Thursday, August 13, 2009

Let there be light

I saw these at some point last year, had forgotten about them until I ran into them at notcot.org.

Freaking Brilliant if you ask me, and something that should appeal to any variety of geek or techno-nerd out there. Here are a couple that I really dig:



And

reminiscent of war of the worlds

These would make great lighting for your Steampunk Workstation.



Update:

I caught this over at Van Slatt's Place IIRC he was the original steampunk keyboard artisan. This lovely setup was crafted by Dave Veloz and posted at Van Slatt's Steampunk Workshop.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Remembrance of things past

I used to collect typewriters among other things, and I have a fondness for deco.



Gotta love the space age!



Many other tin typewriter ribbon cases here

Hot Air Pallette

A very beautiful image. I am not surprised that the photographer's flickr stream has surpassed 1 million views. Loads of loveliness over there. Many images suitable for Desktop backrounds...........Hmmmmmmmm.

Hot air balloons over Chambrey France


Originally seen here

Tree Houses

Who among us does not love a tree-house. Pete Nelson is a master of the art and has a lovely book coming out or already out. Needless to say it is very cool.



An example I think I could manage to enjoy.
Via this Russian Blog courtesy of notcot.org.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Pedal Power

A set of plans for bicycle powered electricity generation. You have the option of buying the system as a kit or assembled. If you are a good scrounger and fabricator all the information needed to hack one of your own is available in one place.

Tesla Turbine Blender

A body could spend the better part of a week at the Instructables web site and not scratch the surface. For the insatiably curious it is a godsend.

The Tesla turbine is a very ingenious solution to generate very high rpms at the spindle using pressurized air or fluid.

There are a number of examples on the instructables site and some that have been put to practical use. The Tesla Turbine Blender is but one example.

First!!!!!!!!! Instructables, Gardening and More

This blog will primarily be a collection of links to interesting solutions to problems that I face from time to time. It will also be a dumping ground of cool shit seen in the wild that I find inspiring in some way. It may also serve to document examples of my own work or musings.

A friend of mine is renting a place on a small piece of land that has allowed for the experimentation of gardening the last two season. water is harvested via barrels under the gutters and the square-foot and container gardening is going pretty well, yet there is always room for improvement so I was excited to stumble across the following from one of my favorite places of inspiration, the Instructables website. A collection of many things DIY.


A link from my inbox led me to the following instructable

The author of the instructable has a page that also documents the process here essentially the same information provided as a redundant resource.

Inspiration for the idea came from the website and work of Colin Austin who developed the concept. Website is a compendium of information about water management and carbon sequestration.

A site with easy navigation and a nice overview of the subject is easygrowvegetables.

I think that it might be a good idea to test out this Idea with the easy grow box Inexpensive proof of concept.




Turn a room into a speaker cabinet (Instructables of course) while learning a little about acoustics and simple crossover circuitry. I doubt that I will get around to making one of these, but I can see constructing some speaker cabinets in the future.



Camping stoves
Woodgas Stove

Ultralight Pack Stove

A more sturdy
pocket sized camp stove



An interesting site with an number of links and projects and news about sustainable living

The rural independent

A group whose gaol seems devoted to container gardening.

Global Buckets


Last but not least a Trebuchet constructed out of that ubiquitous wonder material, cardboard.

That's about it for now.......