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Microsoft has teamed up with Make: Online to develop a series of embedded projects that make use of Windows Embedded CE, Visual Studio 2005 Pro, and third-party embedded hardware. We've brought our pal Kipp Bradford on-board to create three Windows Embedded-based projects and to document them, here on Make: Online and on Microsoft's SPARK Your Imagination website.
For those who may be unaware of SPARK, it's an MS campaign and series of contests designed to introduce students, hobbyists, and others to Windows Embedded CE and its use in "minimalist computers" and embedded systems. Microsoft has partnered with a number of hardware vendors, including VIA, Advantech, and Special Computing to provide special hardware kits. Buy an embedded device kit from one of these vendors and you get full versions of Windows Embedded CE 6.0 R2 and Visual Studio 2005 Professional for free.
For the first project, Kipp will be building a "smart home" automation system using Windows Embedded CE and the VIA ARTiGO A1000 Pico-ITX Builder Kit. He provides some background, on himself and the project:
My first home-built embedded project involved programming a Microchip PIC 16C73, using assembly code to control a stepper motor for a robotic stereo vision camera mount. I had limited experience modifying FORTH and C code on the trusty 6811, but it was truly exciting to machine the mounts and control linkages, design and build circuit boards, write embedded code, and write PC software. Unfortunately, I was in college, all of this work was done outside of my classes, and it truly took a significant amount of time that might have been better spent studying.
I did eventually complete the build and the accompanying electronics and software. Most of the projects I work on today require the same skills and combine the same basic elements: an embedded device receiving input from a user or sensors and generating an output.Much has changed in the fifteen years since that project. Moore's Law has made a significant impact on computational power while processors have become more energy efficient. On-chip peripherals now include USB, I2C, SPI, A/D, D/A, UART, etc. More importantly, customer's expectations have changed. There is increasing pressure on developers to deliver complex user interfaces and feature-rich products nearly overnight. Software tool vendors responded by converting innovations developed for rapid application development on a desktop computer into versions better suited for the latest embedded hardware.
One very prominent tool is Windows Embedded CE. I remember thinking how cool it would be to take my Visual C code and recompile it to run on some little box inside a robot. As with my stereo vision project, I had no legitimate reason to run Windows in an embedded environment other than I thought it would be an interesting project, and as I quickly found out, Windows CE (as it was called at the time), was not the answer I was looking for. I felt like I would need a comprehensive knowledge of the Windows CE libraries to make anything useful happen with my projects, and I really didn't know where to start with the tools. I noticed that other hobbyists faced similar challenges, so I gave up and looked for other solutions.
I was recently asked by MAKE to take a second look at the new Windows Embedded CE and to explore the product from a hobbyist's perspective. With that in mind, I'll be working on three projects using some exciting new embedded computer systems. The first project will involve creating a "dashboard" for an award-winning ultra-high efficiency building in Providence, Rhode Island. The dashboard will run on a VIA Pico-ITX. I will be covering the process of designing and buildingthis project, and the ins and outs of getting started with Windows Embedded CE, in the coming series of posts. Stay tuned...
Our new Make: Online author and technical editor, Kipp Bradford, is a technology consultant and entrepreneur. He's developed electromechanical devices ranging from research instrumentation, consumer products, medical devices, and "mission critical" systems. Kipp may admit to inventing hundreds of toys for Hasbro and Mattel, but he's unlikely to tell you which ones. Kipp is also an Adjunct Lecturer in Engineering at Brown University, where he teaches several engineering design and entrepreneurship courses. Additionally, he serves on the boards of two art non-profits, AS220 and The Steel Yard, in Providence, RI.
Starting next week, Kipp will be reporting on his progress, both here and on the SPARK Your Imagination website, in putting together this automation system using these tools.
Here's the link to the SPARK website.
This SPARK Your Imagination Make: Windows Embedded project series is sponsored by Microsoft Corporation.
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Here's the deal: Boing Boing has come into possession of some wicked footage of an anonymous Atari Computer Camp excursion that has everything you could ever want from grainy stock video: namely, yellowed and over-saturated money shots of retro-tech, and a bevy of over-eager and still-innocent pre-teens banging out BASIC to make crossword crosses out of the words Van Halen (no joke!) and gawping at the awesome limitless power and future of computers.
Here's the catch: neither of the videos -- the first clocking in at about seven minutes, and the second coming in at seven and a half -- have any sound at all.
And so: given Offworld/Boing Boing's sizable audience of chiptune/junk-tech musicians, we thought we'd throw the score open to you. If you're interested in submitting some of your music for the videos, which will be broadcast on BBtv at a later date, send an email to brandon@offworld.com with the subject line "Atari Computer Camp" and we'll dig through and select our favorites from there. Bonus points awarded for (but certainly not limited to) composing on actual 8-bit Atari tech.
See the original post on Offworld for more inspirational shots of the kids at work (and play).
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Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.
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Hot on the heels of yesterday's FSR tutorial, Limor and Phil continue their Sensor Tutorial series with another crystal-clear exposition of a component, this one on the photocell (aka CdS, LDR, photoresistor). Great stuff, guys. Thanks!
Developing countries such as Brazil, India and China have indicated that if - as expected in the next few years - they are going to have to make sacrifices to reduce carbon emissions, they should be able to license some of the most efficient available technologies for doing so.Green technology should be shared (Thanks, Owlswan!)Big business is worried about this, because they prefer that patent rights have absolute supremacy. They want to make sure that climate change talks don't erode the power that they have gained through the World Trade Organisation.
