Techdirt has a wonderful summary of how hard it is sometimes to stay upbeat when faced with some of the complete idiocy that intelligent, tech-savvy readers often have to deal with in their day-to-day lives. While the frustration will probably never go away, nor will the news calling attention to it, it does seem that opening people's eyes to problems helps things move in the right direction, so keep it up. "Yes, we're in the midst of a brutal financial mess — but that won't stop innovation. Yes, incumbent forces, with short-sighted plans and a desire to hold back the tides are annoying and disruptive (not in a good way) in the short run. But even they are finding they can't hold back progress. Robert Friedel has a wonderful book called A Culture of Improvement that details how we, as a society, are constantly looking to improve on what we already have. We add ideas and ingenuity to old concepts and build something better — not because of the desire to grab some "intellectual property," but because of the desire to improve our own lot, to build a better tool that we want to use. Incumbent short-sighted players have been able to hinder and harm progress, but they can't keep it down completely. That culture of improvement can't be stopped entirely."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mr. Bali Hai has compiled a fair-sized gallery of B-movie opening titles. I've seen a few of these movies, and it's probably safe to say that the titles are the best parts.

Psychotronic titles

Kevin Kelly discusses the possibility of an "unthinkable" breakup of the USA. After all, notes Juan Enriquez, "no US president has ever died under the same flag that he was born under."

The most recent breakup scenario was noted today in the Wall Street Journal in a piece about Russian professor Igor Panarin, who predicts the breakup of the US in the year 2010. He has been predicting the same for the past decade but is now getting an audience. The logic of his scenario goes like this:

He predicts that economic, financial and demographic trends will provoke a political and social crisis in the U.S. When the going gets tough, he says, wealthier states will withhold funds from the federal government and effectively secede from the union. Social unrest up to and including a civil war will follow. The U.S. will then split along ethnic lines, and foreign powers will move in.

With his Soviet KGB background it may be no surprise that in Panarin's scenario the breakaway "countries" all succumb to foreign influence and are not really independent. In contrast American scenarios of breakup envision the resultant countries -- like the Pacifica coast -- as vibrant independent influences themselves.

Breakup of the USA

Hate your neighbor? Buy a long-crowing rooster.

According to poultry expert Gail Damerow, writing in the current issue of Backyard Poultry Magazine, long crowers probably have their origins in Japan and have spread throughout the world through deliberate selection. Here's a play list for your listening pleasure, consisting of a Turkish long crowing breed, the Denizli, followed by a Koeyoshi (good crower in Japanese) and the Tomaru (black crower).

Homegrown Evolution: 2009 Waking up on New Year's Day with the world of long crowing roosters

Anonymous Coward writes "On Friday the wonderfully customer centric AirTran decided to remove a family of 9 US born Muslims after a comment between two family members regarding how close to the Jet engine they had been seated. The wonderful part is that after the FBI cleared the family 2 hours later, AirTran refused to fly the family, and refused to rebook them on their way from Washington to Orlando, Florida. The family purchased additional tickets on US Airways later that day, after AirTran requested that the irate father be escorted from their booking podiums by security. This whole story highlights the pathetic customer service we are getting from the Airlines these days — they actually treat us like criminals first and ask questions later. Just don't get me started on Delta." It's nice to see that stupidity still knows no bounds.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microscopic diamonds found a few feet underground are evidence that a big destructive comet hit North America 13,000 years ago, scientists say. The LA Times reports:

According to the theory -- which has its critics -- as the comet broke apart, it rained fire over the entire continent, igniting the plains and the forests and creating choking clouds of smoke.

Heat from the explosions and the massive fires melted substantial portions of the Laurentide glacier in Canada, sending waves of water down the Mississippi and into the Gulf of Mexico. That triggered changes in Atlantic Ocean currents, which ushered in a 1,300-year ice age known as the Younger Dryas.

Battered by fire and ice, as many as 35 species of mammals, including American camels, the short-faced bear, the giant beaver, the dire wolf and the American lion, either immediately vanished or were so depleted in number that humans hunted them to extinction.

The humans, a Paleo-Indian grouping known as the Clovis culture for the distinctive spear points they employed, suffered a major population drop, disappearing in many areas for hundreds of years.

(PDF article about the Clovis Comet)

Funny ad for a homemade motorcycle on Craigslist.

I have a homemade bike me and my brother built many years ago. Runs and drives but the back tire kind of rides sideways. The seat blew out a few years ago and I made do with a sofa cushion, duct tape and a couple of 2x 4's ( the ultimate fix! ). It runs like a champ but does smoke alot especially if you are hard on the gas. Uses about a quart of oil for each gas fillup. I usually just put the oil directly in the gas as it is going to burn it anyway and that way it is easy. Can't drive over 12 miles or so at a time as the motor gets red hot and starts loosing power so probably a good bike for someone who drives locally. Does backfire and squeel pretty loud occasionally so I usually wear earplugs of some kind. DOES NOT pass emmissions so would need to be registered in a county without emmisions check. Great first bike otherwise!

