Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Over at Boing Boing Offworld, Brandon posted about these joystick coat hooks. They're not DIY, but they certainly could be!
Purple squirrel baffles experts"We don't think he is a mutant squirrel but he may have had a mishap around the school. "The old building where we have seen him nipping in and out is a bit of a graveyard for computer printers. He may have found some printer toners in there.
Joshuah Bearman says:
A New Yorker story about home grown atom bombs! Or really, a home grown atom bomb researcher -- a truck driver who single-handedly reconstructed the still classified construction of Little Boy and Fat Man.How A Truck Driver Learned to Build An Atom BombWhat I love about this particular piece is the motivational parallels between Coster-Mullen and the origins of the bomb he wants to recreate. It was the pure pursuit of knowledge that led to the atom bomb. Physicists wanted to understand how the universe worked at the atomic level, and there happened to be some very serious consequences to unlocking the secrets of the grand watchworks. Now, Coster-Mullen, has dedicated himself to understanding the mechanical watchworks of Little Boy. There is no motivation beyond knowing, but that pursuit too has some potentially serious consequences.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Mayor of Mt. Holly wrote about the wonderful Chris Montez on his blog, and found this 1966 video of his song "The More I See You." Good stuff.
Oh, man how I love Chris Montez. I got turned on to him by my good pal John P. of King Cat fame, and if that is not reason enough to believe that Mr. Montez isn't something of a ray of sunshine on the face of all living creatures, check this!Chris Montez!Those Beatles fellas opened up for Chris Montez at his 1962 London show!
It is alleged that while in London for said show he got into a fight with John Lennon in a pub and that Lennon poured a pint over his head at one point.
Mr. Herb Alpert signed Chris Montez to his fledgling A&M record label, resulting in 3 amazing records of laid back, cheery, latin-infused bliss.
Continuing in Boing Boing tv's "Road to CES" series, Joel Johnson at Boing Boing Gadgets sez:
Although we didn't bother with CES last year, this year the Boing Boing team will be out in the cold Las Vegas desert, sifting through piles of sadness incarnate to find the precious products that might actually make our lives — if not truly better — a little happier in the coming year.Join the discussion thread with Joel, Brownlee, and Beschizza over at Boing Boing Gadgets.I'm more excited about going to CES as I have been in a long time. (Thanks in large part to your suggestions.) We try to keep it positive around here, but sometimes that's easier to do when everyone else seems so down in the dumps.
At least that's how I think it'll be at this year's show. Perhaps the convention won't be quite as bleak as I imagine in this "Road to CES" video we've put together.
Flash embed over there, and here's a direct MP4 link if you'd prefer to download.
Previously -- here was Xeni's video installment: The Road to CES: What do you want? (BBtv + Boing Boing Gadgets)
Sponsor shout-out: Boing Boing TV's coverage of CES 2009 is sponsored by WEPC.com, in partnership with Intel and Asus. WePC.com is intended to be a site where users come together to "share ideas, images and inspiration about the ideal PC." Participants' designs, feature ideas and community feedback will be evaluated by ASUS and "could influence the blueprint for an actual notebook PC built by ASUS with Intel inside."
The divorce plea was filed in August by the girl's divorced mother with a court at Unayzah, 220 kilometres (135 miles) north of Riyadh just after the marriage contract was signed by the father and the groom.Saudi court rejects plea to annul 8-year-old girl's marriage to 58-year-old man (via Anorak)"She doesn't know yet that she has been married," the lawyer said then of the girl who was about to begin her fourth year at primary school.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Dog is eaten in many parts of China, but only in Guangdong do people eat cat. It is rare to see a stray wandering the streets. Many cats served for supper here are shipped down from the north.Chinese seek to pull cats from the menuThe Small Animal Protection Assn. says one Guangzhou-based business captures up to 10,000 cats per day from different parts of China. The cat snatchers are typically formerly unemployed people who use large fishing nets and are paid $1.50 per cat.
"They've eaten all their cats so they have to take ours from Beijing. People don't want to let their cats go out on the street," said Zhao Ming, a 55-year-old physician who was among about 40 people demonstrating in Beijing.
The cat trade thrives in a seemingly boundless gray area of commerce. Police are reluctant to charge the cat catchers with theft because many of the cats involved live outside and, in the famously independent way of cats, are not technically owned by humans, merely fed and nurtured.
