Nuvistor 555 Timer
Glorious, and absurd... I'm saying that as a compliment. Eric Schlaepfer, who posts as TubeTimeUS, built a 555 timer out of eight tetrode nuvistors, and Hackaday covered it this month…
Read the full formula: Nuvistor 555 TimerLatest formula
The Careful Mistake
In November 1988 a graduate student wrote a program to answer a simple question: how big is this internet we have built? It stole nothing. It deleted nothing. Its entire purpose was to exist, spread, and count.
The Computer That Fits In A Mint Tin
Salim Benbouziyane crammed a working computer into an Altoids tin, keyboard included. Comfortable? He says no, the keys barely travel. I'll take a cramped keyboard I can carry in a…
Mizzou Investigates Its Own Sociology Chair
Mizzou flunked, and as an IT professional I know a rename job when one's described to me. In a hidden-camera video that Accuracy in Media says it shot in January…
Rogue Makers and Air Pirates
Now that's a theme name with some swagger to it. Clockwork Alchemy runs Rogue Makers and Air Pirates for three days in Redwood City, October 16 to 18, and I'd…
The Two Languages That Lost a Mars Probe
On 23 September 1999, a NASA orbiter arrived at Mars after nine months and 400 million miles. Nothing aboard it was broken. Everything worked. It fired its engine on schedule, behaved impeccably — and passed behind the planet forty-nine seconds early.
Steam Powered Giraffe: Meet Toast
The robots are hiring again. Steam Powered Giraffe, San Diego's resident troupe of singing Victorian automatons, has commissioned a new unit: Toast, built 1896, rebuilt 2026, circus-style, plays flute, carries…
Steampunk Rendezvous: Winthrop, Washington
A Wild West town. Steampunks. A gear swap and a potluck barbecue. This is not a convention, it is not a festival, it is a rendezvous, which is the correct…
Key City Steampunk: Worlds of Tomorrow
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Home of one of the bloodiest battles in American history, a hotel restaurant literally called the 1863, and, apparently, the East Coast's best excuse to put on goggles…
Boston’s Steampunk Gathering: Charlestown, September 18-20
This weekend, Charlestown, Massachusetts transforms into the Doctor's kind of town: gears on everything, corsets as far as the eye can see, and enough top hats to block out the…