Wednesday Confusion Post: Outages, Star ...

Solar botics
November 14, 2012

Some quick heads-up: Apparently the road to recovery in New York is still fairly rough, and as a result our datacenter company is facing some intermittent outages. We appreciate your patience while our site fights off the hiccups.

Random piece of information: did you know the collective nouns for a group of weasels include boogle, gang, pack, and confusion? And for today's word of the day, class,  we are going to go with confusion, because this is what today's post is. Yeah, the links are still cool, and, yes, it is Wednesday, but the monster hybrid post today will consist of weasels! Actually, it won't. BUT we will be making some kind of funky hybrid post, including the cool links, the outage notice above and the announcement of a new and shiny RGB Star Controller that seems to be all the rage these days. Check it out:

Star Controller - 3 Watt RGB Star LED Controller Kit
$22.00
The larger 3 watt RGB LEDs are very bright and colorful, but if you don't get the power just right - POOF! Now your RGB is R(nothin')B. The Star Controller tames this LED so you can power it up with 5 to 12V and use any regular 5V signal to control each channel!

And to add to the confusion, check out these videos of the Star Controller in action:

Now on with the links, the sole stronghold of common sense, protection against numerous confusions (of weasels), the last bastion against the forces of chaos. (*drumroll cue*) - LINKS!

World’s First 3D Printing Photo Booth to Open in Japan
Would you like a miniature 3D printed version of you? Choose from 10, 15 or 20cm tall, the smallest costing about $260. Not much for an instant 3D photo! Just make sure the figure doesn't get into some voodoo magic practitioners' hands...
Oak Myth Masks with a Laser Cutter
A mesmerizing video of laser-cutting leather to produce some cool masks. Good the video doesn't conduct the not-so-mesmerizing smell of burning leather...
Want to Generate Energy? Go Fly a Kite
Sitting on a windy beach in California, flying my smallish 1.3M parafoil made me wonder what it would take to use a kite to generate power. Ah, here we go - attach it to a rail system in Germany!
RoboBrrd
We've known Erin for a while, and she's truly passionate about the RoboBrrd, a fun laser-cut DIY project to learn the essentials of sensors and robotics. Visit her Indiegogo campaign for more detail!

Aaaand we're really excited to announce that this is everything for today! No more confusions! We'll be back with a boogle of cool stuff on Friday… Or Thursday… Next week...

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