Don your favorite bathrobe, cream that coffee and get comfortable with this week’s SolidSmack Weekend Reader. The Weekend Reader features a handful of the most interesting articles featured on the ‘Smack over the past week ranging from tips and tricks to inspirational designs, processes, and more. So lay back, relax and take a load off while reading the top ten stories on SolidSmack this past week. Oh and uh…don’t forget to shed some much-needed sunlight on your face, too. Backyard Scientist Creates Flaming Sword, Plays Fruit Ninja in Real Life Kevin Kohler, aka The Backyard Scientist, is widely known for his unique experiments and projects that often result in something…

Ropes from trees where bottles hung, split beams of distant lights lit by the robot hoards. Unconscious they moved, on a single wheel and five arms, low, high, in between broken brick and bones, always hunting, hunting for these links. Mathieu Latour-Duhaime – Lots of lovely complex lines in all sorts of rich environments from various video game concepts to his own personal work. Stranger Play – A wonderful Stranger Things version of Pac-man to snag all the lights and escape the Demogorgon. 188sqft – The life and time of living in, travelling in and renovating a 188 sq ft 2002 Keystone Cougar 276 fifth wheel. Jerkybot – A drone…

When I reviewed the ALPAKA 7even messenger bag, I didn’t realize how much I was going to use it. Like previous bags I have loved, it’s hard to imagine going anywhere without it. With the wild success of their Kickstarter campaign, knowing they failed on a previous project and learning that the bag was primarily designed with Autodesk Sketchbook and Adobe Illustrator, I had to find out more. Jin Li, Co-founder of ALPAKA, started the design process for 7ven Messenger at the beginning of 2015, after their initial backpack design project failed due to scope creep (it was getting too complicated to manufacture). What did they learn? “Our backpack failure…

Fuel3D announced a new “mirror” 3D scanner that could lead to advanced eyewear applications. The company has long been developing 3D scanning equipment based on an unusual high-speed structured light system. Initially they produced a very effective 3D face scanner, the Scanify, used for both 3D printing and in 3D gaming. Since their introduction in 2013 they’ve branched out into a much wider variety of 3D scanning applications, including a rather large unit we tested at CES earlier this year. Now they’ve announced a device that’s designed specifically to 3D scan faces for generation of custom-fit eyewear. The new device is embedded within a mirror, which causes subjects to act…

If there’s one thing that just won’t go away no matter how hard we seemingly try, it’s the amount of waste that ends up in our oceans. While everybody from GStar to Adidas has announced changes to their supply chains or entirely new product lineups made from waste sourced from oceans, few are as passionate about keeping our oceans and beaches clean than surfers. With a background in architecture and a passion for the ocean, surfer François Jaubert decided to take matters into his own hands and upcycled his own cardboard waste into a modern shortboard surfboard design that rivals those made from traditional environment–harming foam surfboard designs. In total,…

MegaBots wants to have a real-life mech battle. Preferably without dying. So far it’s not looking good. When I first heard about the MegaBots Kickstarter project last year, I definitely giggled like a ten year old. Anybody who wants to build big robots and make them fight is okay by me. We wrote about it here. I sponsored the project. I proudly hung the poster on my office wall, where it serves as a daily reminder that robots, when fighting, are, in fact, awesome. Well friends, it just got real. MegaBots has come a long way. The production value alone is an impressive improvement over their earlier videos, and while…