nycresistor's soup

Dominion is an award-winning deck-building card game that has ten expansions released as of this writing. There are a wide variety of proposed storage solutions to the problem of toting about several thousand cards and sundry mats and tokens, and Sherwin decided it was high time he moved on up from the method he had been using to a proper receptacle.

First, a look at the final product:

 

We managed to fit about 3700 unsleeved cards along with the other odds and ends in with room for further expansion. The dividers make every card easy to locate and access, and the box dimensions keep the whole package relatively compact and portable.

Our starting point was an ad-hoc solution that involved storing each set of Kingdom cards in separate pockets on 9-card sheets, with the base cards being held in deck boxes and the tokens in a bead container, all of which were piled into one of the original game boxes and wrapped in a tote bag. This system worked for a time, but as further expansions were released, both box and tote showed increased signs of strain, neither having been designed to hold more than one game or expansion at a time.

The sheets can be seen overflowing from the game box, which barely squeezed into the tote

The box had already been replaced once before, and when the replacement itself began showing severe signs of wear we began looking into other options. We debated building one out of lumber, but eventually settled on using a case that had been tried and tested in other storage solutions for our first attempt.

We knew that we would require some sort of organizer to keep each column of cards in line, and laser-cut some test pieces out of cardboard to check the fit.

 

Determining the dimensions of the caddy and how to fasten them

 

Assembling the mock caddy, then testing the fit of the cards
We also planned to engrave the game’s logo onto the box using the laser cutter, and had two waxes and two stains we wanted to try. The case came with a tray insert that was made of the same wood, though unfinished, so we did a test burn both before and after applying the four coats to observe the effect. We also removed the hardware from the case and sanded off the veneer in preparation.

Mocking up the logo and testing burn parameters for the wood

 

Applying the coats of wax and stain to the test piece
The logo we used had too much background and shading for a clean burn. We ended up using Pawel Pawlak’s Dominion icons to generate an appropriate vector image of the logo and banner outline for the laser cutter.

Testing the final logo
After finalizing the dimensions of the caddy pieces and wax choice, we then cut the pieces out of clear acrylic, assembled and affixed them with acrylic glue, burned the logo into the case cover, then applied the coats of wax.

Assembling and checking the fit of the final caddy

Applying the wax to the case exterior

To minimize cards sliding around and give them a cushion, we cut a segment out of poker felt and glued it to the bottom with spray adhesive. We attempted to replace the stock hardware with sturdier options, but found the wood to be too thin to support any of the screws from the cabinet fixtures.

 

Testing different adhesives on felt samples and reattaching the hardware to the finished bottom
Finally, after completing assembly of the box, we had to transfer the actual game components from the old box to the new one. We created the divider tabs using sumpfork’s Dominion Divider Generator and had them printed on cardstock and trimmed at a local print shop.

 

The finished box ready to receive the game materials

 

Moving the cards into their new home

Ready to play!

Robots are neat, but everyone has one around the house these days. From Roomba to Alexa, there’s an army of soothing plastic helpers to help you look up actor names and eliminate your least favorite repetitive tasks. Aren’t you curious what is out there chasing the horizon of robotics, on the seam between the artificial and the biological?

Well, that’s what you’re going to learn if you’re one of the lucky ITP Camp attendees this year. Our members Kari Love and Matthew Borgatti will be teaching a class on Soft Robotics and Bioinspiration this week at NYU’s ITP. It will cover how they – real actual researchers in soft robotics – perform research, build prototypes, and solve problems with inspiration from biology. It’s also got hands-on prototyping and playful learning for everyone excited by design and creative process.

From the course description:

Roboticists frequently find inspiration from the incredible evolved forms of nature, and translate them into fresh thinking and solutions. This workshop invites you to explore this fast-growing domain where biology and robotics collide.

Hey NYCR visitors – have you done something neat lately? Let us know, so we can blog about it!

Julia learned to knit in December at NYC Resistor. And then, uh….this blanket happened. Julia, you’re amazing. Students outshining their teachers, etc.

I can vouch for this blanket being extremely cozy. You’re looking at 30 skeins (6,540 yards!) of yarn and 1,040 tails that needed weaving in. It comfortably fits three people.

If you want to make your own blanket, the Infinite Rainbow Throw pattern is free from KnitPicks.

Don’t know how to knit? Wish you had more knitting time? Join us every other Monday for our Knit Knight, 730pm-930pm. We’ll teach you – beginners get their first pair of needles free. (You don’t need to be as intense as Julia in order to attend Knit Knight, we promise.)

