Lego of choice: Doraemon

http://www.geocities.jp/jun_brick/doraemon.html

http://www.geocities.jp/jun_brick/projectd.html

Doraemon, the cosmic cat, must be one of the cutest japanese cartoon characters ever, and my personal favourite: he’s always smiling (unlike Kitty, which “speaks from her heart” and therefore has no mouth: duh!), and he always has some cool gadget to amuse Nobita (he’s got a magic four-dimensional pocket!!). This said, I was really pleased to know that someone had made a “real-size” Doraemon out of lego blocks. (Another proof that anything can be replicated with Lego blocks: it’s just a matter of patience and blocks -and the money to buy them). Continue reading Lego of choice: Doraemon

The FlipFold

http://www.flipfold.com/

Use FlipFOLD for folding your pants, shorts, skirts…even towels and sheets!

Some days ago I wrote about an easy technique to fold Tshirts by hand. I have been using it since then with good results, though the technique renders irregular results: some shirts look better folded than others, some of them are better centered…

Here’s when a little bit of industrial revolution comes in handy: The FlipFold (yet another inspired name) is a very simple machine designed to Continue reading The FlipFold

Lego of choice: The LegWay

http://www.teamhassenplug.org/robots/legway/

I’ve been able to put it on a table, and tilt the table, and LegWay continues to maintain its balance.

The Legway is a successful recreation of the famous, albeit a little expensive Segway, a transportation device which makes use of gyroscopes in order to provide stability with only two wheels. The Legway obtains the same results by adding proximity detectors (provided by hitechnic), to a mindstorms core. These sensors provide the core with precise and continuous measures of the distance to the ground, which are used to make the calculations that allow two motors to keep the thingy always up and proud.

The model shown is currently able to follow a line, and it can also be remotely controlled. Steve, the Legway designer, has also included links to the building instructions and the program he used, so you can try making one for yourself! (and if you succeed, next step is the real thing).

Shirtigami

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7502458538500026068&q=shirt+fold

Coincidentally, it happened that this morning I had a huge pile of tshirts waiting to be folded, and so I have spent some time putting in practice the method shown in this 33 second-long video.

I must admit that I have always had some problems with folding shirts, so this was a very good opportunity to try to refine my skills, and I have to say that the method works well, though you may need to watch the video several times to understand the “flip”. A bit of advice: make sure that you’re grabbing both front and back layers of the shirt when you first pinch it, and that you’re grabbing all the layers right after you take the neck to the bottom. Notice that I say “take” instead of fold. Folding would make the neck turn inside, while you want the neck to be looking outside all the time (they show this step in more detail in the video when folding the second shirt). Give it a try!

ps. Unfortunately, the method is not as efficient on long sleeve shirts, but you can always add some extra folds here and there until it looks good. 😉

Related Article: Tshirt Folding ex Machina: The FlipFold

Chocolate Chip cookies

Today we feature the recipe for the “world’s best chocolate chip cookies”.
They are very easy to make and taste awesome, so grab your apron and go for it!

 

  • In a large bowl, combine 1 cup of margarine with 1 cup of brown sugar and 1/2 cup of white sugar.
  • Next, add 1 teaspoon of baking soda, 1 teaspoon of vanilla, 2 eggs and a pinch of salt. Mix these together well and then add 2 and 1/4 cups of flour.
  • Finally, add 3/4 cup of chocolate chips (or M&M’s) and a pinch of love! Roll the dough into little balls and place them on a well-greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes.
  • Your cookies are now ready. Enjoy! 🙂
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    Related Article: Taste the Tril-o-bites

    Make a notebook, and make it easy: Pocketmod

    http://www.pocketmod.com/

    The PocketMod is a small book with guides on each page. These guides or templates, combined with a unique folding style, enable a normal piece of paper to become the ultimate note card.

