More progress on the foundry furnace!

Another Wimshurst Machine is finished! This is the third complete one I've seen and one of at least half a dozen in process.  If you're working on a Wimshurst by all means send along some photos!

I am fascinated by the individual modification to the basic design people are coming up with.  Rick, who I had the pleasure of meeting at Maker Faire 2009, used a second set of closet pole hangers for the tops of his Leyden jars which I'm sure made the electrode supports significantly sturdier than mine.  I also really like his use of copper instead of aluminum for the sectors.  Great work! (Click through for a bigger picture)

 UPDATE: Plans for my Wimshurst Machine are now available here!

If you follow me on Twitter you know that I had a near death encounter with a flying chunk of steel last week .

This is how I spent my Saturday.

. . .

Oh this looks like all kinds of fun!

Cirque Berzerk was born at Burning Man and has been described as a “circus on acid,” “French burlesque meets ‘Sweeney Todd’ meets Cirque du Soliel” and “P.T. Barnum’s worst nightmare,” Cirque Berzerk returns to the Los Angeles State Historic Park June 18th-July 5th with a bigger, more twisted adult big top experience. It’s a show that’ll tickle your innards with a psychotically-tinged sultry evening filled with sinewy acrobats, sensual aerialists, fiery burlesque dancers and a host of evil clowns. For tickets and more info on this wild, sexy, decadent and demented alternative circus, call 866-55-TICKETS or visit cirqueberzerk.com.

More here!
http://www.myspace.com/cirqueberzerk
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=31839071165
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cirqueberzerk/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuDMOGfXHSc

A couple of months ago The Lady asked me to move the kid's playhouse to a different part of the yard.  Not having access to a fork lift, I fig'red that I could mount a 2" hitch ball on the Yaris' tow bar and make a "fork truck" with my flatbed trailer.  It worked beautifully!

Interestingly, the playhouse is built from the last 8' of the 28' travel trailer I cannibalized to make the flatbed.

This is a short wheelbase fully suspended recumbent bike I built about 10 years ago. It worked quite well, but ultimately I decided I liked my Tour Easy better.

Originally published at Bike-Recumbent.com

Our own Meredith Scheff be showing her art in a show tomorrow. It’s her first show outside of school and she would love to see you all there. There will be prints, originals, and comics. 

here’s the info:

http://www.missioncomicsandart.com/upcomming

Space Gallery: 1141 Polk St., San Francisco, CA 94109
on Friday 07/24/09 – from 9 PM to 2 AM

From the Mission: Comics site:

Mission: Comics & Art will be a retail book store and art gallery that specializes in graphic novels, monthly comic books and fine art.

While I continue to work on securing the right location for this venture, come join and celebrate the comic book art form, and enjoy artwork influenced by comic book or working with comic book themes.

DJs: Discobotic & twiita (myhouse)

Artists:
————————————————————
Audrey Welch
Betsy Lam
Chris Conroy
Eli Maness
Matt Delight
Meredith Scheff-King
telephone & soup
Travis Nichols
W.A.M. – Women’s Art Movement

Mer hopes to see you there! It should be awesome!

When I changed the handlebars on my Tour Easy for a "T" bar arrangement I needed to find a new place for my water bottles. I took a look at some of the Camelback type systems available but balked at their prices. In the past I'd used homemade "hydration" systems made from soda bottles and plastic tubing so I decided to try it again. This time, however, I added two features that really worked out well.

More after the cut, previously published at Bike-Recumbent.com - Jake

How to make high power bicycle headlights with materials from your local home center.

This is an article from a few years back that was up at Bike-Recumbent.com, I'm consolidating everything from there over to here.

Nearly five years after I built them I am still using these headlights with the original bulbs. The 50 watt beam is awesome, oncoming cars always dim their brights when I flash it and it provides plenty of light for the 45 MPH downhill on my way home from work.

 - Jake

A couple of years ago I sat down and tried to write a description of what Steampunk was as a sub-culture, or more precisely, what I thought it could be.  I filled half a moleskine with my scribblings before I decided the whole exercise was hubris, folly, and not particularly fun.  

However, as part of my research I read a couple of histories of the Punk rock movement as well as several books suggested to me by friends as influential in their lives.  The Punk rock histories brought back fond memories of High School, and while I was more into New Wave and Synth Pop back then, the energy of the Punks infused and informed much of the music and culture of the time. I enjoyed the nostalgia.

But the books suggested to me that had the biggest impact were those from the CrimethInc ExWorker's Collective.  In particular Days of War, Nights of Love.  Without going into great detail, Days is a exhortation to examine your life, to question your assumptions, and to act on the answers. It's about autonomy and anarchy and a large portion of Days is criticism of capitalism and it's negative effects on our lives.  Days is from gut, and you feel that the CrimethInc folks got it mostly right.

Rushkoff's book, on the other hand, is a rigorous history of the origins of the corporation and central monetary systems and how they self-propagate and suborn us to "their" needs.  Whether you view Capitalism as our best hope for prosperity or the greatest evil the world has ever known, Life, Inc. will give you insight into how capital has it's own agenda, and how it affects the ways in which we relate to each other.

Rushkoff is not anti-business, anti-commerce, or even anti-corporation, per se.   But he makes the case, to me at least, that the choice of our particular 'flavor' of money has had deep and lasting effects on society and that there are other ways to represent value and different choices we can make in our daily lives that are practical, beneficial, and compatible.  Ultimately, it is a hopeful book.

Attempting to tie this back into my own particular DIY version of Steampunk, let me remind you that money is a tool.  When wielded with skill and understanding it can do a great deal of good, but wielded incompetantly, with evil intent, or simply because the user see the tool as end rather than means, it can hurt and even kill. RTFM. Here's the manual.

Douglas Rushkoff mixing it up with Steven Colbert: