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New Electronics Series from Becky Stern
My old Make: colleague, Becky Stern, has a new video series that she’s doing for the electronics component company, Digi-Key. Becky has always done an impressive job of explaining what can be intimidating technical information in an entertaining and digestible way. If this first installment, an introduction to LEDs, is any indication, this series looks to deliver more of her welcome brand of accessible tech education.
How to Get Clearer and Stronger Transparent FDM Prints
In this CNC Kitchen video, Stefan shows the special settings you can use to create superior-looking clear prints using an FDM (Fused deposition modeling)printer and clear filament. He also looks at how these parameters make your parts super strong.
Making Your Own Vinyl Stickers
If you’ve been attracted to the idea of creating your own custom vinyl stickers, this video shows you how. All you basically need is a crafting vinyl cutter (a few hundred dollars) and some sheets or rolls of vinyl material.
CA Glue Accelerator from Baking Soda and Water
One of the best takeaways from this Bill Making Stuff video (where he celebrates his 50th episode) is his tip for creating your own accelerator for CA glue. As you likely know, there are commercial accelerators, but they smell funny, have nasty stuff in them, and are combustible. You’re even supposed to wear eye protection when using them, though nobody does. You may also know about using baking soda as an accelerator. It works great, but it leaves a dusty powder on everything that you have to clean off. Bill mixes his baking soda with water in a spray bottle and has found that it works great and creates less mess. I will definitely be trying this.
How a Gas Pump Knows When to Turn Itself Off
If you’ve ever wondered how a gas pump nozzle knows when to shut off when your tank is full, this video reveals the clever design. Venturi tubes, Bernoulli principle, negative pressure — it turns out the design is far more complicated that you might expect. I always assumed it was some sort of an electronic sensor, but it’s purely mechanical.
“I was surprised to see a recommendation for the OXO sink strainer. I love OXO products, but that strainer is a disappointment to me. I do like the inversion feature, but stuff still gets stuck in and around the holes. The silicone gets slimy. I have black slime after a week in my kitchen drain, probably from teensy bits of lettuce and herbs and salad dressing. UGH. (Cleaning out the bowl with a paper towel before washing it seems to help.) I don’t know that a standard issue strainer would make me any happier (though I’d love to quit using so many paper towels). I’m glad yours pleases you; my experience is just different.”
This is a great example of that adage made popular by early hacker culture: “Your mileage may vary” (YMMV). When I posted my review of the strainer on Boing Boing, the first few responses were similar to Candy’s and I got nervous, thinking I had prematurely decided a tool was a winner without giving it an honest testing myself. But then the positive reviews came and they were the overwhelming sentiment. And on Amazon, it has 17.5K reviews at 4.7 stars. After a month, we are more than happy with ours, but, as in all things, YMMV. Thanks for sharing your experience, Candy!
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A cool tool can be any book, gadget, software, video, map, hardware, material, or website that is tried and true. All reviews on this site are written by readers who have actually used the tool and others like it. Items can be either old or new as long as they are wonderful. We post things we like and ignore the rest. Suggestions for tools much better than what is recommended here are always wanted.
We live in a world of backgrounded miracles, entire worlds of wonder and beauty that we either can’t see or stopped noticing a long time ago. Look closely at the wings of a fly on your window sill, stare into a bisected piece of fruit, or look carefully at a growth of mold on a dish. Millions of such micro worlds surround us, breathtaking examples of design, engineering, and evolutionary artistry. When we bother to look.
Feathers is a photographic examination of one such overlooked natural wonder, the lowly bird feather. A single bird has thousands of feathers, of different types, and there are some ten-thousand species of birds. Feathers takes a broad view of the evolution of the bird and its feathers while focusing its lens on the plumage of 75 or so notable species. Each species gets a few pages, with one or two impressively photographed feather close-ups and a brief explanatory text.
This book reminded me a lot of Rose Lynn Fisher’s BEE (which I loved). Both books are minimal in content and feel, but that only helps to narrow and maintain your focus on the world under examination. The text in Feathers doesn’t try to tell you everything about the species of the bird and feather that you’re looking at, but the bits of fascinating science it does contain are probably far more memorable. Like BEE, I felt like I got to peer into a world I don’t normally see and came away greatly enriched by the experience. You can’t really ask for more from a book. – Gareth Branwyn
WARREN THE 13TH AND THE ALL-SEEING EYE: A NOVEL
Warren the 13th and the All-Seeing Eye: A Novel by Tania del Rio (author) and Will Staehle (illustrator) Quirk Books 2015, 224 pages, 7.8 x 8.8 x 0.8 inches
A gloomy, nine-story mansion, perched on a plateau in a desolate countryside. A trench-coated, top-hatted visitor stands in an illuminated doorway, a tiny, frog-faced boy dwarfed by this imposing figure, as he stands on a checkerboard-tiled floor, the scene ringed by an ornate, circular frame. Taking up two pages, his aunt and uncle sit at a very long dining room table. The boy’s aunt accuses him, a black word balloon contains the word “Liar!” in calligraphic script. The boy uses the reflection of an algae-filled basin to read the mysterious page of a handwritten journal, its letters written in ornate, backwards cursive.
Warren, a peculiar-looking child with a toad-like face and a luxurious head of hair, is the 13th descendent of the founder of the now-decrepit hotel where he lives with his lazy uncle and mean aunt. Hidden within the walls of the rundown hotel is the All-Seeing Eye, a mythical treasure. Rumors of its existence brings untold numbers of treasure hunters to his family’s hotel, including a mysterious lodger covered in bandages. The nine-story-high mansion begins to be ransacked by these new guests, its furniture toppled, its floorboards pulled up, its carpets unraveled, all in the search for the treasure. A pale spectral girl lurks in the hedge maze, and a strange tentacled creature dwells in the boiler room. Warren’s only friends are Chef Bunion, and his tutor, Mr. Friggs, but his circle of new friends begins to grow in unexpected ways. A colorful cast of characters include witches, pirates, ghosts, librarians, perfumiers, and chefs.
Warren the 13th and the All-Seeing Eye is a lovely book with a foil-embossed cover, nearly every page containing red and black line engraved illustrations that look as though they were pulled from an antiquated reference book from a dusty library. “The ugly boy with the big heart and beautiful hair” meets several intriguing characters, who often aren’t what they appear, and navigates a compelling storyline, strewn with puzzles and clues. Ominous black pages hint at arcane goings-on, and they’re topped with backward, spell-like chapter headings. As the plot twists and turns, descriptive passages weave an atmosphere filled with the scents and flavors of zesty beef goulash, the feelings of dread, excitement, loneliness, and ultimately triumph. It’s a delightful page-turner. – S. Deathrage
Books That Belong On Paper first appeared on the web as Wink Books and was edited by Carla Sinclair.Sign up here to get the issues a week early in your inbox.
