…think alike, or so the saying goes. The implication being that if someone thinks like you, you naturally assume their mind is great. I find the greatest minds are the ones that are roughly on the same axis as yours, but followed it and got to a different spot. I’ve found a few such folks on the web and these are the ones I watch to see what their great minds have come up with.
First Stop: DudeCraft
My daily blog reads are usually related to embedded electronics or CNC fabrication, but I always mix in a visit to the excellent DudeCraft blog. Paul Overton writes it and his personal projects feature handmade craft techniques with just the right amount of bad-ass (snow skulls and Steve McQueen figure prominently) to maintain dude-cred. The guy is also insanely prolific – go a few days without checking and you may have to scroll through a dozen posts. Paul also has a knack for finding the most amazing artists on the web and links to things of jaw-dropping beauty like these amazing papercut sculptures.
DudeCraft does some fine video tutorials as well, and his excellent tutorial on Papercut Portraits is highly recommended. As evidence of the greatness of our minds, I submit the following photographs. The photo on the left is a portrait of Steve McQueen done by Paul and the one on the right is a paper picture of our cat I did 2 months before reading Paul’s entry. I’ve never met Paul, but I suspect he is the bearer of the other half of the amulet I wear around my neck.
Evil Mad Scientist
For topics ranging from projects with Atmel microcontrollers, photography tips, high-tech cooking and creative cat toys there’s the Evil Mad Scientist blog. I’m a big fan and have gotten lots of project ideas and more than a few laughs out of the posts here. The authors also run a store that sells electronics projects and some really nice 10mm diffuse LEDs that I’ve used for several projects.
One of their coolest kits is the Peggy 2 programmable LED pegboard. It was featured on the cover of Make magazine and is all kinds of awesome.
Replicator, Inc.
For anyone interested in technology trends for mass customization and personal fabrication, like 3D printing and the like, I highly recommend the Replicator blog. Run by Joseph Flaherty, it tracks how technologies for rapid prototyping are shifting to being used for production of end-consumer goods. The inevitable endpoint of this trend is internet delivery of physical goods via TCP/IP for fabrication in your own home. That’s an idea that excites the hell out of me, and I suspect Joseph sees the same trend and hence the reference to replicators in his blog’s title.