Treasure Trove is a new Wi-Fi treasure hunting game now in development by Justin "CosMind" Leingang. The Nintendo DS game enables players to seek out items generated by Wi-Fi hotspots nearby. I love the idea of games that are played at the intersection of the physical and virtual. Brandon has more over at Boing Boing Gadgets.
"Treasure Trove promises wi-fi hot spot item hunting"

The Other A.N. Other writes "How does the latest build of Windows 7 stack up against Windows Vista? The answer seems to be very well if the benchmarks run by ZDNet are anything to go by. If Microsoft keeps up the good then Windows 7 should be head and shoulders better than Vista. 'What we have here is one set of data points for one particular system, but I think that the results are very promising. The fact that Windows 7 comes out on top in three out of four of these tests at this early stage is very promising indeed. The boot time and PCMark Vantage results are particularly good.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pink Tentacle reports that researchers at Japan’s ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories have developed a system that can "reconstruct the images inside a person’s mind and display them on a computer monitor."

The scientists were able to reconstruct various images viewed by a person by analyzing changes in their cerebral blood flow. Using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine, the researchers first mapped the blood flow changes that occurred in the cerebral visual cortex as subjects viewed various images held in front of their eyes. Subjects were shown 400 random 10 x 10 pixel black-and-white images for a period of 12 seconds each. While the fMRI machine monitored the changes in brain activity, a computer crunched the data and learned to associate the various changes in brain activity with the different image designs.

Then, when the test subjects were shown a completely new set of images, such as the letters N-E-U-R-O-N, the system was able to reconstruct and display what the test subjects were viewing based solely on their brain activity.

(Flash video embedded above, downloadable MP4 Here.)

More than 20,000 children have been abducted and forced into armed service by warring factions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 1996. Many of these children are sexually exploited; many are forced to participate in or witness atrocities, as a way of life.

In day two of Boing Boing tv's three-day special series in partnership with the video network WITNESS commemorating the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, we present this special feature on the lives of the child soldiers in DRC.

In this episode, we'll hear from Bukeni Waruzi of the Child Soldier Project (AJEDI-Ka/PES), who are working to demobilize the boys and girls and provide them with protection, rehabilitation, and psychological care.

If you'd like to support the work of the Child Soldier Project, here's more info on how to assist (they are accepting donations, but there are other ways to help, too).

For more on WITNESS, and how they are using video to draw world attention to human rights abuses throughout the globe, visit the recently launched Witness HUB website.

William Smith of Hang Fire Books in Brooklyn listed the 16 things he keeps in his jump bag when he scouts for used books. Here are a few:

1. Electronic lookup tools: There are many variations (scanner + DB, phone browser, laptop, etc). I use a Palm Treo with Scoutpal that lets me input 10 ISBNs per query and I can check pre-ISBN title on ABE. Not state of the art certainly (and it's dependent on cell phone reception) but I haven't felt the need to upgrade.

2. Scouting Book: A collection of title lists and identification points compiled through research and experience. Two lists I find very useful are a) $$$ Titles That Book Clerks Don't Know About and b) Out of Print DVD and VHS. I keep these lists on my Treo which I sync before heading out.

9. Folding Wheely Cart: I'm fond of these models. Good wheels, folds small and carries a ton.

15. Handi-wipes and moisturizer: Few things are more disgusting than the gray and dried out hands you get after a few hours of digging through old books. If you plan to bring your hands anywhere near your face (or other people) handi-wipes are essential. I like the individually wrapped ones you find at Chinese restaurants.

16. A Weapon?: There's been some talk on the Biblio list lately about self-defense for the bookdealer. While I haven't yet felt physically threatened at a sale, I've certainly found myself in bizarre and uncomfortable environments. I firmly believe you shouldn't pack a weapon that you don't want turned on you, but maybe learning a little book-fu is a good idea. An OED would make a fine bludgeon, pocket books fly like throwing stars.

This makes me deeply happy on a whole bunch of different levels.

Mutoid Waste Company [via BotJunkie]

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An anonymous reader writes "In an interview, Esther Dyson, chairman of EDventure Holdings, describes anonymity on the Internet as similar to abortion: a bad practice that people should still have rights to. Calling anonymity one of the greatest disappointments of the Internet's evolution, Dyson said: 'I'm pro choice, but I think abortion is an unfortunate thing. I think the same thing about anonymity: Everybody should have the right to it, but it's not something one wants to encourage.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Anne Schroeder's high school math class doodles have turned into a whole host of new characters - Andi's People.

Andi's People were born during my sophomore year of high school, geometry class, to be exact. Their legs grew longer, their smiles, bigger, and their personality, more endearing.

When I moved to Hawaii after college, my boy with flip-flops and an aloha shirt adorned the front of a 'mahalo' note sent back home to family and friends in Boston.

Throughout a career in the hotel/travel industry, Andi's People stayed, for the most part suppressed in the rear of my imagination, taken out for fleeting glimpses including a meeting with Nick Ashley of "Laura Ashley" in London.

Now I have three children and a husband. At a mom's creative night at my daughter's preschool, Berrybrook, in 2000, I felt an uncontrollable urge to create ... and an Andi's People girl holding a giant sunflower emerged. That was the beginning.

Anne now has a line of over 60 original designs for cards and other paper goods.

What have the people of your imagination done for you lately? Do you have books of doodles, drawings or paintings that could come to life and become something public and tangible? Have you tried to fabricate your dreams and personal imagery? Add your comments below, and add your photos and video to the Make Flickr pool.

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Machine Project, a wonderful little alt/tech gallery and event space in Los Angeles where we've shot many a Boing Boing tv episode, is hosting another one of their annual holiday season Fry-B-Ques.

Last year, BBtv attended, and we shot the episode above. You're not actually supposed to fry gadgets, and now that a year has passed, fine, I can reveal that we did not really fry a cellphone. It's all Final Cut magic. Fake. Fakefakefake. You cannot fry cellphones, or gadgets, or bailed-out automobile manufacturers, or credit default swaps, or anything non-edible at the Fry-B-Que. There, that's over with. I feel so much better.

Now: If you go, here is my advice: do not eat anything for like 48 hours beforehand. Here's the blurb from Machine Project:

Fry-B-Q is here! Please join us on Sunday, December 14th at 8pm. This year there's a new twist — Pie-B-Q! Head to Machine for the fried food extravaganza and live music by Emily Lacy & friends, and then go next door to our neighbors the Echo Park Film Center for screenings of new videos from the Machine Project Field Guide to LACMA, rare Machine home videos and pies. Pies! Starts at 8pm. Admission to the event is free, pay $5 for all you can fry privileges, and $5 for all you can pie privileges. Things to do:

1) Arrive between 8 - 11 pm Sunday Dec 14th.

2) Bring something edible to fry. Our trained fryolater technicians will be standing by, eager to batter and fatify your soon to be delicious snacks. Our extensive testing suggests that almost any item will bring great fried satisfaction - potatoes, fish, vegetables, onions, twinkies, etc. Just in case we bought extra fire extinguishers.

3) prepare for eating pie.

4) Bring cash or checks (or credit cards) small and large and become a friend of Machine Project. We need your help to keep doing what we do, and your membership fee is fully tax deductible. Details on our support page.

Incidentally, Machine Project was written up in the NYT recently, and hey! Look at that. Boing Boing was also mentioned in the article.

BitZtream writes "This morning Google announced that Chrome is out of Beta, and showing improvements for plugin support, most notably video speed improvements. It also contains an updated javascript engine, claiming that it operates 1.4 times faster than the beta version, and work has begun on an extensions platform to allow easier integration with the browser by third parties."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you've performed kive with a band, you likely know how important monitor speakers are. Without a vocal monitor, things can go awry quite quickly - and to make matters worse, many small venues don't have them. To keep tabs on sonic output, Mark took matters into his own hands and built this "Wedgehorn" monitor speaker from a design by Bill Fitzmaurice. - Wedgehorn on Flickr

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I like coffee so much that I have tea for breakfast: The first cup of the day in particular is so good that I’m afraid I won’t be able to properly appreciate it when I am half-asleep. Therefore, I celebrate it two hours later when I am fully conscious.