Balko has learned that the lawsuit is real, not a hoax as some have suggested. Here's a copy (pdf) of the complaint. And here's a record of the filing in federal court.
In the Houston Press the attorney for the officers Milburn is suing gave a statement:
"The father basically attacked police officers as they were trying to take the daughter into custody after she ran off."Says Balko: "As far as I can tell, Texas does appear to allow for a citizen to resist an unlawful arrest if the arrest meets certain conditions:""The city has investigated the matter and found that the conduct of the police officers was appropriate under the circumstances. It's unfortunate that sometimes police officers have to use force against people who are using force against them. And the evidence will show that both these folks [meaning 12-year-old Dymond and her father] violated the law and forcefully resisted arrest."
Texas Penal Code Chapter 9, Subchapter C, Section 9.31, Subsection C:(c) The use of force to resist an arrest or search is justified: (1) if, before the actor offers any resistance, the peace officer (or person acting at his direction) uses or attempts to use greater force than necessary to make the arrest or search; and (2) when and to the degree the actor reasonably believes the force is immediately necessary to protect himself against the peace officer's (or other person's) use or attempted use of greater force than necessary.
Balko comments:
Even setting aside the severe beating Milburn's lawsuit says she received at the hands of the police (which is presumably backed by records from the hospital she was admitted to later that night), you're left with several plain-clothes police officers jumping out of an unmarked van, calling a 12-year-old girl a prostitute, then attempting to snatch her from her own front yard. I would think that those actions alone would satisfy the "greater force than necessary" portion of the statute.Dymond Milburn Update
The first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1, has been out for a couple of months now, and it's turned out to be a nicely hackable phone. Google has opened things up a bit more by making a read-only development branch, "cupcake", available for public perusal. If you're wondering when we'll see these enhancements on a shipping Android phone, it's gotten one step closer since the cupcake branch came out:
The changes introduced in the cupcake branch have been merged into the master branch, preserving all of the previous commits to master. The same will happen for each future drop to cupcake.
If you're not familiar with the guts of software development, what this means is that Google's Android developers took two complex pieces of software (the official, stable version of the Android operating system + the experimental version with all the new bells and whistles) and combined them, reconciling any differences and combining them into a seamless whole.
"cupcake" development branch [via phandroid]
For those of you who don't want to hack your own firmware to open it up completely, you can get an unlocked, hackable phone direct from Google.
Basic plot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Amy Crehore posted some preliminary designs for the ukuleles that will be on display at her "Dreamgirls and Ukes" exhibition at Thinkspace in Los Angeles from Feb 13-March 6, 2009.
Ukulele Headstock Art by Amy Crehore
A top Republican internet strategist who was set to testify in a case alleging election tampering in 2004 in Ohio has died in a plane crash. Michael Connell was the chief IT consultant to Karl Rove and created websites for the Bush and McCain electoral campaigns. Michael Connell was deposed one day before the election this year by attorneys Cliff Arnebeck and Bob Fitrakis about his actions during the 2004 vote count in Ohio and his access to Karl Rove’s email files and how they went missing,Rove's computer guru, Mike Connell dies in plane crashGuest: Mark Crispin Miller, professor of media culture and communication at New York University. He is the author of several books, including Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008 and Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They’ll Steal the Next One Too.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
In the war for blue jean supremacy, there is no more worthy, yet neglected contender than the Wild Ass Jean, complete with six Wild Ass bachelor buttons and red suspenders. Fleece lining, your choice!I spotted these jeans on the street, not because of the double-duty denim craftsmanship, but because of the little tag on the rear pocket that featured a little donkey kicking his hind legs like he really means business!
Once I arrived at Bailey's woodsman supply site, I realized that I was one chipper behind the curve. The work clothes and boots they offer are the warmest, ruggedest, and strangely, most flattering work togs I've purchased in years.
As a seamstress, I can tell you that making your own jeans is for "advanced members" only. (See my Craft Liturgy: "Life's Too Short for Pants"). For those of you who won't be turned away, I suggest starting with Sandra Betzina's Vogue pattern #7608 -- plus her book, Fast Fit. You will also need two sewing machines set up -- one for straight stitch, one for double -- plus a serger, if you hope to finish your jeans within a month. There is no ballgown that takes as much labor and finesse as a tailored pair of Western jeans -- but your buttons will burst if you pull it off successfully!
