Have you’ve ever arrived at your desk and felt a sudden onset of ‘MY DESK IS SO BEIGE’ horror flood over you? It’s not uncommon. It’s why we put charts of conversion tables and part number inventories on the wall… then shriek in horror again when that makes it all worse. You need some COLOR. Not in a pillow, crossstich, or fancy afgan. But in a 3D printed Steampunk Vacuum Tube display. Joe Stubbs is a steampunk superstar and his latest project is an amalgamation of electronics, programming, 3D printing, and artistic painting/airbrushing. It doesn’t hold any supreme powers (or practical utility for that matter) but it will add some…

The pizza has been delivered, the ale is chilled, and you’re just about ready to get floored with this week’s SolidSmack Weekend Reader. The Weekend Reader is your In-shorts Reader and gives you a glimpse of the most interesting articles featured on the ‘Smack’. A recap of the week that was, and a glimpse of what you should be chewing on – figuratively, of course. It Took 400,000 LEGO Bricks to Make This Volkswagon Camper Van (with Sliding Door) The world is never short of life-size LEGO vehicles. We’ve seen a static Chevrolet Silverado Pickup Truck, a road-worthy LEGO Bugatti Chiron which can hit a roaring 12 MPH (20 KPH), and now, we…

It was a vast crucible of beetles and malarky–the two things you were always aware of but never wanted to see combined. Somehow they had been joined together. And the indescribable horror they produced shuttered all hope, save for the light chain rays, if we could but reach them, of these ventricle-expanding links. Jerome Comentale – Green pastures, floating sky islands, vast landscapes. Behold the king, and while he does that, take in the breathtaking views of this artist from Nantes, France. BIG IN JAPAN IPA – Just absolutely brilliant SingleCut introduces beer that brings music to your ears. Each BIG IN JAPAN IPA label features visual clues for a rock song that…

You may know them primarily as a car company, but did you know Nissan also made self-parking chairs? It’s true and you can file this under, “Tech we need NOW.” Back in 2016, Nissan launched the Intelligent Parking Chair – a seat which incorporates the company’s patented Intelligent Parking Assist technology (most commonly found in their cars) and harnesses it to store itself back under the table or desk from where it once came: Watching a small army of chairs march themselves back after a long meeting looks just as creepy as it sounds. How does it work? By strategically placing four WiFi-enabled motion detecting cameras on a room’s ceiling,…

If you’ve felt like the product dev community options are lacking or if your last project design community is messin’ with your emotions, there’s hope yet for you and your precious project collaboration dreams. Wikifactory is a new ‘social platform for collaborative product development’ but I’d go one step further to say it’s an end-to-end product development collaboration platform to capture software-hardware needs plus the process and the potential for a lot more. Where Do You Go to Collaborate on Design Projects? It’s (almost) 2020 and solutions for project collaboration are few and far between. If you ask someone how they collaborate with others on design projects, the most common…

Are you using your mouse to help you view Youtube videos? Most all of us will answer this question with a resounding “YES”. Perhaps its time to cross-over to the keyboard. I recently discovered YouTube has keyboard shortcuts to control its video player. I’d been clicking my way through a heap of videos. Using my mouse to control the viewing session was not fluid. For example, when I’d try to click forward or backward to a specific spot I’d invariably go too far. Mouse navigation simply lacked the precision and efficiency I desired in my Youtube viewing experience. So when I discovered the keyboard shortcuts I thought I’d give it…