As for the “paradox,” well, it boils down to this: the three apparently-identical stacked gears on the end are driven by a single gear, yet move at different rates, which, of course, would be impossible if they were truly identical. News flash: They’re not. But I’m sure it was harder to fight boredom in the 18th century than it is now, and the build is undeniably gorgeous.
To “shoot,” an anvil, for the record, is to blast it several hundred feet into the air using a charge of black powder. This delightful man, Gay Wilkinson, is apparently the world’s champion anvil-shooter. The fireworks start at 1:30. [via Boing Boing]
I’m not sure exactly what it means to be “hell bent for leather,” but I am sure that this is the outfit you want to be wearing while you’re thusly engaged. Prince Armory is (mostly) Samuel Lee, who goes by *Azmal on deviantART. Beautiful craftsmanship. [via Geekologie]
Tom Banwell is one of the artists featured in the currently-ongoing Steampunk exhibition at Oxford’s Old Ashmolean building. Shown here is “Sentinel.” via Propnomicon]
From the MAKE Flickr pool Matt the modulator picked this rather sweet 80’s Maplin Harmony Generator kit on ebay. Though nonfunctional after the initial assembly, a bit of rewiring got things up and running for the above-seen demo processing a Gameboy/LSDJ sequence. He was also kind enough to post the relevant schematics/article for those interested.
Hans Scharler just submitted this cool hack-‘o’-lantern to our Make: Halloween Contest 2009. It includes a motion detector, some LEDs, and a fog machine, and when someone approaches it lights up and shoots “steam” out of its ears.
Joe Bowers designed a case for his Chumby Guts and asked me to laser cut it for him. It reminds me of an old television set.