UPDATE: Email Bailey's to get on their waiting list for the next supply of Wild Asses! Many sizes are already gone for the Xmas rush.
(Susie Bright is a guest blogger)
My mother died four years ago, on a Christmas week. My father passed the next winter, when the light started changing and the warm days were gone for good.A nurse called me one night from my mother's hospital bed and talked about the winter chill -- how when the temperatures suddenly dropped, even though everyone was well-heated in the nursing home, a score of people would pass away. The dying of the light at the end of the year was more than just a metaphor.
I feel a kindred spirit with others who've lost close friends and family during the holidays -- our memories of those relationships, warm or troubled, close or estranged, are overwhelming this time of year.
I was fortunate to find a book after my parents died, called Always Too Soon: Voices of Support for Those Who Have Lost Both Parents, which is a collection of interviews with an incredibly diverse group of people who don't mince words about the transformation of loss.
Who knew that actor/rapper Ice-T got his nickname as a result of how cold he became as a child when he lost his mom and dad. I sobbed over Geraldine Ferraro's story, of all people. Each story is illuminating and comforting, especially during the holiday mania, when "false consciousness" seems to be in overdrive.
Listening to my parent's voices, the little bits of recording I have, is especially poignant to me, more than photo albums. Both my parents were linguists; that's how they met as students, each interested in Native California history.
The only recording I have of my mom, Elizabeth, is her interviews with elderly Patwin tribe members in the 1950s, sharing stories and songs from the last of the original fluent speakers. Even though I don't understand most of what they're saying, I'm spellbound by the timbre of my mother's voice.
In my father's case, Bill Bright, he was a veteran broadcaster from KPFA, and delighted in being on the air. I interviewed him about his life and language interests at length on my Audible audio program:
MP3 file: Bill Bright, 8/13/28 - 10/15/06
In the first segment, Bill talks about his book, Native American Place Names in the United States. You will learn why the origin of the town name, Loleta, CA, comes from an elderly Wiyot man telling a lumber baron's wife, "Let's fuck!" There's more than one story of American place names like this! He also explains the political and sexual controversy behind the much-abused word "squaw" -- which is a lot more complicated than you might think.
In the second segment, I asked my dad what was his first experience was of looking at something "erotic." He describes a series of "Tijuana Bibles" that circulated on the Oxnard Union High School playground in the 1930s -- and how his eyes were opened when he came to Berkeley in the post-war years.
At the end of our interview- and this part always makes me cry -- Bill recounts some of Coyote's mythic and erotic misadventures. He sings me a song, in the Karuk language, as a girl would sing to capture the attentions of a young man she might have her eye on. He has such a beautiful voice! He learned this song from Nettie Rubin, one of the native speakers and consultants he met when he was just a young man with a wire recorder, traveling up the Klamath River. She told Bill that since he didn't have a daughter, she was going to have to pass on all her special "daughter songs" to him.
Photo: Elizabeth and Bill Bright, 1954, on Army leave in Florence
(Susie Bright is a guest blogger)
I've been working on a memoir -- which was catalyzed by Tin House editor Rob Spillman when he asked me if I had a story about going to the high school prom, for his new book.
I told him that at my school in the 1970s, only "squares" went to the prom, but that I did have a rather illicit role in a Quaalude-drenched swim-team banquet at the famous Century City Playboy Club.
Did that count? He said yes. On that initiative, the following chapter began:
I was a high school swim team score-girl before I was a commie. I'm glad things ended up that way, because otherwise I never would've been able to touch the Playboy Bunny, and carry on my sensual, if guilty, disposition.The high school swim team was my ticket to an almost-prom, to halcyon schooldays, to a bartended, dress-up affair.
The Trotskyists, the Yippies, the lavender pinkos -- they gave me guns and a good deal to think about, but nothing soft or fluffy.
I went to a school called University High -- a white, mostly Jewish school in West Los Angeles. Its public face was one-part Hollywood Colony, one part UCLA professors' kids. In the '70s, there was no truly integrated school in the district. A discreet number of black students from South Central Los Angeles were bused into white schools from the time they were in Kindergarten.
It was not a two-way street. It was a cradle-to-cap affair.
Continued...