#

If you were at Maker Faire Austin, you may have seen this honky-tonky belt buckle Ryan from SparkFun built which incorporates an MP3 player. It even has an MMA7260 Triple Axis Accelerometer on it to create a hip-thruster interface (i.e. you change songs by thrusting your hips). Oh, THAT's not going to look embarrassing on the subway. But then, the entire buckle is dripping with sartorial wrong sauce.

MP3 Player Belt Buckle

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Designer Emma Smart's created these great sandwich boxes for ASDA, the British grocer: they fold out to make a perfectly dinky little place-settings.

D&AD ASDA Lunchboxes (Thanks, Marilyn!)

An anonymous reader writes "Like many consumers nowadays, I find more of my time spent on the internet and various wireless devices (e.g. mobile phone). This has gotten to the point where I basically do not use a landline or cable television anymore, and they are essentially pork on my broadband bill, which further subjects the consumer to all sorts of clandestine fees that aren't disclosed until the first bill arrives and add a non-trivial sum (in my case, nearly 100%) to the monthly rate. However, it seems that all broadband access providers have this stipulation, that an internet customer must first have a basic phone or cable TV service in order to sign on for the internet service. Are there any ISPs that can get around this and still deliver broadband internet service at a competitive rate?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mexico's just passed a raft of invasive surveillance rules that require phone companies to get the fingerprints of everyone who buys a phone:

Also Tuesday, the Senate voted to create a registry of cell phone owners to combat kidnappings and extortions in which gangs often use untraceable mobile phones to make ransom demands.

Telecoms would be required to ask purchasers of cell phones or phone memory chips for their names, addresses and fingerprints, and to turn that information over to investigators if requested.

At present, unregulated vendors sell phones and chips for cash from streetside stands. It is unclear how such vendors would be made to comply with the new law.

Mexican congress approves widening police powers (Thanks, Patricio!)

Igor sez,

I work for Archive.org at a scanning center in NYC. Until a couple of months ago we worked at the Donnell Library in midtown. If you have ever been to MOMA it was the big library across the street. The city of NYC decided to turn it into a luxury hotel for some reason. There are a ton of people who frequent the library for books, internet and an amazing film library. It was really really sad to see it go. I didn't grow up in NYC, but many coworkers of mine did and they had so many memories of being a kid there and seeing their amazing Winnie the Pooh collection and watching movies for free.

The library is going to be reopened at a fraction of its size in the basement of the hotel, but that is only because by law the space MUST be used for a library and it won't be open for years.

Anyway, because of my job for the Internet Archive, we were the very last people out of the building long after all the librarians had moved on. On my last day of work I wondered the building and took shots of the demolition. The pictures, at least to me, are pretty emotionally stirring. I really think you guys will be interested in seeing them.

The Donnell Library Center: A Eulogy In Pictures (Thanks, Igor!)

An anonymous reader writes "One of the UK's top cyber cops, detective superintendent Charlie McMurdie, says the top brass want to develop the equivalent of a breathalyzer for computers, a simple tool that could be plugged into a machine during a raid and retrieve evidence of illegal activity. McMurdie said the device was needed because of a record number of PCs were being seized by police and because the majority of cops don't have the skills to forensically analyse a computer."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A teacher in Austin sent an angry, accusatory email to a local Linux collective ("HeliOS Project, which builds and provides Linux computers to disadvantaged or 'exceptionally promising' students") accusing them of piracy for distributing the free operating system and excoriating them for encouraging her students to do the same. She threatened to have the group's organizer investigated by the police, too.

...observed one of my students with a group of other children gathered around his laptop. Upon looking at his computer, I saw he was giving a demonstration of some sort. The student was showing the ability of the laptop and handing out Linux disks. After confiscating the disks I called a confrence [sic] with the student and that is how I came to discover you and your organization.

Mr. Starks, I am sure you strongly believe in what you are doing but I cannot either support your efforts or allow them to happen in my classroom. At this point, I am not sure what you are doing is legal. No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful.

These children look up to adults for guidance and discipline. I will research this as time allows and I want to assure you, if you are doing anything illegal, I will pursue charges as the law allows. Mr. Starks, I along with many others tried Linux during college and I assure you, the claims you make are grossly over-stated and hinge on falsehoods. I admire your attempts in getting computers in the hands of disadvantaged people but putting linux on these machines is holding our kids back.

This is a world where Windows runs on virtually every computer, and putting on a carnival show for an operating system is not helping these children at all.

The HeliOS organizer kind of goes off the rails in his response, implying that the teacher's been brainwashed by her union to support Microsoft because they get donations from Microsoft. I think it's more likely that she just doesn't know what the hell she's talking about and has received umpty-million "piracy is terrorism" messages from the school board and the BSA.

AISD Teacher Throws Fit Over Student's Linux CD (Thanks, Chris, Jessica, and Doug!)

conner_bw writes "In a world first, a research group in Kyoto Japan has succeeded in processing and displaying optically received images directly from the human brain. Here's the Japanese press release for good measure. One step closer to broadcasting your dreams? The research is due to be published today in the US scientific journal Neuron."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

conner_bw writes "In a world first, a research group in Kyoto Japan has succeeded in processing and displaying optically received images directly from the human brain. Here's the Japanese press release for good measure. One step closer to broadcasting your dreams? The research is due to be published today in the US scientific journal Neuron."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here's some video of Sean Reynolds' UAV that uses an Arduino Mini, Maxbotix ultrasonic sensors, and a HMC6352 compass module for autonomous flight control.

Wash UAV: Final Demo [via SparkFun]

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Brett Smith writes "This morning the Free Software Foundation filed suit against Cisco for violations of the GPL and LGPL. There's a blog post with background about the case. The full complaint is available too." The short version, as excerpted by reader byolinux, is that "in the course of distributing various products under the Linksys brand Cisco has violated the licenses of many programs on which the FSF holds copyright, including GCC, binutils, and the GNU C Library. In doing so, Cisco has denied its users their right to share and modify the software."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's good to discover that Michael McGinnis' 3D maze puzzle, Superplexus, is back in production. Here's my review of it in Make magazine. It's one of my favorite toys.

Michael wrote an article about the creation of his Superplexus, which Make is going to run next year.

Superplexus at Think Geek

Cold and rainy and wintry here.

Been riding the subways, meeting with friends, walking a lot, bundled up and finding lots of free unsecured wireless all over the city, unlike the Bay Area where everything's locked up.

Another secret of NY, if you need a warm dry place to hang out for an hour or more with no one hassling you to buy stuff, try the lobby of a big hotel. There are lots of them, and they're public places, and often have free coffee. Someday they'll close these places or figure out how to charge for them, but for now they're noisy amenities that are open all the time. Across from me in the New York Sheraton lobby there's a mother and daughter playing cards, people reaidng newspapers, business people talking deals, and no one seems to be in any kind of a rush. I have my Asus 1000H with 5 hours of battery life and nothing to do for 45 minutes. I bought a Starbuck's at the bar, over-priced for sure, so I hope they're getting a fair deal from me. Christmas music playing (I could live without but) -- it seems fitting.

Yesterday I had dinner with my book agent Steve Hanselman at the Capital Grille under a huge portrait of JP Morgan. I promised a portrait of Morgan on Scripting.

This morning I had breakfast with Anil Dash of SixApart, and got his pic with David Jacobs, also of SixApart. This is an alternate universe, one of my best friends is named David Jacobs. No relation. The one here is a Mets fan and the one in SF is a Cubs fan. They both feel like brothers, for different reasons.

Better living through exposure to microbes at the the infamous Hans Brinker Budget Hotel in Amsterdam. After reading Wild Fermentation, I'm all for it!

While it may not be a masterpiece of information design, Jeff Breakey's complete sprouting chart does tell you what you need to know about sprouting everything from Aduki to Wheat.

Here's an excerpt:

And here's the full version.

(via Mother Earth News)

It is from 1981, so expect prices to be a bit off...

For sprouter plans, check out a variety of Instructables.

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Save vs. Death found this great three-part news story about Boise's punk scene in 1985. Punk in Boise, Idaho (1985)

Rudy Rucker has a great blog entry (an excerpt from his memoir-in-progress, Nested Scrolls) about Hollywood's 11-year-attempt to make a movie based on his novel Software, which is one of my favorite science fiction novels.