(via grow-a-brain)

Good Morning America introduces us to women who treat their Reborn baby dolls like real infants. "Women living with fake baby dolls treat them like real children" (jezebel.com, thanks Tara McGinley!)

Tech Fragments reports on Homeland Security's Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST), which will screen people for "mal-intent" as they walk past checkpoints.

The system uses cameras to detect slight alterations in pupil sizes, blink rate and even direction of gaze. A laser radar called BioLIDAR measures heart rate and changes between heartbeats. The BioLIDAR can even monitor a persons respiration and track movements in the face, neck, and cheeks. Stressed out? A thermal camera will pick up on this too by gauging changes in the skin temperature.

Homeland Security ran a test in September of 140 volunteers using a FAST prototype. The system was very accurately able to pick out people with hostile intent. "We're still very early on in this research, but it is looking very promising," says DHS science spokesman John Verrico. "We are running at about 78% accuracy on mal-intent detection, and 80% on deception."

Underground comic icon S. Clay Wilson suffered a severe injury in November. He is out of the hospital now, but will need extensive rehabilitation, and friends and family are putting on some benefits to help with the massive medical costs. If the incredibly troublesome and twisted art of this man has entertained or helped you in any way, please consider helping out if you can.

Here's some info and links:

S. Clay Wilson Noise Benefit
Jan 11 at the Hemlock Tavern in San Francisco, starting at 6 p.m.

Mojo Lounge Benefit
Jan 24th at the Mojo Lounge in Fremont, CA. The Dave Walker Band will play from 3 to 7 and there will be a raffle afterward with CDs, artwork, amp repair coupons and other donations, as well as comic books and art for sale during the performance. All proceeds will directly help pay for S. Clay's medical expenses. For more info, email Dan Fogel of HippyComix at comixpr@comcast.net.

Steve Duin's Oregonian columns covering the story.

There's also an address where donations can be sent:
P.O. Box 14854
San Francisco, CA 94114

--Bruce (Thanks, Howard!)

(Shawn Connally and Bruce Stewart are guest bloggers)

mattskent writes "I'm currently a junior in college working towards my Bachelor's degree in Computer Science. As such, I'm starting to look pretty seriously at jobs in the IT/Computer Science field. I've spent plenty of time working entry-level IT jobs doing various kinds of help desk type work, and so most of the exposure I've had to the field is related to support of other people's computers. I enjoy helping other people out, but I'd rather not be plugging things in and restarting computers the rest of my life. Although the possibility is growing on me, I don't think I would particularly love to write code all day for a living either. What are some interesting jobs that you've had or heard of that I could look into fresh out of college with a Computer Science degree?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

From Mark Burnett's 2005 book Perfect Passwords: Selection, Protection, Authentication, a table of the "Top 500 Worst Passwords Of All Time." (via Beschizza's Twitter)


UPDATE: Here's the Google cache.

Every year, some friends of mine throw an "Art Hat" party for New Year's Eve. We get together and each construct a hat that we wear at the stroke of midnight. We parade around in the hats while banging on their pots and pans. Last year, we had a bonfire in their front yard and make a tremendous racket outside (their Arlington neighbors must LOVE them). This year, it was too bloody cold, so we made our joyful noise inside the house. The hats people put together on the fly are pretty impressive.

My hat (seen here) was made of paper I corrugated (with a paper crimping tool I have), a paper plate, red grommets, computer keyboard membrane, LEDs, a Blinky Bug circuit, and chocolates (the platform for the bug). This is the hat the next day so it's a little worse for wear. I had a very...er complicated year I needed to dance off.

Happy New Year!

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nandemoari writes "The beta version of Windows 7 has been widely distributed through torrents and other file sharing systems. But now some commentators claim Microsoft deliberately allowed the package to get into the hands of pirates. 'I'm not being critical here, as some Microsoft Watch commenters will surely claim. It's rather smart marketing. Microsoft fills a big news void with something bloggers and journalists will write about. The suspense of stealth downloads from torrents and races to post the best screenshots first make the Windows 7 leak buzz all the more exciting. For other people, there is delight in seeing Microsoft squirm because Seven leaked early. Not that I see much squirming going on.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Brother's Quattro 6000D HD sewing machine... via Giz, wow!

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I've been slow to get to start work on the MediaWiki API.

But today I took the first step, to find out that it is possible to turn off the API, and that the test wikis people have been kind enough to let me play with have it turned off. (It defaults on.)