(Susie Bright is a guest blogger)
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Isn't spending $4200 on a desk made out of an actual airplane wing more important than a few month's rent? If so, get yours here! Otherwise, anybody know of a good place to find a few abandoned chunks of airplanes?
Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Furniture | Digg this!
(Flash embed above, here's a downloadable MP4 link)
Continuing in our retrospective of favorite Boing Boing tv episodes from 2008, we return to zero gravity today.
With me on the Zero-G weightless flight featured in this episode are Intel Chairman Craig Barrett; my friend Sean Bonner from metblogs; and a bunch of science teachers from grade schools and high schools throughout the United States who were on board to conduct microgravity experiments for the kids back home.
As you watch, keep an eye out for the floating lego robot, a flying pig, and the barfing guy who is totally barfing for reals -- the rest of us did not, btw, I don't get sick in space.
What you see in this episode is what it really feels like, and it feels awesome.
(Special thanks to Peter Diamandis, and George and Loretta Whitesides)
BB pal Bonnie Burton of Lucasfilm and all things Star Wars says, "If Boing Boing readers want to see a REALLY retro Wookiee family photo, check out the Star Wars Holiday Special which aired once 30 years ago -- just in time for the holidays.
Great stuff about the Holiday Special here too: link one, link two. The Bantha toy that Lumpy (Chewbacca's son) plays with in the Holiday Special inspired me to do this craft!"
This NYT article puts forth the argument that while our presently crappy economy is hurting retail sales overall, crafting stores and web services that involve crafting are seeing, and will continue to see, a healthy bump:
Craft stores, from giant chains like Michaels Stores to small scrapbook supply shops, are reporting that sales are higher compared with the last holiday season, and online marketplaces for handmade goods, like Etsy, are seeing a boom in listings and transactions.For Craft Sales, the Recession Is a Help (New York Times)Sales at Scrap, a craft supply store in Portland, Ore., were up 33 percent in November compared with the year before. The shop’s customers have made a menorah out of yellow plastic bottle caps, Christmas tree ornaments from wood samples and calendars from fabric and paper collages, according to Sarah Dyer, the manager.
“A lot of people are doing a do-it-yourself Christmas, because of the economic downturn but also wanting to make their lives more sustainable, making stuff as opposed to buying more stuff,” she said.
Image: "rua dos remédios," a photograph of a crafting supply store in Portugal, by Flickr user Rosa Pomar.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
NSFW, but you can take out your revenge on those rat bastards who ran AIG with this handy Flash game by the incredibly talented animator Joaquin Baldwin.
I'll admit that I've got NERF on the brain. Perhaps there's something about the holidays that makes me want to shoot foam darts at people... This is a fantastic steampunk NERF modification by Professor Oliver Shagnasty, Maker to the Queen, World Traveler, Custom builder of Gadgetry. He used late 1800's gas lamp parts, vintage brass and copper to bring this one to full, steamy glory. It has since been sold, but he offers many other modified NERF guns on his website.
Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Toys and Games | Digg this!
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
For craft sales, the recession is a help @ The NYTimes...
Feeling the pinch of the economic downturn, some holiday gift-givers are saving money this year by making their own presents or — for those who lack the time or talent — buying handmade gifts from others.And....
Craft stores, from giant chains like Michaels Stores to small scrapbook supply shops, are reporting that sales are higher compared with the last holiday season, and online marketplaces for handmade goods, like Etsy, are seeing a boom in listings and transactions.
Sales at Scrap, a craft supply store in Portland, Ore., were up 33 percent in November compared with the year before. The shop’s customers have made a menorah out of yellow plastic bottle caps, Christmas tree ornaments from wood samples and calendars from fabric and paper collages, according to Sarah Dyer, the manager.
“A lot of people are doing a do-it-yourself Christmas, because of the economic downturn but also wanting to make their lives more sustainable, making stuff as opposed to buying more stuff,” she said.
The boom in crafts and related supplies contrasts with poor results for traditional retailers, like electronics retailers and department stores. The nation’s overall retail sales in November fell 7.4 percent from the year before, according to the Commerce Department.
The craft sector, which has about $5.9 billion in annual revenue, is “operating in its own little niche,” said George Van Horn, a senior analyst at IBISWorld, a research firm. “The number of establishments is growing.”
On eBay, people bought 13,137 handmade crafts over the last 60 days for an average price of $8.21, and sales of handmade crafts climbed 34 percent, the company said.
