littleBits Electronics: DIY hardware kits and more

littleBits Electronics is a cool concept for hardware hackers and DIYers. The company was founded by Ms Ayah Bdeir, originally from Lebanon and Canada but now living in New York City. In 2014 Popular Mechanics named her one of 25 Makers Who Are Reinventing The American Dream.  Designed to be be plug-and-play and using solderless connections, the parts and kits are pricey, so for those who know what they're doing it would probably be less expensive to source from Radio Shack or The Source. littleBits Elections also has a section called BitLab where designers can submit their projects for the public to vote on and if accepted, littleBits will put them into production and the designer will share in the revenue.

MakerBot, 3D printing on the cheap

This looks pretty cool, 3D printing using ABS plastic with a robot design from MakerBot. Not that I'll be rushing out to get the plans, but there's a cool video on YouTube I saw through Robert L. Balliot's Ocean State Librarian blog's Research Link of the Week. Request for you Robert, please provide a permalink for the current research link, not just the past ones. While he suggests public libraries invest in this technology, many libraries such as my own can't even afford to buy books and other resources due to cutbacks. So I don't think something like this will be at the top of their list. This seems to be something that would currently be of more interest to an artist coop.

Has this ever happened to you, stringing holiday lights the wrong way?

Has this ever happened to you? Stringing your holiday lights the wrong way? Yes, I did that on the weekend while stringing our Christmas lights. So I though, there has to be a male-male adapter out there so you can fix this without having the relay the entire string. I even sketched out my idea. I went to a local hardware store and was told no, that people would fry themselves if such a thing were available. Hmmm, so I checked The Google and sure enough Georgianna Reid of Kansas City, MO, USA, filed a United States patent in 2005 for just such a device. And the first sentence of the summary as found on FreePatentsOnline states "A double male electrical connector is provided to connect the female end of a string of Christmas lights with the female end of an extension cord suitable for plugging into a wall outlet." Her design, unlike my preliminary sketch, which obviously won't go anywhere, includes a safety feature so that "the apparatus includes a jacket receiving the connector for axially slidable use so that both male plugs cannot both be simultaneously exposed," which would leave the inevitable people-frying mentioned by my local hardware representative.