So to get started I'm going to need a wiki that has its API turned on. Here's a page that explains what's needed. It looks like Perl to me, it's probably easy for a Perl guy to futz with this, but I don't want to hack anyone's server. I want to stay strictly on the workstation side.

I promise to share what I learn programming the wiki once I get the ball rolling.

A panel used by [script]

25C3 is underway and includes excellent presentations. Via hackaday, here's some coverage of "Solar-powering your Geek Gear:"

[script] selected a four segment folding solar panel after some research. he pointed out that solar is currently more of a necessity technology than money saving since the panels can be very expensive. for connectors, he recommended ones that were safe, polarized, and difficult to short, like the ria connect 230 series he used. most of the device plugs were easily purchasable, but some had to be salvaged from old ac adapters. a key component of his setup was the adjustable voltage regulator. it's based on the ltc3780 buck-boost controller which is 98% efficient and can be adjusted from 4v to 25v.

More, including the author's slides and paper, here.

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ancientribe writes "Security experts are cautiously on the lookout for some lesser-known but potentially lethal threats that could be more difficult to prepare for and defend against in 2009. These aren't your typical enterprise hack attacks. They're mainly large-scale Internet threats — attacks that knock out sections of the Internet infrastructure, radical extremist hackers, Web attacks that adversely affect online ad revenue, and even the unthinkable: human casualties as a result of a cyberattack." Also known as the new group of things the fear mongers will use to make you do their bidding.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chitra Ganesh is a Brooklyn-based artist whose drawings, photographs, and digital collages are inspired by Indian's Amar Chitra Katha comix series. She has a show of new work opening next week at the Chatterjee & Lal gallery in Mumbai. The incredible piece above is "Still from The Ghost Writer" (lenticular print, 19.75" x 27.5"). Of course, a lenticular print gives the illusion of depth and movement like those Cracker Jack prizes. But this one is a couple feet wide! The exhibition, titled The Ocean Beneath, runs until January 29. Chitra Ganesh's site (chitragensh.com), More of Ganesh's work (thomaserben.com)

Thermistors are pretty cool little items. They convert heat into resistance. By having the temperature available as resistance, you can use the value to control other things like circuits and programs. Photo cells do the same thing with light, and they are in lots of common devices from night lights to dimmers on clock radios.

How could you use a thermistor with your shiny new Arduino? What could you measure with a thermistor? Have you got any videos like this where somebody demonstrates an interesting device? This video came from a summer youth program in Boston. Does your community have a similar opportunity for teenagers to learn incredible things and work on neat projects? Show your ideas in the comments, and iinclude your photos and video in the Make Flickr pool.

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My brother, Abe, and his wife, Josie, built an amazing house down in Terlingua, Texas, basically out of mud and empty bottles. OK, that’s oversimplifying it, but they built the dwelling with their own hands, mostly out of adobe, rocks they collected from their property, and other scrounged materials. It’s a beautiful, self-sufficient abode that includes a rainwater catchment system, solar and wind power, and a groovy Tolkienesque fireplace. They’ve now moved to the state of Chihuahua in Mexico, and are working on another house while raising a new baby.

During it all, they’ve been chronicling their work and documenting their research, so that others can benefit from their mistakes (just a few) and hard-earned knowledge (lots and lots). For anyone considering a life off the grid, or just interested in what it takes, their Vela Creations website is a great resource, full of practical information and in-depth how-tos.

--Shawn

Vela Creations

(Shawn Connally and Bruce Stewart are guest bloggers)

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "According to a tantalizing 'unconfirmed' report, it appears that the RIAA has jettisoned MediaSentry (now known as SafeNet) as its 'investigator'. MediaSentry has come under heat in a number of different states for the fact that it was 'investigating' without an investigator's license and invading people's privacy. Earlier this year it was found to have made diametrically conflicting written statements to two different tribunals within 30 days of each other, in one denying that it was an 'expert witness', in another claiming that it was an 'expert witness'. If the report is accurate, the termination comes at an interesting time, since MediaSentry's investigator is the plaintiffs' only fact witness to prove copyright infringement in Capitol Records v. Thomas, which is now headed for a retrial on March 9th. If he does take the stand, the reasons for his company's termination will be fair game for cross examination. One also has to wonder if it's in any way connected to the puzzling enigma of the New York Attorney General's alleged involvement in the RIAA's recent Wall Street Journal announcement that it would be reducing its p2p file sharing cases to a trickle."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ryan writes in about several Madison, WI Makers (including Ryan) that were featured in this story in 77 Square, a weekly arts/entertainment section in the Capital Times. Local DIYers reclaim old junk and turn it into functional, useful stuff...

