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when I was young growing up in LA, my favorite place to eat was a diner that had sawdust on the floor. What I remember most is that the diner had a train that ran along the u-shaped counter and made a loop back into the kitchen. Sitting at the counter, I wrote down my order and clipped the piece of paper to a boxcar and off it went to the kitchen. Soon, the train returned and stopped in front of me with my plate sitting on top of a flatbed car.
When my own son was young, we set up some trains at Christmas and enjoyed them. I don't know if they occupy the same place in his brain as they do in mine. Video games have meant more to him and honestly, race-car sets were much more fun. Nonetheless, coming upon Christmas again, I want to build a train board and get a train set. I've been looking at what's new in trains, and I see digital command systems. It's a little hard to figure it out. I'm curious how trains and computers (microcontrollers, even) might play together today.
Recently, I was re-reading Steven Levy's book, Hackers, and it begins by telling the story of the MIT Model Railroad Club. There were two groups in the student club -- one that worked on the detailed layouts and the other that worked on the switching. It was the latter that saw the possibilities for using computers to control the trains. It was this group that first defined the hacker ethic and what Levy called the "hands-on" imperative. If you couldn't get your hands on something and take it apart, you could not understand how it works and learn to use it. In those days, computer manufacturers wouldn't have thought that a model train set was an appropriate application for computers, nor could they have imagined that the future of technology would be influenced so much by hackers.
Over the weekend, I visited the Golden State Model Railway Museum in Point Richmond, California. The trains weren't running on the day I visited but I did get to see the different layouts, simulating different California scenes. The museum is a little sleepy, with old men working on the tracks. Frankly, what I imagine going on there is more interesting than what is actually going on. I want more interactivity than what's possible with the large-scale train layouts. I also recall over the years visiting men who had elaborate train yards in their garages. The layouts are meticulous and each one must have taken years to build. I don't necessarily want to the be that kind of person.
Afterwards my wife and I went on a beautiful walk in the Miller-Knox Regional Park across the street from the museum. It's the site of the Ferry Point Terminal, where, in the days before there were bridges over the Bay, trains arrived at this pier. Passengers and cargo were unloaded on to ferries and transported across the bay. Today, Ferry Point is a makeshift fishing pier but the shadowy hulk of train tracks and a rusty crane remain in place.
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What do you do with all those extra resistors, capacitors outdated Ic's and dull red LEDs? Make SpareBots!
Part sculpture, part recycling, SpareBots are a festive way to make figures, work with your hands and tell a story, like the SpareBot rodeo below:
Flickr user Charlie Beldon has posted up some neat little sparebots into the Make Flickr pool.
Have you tried your needle nose pliers at the craft of SpareBots? Would this be a good way to introduce young people to the components of electricity? Could it be a good way of learning soldering? What else could be done with the idea? Stop motion SpareBot animated opera? Post into the Comments or the Flickr pool with your ideas.
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Here are some of my favorite posts from the CRAFT blog this week:
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Here are some Instructables for variations on building shelves with glass bottles as the verticals:
Bottle shelving with tension provided by a hook and bolt tightened between the shelves.
A kitchen shelving unit version of their design.
Check out Zero Waste's other projects here.
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It's impossible to tell how tech companies will take feedback or advice, I just give it as it occurs to me. I don't try to sugar-coat it, but then I don't think that there's anything wrong with providing an imperfect or incomplete product or service.
I know Halloween is over, but I really wanted to share this project that Todd emailed us. The honking pumpkin was inspired by my How-to Tuesday: Scariest Pumpkin ever build. This is exactly why we do the builds for the blog. We want our readers to be inspired to make things, and maybe like Todd, make them better. Best of all, share what you have learned so others can do the same. Thanks Todd, you made my day year! Have you made anything inspired by the MAKE blog? If so, send us a link. Thanks!
My honking pumpkin used to scare the H-E-Hockey-Sticks out of Trick-Or-Treaters. I based this project on a Make-blog posted just before Halloween as I noted on the first page. The project turned out very scary indeed, but I had a lot of false triggering of the car horns on Halloween night. This site is about my re-build to make it better and more importantly I documented how I used my Oscilloscope to track down the cause of the false triggering and correct the problem.
More about the MAKE inspired honking pumpkin
More:
How-to Tuesday: Scariest Pumpkin Ever
In the Maker Shed:
Bare Bones Arduino Board Kit (Unassembled)
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I love ImageMagick, it's creating thumbs for me, night and day, day in and day out. The feed that's using the thumbnails is up and working. 
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Don't miss the previous installments: kids' stuff, fiction, gadgets, comics and nonfiction.
Freakazoid - The Complete First Season
The best TV cartoon since the Max Fleischer era, on DVD
Original Boing Boing post
Tekkon Kinkreet
Absolutely extraordinary comic fuses manga and French comics in a story of violence and lost boys in a surreal Japanese cityscape
Original Boing Boing post
DAVE MCKEAN'S KEANOSHOW
Surreal gorgeous short videos on DVD
Original Boing Boing post
Masters of Science Fiction: The Complete Series
Stephen Hawking hosts a science fiction TV show
Original Boing Boing post
Alphabutt
(Kimya Dawson)
Weird, jangly, hilarious awesome music for kids
Original Boing Boing post
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Mechatronics writes -
This is a set of musical bells which are driven by solenoids and controlled by an Arduino microcontroller.
There are 8 bells covering one octave.
The bells are controllable from a PC, or the tower can stand alone and play pre-programmed melodies.
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Evidently the people of New Mexico have seen it all. Even robolegs gone wild!
Carlos is a robotic everyman. He's not one of those fancy deep sea dwelling, swimming pool competing, publicity hogging, multiple kill, or planet exploring robots, just a regular robot doing his thing like us humans.
Carlos was a college kinetic sculpture project. I was interested in the concept of automating aspects of society that were considered not so "glamorous". Robotics are often used in environments which are considered dangerous to humans. Deep sea exploration, nuclear cleanup and volcanism are some of the "higher profile" adverse environments which robots are used. My question was, "What about other dangerous or hazardous areas?". For example, homeless people live in extremely dangerous environments. Shouldn't there be automated equipment used by this strata of society? So, for this project I chose to implement an automated walking, homeless shopping cart.
Check out some of the other projects at GizmoGarden!
Via Zoomdoggle
What do robots mean to you? Have you built a robot to solve a problem? Have you made plans for automating mechanisms? What have you done to create devices that move in response to sensor data? Add your photos and video to the Make Flickr pool, and bring on your comments!
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It would be a mistake, however, to fail to see peak population as a hugely important insight, because when we know that we are riding a wave of increasing numbers (and increasing longevity) that will crest sometime after the middle of this century, we can also see thatPeak Population and Generation X1) The longer population growth rates remain high, the more total people there will be on the planet when we reach peak population, so one of our biggest goals ought to be seeing to it by every ethical means possible that the wave of population growth crests sooner rather than later.
