Computers & Mobile

The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for digital gadgetry, open code, smart hacks, and more. Processing power to the people!

Online dice collections

Online dice collections

Shown above is a small sample of Justin Michell’s meticulously-documented dice collection over at Kevin Cook’s DiceCollector.com. Justin’s is one of six collections, besides Kevin’s own, hosted at the site, which makes for fascinating browsing. Most folks’ experience of dice is limited to the simple Platonic-solid dice, but of the first 20 integers, only 1-, 17- and 19-sided dice are not represented in Justin’s collection.

Disclosure: I got wind of Justin’s collection when he contacted me about putting my old design for an alphabet die up on Shapeways, which I did. His print in stainless steel is shown uppermost. I make two bucks for each one they print.

More controversial posts!

More controversial posts!

My choice of updates to include in last Thursday’s round-up of controversial posts turned out to be somewhat, ah…well, you know: Starts at “c” and gets to “l” by way of “ontraversia?” In the interest of shameless click-baiting fairness, here’s a few that didn’t make my initial cut, as well as a couple that escaped my attention altogether. And–what the heck–I’ll arbitrarily format it as a Top 10 list.

A tiny screen font you can actually download and use, free

A tiny screen font you can actually download and use, free

A reader who enjoyed Monday’s post about Ken Perlin’s astoundingly tiny screen font , but was disappointed to learn that the font was not available for use, wrote to point out Domenico Mazza’s “Zepto,” which is available for free over at MyFonts.com. Shown above is a comparison of Perlin’s Tiny Font to Zepto, with the same text, in the same screen area, at comparable size and density. You can see that Zepto isn’t quite as readable as Perlin’s font, but still does pretty well.

Recyclable Bloom laptop

Autodesk has been giving away Inventor of the Month awards. The October award was given to a group of Stanford grad students. They designed the “Bloom laptop,” which is designed to be completely field-stripped in a couple of minutes for ease of recycling, without the use of tools. One side benefit of their design is […]

Top 10: Most controversial posts

Top 10: Most controversial posts

Although many of us bloggers grimaced to read your comments when these posts first went up, time heals all wounds, and we’ve been having a great time on the mailing list bandying about our memories of our best/worst “ouch” moments from Make: Online and CRAFT. I’ve compiled a list of the top/bottom 10 best/worst posts from our trip down memory lane, and have included the best/worst outraged comment, from each, to summarize. Enjoy!

Fairbairn cranes on Flickr

Fairbairn cranes on Flickr

A reader who saw last night’s post about human-powered cranes and lifting machines e-mailed me to point out that many of the Fairbairn hand-cranked cranes featured in that post’s title image are still around, and that there is in fact a Flickr group that collects photos from enthusiasts. At least one of the cranes has […]