Join the fun at the NYC Resistor Interactive Show this Saturday, where you can play Dance Dance Running Man by Colleen AF Venable, Eric Skiff, and Astrida Valigorsky:

Dance Dance Running Man revives the dance-game classic DDR as dystopian chase game. Keep those feet moving while the chasers chase from behind the arrows and Arnold keeps them at bay. Featuring images from the film and pro-level DDR pads, you’ll be dancing for your life!

Come play with it yourself at The Interactive Show on May 13th! Tickets are just $15 in advance ($20 at the door), and the libations are on us. Get your tickets now!

Come to the NYC Resistor Interactive Show this Saturday to see “Who Do You Love” by Adelle Lin, Olivia Barr, and Matt Pinner:

A deplorable reality television host rises to power by exploit people for the sake of entertainment. He uses a nightmarish cacophony of violence and catch phrases to control his audience. In The Running Man this media mogul shouts, “Who Loves You and Who Do You Love?”

Who Do You Love is an interactive sound installation that samples Donald Trump saying the word “China” in phrases from his campaign and presidency. The interface device for the installation consists of three acrylic towers, dispersed through the space. Each tower houses three buttons where players can activate the sound from different locations. Pressing a button triggers the Commander and Chief to say “china”, “i love china”, “i know china very well”, or “china all the time”.

The phrases overlap each time a button is pushed to create an ambiance of garbled memetastic catch phrases. The towers encase a teensy audio shield, teensy 3.2, xbee, and our custom oshpark pcb. the devices connect to each other using these 900mhz xbee radios and light up clear acrylic portions with led sequins when buttons are pressed anywhere in the space. The new echo of “China” is channeled into the exhibition room’s speakers or through headphones. Multiple players of Who Loves You collaborate to compel the distortion of Trump’s reflections on China into noise.

We hope this raises some discussions about your feelings around entertainment media and representative governments.

More info on Github.

Come play with it yourself at The Interactive Show on May 13th! Tickets are just $15 in advance ($20 at the door), and the libations are on us. Get your tickets now!

Here’s another Interactive Show preview, this time of “Panorama Lamp” by Kirill Shevyakov, Alexander Savvy, and Paul Koch. Check it out in action in this video.

The Panorama lamp is a tribute to a monumental Soviet architecture. Inspired by a colossal concrete curves and extraordinary aesthetic of USSR structures this lamp is a miniature replica of a soviet movie theatre. The surface of the lamp is divided into 70 units creating a 360 degree visual grid. Each unit encompasses an LED which forms a vast “canvas” for various interactions, light sequences, and data visualizations.

Come play with it yourself at The Interactive Show on May 13th! Tickets are just $15 in advance, and the libations are on us. Get your tickets now!

Time has been flying and we’ve been frantically getting ready for The Interactive Show. It’s just 17 days away! Here’s a preview of “Red Rider” by Ranjit Bhatnagar and Colleen AF Venable.

A modern take on Little Red Riding Hood with a NYC twist. The story is told in six voices, each giving their version of what happened—including Red Rider (the fastest bike messenger in the city), the now-vegan Wolf, the Lumberjock (who always gives 110%), three very bizarre little pigs, and a maybe-not-so-sweet-and-innocent Grandma. Find the six listening stations and see if you can you figure out what happened to the Wolf.

Tickets are just $15 in advance, and the libations are on us. Get your tickets now!

There’s still time to submit a project before the May 1st deadline, contact us!

Dominion is an award-winning deck-building card game that has ten expansions released as of this writing. There are a wide variety of proposed storage solutions to the problem of toting about several thousand cards and sundry mats and tokens, and Sherwin decided it was high time he moved on up from the method he had been using to a proper receptacle.

First, a look at the final product:

 

We managed to fit about 3700 unsleeved cards along with the other odds and ends in with room for further expansion. The dividers make every card easy to locate and access, and the box dimensions keep the whole package relatively compact and portable.

Our starting point was an ad-hoc solution that involved storing each set of Kingdom cards in separate pockets on 9-card sheets, with the base cards being held in deck boxes and the tokens in a bead container, all of which were piled into one of the original game boxes and wrapped in a tote bag. This system worked for a time, but as further expansions were released, both box and tote showed increased signs of strain, neither having been designed to hold more than one game or expansion at a time.

The sheets can be seen overflowing from the game box, which barely squeezed into the tote

The box had already been replaced once before, and when the replacement itself began showing severe signs of wear we began looking into other options. We debated building one out of lumber, but eventually settled on using a case that had been tried and tested in other storage solutions for our first attempt.

We knew that we would require some sort of organizer to keep each column of cards in line, and laser-cut some test pieces out of cardboard to check the fit.

 

Determining the dimensions of the caddy and how to fasten them

 

Assembling the mock caddy, then testing the fit of the cards
We also planned to engrave the game’s logo onto the box using the laser cutter, and had two waxes and two stains we wanted to try. The case came with a tray insert that was made of the same wood, though unfinished, so we did a test burn both before and after applying the four coats to observe the effect. We also removed the hardware from the case and sanded off the veneer in preparation.