2) If we are successful in reaching peak population sooner, at a lower number of people, rather than later with more people, we will be much more able to confront the myriad interlocking crises we face -- a comparatively less crowded planet is an easier planet on which to build a bright green future.
3) Since we know the single best way of bringing down high birth rates is to empower women by giving them access to reproductive health choices (including contraception and abortion), education, economic opportunities, and legal protection of their rights, empowering women ought to be one of our highest priorities. (As Kim Stanley Robinson puts it, empowering women is the best climate change technology.)
4) Our other main task is to preserve natural systems and transform human economies in order to best withstand this wave of human beings, avoid catastrophe and leave behind as intact a world as we can -- to save the parts (including not just biodiversity but also the diversity of human cultures and histories) so that future generations have as many options as possible.
5) Our best hopes for both avoiding catastrophe and preserving our heritage all hinge on our actions over roughly the next two decades. In that time we have enormous work to do: create at least the model of a zero-carbon, zero-waste civilization; begin deep and widespread impact reduction here in the developed world; sustainably raise the prospects of those (especially women) living in the developing world; and preserve as many working parts of our planetary heritage as we possibly can. After that time, all of these jobs will grow progressively harder, trending quickly towards impossibility.
I've got a copy on its way to me, but while I'm waiting, I'm delighted to discover that Jamie talked his publisher, Yale University Press, into offering the book as a free, CC-licensed download. And right there, in the preface, I'm hooked:
The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind, Download The Public Domain, The Public Domain on AmazonEach person has a different breaking point. For one of my students it was United States Patent number 6,004,596 for a “Sealed Crustless Sandwich.” In the curiously mangled form of English that patent law produces, it was described this way:
A sealed crustless sandwich for providing a convenient sandwich without an outer crust which can be stored for long periods of time without a central filling from leaking outwardly. The sandwich includes a lower bread portion, an upper bread portion, an upper filling and a lower filling between the lower and upper bread portions, a center filling sealed be- tween the upper and lower fillings, and a crimped edge along an outer perimeter of the bread portions for sealing the fillings there between. The upper and lower fillings are preferably comprised of peanut butter and the center filling is comprised of at least jelly. The center filling is pre- vented from radiating outwardly into and through the bread portions from the surrounding peanut butter.
“But why does this upset you?” I asked; “you’ve seen much worse than this.” And he had. There are patents on human genes, on auctions, on algorithms. The U.S. Olympic Committee has an expansive right akin to a trademark over the word “Olympic” and will not permit gay activists to hold a “Gay Olympic Games.” The Supreme Court sees no First Amendment problem with this. Margaret Mitchell’s estate famously tried to use copyright to prevent Gone With the Wind from being told from a slave’s point of view. The copyright over the words you are now read- ing will not expire until seventy years after my death; the men die young in my family, but still you will allow me to hope that this might put it close to the year 2100. Congress periodically considers legislative proposals that would allow the ownership of facts. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act gives content providers a whole array of legally protected digital fences to en- close their work. In some cases it effectively removes the privilege of fair use. Each day brings some new Internet horror story about the excesses of intellectual property. Some of them are even true. The list goes on and on. (By the end of this book, I hope to have convinced you that this matters.) With all of this going on, this enclosure movement of the mind, this locking up of symbols and themes and facts and genes and ideas (and eventually people), why get excited about the patenting of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? “I just thought that there were limits,” he said; “some things should be sacred.”
This AP story talks about a riot in the factory where Nerf toys were manufactured for Hasbro -- and no, they didn't fight with Nerf bats.
Workers riot at Chinese toy factory (Thanks, Jennifer!)
Tempers began flaring Tuesday when the plant's Hong Kong owner, Kader Holdings Company Ltd., prepared to lay off 216 migrant workers at the factory that employs 6,500. About 80 senior workers claimed they were getting shortchanged on their severance pay, and they mobilized a mob of 500 — mostly other unemployed workers and friends, Guo said.The workers battled security guards, turned over a police car, smashed the headlights of police motorcycles and forced their way through the factory's front gate, Guo said. They went on a rampage in the plant's offices, damaging 10 computers, the company said.
The account was confirmed Wednesday by several of the 200 or so jobless laborers peacefully milling around the street in front of the four-story factory complex covered in soot-stained white and green tiles. Small groups of workers inside the factory pressed against glass windows and stared at the crowd below. When their shift ended, they flooded into the streets and mixed with the angry workers.
"The factory's management and the local officials really look down on the workers," said one laid-off worker who would only give his surname, Qiao, because he feared criticizing the company might jeopardize his chance of getting any compensation.
I spent some time in Mumbai in September, and met some of the warmest, cleverest, most driven people I've ever encountered, from the slums of Dharavi to the IT parks to the Bollywood studios, it was a bottomless well of ambitious strivers who loved their city and worked and played around the clock. The poverty was crushing, the bravery inspiring, the city beautiful and terrible at once. Like most foreigners who visit the city, I stayed in the tourist quarter in Colaba, where many of the attacks occurred -- I had dinner at Leopold's, tea at the Taj, tried to get a train at VT.
I hope that all my Mumbai friends are safe and sound. I've been avidly reading the traffic on one of the Indian mailing-lists I lurk on, watching as the Mumbai residents check in, trade stories, give thanks for being alive and, like Mehta, pledge to answer the problems of their city with love instead of hate.
What They Hate About Mumbai (via Jon Taplin)In the Bombay I grew up in, your religion was a personal eccentricity, like a hairstyle. In my school, you were denominated by which cricketer or Bollywood star you worshiped, not which prophet. In today’s Mumbai, things have changed. Hindu and Muslim demagogues want the mobs to come out again in the streets, and slaughter one another in the name of God. They want India and Pakistan to go to war. They want Indian Muslims to be expelled. They want India to get out of Kashmir. They want mosques torn down. They want temples bombed.
And now it looks as if the latest terrorists were our neighbors, young men dressed not in Afghan tunics but in blue jeans and designer T-shirts. Being South Asian, they would have grown up watching the painted lady that is Mumbai in the movies: a city of flashy cars and flashier women. A pleasure-loving city, a sensual city. Everything that preachers of every religion thunder against. It is, as a monk of the pacifist Jain religion explained to me, “paap-ni-bhoomi”: the sinful land...
But the best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever. Dream of making a good home for all Mumbaikars, not just the denizens of $500-a-night hotel rooms. Dream not just of Bollywood stars like Aishwarya Rai or Shah Rukh Khan, but of clean running water, humane mass transit, better toilets, a responsive government. Make a killing not in God’s name but in the stock market, and then turn up the forbidden music and dance; work hard and party harder.