The scripts kept getting worse—we were up to version ten before long. The film agent I was using then, Steve Freedman, told me that by now Phoenix had spent over a million dollars on test shots and discarded screenplays. I was alarmed that they’d thrown out so much money on such shit. But Steve said it was all good.

“The million dollars makes Medavoy pregnant. If he tries to back out, I say, ‘No, you’re pregnant, you’ve got to make the film.’”

I had one last meeting with Mike Medavoy. He finally wanted my advice on how to doctor the script. They flew me to LA first class, and a limo picked me up at the airport. Like so many people in LA, the driver was talking about the Business, and she was happy to hear I was going to a script meeting.

Software in Hollywood

Via Pink Tentacle: "This delightfully deranged promo video for Maximum The Hormone’s 'Bikini Sports Ponchin' was directed by Kōki Tange (Yellow Brain)."

GMonkeyLouie writes "The website for President-elect Obama's transition team, Change.gov, has unveiled a section called Open for Questions, which lets users submit questions and vote them up or down, in an effort to let the collaborative mind produce the questions that are the most important to the American populace (or at least the web-savvy portion). The page is powered by Google Moderator. It was unveiled yesterday, and CNet reports that when they went to post last night, '159,890 had voted on 1,986 questions from 3,255 people.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amy Scattergood of the LA Times offers 50 excellent ideas for giving homemade gifts this holiday season.

Not only are homemade gifts less expensive, they also capture the spirit of holiday giving in a way that purchased gifts simply can't. And if you consider the ubiquitous traffic and holiday crowds, a leisurely morning spent baking breadsticks or whipping up a batch of homemade marshmallows seems positively Zen-like by comparison.

1 Make a batch of grissini grissini (homemade breadsticks), flavored with rosemary or black pepper, wrapped in parchment paper and tied with a bow.

2 Cut out cinnamon marshmallow stars with cookie cutters, then pack them, dusted with powdered sugar, into a tin.

3 Pack a batch of cookbook author Paula Wolfert's prunes in Armagnac into a Mason jar. (Awesome over vanilla ice cream or crepes.) They'll be ready to eat in two weeks: You can include that on the "don't-open-until-Christmas" card.

4 Make a batch of caramel sauce and pour it into a sterilized old vinegar jar or an antique bottle from a flea market.

5 Stack a dozen shortbread cookies, flavored with lavender or a spice of your choice, wrap in tissue paper and tie with a ribbon.

6 Make a batch of fudge with 70% cacao and stack the pieces in a tin lined with parchment paper. Wrap the tin with a page of newspaper that showcases the recipient's hobby or political bent.

50 ways to make your holiday gifts homemade

Boing Boing tv is commemorating the 60th anniversary of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights this week in partnership with WITNESS. Founded by musician and activist Peter Gabriel in 1992, the group uses video and online media to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations.

Today, we present this interview with the organization's digital archivist, Grace Lile about video as a tool to fight human rights abuses at home and abroad. She tells us about how WITNESS gathers videos from human rights activists and "citizen eyewitnesses," and why collecting and preserving this footage matters.

Grace also tells us about the recently-launched hub.witness.org, which is a sort of gathering place for people who want to get involved.

(Special thanks to Yvette Alberdingkthijm, Sameer Padania, Martin Tzanev, Matisse Bustos Hawkes, and Bryan Nuñez of Witness, and BB Patron Saint Joi Ito.)

Vrogy has created a foam prototype of the M6G pistol from Halo 3. He originally intended to make a whole arsenal of aluminum cast weaponry from his designs. He discovered from this design that lost foam metal casting is somewhat a fussy art.

I cast one, but it turned out very wrong.. metalcasting is a touchy thing....some things just take a whole lot of iterative cycles.

His work really shows a dedication to using the Design Process and prototyping to get the results that he is after. It seems from looking at his work that the process itself is an important part of how and why he creates. His CAD renderings of the parts and body armor are finely detailed and wonderful to behold.

One of his other projects is to make the Rockliff DIY CNC machine mentioned a while back on the Make blog. his machine is just about ready to go. More on that after the glue dries and he finds a 'truly workable CAM program'.

The idea is to CNC parts for different scifi and fantasy costumes and props, most notable the Starcraft II marine armor and the various Halo armors. MDF or coated foam parts would provide a base for silicon molding or vacuum-forming bucks.

Have you been machining devices, costumes or other imagery from video games and virtual worlds? How can video games feed your curiosity and creativity? What have you done with insulating foam or other materials? Have you got a good lead on a workable CAM software package? What do you use for your CAD designing? Share your ideas and techniques in the comments, and show off your work in the Make Flickr pool.

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Lucas123 writes "Linux, Vista and Mac OS perform differently with solid state disk. While all of them work well with SSDs as they write data more efficiently or run fewer applications in the background than XP, surprisingly Windows 2000 appears to be the winner when it comes to performance with SSD. However, no OS has as yet been optimized to work with SSDs, a lost opportunity that Microsoft plans to address with Windows 7 and that Apple is likely to soon upgrade its platform for as well."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Videogum senior editor Gabe Delahaye writes,

If you were able to make it to the Gummy Awards on Monday night, then you saw our tribute to the best viral videos of the year. Now, this is comprehensive but in no way complete, because that would be exhausting. So there were plenty of great videos out there that didn't make it into this montage. But even without Drunk History or the Zach Galafianakis Absolut Vodka Ads, without Baby Preacher, Lil' Bill O'Reilly, or the kids rapping about the election to T.I.'s "Whatever You Like," and probably a dozen other honorable mentions, I feel confident that you will still find this to be a captivating, thorough, and most of all HEARTBREAKING tribute to this year in internet.

Bre posted up these 30 illustrations from the book Elektroschutz in 132 Bildern. These diagrams outline causes of electrical accidents...

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100 classic books are coming to the Nintendo DS on December 26 in the UK, with support for downloadable books. The DS could make a nice ebook reader if it's done right:

Turn your Nintendo DS into a pocket-sized library with 100 timeless novels from some of the greatest writers in history. Enjoy the exciting escapades of the swashbuckling Long John Silver in "Treasure Island", marvel at the redoubtable skills of the most famous detective of all time in "the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", or run the course of true love with Elizabeth Bennet in "Pride and Prejudice" - the choice is yours!

100 Classic Book Collection [via Slashdot] VideoGamer.com has the complete title list.

The open-source dslibris looks interesting as well; it's homebrew, so you'd need to load it on an appropriate storage device.

The DS would make an interesting platform for presenting all the various media we have here at Make--videos, books, magazine articles could come together in a touch-friendly way. If anyone from Nintendo (or hey, anyone from the homebrew community) is reading this, get in touch (no pun intended, I swear!). <!-- var name = "bjepson"; var domain = "oreilly.com"; var display = "Email Brian"; var ending = ""; document.write(''); if (display) { document.write(display); } else { document.write(name + '@' + domain); } document.write('' + ending); // -->

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Article with the three Rs - reduce, reuse, recycle (and a MAKE mention! We'd like to say 4 Rs, re-Make: !).

Shopping stress and hall-decking frenzy is just so last year. Try thinking through everything about your holidays, whether it’s the food you prepare, the trips you take or the way you celebrate, and break it all down using the three Rs of simplifying — reduce, reuse, recycle. Rethinking your routine might make it simpler this year — and less stressful in the future....

RECYCLE Everything: There’s fun to be had with all the old sweaters, shoe boxes and computer cables shoved to the back of the closet and a little creativity. If the old imagination is a little rusty, don’t worry: There’s lots of help out there. Check out Instructables.com for step-by-step, how-to instructions for almost everything in life, including gift ideas like recycled lamps, kids’ book clocks, homemade bubble bath and speakers from cereal boxes and dolls. For a science and technology spin on DIY projects, check out the Web site for Make magazine at Makezine.com.