Mocking up the logo and testing burn parameters for the wood

 

Applying the coats of wax and stain to the test piece
The logo we used had too much background and shading for a clean burn. We ended up using Pawel Pawlak’s Dominion icons to generate an appropriate vector image of the logo and banner outline for the laser cutter.

Testing the final logo
After finalizing the dimensions of the caddy pieces and wax choice, we then cut the pieces out of clear acrylic, assembled and affixed them with acrylic glue, burned the logo into the case cover, then applied the coats of wax.

Assembling and checking the fit of the final caddy

Applying the wax to the case exterior

To minimize cards sliding around and give them a cushion, we cut a segment out of poker felt and glued it to the bottom with spray adhesive. We attempted to replace the stock hardware with sturdier options, but found the wood to be too thin to support any of the screws from the cabinet fixtures.

 

Testing different adhesives on felt samples and reattaching the hardware to the finished bottom
Finally, after completing assembly of the box, we had to transfer the actual game components from the old box to the new one. We created the divider tabs using sumpfork’s Dominion Divider Generator and had them printed on cardstock and trimmed at a local print shop.

 

The finished box ready to receive the game materials

 

Moving the cards into their new home

Ready to play!

Robots are neat, but everyone has one around the house these days. From Roomba to Alexa, there’s an army of soothing plastic helpers to help you look up actor names and eliminate your least favorite repetitive tasks. Aren’t you curious what is out there chasing the horizon of robotics, on the seam between the artificial and the biological?

Well, that’s what you’re going to learn if you’re one of the lucky ITP Camp attendees this year. Our members Kari Love and Matthew Borgatti will be teaching a class on Soft Robotics and Bioinspiration this week at NYU’s ITP. It will cover how they – real actual researchers in soft robotics – perform research, build prototypes, and solve problems with inspiration from biology. It’s also got hands-on prototyping and playful learning for everyone excited by design and creative process.

From the course description:

Roboticists frequently find inspiration from the incredible evolved forms of nature, and translate them into fresh thinking and solutions. This workshop invites you to explore this fast-growing domain where biology and robotics collide.

Hey NYCR visitors – have you done something neat lately? Let us know, so we can blog about it!

Julia learned to knit in December at NYC Resistor. And then, uh….this blanket happened. Julia, you’re amazing. Students outshining their teachers, etc.

I can vouch for this blanket being extremely cozy. You’re looking at 30 skeins (6,540 yards!) of yarn and 1,040 tails that needed weaving in. It comfortably fits three people.

If you want to make your own blanket, the Infinite Rainbow Throw pattern is free from KnitPicks.

Don’t know how to knit? Wish you had more knitting time? Join us every other Monday for our Knit Knight, 730pm-930pm. We’ll teach you – beginners get their first pair of needles free. (You don’t need to be as intense as Julia in order to attend Knit Knight, we promise.)

Join the fun at the NYC Resistor Interactive Show this Saturday, where you can play Dance Dance Running Man by Colleen AF Venable, Eric Skiff, and Astrida Valigorsky:

Dance Dance Running Man revives the dance-game classic DDR as dystopian chase game. Keep those feet moving while the chasers chase from behind the arrows and Arnold keeps them at bay. Featuring images from the film and pro-level DDR pads, you’ll be dancing for your life!

Come play with it yourself at The Interactive Show on May 13th! Tickets are just $15 in advance ($20 at the door), and the libations are on us. Get your tickets now!

Come to the NYC Resistor Interactive Show this Saturday to see “Who Do You Love” by Adelle Lin, Olivia Barr, and Matt Pinner:

A deplorable reality television host rises to power by exploit people for the sake of entertainment. He uses a nightmarish cacophony of violence and catch phrases to control his audience. In The Running Man this media mogul shouts, “Who Loves You and Who Do You Love?”

Who Do You Love is an interactive sound installation that samples Donald Trump saying the word “China” in phrases from his campaign and presidency. The interface device for the installation consists of three acrylic towers, dispersed through the space. Each tower houses three buttons where players can activate the sound from different locations. Pressing a button triggers the Commander and Chief to say “china”, “i love china”, “i know china very well”, or “china all the time”.

The phrases overlap each time a button is pushed to create an ambiance of garbled memetastic catch phrases. The towers encase a teensy audio shield, teensy 3.2, xbee, and our custom oshpark pcb. the devices connect to each other using these 900mhz xbee radios and light up clear acrylic portions with led sequins when buttons are pressed anywhere in the space. The new echo of “China” is channeled into the exhibition room’s speakers or through headphones. Multiple players of Who Loves You collaborate to compel the distortion of Trump’s reflections on China into noise.