Photography by Simon Jansen
New Zealander Simon Jansen has all the bona fides of an alpha maker. A software engineer and classic car restorer, he's got a half-built R2-D2 and a custom minibike he made from scratch. He achieved geek fame with his ASCII animation of Star Wars scenes (asciimation.co.nz), which practically defined obsessive attention to detail.
But a jet-powered beer cooler? This bloke operates on a whole 'nother level of absurdity.
Jansen set out to make the holy grail of many a maker: the homemade jet engine. In his Auckland garage, he welded his own combustor, bolted it to an old turbocharger, and added a leaf blower for air flow and a propane tank (sans regulator) for fuel.
The trickiest part was the oil system, which must maintain critical lubrication pressure: "I used an oil pump from an old Ford Escort Mark 1, driven by the motor and gearbox from a cheap 12-volt rechargeable drill!"
Don't try it at home without an exhaust temperature gauge that goes to 1,000°F and an rpm meter that hits 100,000. But bloody hell! It worked, with
the head-splitting roar that jet hobbyists live for. "Incredibly loud," Jansen recalls fondly. "You can hear the air being ripped apart as it is sucked into the turbine. I was grinning for days."
From adversity came the real breakthrough. Jansen's jet burned propane so fast that the tank rapidly iced up, dropping the fuel pressure. So he stood the tank in a tub of warm water. When a colleague remarked that the iced water could then chill beverages -- eureka!
Jansen says beer and dangerous machines don't mix, so he abstains from the frosty bevvies until he's finished playing with the engine. Ever the tinkerer, he has stripped down and rebuilt the jet beer cooler several times. "The latest iteration should be more self-contained and portable," he promises. "I've been telling the mates at the office we'll fire it up in the car park."
>> Jet-Powered Beer Cooler: asciimation.co.nz/beer
>> More Homemade Jets: junkyardjet.com
From the column Made on Earth - MAKE 11, page 19 - Keith Hammond.
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45 Vintage ‘Space Age’ Illustrations (Thanks, Samantha!)
(Image: Traffic of the Future (1959) by Klaus Bürgle, as seen in Veloopity's Flickr stream)
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Where will it end? The suspense is killing me!
30.11.38: Two eggs.29.11.38: One egg.
28.11.38: Two eggs.
27.11.38: One egg.
25.11.38: Two eggs.
24.11.38: One egg.
Cylinder of Butagaz gave out yesterday. That makes 5 weeks. It has supplied pretty regularly 3 gas-jets (one of them higher candle-power – I think 60 – than the others) & a fourth occasionally.
See also: Orwell's diaries in blog form
360 Paper Bottle (Thanks, Rian!)
The 360 Paper Bottle is a sustainable vision of the future. It is the first totally recyclable paper container made from 100% renewable resources. Versatile in its range of consumer applications and made from food-safe and fully recyclable materials, it decreases energy consumed throughout the product life cycle without sacrificing functionality. It is paper packaging that stands up to all liquid categories.
See also: Paper bottles for mineral water gluggers
This Guitar Hero mod posted by Youtube user Egyokeo blew my mind. A MIDI drum kit and some custom software on a PC send button-press input via the Xbox Input Machine (XIM) hardware to an Xbox running Guitar Hero.
Since I injured my middle left finger playing Guitar Hero 2 way too much when it came out, I've been dying to get back to playing it. But my finger hasn't healed. I was holding the neck too tightly on the X-plorer guitar controller and it hurts to bend it anymore. I've never had an injury playing the drums, so I thought "wouldn't it be great to be able to play Guitar Hero on the drums?" So I thought about how that might be accomplished... researched, implemented, borrowed, and here I outline the finished product.
Here's the whole chain of what's going on:
- Me banging on my drumKat MIDI drum pads
- drumKat MIDI Out to MIDI/USB adapter to PC
- PC running my own custom MIDI Hero software
- MIDI Hero calls into XIM which sends input to the Xbox 360 console
To make the songs playable with two-sticked drum input, some of the pads simulate multiple button presses for the 3 note chords and an input buffer on the PC automatically holds all notes until just before sending another hit event. You could tweak the setup to use a MIDI keyboard or even a MIDI guitar.
There are a lot more details on Egyokeo's site as well as the blog maintained by XIM creator OBsIV. Unfortunately, there are no instructions for actually playing like this. I'm pretty sure it involves secret ninja stuff.
MIDI Hero: Play Rhythm Games using any MIDI Instrument
Building your own Xbox 360 Input Machine (XIM)
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This doesn't quite look like the most crash-safe vehicle ever designed, but electric power plus bamboo construction does provide a dream-like level of sustainability:
Any guesses on what epoxy/resin they're using to hold the bamboo together?
Thanks to Ecofriend for finding some specs: "the 60-kg electric car can run for 30 miles on a single charge."
Couple this with your bamboo bike, and your only transportation problem will be outrunning hungry pandas!
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From the MAKE Flickr photo pool
While visiting family over Thanksgiving I witnessed this device in use - "Mark's Magic Box" displays song lyrics and note changes to simplify band rehearsals. The setup uses a laptop + LCD for storage and display - controlled via foot-pedal which was built from a mouse and housed in a handmade metal enclosure. A teleprompter for music - very cool!
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On O'Reilly Radar, Joshua-Michele Ross has an interview with the always-original and thought-provoking Kevin Kelly. The discussion covers various topics related to biology, technology, and net-connected culture. As Josh says:
This last section (at 7mins 30 secs) is the deepest and most provocative. Kevin assumes the point of view of technology to assess its needs and wants. This line of inquiry leads to some surprising conclusions. My favorite quote from the conversation: "We are the sexual organs of technology" Indeed.
I really like the observation that, unlike biology, technology is almost impossible to make extinct, and that it's hard to find any technologies from the past that aren't still being used in some fashion today. For instance, there are more human beings making arrow heads today, Kevin claims, than were making them in pre-historic times.
"Technology is the 7th Kingdom of Life" - A conversation with Kevin Kelly
More:
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Sakura Koshimizu's waveform jewelry uses actual audio as its source -
Waveform Series is the laser-cut shapes of the waveform of the sound in sound editing software environment. I used some human sound such as yawn, atchoum, giggle, wow, and the sound of church bell.- Waveform Series Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Crafts | Digg this!
Get four volumes of CRAFT year two, combined in a special edition collector's box! CRAFT: The 2nd Year includes volume 5, volume 6, volume 7, and volume 8 and is now for sale in the Maker Shed.
