Who wouldn't love an indoor swing? The upcoming cold winter season is one good reason to build one, but truly, an indoor swing is just plain fun all year round. Luckily Apartment Therapy has posted a How-To on building a simple wooden plank swing.
Terrariums. With fall quickly turning into winter, now's your chance to capture some of that remaining greenery as your very own garden-in-a-jar. I was lucky enough to catch Paula Hayes' terrarium show at Marianne Boesky Gallery in NYC this past summer. Her work is beautiful, not to mention inspiring:
Hip hop music + outdoor street setting makes tap dancing supremely more cool (not that it wasn't cool already). Pretty sweet move starting around 1:17. Pick up some moves yourself.
Vintage Projects offers 100+ free plans for building all sorts of fun DIY projects spanning musical instruments, archery, boats, motorbikes, go carts, science experiments, telescopes, tractors, radios, and more.
The Panzerbike. A monster bike like no other. The Frankenstein of all motorcycles. This big boy has an 800-horsepower engine, and weighs in at 4.74 tons.
Now, that's some whittling. Awesome school-desk-art by Ben Turnbull. See how wood carver Bob Seguin makes a mini navy colt revolver out of basswood here.
Most DIY freaks do-it-themselves because they love it. Because they're curious, creative, and like to take the long road (or figure out an ingenious short cut).
Cartograms are usually pretty mundane, but throw in Flickr, Photoshop, and a well-known public place and you have an artistic representation of popular colors. Much more eye-grabbing than your common map.
California Redwoods are some of the oldest and tallest trees on Earth, so snapping a single photograph couldn't possibly capture their majestic entirety.
The beautiful ectoplasmic dance of the cornstarch speaker monster is finally elucidated. In addition to being captivated by its eerily vibrant dance, you can now understand exactly why it happens, thanks to Collin Cunningham from MAKE. He gives a great explanation of cymatics - the study of visible sound and vibration.
Japan loves their pets. This dog owner loves his border collie, named Kirin. He loves Kirin enough to make sure he gets his exercise. All it takes is a little dog training after all.
When you think about car customization, you think about installing a stereo or a turbocharger or something like that, but Joe Harmon and gang have gone a step further and built their own custom car - literally woven out of wood.
Slacklining is an *extreme-nut* sport of balance. It is a version of "tightrope walking" across great heights (note: distinct difference from tightrope: the rope is not as taut, but more elastic, trampoline-like).
Yuto Miyazawa kicks ass at electric guitar. Seriously, this kid is out of this world. What other nine-year-old is invited to perform Crazy Train, on stage, with Rock-n-Roll God Ozzy Osbourne?
Behold, Kent "Toast" French, the Guinness World Record holder for fastest clapping. You might say, fast clapping? What kind of feat is that? Well, just watch. The video below gets pretty intense... Kent can clap 721 times in 60 seconds. That's 12 claps per second.
Evolver is a fun little piece of architecture with an incredible 720º panoramic view of Zermatt, Switzerland. The structure was built by second year students of the ALICE Studio at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL).
No more alkaline batteries. No more NiCad's. No NiMH's. No Lithium. Forget all of those hazardous chemical reactions in the batteries and think eco-friendly. Professor David Edwards did.
To Mario enthusiasts everywhere: Mario mania has been lovingly expressed all over the web for some time now (including How-To). The most recent accomplishment brings together two classic favorites: Mario plus LEGOs.
Exquisitely detailed Star Wars wedding cake! Amazing sugar art representation of Luke Skywalker lying in dead tauntaun innards, made for Star Wars artist Chris Trevas and his wife Julie.
Virtual autopsies are the wave of the future in forensic medicine, using three-dimensional x-ray techniques instead of hacking through a mess of blood and guts. The Virtual Autopsy Table allows the cause of death to be determined quickly to aid in criminal investigations. Amazing - straight out of Bones or CSI.
These soccer playing robots from TU Freiberg Robotics are programmed using Knesthetic Bootstrapping, which control the Bioloid's motions. Players can send commands to the soccer bots via Wii Remotes, and users abroad can control them directly online. If soccer's not your game, robots can play chess, too.
Forget the Segway, you don't even have to stand anymore thanks to Honda's U3-X. This self-balancing unicycle relies on an inclinometer instead of gyroscopes to keep the rider balanced. The personal transporter even allows the user to travel forward, back, left, and right thanks to the Honda Omni Traction (HOT) drive system. This automatic unicycle gives a whole new meaning to taking it easy.
Stretta considered investing in a foosball table for his son, and ultimately decided to go the (much more fun) DIY route: a LEGO foosball table. Very nice work:
Just like magic - incredible new project from Sweatshoppe in which video is "painted" onto a wall. Video demonstration below, (don't miss it! absolutely visually amazing).
Yep, just what the headline says. Believe it or not, NTT DoCoMo has showed off "a set of prototype in-ear headphones that can detect and measures changes in the body's electrical state when your eyes move." Forget voice activation, eye gesture recognition is the thing of the future.
Check out Cirque Du Soleil's Oli Lemieux, as well as other performers, training on the trampoline. Kinda blows backyard trampoline tricks out of the water... but you gotta start somewhere. Amazing.
Sweden's Hans Andersson, has a new way of solving both the Rubik's Cube and Sudoku puzzles... ROBOTS. That's right, memorizing lengthy algorithms or racking your brain with numbers is no longer required to solve these perplexing puzzles.
According to Wikipedia, "Sympathetic Resonance is a harmonic phenomenon wherein a formerly passive string or vibratory body responds to external vibrations to which it has a harmonic likeness."
With Facebook and Twitter dominating the world, playing chess opposite a real, touchable person is no longer necessary. With the ChessBot, you can now play on a real chessboard remotely - the next best thing to in-person play.
Crazy! Real working v8 32 valve engine, made completely from LEGOs. Not made from a set, and apparently took about 300 hours to construct. Click through to YouTube description for link to parts list (PDF).
YouTube user Talapz has built a LEGO Pop-up Buddhist temple. Jaw dropping construction. Made from 4500 bricks, the structure is a representation of actual temple Kinkaku-ji (video below):