When Ryan Bollig got frustrated with the short battery life of his wife's battery-powered Swiffer Vac, he didn't take the inconvenience in stride by throwing out the appliance and buying a newer, more powerful model.

Instead, the Madison-area handyman took out the old battery pack and replaced it with a newer, stronger battery pack. The result: a hot rod Swiffer Vac that runs three times longer than it used to.

"If you're not able to change it in whatever way you think is appropriate for your life, you're not really invested in it. You're just paying to use it," said Bollig, a Sun Prairie resident who recently launched madcitymakers.com to unify the scattered assortment of locals who fix, invent and re-invent.

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Louis Braille became blind aged three. In 1821 he started to devise the Braille system to help people with visual impairments to read and write...

Invented by Louis Braille at the age of 15, the idea came from a soldier who had served in the Napoleonic army in Poland and had attempted to devise a system that could, with night-time manoeuvres, allow messages to be sent and instructions to be passed from hand to hand.

It didn't work, because the system was too complex and the soldiers didn't get it. Not surprisingly, because to read Braille without being able to see you need to develop sensitive finger ends.

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I ordered a gadget from NewEgg on December 26, guaranteed 3 day UPS. Today's the day it's supposed to arrive, and I was totally looking forward, but UPS says: THE RECEIVER REQUESTED A HOLD FOR A FUTURE DELIVERY DATE. UPS WILL ATTEMPT DELIVERY ON DATE REQUESTED / DELIVERY RESCHEDULED[X]. That's really funny cause I'm the receiver and I sure didn't request a "hold for a future delivery." Oy.

So now I'm on hold on chat to get an answer from NewEgg, since there's absolutely no way to get to a human on UPS. I figure since NewEgg has my money, they should be able to help me figure out what this means. Stay tuned.

Of course their answer is to call UPS. Don't you love it when a vendor takes responsibility. (Not.)

So NewEgg was no help, so I tried calling UPS for a second time, and this time I said "Representative" repeatedly to every prompt. And it worked. I got to talk to a human being. Maybe it's actually on the truck she said, but they're going to call me from San Pablo at noon to let me know what's going on. Stay tuned.

Then I got an email from the NewEgg rep, who I had suggested should call UPS instead of me doing it, and guess what -- she did it! Amazing. Maybe there's hope. She said the UPS website was mistaken and the package is on the truck out for delivery and I should get it today. Maybe 2009 will be a great year. Stay tuned.

BTW, I gave the NewEgg rep a link to this blog post so there's a chance they may read this or comment.

fortapocalypse writes "I'm getting paid a good salary as a Java developer and the hours are great. It is also very stable, which means something in today's economy, especially with a family to feed. However, I'm very unmotivated both because of the work that I do, which is boring, and because the organization I work for is highly political, disorganized, and lacks accountability. I've done what I could to try to change things at work and have pretty much given up on that. I want to go out on my own, either starting my own company or just working as a contractor doing Java development, but I'm not sure of the best way to get started, and my family needs the stability of my current job. I'd really like to start out part-time at 5-15 hours a week to use it as supplemental income (which my family could really use at the moment), but I really don't know where to start. I doubt many contracting agencies would be interested in a part-time worker. What would you suggest for someone in my position?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Police arrested Anthony Delmar Anderson of Limestone County, Alabama for allegedly exchanging crack cocaine and pills for gift cards. Reminds me of the hooker who was paid with a gas card. I smell a market opportunity for gift card manufacturers to engage with the underground economy! "Man Accused of Selling Crack for Gift Cards"

Here's the winner of the quick "What you're making in 2009" contest, send me a note Brent to collect your prize, a Maker's Notebook!

Posted by: Brent on January 1, 2009 at 11:07 AM Resolving to Complete my Solenoid Project I'm resolving to complete my solenoid project this year. Scavenged dishwasher solenoids and assembled a voltage regulator board to allow an arduino to control the output of water through the valves. Essentially the valves fill the room with rain, and as a participant walks underneath the valves shut off leaving them dry, but standing in the middle of a shower. Seems like I've been working on this one for a long time, but I knew nothing about soldering, plumbing, electronics, blob detection prior to the project! If anyone's interested, more of my project details are up on my blog.

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My friend Ken Hollings, author of Welcome to Mars, recently visited the Bourbaki Panorama in Luzern, Switzerland. Panoramas are something like an analog predecessor to iMax and virtual reality. Painted in 1881, the 1,000 square meter Bourbaki Panorama painting was later augmented with mannequins and props to enhance the immersion experience. Ken writes:

I recently returned from a brief lecture tour of Switzerland, during the course of which I was taken to the Bourbaki Panorama while in Lucerne: an amazing reconstruction of the French army's demoralized retreat across the Swiss border after being defeated and demobilized by the Germans in 1871 - Bourbaki is the name of the French army's commander who made an unsuccessful attempt to commit suicide rather than live with the shame - the Panorama is located at the top of large purpose-built roundhouse near the lake and features dozens of wax figures set against a painted backdrop... there aren't a lot of pix of it on the web, and you're not allowed to take photographs while you're in there, but this attached one (click image to enlarge) gives you a good idea of how it's put together. The use of telegraph wires and train tracks, cattle cars etc to suggest shifts in distance and dimension is particularly skillful.