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In 1986, I had a meeting with Guy Kawasaki when he worked at Apple. I showed him an early version of one of our products, we had thrown the kitchen sink into it, every half-baked R&D idea, cause our company was failing and this was our last chance. One idea intrigued him. He said everyone at Apple was hand-designing foils to print on Laserwriters (they were new then). He took a piece of paper and drew a box around one of our pages, and asked if we could do that. Of course we could, and we did, and we immediately sold 1K copies of the product for Apple people, but more importantly, they were so excited by it, they in turn sold many more thousands to their customers, and our company went from being in the brink of shutting down to gushing cash. All because (drum roll) we listened to a user. Ask Guy if you don't believe me, he's on Twitter.
In 1986, I had a meeting with Guy Kawasaki when he worked at Apple. I showed him an early version of one of our products, we had thrown the kitchen sink into it, every half-baked R&D idea, cause our company was failing and this was our last chance. One idea intrigued him. He said everyone at Apple was hand-designing foils to print on Laserwriters (they were new then). He took a piece of paper and drew a box around one of our pages, and asked if we could do that. Of course we could, and we did, and we immediately sold 1K copies of the product for Apple people, but more importantly, they were so excited by it, they in turn sold many more thousands to their customers, and our company went from being in the brink of shutting down to gushing cash. All because (drum roll) we listened to a user. Ask Guy if you don't believe me, he's on Twitter.
Every professional performer always does the same thing at exactly the same moment in every show they do. What I like are things that are different every time. That's why I like amateurs.-- Andy Warhol
What Andy Warhol said about professionals vs. amateurs is true not just in theatre, but in lots of DIY pursuits such as brewing your own beer. Homebrew is better because each time it's different.
The beer that you buy is made by pros with the goal of replicating the same recipe each time; the same ingredients, the same process, the same consistent result. If you make your own beer, you can forget the same-old, same-old. In fact, it's rather hard to brew the same exact thing each time following home-made processes. As an amateur, you get to enjoy these small but noticeable differences. Homebrew has its own design goals, mainly exploring lots of variations that allow you to see how different beers can be. For instance, we've used fresh hops that I've grown when they're in season; we can dry the hops for use later in the year. We'll also buy hops from the brewing supply store.
I've got a setup for all-grain brewing at home and it takes about six hours to get a batch ready for fermentation. In the photo below, you can see the underlying IPA recipe and my notes outlining the steps. The notes help me structure the process and remember to do everything I need to do. I also use the notes to record times and other measurements.
The photo at right is next-to-last step, siphoning the cooled-down brew into a 7-gallon glass carboy. We'll add yeast and the fermentation will start. It takes several days for the sugars to be converted into alcohol. I like to check on the batch and see this vigorous activity up-close.
Brewing is fun to do with a group of people. The brew room, like a workshop, becomes a hangout and you get to talking while you're doing something. My daughter's fiance, Ryan, is learning to brew along with me. Ryan understands much more of the science behind brewing. We made a tasty Pumpkin Ale for Thanksgiving. Yesterday, we started a batch of light-colored German-style beer, which we'll eventually bottle for holiday presents.
More serious home-brewers try to perfect a recipe and repeat it each time, especially those who enter competitions. But not everyone needs to have that goal. To cite a phrase made popular by Perl programmers, there's more than one way to do it. That's what makes homebrew so interesting.
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With the Thanksgiving turkey behind us, here's something else you don't eat regularly: meaty balls. Check out The Testicle Cookbook: Cooking with Balls by Serbian chef, Ljubomir Erovic. This multimedia cookbook tells you how to peel and slice animal testicles to make such wonders as Testicle Pizza - just add your own toppings!
Wouldn't you know *it* tastes like chicken. But *it* works like Viagra!
Ever since I was a little boy I listened to the elderly talking about testicles, when well prepared and cooked, can stimulate sexual activities. It seemed funny and stupid to me then, until as a grown up man I tasted delicious goulash at a party sometime at the end of the ‘80s. I was told that it was a rabbit goulash. I couldn’t sleep that very night because I became incredibly aroused and felt a real ``charge of positive energy`` that I had to use somehow. I had never experienced anything like that before.Gentlemen, don't be squeamish, fire up the barbie and invite the neighbors over. See what kind of positive energy you can cook up at home.The next day, after the wild night, I found out from a friend that the dish we ate was testicle goulash. I suddenly realized that it could be a great way to help the sexually troubled ones and through the cooking contests discover the strongest aphrodisiac to conquer the world. The way to better sexual life through food and not drugs is the idea that keeps running through my mind.
If I had to choose one recipe from my book and recommend it to someone who's eating testicle meat for the first time it would have to be Erovic Style Goulash with Stallion or Bulls Testicles. This is because Stallion and Bulls testicles are the tastiest, and the combination of flavours works best with the testicle meat. It also happens to be my favourite recipe, which I created myself!
Like every other meat, testicles taste differently depending on which animal they come from. But in general it is quite similar to other white meats, and once it is cooked a lot of people think it is actually chicken!
From Erovic's introduction to the Ball Cup, the Testicle Cooking Championship.
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I don't generally do a lot of food posts over here, but I thought this was really clever - love noodles, but getting bored with your same old combinations? Consult the Noodlr, the noodle soup idea generator cooked up by Serious Eater Michele Humes. Via Angry Chicken
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GeekDad Holiday Gift Guide #4: GeekMoms!
Mom needs presents too! The GeekDads have come up their best holiday gift ideas for GeekMoms.
Hey You Guuuuyyyys! A New Electric Company Starts in January!
Once upon a time, before he became a brilliant movie actor with an Oscar and dozens of films under his belt, Morgan Freeman was known to a generation of children as the Easy Reader, Count Dracula, and hosts of other characters on The Electric Company. Starting in January, an entirely new generation of kids will get their own version of the show, being developed by Sesame Workshop and to be shown on PBS Kids as part of their Raising Readers effort.
Dwarven Forge Hammers Out the Boredom of Plain-Jane RPG Battlemaps
If you head out to your Friendly Local Game Store and observe the tabletop gamer in his or her natural habitat, you'll see that every gaming table is different. Some gamemasters are hunkered behind laptops, others are peeking over their screens. At one table, the clatter of dice is constant, while at the next, it's all about roleplay and the dice still haven't left their pouches.
Geekly Reader - "The Radioactive Boy Scout" by Ken Silverstein
David Hahn was a geeky kid growing up in the suburbs of Detroit during the early 1990's. Like most geeky kids, he was socially awkward and had an intense fascination with very narrow subject matter; in his case, science. But when David began working on his Atomic Energy Merit Badge, his rather obsessive pursuits nearly lead to an environmental disaster.
10 Geeky Movies That Were Terrible, but We Loved Them Anyway
What were the movies whose thin plot, or poor acting still won us over because they developed a level of geek credibility through excellent referencing, humor or attention to obscure details?
