tech@vedella

A prisoner in Wales made these astounding Final Fantasy weapons out of toothpicks, only to have them confiscated because they were so realistic that the prison authorities felt that they constituted a threat to safety. It's this kind of dogged, enthusiastic creativity that makes dinners with my Welsh in-laws so exciting! Prisoner Builds Final Fantasy [...]

Mister Jalopy says, "Coco's sells beechwood, made in Germany Kum pencil sharpeners for $1 each [left]. I knew Kum had been around for about 100 years, but I did not know they made the most awesome pencil sharpener in the entire world [right]." Kum pencil sharpeners

Phil Torrone says: This week for my bi-weekly MAKE soapbox column, I thought I’d share some of my notes I’ve jotted down recently about making things, working with and supporting beginners. Lately, I’ve been thinking about how much fun it is when you’re a beginner at something as opposed to being an “expert.” At some [...]

Seventeen Evergreen - Polarity Song from Lucky Number Music on Vimeo. [Video Link] (Thanks, Jim!)

Inspired by the skateboard-truck lazy-susan table I blogged last year, Instructables user Wilgubeast has produced a HOWTO for replicating it for about $70, excluding the glass: "Think of the possibilities: Play board games where nobody has to look at the board upside-down. Bring the remote within reach without getting up from the couch. Epic tea [...]

Echo Park's much loved Machine Project offers art, classes and civilized mayhem from Experimental Millinery and Bookbinding to Flame Effects (read: giant fireballs) and Sewing 101. Annually, a month's worth of epic programming is compressed into a single night's party. At this year's benefit, DMV: After Dark, you will experience such phenomena as: car horn [...]

Simon Garfield offers his selection of the eight worst fonts in the world. Comic Sans is not included on grounds of lifetime achievement, but loathed classic Papyrus and Trajan make good showings. The winner is London's 2012 Olympic Font, which fits in well with the event's draughtmanship-free "blowjob Lisa" logo and "default shapes in the [...]

Jon Kalish reports on DIY sous vide immersion cookers. (In a recent issue of MAKE magazine, we ran a how-to article on building a sous vide cooker for about $75. Here are the full instructions. ) Sous vide cooking was once the province of chefs at fancy restaurants and home cooks willing to shell out [...]

Meara O'Reilly says: Open Source Ecology is a network of farmers, engineers, and supporters building the Global Village Construction Set -- a modular, DIY, low-cost, open source, high-performance platform that allows for the easy fabrication of the 50 different industrial machines that it takes to build a small, sustainable civilization with modern comforts. They've launched a Kickstarter here.   [...]

Above left is Welsh surgeon Sir John Williams who has long been suspected of being Jack the Ripper. Above right is a knife that Sir John's great-great-great-great nephew, Tony Williams, found that he claims is the Ripper's weapon. The story is in his book, Uncle Jack - A Victorian Mystery. From The Telegraph: He found [...]

Aquaria, one of my favorite indie games of recent years, is now out for iPad. [Thanks, Adam!]

Chris Watson was a founder of the seminal 1970s experimental music/performance art group Cabaret Voltaire who has since become a highly-respected ambient sound recordist for television, film, and radio. More than a decade ago, Watson spent a month on a train traveling across Mexico with a BBC TV crew documenting the Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México's [...]

Sophie Madeleine "Oil & Gold" - Live at the Loft from Indaba Music on Vimeo. [Video Link] Shown here, for the first time anywhere, is this wonderful video of Sophie Madeleine performing "Oil & Gold." It was shot at the the Indaba Music offices in New York. Sophie says, "You may already be acquainted with [...]

The Scuttlefish, former-Gizmodo editor Brian Lam's newish blog about all things awesomely ocean, is looking for writers and interns.

A delightfully creepy, interesting, and real tale on the latest Memory Palace podcast. Host Nate Dimeo says, "1893: a sad dad's neighbors convince him that his dead daughter is a vampire who's after the blood of his other children. Bodies are exhumed, hearts removed, teas are made from ashes, unsurprisingly, none of this cures tuberculosis. [...]

Sathorn Unique is a 50-story skyscraper in Bangkok that was meant to be a luxury living address but now it's totally abandoned and decaying. Cory posted about this Ballardian behemoth earlier this year. BB contributor Chris Arkenberg saw the building from a boat several years ago and was so inspired that he made a killer [...]

This is why whale watchers are warned to stay 100 yards away from whale feeding areas. Or, as National Geographic's Sven Lindblad put it, "Note to self: Avoid kayaking among schooling herring or sardines." Video Link

Book industry art director Peter Mendelsund was a judge in a book jacket contest. One of the entries, a proposed cover for Nabokov's Lolita (above left), inspired Mendelsund to write an essay about the historical approaches to jacketing this particularly "complicated" book. So what’s a designer to do? Does a designer attempt a (truly) shocking [...]

Two assholes in Georgia dropped some acid, ran naked in the streets, and dosed their pet dachsund "Oscar" (at left), who they'd just picked up only days earlier from a Georgia animal shelter. The disoriented and dosed doggie wandered into traffic and was struck dead by a car. I'm all for consenting adults having whatever [...]