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PeekAB00 writes "With 2009 IT budgets getting chopped down John Perez came up with this list of 25 best alternatives to enterprise applications (e.g DimDim over Webex, SugarCRM instead of Seibel, Zenoss over HP OpenView). John's list is somewhat eclectic. I am curious to hear what other enterprise (let's be frank...expensive) apps I can replace this year with open source ones. I am particularly interested in back-up and email archiving suggestions."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

KentuckyFC writes "A team at IBM has built the first high quality graphene transistors and clocked them running at 26 GHz . That doesn't quite knock silicon off its perch. The fastest silicon transistors are an order of magnitude faster than that but the record is held by indium phosphide transistors which have topped 1000 GHz. But it's not bad for a new kid on the block. It took silicon 40 years to get this far. By contrast, the first graphene transistor was built only last year. IBM says: "the work represents a significant step towards the realization of graphene-based electronics." (abstract)."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo is in the process of building a new Humboldt penguin exhibit that conserves energy; they're installing a natural filtration system, and they're using geothermal energy to keep the pool at a penguin-pleasing temperature range of 50-60 degrees Farenheit.

State-of-the-art engineering allows the new penguin exhibit to help us reduce our environmental footprint. The plant roots and microbes in a "constructed wetland," similar to a natural wetland, will filter the penguin pool water as it becomes dirty, or nutrient-rich (think feathers, fish and poop!). This natural filtration system will return purified water to the penguin pool. This means a pristine water environment for the penguins and no pollution entering our lakes, streams or Puget Sound. One-hundred feet below the exhibit, deep tubes will use the earth's thermal reserves to maintain the penguin pool at the birds' ideal water temperature of 50-60 degrees---heating it in winter and cooling it in summer.

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An anonymous reader writes "How the Moon arose has long stumped scientists. Now Dutch geophysicists argue that it was created not by a massive collision 4.5 billion years ago, but by a runaway nuclear reaction deep inside the young Earth."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's time for another Boing Boing seasonal tradition: our charitable giving guide, a list of charities we personally support and want to give more attention to. And as in previous years, we invite you to add your own favorite charities to the list in the comments section. This is going to be a rough holiday for the charitable sector -- we're all tightening our belts. Don't forget the charities that keep the world fair, free and healthy this holiday season.

US Charities

Electronic Frontier Foundation: Once again, my largest donation for the year goes to EFF. They're suing GW Bush and Gonzo over warrantless wiretapping, seeking DMCA exemptions for video remixing and phone unlocking, working to keep e-voting honest, busting the phone companies and fighting against telecom immunity; overturning crappy patents -- the list goes on an on. Architecture is politics: the structure of the net will determine the structure of the society it underpins. If we lose the net's freedom, we lose everything. I've worked for EFF in the past and I know exactly how far they stretch every dime. It's magic.

Creative Commons: Five years in, and CC is better than ever. Governments around the world are releasing their material under CC; it's become the norm for science, documentation, fan-media, and many kinds of literature, as well as podcasts. The launch of ccLearn for schools was a huge step this year, and the organization keeps on doing fantastic work on a shoestring budget.

Youth Radio: Pesco sez, "Youth Radio is an afterschool program that teaches journalism, media, and audio production skills to underserved young people, mostly high school age You can hear their stories on National Public Radio, local airwaves, and of course online. A lot of the graduates stick around for a while as paid writers, producers, engineers, and teachers."

Xeni sez, "Fundacion Sobrevivientes (In English, "Survivors Foundation") works to end "femicide" in Guatemala. They provide legal aid, psychological care, and protection for rape victims -- including children. They assist women whose children have been snatched from them to be sold illegally into adoption. They provide support for families of female assassination victims. Founder Norma Cruz was featured in the documentary Killer's Paradise. Her work links the murders of thousands of Guatemalan women to the country's 36-year civil war. She, her colleagues, and family are frequently targeted by those who seek to prevent the center's work. Contact: asobrevivientes@yahoo.es or info@sobrevivientes.org Tel: (502) 2285-0100 or (502) 2285-0139"

Free Software Foundation/Defective By Design: It's wonderful to see a campaigning group based on fighting DRM. Defective by Design has pulled off a number of audacious and clever actions that have raised public awareness of DRM. The fight starts here.
a

The Internet Archive: What would we do without it? I use it every day. Its mission: Universal access to all human knowledge. What could be more noble?

The Gutenberg Project: The world's leading access-to-public-domain project. They have truly created a library from nothing, and oh, what a library.

The MetaBrainz Foundation: I'm on the board of this charity, which oversees the MusicBrainz project. MusicBrainz is a free and open alternative to the evil (dis)Gracenote, which took all the metadata about CDs that you and I keyed in and locked it away behind a wall of patents and onerous licensing deals. The org that controls the metadata controls the world -- this needs to be in the public's hands.

Last year: The Participatory Culture Foundation: I'm on the board of this charity, which produces ass-kicking media software in the public interest. The best-known of these is Miro, an Internet TV program that just works -- add feeds based on YouTube keywords, or published feeds from creators, and new video arrive automagically and just play. Because TV is too important to leave up to Microsoft and Apple.

The Clarion Foundation: I'm on the board of this charity, which oversees the world-famous Clarion Writers' Workshop, a bootcamp for sf writers that has produced some of the finest talents in our field, including Octavia Butler, Bruce Sterling, Nalo Hopkinson, Kelly Link, and Lucius Shepard. I'm a graduate myself, and an instructor (I taught in 2005 and I'll be back in 2007) -- I received a substantial scholarship to the workshop in 1992 and it changed my life. I will pay that debt forward every year.

Amnesty International: Just famed for their principled, effective campaigning for justice and fair treatment under the law, Amnesty has its finger in every pie -- freeing Gitmo detainees, defending jailed journalists, fighting torture and human trafficking, and standing up to bullies wherever they find them. They deserve every cent we can give them.

Hospice Net: I make a donation to this charity every year in memory of my dear friend, former Boing Boing guestblogger Pat York. Pat was killed in a car accident, and her family nominated this charity for memorial gifts.

ACLU: For the liberties the EFF doesn't cover, here in sticky meatspace, we have the ACLU. Fearless upholders of the Constitution -- an org that knows that you have to stand up for the rights of people you disagree with, or you aren't in a free society. Unwinding the violence done to fundamental freedoms over the past eight years will take time and money. The number of bad laws and regulations to overturn is staggering.

Public Knowledge: Public Knowledge are the best copyfighters on the Hill, real DC insiders who know the ins and outs of fighting in the halls of administrative agencies like the FCC. We never could have killed the Broadcast Flag without PK, and I'm grateful that someone else is willing to be the person who puts on a suit and explains things in plain language to Congressional staffers. It's a thankless task. This year, PK was instrumental to opening up America's "white space" spectrum -- fallow radio frequencies hoarded by broadcasters -- in order to allow for thousands of times more WiFi-style bandwidth for us all to use.

Child Rights and You: I travelled to Mumbai earlier this year for research and was overwhelmed by the terrible, ubiquitous child poverty -- thousands and thousands of children, barefoot, disfigured, begging. I asked my Indian friends about it and was told that it was endemic to Mumbai and India in general, and that many children are exploited by desperate parents or criminal "pimps" who muscle them out of the majority of their earnings. As a new parent, I couldn't help but wonder again and again how I would feel if it were my child living in those circumstances. I'm no stranger to poverty -- I helped build schools with Nicaraguan refugees in Central America, worked to set up an NGO in sub-Saharan Africa -- but I'd never seen anything to rival this. On advice from my Indian friends, I investigated and made a donation to CRY (we also nominated them as a charity in lieu of presents for people who came to our wedding). CRY works to remedy the root causes of child poverty in India, in cities and the countryside, with a special emphasis on protecting girls from exploitation. The problem is deep and huge, but the solution has to begin somewhere. CRY also maintains a UK site for British donors.

Canadian Charities

Youth Challenge International: YCI sends young Canadians abroad to work on sustainable, community initiated development projects. Challengers work in international teams that include Costa Ricans, Guyanese, and Australians. I'm an alumnus, having done a hitch in a Nicaraguan squatter village in rural Costa Rica when I was 21, and it changed my life forever.

Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation: My aunt Heather died of breast cancer when she was only 41. My whole family is now involved with the society. I don't live in Toronto and can't join the annual run for the cure there, but at least I can donate to the cause.

UK Charities

Open Rights Group: Danny O'Brien and I co-founded ORG a couple years ago and I continue to serve on its advisory board. ORG has done stupendous work since its founding -- this year, they helped reverse an EU initiative force ISPs to disconnect their customers on the basis of unsubstantiated accusations of infringement. In 2009, we need them to help us fight off the national ID card, increased Internet surveillance, and a mad proposal to give the major record labels another 45 years' worth of copyright on existing works, despite the unanimous opinion of the government's own experts saying that this will be bad news.