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Don't miss the rest of the posts: kids' stuff, fiction, gadgets and comics. Tomorrow I'll wrap it up with DVDs and CDs.
Good Calories, Bad Calories
(Gary Taubes)
Gary Taubes, whose NYT article on Atkins rekindled the low-carb eating movement, sums up his reserarch on low-carb eating
Original Boing Boing post
Transit Maps of the World
(Mark Ovenden)
Sheer subway-porn
Original Boing Boing post
Magic and Showmanship: A Handbook for Conjurers
(Henning Nelm)
Classic book about conjuring has many lessons for writers
Original Boing Boing post
Laika
(Nick Abadzis)
Graphic novel tells the sweet and sad story of the first space-dog
Original Boing Boing post
Mutter Museum Historic Medical Photographs
(Laura Lindgren)
Haunting book of Victorian pathological curiosities
Original Boing Boing post
Realityland: True-Life Adventures at Walt Disney World
(David Koenig)
The secret history of Walt Disney World
Original Boing Boing post
In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
(Michael Pollan)
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Original Boing Boing post
Clear and to the Point: 8 Psychological Principles for Compelling PowerPoint Presentations
(Stephen M. Kosslyn)
Cognitive science vs. crappy PowerPoint slides
Original Boing Boing post
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
(Clay Shirky)
Clay Shirky's masterpiece
Original Boing Boing post
The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism
(Matt Mason)
To get rich off pirates, copy them
Original Boing Boing post
Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found
(Suketu Mehta)
Exhausting and beautiful love-note to Mumbai
Original Boing Boing post
Urawaza: Secret Everyday Tips and Tricks from Japan
(Lisa Katayama)
Make Magazine meets Hints From Heloise by way of postwar Japan
Original Boing Boing post
China Shakes the World: A Titan's Rise and Troubled Future -- and the Challenge for America
(James Kynge)
Book captures the grand sweep of changes in the most populous nation on Earth
Original Boing Boing post
Punk House: Interiors in Anarchy
(Abby Banks, Timothy Findlen, Thurston Moore)
Communal homes of the anarcho-syndicalist lifestyle
Original Boing Boing post
The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need
(Daniel H. Pink)
Optimistic and iconoclastic career guide in manga form
Original Boing Boing post
Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture
(DJ Spooky)
Essays on the future of music edited by DJ Spooky
Original Boing Boing post
Arts, Inc.: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights
(Bill Ivey)
How the DMCA, Clear Channel and copyright extension are killing culture
Original Boing Boing post
The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It
(Jonathan Zittrain)
How to save the Internet from the Internet
Original Boing Boing post
The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey
(Emmanuel Goldstein)
Best of 2600 Magazine anthology
Original Boing Boing post
A People's History of American Empire
(Howard Zinn)
Fantastic comic-book adaptation of Zinn's classic A People's History of the United States
Original Boing Boing post
Secrets of the Mouse: An Unofficial Behind-the-Scenes Guide to Disneyland Park
(Alan Joyce)
Insider Disneyland guide
Original Boing Boing post
Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School
(John Medina)
Oliver Sacks meets GETTING THINGS DONE
Original Boing Boing post
My Mother Wears Combat Boots: A Parenting Guide for the Rest of Us
(Jessica Mills)
Kick-ass punk-parenting book
Original Boing Boing post
True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society
(Farhad Manjoo)
The science, history and economics of self-deception
Original Boing Boing post
The Quirks & Quarks Guide to Space: 42 Questions (and Answers) About Life, the Universe, and Everything
(Jim Lebans)
Bite-sized answers to the massive questions of inquisitive astronomical ponderers
Original Boing Boing post
Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future
(Cory Doctorow)
Collection of my infamous articles, essays, and polemics. championing free speech and universal access to information
Original Boing Boing post
The Baby Sleep Solution: A Proven Program to Teach Your Baby to Sleep Twelve Hours a Night
(Suzy Giordano)
The best parenting book I've read
Original Boing Boing post
How Children Learn
(John Holt)
Cllassic of human, kid-centered learning
Original Boing Boing post
The Hungry Scientist Handbook: Electric Birthday Cakes, Edible Origami, and Other DIY Projects for Techies, Tinkerers, and Foodies
(Patrick Buckley, Lily Binns)
Nerdy cookbook for kitchen hackers
Original Boing Boing post
Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin
(Kenny Shopsin, Carolynn Carreno)
Memoir and cookbook from Shopsin's, the best, most eclectic eatery in Greenwich Village
Original Boing Boing post
How Children Fail
(John Holt)
Angry lessons from failures to teach
Original Boing Boing post
Alan's War: The Memories of G.I. Alan Cope
(Emmanuel Guibert)
Extraordinary graphic novel memoir of a US GI who arrived in Europe at the end of WWII and stayed
Original Boing Boing post
Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street
(Michael Lewis)
A timely moment to revisit 20-year-old memoir of the rise and fall of a financial bubble
Original Boing Boing post
The United States Constitution: A Graphic Adaptation
(Jonathan Hennessey)
US Constitution in graphic novel form
Original Boing Boing post
Bat-Manga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan
(Chip Kidd)
The lost Japanese Batman comics of 1966
Original Boing Boing post
Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China
(Leslie T. Chang)
Amazing memoir by American-born Chinese journalist
Original Boing Boing post
Bound by Law?: Tales from the Public Domain
(Keith Aoki, James Boyle, Jennifer Jenkins)
The "Understanding Comics" of copyright, in a new edition
Original Boing Boing post
The Essential Groucho: Writings by, for, and about Groucho Marx
(Stefan Kanfer)
A book of fine grouchovian material that contains at least five guaranteed laughs on every page
Original Boing Boing post
Corrupted Science: Fraud, Ideology and Politics in Science
(John Grant)
The history, cause, effect and state of bad science
Original Boing Boing post
Don't miss the previous installments: kids' stuff, fiction and gadgets!
Tomorrow's nonfiction day, and Monday'll finish up the series with DVDs and CDs.
Laika
(Nick Abadzis)
Graphic novel tells the sweet and sad story of the first space-dog
Original Boing Boing post
The Perry Bible Fellowship: The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories
(Nicholas Gurewitch)
Hilarious, surreal webcomic
Original Boing Boing post
Invention of Hugo Cabret
(Brian Selznik)
Award-winning steampunk graphic novel for kids
Original Boing Boing post
Good as Lily
(Derek Kirk Kim)
Ass-kicking girl-positive graphic novel for young readers
Original Boing Boing post
The Plain Janes
(Cecil Castellucci, Jim Rugg)
Funny, spirited little story about a gang of girls named Jane at a strait-laced high-school, rejected by the mainstream, and their art adventures.