On Sept. 29, a day the stock market plunged sharply, Etsy, the leading Web marketplace for handmade goods, had record sales. In November and December, the site has continued to break records. Last month, artists sold $10.8 million of goods on Etsy, up from $4.2 million in November 2007. Some 135,000 people signed up for Etsy memberships and sellers listed 1.1 million new items, both figures more than double the same month last year.
That's incredible!
This week I am going to show you how to hack a MAKE gift subscription card. Actually, it's showing you how to interface a 7-segment display with an Arduino. I just happened to make it into a gift card subscription.
My idea was to give a MAKE subscription and an Arduino to a friend. What a great combination! As a final part of the gift, I am making a post about how to program the 7-segment display to help them get started.
It may be too late to order the 7-Segament display and Arduino for the Holidays, but it's never too late to get a MAKE gift subscription or Maker SHED Gift Certificate.
What you need:
Here is a list of the components that you will need for this build.
Step 1: Print the card
Print the MAKE Gift Subscription card. You can download one here. I modified mine a bit, but you don't have to, just find a spot that it will fit on any of the cards. Next, Cut an opening 1 5/8" x 5/8" where you want the display.
Nothing captures the holiday spirit like staggering numbers of alcoholic beverage bottles.
[via Unpluggd]
Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Holiday projects | Digg this!
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Mark's article on GOOD! The Return of Amateur Science...
Last week, while browsing the Popular Science archives (which recently became available on Google), I noticed that the earlier issues of this 138-year-old magazine contained quite a few articles devoted to amateur science. The 1940s and 1950s were a heyday for basement-based research, with experiments such as making hydrogen gas, building a photomicrographic camera out of a stovepipe, constructing a Geiger counter, making a tiny oil refinery, and superheating steam to a temperature high enough to light a cigarette. It’s fun to imagine postal clerks, insurance brokers, and aluminum siding salesmen pulling out a microscope to study a sample of the family pet’s fur, or going outside to examine the heavens with a handmade telescope.Popular Science wasn’t the only magazine encouraging the everyman to learn more about the natural world. For 72 years, Scientific American ran its popular “Amateur Scientist” column, which debuted in 1928. Projects included constructing an electron accelerator, making amino acids, photographing air currents, measuring the metabolic rate of small animals, extracting antibiotics from soil, culturing aquatic insects, tracking satellites, constructing an atom smasher, extracting the growth substances from a cantaloupe, conducting maze experiments with cockroaches, making an electrocardiogram of a water flea, constructing a Foucalt pendulum, and experimenting with geotropism. Who knew you could have so much fun at the kitchen table?
One of our Maker Channel videos on Make: television, YouTube favorite, Junji Koyama plays flutes he makes out of carrots, peppers and broccoli. He was excited to share his videos with us and we really appreciate his submission. To submit videos of your own, visit our submission site.
Here's the M4V and/or subscribe in iTunes.
Make: premieres on Public Television stations nationwide in January; call your local station and request "Viewer Services" to learn more about your city's broadcast times and dates. We'll also stream full episodes on www.makezine.tv on January 3rd.
Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Make: television | Digg this!
Star Wars maven Bonnie Burton interviewed Larry Lars, the creator of this wonderful Star Wars LEGO nativity .
Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in LEGO | Digg this!
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Atif Shamin, a student at Carleton University in Canada has figured out a way of reducing a mobile device's power consumption by replacing all of the internal wires and PCBs of a device with an antenna. This enables a wireless connection between a micro-antenna embedded within the circuits of the chip. Pretty cool, now my friend can watch their whole ALF box set without getting up to charge it.
Carleton University Engineering via iPhone Alley
Season's greetings and noisy tidings of good cheer to you and yours!
Inventor's 2020 vision: to help 1bn of the world's poorest see better @ The Guardian...
Silver has devised a pair of glasses which rely on the principle that the fatter a lens the more powerful it becomes. Inside the device's tough plastic lenses are two clear circular sacs filled with fluid, each of which is connected to a small syringe attached to either arm of the spectacles.Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in News from the Future | Digg this!
The wearer adjusts a dial on the syringe to add or reduce amount of fluid in the membrane, thus changing the power of the lens. When the wearer is happy with the strength of each lens the membrane is sealed by twisting a small screw, and the syringes removed. The principle is so simple, the team has discovered, that with very little guidance people are perfectly capable of creating glasses to their own prescription.