For more on the Bourbaki Panorama, see this 2003 article in VRMag by Michelle Bienias: 19th Century Bourbaki Panorama

You might remember delightful Edna Jester, 89, of Blue Ash, Ohio who was arrested in October for refusing to return a neighbor kids' football that fell in her yard. According to the Associated Press, Jester is suing the young man's parents "claiming she has suffered emotional distress because footballs and other playthings belonging to her next-door neighbors keep landing in her yard." "89-year-old arrested for keeping ball sues family"

Craig writes "Journalspace.com has fallen and can't get up. The post on their site describes how their entire database was overwritten through either some inconceivable OS or application bug, or more likely a malicious act. Regardless of how the data was lost, their undoing appears to have been that they treated drive mirroring as a backup and have now paid the ultimate price for not having point-in-time backups of the data that was their business." The site had been in business since 2002 and had an Alexa page rank of 106,881. Quantcast said they had 14,000 monthly visitors recently. No word on how many thousands of bloggers' entire output has evaporated.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I don't know about you, but every new year, I come out of the gate with a new commitment to be more organized and work-efficient in my never-ending, nerfarious plans to take over the world. In searching out new organizing tools, I found this line-up of eight print, fold, make paper tools at Unplggd. I've been using the Hipster PDA version of the D*I*Y Planner (seen above) for years and still swear by it. I've also used the PocketMod and the printable graph paper.

And while we're on the subject, my fave electronic organizing tool for '08 was Evernote. I LOVE this app!

8 Cool Organizer Tools to Print For Free

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Only one more day until the Make: television show premieres! These photos of me and Bill Gurstelle are from the VCR Cat Feeder we built for the first episode. Here's a look at how we scripted the segment:

The process of writing the scripts for the Maker Workshop segments was pretty organic. Executive Producer Richard Hudson, Producer Michael Smith, Technical Consultant William Gurstelle and I started off shooting bullet points at each other via email. Once we knew what the major build steps were, they would format those into individual shots, including where the cameras would be, where I'd be standing in the workshop, a props/tools breakdown, and the script itself.

Once we got on set for rehearsal day, we'd run through this a number of times, refining what I'd be doing on camera, and adjusting the talking points. It was a lot of fun and chaos as we all brainstormed and threw ideas into the air to see what would work. We realized as we went that it was better for me to hit talking points as naturally as possible, rather than memorize a script. Those talking points were what we followed on the shooting day, along with the refined camera locations and set directions.

If you're not familiar with this project, it uses the timer function on a VCR to schedule the feeding of your cat. Seems pretty straightforward. However, as Bill and I started building ours we both realized that VCR drumhead motors have a feedback loop to shut things down if the RPMs drop below a certain speed. This means you can't use them to turn much without either defeating the feedback sensor (not too easy as it turns out) or using some gearing to turn the high RPMs into high torque. We were on the phone a lot cursing VCRs, but in the end, Bill's pulley wheel design saved the day.

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We're once again happy to announce a new icon set for sale over at our IconShoppe. It's called Boxtrot, and it's a simple little set of perfectly square icons that come in 7 colors, 3 sizes and 2 formats (GIF and PNG). It's also reasonably priced at just thirty-nine bucks.

The new set is based off the previously released Disco and Square Dance sets. Also released today is the Ballroom SuperPack, which includes all three sets at a discount of over 30% (and similar to our Chameleon SuperPack which is another way of getting multiple sets in one discounted purchase).

If you've already bought Disco and/or Square Dance and wish to purchase the SuperPack, let us know and we'll send instructions on getting an additional discount.

Here's to fresh pixels in 2009!

carazoo.com sends along a story on Volvo's upcoming crash-proof car. The company will introduce a concept car based on the S60 this month at the Detroit Auto Show, looking ahead a few years to the goal that by 2020 "no one should be killed or injured in a Volvo car." The concept car will have forward-looking radar as a proximity sensor, and the ability to brake if a collision is imminent. When the car senses a collision, a light flashes on the windscreen display along with an audible warning. If the driver doesn't act, the car will brake automatically.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

davidphogan74 writes "MPC Computers (formerly Micron's computer division) notified the Idaho Department of Labor in a letter on 12/29/2008 that it would terminate its remaining employees. The company had been operating under the protection of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy since November, after it laid off 200 employees in October. MPC said 147 employees would be terminated immediately and 51 would be retained while the company liquidates its assets. Last year, MPC bought the professional business unit of PC company Gateway, which itself had been bought by Acer earlier that year. MPC had sold business technology hardware to mid-sized business, government agencies, and education organizations since 1991."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

John is working on a one wheeled self-balancing skateboard project and he's just posted a how-to!

