Ignoring the Half-Tau Day heretics out there, we laser-etched some pies for Pi Day. This is a cranberry-orange meringue pie. Turns out the meringue etches beautifully! If you look closely at the pie you’ll notice that there are digits of pi forming the outline… đ
Settings for raw meringue on our laser are apparently 100 power and 100 speed. (We did bake it a bit after this, no worries.) Making laser noms is fun!
gopher
gopher://gopher.nycresistor.com/1 is now live!
For those of you aching to find out more about NYC Resistor while surfing the arpanet on your mosaic browsers, fret not. We’ve got you covered. Now with our newly launched gopher services you can keep in touch with the modern era from the comfort of your golden age of technology and grand self delusion. We aim to please!
Managing private communication on the internet is a bit like space travel: It’s not impossible but the technology involved is difficult to use. Bring your laptop and your crypto-curiosity to Resistor on March 11th, 7:00pm for hands-on help with end-to-end secure email, anonymous web browsing, and general good practices for online privacy with folks that have been using this stuff for slightly longer than most. If you’re already an uber l337 cypherpunk and have a PGP key already, stick around for a key signing and probably some snacks!
Lasers can make tasty treats. I spent some time last night with my friend Brenda Hiller (pictured here) experimenting with using the laser to caramelize colored sugar onto some chocolate tiles. Place a piece of chocolate into the laser (with something food-safe under it, of course), pour on some sugar, and then etch away. We were experimenting with what kinds of shapes we’d be able to etch.
The end result? The caramelized sugar sticks to the chocolate tiles, and it is super tasty. Full writeup and a few more photos on my blog.
For anyone using any of the APIs now under Google Cloud, Iâve recently launched an unconventional crowdfunding campaign to buy a month of Gold tier support ($400/month), which I plan to use not just for my own support requests, but yours too! It turns out thereâs a lot of unanswered questions relating to APIs I might want to use in the future, and maybe youâre in the same boat.
I plan to pool our funds to send our support tickets to real live humans, first dibs for campaign backers, then onward to submit all the unanswered Google Cloud questions I can find using my Ticket Overflow extension for Chrome/Chromium, which Iâll also be releasing as part of the campaign. If you have any hot API probs, post them on Stack Overflow with the appropriate tags (gcloud, google-translate, google-cloud-platform, etc) and Iâll try to get answers for them. Ultimately, the more questions get answered, the easier it will be for other developers searching Stack Overflow to find API answers and make the internet just that much more useful!
If you’re interested in making your hardware open source, check out my new book, Building Open Source Hardware! It contains a how-to guide and checklists for many aspects of open source hardware: manufacturing, licensing, and business in open source hardware to name a few. In the spirit of democratization, different authors have written each chapter, many friends of Resistor, and Resistor member Catarina Mota also has a chapter in the book!
Don’t take my word for it, check out this review:
“This book is one you can judge by it’s cover. It is everything you need to know about how to work on an open hardware project from cradle to grave. It is a solidly researched book that doesn’t skip an issue because it is hard, nor is all the content from one person or organization. This has produced a product which is informative to a degree that it is greater than the sum of it’s parts.” -Aaron Harper (read the whole review.)
Also check out the NYC inspired kit to practice making open source hardware derivatives:
Remake the kit to be a landmark or building in your area, and together, we can build the world! (Godzilla not included.)
You can buy the kit from me, or get both the book and the kit at Sparkfun.
Have you ever envied those beautiful green PCBs that all modern electronics have? Do you want to kick up the professionalism in your projects with a real PCB? Would you like to simply learn how to better document your circuits with a nicely done schematic?
Sign up for our latest EAGLE class on Saturday, March 14! Get tickets here.
If you’ve ever wanted to make something thermochromatic, electrochromatic, or inflatable with laser cut lace, a custom RGB LED silk flower, and antique conductive thread then check out my new 21st Century Fashion Kit collaboration with sparkfun. Hereâs a look at what you can make:
The kit was two years in the making since some of the items were hard to come by. So I am excited about the selection of experimental materials it offers. In the kit you will find:
Inflatable Materials- Inflatables are my favorite thing to send down the runway, because they transform and change shape when the blower is turned on. I like to prototype inflatable shapes by fusing together a certain type of plastic tablecloth with a traditional clothes iron. Included is a tablecloth with a lace pattern, battery, and fan. Instructions for creating inflatables are on the kit website.
Sapphire Blue Thermochromatic Pigment- that can be mixed with nail polish, paint, clay, etc. to make colors that change with varying temperature . I chose a very specific shade of blue (similar to Yves Saint Laurentâs #18 Blue Majorelle nail polish), that when mixed with red to create purple or orange to create taupe, or yellow to create jade, will create shades that are on trend.
Electrochromatic Materials for many of the pisces necklace trend- The MOSFET power controller, conductive thread, and battery you will need to make your thermochromatic design electrochromatic (changes color with electricity). Tutorial is also on the kit page.
RGB LED Silk Flower- handmade by a 4th generation, family owned silk flower manufacturer in the garment district.
Laser Cut Lace Leather Skull- Everyone should have the opportunity to play with something laser cut. I designed the lace with holes sized specifically to fit around 5mm LEDs, because laser cut things are even better when blinky.
Antique Conductive Thread- I love to look through trim supplier warehouses for unused antique/vintage stock. I spend the day digging through piles of boxes. One day I found a box of shiny antique thread from the 1930âs that felt cool to the touch, which made me think that it might be conductive. Sure enough it was, with very low resistance! My jewelry manufacturer tested the thread, and believes that it is gold plated. I find it amazing that something from the 1930âs is perfect for integrating technology with fashion today.
And some violet LEDs, coin cell batteries, and needles…
We here at NYCResistor talk a good game about Dioramas, but it’s pretty rare to see any action taken (although full credit goes to our member Shelby for providing great Dioramas for multiple past Interactive Shows!). This weekend provided just the right combination of terrible weather and 3-day-weekendness to motivate me to make it happen. This project combines both my love of dioramas and my long-held passion for paper mache volcanoes. My wife and I created this enchantingly tiny realm perched on the precipice of total annihilation using newspaper, water colors, some tiny drink umbrellas, and other misc. objects found lying around the house. Note the family of 3d-printed Nessies visible in the shallow waters near the photo-realistic beach.
From our member Adam:
It’s been conjectured that the eruption was in fact triggered by the weight of the enormous half-mile steel flagpole installed on the northern shore, and that it was the memory this incident that scotched the original plan for a half-mile steel flagpole to be installed on the moon during the Apollo program.
And now watch it in all of its anti-climactic glory:
The gauntlet has officially been thrown, 4th graders!
Here’s some updates to our Burning Man project, The Temple of the Unticketed. We finished and submitted our proposals to Burnging Man Arts. You can find the proposal, budget and project plan in our GitHub. We worked really hard dotting the eyes and crossing the tees, hopefully they’ll notice and support the project. While we wait we continue to work.
Max has made good progress on revB of the BeagleBone cape. Unfortunately the boards to hook up the TFTs got lost in the mail. No, really. OSH Park is sending us another batch for free, so thanks to them for that! Once we get those we should be able to try a scaled up test.
Finally I managed to get a first pass at the virtual installation done. It’s my first pass at anything non-trivial in three.js so it might be a little rough around the edges. Any vignettes you create will go up on the virtual installation. Try it out!