Tess Gerritsen wrote a book titled Gravity about a female astronaut stranded in space when the rest of her crewmates are killed. Alfonso Cuaron wrote and directed a movie titled Gravity about a female astronaut stranded in space when the rest of her crewmates are killed. Uh-oh.
Bunker.jordanDERP
Scientists have seen hypervelocity stars before, but this is the first time they've ever observed an entire star cluster thrown from its host galaxy. Named HVGC-1, it's traveling at a rate of 2 million miles per hour — and its ultimate fate is to drift through the cosmic void for all time.
Sometimes a picture can speak louder than words.
Kosmas Santosa provides some stark commentary with this evocative build.
Lorena Rodríguez doesn't just make adorable plush dolls out of the ladies on Adventure Time; she also gives them perfect little wardrobes. Seriously, where can we buy these?
After experiencing an inordinate amount of rain over a 24 hour period, a street in Baltimore experienced a landslide, sending at least 10 cars down a steep bank onto the railroad tracks below.
This video from umeaenergi shows the often hilarious results of “living with lag”, an experiment they did with Raspberry Pi and Oculus Rift. Watch as they try to perform everyday tasks like attending an exercise class, attempting to bowl, playing ping pong, and more.
You wouldn’t accept lag offline, so why do it online? ume.net, a fiber broadband provider that offers up to 1000 Mbit/s, performed an experiment. Four volunteers got to experience internet’s biggest disturbance in real life – lag.
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
Aela the Huntress is a Nord werewolf, and not the kind of character you want to anger. When cosplayer Wind of the Stars started working on a replica of her costume, she wanted to make it as authentic as possible. That meant going with leather instead of vinyl, dyeing it, and making chainmaille by hand. She used Worbla and Eva foam for the armor. She goes into details at her site, and her notes for making the clothing portion of the costume are as follows:
I went to Tandy leather and got one of their clearance/cheaper hides for this project. The original color of the leather was light warm red-brown. It was the closest color hide that I could find in my budget. Being as it was not the color I wanted, I de-glazed the hide and re-dyed it a darker color. Since Aela’s outfit is so unique, as it is a backless leotard with a four-part loin cloth/skirt….thing, I didn’t even try to look for a base pattern to modify. I drafted own patterns by draping spare cotton on my dress form. Aela’s ‘top’ looked like a leotard to me based on how taught it was vertically. However, since she doesn’t have a true back to it, just straps, I ended up making a spandex thong that then snapped to straps coming from my waist. The leotard then goes around my neck in halter. For the loin cloth, it really is just a glorified belt with four panels sewed to it. For all the straps on this costume, I glued to pieces of leather together with rubber cement and then stitched them together. The hide I was using was to soft to use on it’s own and needed to be reinforced in order to keep everything in place. I used a mixture of snaps and domed rivets to hold all the straps in place. At some joints I did sew it for extra stability.
Read more details about construction at Wind of the Stars’ blog.
Photographer Romain Laurent (previously here and here) continues to create a new looping animated portrait each week. The photographer began the project as a way to break free from the pressure of commercial work, and we’re glad to see the project is still ongoing. These are some of the best portraits since the new year, but you can see lots more on his Tumblr.
Bunker.jordanNOPENOPENOPE
Trees? Sure. Trees are nature's ladders, to a bear. A craggy rock face, on the other hand, seems a taller – and more dangerous – order. But these two black bears handle a cliffside ascent with ease.
Yo-Sub Joo takes his digital masterpieces to the sky with this giant virtual creation of the Avengers Helicarrier. Unlike real models, you can know the exact parts count in a digital build, and this one uses 22,694 bricks and would measure 85.4 x 45.3 inches in real life. You can see more pictures and detail shots on MOCpages.
A bold defiance of oppressive gender ideals, packaged as the ultimate it’s-not-you-it’s-me gentle letdown.
“There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage,” George Bernard Shaw asserted in his 1908 meditation on the subject. “We look for communion, and are turned away,” Denise Levertov wrote in her poem “The Ache of Marriage.” Bridging the thinking of dangerous nonsense and the turning away is the marriage proposal — and its considered refusal.
From Hell Hath No Fury: Women’s Letters from the End of the Affair (public library) — Anna Holmes’s magnificent collection spanning centuries of missives, which also gave us Simone de Beauvoir’s exquisite breakup letter and this moving breakup moment from the Vietnam War — comes an outstanding contribution to the genre from none other than Charlotte Brontë.