After reading a Make magazine article on the self balancing unicycle of Trevor Blackwell I thought about trying to build a one wheeled skateboard style device. I then found a self balancing skateboard on the net built by Ben Smithers and decided I would definitely have a go at this. The aim of this project is to build a skateboard type device just for fun, based on Segway self-balancing principles. Some skateboards of this type already have been built by others and links to most of the relevant webpages are listed. It reminds me a little of the chain driven back-spinning "bouncing bomb" hanging below the Lancasters in the "Dambusters" raids. It has turned out looking like a piece of "steampunk" technology, i.e. it looks like a cross between modern electronics and Victorian steam technology. This is a work in progress............

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We're at Day Two, and there's already quite a bit on the calendar for 2009. I'm honored and thrilled to be speaking at the following events this year, microformatted for your convenience:

• Web Directions North February 2-10, 2009 Denver, Colorado
• An Event Apart May 4-5, 2009 Seattle, Washington
• An Event Apart June 22-23, 2009 Boston, Massachusetts
• Carson Workshops November, 2009 London, England

There'll be more info forthcoming on the workshop in London next Fall, which will hopefully stem off of a new project that'll be underway a few weeks from now.

I'm also excited to mention that Meagan will be speaking at Future of Web Design London in April. More about that over at Meagan's blog.

Happy New Year, fine people.

Happy birthday Isaac Asimov! Biochemist and Sci-Fi author Isaac Asimov was born today in 1920, wrote tons of Sci-Fi books capturing the imaginations of millions, and perhaps best known by makers for his creation of the "Three Laws of Robotics":

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

My favorite "maker" science fiction story of all time is from Isaac Asimov, it's a short story so I've included it here. Read it from the beginning, the ending is epic! Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Robotics | Digg this!

Paul Neave has a wonderful site to wander through, it's full of little toys and wiggly kind of stuff. I really liked the Neave Planetarium; you can virtually explore the sky from any point around the world.

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Secretly shoot your voice across the room on a laser beam in this fun and easy project.
Thanks go to Simon Quellen Field for the original article in Make: Volume 16

To download The Simple Laser Communicator View MP4 click here or subscribe in iTunes.

Check out the complete Simple Laser Communicator article in MAKE: Volume 16 "Simple Laser Communicator"
and you can see that in our digital edition.

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fortapocalypse sends word that a new paper was published today in the journal Science on the hypothesis that a comet impact wiped out the Clovis people 12,900 years ago. (We discussed this hypothesis last year when it was put forth.) The new evidence is a layer of nanodiamonds at locations all across North America, at a depth corresponding to 12,900 years ago, none earlier or later. The researchers hypothesize that the comet that initiated the Younger Dryas, reversing the warming from the previous ice age, fragmented and exploded in a continent-wide conflagration that produced a layer of diamond from carbon on the surface. While disputing the current hypothesis, NASA's David Morrison allows, "They may have discovered something absolutely marvelous and unexplained."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Harry writes "Most folks think that Microsoft Office's Clippy, Microsoft Bob, and Windows XP's Search Assistant dog were perverse jokes — but a dozen years' worth of patent filings shows that Microsoft took the concept of animated software 'helpers' really, really seriously, even long after everyone else realized it was a bad idea. And the drawings those patents contain are weirdly fascinating." The article, a slide show really, spreads over 15 pages.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Secretly shoot your voice across the room on a laser beam.
Thanks go to Simon Quellen Field for the original article in Make: Volume 16
View the PDF

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Michelle @ CRAFT points us to these incredible paper illustrations by Russion illustrator and graphic designer Yulia Brodskaya.

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theodp writes "So where do you turn to for great ideas when tough times force you to abort your engineers' brainchildren? If you're Google, reports Nicholas Carlson, you simply outsource brainstorming to your users. Google's launched a new Google Product Ideas blog as well as a Product Ideas for Google Mobile site where users can submit feature and product ideas and vote on others. So what's in it for you if you come up with Google's next billion-dollar-idea? 'If you post an idea or suggestion and we put it into action, we may give you a shout out on our Product Ideas blog,' explains Google, 'but we won't be compensating users for their ideas.' Lucky thing don't-be-evil Googlers don't have to live up to the IEEE Code of Ethics, or they might have to credit properly the contributions of others." So what's wrong with a shout out among consenting adults?

