Cool toys and Gadgets

Yet another day and yet another fake creation from the land of cloned phones, but we must agree that many of these Chinese phones prove to be better than the real ones. It’s the Barbie P520 clamshell phone this time that shares the looks of Mattel’s Barbie B2 mp3 player. Anyway, this one is not a sponsored product of Mattel. The most interesting part is that the pink heart shaped box even bears the tag line that reads “Barbie Music Phone.” The Barbie P520 phone doesn’t look phony by any means when it comes to technical specifications. The phone measures 60 × 63 × 21mm and weighs 110 grams.

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Photograph by Kim Dow

Scott Wade of San Marcos, Texas, thought he could do better than write "Wash Me" on the backside of a dusty car. He started drawing caricatures. His father was a cartoonist of sorts and had taught him to draw funny faces. It was Wade's idea to make a dirty car window his canvas.

"For the last 20 years living on a dirt road," he says, "there's always dirt on my car."

With the sun baking it, the dirt takes about two weeks to form a stable work surface. Wade began, like anyone else, by using his finger, and then tried popsicle sticks. To introduce shading, he decided to use brushes. Over time he developed a range of techniques, which included using plants and rubber paint-shaper tools.

Wade particularly likes the dirt of central Texas, where crushed limestone mixed with clay serves as a road base.

"It makes the perfect dirt," he says. "It's very light-colored and the contrast is great against the dark shadow inside the car."

As he got more requests to create his Dirty Car he realized that he had to figure out how to dust up a car himself. Now, he can prepare a car in minutes using a light coating of oil and pyro-lite, a less toxic alternative to fuller's earth.

At the Austin Maker Faire in 2007 (& 2008), Wade dusted up his Toyota and created Monsters from the Movies, featuring the Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman. The next day he painted a tribute to Willie Nelson that included Waylon Jennings. "After a good rain," he says, "it appears to wash off, but in a couple days it comes back in a ghostly form."

Recently, he was asked to draw Biff Henderson for the David Letterman show. In addition to portraits, he enjoys dusting up the old masters. "I have this grandiose idea of parking cars all the way up the ramp of the Guggenheim Museum and painting in dirt reproductions of the pieces that are on the wall next to it."

>> Dirty Car Art: dirtycarart.com

From the column Made on Earth - MAKE 14, page 23 - Dale Dougherty.

Rachel Hobson @ CRAFT writes:

Jeffery Ruddell over at CraftStylish has done it again! All of his paper projects leave me swooning, but - honestly - often leave me feeling a little intimidated. His latest project, though, is right at my speed and would actually be fun to tackle with my kids. He's made a gorgeous snowstorm garland that uses two very simple supplies: dental floss and white circle stickers from the office supply store. This makes me want to try the same idea with colored circles to string around my tree...

A lot of people who own MacBooks tend to want to show them off. However, if you’re finding you need to protect your precious MacBook Air from bumps and scratches, you might be interested in the U-Suit Case.

The U-Suit covers up your MacBook Air and keeps it protected. However, it looks remarkably like a Dell Inspiron, doesn’t it? Kind of strange, don’t you think? But hey, at least you can still see the Apple insignia poking through the clear part.

Make by Uniea, the U-Suit Premium is available in both red and black color options. It is resistant to scratches and can hold up against most impacts. You can get this case now for $69.95, which is quite expensive, but most computers are an investment, so this can just go toward securing it further for you.

[via Chip Chick]

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OMG. I love these Photoshopped portraits of the original Enterprise crew as Victorians!

Victorian / Steampunk Star Trek Wallpapers

More:

• Steam-Wars LEGO contest
• R2-S2 (R2 Steam Too) - The steam powered R2-D2

The Instructables book has a nice little write up in the NYTimes! Penelope Green writes-

The duct tape roses I made over Thanksgiving were fetching (until they were gummed by the cat), but post-turkey lethargy prevented me from digging into the meatiest projects in “The Best of Instructables” (Make: Books; $34.99). One example: the concrete light bulb wall hook, described as “an excellent excuse for driving a lag bolt into your wall” by its inventor, Ray Alderman. He and it are emblematic of the instructables universe, a blogging community of do-it-yourself-ers, robot-makers, food hackers and techno-geeks who share their crafty ways at Make magazine and Instructables (makezine.com and instructables.com), sometimes selling the finished products on etsy.com, the online bazaar for handmade things.

So, you’ve been waiting for the iPhone to hit Walmart, so you can stock up on paper towels, buy a DVD and throw an iPhone in your squeaky cart all at once. Well you’re in luck assuming you didn’t get killed by greedy shoppers during black Friday. Looks like Apple will begin selling the iPhone at Wal-Marts on December 28th.

Wal-Mart employees are apparently already receiving training on iPhone activation. Today Boy Genius Report claims that Apple may be reintroducing the 4GB iPhone to be sold at Wal-Mart for only $99 with a two year contract. They aren’t completely confident about the report, so it should be taken with a grain of salt. However, the Walmart training materials pictured above have been seen so that suggests there is some truth to it.

A $99 iPhone at Walmart. Who would have thought?

[Macrumors]

The "Solar Paper Latern" is made from 36 miniature solar panels with each connected up to an electroluminescent diode. The resulting light can remain on indefinitely, as long as the panels are near a spot of strong sun exposure.

Solar Paper Lantern by Damien 0'Sullivan @ Saint Etienne Design Triennial

SSRN-Music and the Market: Song and Stock Volatility by Philip Maymin... via Waxy & Kedrosky.... Philip writes-

I compare the annual average beat variance of the songs in the US Billboard Top 100 since its inception in 1958 through 2007 to the standard deviation of returns of the S&P 500 for the same year and find that they are significantly negatively correlated. With the recent high stock volatility, people should now prefer less volatile music. Furthermore, the beat variance appears able to predict future market volatility, producing 2.5 volatility points of profit per year on average.

Video technology sure has come a long way in the past 30 years. In the early days the first video recorders used by TV production crews were large quad decks about the size of refrigerator lying on its back and recorded video onto 2-inch wide videotape. Now you can easily find camcorders that fit in your pocket and even shoot high-definition video. This holiday season millions of people will give and receive some form of video, whether it's a LCD TV, video game system, camcorder or other device. Why not consider giving the gift of video in the form of a fun and practical project that can be found in the pages of Make Magazine? Here is just a sampling of some of the video related gifts and resources you can find in the pages of Make and the Maker Shed. Happy Video Holidays!