On the last day of February in 1839, eight years before Jane Eyre was published, Brontë received a letter of marriage proposal from Henry Nussey, a Sussex curate whose sister Ellen was one of her close friends. Brontë’s reply, written on March 5, 1839, is nothing short of brilliant — assertive yet generous, unambiguous yet kind, and a masterwork of the it’s-not-you-it’s-me model. She essentially spells out why she would make a terrible mate by the era’s standards for what a good wife means — “her character should not be too marked, ardent and original” — channeling with equal parts humility and dignity her quiet confidence in being the antithesis of these qualities.
My dear Sir
Before answering your letter, I might have spent a long time in consideration of its subject; but as from the first moment of its reception and perusal I determined on which course to pursue, it seemed to me that delay was wholly unnecessary.
You are aware that I have many reasons to feel gratified to your family, that I have peculiar reasons for affection towards one at least of your sisters, and also that I highly esteem yourself. Do not therefore accuse me of wrong motives when I say that my answer to your proposal must be a decided negative. In forming this decision — I trust I have listened to the dictates of conscience more than to those [of] inclination; I have no personal repugnance to the idea of a union with you — but I feel convinced that mine is not the sort of disposition calculated to form the happiness of a man like you. It has always been my habit to study the character of those amongst whom I chance to be thrown, and I think I know yours and can imagine what description of woman would suit you for a wife. Her character should not be too marked, ardent and original — her temper should be mild, her piety undoubted, her spirits even and cheerful, and her “personal attractions” sufficient to please your eye and gratify your just pride. As for me, you do not know me, I am not this serious, grave, cool-headed individual you suppose — you would think me romantic and [eccentric -- you would] say I was satirical and [severe]. [However, I scorn] deceit and I will never for the sake of attaining the distinction of matrimony and escaping the stigma of an old maid take a worthy man whom I am conscious I cannot render happy.
[…]
Farewell—! I shall always be glad to hear from you as a friend –
Believe me
Yours truly
C Brontë
Brontë remained unwedded until a year before her death, when she married Arthur Bell Nichols, her father’s curate, who had been in love with her for years. (“Currer Bell,” the male pseudonym she had used to secure unbiased consideration of her works with publishers, was based on Nichols’s middle name.) One has to wonder whether Jane Eyre would’ve ever come to life, and gone on to inspire generations, had Brontë succumbed to the era’s oppressive standards of female domesticity.
Hell Hath No Fury is an enchanting read in its totality, featuring letters from both ordinary lovers across the ages and such cultural icons as Sylvia Plath, Edith Wharton, Queen Elizabeth, Zelda Fitzgerald, Anne Boleyn, and Virginia Woolf. Ten years later, Holmes followed it up with the equally, if very differently, delightful The Book of Jezebel: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Lady Things.
For more meditations on marriage, see Charles Darwin’s endearing list of its pros and cons and Susan Sontag’s youthful rant.
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Computation Of 3D Vision In Praying Mantises:
How can a praying mantis and a pair of the world’s smallest 3D glasses help us understand our own vision and improve the world of robotics?
Analysing how mantises see in three dimensions could give us clues about how 3D vision evolved and lead to novel approaches in implementing 3D recognition and depth perception in computer vision and robotics.
A key component of the research entails presenting virtual 3D stimuli, such as moving targets within the visual field of the mantis. As a first approach, the researchers are attaching a pair of 3D glasses — the world’s tiniest – with beeswax to the mantis, and placing it in front of computer-generated images, presented on computer monitors….
To find out more about this research click here.
View the image gallery here.
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!
Mass Effect’s Dr. Liara T’Soni is a researcher so I have a feeling she’d appreciate all the work cosplayer Dahlia Thomas put into making a costume based on her. She did a tremendous job not only with sculpting T’Soni’s head but also painting it. The gradation of blues looks perfect. She documented the build process for the head piece, and it’s fascinating to watch it come together. Here’s how she started:
1. I sprayed a lot of Krylon clear coat on this, cried a little, andI put water based clay to separate each side of the sculpt.
2. I smoothed out the wall of clay with an old credit card I had that’s invalid because someone was ordering porn and stamp makers from India with. Damn fraudulent charges. Most expensive clay tool ever, but I digress.
