The upcoming Iron Man sequel features an updated suit of armor, and now you can make a miniaturized paper version for yourself. It is a bit more complicated than beginner papercraft projects and doesn’t have a list of instructions, so make sure to keep your printer ink refreshed if you have to start over. Get the printout here.

Also, the Mark V armor (the suitcase one – how much must that weigh??) is papercrafted too. Check it out.

Speaking of Iron Man: check out the article I wrote in the current issue of WIRED magazine: Geek Justice League: Caped Crusader Billionaires We’d Like to See. A fun piece to go along with the soon-to-premiere Iron Man 2 movie. As a big comic fanatic growing up, getting to write about superheroes is still amazingly fun. And I love that Wired illustrated the “geeks” very closely to the descriptions I submitted for them. Enjoy!

A simpler but no less geekily awesome paper project is the Geoff Peterson “Cubee.” Anyone who’s been keeping up with Mythbusters’ Grant Imahara or watching the Craig Ferguson show know that Grant recently made a robot sidekick for Craig, named Geoff Peterson. It’s a work of comedic and robotic art. And now you can pay homage to a great late night talk show moment by making your own paper version. Get the file here.

Combining RC aircraft and video cameras is as instinctual as putting berries on your cereal. And as manufacturers come out with higher quality lenses and sensors, while shrinking camera size and weight, some pretty impressive (and expensive) rigs have been assembled to capture aerial footage.

However the iPhone does not seem like a good fit for a project like this. Light: yes. Fragile: very. Important to your daily life: completely. Watch as this unlucky (or perhaps, very lucky) fellow flies his iPhone-equipped airplane into a light post. Hilarity!

When I tried to shoot some nice aerial video from my iPhone equipped rc-plane I accidently crashed into a lamppost.
My aeroplane was totally smashed but my iPhone fortunately survived and captured everything on video!

I’m flying over Löberöd in south of Sweden.

Of course, done right the footage from RC aircraft can be downright cinematographic.

This video, while not aerial, shows the workings of a pretty badass flying rig equipped with a Canon G10, and shot on one of my favorite DSLRs for video, the Canon 7D (although I’m starting to like the T2i a lot – the price and quality is undeniable).

Being a regular reader of the Harbor Freight catalog I quickly noticed their signature look in the back pages of Car and Driver magazine. I also noticed the listed prices were better than the regular ones in their monthly mailer. And on top of that, the coupons don’t expire until mid-July. A pretty nice reward for the Car and Driver readers.

Here’s a scan of that ad; print it out on your company’s color laser printer and see if it works at your local HF shop. The jack stands and creeper are looking pretty useful for the project I’m working on right now…

The Baja California Earthquake on April 4, 2010 left a fair amount of localized destruction and wide-spread shaken nerves in its wake, but thankfully it was not nearly as devastating as could have been. At 7.2 on the Moment Magnitude Scale (an updated, more precise measurement than the Richter scale for large earthquakes), the quake released more energy than the Loma Prieta earthquake that knocked down many parts of San Francisco and Oakland in 1989.

This was a butt-kicking earthquake. It lasted for approximately a minute (compared to 10-15 seconds for Loma Prieta). The power of it can be seen through some phenomenal photos taken during and just after its occurrence – Route 5 heading south of Mexicali has developed massive cracks, and the dust rising off the surrounding mountains show how an earthquake this size treats the surface of the planet like someone trying to shake the sand out of a beach blanket.

Fortunately, the area where the earthquake occurred is not a densely populated metropolitan zone such as San Francisco or Los Angeles. Mexicali and its surroundings are largely agricultural, with a desert that stretches far beyond. The principal buildings are low-rise, and there is no major transportation/freeway network in the area; disruptions will be quickly re-routed. Incidentally, every time I’ve passed through the city I’ve managed to get completely lost, and once even had an early-morning police escort to the border. But that’s unrelated

Here’s how seismometers work, and how to build one of your own:

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