Author Archives: Adam Fabio

Fail of the Week: Engine Flips Out

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A few weeks ago an incredible video of an engine exploding started making the rounds on Facebook. This particular engine was thankfully in a dyno room, rather than sitting a couple of feet away from a driver on a track. We’ve all seen engine carnage videos before, but this one stands out. This diesel engine literally rips itself apart, with the top half of the engine flipping and landing on one side of the room while the bottom half sits still spinning on the dyno frame.

Building performance engines is part science, part engineering, and part hacking. While F1 racing …read more

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Henrietta Lacks and Immortal Cell Lines

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In early 1951, a woman named Henrietta Lacks visited the “colored ward” at Johns Hopkins hospital for a painful lump she found on her cervix. She was seen by Dr. Howard W. Jones, who indeed found a tumor growing on the surface of her cervix. He took a tissue sample, which confirmed Henrietta’s worst fears: She had cancer.

The treatment at the time was to irradiate the tumor with radium tubes placed in and around the cervix. The hope was that this would kill the cancerous cells while preserving the healthy tissue. Unbeknownst to Henrietta, a biopsy was taken during …read more

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The Secret of Twinkling Christmas Lights

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With the holidays over, many of us are braving the elements to take down all those holiday lights. LED lights have largely taken over the market, but in some places, you can still get classic incandescent bulbs. There are some effects that LEDs can’t quite mimic yet. One of those is the magic of “twinkling” light sets, which [Alec Watson] explains in a Technology Connections video. Everyone has seen bulbs that flash, and strings that dim. But the twinkle effect until recently has been hard to describe.

Typical flashing bulbs use a bimetallic strip. As the filament of the bulb …read more

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The Secret of Twinkling Christmas Lights

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With the holidays over, many of us are braving the elements to take down all those holiday lights. LED lights have largely taken over the market, but in some places, you can still get classic incandescent bulbs. There are some effects that LEDs can’t quite mimic yet. One of those is the magic of “twinkling” light sets, which [Alec Watson] explains in a Technology Connections video. Everyone has seen bulbs that flash, and strings that dim. But the twinkle effect until recently has been hard to describe.

Typical flashing bulbs use a bimetallic strip. As the filament of the bulb …read more

Continue reading The Secret of Twinkling Christmas Lights→

Why Sony’s Trinitron Tubes Were the Best

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If you’re old enough to remember Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) Televisions, you probably remember that Sony sold the top products. Their Trinitron tubes always made the best TVs and Computer Monitors. [Alec Watson] dives into the history of the Sony Trinitron tube.

Sony Color TVs didn’t start with Trinitron — for several years, Sony sold Chromatron tubes. Chromatron tubes used individually charged wires placed just behind the phosphor screen. The tubes worked, but they were expensive and didn’t offer any advantage over common shadow mask tubes. It was clear the company had to innovate, and thanks to some creative engineering, …read more

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How Hackerspaces Spend Money

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Running a hackerspace is no easy task. One of the biggest issues is money — how to collect in dues and donations, managing it, and how to spend it. Everyone has different interests and would like to see the budget go to their favorite project or resource. Milwaukee Makerspace has come up with a novel way to handle this. Members pay $40 a month in dues. $35 of that goes into the general budget. The member themselves can pick where the last $5 goes.

Using the hackerspace’s software, members chose where their $5 goes each month. It can all be …read more

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Toy R/C Car Upgrade to Hobby Grade Parts

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[HobbyPartz] wanted his toy grade Radio Controlled (R/C) to drive a bit more like the real thing, so he upgraded it to hobby grade electronics.

If you didn’t know, there’s a pecking order in the R/C world. There are the toy grade cars which you can find at your local big box store, and the hobby grade cars, which grace the shelves of the local hobby shop. Toy cars often come with great looking shells – Corvettes, Lamborghinis, Porsches,  or even Ferraris. It often seems like the manufacturer spent all their money licensing and molding the shell though because the …read more

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34C3: North Korea’s Consumer Technology

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[Will Scott] and [Gabe Edwards] shed some light on the current state of consumer computing technology at 34C3 in their talk DPRK Consumer Technology. The pair has also created a website to act as a clearinghouse for this information — including smartphone OS images up at koreaComputerCenter.org.

Not a whole lot is known about what technology North Korean citizens have available to them. We have seen Red Star OS, the Mac-like Linux based operating system used on PC based desktops. But what about other systems like smartphones?

[Will] and [Gabe] found that cell phones in North Korea are typically manufactured …read more

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Sound Isolated Server Rack

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Servers are most often found in climate controlled data centers. This means they aren’t exactly built for creature comforts like quiet operation. Quite the contrary — many server chassis include fans which absolutely scream when the machine is under load. [Whiskykilo] needed to set up a 12 U rack in his basement for working from home. He knew the sound would get on anyone’s nerves, but especially on those of his wife.

To solve this problem, he built a sound isolated rack. The build started with a standard 12 U metal rack frame. This is wrapped in 1/2″ MDF coated …read more

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Rubik’s Cube Table has A Hidden Surprise

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[Nothorwitzer] built a pretty incredible Rubik’s Cube table with hidden storage. The coolest feature of this table is the way it opens. Twisting the top section of the cube causes two drawers to pop out from the sides. The further you turn the top, the more the drawers extend. As the top hits its rotational limit, the lid of the cube lifts up, revealing the entire top section is hollow.

[Nothorwitzer] built the table from plywood, hardboard, and MDF. Hiding inside the base is an old car wheel hub and bearing. The entire rotating system spins on this assembly. The …read more

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