Troubleshooter #4: XYZ-Wing This is part of a series on puzzle solving techniques. If you are stuck on a particular Krazydad puzzle, drop me a note, and I’ll use this space to help you out. Michael wrote in an email: Dad, Good morning and an early happy thanksgiving. I really enjoy your puzzles and I […]

Campanello from David Watson on Vimeo. Todd Kurt sent me the link to this very nice electro-mechanical doorbell, designed by David Watson. He provides detailed instructions on his website, along with a few other interesting projects. I’m currently fascinated with such mechanisms, and hope to build something similar using a set of tuned desk bells […]

Chris Harrison, a PH.D. student at Carnegie Mellon, has put together a really nice set of visualizations, often involving words, such as the color flower shown here. The rest of his website is full of some very cool research/fun projects as well. link

Th new mobile app Astro Cantus plays the stars like a music-box, much like my own 2009 piece, Wheel of Stars. There are a few differences, however (I don’t doubt that it was conceived independently). Astro Cantus classifies the stars into 7 discrete pitch classes (based on spectral type), which gives the music a more […]

Improv Everywhere‘s Charlie Todd gives a wonderful TED talk on two of my favorite subjects: wonder and delight.

For the past four years, Ranjit Bhatnagar has done something awesome every February: He builds an instrument a day for the entire month. One of my favorites is this 8-bit violin. On his site, you’ll find some great videos of the violin being played by experts. Ranjit has been doing this for a while, and […]

I recently posted a tutorial on how to draw circles, spirals and fibonacci spirals (that pattern you see on sunflowers). I thought it would be only fair to post this critique of the notion of the “golden ratio”, in which mathematical curmudgeon Donald Simanek takes sacred geometers to task for overstating the importance and pervasiveness […]