that of the arms,” said deep-sea biologist Bruce Robison of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California. Referring to the way the tentacles hang down from elbow-like kinks, Robison said: “Judging from that structure, we think the animal feeds by dragging its arms and the ends of its tentacles along the seafloor as it drifts slowly above it.”

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Original post by Patti Schiendelman

Here is our 2008 Make Holiday Gift Guide for kids. Hopefully these gifts will inspire you to go out and make new things, teach others what you know, or even learn something new. The best gift you can give any kid is quality time together. I tried to cover a lot of different ages, skill levels, and interests. If I missed something you think should be added to the list, please leave it in the comments below. Thanks!

If you are looking for cool projects to make with your kids over the Holidays, don’t forget to check out the Make blog “Kids” category for hundreds, if not thousands, of great projects.

Howtoons
As seen in Make Magazine. Part comic strip and part science experiment, Howtoons shows children how to find imaginative new uses for common household items like soda bottles, duct tape, mop buckets, and moreñto teach kids the “Tools of Mass Construction”! Howtoons are cartoons that teach 8ñ to 15ñyearñold readers “how to” build, create, and explore things. Combining a fun, fullñcolor cartoon format and real life science and engineering principles, Howtoons are designed to encourage kids to become active participants in the world around them.
Price: $15.99

Drawdio Kit
You may have to put this kit together if you have younger kids, since it requires soldering. 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!

Drawdio is an electronic pencil that lets you make music while you draw! It’s 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.
Price: $19.50

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Original post by Marc de Vinck

JCDC Versus LEGO from Four H on Vimeo.

The Brothers Brick pointed out this amazing CGI animation of a LEGO fashion show by Fabrice Pathier (Four H). The clip features designs by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac.

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Original post by Patti Schiendelman

The Cincinnati Junior Makers group started as a bunch of bike riding fathers with young kids. The group used to go on rides hauling their cherubs around on bike trailers and tagalongs. Now the kids are old enough to ride on their own, but not quite up for the challenge of traffic. Since they like each others’ company and are raising clever kids, they have turned to Make to help provide some worthwhile activities.

Brad Writes:

Our group - the Cincinnati Jr Makers, got together and made the air rockets detailed in Make 15 makezine.com/15/airrocket/ . These are really easy to build. Literally some paper and tape. I had put the launcher together that morning. It is basically a battery operated spud gun with a big impressive detonator type button to launch. We used a battery from my son’s min-jeep but a drill battery should work fine too. Total project cost was around $60.

We spent a few hours making and decorating the rockets. Then off to the local park to launch. These were simply AMAZING! A friend who is also in the club had made 2L water rockets last year - he brought his setup as well and we had a rocketfest! My wife is taking the video - you can see from her response at the launch how successful this was (I am the guy in the black Make t-shirt). We spent maybe 2-3 hours launching, repairing, and modifying the rockets. Who knew that simple fin modifications could be so impactful. This one was so successful that I have done it 3 times since with people who missed the first session.

You can check out the article in Make 15, or try these links to the digital pages. First - Second Third - Fourth - Fifth - Sixth

Would you like to use Make as a resource for organizing activities and project with students and kids? If you do, take some pictures and video, add them to the Make Flickr pool. If you have a set of pictures, add some text explaining what you did to the set description.

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Original post by Chris Connors

Students @ Bancroft Elementary School in Montreal, Quebec are making some awesome music videos as part of the Modern Music Makers after-school program

students (five to ten years old) are divided into groups of four (give or take), and given the means to make their own songs from scratch. Explains Shaw: “Each group got a drum kit with a certain number of sounds on it—bass, melodies and some effects—and they each had a different palate of sounds to work with.” The means and materials at their disposal were limited at best, but that’s the beauty of the program: anyone can conceivably scrape together the minimum kit to pull it off. For Modern Music Makers, this consisted of a malfunctioning point and-shoot DV cam, some primitive green screen effects, a small laptop, a microphone, a soundcard, a midi keyboard, and an instrument from each kid’s bedroom. The real constraint, says Shaw, was time. “We had one hour a week to work with four groups of kids. The maximum [time] each one would get with the technology was 15 minutes. That’s not a lot of time to generate ideas. Luckily, the programs we used are good for doing stuff on the fly.”
[…]
“Being able to put that technology in the kids’ hands and have them work with it and realize they could create a video, create a song—you could see that disconnect being broken down.”

- Modern Music Makers [via Kitsune Noir]

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Original post by Collin Cunningham

We’re really liking Discovery’s new show, Time Warp - it’s the perfect combination of science, woohoo! moments, and how things work. The hosts, Jeff Lieberman and Matt Kearney, both have an infectious sense of curiosity that make the show really fun to watch.

