DIYs & Mods

The Space Shuttle Program, which employs five thousand people and comprises more than a quarter of NASA infrastructure, is set to end in early 2011. How to commemorate the program that has defined manned spaceflight for more than thirty years? How about with an astronaut-helmet tea cozy!

Digital filmmaker Fran�ois Vautier installed an ant colony in his scanner and scanned it every week for five years. The movie he made of the results is fairly astonishing. It's high-tech ruin porn at insect scale.

Artist and technologist Aram Bartholl is mortaring USB drives into brick walls and curbstones throughout New York City and inviting people to use them to share files. His "Dead Drops" project offers a glimpse of a utopian, DIY darknet in RL.

An explanation for the spectacular missile contrail that appeared in the Los Angeles sky last night continues to prove elusive. Amidst the speculation, a benign possibility suggests itself: could it be that someone got carried away while trying to earn Scouting's space exploration merit badge?

Last year, John Savio, Apple fanboy and avid Halloween fan, created an iPhone 3GS costume that impressed the geek community. It was both a thing of beauty and yet somehow aesthetically ‘off.’ He incorporated a display that made the costume look like a functioning device, but the form factor was all wrong. The corners were too squared… the width too ...

Ray Tanaka and his team over at PayPal Labs constructed this PayPal Vending Machine, unveiling it at PayPal X Innovate 2010. The machine melds together a zeitgeist of gadgets to allow smartphones to scan a QR code and make a PayPal payment. Once a payment is made, the machine tweets your purchase and notifies you with a confirmation display. Tanaka ...

It’s a curious thing, physics. It’s everywhere around us, yet without an education of its every function and reaction, most of us don’t see it, or at least acknowledge it. We know it’s there, but we’re immune to its actual nature. For instance, something as simple as peeling a piece of Scotch tape off of the roll. Most people would ...

Ben Heck, expert modder and webshow host, is at it again with his newest creation, the Real-Life Portal T-Shirt. By modifying the shirt with “a chest-mounted LCD screen and a back-mounted CCD camera,” Heck created a t-shirt which puts a hole through your belly, right where the cake would have been if it weren’t a lie. Ben shows off his ...

An Australian carpenter-cabinetmaker took his talents to the automotive world with his custom DIY Ferrari V12 engine which is completely made out of carved wood. Weighing around 55 lbs, the wooden V12 is an exact replica of the actual Ferrari engine, down to every last wooden spark plug. Of course, the engine is not functional, so don’t try to strap ...

This week in cheap Stormtrooper costume ideas, we examine Jason’s Stormtrooper trash bin helmet, an idea he was forced to employ after a student of� his promised to lend him a costume for a school event, yet failed to deliver. In a blind panic, Jason grabbed the closest object within arm’s reach and improvised. Here is what you’ll need according ...