News and Updates from WonderHowTo: Page 189

Grannies aren't the only crochet artists out there.

Gliding + falconry = parahawking, a unique and exhilarating experience. Birds (vultures, eagles, hawks) are trained to "guide" a paraglider through thermals (columns of rising air in the lower altitudes of the Earth's atmosphere which provide large, soaring lifts). The birds also perform incredible acrobatic maneuvers. Developed by British falconer Scott Mason in 2001, Nepal is the home base for the sport.

There are many NES mods on the internet, but this one is pretty awesome.

Vive Cool City (a crew of raucous Aussies who decided to make internet TV) tour the world featuring marvels, oddities, and cultural anomalies. This particular episode features Minoru, veteran Yo-yo World Champion. This dude is good. Skip ahead approximately half way through to see his moves.

Diego Stocco is back (previously, the incredible Music From a Tree). This time Stocco has created the experibass:

Travis Pastrana is an extreme sports nut, competing (and winning) X Games events such as motocross, freestyle motocross, supercross, and rally racing. In this Thrillbillies clip, Pastrana flips a big wheel at incredible speed over a 50-foot stretch (while donning a pinstripe suit). What an insane dude!

From Wikipedia,

University of Tokyo and MIT join forces to create a high speed, three fingered, robot pitcher. From Pink Tentacle:

Light-weight, tiny, and easily doable, Mark Jurey's penny stove instructional demonstrates how to make a sleekly simple (and cheap) camping stove.

Yikes. This kid is nuts.

VIDEOGIOCO, an insane animation by Donato Sanson and Enrico Ascoli. Careful. Definitely NSFW, particularly in the 0:30 range.

iRobot released their new soft blob morphing robot this past Tuesday. The amazing shape-shifter has the ability to squeeze through tiny crevices.

Allegedly the world's smallest model train, Stan's Trains' TY-Scale train is built at the scale of 1:900.

Justin Quinnell has created a series of pinhole photographs taken from the perspective of an open mouth. Pinholes can be disposable, flexible and pretty simple to make. Play around and see what kind of interesting perspectives you can come up with...

Sorry Nissan Land Glider, the BMW Simple makes you look like a Granny car. This prototype truly feels like a car and motorcycle combined (plus it bears an amazing resemblance to the Tron light cycle).

Beatboxing flutist, Greg Pattillo, burst onto the YouTube scene circa 2007, racking up over 20 million views for his performance videos. Patillo has garnered world recognition for his skills, as well as attention from the New York Times:

Real life transformer, OmniZero, can climb a ladder, perform somersaults, jump rope, crack eggs, battle other robots, and best of all, carry a person. Witness all of these actions of the various OmniZero prototypes in the video gallery below.

Korean artist Osang Gwon creates more than just alluring paper-made girls.

From Wildwood Survival, how to make fire with a condom and water. Okay, so article author Rob Bicevskis doesn't use a condom (he suggests any kind of "plastic wrap"), but I think a condom makes it a little more fun. Nicely photographed how-to, click through for the text steps. Additional fire-condom How-To video further down.

Skip Conversions = guerilla art + recycling + creative urban upcycling. My three favorites below (particularly the pool, which literally interprets the term "dumpster diving").

MIT scientist explains OLEDs by electrocuting a pickle.

First thing's first. Remember Pee Wee's amazing breakfast machine? For those who missed out, watch (best YouTube version dubbed in Italian):

No joke. This is not an Onion headline. This coming Friday, October 9th, NASA is actually planning on bombing the moon in search for water. The missile, a Centaur rocket, will blast off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, aiming at the moon's South Pole. Scientists will then analyze the debris from the explosion for traces of water ice or vapor.

At WonderHowTo we've drowned and revived a fly, we've flown fly-powered aircrafts, and now we are inspired to make our own Dead-Fly-Art.

This past weekend Berlin celebrated the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall with a visit from France's Royal de Luxe street theatre company.

Make your own version of the $1500 Qlocktwo, a clock that literally spells out the time for you.

Nerd out with Won Park's Star Wars/Star Trek dollar-gami. More images on DVice.

Girls Gone Grabblin', the deep South's spin on Girls Gone Wild. Young girls diving underwater, sticking their hands into the unknown, and pulling up giant catfish. These have to be some of the coolest girls on earth.

Easy as 1-2-3... Print, fold and start taking pictures. Free download and instructions for the Czechoslovakian designed Dirkon camera here. The Dirkon uses 35mm film and takes hazy, blurred, highly saturated pictures typical of the pinhole format. Image examples below.

British artist Richard Wilson's "Turning The Place Over" holds affinities to Gordon Matta-Clark's site specific "building cuts" from the seventies. Wilson created a rotating cut facade, which reveals the building's interior with each turn.

Foldschool offers free download plans to create 3 different cardboard chairs. Each chair is designed by Swiss-based architect Nicola Enrico Stäubli. Design conscious & cheap, folding-it-yourself is a fun, cheap alternative to a trip to Ikea.

Nik Ramage creates low tech, absurd mechanical objects that perform mundane every-day tasks (from blowing out candles to walking down the street to drumming your fingers out of boredom). Click through to Ramage's site to see more of his work. Five of his pieces below:

This amazing ball catching robot named TOTO (Tracking of Thrown Objects) has been built to speed up "fully automated production systems...where parts will be transported between workstations by robotic throwing and catching".

Every explosive loving, thrill seeking, roller coaster junkie's childhood dream: the jet powered merry-go-round. This steam punk inspired machine is brought to you by Brooklyn-based arts collective The Madagascar Institute. More images below the video.

We've featured Temporary Services before, but we thought they deserved a full spread. In this post, we've included some of their How-To drawings and examples of recreated prison art.

Insekten!, test shots using Canon macro lenses and the Canon 5D Mark II, by YouTube user Powermaennchen.

According to the Telegraph's interview with world record setting bubbleologist (who knew such a thing existed?!) Samsam Bubbleman, "It's all about having the right bubble solution. If you have the right mixture then your tools don't matter..."

Wikipedia's definition of dice stacking:

Going green doesn't mean we have to give up classic American traditions like Monster Truck rallies. This cute little Smart car was converted into a Monster Truck by Greek rally champ, Stefan Attart.

According to Wikipedia, to be called "the Stradivari" of any field is to be deemed the finest there is...