Do you know how your dog uses its tongue to drink? In what exact way a face contorts when punched by a UFC contender? What happens when an egg falls into the pinwheeling blades of a fan? Or an apple is hit with a bullet? Using the latest in high-speed photography, the Time Warp team takes some natural events (a cat licking its paw, a champagne bottle being opened) — and some not-so-natural (a water balloon to the face, a raw piece of chicken exploding) — and turns them into a thing of both beauty and learning.

Time Warp recently filmed EepyBird’s Diet Coke and Mentos fun - the episode is called “Stone Breaking” Do your own messy experiments with the Diet Coke and Mentos kit from the Maker Shed!

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Original post by Patti Schiendelman

IEEE Spectrum has a piece on steampunk, featuring our pals Jake von Slatt, Datamancer, and I-Wei Huang. Pictured to the left of Jake above is a project he’s doing for MAKE Volume 17. Can you guess what it is?

The desire to make things is an integral part of the steampunk movement. Drawing inspiration from fantastical works like Jules Verne’s Les Voyages Extraordinaires and H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine, steampunk adherents embrace the do-it-yourself ethic, and they prize unique, intricate designs over disposable, bland creations.

“It’s part art and part just tinkering with stuff, trying to create something that no one has really tried to do before,” says I-Wei Huang, known as Crab Fu, an artist and animator based in Dixon, Calif., who has built a collection of steam-powered mechanical critters.

The Steampunk Contraptors

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Original post by Gareth Branwyn

Great idea for your next guerilla lecture tour, a public-address system in a box - runs on C batteries!

The built-in sound system has a 20-watt amplifier and dual, 4″ speakers that produce crisp sound from the briefcase’s front panel, ensuring crystal clear orations. The 14″ by 15″ lectern props up the briefcase and easily accommodates legal pads and note cards. The unit provides two microphone options–a handheld condenser microphone with nine feet of cable and a 3/4″ lavaliere model that clips to a tie or lapel. The control panel on the side of the briefcase enables tone and volume adjustments and the 13″ gooseneck arm attaches to the briefcase and secures the handheld microphone at your preferred height.

Hrrmm … methinks an ultra-bright LED spotlight plus echo effects might be necessary additions for optional dramatic emphasis. - The Orator’s Briefcase PA System [via Neatorama]

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Original post by Collin Cunningham

How To Keep Motherfu#%s From Putting Their Seats Back from fПe on Vimeo.

Evan from F.A.T. figured out this air travel hack: put a big zip tie between to traytable supports to prevent seats from reclining. And to the poor dude sitting in front of Evan, don’t take it personally, it’s to fight unjust legroom cutbacks. I wonder if the two poeple sitting there next to each other could defy this trick by reclining together!

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Original post by Becky Stern

Evan from F.A.T. figured out this air travel hack: put a big zip tie between to traytable supports to prevent seats from reclining. And to the poor dude sitting in front of Evan, don’t take it personally, it’s to fight unjust legroom cutbacks. I wonder if the two poeple sitting there next to each other could defy this trick by reclining together!

[Editor’s note: This appears like a DIY version of the “Knee defender” - But, this isn’t nice or very Maker-ly, I’m not going to remove the post since there is now a healthy discussion about it along with my apology, sorry folks - pt]

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Original post by Becky Stern

Randy shares documentation of his experiments using infrared LEDs to prevent cameras from recording his facial identity. The verdict - it no worky (at least with any of the LEDs tested) - How not to block cameras

More:

- IR LED glasses (anti-paparazzi)

- LED security camera disruptor on Hackszine

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Original post by Collin Cunningham

Last weekend I went up to A𔔔 in Providence Rhode Island. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I knew it would be interesting. All I really knew about the group was what I had read on their website and some things Brian Jepson had told me at HOPE and other events.

I spent the day with some of the people at AS220. It was a Saturday, so it was kind of quiet and we were able to see a lot of studios without getting in the way. Here is how AS220 describes themselves:

AS220 is a non-profit community arts space located in downtown Providence. Our mission is to provide an unjuried and uncensored forum for the arts. If you live in the state of Rhode Island, you will get an opportunity to exhibit or perform at AS220.

A𔔔 has evolved into kind of an anti-institutional institution. We’ve done our best to present the various facets of the organization without using the word “program” to box in what are simply organized human activities in pursuit of a common mission.

The AS220 Labs:

I spend most of my time on a tour of the facility and n the AS220 Labs. It is an amazing space where any Maker would feel right at home. They are constantly pushing technology and art in new directions. This is what the Lab’s main responsibilities are, but they go way beyond this list.

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Original post by Marc de Vinck