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?"Colony" is an interactive, multi-player performance art project by Australian artist Troy Innocent. The project employs a freely downloadable iPhone app ("Colony" from the App Store) that allows up to 30 people to contribute to a shared sound environment by playing a number of networked totems in the physical location. Visitors without iPhones can also trigger the instruments as they walk through the environment.

Colony via Mobile Audience

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It seems shouting in the datacenter increases disk latency, fun experiment - we've all shouted in the server room, maybe we need to do it outside from now on... or just go all SSD.

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John posted this vid of the Puzzlemation led matrix modules in use for those who didn't catch them at Maker Faire. This really gets across the impressiveness of the project - pretty easy to imagine this device being a popular evolution of the classic jigsaw design. We'd likely be assembling scenes from our fave DVDs in a full-motion-video version not too long after.

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Puzzlemation @ Maker Faire

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bone_idol writes "The Guardian is reporting that the private sector will be asked to manage and run a communications database that will keep track of everyone's calls, emails, texts and internet use under a key option contained in a consultation paper to be published next month by Jacqui Smith, the home secretary. Also covered on the BBC."

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Meatricity is the electricity generated by the muscle power of humans or other animals. After a great day working on project ideas for Alternative Energy module in next summer's Learn 2 Teach / Teach 2 Learn program at the South End Technology Center, I drove by a huge workout gym sort of filled with beautiful people transferring energy.

The idea of using people and animals to generate electricity is nothing new. Hand cranked or shaken flashlights are pretty popular, there are even examples of bicycle powered generators to illuminate holiday decorations. In Make 5, the Made on Earth column features a project where a person's backpack generates electricity as the wearer moves around. The Rodent Powered Night Light is an excellent example of the pet power version of Meatricity.

Certainly westerners have a much larger appetite for using power than they have desire to generate it, but many of our devices now have small rechargeable batteries that could be reloaded by having a passive or active generation scheme available.

So how about it? Could we as a culture generate more of our electricity from the muscle we carry around? What kinds of benefits would meatricity provide to us and our kids? How would exercise equipment need to be redesigned to capture the energy of the user? Could we see it as morally superior to use Meatricity than power generated from burning fossil fuels? Add your ideas in the comments, and contribute your photos and videos to the Make Flickr pool.

Related:

• Rodent Powered Night Light


• Power Pack - Generating power with the motion of a back pack


• Pedal power to light up Times Square New Year sign


• Revolving door in Netherlands train station generates power per revolution


• Makeshift #1

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This morning, Ed Baafi, Amon Milner, Jacob William, and a number of the youth leaders at Learn 2 Teach, Teach 2 Learn developed an idea of how to teach electricity to youth with a new kit idea.

What we are looking to do is reinvent the Alternative Energy module in the summer program. The kit will be flexible enough that experimenters can have hands-on experiences with power generation, storage and output. We also hope that they will be able to add on various technologies as they become available to the experimenter.

The Electricity Experimenters' kit helps promote exploration and understanding of the ways that people can use store, and generate electricity. A focus is made on allowing the user to interchange a number of different modules for generating, making use of and storing small amounts of electric current. These modules will enable youth to gain hands on experience with creating, storing and using energy for personal exploration.

The result of exposure to this kit is that we want people to be able to think, say and believe:

I can make a choice between clean and nonclean generation and the electricity is the same.


and:


I can make my own electricity without harming the environment.

How do you teach electricity? What do you do to help people understand the systems in their lives? What could you add to this kit idea to make it better? What information would you want people to have when they do experiments with electricity? Do you have any existing projects that could be used with a kit like this? How would you make the physical objects? What activities would bring out valuable learning outcomes when experimenting with electricity generation, storage and use? How can we use modifiers like voltage regulators and resistors in ways that don't confuse experimenters? What do you tell or show people that helps them understand the workings of a multimeter?

Add your comments to the discussion, and post your photos in the Make Flickr pool.

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Last time I wrote about a DIY Lamborghini it ended up being a top 10 posts on the MAKE blog in 2008. Now that 2009 is here I thought I might try it again with another DIY Lamborghini. This time it's a 2001 Lamborghini Diablo VT replica.

This is the workshop he built just so he had the proper space to work on the Lamborghini.

The base is roughly eighteen feet square. Two openings are at the front for a window and a door, one at the side for the main workshop doors. The cement base is six inches thick laid over a hardcore base of bricks, concrete lumps and old engine blocks and heads a neighbour needed rid of. The base was laid in four sections due to its size over a period of two days. Excavation of the hole was done with a digger I borrowed in easter to dig a pond.

The web site even has some DXF files , among other plans, so you can make custom inlet manifold covers to fully Lambify your car. It's a great project, and I am really glad to see more and more people sharing their builds with the world.