3. I added “Registration Keys” so when casting I can get a tight fitting case and enclose them together. That’s for when I pour the latex.
I’m also prepping the plaster as well. I’m wearing a respirator because this is dusty and I don’t want to get inhale it. Not only that, I just spray painted something before hand and I forgot to take this off. — with Those knobs are Registration Keys.
4. I add my first layer of plaster onto the sculpt. This is important, if you miss a spot, you don’t get any details of scales and tentacles that you worked super hard on.
See more photos of the head sculpt in progress at Dahlia’s Facebook page.
via Geek x Girls, photo by Sorairo-days Cosplay & Photography
By now, when I look at components I evaluate their aesthetics as much as I do their functionality. When I design boards, the look and feel of the component has to fit the design, not only what it’s supposed to be doing. Resistors come in an amazing spectrum of colours — particularly older ones! — and I wanted to find a way to use them for their colour rather than their value.
I had a bunch of resistors — 1/8W and 1/4W — left over from a project and I wanted to experiment with a symmetrical arrangement.
We’re watching a video from SRI International, who have apparently been developing micro-robots that can assemble things.
In the video you’ll see these magnetically controlled robots whisk about a surface, rapidly collecting parts and assembling them into structures, such as the truss imaged above. It’s startling to see how quickly and accurately these critters can move and perform their work.
While this technology seems to have been developed for “assembly” of objects, we’re wondering if some modifications could result in a rather different type of 3D printer. Imagine armies of such small robots, each moving rapidly to deposit a piece of material, gradually building up an object. That’s additive manufacturing for certain.
The interesting angle is that the robots could use material from multiple “bins”, meaning you could theoretically use this approach to build objects out of many different materials.
Fusing the material together is an issue. Perhaps “glue bots” could deliver binder as material is placed in position?
Some may say 3D printing is a limited technology with few applications. We think not, as there are many new methods of performing 3D printing yet to be discovered. This could be one of them.
Via YouTube (Hat tip to Matt)
These photographs show a male cross-dresser posing in various costumes. They are from the collection of Richard von Krafft-Ebing, held by the Wellcome Library. Richard von Krafft-Ebing was a neurologist and clinical psychiatrist, who wrote Psychopathia Sexualis (1886), the first scientific study of sexual deviation.
All images released under a CC BY 4.0 license
Field postcard from Corporal Hitler to his regimental comrade Karl Lanzhammer, from Munich. Hitler was wounded by shrapnel in October 1916. In December 1916 he had just been discharged from hospital and was then stationed with the reserve battalion in Munich. In the brief text, Hitler reveals some spelling difficulties by writing the German word for immediately, ‘sofort’ with double f – ‘soffort’.
Dear Lanzhammer,
I am now in Munich at the
Ersatz Btl. Currently I am under dental treatment. By the way I will report voluntarily for the field immediately.
Kind regards A. Hitler
“Originally designed to star alongside Jack Nicholson in a 1968 counter-culture, acid-themed road movie called Psych-Out in which Jack’s character was called Stoney”
See the full article on Voices of East Anglia
Bunker.jordanDAMNIT. I had this idea years ago. I didn't implement it because I'm not evil, and didn't want to make money off of people's fear...
In his ongoing series of photos titled Moon Games, French photographer Laurent Lavender has subjects play with a rising moon, effectively tansforming it into a balloon, a painting, and even a scoop of ice cream. The dreamlike photos have been turned into a calendar and a (French-only) book of poetry as well as a few other objects. You can see more of his work over on Facebook. (via IFLScience)
Two anonymous art students, who go by the moniker dangerdust, have been creating gorgeous hand-lettered and illustrated chalkboards featuring inspiring quotes from literary and public figures. Every Monday a new piece, rendered entirely by chalk, appears on the common chalkboard, only to be ephemerally replaced the following week. “Despite our overwhelming workload at Columbus College of Art & Design we bring it upon ourselves to create a chalkboard every week,” say the two students, explaining the motivation behind their late-night rogue art. Each piece, with its cleverly placed backdrop and bold composition, is as unique as the quote itself. They’re created in one fell swoop, which can take up to 11 hours. Like the students say themselves, “it’s the best form of vandalism.” Even if you’re not a student at their school you can follow their weekly creations on behance or Instagram. (via designboom)
