I made four of these laser cut music boxes as christmas gifts to my family. The pattern was generated with a Processing script, which I wrote. The lid contains an inlaid Hilbert space-filling curve. On each of the sides is a colorful J, representing each of my four family members (our names all begin with […]

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 […]