A friend came across a project known as a Flame Speaker. The similarities to a Rubens Tube resonated with me and I was immediately intrigued. Some of the best information we could find about it where documented in a 1960s Popular Electronics magazine. Apparently hobbyists were making these things in their basements around the country, …read more
I pulled out an old transformer that I had been saving for probably 10 years. I don’t even remember where I got it from. According to the tag on it, it has a 110V input but the output is 6200V rated at 82mA. I ran the input through a contactor (basically a beefy relay) so …read more
Read Parts 1 and 2, first. Step 4. Drill and tap holes in the flanges for mounting the speaker and Buna-N rubber sheet. The reasons will become clear in later steps, but I’ll just describe what holes I drilled. One flange will be welded to the tube itself, so it will have nothing but tapped …read more
On April 23rd, 23andme.com ran a special on the anniversary of the discovery of DNA. $99 for their complete ancestry and health analysis kit, which usually costs $499. A bunch of my nerd friends and I got the kit, so we can analyze our own genes. They’re mine, why shouldn’t I know what they say? …read more