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Colin’s toolbox.

Collin Cunningham posted another episode of Collin’s Lab detailing his basic electronic toolkit.

I’m doing pretty good, just missing good tweezers, a hemostat, tin snips, desoldering tool and magnifying visor.

Engineer Guy

I’ve been enjoying Bill “Engineer Guy” Hammack’s videos. In his videos, he everyday technology from an engineer’s perspective. Here are a couple of my favorites:

Fluidity for WiiWare

Fluidity on Nintendo’s WiiWare may be best game I’ve played all year. My only criticism is that the plot is thin – the main character is a puddle, supporting cast is a book and the enemies are flaming slugs made of ink. However, Fluidity is a puzzle game. The plot doesn’t need to be strong, the puzzles do. I’ve only played for 2 and half hours so far, but in that time no two puzzles were alike.

Synchronized Crashing

Start the first video. Nine seconds in, press play on the second video and watch a hang glider pilot crash from 2 different angles. Be warned, there is some cursing.

Explore Motor City

I forget where I found this video series, but it appeals to the Bohemian in me. Johnny Knoxville drives around Detroit showing that despite (because of?) all the decay, young artists and musicians and makers of things are moving back into the city and creating wonderful work in ways they wouldn’t be able to anywhere else.

DIY: Prototyping fundamentals from MIT’s AI Lab

MIT’s Tech TV has a great series of videos demonstrating the tools and equipment used in their Artificial Inteligence Lab’s machine shop. The video below is 40 minutes long, but they have hours more where this came from.

DIY: Make Presents Electronic Components

If you watched the NASA soldering videos that I posted earlier and you’re now wondering what sort of things a person should be soldering, check out the Make Presents video series. Make contributor Collin Cunningham’s geeky explanation and exploration of various electronic components is both entertaining and educational.

Here is a Youtube playlist with all the Make Presents videos.

DIY: Solder like an astronaut

NASA has a series of 6 very short videos explaining and demonstrating basic soldering techniques on their Radio Jove site. Well worth checking out if you need to solder electronics but have no clue what you’re doing.

Kick-Ass Teaser Trailer

I saw this posted over at BoingBoing and after making my coworkers sit through it 4 times in 10 minutes decided I had to repost. The red band “mature audiences only” is for violence and a 12 year old girl using foul language. You have been warned.

Crystal Head Vodka

Check out this video of Dan Aykroyd promoting Crystal Head Vodka. This unique spirit is quadruple distilled, triple filtered and then “filtered” through Herkimer diamonds. It comes in a crystal skull shaped bottle, which Dan describes in greater detail in the video. The sales pitch is 8 minutes long, but at 5 minutes in they start focusing on vodka rather then ghosts and mystery.

If you’re interested in how good the vodka is, see John Hodgman’s video review after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »