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BionicOpter: An RC Helicopter that looks like a Dragonfly

While I wait for my 3D printers to heat up I do other stuff, like discover that Festo have once again made a robot that’s so gorgeous it’s almost poetry.

Yesterday I said I finally had SSL certificates. Turns out the one I got was lower protection than I wanted you to have, so I got a refund and I started applying for the more extensive version. I hope the process will be done today at which point the blog, the forums, and the shop will all be covered. The difference between the two is that one shows up as a little lock in firefox and one shows up as a green lock with the company name beside it, meaning someone has verified I actually exist and taken out an insurance policy that your info is safe.

On another unrelated note, it seems that if you order 20 of something from China it takes 6 weeks to arrive and if you order 200 of something they ship it express. Hidden unlock bonus level speed combo!

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Using Rsync for Higher Quality (Error-free) Web Design

Why

It’s always best to test your machines before you send them into the wild. All my web clients have a test copy of their website on a password protected server where they can review and approve changes. Once the changes are approved I need to be sure that they all get copied to the live server. Miss a file and things could break. I need a bullet proof way to make sure it all gets sent and I’d rather not do it by copying the entire contents of the website every time I make a change.

I’m a big believer in eating your own dog food: I test all my parts before I ship them and I only recommend technologies I have used in my own work. One of the reasons I outgrew my old web host is that they wouldn’t let me run rsync, the tool I now use with my clients. Rsync will copy files from one machine to another very efficiently. It only copies the differences in the files, saving a lot of time.

How

The basic rsync syntax is very simple.

[code language=”bash”]rsync rdz /my/dev/folder [email protected]:/remote/folder[/code]

This is a bash command that tells the linux machine “use SSH to copy the entire directory of /my/dev/folder to /remote_folder/ on remote.machine.com and log in with account_name if you need to.”

Now I put this in a bash shell script and then run it whenever I need to update the store. I have a similar script for each of my clients. Hell, I might even make it into a web-console so I don’t have to edit copies of this script. We’ll see if I do it enough times that it’s worth automating.

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MANTIS: A Giant Walking Crab Robot

I’m a huge fan of Micromagic systems. My very first crab robot was based on their design. Last year I heard they’d finally completed their giant hydraulic crab robot. I’m delighted to finally see a video. You can find out more at the Manis offical homepage.

I still want to build my own. I’m going to need a lot of help. Do you know anything about hydraulics? Drop me a line.

What do you wish you could build?

Found a whole set of videos about MANTIS

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Let’s Make a Makelangelo 2 Box

This tutorial shows how to assemble a DIY Makelangelo 2 Box. With this and the other video about the pen holder you should be able to get all the mechanical components together. You’ll need a hot glue gun, a screwdriver, and some patience. I’m really glad that people seem to like the fast-forwards and the extra comment ticker. I used Youtube Annotations until I realized most people have them turned off.

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Delighted Customer Feedback, March 2013

Caleb sent in some pictures of his 3-arm Delta robot. He says “I’m looking forward to posting on the forums about a stand I made for the delta robot that hides the electronics, including a wireless Wii Nunchuck interface for controlling it (though I haven’t had time to program that just yet).”

Check out this beauty:

Johan also wrote in to say “I finally got some sound coming from the pickup I made from your 3D print! It actually sounds better than the original pickup I copied. Any chance you [know a machinist] who can make me an aluminum version of what you printed?”
Gladly!

Speaking of forums, I’ve just activated a new feature – when you create an account in the store it will create an account for you in the forum. One less registration form.