Looking for just the right salad fixings and wrapping paper at the same time? How about celery stamped gift wrap? If you plan it right, you can have your vegetables do double duty.
While you are at it, you might want to check out the rest of the referring site, a source of lots of great ideas, Curbly.com.
Vegetable printing, its not just for Potatoes anymore.
How do you make your own wrapping for gifts? What would the most environmentally and meal friendly inks be? Add your comments below and contribute your photos and videos to the Make Flickr pool.
Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Crafts | Digg this!
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Parallax forum has an interesting supercomputer project based on 11 Parallax Basic Stamp micro-controllers. This might not be a supercomputer based on Wikipedia's definition, but it's still an amazing accomplishment.
This is the World's First talking Basic Stamp Hobby Supercomputer!!! (and the World's 1st Supercomputer built from hobby microcontrollers) It communicates by English and Chinese voice (EMIC TTS board), lights (21 LEDs), vision, sound (12 speakers), motion (PIR), ports (176), infrared, Vibra Tab Mass detector, accelerometer, temperature chip, ultrasonics [PING)))], LCD Liquid Crystal Display, and a tiny uOLED color monitor. Attachments include a keyboard, 3D space mouse, and other goodies under development.
More about the Basic Stamp supercomputer
Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Computers | Digg this!
If you want to add a little excitement to your MakerSHED gift certificates, consider giving them in cube form. It just takes 6 cards and simple folding to create a cube. I have been making cubes from my old business cards with the instructions by Ned Batchelder.
All you have to do is put one card perpendicular to the other card. Fold the bottom card up around the top card. Flip it over and repeat. Do this 3 times and you have 6 sides that can be assembled into a cube.
Nobody was sure what exactly had happened to Christopher Robin after he'd left the Hundred Acre Wood, but they were thrilled with his gift certificates to the Maker Shed and the MAKE and CRAFT magazine subscriptions. Your friends will be thrilled, too! There's still time to give gift subscriptions and Maker Shed gift certificates! Don't forget the printable gift cards!
Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Holiday projects | Digg this!
I was giving a subscription to MAKE this year to a friend for Christmas, so I printed out one of the print-at-home gift cards to announce it. Here's my Flickr set showing how you can add LEDs to a card using conductive thread and a watch battery with holder. It's pretty easy and uses the same circuit as my electronic embroidery tutorial. The LEDs are wired in parallel with each other and the battery is on the back of the card. The threads run between the two folded layers of paper so as to be held secure.
If you've ever seen a boxing match, you know that two people 'box' each other in rounds. To train, boxers use a timer on the same time base as a fight so that their bodies get used to 3 minutes of boxing and 1 minute of rest, during a bout.Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in DIY Projects | Digg this!
My goal was to re-create the timers found in our local Front Range Boxing Academy. At the gym, a common boxing timer is used and the bulbs keep burning out. That is unacceptable in this day in age with LEDs lasting at least 30 times longer than regular incandescent bulbs. These common boxing timers are also expensive ($99)!
Some days it is painful being an engineer. Looking at this hunk of metal, I know inside there is just a microcontroller, a loud speaker, a couple switches, some lights, and a whole lot of empty space... This is a pretty straight forward project! Forgive me, but I tend to use a lot of stuff around the office that is readily available. And because this was meant to be an example project, I used all through-hole components.
There's an epic discussion taking place under yesterday's piece about Rick Warren and the Obama inaugural. Really something to behold. Lots of intelligent discourse about something that's very emotional. That's a huge milestone. And people say blogging is dead. Feh. We're just getting started.
4. It may be too generous to call it bone-headed, it might be Rove-headed. This is a total wedge issue. Thanks so much Obama for uniting us (not).
I like this clipping from a police blotter in the Silicon Valley area. I don't know if it's real or not, but I hope it is.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
PIxastic is a Javascript library that provides low level image processing capabilities to your web applications. Jacob Seidelin has been working on this as part of an all-Javascript image editor, and he decided to release the library under the MIT license earlier this month:
Pixastic works by utilizing the HTML5 Canvas element which provides access to raw pixel data, thereby opening up for more advanced image effects. This is where the "experimental" part comes into play. Canvas is only supported by some browsers and unfortunately Internet Explorer is not one of them. It is however well supported in both Firefox and Opera and proper support is hopefully coming for Safari soon (Safari currently only works with the WebKit nightly builds). A few of the effects have been simulated in IE using the age old proprietary filters. While these filters are much faster than their Canvas friends, they are few and limited. Hopefully we will one day have real Canvas on IE as well.