Original Boing Boing post
100 Days Of Monsters
(Stefan G. Bucher)
Book showcases blob-to-monster art
Original Boing Boing post
Army @ Love Vol. 1: The Hot Zone Club
(Rick Veitch)
Romance/war comic deals out the offensive yuks
Original Boing Boing post
Three Shadows
(Cyril Pedrosa)
Haunting and dreamlike graphic novel of love, bravery and sacrifice
Original Boing Boing post
St. Trinian's: The Entire Appalling Business
(Ronald Searle)
Ronald Searle's original dark, weird and hilarious St Trinian's comics
Original Boing Boing post
The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need
(Daniel H. Pink)
Optimistic and iconoclastic career guide in manga form
Original Boing Boing post
Cory Doctorow's Futuristic Tales Of The Here And Now
(Cory Doctorow)
A six-edition series of comics adapted from my short stories by an incredibly talented crew of writers, artists, inkers and letterers
Original Boing Boing post
Too Cool To Be Forgotten
(Alex Robinson)
Wish fulfillment graphic novel becomes something lovelier by far
Original Boing Boing post
A People's History of American Empire
(Howard Zinn)
Fantastic comic-book adaptation of Zinn's classic A People's History of the United States
Original Boing Boing post
TEKKONKINKREET: Black & White
(Taiyo Matsumoto)
Absolutely extraordinary comic fuses manga and French comics in a story of violence and lost boys in a surreal Japanese cityscape
Original Boing Boing post
The Mad War on Bush
(The Usual Gang of Idiots)
A truly superlative collection of parodical and satirical material from eight years' worth of Mad lampoon
Original Boing Boing post
Tekkon Kinkreet
(Lauren McLaughlin)
Absolutely extraordinary comic fuses manga and French comics in a story of violence and lost boys in a surreal Japanese cityscape
Original Boing Boing post
MAD About Star Wars
(Jonathan Bresman)
More than your average MAD anthology
Original Boing Boing post
Alan's War: The Memories of G.I. Alan Cope
(Emmanuel Guibert)
Extraordinary graphic novel memoir of a US GI who arrived in Europe at the end of WWII and stayed
Original Boing Boing post
The United States Constitution: A Graphic Adaptation
(Jonathan Hennessey)
US Constitution in graphic novel form
Original Boing Boing post
Bat-Manga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan
(Chip Kidd)
The lost Japanese Batman comics of 1966
Original Boing Boing post
Bound by Law?: Tales from the Public Domain
(Keith Aoki, James Boyle, Jennifer Jenkins)
The "Understanding Comics" of copyright, in a new edition
Original Boing Boing post
Al Jaffee's Tall Tales
(Al Jaffee)
Skinny comics with snappy humor
Original Boing Boing post
Mile of London Tunnels for Sale, History Included (Thanks, Organ Leroy!)
But it was not long before the documents had to be moved again to make room for a secure international telephone center that the government deemed necessary as relations between Washington and Moscow grew tense. During the cold war, the British government instructed its telephone department, which later became BT, to set up a secret communications system based on the latest technology that would be able to survive a nuclear attack.It was the beginning of the busiest period for the tunnels, with almost 200 workers spending their days and nights underground to route up to two million calls a week across the 6,600 phone lines. In 1963, the hot line established between Moscow and Washington after the Cuban missile crisis ran through the London tunnels.
The buzzing complex soon became known as “underground town,” with its own recreation room complete with dartboards and billiard tables, a movie theater and two dining halls. Workers often spent the night in sleeping rooms.
Photography by Amber Henshaw
The area around the house of Azmeraw Zeleke in northern Ethiopia is littered with burnt-out mortar shells left over from a war with neighboring Eritrea.
For months, Azmeraw wondered what he could do with them as he saw them being sold around Mekele town (about 800km from the capital, Addis Ababa). They were being used for washing clothes or for crushing things. Finally, he struck upon the idea of converting the shells into the inner workings of coffee machines.
The shells stand about 1 meter high. Azmeraw cuts off the pointed ends, seals them, and puts holes in the aluminum cylinder. The cylinder then channels the water, coffee, and milk.
Coffee is a major export from Ethiopia and plays a big role in life. After meals, the traditional coffee ceremony allows family and friends to get together to share news and discuss the issues of the day. Coffee shops are also popular. Each of Azmeraw's machines costs about $1,300, which is relatively cheap compared to imported machines. A local coffee shop owner, Haile Abraha, says the machines work well and make great coffee.
Azmeraw thinks he has sold hundreds -- he's not sure exactly how many -- since he started production five or six years ago. But he says it can be difficult to convince people in the area to buy the machine because of the mortar shell. "These shells have all been used. We all need peace and we don't want war, but once these shells have been used, we should use our skills to do something with them," he says.
"Sometimes I think about the fact they were used for war, but I want to change them to do something good. They could be a symbol of war, but I am doing something good out of the bad."
Azmeraw has big plans for his small business. At the moment, he works out of three ramshackle rooms with gaps in the corrugated roof. His staff of six sells the machines to coffee shops and restaurants in the area. In the future, he hopes to sell them even farther afield -- perhaps even to Eritrea.
From the column Made on Earth - MAKE 10, page 20 - Amber Henshaw.
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The iPhone dev team, hard at work as usual, announced a successful iPhone Linux port today. It's still at a very early stage, but the kernel boots on first and second generation iPhones and the first generation iPod touch. A framebuffer driver and a working Busybox installation point to an exciting open source future:
What we have:
- Framebuffer driver
- Serial driver
- Serial over USB driver
- Interrupts, MMU, clock, etc.What we have in openiboot (but hasn't been ported yet):
- Read-only support for the NAND
What we don't have (yet!):
- Write support for the NAND
- Wireless networking
- Touchscreen
- Sound
- Accelerometer
- Baseband support
If you're a Linux hacker and want to pitch in with the porting process, hop on the #iphonelinux IRC channel at irc.osx86.hu.
iPhone Linux - Official Announcement
It's just a demo at this point, but if you can't wait to see this running on your own phone, here's what you need:
Installation Instructions
iphonelinux-demo.tar.gz
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The attacker's name is Donald Kercell, a 49-year old. I searched for his name and found this SacBee story from 2007, and archived in a library service.
Kercell is a 48-year-old resident of Rio Linda. In his youth, he discovered two things. One was that he had a talent for working with concrete. The other was methamphetamine.The former, coupled with an impressive work ethic, kept Kercell gainfully employed much of the time. The latter put him in prison.
Little Brother UK launch/signing at Forbidden Planet London, Nov 29Saturday 29, November, 1:00PM - 2:00PM
Forbidden Planet London Megastore,
179 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, WC2H 8JROur Price: £6.99
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
As is our newly minted tradition, Boing Boing tv ends the holiday week with a Unicorn Chaser.
