Nerds! I’m so excited I can barely contain myself!

Why? I’ve been catching up on the various feeds in my reader and finally got to reading a couple weeks worth of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories posts. The first thing you need to know about these cats (note: not real cats) is that they’re awesome. The second thing to know is roughly 40% of their posts go right over my head — but the ones that don’t are pretty wicked cool.

They just got back from the 2011 Bay Area Maker Faire where they debuted this baby:

To me, this is the definition of nerdy: it’s a large-scale reproduction of a childhood educational toy. IT DOES NOT GET BETTER THAN THIS, PEOPLE!

Okay, I’ll calm down. I’m sorry I yelled.

Normally I wouldn’t link you to something you couldn’t build yourself, but I think it’s safe to assume most of us don’t have loading docks or tons of free space available to build a giant Digi-Comp II. Don’t despair, this does bring to mind a few cool projects:

• Learn to count in binary from Zach Bacon. Awesome name, clear instructions. (Also, the final video of my post goes well with Zach’s instructions.)
• Build a binary clock, using a kit or this Instructable, which was sourced from this post.
• Build a wooden binary adding machine like this one:

Also, I think this binary counter looks really cool, but I couldn’t find any plans for it. That said, it looks pretty simple. The little swinging gates are the key:

For more background and resources about the Digi-Comp II, please go check out the full posts over at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories:
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/dcii

http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/dciivid

You can find Mindy on Twitter at HolaMindy.

The Nerdist