NO2ID: As the UK sleepwalks into a surveillance state, NO2ID stands as the nation's best, last bulwark against an Orwellian nightmare of universal tracking. NO2ID has won substantial victories against the New Labour's compulsive move towards a national ID card, keeping it at bay for years. The government wants to issue me (and other immigrants) one of these when my visa next renews, in two years. If they try to, I'll leave and take my family with me. My grandparents fled the Soviet Union rather than live under a ubiquitous surveillance system -- I'm not going to be enmeshed in one two generations later.

Liberty: Britain's answer to the American Civil Liberties Union. Every single time I read or hear a news-story about incursions on human rights in the UK, there's an articulate, knowledgeable Liberty commentator countering government's flimsy arguments and campaigning for our freedom. In an era where politicians spy on us seemingly through naked instinct, like ants building hills, it's groups like Liberty that present our best bulwark against tyranny.

MySociety: Software in the public interest -- it's a damned good idea. MySociety produces software like Pledgebank ("I will risk arrest by refusing to register for a UK ID card if 100,000 other Britons will also do it") and TheyWorkForYou (every word and deed by every Member of Parliament). It's plumbing for activists and community organizers.

Jake von Slatt sez, "Make: Blog was very kind to ask me back for another year of The Steampunk Gift Guide. These are 'gifts for the Steampunk' rather then 'Steampunk gifts.'"

Lenk Butane Torch and Soldering Iron

Price: $49.99
Buy: Wall Lenk Store - Link

These are my two Lenk torches. To the left is an alcohol-fired torch that's probably 50-75 years old. I occasionally use it to heat-shrink tubing, but it's difficult to maintain and liable to seriously burn you if you are not careful with it.

To the right is my Lenk LSP-180 combination soldering iron and mini-torch. It's one of my very favorite tools and I use it a for soldering wire connections in soldering iron mode and for heating and soldering brass and copper shapes in torch mode.

Steampunk Gift Guide - 2008 (Thanks, Jake!)

I'm a big fan of Noah Scalin's ambitious Skull-a-Day project, through which he crafts and posts a skull using a different medium every day. So I was delighted to get a review copy of SKULLS, the book adaptation of his website, which lavishly reproduces his expert photographs of his widely varied projects. Every one of these skulls is an artistic success, though some are better than others (I'm a big fan of the food-skulls like those shown below -- even the simple Soy-Sauce Skull is admirably well-executed given the volatility of the medium). It's always tricky to turn a website into a book, but this is a good one: in addition to the skulls and the brief artist's notes, there's a couple of appendices, one of which will teach to you make skulls from a variety of household objects, the other shows off some of the best fan-skulls Scalin inspired.

SKULLS

Last month, I wrote about the release of Jamie Boyle's The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind a new book by one of copyright's leading and most erudite scholars. I've just finished reading my review copy (you can get a free copy too -- the book is CC licensed and free to download) and I wanted to drop in a short review.

All my early excitement about this book's release was absolutely justified. This is a hell of a book. It starts with a thorough, charming, and extensive grounding in the history and contours of copyright, moving from the 17th century to the DMCA. This is familiar ground, but Boyle gives it new life with witty asides, novel comparisons and clear writing.

The second section of this book is where it really sings, though. This is the case studies, particularly the history of the "George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People," the scathing political rap spawned by outrage over FEMA's response to, and the press coverage of Katrina. Boyle traces the musicological history of this track all the way back to Ray Charles's appropriation of contemporary gospel compositions to invent soul music (over the howls of protest of the gospel singers he ripped off) to the changes wrought to hip-hop over bad US court judgements on sampling, to the legal safe harbors that allowed YouTube to flourish, giving a home to the fan videos for a political song (noting that Ben Franklin loved to rewrite the words to popular songs to make fun of political scandals) to the unmitigated hypocrisy exhibited by Jib-Jab when they used the DMCA to threaten one of the video-makers for sampling their own remix of Woody Guthrie's "This Land..." The point of this remarkable journey is to illustrate just how complicated and "unoriginal" the most original creativity is, how much even trail-blazing innovators rely on borrowing from other artists to invent their new creations.

Following on this are other case studies, including a marvellous report on the failure of the European "Database Right" -- a kind of copyright extended to facts in databases that was meant to spur investment and innovation, but instead crippled and shrivelled Europe's database industry.

From there, Boyle moves into solutions -- hacks around the law like Creative Commons and then a comprehensive, simple program for reforming copyright law to use empirical evidence to figure out when exclusive rights make for more vibrant creativity and when they stand in creativity's way, and to apportion (and adjust) copyright accordingly. He cites successful empirical studies and talks about how their methodologies could be adapted for wider use. He describes this as an "evidence-based" approach to copyright, one grounded on the goal of ensuring the most creativity, rather than the most reward for the creators that last year's copyright turned into winners.

Finally, Boyle returns to the theme that has dominated his career: the idea that copyright needs an "environmental movement" -- a unifying principle that ties together all the people who want to get a better, more balanced world of copyrights and patents and trademarks in the same way that the notion of "ecology" brought together people who cared about wildlife, about water quality, about smog, about the ozone layer, etc, together for the first time.

All told, you'd be hard pressed to find a book that better-balances accessibility with thoroughness, or one that carries so many constructive, reasonable, moderate and achievable proposals for making a system that will improve the lot of creators and the public everywhere.

The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind, Download The Public Domain, The Public Domain on Amazon

The Netherlands based company, Royal Boon Edam Group Holding, has created the world's first energy generating revolving door that is currently installed at the Driebergen-Zeist railway station in Holland. The door stores power generated in a capicitor bank and illuminates LED lights in its ceiling, while a large scale display outside the building shows pedestrians how much overall power has been generated by the door. This commercialized door is not to be confused with the "Revolution Door" project which still remains a prototype.

World's First Energy Generating Revolving Door via InHabitat

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pilsner.urquell submitted a quote from the announcement saying "Well folks, it's that time to announce a new stable Slackware release again. So, without further ado, announcing Slackware version 12.2! Since we've moved to supporting the 2.6 kernel series exclusively (and fine-tuned the system to get the most out of it), we feel that Slackware 12.2 has many improvements over our last release (Slackware 12.1) and is a must-have upgrade for any Slackware user."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google Zeitgeist 2008 is up, here are the top 10 "DIY searches"...

DIY (Do It Yourself)

1. diy wedding
2. diy tv
3. diy solar
4. diy tile
5. diy audio
6. diy home
7. diy halloween
8. diy electric
9. diy concrete
10. diy car

A lot of people come to the MAKE sites looking for these, here are some of what they'll find!

diy wedding - Five cent wedding bands and the knitted wedding.
diy tv - DIY Television, DIY Rear projection bedroom TV project.
diy solar - DIY Solar heater, DIY Solar-powered PC, DIY $300 solar power generator.
diy tile - DIY Carpet Tile Sample Area Rug, Scrabble tile mosaic table.
diy audio - DIY Audio splitter, DIY Audio projects.
diy home - DIY Home, DIY: Home Entertainment.
diy halloween - DIY Halloween contest, DIY Halloween contest winners.
diy electric - The Cap Kart: DIY Electric Go-kart, DIY Electric stick bass.
diy concrete - DIY acid stained concrete, The making of... concrete rings.
diy car - Yabba Dabba DIY - Homemade Flintstones car, DIY Micro steam car.

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?"Zero Worship" is an art installation consisting of 14 metal measuring tapes positioned with their magnetic tips touching at a single point. The tapes are held together by their own structural integrity where zero is the highest point. The piece was built by Irish artist Ivan Twohig who uses everyday objects in his art to re-imagine their significance in society.

Zero Worship

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Donal sez, "I came across this display in a shop window in Dublin, Ireland and thought of Cory... If we this much surveillance on a handbag, the shoplifters have won."

Big Brother's secret handbag fetish (Thanks, Donal!)