In today's edition, Boing Boing Gadgets' Joel Johnson, who trekked out into the wilderness for this previous episode, returns there to perform the nerdcore anthem embedded above -- UHHHH. (MP4 Link).
Not a single one of these grunts was repeated. All were taped in the order they appear in this remix, the morning after Joel was nearly bitten by a snake, doing a gadget review out in the wilds.
Perhaps you were too busy stuffing yourself with turkey this week to catch all of this week's BBtv goodness. I'll embed a recap below.
BBtv/Offworld: Status Report Edition, Brandon's Still a Death Gnome
Boing Boing Gadgets: Joel Reviews T-Mobile Cameo Picture Frame
Boing Boing tv Update: Virgin WiFi, Obfuscated Code, Comment Poetry, Downfall Housing Remix
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Earlier in the fall, I had the opportunity to visit Douglas Repetto in his office at Columbia University in New York. The founder of Dorkbot and organizer of ArtBots, Doug is an artist and maker and he writes the "Art Work" column for Make magazine. When I visited Doug, he was working on a piece about Squirrel Cages. These cages are quite beautiful constructions, made out of wood with the assistance of a laser cutter.
At the time, I wasn't familiar with the term "squirrel caging", which means to turn things over in your mind without end. One writer describes squirrel caging as the "act of rumination on negative thoughts." Whether they are good or bad thoughts, we all have had the experience of not being able to stop thinking about SOMETHING.
The completed work, "Distributed Squirrel Cage for Parallel Processing" was later exhibited at the Main Street Museum in White River Junction, Vermont. Doug explains:
Humans are invited to write obsessive thoughts on scraps of paper, deposit them in squirrel cages, and turn the crank, thus offloading the actual work of obsessing to the mechanism. This cutting-edge apparatus applies the latest techniques in distributed, massively parallel processing to the age-old problem of broken human minds.
Maybe Doug could set up a Squirrel Cage installation somewhere down on Wall Street.
Mother begins work to keep her son's pony (Thanks, Jeremy!)
She has had numerous Caledon businesses ask if they can post a petition for her, has received a number of offers from local stables who would like to house Emily the pony for her, and is constantly fielding calls and letters from people who would like to meet and lend support to Sam and Emily."One thing we are considering is planning some sort of meet and greet," said Spiteri. "We have had so many people ask to meet with us, that we want to plan a day where people can visit our property and meet Sam and Emily themselves, see where we house her, and the situation we're in."
According to Spiteri, the Town informed her that the next available committee date will be November 12. Until then, she will work on finishing all of her paperwork, and raising the funds needed for the application. Spiteri said she needs to pay a fee of $800 for the application.
Every time I think about moving back to Canada some day, I remind myself of how miserable the national Internet infrastructure is -- and how awful the big telcos are, and how weak-kneed and ass-licking the telcoms regulator is -- and I realize I can't possibly move home. The Internet's where I live, it's how I earn my income. Living on Canada's Internet would be better than living on China's Internet, say, but that's a pretty low bar to hurdle.
1. Last week the CRTC sided with Bell against a group of small Internet Service Providers who want to offer their customers unthrottled connections where what they download is their own business and not subject to interference.Is Canada becoming a digital ghetto? (Thanks, Jesse!)2. In last week’s throne speech the Conservative government renewed their intention to “modernize” Canadian copyright law. Their effort to do so last session was Bill C-61, a woefully unbalanced and retrograde piece of legislation that led to the greatest citizen backlash to any proposed bill in recent memory. Yet there has been no indication from new Industry Minister Tony Clement that a much-needed public consultation will take place. The best he has offered is the possibility of a “slightly different” version of the bill.
3. Twitter has just announced that they are killing outbound SMS messaging in Canada due to exorbitant and constant rate hikes from Canadian cell providers (former Industry Minister Jim Prentice vowed to get tough on SMS price gouging, then backpeddled). Cell phone rates in Canada are among the highest in the world, and the result is that mobile penetration is pathetically low and that emerging new cultural platforms like Twitter are being hobbled.
At least four other people were injured, and the store in Valley Stream on Long Island was closed. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in Bentonville, Ark., called the incident a "tragic situation" and said the employee came from a temporary agency and was doing maintenance work at the store.The United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 1500, which represented the deceased worker, has called for a investigation by OSHA and the NY State labor department."He was bum-rushed by 200 people," co-worker Jimmy Overby, 43, told the Daily News. "They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too. ... I literally had to fight people off my back."
Director of Special Projects for Local 1500 Patrick Purcell called Wal-mart's comments in response to the incident both "cold and heartless." "If the safety of their customers and workers was a top priority, then this never would have happened," Purcell stated. "Wal-mart must step up to the plate and ensure that all those injured, as well as the family of the deceased, be financially compensated for their injuries and their losses. Their words are weak. The community demands action," Purcell concluded.(Thanks, Derek Bledsoe)Purcell also suggested that people visit the website walmartcrimereport.com to review other incidents of Wal-mart not providing a safe work and shopping experience.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
I've been listening to the audiobook, Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama, which has the additional benefit of being read by the author. Obama's baritone has become a familiar voice in my head. What might surprise some people, beyond Obama's ability as a writer and storyteller, is that each of his characters becomes a distinct voice that he brings alive, not just in his writing but even more so in this audiobook. They come alive for us because they are so alive to him.
Each person's unique voice -- from the lyrical African-English of his father or half-sister Auma, from his independent-minded and concerned mother to the voice of the South-side of Chicago's preachers, political organizers and young black men on the street, to his Kansas-bred grandparents and his Indonesian stepfather -- these are people that Obama carries with him. These aren't stock characters like Joe-the-plumber or Joe-Six-Pack. They aren't the subjects of morality tales like the historical characters in Kennedy's "Profiles in Courage." They are complex characters with hardships and conflicts, plagued by self-doubt and inspired by high ideals. They cuss and they cry.
I am so grateful that our democracy has elected a leader who can write like this, think and feel so deeply, with great subtlety and sympathy, and who will bring with him to the White House such a new assortment of interesting people -- not in his Cabinet but in his head.
Over at Boing Boing Offworld, Brandon links to videos of Ken Moore's delightfully DIY Wii Theremin.
What is open source hardware? Briefly, these are projects that creators have decided to completely publish all the source, schematics, firmware, software, bill of materials, parts list, drawings and "board" files to recreate the hardware - they also allow any use, including commercial. Similar to open source hardware like Linux, but hardware centric.