We hope this raises some discussions about your feelings around entertainment media and representative governments.

More info on Github.

Come play with it yourself at The Interactive Show on May 13th! Tickets are just $15 in advance ($20 at the door), and the libations are on us. Get your tickets now!

Here’s another Interactive Show preview, this time of “Panorama Lamp” by Kirill Shevyakov, Alexander Savvy, and Paul Koch. Check it out in action in this video.

The Panorama lamp is a tribute to a monumental Soviet architecture. Inspired by a colossal concrete curves and extraordinary aesthetic of USSR structures this lamp is a miniature replica of a soviet movie theatre. The surface of the lamp is divided into 70 units creating a 360 degree visual grid. Each unit encompasses an LED which forms a vast “canvas” for various interactions, light sequences, and data visualizations.

Come play with it yourself at The Interactive Show on May 13th! Tickets are just $15 in advance, and the libations are on us. Get your tickets now!

Robots are neat, but everyone has one around the house these days. From Roomba to Alexa, there’s an army of soothing plastic helpers to help you look up actor names and eliminate your least favorite repetitive tasks. Aren’t you curious what is out there chasing the horizon of robotics, on the seam between the artificial and the biological?

Well, that’s what you’re going to learn if you’re one of the lucky ITP Camp attendees this year. Our members Kari Love and Matthew Borgatti will be teaching a class on Soft Robotics and Bioinspiration this week at NYU’s ITP. It will cover how they – real actual researchers in soft robotics – perform research, build prototypes, and solve problems with inspiration from biology. It’s also got hands-on prototyping and playful learning for everyone excited by design and creative process.

From the course description:

Roboticists frequently find inspiration from the incredible evolved forms of nature, and translate them into fresh thinking and solutions. This workshop invites you to explore this fast-growing domain where biology and robotics collide.

Hey NYCR visitors – have you done something neat lately? Let us know, so we can blog about it!

Julia learned to knit in December at NYC Resistor. And then, uh….this blanket happened. Julia, you’re amazing. Students outshining their teachers, etc.

I can vouch for this blanket being extremely cozy. You’re looking at 30 skeins (6,540 yards!) of yarn and 1,040 tails that needed weaving in. It comfortably fits three people.

If you want to make your own blanket, the Infinite Rainbow Throw pattern is free from KnitPicks.

Don’t know how to knit? Wish you had more knitting time? Join us every other Monday for our Knit Knight, 730pm-930pm. We’ll teach you – beginners get their first pair of needles free. (You don’t need to be as intense as Julia in order to attend Knit Knight, we promise.)

Join the fun at the NYC Resistor Interactive Show this Saturday, where you can play Dance Dance Running Man by Colleen AF Venable, Eric Skiff, and Astrida Valigorsky:

Dance Dance Running Man revives the dance-game classic DDR as dystopian chase game. Keep those feet moving while the chasers chase from behind the arrows and Arnold keeps them at bay. Featuring images from the film and pro-level DDR pads, you’ll be dancing for your life!

Come play with it yourself at The Interactive Show on May 13th! Tickets are just $15 in advance ($20 at the door), and the libations are on us. Get your tickets now!

Come to the NYC Resistor Interactive Show this Saturday to see “Who Do You Love” by Adelle Lin, Olivia Barr, and Matt Pinner:

A deplorable reality television host rises to power by exploit people for the sake of entertainment. He uses a nightmarish cacophony of violence and catch phrases to control his audience. In The Running Man this media mogul shouts, “Who Loves You and Who Do You Love?”

Who Do You Love is an interactive sound installation that samples Donald Trump saying the word “China” in phrases from his campaign and presidency. The interface device for the installation consists of three acrylic towers, dispersed through the space. Each tower houses three buttons where players can activate the sound from different locations. Pressing a button triggers the Commander and Chief to say “china”, “i love china”, “i know china very well”, or “china all the time”.

The phrases overlap each time a button is pushed to create an ambiance of garbled memetastic catch phrases. The towers encase a teensy audio shield, teensy 3.2, xbee, and our custom oshpark pcb. the devices connect to each other using these 900mhz xbee radios and light up clear acrylic portions with led sequins when buttons are pressed anywhere in the space. The new echo of “China” is channeled into the exhibition room’s speakers or through headphones. Multiple players of Who Loves You collaborate to compel the distortion of Trump’s reflections on China into noise.

We hope this raises some discussions about your feelings around entertainment media and representative governments.

More info on Github.

Come play with it yourself at The Interactive Show on May 13th! Tickets are just $15 in advance ($20 at the door), and the libations are on us. Get your tickets now!