A reader writes, "Berlin-based Artist Andreas Nicolas Fischer has completed a pair of financial data sculptures. One sculpture compares the world gross domestic product with the world derivatives volume as a statistical map cnc-milled in wood. The other piece shows the 3 main stock market indices in 2008 as a sculpture consisting of 150+ laser-cut wood polygons."

Fundament, Indizes

Photograph by Max Maruszewski

Learning to use an oxyacetylene torch was just the spark Max Maruszewski needed to set his interest in building things afire. Now, when he's not working on a school play or racing around a parking lot in the "wheelchair" he and a buddy made out of a shopping cart, this 16-year-old's almost certainly "coming up with crazy stuff to build."

Boredom can play a large part in a teenager's life, but for Maruszewski, it's often his muse. Take, for instance, his Lego PlayStation conversion. "The PlayStation box came from pure boredom, late at night when my friend Doug West came over," he remembers. "Mainly I just get bored and decide to go make something weird."

Maruszewski's interest in making things started when he was a youngster, hanging out in his father's bicycle shop in San Francisco. From there, he was lucky enough to find a venue for learning often-neglected maker skills. "It really started to pick up when I started a machine shop class at Petaluma High School," he says. "I learned how to use an oxy torch and how to use lathes and such. These skills motivated me to acquire some more 'hardcore' tools."

He's now working on a remote-control " shopping bot" that he and a pal hope to send down to the local 7-11 for chips and salsa. "It will hand the cashier a credit card and get the receipt and bring it back. It's going to be quite a challenge," he predicts.

Maruszewski continues to take machine shop classes, and after school he's earning his second-level credential with the National Institute for Metalworking Skills (NIMS). The NIMS credentials will allow him to apply for a degree in CNC machining later on, something he's very keen on doing.

For now, he's content to continue his schooling and have a little teenage fun. "Doug and I like to go to the local [grocery store] and get a train of carts attached to the back of the wheelchair. We zoom around the store grabbing coupons, then leave really fast."

Ah, the vagaries of the youthful mind. Maybe next he'll build coupon-dispensing robots.

>> Maruszewski's Projects: makezine.com/go/maxm

From the column Made on Earth - MAKE 13, page 28 - Shawn Connally.

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This interesting art project, entitled "m/e/m/e 2.0 (dreams of the 21st century)" by Danja Vasiliev is an interactive installation that provides an ironic twist to the world of web 2.0. The project consists of 28 old CD/DVD-ROM drives which open and close through a web based interface. Each tray is filled with a circuit board in the shape of a CD that parodies some form of web 2.0 style with a website printed on its face. Check out the videos of it in action at the links below.

m/e/m/e 2.0 (dreams of the 21st century) via Neural

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bledri writes "Officials close to the Obama transition team say that Physics Nobel Laureate Steven Chu is the likely candidate for Energy Secretary . Some are worried that Chu is not politically savvy enough, but I'm hopeful that a scientist will base policy on evidence. Discuss among yourselves."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Think Anatomy points us to Anatomy Arcade, an anatomy learning site with free flash games, including Poke-A-Muscle, Whack-A-Bone, and a bunch of cool jigsaw puzzles.

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This American Life's hour-long show on "credit-default swaps" is the best explanation I've heard so far for what the hell these things are and how they ended up causing so much havoc. I keep asking economists, bankers, and finance people what this is all about and while I understood that somehow an exotic, unregulated, non-standardised financial instrument had created trillions in semi-illusory wealth, I just couldn't really understand exactly what that meant. This hour-long audio show does a great job of explaining the technicalities of CDSes, and then delves into their history, regulatory context, and problems, ranging from Congress to bankers to people on the street. Great stuff -- an hour well spent.

Another Frightening Show About the Economy (Thanks, Alan!)

Here's a nice little technique to make sad melted snowman cupcakes:

Pour a couple of cups of icing sugar (powdered sugar) into a bowl and stir in some cold water, a little at a time until you have a spreadable icing - don't make it too runny.

Spread onto the cupcake. Pop on the head and use a little of the icing to glue on the Smartie, hat and nose. Use the black icing tube for the eyes and buttons.

Winter Cranberry Cupcakes (via Craft)

Olympus is rebranding its Stylus SW series of digital compacts as the Stylus TOUGH series to better promote its range of rugged cameras in a more defined category. Now to be known as Stylus TOUGH in the United States and µ TOUGH in the European Union, this new name will be introduced in early January 2009.

Nobel Physicist chosen to be Energy Secretary - "we are what we celebrate", having a scientist in this role is a fantastic choice, we'll see how it goes!... Steven Worked on laser cooling and trapping atoms using lasers!

President-elect Barack Obama has chosen Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who heads the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, to be the next energy secretary, and he has picked veteran regulators from diverse backgrounds to fill three other key jobs on his environmental and climate-change team, Democratic sources said yesterday. Steven Chu is an American experimental physicist. He is known for his research in laser cooling and trapping of atoms, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997. His current research is concerned primarily with the study of biological systems at the single molecule level. He is currently Professor of Physics and Molecular and Cellular Biology of University of California, Berkeley and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Pictured above, a photo via BoingBoing by Bart Nagel. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Science | Digg this!

Jock Brandis saw how people live and decided to make it better. Brandis created the Full Belly Project collaborated with Amy Smith's Engineering research group at MIT to develop an innovative and open source design to shell peanuts quickly and effectively.

On a trip to West Africa to help a friend fix a solar-powered drinking water system, Joost (Jock) Brandis came across an even bigger need: a simple, cost-effective peanut sheller to help poor women prepare tough ground nuts for sale. It seemed simple, and Brandis promised to find one back in the U.S. What he didn't know was that this "holy grail of sustainable agriculture" didn't exist.

A film lighting director by trade and a handy guy himself, Brandis decided to invent one. His Universal Nut Sheller, built for $28, is now revolutionizing vital cash crops in developing countries by cutting down on labor hours and keeping more money with farmers, who no longer have to take crops miles away to be shelled by an outside source.

Check out the video to find out more.

Two and a half years ago, we featured the full Belly Project's open source hardware design to bring affordable peanut shelling technology to a hungry world. As a direct result of that post, many people in rural Malawi and other communities do not have to break the shells of their peanuts by hand. The Full Belly Project is a growing movement bringing sustainable and affordable technology to people in great need.

What are you making to solve the world's problems? Have you used the peanut sheller from the Full Belly Project? Could you work up ways to improve this open source design? Add your ideas in the comments, and add photos and videos to theMake Flickr pool.

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From the MAKE: Flickr pool

Farnea's "last drones" are quite nicely built mini-synths, representing 3 very popular DIY electronic instruments -

the last drones built for my friends, playing with me in Elisha Gray band.

on the left FESTER, the optical theremin.

on the top Ag0 LOLLOSO, the weird sound generator.

on the right WHAT A MESS(INA), the atari punk console.

- last drones

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The new incarnation of Handmade Music will be causing a ruckus this evening @ 3rd Ward in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn. If you're in the area, be sure to stop on by and check out the fruits of sound-maker labors - and if you have a project to be heard, be sure to bring it along! -

>HANDMADE MUSIC
Hosted by createdigitalmusic.com with Etsy.com and Make Magazine at 3rd Ward

OPEN PARTY with DIYers
> Strange sounds!
> Workshop 7:30-8:30p with MIKE UNA - Make your own Beep-It optical Theremin, even with no prior experience
> Drinks and snacks
> Fab gallery space in East Williamsburg, well worth the trip

Part party, part mixer, part Science Fair, and part performance, this is an informal chance for geeksters and the geek-curious to come together, relax, and discover new sounds. The evening is a gathering of inventors of circuit-bent toys, custom software and patches, interactive digital & visual instruments, custom electronics, electricity-powered noisemakers, DIY robots and new acoustic instruments. And it’s open to everyone from hard-core hackers & newcomers to music lovers who want to learn about the DIY music scene.

Got a project in progress? Bring it along!

Just want to hang out and meet some makers and discover some new things? Drop in!

WORKSHOP BONUS - for the cost of parts!
Michael Una will demonstrate his optical theremin synthesizer Beep-it and conduct a workshop wherein attendees will build their own optical theremin. The basics of analog synthesis will be discussed. No skill level is required- all tools and parts will be provided by the participation fee.

