Fabrication

The MythBusters are at it again.

In a tweet this morning, Adam Savage, co-host of the hit Discovery Channel show, said that he and his co-conspirator, Jamie Hyneman, have gotten the green light to produce their new "sooper secret project," "Unchained Reaction."

According to Deadline Hollywood, Savage and Hyneman will executive produce the new Discovery Channel show and serve as judges on what will be a six-part series. The show will pit "two teams of varying backgrounds--artists, rocket scientists, animatronic specialists, engineers, and even your average Joes--against each other to build an elaborate chain reaction … Read more

Imagine: You're walking down the street at night. You turn a corner, and suddenly, coming your way, you see someone with "Avatar" playing on their jacket.

It's a futuristic notion, but according to the folks at open-source hardware maker Adafruit Industries, it's one that's just months away.

That's because Adafruit has just unveiled Flora, its brand-new Arduino and Arduino-compatible wearable electronics platform. Designed to give anyone the ability to craft a matrix of up to hundreds or someday, more than 1,000 small LED "pixels," Flora is meant to make it possible to easily craft custom wearable multi-LED pixel designs perfect for art events like Burning Man, or even the streets of whatever town you live in. … Read more

Here at Geek Gestalt, every day is different. The world of geek culture is broad--sometimes bewilderingly so. A typical year's coverage can easily include stories on everything from Burning Man to Lego, aviation to 3D printing, NASA to tech startups, MythBusters to Pixar movies, and so on.

That makes coming up with predictions for next year in culture a difficult task--but we're here to serve, so that's just we're offering. Of course, trying to settle on just five ideas for 2012 means leaving a lot of things out.

Still, prognosticating culture's next steps meant talking … Read more

I've been going to Burning Man for many years, and each time I've struggled to figure out a good way to make a home in the desert that's shaded, ventilated, stylish, and comfortable.

Over the years, I've tried nearly everything: tent, carport, dome, truck, RV, van, and combinations of all of the above. And I've even finally gotten to the point of making a space that I feel proud calling my living room. People come to visit, there's room for plenty of seating, and if someone wants to make dinner, they can do it. … Read more

It's not often that two world-famous TV stars drop by your house, but then again, it's not often that cannonballs come flying through your walls either.

On Wednesday, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, MythBusters hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman personally stopped by to apologize to the residents of the Dublin, Calif., house that crew members of their show had accidentally hit with their cannon fire a day earlier.

In a tweet this afternoon, Savage addressed the situation. "It's true, a cannonball got away from a Mythbusters experiment in Dublin, CA," Savage tweeted first. &… Read more

Cannonballs into people's houses. Blown-out windows. Electric shocks. Goat-kicks to the groin. Welcome to the "MythBusters."

If you think the now-famous MythBusters cannonball mishap is the only example of things going wrong at the hit TV show, you haven't been paying attention.

It turns out there's no shortage of examples of accidents, injuries, and even damaging explosions resulting from the show's countless attempts to bust myths (See videos at the end of this blog post). As co-host Adam Savage once put it, "MythBusters" is "four minutes of science, and 10 minutes … Read more

The robots have arrived.

This morning, My Robot Nation officially launched, offering customers around the world the ability to design the droid of their dreams--and have it quickly 3D printed and sent to them.

Note: Please come back tomorrow for a behind-the-scenes story looking at how My Robot Nation's founders spent launch day.

A month ago, as reported first by CNET, the service launched into beta, and for the first time, people in the U.S., Canada, and Europe were able to use My Robot Nation's simple Web-based design tools to craft their own miniature robots. Since then, hundreds of people have done so, and within days, each got delivery of a package containing a ceramic-like figurine meant to be displayed wherever buyers like to show off their small collectibles. … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--For people like Sarah Reinertsen, one of the many downsides of having a prosthetic leg is that there's never been a fashionable way to dress it up.

But for Reinertsen, a record-setting triathlete, and others including a growing number of combat veterans, a startup called Bespoke Innovations is forever changing the way they feel about themselves and how the world looks at them.

Bespoke was founded by industrial designer Scott Summit and orthopedist Kenneth Trauner. The company's initial products are what are known as fairings--3D printed prosthetic leg covers that are each one-of-a-kind and designed for and … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--You may not know CAD, but if you've got a computer, you can now start creating 3D models.

That's the idea behind 123D Catch and 123D Make, two new free software applications that Autodesk is planning on releasing on Monday. The two programs join the company's existing iPad app, 123D Sculpt, as part of a family of tools that are intended to give just about anyone the ability not just to make their own 3D designs, but also to get them produced as real, physical models.

Autodesk unveiled the two new applications at a press event … Read more