More about this amazing DIY V12 Lamborghini Diablo

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DIY Lamborghini

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Brendan Gregg of Sun's Fishworks lab has an interesting video demo up at YouTube demonstrating just how bad vibes, if expressed with sufficient volume in front of a rack full of disks, can cause a spike in disk latency. White noise, evidently, doesn't do them much harm. (Maybe they just feel awkward to get yelled at on camera.)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If seeing a tandem bike riding by makes you momentarily pause and have a look, imagine your delay when a 15-person bicycle-truck slowly passes by.

Called the Busycle, this bicycle behemoth moves under the power of 28 human legs, plus a driver. And while it can only go about 4 miles per hour, the infectious camaraderie of its passenger power-train just might make it exhilarating.

Boston-based artists Heather Clark and Matthew Mazzotta had an idea and a lot of energy to see what they could accomplish. Starting with a $1,000 grant from the Berwick Research Institute in Roxbury, Mass., they set to work with limited engineering skills and some borrowed tools.

"We used almost all recycled, reused, and donated materials," says Mazzotta. "Bed frames and weight equipment from Harvard's recycling program to make the frames of the bikes, an old Dodge Van from a moving company as the base of the Busycle, parts from all the bike shops in Boston, and a Mack truck steering wheel from 'The Foot,' a big, bearded guy who runs a tractor-trailer junkyard. We even got some new materials like tube stock and pillow block bearings donated from different Boston businesses."

They posted on Craigslist for anyone interested, and about 65 diverse volunteers joined the effort. "We quickly realized that the talent and support we were seeing in those that wanted to help warranted a much bigger Busycle than we had originally planned on making. And $1,000 to get space [and] buy tools and materials was not going to cut it."

A donation from Sparqs Industrial Arts Club really made a difference; they also helped train volunteers.

On a multi-city tour this past June, the Busycle collected stories, ending each route with a storytelling session. "As for the Busycle's future, we found that the Busycle is not a practical technology," Mazzotta says. "The way we made it on our little budget, it goes too slow. But what it did do was bring a bunch of unique people together, all from different backgrounds, to work together."

busycle.com

From the column Made on Earth - MAKE 7, page 26 - David Albertson.

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RobGoldsmith writes "SpaceX's Falcon 9 is now fully integrated: an update from Elon Musk states 'Falcon 9 is now fully integrated at the Cape! Today we mated the 5.2 m payload fairing to the Falcon 9 first stage. This was the final step in the integration process — one day ahead of schedule.' New images are now available showing the first fully integrated Falcon 9 Rocket. Once the launch mount and erector are complete, SpaceX will transfer Falcon 9 on to the erector and raise it to vertical early in 2009."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Bob Hickman, Minty Amp maker, sent us a howto on making a jig for small form factor soldering projects.

I often have to solder up a bunch of PCBs that are the same size, but have a bunch of fiddly components on them.

To save time and frustration, I decided to re-purpose a used chewing gum tin to make a jig so I could solder multiple boards at once and keep my components from moving about.

His hack allows you to place all of the components and then solder them all at once, which is pretty handy even if you're not soldering a bunch of boards at the same time. The trick is to cram a bunch of flame retardant foam inside and close the top cover, sandwiching the components onto the PCB. You can then move things around as you please and your hands are free to work the solder and iron.

Simple Soldering Jig

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jwilcox154 writes "Yesterday a dispute over fee hikes had threatened a damaging blackout at a minute past midnight Thursday that would have prevented TWC subscribers from watching their favorite shows such as 'SpongeBob SquarePants' and 'The Colbert Report.' The two sides reached an agreement on Thursday, the first of January 2009. The companies stated the terms of the deal were not disclosed. Details must still be finalized over the next few days."

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This washing machine sends messages to Twitter when the clothes are done... for now a hack, eventually a standard feature :)

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Mike writes "Microsoft's market share in the browser dropped below 70% for the first time in eight years, while Mozilla broke the 20% barrier for the first time in its history. It's too early to tell for sure, but if Net Applications' numbers are correct, then Microsoft's Internet Explorer will end 2008 with a historic market share loss in a software segment Microsoft believes is key to its business."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Last night, Austin had a beautiful, community-grown New Years Eve celebration. Austin Bike Zoo, ArcAttack!, and others came out with improvements to their already-great shows, and the new star was a working, 34-foot wooden clock tower. Filled with resolutions, it later became a work of fire art. Here's my favorite slideshow, via zAdventure on Flickr:

Some (possibly dubious) reports of minor injuries aside, this was the best New Year's art I've seen. Thanks to Community Art Makers for a breathtaking project! If you've got photos from last night in Austin (or any other great New Year's art), please link to them in the comments.

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