tweaks the limbs

“I’m thinking about buying a horse. Great for transportation and once you’re done with it, you’ve got about seven days worth of meals.”

Trashballs are an art project by Christopher Goodwin based on the little vending machine pods for kids that often include crappy toys or stickers. My daughter loves to get these at HEB or our favorite local Mexican restaurant, Aranda’s. She also often goes for the superballs you can get from those machines.

I ordered a set of three Trashballs myself. I’ll post pix when I get ‘em.

Finkbuilt sez:

The actual capsules that the trash treats are packaged in are not your ordinary gumball machine bubbles. These clear polycabonate spheres are not meant to be easily opened. The only place that I have ever seen a case like these is at the core of of one of those light-up superballs. I actually had to destroy one ball to get it open. So what did I get?

via BoingBoing

“After this photo was taken, Bush lit up a joint, played Minesweeper on his cell phone, forced NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer (pictured left) to give him a blowjob and then ran over a servant — all totally legal.”

See Image Here.

For a few months, my wife’s old Pioneer amplifier has given us bad volume control at lower volumes. Unless it’s turned up pretty loud, the volume will jump up and down even though the know isn’t being moved.

But now I’ve found an article that might explain what’s going on. The volume knob is just attached to a potentiometer, and the potentiometer, or “pot” has just worn out.

The wiper literally wears a path through the conductive strip. When all three contacts get all the way through, they don’t make contact any more, and the pot quits functioning. During the normal life of the pot (that is, the wear-out process) the bits of resistive material gouged and work from the resistive strip stay around and can actually lift the wipers from the resistive strip. If there is a DC voltage across the pot when this happens, the wiper loses and then regains contact at a different DC level than it left, so it makes a scratch or click.

The Secret Life of Pots (via)

I saw the list of bands for this year’s ACL, and I don’t know if I can stay away yet another year. look at this!

• Björk
• White Stripes
• Arcade Fire
• The Decemberists
• Yo La Tengo
• My Morning Jacket
• Bob Dylan

I really like this idea of selecting a good photo and turning it into a set of tiles for the kitchen or bath. It seems like a way to make a make a space really unique. The food designs at Digitile are particularly cool because they make the food larger than life, and give the image a kind of fantasy quality. You get to see the details of the fruit in a way you normally don’t notice. Like the face in the apple or the folds and waves in the red cabbage.

Of course, it looks like this choice can be expensive. Pacifica Tile Art will let you email a photo and they will print custom tiles. The designs at Digitale have color backgrounds. I think it would be hard to fill out a wall beyond the design with the correct color. I also wonder what happens if you really use the space and the grout gets stained in the process? I suppose you could seal or stain the grout to either keep out the dirt or apply an intentional grid to the image.

via Curbly

credit: blakewest

This guy from Readymech was pretty fun to put together. The instructions said to use tape, but I opted for Mod Podge and a brush to glue up all the tabs. It’s pretty important to use the heavier paper or card stock. Regular 20 lbs. copy paper can’t handle wrinkles under all the manipulation.

A few years ago I made two or three robots from ROBOT TAIRIKU. My favorite was this #29 robot. Unfortunately it was destroyed by my, at the time, 1 yr old. Such is the short and brutal life of paper mechanical men.