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I really like the sounds that Gijs is able to produce with his Hardware Software Synthesizer 2, aka the HSS2. It's all based on a single Arduino, making this version easier to build compared to the HSS1. Check out the link for the complete code and schematics so you can make you own.
This is a trimmed down version of the hard soft synth 1. The hss1 used 2 arduinos, one for sequencing and one for audio. This version has both the sequencer and the audio in one arduino, reducing the number of parts allot.
More about the Hardware Software Synthesizer 2
In the Maker Shed:
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Make: Arduino
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Bicycle Maintenance: How To Maintain Your Mountain Bike For Peak Performance
Here's is a very thorough way of tuning up your bike after a hard ride. The rest of the site has some other good information, but you have to dig through a lot of 'lifestyle' type entries before you find the making goodies. The bicycle section does look like it has valuable video resources.
Thanks to Will in the comments
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This is a really interesting piece of interactive art by Ellie Harrison. The Vending Machine is programmed to give out free snacks when the recession makes the headlines of the BBC News RSS feed. Also, there is a sign outside the gallery that flashed "Free Food", alerting any hungry gallery visitors. I really enjoy seeing the virtual and physical worlds interacting in such a cool way. Check out the link for a lot more information about the work.
The Vending Machine project is one of the outcomes of Ellie's period of residency at Plymouth College of Art in 2009 and is on show at the college's Viewpoint Gallery as part of her solo exhibition from 23rd April - 30th May 2009. It was programmed by Ben Dembroski in PureData and Python and uses project2891 to communicate with i-DAT in order to activate the messages on the GreenScreen. Production assistance by Jason Mills.
More about the Vending Machine by Ellie Harrison
In the Maker Shed:
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More about the Make Controller 2.0 & Interface Board kit
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Members of the South Kingstown High School Robotics team explain the vehicle they made for the MATE ROV 2009 regional competition at Massachusetts Maritime Academy.
If you were a participant on one of the teams in this year's regional competitions, please add your photos to the MAKE Flickr pool, and if you could, please use these tags: MATE2009, MATERegionals2009, and for the Northeast regionals at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy: MATERegionalsMMA2009. If your group competed in another regional, try to set the tags for that so that we can find all the pictures and video easily. If you are using YouTube or some other system, you can use the same tagging system as well.
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Maggie Koerth-Baker is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. A freelance science and health journalist, Maggie lives in Minneapolis, brain dumps on Twitter, and writes quite often for mental_floss magazine.
If you've never given much thought to all the cool things you could do with an abandoned silo, well...you didn't grow up in Kansas, did you? Personally, I had a great plan for a scuba-through aquarium (with whales!) that really could have gotten off the ground if someone had ponied up the seed money back when I was 5.
With a recent architectural design contest to revamp a couple of former sewage treatment plan silos into cultural landmarks, the Amsterdam City Council seems to be going for something a bit more practical than my old grain silo dreams. The ArchiCentral blog has some great renderings of the entry by NL Architects, which includes a "Cultural Silo" (with theaters, gallery space, and a restaurant), and a "Climbing Silo" (with a 40-meter/131-foot-high artificial cave for rock-wall climbing enthusiasts...of which, apparently, Amsterdam has many).
BTW: The headline here, a quote from the NL Architects spokesman, roughly translates from architect-speak into English as, "This project is going to be kick-ass!"
What would you do with a retired silo? I still think the aquarium idea would be "abstract mysterious" as all hell.
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Maggie Koerth-Baker is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. A freelance science and health journalist, Maggie lives in Minneapolis, brain dumps on Twitter, and writes quite often for mental_floss magazine.
The CDC released the first photos of H1N1 this morning. FACT: If you tilt the computer screen at just the right angle and slightly cross your eyes, you will see a pig riding a sailboat.
Seriously, though, these are some gorgeous shots. I may spend the next 10 minutes before the coffee kicks in just listening to that amino acid sequence MP3 and staring at these photos.
Make a varmint detecting webcam that captures rascally rabbits in your backyard.
Thanks go to Bob Goldstein for the original article in MAKE, Volume 17.
To download The Animal Detector MP4 click here or subscribe in iTunes.
Check out the complete Animal Detector article in MAKE, Volume 17 "Animal Detector"
and you can see that in our Digital Edition.
Check out animals caught on video at Bob Goldstein's blog.

