DIY

Pucker up! Kissing machine rates your smooches

On a scale of 1 to 8, how are your kisses? You could check in with whomever you're smooching these days -- or you could consult the Kissing Evaluator.

The electronic contraption, built by a team of San Francisco makers, reacts to a couple's canoodles with LED lights and woob woob and bleb bleb noises (a method that's been officially certified by the International Association of Kissing Metrics).

The team built the whimsical device for Red Bull Creation, a national competition that challenges contestants to invent something creative around a piece of hardware -- and then display it in public. Red Bull sent this year's participants a "Turbull Encabulator" circuit board that it designed as a tool for making LED light art, along with RGB LED lights and instructions to "make something awesome." … Read more

Students blast off in egg payload rocket contest

Big rockets like the SpaceX Grasshopper and the Orbital Antares have been in the news lately, but those are a little out of reach for the average student. That's why the Aerospace Industries Association's Team America Rocketry Challenge exists. It fans the maker flames by challenging kids to design, build, and launch model rockets.

The rocket challenge finals took place over the weekend. It was a record year for the competition's turnout, with 725 teams battling through the initial rounds. The top 100 teams participated in the final fly-off in Virginia, representing 29 states with teams from schools, 4-H clubs, and even a team made up of Civil Air Patrol volunteers.

The competition was open to students in grades 7 through 12. All the teams had one goal: build the best model rocket. The challenge was to fly an egg to 750 feet up in the air, and then parachute it back to the ground with no damage. That's even harder than it sounds.… Read more

Home networking Part 7: Power line connections explained

Editors' note: This post is part of an ongoing series. For the other parts, check out the related stories section below.

Power line networking basically turns a building's existing electrical wiring -- the wires that carry electricity to different outlets in the house -- into network cables, meaning they also carry data signals for a computer network. And this means virtually all households, in the U.S at least, are "wired for" power line networking. It doesn't replace a regular network, so you'll still need a router, but it's a good way to extend … Read more

'Pinterest stress' not just for moms?

I don't know exactly when it happened, but I can now say for sure that I live in a Pinterest household. The influence of the digital pinboard has infiltrated numerous aspects of life in the Mack family palace, from our wardrobe to nightly dinners to the bling I've been instructed to install on the door of the oven those dinners are cooked in.

That's right, I'm going to bling out my oven because my wife told me to, because it looked cool to her in a thumbnail on a punnily named social network.

This is not quite the future the Jetsons promised us, but we're living it.

So I was very interested to read the findings of a recent survey about what stresses out American moms. The online survey of more than 7,000 women in the U.S. was conducted by Insight Express/NBC News for TodayMoms.com and revealed one particularly fascinating nugget:

Measuring up to all the cool crafts they see on Pinterest causes stress for 42 percent of moms.

… Read more

Desktop Othermill carves out circuit boards, jewelry

What if you could easily add custom-designed circuits to DIY projects like 3D-printed stuff? Here's a small mill that can churn them out with precision and power.

Othermill is a Kickstarter project that has quickly exceeded its fundraising goal. It's designed to be a portable, desktop three-axis mill that can produce printed circuit boards, jewelry, molds, and other objects.

Conceived by the wizards at San Francisco-based R&D shop Otherfab/Otherlab, known for its crazy inflatable robots, Othermill works with CAD software to cut material in three dimensions. Unlike 3D printing, it cuts material away instead of adding it. … Read more

In Montreal, vintage cigarette machines sell indie art

MONTREAL--For the first time in maybe 20 years, I got a new cassette tape.

It's a bitchin' mix of 1970s funk tunes and it sounds delicious on my car stereo, which fortunately is old enough to be able to play it. But the best thing about this tape is that it came out of a vending machine.

Distroboto is a nonprofit network of machines in Montreal that have been retrofitted to sell works by independent artists. They spit out music, literature, and accessories, all for $2 a pop. … Read more

Giant NES controller table gets the steampunk treatment

There's something about the NES controller that lends itself to supersizing in coffee table form. We've seen more than a few -- the original (as far as we can tell); Baron von Brunk's working Lego version; and a working wooden version for a touch of class.

It's that last one that concerns us today, since its creator -- Charles Lushear, aka Bohemian Workbench -- has just come out with a brand new "steampunk" version, made from salvaged antique parts and wood. … Read more

3D-printed 'Liberator' gun fires first successful shot

A Texas man has become the first person to successfully fire a real bullet from a gun created on a home 3D printer. Sound crazy? In fact, the blueprint for the pistol is available for free online for anyone to access. And it's legal.

University of Texas law student Cody Wilson, 25, released a video of a 3D-printed gun named the "Liberator" taking test shots over the weekend. The gun is mostly made of plastic, with the exception of two metal pieces: a metal firing pin and a 6-ounce piece of steel that's required by law under the Undetectable Firearms Act. Of course, the piece of steel that makes the weapon visible to metal detectors, and legal, can certainly be omitted by future hobbyists.

Wilson invited Forbes reporter Andy Greenberg to witness the trial. Greenberg reports that 15 of the gun's 16 pieces were printed by a Stratasys Dimension SST 3D printer -- the metal firing pin is the 16th piece. … Read more

Expelled girl's 'bomb': Toilet cleaner and foil

People like to claim that education is in crisis.

But it's surely no more in crisis than humanity itself, as it veers toward an unknown future while leering into screens for its solution.

However, Bartow High School in Florida garlanded itself in a particularly educative spirit this week by expelling a 16-year-old girl for putting a couple of chemicals into an 8-ounce water bottle and watching it go bang.

Should this tale not have exploded before your eyes this week, Kiera Wilmot wasn't merely expelled for this misdeed on school premises, she was also charged with felony possession … Read more