You MUST rsvp + pay parts fee by Wed 12/10 at:
http://beepit.eventbrite.com/

195 Morgan Ave., at the corner of Stagg St., in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Take the L line to the Grand Street stop. Head South on Bushwick Ave. (towards the school) one long block and make a left on Stagg Street. 3rd ward is located three blocks down Stagg Street on the corner of Morgan Ave.
(also accessible from Montrose or Morgan Ave. L stops)

- Handmade Music 12/11

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dj writes "The propulsion division of SpaceX has performed another important test. After the test of the Falcon 9's first stage Merlin engines, the smallest engine of the SpaceX family, Draco, has been put to test. During the test, the thruster fired for ten minutes, paused for ten minutes, and then was restarted for an additional minute. The test was performed on a new vacuum test stand built by SpaceX, and put into operation in March 2008 at the SpaceX Test Facility outside McGregor, Texas."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Greetings everyone! It's hard to imagine that an entire year has passed since MAKE asked me to write last year's Steampunk gift guide. What a year it's been too!  Last year, I still had some doubt that Steampunk was a bona fide subculture, but so much has happened in the course of the year that there can be no question now that it is.  2009 is already promising to be an even bigger year for Steampunk!

Here at the Steampunk Workshop some very cool things have been happening!   Last month Jeff VanderMeer and I announced our collaboration on a project-oriented book about the Steampunk subculture and in January you will see something I'm really excited about; the Victorian Technology issue of Make: Magazine and the debut of Make:TV - both of which I've had the honor and great pleasure of making some small contribution.

So without further adieu here is the gift guide!  This year I've tried for a somewhat more accessible array of items that are best thought of a 'gifts for the Steampunk' rather than 'Steampunk gifts' as I think that will be of greater utility those those of you choosing presents for the Steampunks in your lives!.    - Jake.

---

Drill Baby Drill

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For the most recent Evil Mad Scientist project, Windell and Lenore show you how easy it is to make cool light-up greeting cards with little more than some LEDs and coin cell batteries and some basic paper craft supplies. You can even make multi-colored cards!

Edge-Lit Holiday Cards

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One of my favorite makers is now selling his awesome squid hats, check them out!

Estee's House of Fine Squid Hats - Cephalopod Über Kopf. Squid Hat #9. One size fits most adult noggins. On sale, just in time for Cephalopodmas!

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Incredible costume and dancing... the "human slinky"! You can book the slinky, from Romania - also check out more videos...

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This article was about spending cuts but this caught my eye... The UA Flandrau Science Center is going to roll their own multi-touch tables using Arduino...

...Faust says that typical exhibit designs and construction can be expensive--and that exhibits break down or get boring after awhile. Therefore, the UA thinks a different approach is in order: Flandrau plans on using open-source hardware and software technologies that can easily be built and fixed in-house. (Open-source software and networks are developed by computer experts who believe in the free sharing of technology and information.)

One cost-saving example that Faust cites: The UA Science Center plans to use dozens of touch-screen tables and interactive walls. Faust says one company the university contacted, GestureTek, makes touch-screen tables similar to the type that the UA wants to use--and charges $50,000 per table.

"Our exhibits director believes that we could produce a comparable table at 55 inches, with multi-touch and object recognition, for approximately $10,000 using our open-source hardware and software," Faust says.

In addition, GestureTek only provides a one-year warranty, and then the Science Center would be on its own. If the center wants to change the content of the GestureTek table, it could be forced pay $5,000 to $35,000 to reprogram it.

"We could change the content in-house for little or nothing," Faust says. "I think this really demonstrates the power of the open-source approach that we are using."

An article in the October issue of Wired magazine offers some clues into the technology to be used at the yet-to-be built UA Science Center. The story is about Arduino, an Italian company that makes circuit boards specifically for open-source networks. Arduino puts of all its schematics, designs and software on its Web site for anyone to download for free. The catch is that plans and software designed from Arduino's materials must be put on the Internet for others to use--which is what the UA Science Center plans to do with its exhibit designs. In fact, Faust says, several exhibit specs have already been discussed and tweaked by posting the plans on open-source networks.

More:

Arduino Gift Guide! - The Arduino open-source microcontroller platform can be programmed and equipped to perform a nearly endless list of functions. It's likely the best all-around centerpiece to a modern electronics project. But one of the tasks Arduino is best used for is straight-up fun - the open design means there's an Arduino board suitable for almost any project, and a wealth of add-on "shields" extends its abilities with ease.

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Inventor Le Trung must really like the book, "The Stepford Wives," because he has built the dream of every lonely man without hope, a robot wife. Le's wife, Aiko, starts the day by reading him the newspaper headlines and they go for a drives in the countryside. Le says his relationship with Aiko hasn't strayed into the bedroom, but a few tweaks could turn her into a sexual partner, even redesigning her to have a simulated orgasm. *Shudder*

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A genetic algorithm provides a simple way to search for an approximately optimal solution for an otherwise difficult and complex problem. By simulating the process of evolution, random mutation, breeding and selective pressure, a program can evolve a solution to a problem.

Seth Just wrote in with a simple and customizable genetic algorithm written in Perl. Given a problem set, you can define a function to randomly initialize each "individual", a mutation function to alter an individual, a breeding function that combines individuals with the strongest members, and a fitness function that computes the strength of an individual. His code is well documented and you can adapt it for your own problems fairly easily.

He also points us to a couple of interesting projects that are worth mentioning. The evolution of the Mona Lisa, pictured above, is an example genetic algorithm written by Roger Alsing. Given only 50 semi-transparent polygons and over 900 thousand mutations, his program is able to optimize their placement and color to produce an incredible likeness of the Mona Lisa.

Another cool example is this Flash vehicle simulator. A car with two wheels and two passengers is randomly constructed and its fitness is defined by how far it is able to drive without the passengers touching the ground. At first, most iterations don't even get past go, but as the evolution proceeds, a more robust vehicle is formed which is capable of navigating the terrain.

Genetic Algorithms in Perl
Genetic Programming: Evolution of Mona Lisa
Genetic Car

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yaksha writes "Intel said on Wednesday that it has completed the development phase of its next manufacturing process that will shrink chip circuits to 32 nanometers. The milestone means that Intel will be able to push faster, more efficient chips starting in the fourth quarter. In a statement, Intel said it will provide more technical details at the International Electron Devices Meeting next week in San Francisco. Bottom line: Shrinking to a 32 nanometer is one more step in its 'tick tock' strategy, which aims to create a new architecture with new manufacturing process every 12 months. Intel is obviously betting that its rapid-fire advancements will produce performance gains so jaw dropping that customers can't resist."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

yaksha writes "Intel said on Wednesday that it has completed the development phase of its next manufacturing process that will shrink chip circuits to 32 nanometers. The milestone means that Intel will be able to push faster, more efficient chips starting in the fourth quarter. In a statement, Intel said it will provide more technical details at the International Electron Devices Meeting next week in San Francisco. Bottom line: Shrinking to a 32 nanometer is one more step in its "tick tock" strategy, which aims to create a new architecture with new manufacturing process every 12 months. Intel is obviously betting that its rapid-fire advancements will produce performance gains so jaw dropping that customers can't resist."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yury Gitman teaches a class about incorporating electronics into toys, he calls it "Making Toys: Playful Experience Design Through Interactive and Wireless Techniques." This semester they're having a public open house to showcase (and play with) the toys they've created during the course. There's RFID, Arduino, and included source code. If you're in New York, head over to Parsons for the fun:

Making Interactive Toys Presentations and Playtesting
Dec 16th, 2008
Formal Critique 6:30-7:30pm
General Playtesting 7:30-8:30pm

2 W 13th St., 10th Floor [Main Lab, Far Corner]
New York, NY 10011
http://cdt.parsons.edu/

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Yury Gitman teaches a class about incorporating electronics into toys, he calls it "Making Toys: Playful Experience Design Through Interactive and Wireless Techniques." This semester they're having a public open house to showcase (and play with) the toys they've created during the course. There's RFID, Arduino, and included source code. If you're in New York, head over to Parsons for the fun:

Making Interactive Toys Presentations and Playtesting
Dec 16th, 2008
Formal Critique 6:30-7:30pm
General Playtesting 7:30-8:30pm

2 W 13th St., 10th Floor [Main Lab, Far Corner]
New York, NY 10011
http://cdt.parsons.edu/

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Simple, commonplace and absolutely vital to our electronic world - take a closer look at the current-fighting backbone of circuitry, the resistor!