Make a varmint detecting webcam that captures rascally rabbits in your backyard.
Thanks go to Bob Goldstein for the original article in MAKE, Volume 17.
View the PDF of this project. and then subscribe to MAKE Magazine for other great projects
you can do over the weekend.
We journey upstream with environmentalist Dan McCormick, a maker who crafts intricate watershed sculptures out of woven willow. In the Workshop, John Park shows how to build lively and inexpensive miniature robots. Mister Jalopy reveals the hidden treasures of his "Compact Childhood Museum." The Maker Channel segment features French fries shot from a spud gun, freeline skates that ride like a skateboard, an Asteroids game wrist watch, and a motorized wheel chair that shoots flames.
Get the m4v, subscribe in iTunes, watch in HD on Blip
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Bruno Mathez's striking experiment with sound and light, Beam Music -
What you're seeing is a dark attic space in which the frames of wood and the pipes are being lit by a very precise ray of light, giving us the illusion that the light comes from inside the object.Work using this above technique is on display at Brighton's Blank Gallery this month.Each lit object has its own individual sound.
This was made in the attic of The Pavilion in Bexhyl on Sea, England. This is my first experiment, I'm preparing an exhibition for the Brighton Fringe based on this idea. I'm collaborating with Mike Blow who will put light sensors on each lit object to react with sound. The sonic result is amazing as it directly reacts to the ligh projected.
The aesthetic here reminds me of the Optron video we highlighted here a while back -
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Alex has been using Scratch to teach problem solving and programming with kids.
Here is the balancing cat.sb file. Here is Alex's solution.sb.
You will need a copy of the free program Scratch. Try it out, post your results on the Scratch site, and let us know what you think.
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A worthy addition to the subgenre of videos of the Super Mario theme being performed on various instruments by young people who were too young to have played the NES games as kids. These musical game-historians give me hope for the future, they truly do.
Mario Theme on Balalaika (Thanks, Putinoid!)

1913 Scripps-Booth Bi-Autogo
(Thanks, Dave!)


This Sunday at 3rd Ward, an artist collective workspace in Brooklyn:
Bamboo Bike Studio is partnering with Brooklyn-based design center 3rd Ward for the Green Bikes Birthday Block Party. The festivities will converge on Stagg Street in Bushwick, Brooklyn for bike competitions, bands and music videos, badminton, drinks, BBQ, live screen-printing and more. The Bamboo Bike Studio team and friends will be riding 10 deep to a Bamboo Bike Studio tent, where a live bike building demonstration will be going on throughout the day, and bicyclists can check out a bamboo bike, ask questions, and sign up for classes.
Sign up for a 3rd Ward membership and score a free bamboo bike, as well. Via Cool Hunting.
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Using a GPS reference board and an Atmel ATMEGA324 microcontroller, engineer Bengamin Kokes has created a prototype GPS peripheral for his iPod nano. To display coordinates, the device uses Advanced iPod Remote commands to send a 4-color image to the iPod screen, a technique Kokes picked up after seeing it implemented in an Alpine car stereo.
iPod GPS [via Hack a Day]
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Now our independent study group was a remarkable group of non-conformists, whose marks -- on tests we didn't attend classes for or study for -- were so high that some wondered aloud if we were somehow cheating. My grades had climbed into the low 90% range, and this included English where such marks were rare -- especially for someone whose grades had soared almost 30 points in a few months of 'independent' study. The fact is that my peers had done what no English teacher had been able to do -- inspire me to read and write voraciously, and show me how my writing could be improved. My writing, at best marginal six months earlier, was being published in the school literary journal. On one occasion, a poem of mine I read aloud in class (one of the few occasions I actually attended a class that year) produced a spontaneous ovation from my classmates.While I didn't go through a program like that, some of my own experiences have been similar. In college, I was four semesters deep in statistics class before I took a job tutoring stats, and then eventually teaching an intro college class in statistics, and it wasn't until I tutored others and (finally) taught that class that I really understood many of the concepts that I'd supposedly "learned" in class. In class, I did quite well, but it was because I'd learned how to get by and solve problems. In actually teaching others, I was forced to really understand the subject so that I could actually answer the questions that came up.
The Grade 12 final examinations in those days were set and marked by a province-wide board, so universities could judge who the best students were without having to consider differences between schools. Our independent study group, a handful of students from just one high school, won most of the province-wide scholarships that year. I received the award for the highest combined score in English and Mathematics in the province -- an almost unheard-of 94%.
The reality that most PC game publishers ignore is that there are people who buy games and people who don't buy games. The focus of a business is to increase its sales. My job, as CEO of Stardock, is not to fight worldwide piracy no matter how much it aggravates me personally. My job is to maximize the sales of my product and service and I do that by focusing on the people who pay my salary -- our customers.You can waste an awful lot of energy and resources "fighting pirates" and losing, or you can focus on actually serving your customers and making money. Which seems more intelligent?
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