robotmonkeys

the monkeys know all

Category: installation / sculpture

  • The Perfect Bucket

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    I often think about this bucket. It is the most perfectly designed bucket I have ever seen.

    It was the early or mid 90s, and my mom and her friend Cheryl were looking for gifts do the church’s Fathers’ Day breakfast. They went somewhere, maybe a True-Value or an Ace, and found these. Cheryl looked at them and said, “These are good buckets. John needs a bucket.” So they bought several as gifts.

    Cheryl was right. These are good buckets. In high school, I thought a bucket was kind of silly but I was struck by how unusual it looked. Every feature was there for a reason, and worked well. Ever since that day I compare the very bucket I see against this one, and every bucket I see fails to measure up.

    The first thing I noticed about it was that it had a flat back. It was the first flat back bucket I ever saw. It had the hose clips, a spout, and a little lip on the bottom to grab when pouring. even the rubber on the handle has held up over 30 years.

    Only today, did I look up who made it. Gracious Living out of Ontario. They still make it, but I have no idea where to buy one.

  • E-Cacia

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    Eau Claire, Wisconsin’s SolarForma has created these solar panel supporting tree structures they call E-Cacia. Each tree produces 3.5 kW of electricity, while simultaneously providing 440 square feet of usable shade.

    Previously. Previously. Previously. Previously.

  • Felt Witchy, Might Delete Later

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    I don’t know why I made this, but I felt a compelled to make a box covered with magical symbols.

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  • At Long Last…

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    Back in the mid 90s, my friend Brad pulled out a strange small brass contraption. With a few slides and pulls, it transformed into an awkward pipe.

    It was exquisite. A door covered the bowl. It had a pick to stir and clean it that was kept in tube on the side. It even had a place to hold unburned weed. It was the perfect hash pipe.

    I thought about that pipe for 30 years. I couldn’t tell you anything else about it until a few weeks ago, and now I own one.

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  • Tutankhamun Mask “Fixed”

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    Sometime last year, the beard on King Tut’s famous mask came off broken off and then was quickly repaired using “a quick drying, irreversible material”. Apparently, some sort of epoxy.

    Jackie Rodriguez, a tourist who witnessed the repair work on the beard in late August, provided a photo to The Associated Press showing a museum employee holding it in place as the glue sets. “The whole job did look slapstick,” she said. “It was disconcerting given the procedure occurred in front of a large crowd and seemingly without the proper tools.”

    Update Sat Jan 24 11:58:55 PST 2015: German restorer, Christian Eckmann, said in a press conference today, that the mask can properly be restored.

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  • The Only Gun The NRA Doesn’t Like

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    Meet the Armatix iP1. 22 LR calibre semiautomatic with a 10 round magazine. What’s not to like? How about the the RFID wristwatch that only allows the wearer to fire the gun?

    Back in 2002, New Jersey passed a law mandating that all guns sold in the state had to have lockout technology built in, three years after such a gun went on sale somewhere in the United States. The gun has gone on sale &emdash; albeit very briefly &emdash; twice, once in Los Angeles, and then again in Rockville, Maryland (a place that it is strongly advised that one to not return to). Both stores stopped selling the guns after receiving death threats. Not only that, but the Republican Attorney General of New Jersey is refusing the certify that the gun was sold, and active the law.

    Instead of “promoting freedom” to own the gun one chooses, the NRA is actively campaigning against the sell of a particular firearm, because the RFID locks would increase manufacturing costs. Why do they care about this? Because the NRA gets significant amounts of funding from gun manufacturers.

  • 1919 Mechanical Play-by-Play Scoreboard

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    1919 mechanical play -by-play scoreboard

    Back in 1978, a box of newsreels were found in the Yukon. Only recently though, was a newsreel of the infamous Black Sox 1919 World Series discovered in the collection.

    It’s a great find, and as Deadspin points out, it shows the infamous 5 run inning that made it obvious everyone that the White Sox were throwing the game. However that’s not what caught my eye. What I was astonished by was the mechanical scoreboard that allowed people in Cincinnati to watch the game in near-real-time. The board doesn’t just feature moving base runners, but also features a ball that moves around as the play progresses. I had never seen anything like this before. Even the Flash players that MLB.com puts out, don’t feature a moving ball.

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  • Papal Blood Stolen

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    Over the weekend, thieves apparently not-too-concerned about booking a place in heaven, stole a relic that contained a piece of gauze that was once soaked with the blood of late Pope John Paul II. Church officials at the isolated San Pietro della Ienca church in the Abruzzo region of Italy reported the burglary. The small church housed the relic that is one of only three in the world.

    According to the BBC, the relic was not heavily guarded, as the thieves were able to break through the iron bars and a window protecting the display. The burglars also took a crucifix, but left the church’s collection box untouched.

    Be on the look out for pope clones, or perhaps Baphomet, or maybe just deranged billionaires with collections of bloody gauze. Who owns Curt Shilling’s bloody sock?

  • 21 Vodka Gun Salute

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    Vodka spokesman Mikhail Kalashnikov dead at 94.

  • Emergent Pong

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    At SIGGRAPH91, graphics researcher and digital artist Loren Carpenter stood near the front of an 5000 seat auditorium in a Las Vegas hotel. In the seats in front of him, the attendees held cardboard paddles, one side of which was red, the other green. Behind him was a giant screen covered in blinking and shifting red and green dots. After a few moments, the audience figured out what Loren already knew. A camera was trained on the auditorium and was feeding images into a computer that then displayed the color and polishing of every paddle in the room. The audience cheered and began to wave back and forth in unison.

    The screen changed to classic video game Pong. The only difference was that instead of all white paddles, the paddles were two-toned, with a green upper half, and a red lower half. Loren took the stage and addressed the crowd. “Okay guys. Folks on the left side of the auditorium control the left paddle. Folks on the right side control the right paddle. If you think you are on the left, then you really are. Okay? Go!”

    The ball began to move across the screen and the paddles twitched to life. The paddles move to a height calculated from the relative number of red and green paddles. If everyone shows the same color, then the paddle will move to either the extreme top or the extreme bottom. However, if some show the opposite color, then paddle will stop somewhere in the middle. Surprisingly quickly, the crowd began to play effectively, even when the speed of the ball increased.