This is one of the new and emerging trends we've seen really take off over the last few years. Each year we do a guide to all open source hardware and this year there are over 60 projects/kits - it's incredible! Many are familiar with Arduino (now shipping over 60,000 units) but there are many other projects just as exciting and filled with amazing communities - we think we've captured nearly all of them in this list. Some of these projects and kits are available from MAKE others from the makers themselves or other hardware manufacturers - but since it's open source hardware you can make any of these yourself, everything is available.
You can also call this guide... "The Open source hardware gift guide - The one and only, 3rd annual celebration of open source hardware!" - we think these are some of the best things to consider for the holidays and it supports an exciting development in hardware design.
So sit back and get ready to scroll through the list! Here we go!
Arduino Duemilanove - The new classic
Arduino is a tool for making computers that can sense and control more of the physical world than your desktop computer. It's an open-source physical computing platform based on a simple microcontroller board, and a development environment for writing software for the board. "Duemilanove" means 2009 in Italian and is named after the year of its release. The Duemilanove is the latest in a series of USB Arduino boards.
Features:
We have a Black Friday sale at MAKE - 10% off all kits - today only - use code OSHGG for any kit in our kit section and you'll get 10% off at checkout in the Maker Shed store. The code OSHGG is to celebrate our third annual Open Source Hardware guide for 2008. Please take check out our guide with many of the kits that are on sale, visit the Maker Shed kits and save 10% off. Offer expires tonight at 11:59pm PST 11/28/2008.
Over at the Cool Tools blog, Kevin Kelly just reviewed How to Build an Igloo: And Other Snow Shelters by Norbert E. Yankielun. I really wish I had this book as a kid; snow forts are so much fun!
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When I first got this Kit in the mail from the Maker Shed I stared puzzled at the box. What exactly was the point? A bug that blinks it's eyes when it senses movement? As I opened the box and checked out the contents I realized that the Blinkybugs don't walk, talk, chalk or really do anything besides lighting up.
But what I learned as I started to build them is that they do something more important than all that. They make you excited to build, and in essence are simply fun. Also as I was showing my friends what I was up to, I quickly learned that they make great gifts as well. I had at least four people ask me what I was going to do with them (in a hinting sort of way). So I am giving all four of them away as gifts. I even made a Halloween variant for some of my friends. So besides being a fun, simple kit to build I am guessing you want to see what these friendly little LED bugs do? Check the video out after the jump along with all the macro lens photos on how to build it.
Here is what the creator of this kit thought "This grew into the idea of planting little robotic insects around the city... on trees, fences, etc, to surprise people and just add a bit
of strangeness to the environment. I wanted them to blink intermittently, and respond to their environment, which led to the idea of the antennae acting as a spring switch, so the eyes would
blink whenever the wind blew." - Ken Murphy.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
King Records celebrated in Cincinnati“What we’d want to do with the recording studio is provide opportunities for internships and workshops and do more community outreach to get kids interested in learning about recording, performance and all aspects of the music business,” Curley says...
Nathan died in 1968 and the label was sold, moving out of town as many studio musicians faded into clubs and other cities. A couple generations thus grew up with little local awareness of the studio.
Actually, the mainstream (white) media didn’t do much at the time to tout the studio’s work. Little attention was paid in the local media to King’s artistry, especially the R&B acts....
While Nathan was catering to niche audiences, he created a musical stew rarely replicated in the recording world. Black and white session players worked together in what was likely the only truly integrated business in Cincinnati of the ’50s. They often recorded a song with a Country artist, then did it again for the R&B market.
As (Cincinnatian) Bootsy Collins remembers, “He never had a neon sign out front. If you didn’t know it was King Records, you wouldn’t know it. He just wanted to get the music done and get it out. He wasn’t trying to be a star. He was like the man behind the camera. He just wanted to make the movie and make it happen.”
Rachel @ CRAFT points us to Virginia Fleck's artwork using recycled plastic bags to create amazing (and really big) patterned mandalas.
From the pages of CRAFT:09:
Betz White's fused plastic creations and how to make them!
Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arts | Digg this!
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
ToddlePuff is an inflated interface that incorporates 16 proximity sensors and acts as a game controller for toddlers. It surrounds the child and encourages full body motion. It blocks the toddler's eye sight to create an immersive experience and is wider than a toddler's arm span to encourage movement. An animated children's story is displayed on a screen and told through the speakers. Images of characters from the story are placed on different locations inside the interface. When a character blinks on the screen, the child needs to find the matching image on the surrounding inflated walls and touch it to resume the story. The interaction inside ToddlePuff develops orientation, coordination and speed.
Here's a link to a video of two young sisters playing ToddlePuff. Even without the inflatable environment, kids may enjoy the "Flat for Rent" story, available, ToddlePuff.com.
Here's an Instructable on building primitive batteries, interesting not so much for its (low-current, low-voltage) results but as a nice overview of a different way of making batteries. Also check out this Wikipedia entry on earth batteries, which I found via this Instructable.
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I'm doing it by launching the ImageMagick convert app, once for each picture. The fixed width is 100 pixels, I compute the height to be proportional. My script makes sure not to start another conversion until the previous file exists, because the process is unfortunately asynchronous. However it is easily synchronized. I have a 15 second timeout. Then I wait 5 seconds between conversions to let the CPU catch up processing other tasks. Image processing, esp for very large images, is a very CPU-intensive thing, apparently.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
For real work, I use a full setup with lots of hard drive space, and two big screens and comfortable seating.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
shopsin's general store
baby leo
funkyzilla
sumolounge
demeter fragrance
mudpuppy magnet monsters
butter ny
green chair press
field notes: the kit
bird song organ
chicken bag
krappy
gun rack organizer
elsewares
global home
previously on web zen:
shopping zen 2007
Permalink for this edition. Web Zen is created and curated by Frank Davis, and re-posted here on Boing Boing with his kind permission. Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!)
Here is where I would attempt to summarize the meaning behind Bram Knaapen's "Technology Context Communicator". It's a fairly complex subject matter, so I think I will let him do it for me:
The non face-to-face communication of social and emotional experiences between people usually happens through phone or other media like e-mail, IM (instant messaging or webcam (e.g. Skype). The context in which the experiences were experienced plays an important role. Neither the technology nor our way of describing enables us to communicate this context in a way it can be "experienced" by the other person. There still are a few layers of formulation & interpretation in between: you can only imagine. This project focuses on the design of a system that is able to communicate the real-time context of a remote user so that the receiving person is able to " feel" as if he/she is there without the translation steps that are required when describing an experience. Emphasis is on the visual element in experience and thus imaging technology. The final concept is a modular system of connectable triangles that can be mounted to the wall and can project a real-time abstract display of a remote visual context.
More about the "Technology Context Communicator" made from 5 Arduinos [arduino.cc]
In the Maker Shed:
Make: Arduino
turkey cupcakes
(Thanks, Marilyn!)