    The interest of pocketmod lies in the way it merges several useful related ideas into a single, solid initiative. There’s a set of handy templates (or mods, as they call them) to choose from; an intuitive application to arrange them into a custom notebook; a way to make this application as accesible as possible (you can either design and print the notebook right from the browser, or download the software and use it offline); a clever folding pattern so that the notebook is quickly made from the printed piece of paper; and a tool to convert previously made documents (in pdf format) to a ready-to-fold booklet (or series of booklets, if needed).

    I find that the folding technique leaves too much paper unused (one side, actually), but after trying several alternatives I believe that actually the authors went for the easiest way to get the book ready. Anyway, the forum is a good source for further mods and ideas. Now you can say goodbye to sketching on paper napkins!

    ps. Still, if you must use a napkin, remember the folding pattern: you’ll get a notebook as small as it is cool 🙂

    Related Article: All you need to make a notebook

    Adding an image to Black-Letterhead theme

    Last Updated 23.02.06

    Black-Letterhead is the name of the theme that I’m using as the layout for this site. It took me quite some time to figure out how to add the image for the header, and when searching for information I couldn’t find an “easy” answer; that’s why I decided to show here the code that I changed in case it may be of help to others. (disclaimer: I’m anything but an expert in this field, so I don’t know if it will work for you -but it has worked for me). Continue reading Adding an image to Black-Letterhead theme

    Easy life through practical origami: fujimoto explained

    Today I got an explanation on this technique. It is basically an iterative method that allows to approximate the measures until a satisfactory value is achieved; this comes to mean that you make an initial guess, you apply an operation on it and then repeat that same operation over and over, taking the result of the previous step as the starting point for the next, which will give you more accurate measures each time.

    For instance, if you want to divide a segment of paper in thirds, you would do the following:

    1.-Fold one side the paper into what you guess could be the right measure for a third of it. Don´t mark the folding completely, just mark the end of it so that you know where it is.

    2.-Fold the other side so that it reaches the point you just marked, and mark the folding.

    3.-Fold the other side so that it reaches the point you just marked, and mark the folding.

    Keep doing this. In a few steps you should have accurate thirds.

    Now for fiths:

    1.-Fold one side of the paper into what you guess could be the right measure for a fith of it. Mark it just enough to know where it is, as I explained for thirds.

    2.-Fold the other side so that it reaches the point you just marked, and mark the folding. Now make and mark a fold which is the half of this.

    3.-Fold the other side so that it reaches the point you just marked, and mark the folding. Now make and mark a fold which is the half of this.

    Keep doing this. In a few steps you should have accurate fifths.

    … Now that I think about all these thirds and fiths, this looks a lot like the way one would tune a musical instrument 🙂

    Thanks to my friends of the origami group in Santiago de Compostela for sharing these techniques with me.

    Related Article: Origami cd case

    Easy life through practical origami: cd case

    Last Updated 25.06.06

    http://www.papercdcase.com/

    Use this website to create a PDF file which can be printed and folded to create a paper CD case.

    Actually it´s better to learn how make the case by folding since you never know when you´ll need one. But actually there´s a tricky thing about it, as you have to divide the top in five equal parts. How do you do this? Well, the instructions say “use the fujimoto approximation technique or something“… A friend of mine taught me a way to get the first segment, as shown in this little step-by-step guide.

    Update 25.06.06 I just found these other instructions to make a case -simpler and less precise, but it does the job 🙂

    Related Article: Fujimoto technique explained

    Related Article: Origami envelope

    All you need to make a notebook

    http://www.incompetech.com/beta/plainGraphPaper/

    I cannot anticipate all needs, but the grids below should cover most common ones.

    http://www.crbond.com/score_paper.htm

    Here you will find a set of Acrobat (*.pdf) files which will print out music score paper on your printer.

    Print this over the previously printed grids to finish your empty notebook

    😉

    http://www.sff.net/people/Brook.West/bind/bindit.html

    Make or repair books with this easy technique.

    Related Article: Make a notebook, and make it easy: pocketmod