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.
LiquidPiston’s 4-lb Rotary Engine Shows What it Can Do
“LiquidPiston has invented a new rotary type engine that is piston-less, valve-less, and weighs only four pounds. They published a proof of concept video for the XMv3 engine, shown powering a small go-kart, that builds evidence that the High Efficiency Hybrid Cycle (HEHC) engine could be the compact, energy-efficient engine of the future.”
Google’s Project Bloks is an Open Hardware Development Platform for Tangible Programming
“Despite the plethora of apps and games that are slowly breaking down the barriers for learning how to code, one of the biggest remaining hurdles is as simple as they come: humans like to build stuff with their hands.”
Paper is a Minimalist Approach to the Cumbersome All-in-One Desktop Printer
“Having just graduated with a degree in Industrial Design earlier this year, 27-year-old Ludwig Rensch is already proving that he can lay down the iron fist and squash existing design annoyances with his innovative problem-solving skills.”
Bose Launches BOSEbuild with a Build-It-Yourself Bluetooth Speaker
“As the complexities of hardware design continue to be broken down and simplified into build-it-yourself projects for inspiring the next generation of inventors, the quality of these build kits only continue to get better.”
Model of the Week: Venus Box [It’s Fancy!]
“You remember that dream of your fists being replaced by portals to one world with unlimited meat cannon buffets and the other to a world of candy dinosaur rides? Yeah, this Venus Box is exactly what those portals looked like. What’s even weirder is how you ALL had that same dream and wrote me about it.”
Cool Tools of Doom: The Ultimate Design & Animation Course Bundle ($29)
“As any designer or engineer knows, the sky is the limit when it comes to staying on top of 3D software and workflows. While becoming an expert in one or two software packages may make sense for your day-to-day projects, it never hurts to stretch that 3D content creation muscle – even if just a little bit.”
