Bamboo tablet mod WIP
Jez over at sammynotebook.com is in the midst of cramming a Samsung N110 into a custom bamboo and aluminum case with promising effect. Add a decent screen with capacitive touch and you’d have a decent machine.
Computers & Mobile
The latest DIY ideas, techniques and tools for digital gadgetry, open code, smart hacks, and more. Processing power to the people!
How-To: Generate dice mosaics from image files
Michael Boehm saw our post a couple of weeks ago about Etsy seller Stukenborg’s letterpress prints using dice as “type,” which mentioned the idea of using the same technique for making pixel-based images as well as geometric patterns. He got interested in the idea, went off to experiment, and eventually produced the dice-mosaic version of Man Ray’s Le Violon d’Ingres shown above. When he posted the results in the comment thread, I asked for, and he was nice enough to provide, a written explanation of the method, which uses Mark Probst’s open-source photomosaic utility Metapixel. I’ve reproduced Michael’s e-mail, with only minor edits, below. [Thanks, Michael!]
Featured Maker: eBoy
Iconic pixel-art collective eBoy probably needs no introduction. Around here, they’re best known for the splendiferously intricate poster they made to promote Maker Faire Bay Area 2007, shown above. TBH, their catalog kind of puts me in an almost-panicky state of it’s-all-so-awesome overload. Their posters–which include a “cities” series featuring LA, NYC, Toyko, London, Berlin, Cologne, Venice, and the Baltimore docks, as well as “event” posters including a promotional for Amnesty International, the giant-robots-themed SuperBronco print created for their first solo gallery show, and FooBar, which is a mash-up of iconic Web 2.0 brands in a kind of “virtual city”–all induce the same jaw-dropping wonderland-of-details type effect. It feels like I could spend hours exploring any one of them, and there are so many. So many! Besides the posters, they also offera book which includes eight of their most popular designs reproduced on a smaller scale in case, like me, you just don’t have enough space on your walls for all the awesome they want to put there.
Clever laptop decals riff off Apple logo
Snow White is from Etsy seller coolskins, and Eve avec serpent from IvyBee.
Duct tape iPad sleeve
Using nothing more than a bubble wrap envelope, double-sided tape, and some duct tape, maker Frank Hsueh created a unique and sturdy carrying case for his tablet computer.
DIY Soft iPhone and iPad Stylus
Maker Adam Kumpf from the design firm Teague in Seattle demonstrates a DIY soft conductive stylus for use with an iPhone, iPad, or any other device with a capacitive touch screen.
Handy reverse image search engine
The same helpful commenter who gave me a hand on this morning’s mystery dentist office flyer post also hipped me to the wonder that is TinEye, a Heaven-sent search engine that lets you upload or link to an image, and then finds other instances of the same image, or cropped or resized versions of it, […]