The ability to manipulate image data directly is one of the more compelling features of the next generation of web browsers. I'm looking forward to the day when I can cut and paste an image directly into a blog post, adjust its color and crop it, all without jumping back and forth to an image editor.
Check the Pixastic site for more details on the supported browsers and available filters. There's also a small snippet of code that shows you how to use Pixastic with jQuery.
Pixastic Image Processing Library
Picastic Documentation
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Burger found that 70 percent of the participants had to be stopped from escalating shocks over 150 volts, despite hearing cries of protest and pain. Decades earlier, Milgram found that 82.5 percent of participants continued administering shocks. Of those, 79 percent continued to the shock generator's end, at 450 volts."Santa Clara University professor mirrors famous torture study" (Thanks, Robert Pescovitz!)
Burger's experiment did not go that far.
"The conclusion is not: 'Gosh isn't this a horrible commentary on human nature,' or 'these people were so sadistic,'' said Burger.
"It shows the opposite — that there are situational forces that have a much greater impact on our behavior than most people recognize,'' he said.
(Flash embed above, and here's a downloadable MP4.)
Happy Lazy-Time on Boing Boing tv! We're slowing down for the holidays, and taking a few weeks to gloat over all the fun stuff we produced together in 2008. Come join us in the seasonal gloating! Right here, under the genetically engineered mistletoe, by the warmth of burning fuel cells.
Today's installment: Remember when we flew out to the Mojave Spaceport to hang out with astronaut and American hero Buzz Aldrin, Virgin Galactic (and Virgin America, and Virgin everything) founder Sir Richard Branson, Scaled Composites founder Burt Rutan, and other space luminaries for the Virgin Galactic launch? Well, why don't we just revisit that moment of glory here. It was a lot of fun. And we're hoping a future episode of our video hijinks will actually take place on the spacecraft. That's what we want for Christmas.
Original blog post here:Why revisit this episode today? Snip from a blog post on spacefellowship.com:
Earlier this week images were appearing on the internet showing that the WhiteKnightTwo craft had been doing some tests in Mojave, the earliest tests showed perhaps two of the engines being used, while a later test showed all the engines working and some further testing. Today we finally saw the four Pratt & Whitney Canada PW308A engines carrying the craft into the air and a huge milestone being reached by Virgin Galactic.Read: Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo Mothership Makes Maiden Flight.The maiden flight of the craft lasted just shy of one hour and happened today at around 08.15 at Mojave air and spaceport. Rumours suggest that a Beechcraft King Air was used for a chase plane. (...) This key event now leads us into an interesting 2009 when we should see the SpaceShipTwo craft being unveiled.
And, you may also enjoy revisiting this related Boing Boing tv episode, another one of our faves from 2008: Xeni kicks the tech tires on Virgin America (Flash embed below, here's the downloadable MP4 Link). In case you're joining the party late -- you can watch Boing Boing tv while you're on Virgin America airplanes, we think they're about as awesome as an airline gets, and I believe the Galactic episode above is actually playing on seat-back rotation right now.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Bright Eyes (1934)
Starring Shirley Temple, with Charles Sellon -- completely upstaged by uber-brat Jane Withers. I'm starting to see where PeeWee Herman got some of his moves!
One of the best rat-a-tat-tat's is between the Indulgent Mom and her Spoiled Child:
Anita Smythe: Now, dear, practice your piano and Mama will buy you something nice.Withers was cast- and everyone else sent home- the moment the director, David Butler, heard her impression of a machine gun.
Joy Smythe: What?
Anita Smythe: Anything you like. What do you especially want?
Joy Smythe: A machine gun!
(Susie Bright is a guest blogger)
Here's a vertical farm that seems a bit more DIY-able than others, using shipping containers, for strong, cheap, stackable infrastructure. You can learn more about Organitech here. It's not clear how production-ready they are, but this seems like an approach just begging for tinkering...
Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Green | Digg this!
67 queries. 6.844 seconds
