Author: John

360 Video

wrapedunwraped

I used to have somthing I called an ‘Orb Cam’ on my site. It was a large chromed plastic sphere that had a camera pointed at it. I didn’t have any software to flatten out the image so it was pretty much a poor man’s wide angle lens.
This is too darn cool! (Thank you MAKE for posting this)I’ve seen similar ideas done for robotic vision and 360 pamoramic images but the software has always been out of reach because I don’t program. I have to get a better Mac so I can run realtime effects…

Video Thing: My ghetto 360? video experiment

video, VR, MAKE, cool,

Your Very Own VR Setup

360
I remember seeing the Spin 360 (?) guys doing their setup at BattleBots to make 360 VR images of the combat robots. They had all sorts or crap there to get the job done. Computers, high end digital vedeo cameras, lights, white walls, big assed turntable… Now you can do it all with a bunch of Legos and an old digital camera. How cool is that? This is a much better solution than what I did years ago with my CoolPix 100 and some black cloth…
I can see this being a cool way of creating content for a laptop that has been turned into a digital frame. Make a bunch of QT VR slides (frames, clips, what is the correct term?) and run them as a continious loop on the digi-frame to add a little spice to your normal slide show of family photos. I should get on that and build one shouldn’t I…

VR-object turntable [Discovered on MAKE]

MAKE, VR, Lego, cool

Blood Powered Fuel Cell

Red Blood Cells

I saw this today and thought I’d share:

A Japanese research team has developed a fuel cell that runs on blood without using toxic substances, opening the way for use in artificial hearts and other organs.

The biological fuel cell uses glucose, a sugar in blood, with a non-toxic substance used to draw electrons from glucose, said the team led by Matsuhiko Nishizawa, bio-engineering professor at the graduate school of state-run Tohoku University.

Blood Fuel Cell [lifted from Boing-Boing]

Castelli Models

Willy

My wife knows one of the artists that works at Castelli Models and she sent me the address of their web page tonight. I took a look and their stuff is darn good. Their creations have been on Saturday Night Live, used in Ebay ads, as props on NBC and ABC networks and many other places. If you have any need for anything built and you in the New York area give these guys a call (hey, her friend is going to let her stop by the studio and possabily do some interning. Way to go Tum! 🙂 )

Castelli Models produces custom modelmaking for film and print. From oversize to miniature props to industrial prototypes, vacuum forming, mold making, fake food, or creature characters. What ever your next project may be. Give us a call.

Castelli Models

production, TV,minatures,New York, models

Scientific Paper Toys

DNASpectrum Snail

Here are some more paper toys you can build. The Spectrum Snail is very cool. If your a science teacher or have kids and you want to give them a simple demo of how white light is made up of differnt colors, this would be pretty nifty. The paper DNA is also very cool. Cerative use of old PET plastic bottles too!

CD Spectrum Snail – Spectrascope made out of a CD and paper
Paper DNA Model

Japan, paper, DIY, science

Paper Toys

Chocolate truck

I have a fondness for paper toys. I have blogged a few resources on paper toys in the past, if you want to you can look at a few of them here and here.
These new ones are quite nice and also make nice moving toys for kids to play with. I once built a farm house with cut out animals for my daughters and both of them thought it was pretty neat.
Victorian-style print-and-assemble toys to download

paper, toys, Victorian