Download the m4v file or subscribe in iTunes

The resistor really is a deep and rich topic to explore. There were a number of topics I would've liked to cover in this video, but unfortunately there's only so much time - here's a few items that sadly, didn't make the final cut -

• DIY ribbon controller
  
• How to read resistor values, in depth
  
• How a potentiometer works, and it's variants
  
• How to use/apply Ohm's law
  
• The Drawdio kit/project
  
• dissection of a resistor
  
• how to use a light-dependent resistor

I'm curious - what would you have included? Anyone care to post their own additions/corrections/reactions/contemplations/etc in video-form? If so please send us a link!

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There are some photos from the Steampunk show last Friday at 1st Studio over at my Flickr. Above is "Octophone" by one of my studio mates, Damian Johnson.

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HardYakka writes "According to this post in the Fortune blog, the iTunes app store has been a boon for users but some developers are saying the number of free and 99 cent apps make it difficult for developers to create complex, higher priced apps. Craig Hockenberry of Iconfactory says the iPhone may never get its killer app like the spreadsheet was for the Mac. If Apple does not do something, the store will be left with only ring tones and simple games. Some are suggesting that overpaid developers are the problem and the recession will soon lower the wages and costs for complex apps."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

President-elect Barack Obama is said to be likely to name Steven Chu, the physicist who runs Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as energy secretary. Here are two things I like about this: (1) Chu believes science is real. (2) Chu believes climate change is real. Chu won the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics. If you were at a Christmas party with him tonight and the topic of discussion shifted to atomic physics, he would pwn your ass real fast. But he is not a politician. This fact worries some in Washington, because one of his first and most important tasks in early 2009 would be to tackle a landmark energy reform bill. More: CNN, NY Times, Reuters.

VIDEO: Chu speaking about "A New Energy Program," at the Climate Change and Global Politics Conference hosted by the World Affairs Council of Northern California.

In the new issue of The Atlantic, the inimitable PJ O'Rourke tours Disneyland's revived House Of The Future attraction. According to O'Rourke, it's a boring beige abode lacking the imagination that makes futurism fun in the first place. From O'Rourke's piece, titled "Future Schlock":

According to Disney, the shape of things to come can be found at Pottery Barn, with a quick stop in Restoration Hardware for “classic future” touches and a trip to Target to get throw rugs and cheap Japanese paper lanterns. HoF II was designed by the Taylor Morrison company, a home builder specializing in anodyne subdevelopmental housing in the Southwest. The company’s president and CEO told the Associated Press, “The 1950s home didn’t look like anything, anywhere. It was space-age and kind of cold. We didn’t want the home to intimidate the visitors..."

Denigration of the future has become an intellectual prop over the past 40 years. Looking forward went out of fashion about the time that Buckminster Fuller’s audacious geodesic domes, meant to cover entire cities, wound up as hippie-height, wobbling, tent-sized structures on Mendocino County pot communes.

Bruce Handy, writing in Time about Disney’s reopening of a deliberately out-of-date Tomorrowland in 1998, began his essay with the sentence, “The future isn’t what it used to be.” He went on, “It’s not a novel observation to point out that our culture has become increasingly backward looking.”

Well, given the future envisioned in Disney’s House of the Future, who can blame us for looking the other way?

Disney’s Tomorrowland is deeply, thoroughly, almost furiously unimaginative. This isn’t the fault of the “Disney culture”; it is the fault of our culture. We seem to have entered a deeply unimaginative era.

"Future Schlock" (Thanks, Jess Hemerly!)

(Warning: the video embedded in this post contains graphic content that viewers may find disturbing.)

Boing Boing tv commemorates the 60th anniversary of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights this week in partnership with WITNESS. Have you read the declaration lately? You can do so here. It is as timely and essential to our world today as it was on December 10, 1948, just after the end of World War II.

WITNESS was founded by musician and activist Peter Gabriel with other human rights groups in 1992. They use video and online media to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations. We'll be airing reports from the WITNESS archives this week, and tomorrow Boing Boing tv will present an interview with the organization's digital archivist, Grace Lile. She spoke with us about how WITNESS gathers videos like the one I'm embedding here, and why collecting and sharing this footage matters. She also tells us about the recently-launched hub.witness.org, which is a sort of gathering place for people who want to get involved.

Today, as a special edition of BBTV WORLD, we present a video from WITNESS that was produced by Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) and the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL). With this video, they sought to "prevent continued unlawful acts that threaten the rights to life, liberty and personal security of two boys, Jorge, age 18, and Julio, age 17, and 458 others detained in the Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital of Paraguay." The two boys were detained in approximately six-by-six feet isolation cells, naked, and without access to bathrooms. Hospital staff said the boys have been detained in these conditions for the past four years.

The video is deeply disturbing. I found it very painful to watch. But the producers, and the people behind WITNESS, hope that by documenting these abuses and making the documentation available to the world in this explicit form, we will be inspired to stop the abuse -- in this case, and in others around the world.

Here is a direct MP4 link, if you prefer to download. Below, a video from WITNESS commemorating the Declaration of Human Rights, and what it means to us today.

(Special thanks to Yvette Alberdingkthijm, Sameer Padania, Martin Tzanev, Matisse Bustos Hawkes, and Bryan Nuñez of Witness, and BB Patron Saint Joi Ito.)

Cartoonist and illustrator Roy Doty has created a wonderful Christmas card each year since 1946. The card from 1971 seems well suited to a real-world re-Make over the holidays.

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coondoggie writes "The Federal Trade Commission today got a court to at least temporarily halt a massive "scareware" scheme, which falsely claimed that scans had detected viruses, spyware, and pornography on consumers' computers. According to the FTC, the scheme has tricked more than one million consumers into buying computer security products such as WinFixer, WinAntivirus, DriveCleaner, ErrorSafe, and XP Antivirus. The court also froze the assets of Innovative Marketing, Inc. and ByteHosting Internet Services, LLC to preserve the possibility of providing consumers with monetary redress, the FTC stated."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Today on our specially Doom-15th-anniversary themed Offworld (see it now before the skin swaps back!) we, most excitingly, got an exclusive first listen to LittleBigMusic, a collection of LittleBigPlanet's original music (outside the relentlessly hip guest artists) by Daniel Pemberton. It's worth mentioning here that Daniel is also the composer behind brit-com Peep Show's original season one theme song (the not- pop-punk Harvey Danger one), and the track he gave us is no less wicked, a big band/ragtime turntablist romp not too far outside the likes of Kid Koala. We also got the second installment of Margaret Robertson's One More Go, in which she explains why the "beautiful, enigmatic, alluring and unmasterable" shooter Ikaruga is "her Mona Lisa," and elsewhere got a deeper look at the design behind excellent freeware PC platformer Knytt Stories. Finally, we read, happily, just what Steven Spielberg knows about games, saw Sony's fair-enough response to its temporary closure of LittleBigPlanet social networking site Sackbook, saw 'Buffalo Bill's game room, Guitar Hero heading to the arcade, and clever Left 4 Dead hacks, and celebrated that Doom anniversary with some recommendations, remembrances, and eBay auctions.

A Guitar Hero 3 arcade game will soon be available for your coin-op pleasure at a sports bar, movie theater, or hotel lounge near you. Brownlee has the details over at Boing Boing Offworld.
Guitar Hero goes arcade

Want to make your own Arduino shields? Garrett at Macetech has an Eagle file to make your life a little easier:

I created a very basic Arduino shield scaffold; the schematic has only the standard Arduino headers, and the PCB has the correct header spacing and labels. The PCB headers are locked so they can't be accidentally moved. Also, the PCB has a dashed line showing the edge of the parts on the Diecimila board that extend higher than the female headers; if your PCB is kept behind this line, it won't short on the USB connector when using standard length header pins.

Download the Eagle CAD project here: ArduinoShieldScaffold.zip

(via hack a day)

Also check out Rob's Eagle library for ATMEGA168 and ATMEGA8 microcontrollers.

And, earlier in the prototyping process, I'm a big fan of Ladyada's protoshield kit with a mini breadboard on top.

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