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Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

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Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#271

Post by azriel91 »

1. A dove soft toy, that can tuck its wings:

- stencil: https://github.com/azriel91/dove_stencil/

- wings tucked: https://github.com/azriel91/dove_stencil/blob/main/photos/20...

Made this because one of my friends said she liked things with character, and I knew that a handmade soft toy wasn't "enough", and so letting it tuck its wings was that character.

2. Many ambigrams (words that when rotated upside down, read as the word). These ones are names for friends / acquaintances

- blog: https://cards.azriel.im/

- different names: https://cards.azriel.im/2018/09/kevin-fiona.html

- colour inversion: https://cards.azriel.im/2018/01/carlo.html

I still make them occasionally, just haven't updated the blog

edit: ah it's not markdown, links were codified

Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#272

Post by larrik »

hoofhearted wrote: post #115

I helped build “The Cloud” without really knowing it lol.. I joined a 5 year electrical apprenticeship after highschool. I spent many days between 2006 and 2012 building out crazy electrical systems in these giant warehouse looking buildings in Northern Virginia, for DuPont Fabros and Digital Reality. I had no idea exactly what the purpose of these server farms were for, but they just told us “if we build it they wil…

I was under the impression us-east-1 launched in 2002 or 2003. AWS was certainly a thing in 2004, at least.

Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#273

Post by s0rce »

dns_snek wrote: post #143
giraffe_lady wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This joke is funny because no one currently living has to make this choice.

Oh they do, but now it's in the name of electrification . https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/03/child-la...

I was going to post the same example of cobalt in the Congo.

Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#274

Post by sdenton4 »

chantepierre wrote: post #25

My telescope(s). It's a very rewarding hobby, from making the mirror (manual labor + measurements with interferometry), silvering it (a bit of chemistry), designing in CAD and building the actual usable telescope, there are a lot of moving parts to design, and steps that you can either do or delegate. I think anyone who likes manual work can find a piece of a telescope that's enjoyable to work on. The feeling you get…

I've got an unfinished 8-inch mirror that I spent a month of evenings grinding... Someday I'll get around to polishing and building out a cargo-bike-collapsable structure for it.

A cool thing about DIY telescopes: You can get better results than a commercial mirror, because you can turn your time into quality at a rate which is not economically feasible for manufacturing.

Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#275

Post by jrowen »

alberth wrote: post #249
adrianmonk wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn’t this though wrongly taking credit. No, because it says "without really knowing it" right in the first sentence.

But they did “know it”. When you’re building data centers, you are fully aware you are building “The Cloud” (even before that term was coined), because that’s literally the business you’re in … regardless of who you’re customer (AWS) is or not.

Is there a reason you're so intent on being a killjoy? Is there really an important point being made here? Don't worry, they do not falsely believe that they invented and built AWS.

This story is basically akin to someone who works at a restaurant saying that one day a celebrity came in and ordered a hamburger, and a photo was taken with the hamburger that ended up becoming famous, and them saying that they made that hamburger. It's just an interesting "I was a small part of something that became big" story. But thank god we have you here to make sure that that person doesn't go around telling people they built AWS.

Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#276

Post by uranium »

reacharavindh wrote: post #235

Cradle I built with my hands for my son, and managed to finish it well before he was born. Still very proud every time I look at it. About to be used for the next one :-) https://ibb.co/PQ38tcG https://ibb.co/tXv9dsy https://ibb.co/3FXR4Vn

That's lovely--really elegant lines.

Also, congratulations!

Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#278

Post by WillAdams »

giantg2 wrote: post #244

Possibly a garden - growing lesser known varieties of fruits can veggies is something I find interesting. Or maybe making a traditional bow. Identifying types of wood, reading the grain, and turning it into a bow is interesting. I think most people have this concept that wood is this rigid thing, but seeing a traditional bow on a tillering tree is something else.

Making an (archery) bow is one of the most challenging woodworking projects of all --- removing 1/1000 of an inch of thickness from the back (evenly) will change the draw weight by 1 pound, and when the stave is first roughed out, there is a single point in the structure which is the weakest which defines the maximum possible draw weight for that bow --- that is, until one tries making arrows, as the old saw goes:

>Any stick will do for a bow, but an arrow must be perfect.

I've made a couple --- one of my most successful was a Decurve-reflex hickory-backed hickory Flatbow:

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/paleoplanet69529/decurve-ref...

Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#279

Post by stankot »

I'm a sucker for old games and good pixel art and I've built a pixel art frame powered by a LED matrix. It is not the most impressive thing I've built, but it is the one that brings me the most joy.

Videos:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Stanko/retro-frame/dev/ret...

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Stanko/retro-frame/dev/ret...

I wanted something that has a feel of an art object and sits on the shelf, rather than being a smart object that you can control with an app.

The whole thing is open source and you can make it yourself:

https://github.com/Stanko/retro-frame

Disclaimer - This was my first ever python project and I just made it work. ATM a friend of mine is helping me refactor everything. Repo also needs images of a new wooden frame I made.

Edit: Formatting.

Re: Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?

#280

Post by s0rce »

I built a few custom scientific measurement equipment over the years during my Postdoc and at a biotech startup.

System to monitor crystallization/freezing of ice in 2-5nm diameter pores within silica (coated on molybdenum mirror) by infrared absorption (https://lylegordon.ca/researchoverview.jpg).

Micro-rheometer to measure viscosity of samples as small of 3uL of liquid (this was an improvement on a NIST design that didn't require calibration of capillary diameter)

Porosimeter to measure active (flow through) pore size (5-50nm) in tiny membranes that only flow a few microliters per minute of helium (gas).

Custom time-resolved pycnometer to measure flow rates of membranes attached to a closed volume, detect leaks, and measure the internal volume.

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