The WTO is widely misunderstood and misrepresented as an organisation designed to promote free trade. In fact, some of its most economically important rules promote the opposite: the costliest forms of protectionism in the world.
New Zealand couple flee after finding £4m in their bank accountThe pair, named in media reports as Leo Gao and Cara Young, could hardly believe their luck when they checked their account at Westpac bank on 5 May, hoping to find their request for a NZ$10,900 (£4,000) overdraft had been accepted.
Instead, the bank had deposited 1,000 times that amount: NZ$10m, or around £4m. With so many borrowers around the world constantly being told "no" by their creditors, here, finally, was a bank that liked to say "yes".
Last night the accidental millionaires from Rotorua, a tourist city on the north island overlooking, appropriately enough, the Bay of Plenty, are on an Interpol wanted list after fleeing with the bulk of their windfall two weeks ago.
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The delays do not appear to be hampering the business of the major publishing houses or those willing to spend $685 for a "special handling fee" that expedites registration.That seems rather important, because you could easily make the argument that the Copyright Office has every incentive in the world to let that backlog and its $45 applications pile up to encourage "serious" professionals to file the expedited $685 option.
Marissa Ditkowsky, a Long Island teenager, has been checking her mailbox for 15 months for the copyright registration for three songs she wrote, recorded and sent on a compact disc to the federal government.Yikes. She should be a lot more worried about obscurity than anyone taking her songs. Keeping her daughter away from performing open mic nights just because they haven't received the registration seems silly and incredibly counterproductive. She would still hold the copyright on the songs, she would just be limited in what she could sue over until the registration is official. Claiming that she would have "no recourse" is incorrect. The "lost year" is their own fault, not the fault of the Copyright Office.
"We lost a whole year," said her mother, Alita, who wants to launch her guitar-strumming daughter on a music career. At 14, Marissa is too young to appear on "American Idol." Instead, she wants to sing her songs during open-mike nights at local clubs and make a professional demo she can shop to music companies.
But Alita Ditkowsky does not want her daughter to perform without a copyright, because she fears that Marissa's songs are so good, someone else will steal them. She said she learned that lesson years ago while trying to get a job at an advertising agency.
"They asked me to write an ad for the Schick electric shaver," Ditkowsky said. "So one day in my car, I hear this radio spot I had wrote for the Schick electric shaver. It was my commercial, word for word. They used it, didn't pay me for it, didn't even hire me. But legally, I had no recourse."
Moleskine is running a competition to hack your notebook. Winner gets a lifetime supply of Moleskines.
Carving a place of a notebook for your iPhone? Adding extra pockets? Adding extra ribbon markers? Mindmaps? Somebody's been looking at The Maker's Notebook hacks on Flickr!
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The product of this feeding, Helprin suggests, is just so much trash. The work of the Internet is an intellectual waste. No serious reader, or especially writer, should pay any attention to this waste.Emphasis mine -- obviously. Now, while this might seem like a bit of a slap at Techdirt, I actually agree -- wholeheartedly. I certainly hope that no one gets their copyright education solely from any blog, whether it's written by me or by William Patry. However, it struck me as odd that Lessig specifically called out Techdirt, seeing as I hadn't even noticed us being mentioned at all in the 1/2 (or so) of the book that I've gotten through (and I've never spoken to Lessig, nor seen him mention Techdirt in the past). So, I pulled out my copy of the book, and went to look at the endnotes for the first time... and realized that a rather large number of the quotes that Helprin spends his time deriding are pulled from Techdirt. But not from what I wrote... but from the comments (which he refers to, oddly, as "sections").
But then here's the astonishing fact about Digital Barbarism: Though the Internet is a waste, though blogs are "subliterate" and wiki's are written "the way Popeye speaks," Helprin draws exclusively upon the Internet to form the knowledge he needs to launch his attack. He cites no book, or scholarly article, that might help explain the copyright puzzle that started him on his odyssey. Literally everything he points to to explain the weirdness that is copyright is either a blog, or a wiki, or an essay in an Internet publication.
Now I like the Internet as much as the next guy, and I guess I had never really had to think about the question before. But Helprin has convinced me that you can't understand the subject of copyright law by simply reading blog posts. To get it, or at least to get it well enough to write a frakking book about it, you're going to need to read something other than techdirt.com.
There is never a proper debate for copyright theft. If you create it, then you own it. Many countries have unlimited copyright. Maybe that's what North America should consider. If it is created by your intellect then it is yours. You may pass it along as you wish, but it is yours forever.Now, this is all sorts of wrong, but I assume this is one incredibly misinformed individual, rather than a representative of, say, the RIAA. However, Helprin has no such qualms. He takes random comments from up and down that Techdirt post, and assumes they represent the secret agenda of groups like Creative Commons (who he refers to as an "informal" group building software to abolish copyright -- again, all sorts of wrong).
Helprin writes: "Previously, a copyright assigned to a publisher or a studio would remain there for all the days of its life. Now, and thanks to Sonny Bono, if it is not a work for hire (which nothing should or need be), a licensee can keep it for only thirty-five years, after which the rights return to the author, the composer, the artist, or the heir." (127). Wrong. The Sonny Bono Act didn't create the termination right. It merely extended it.Yet, Helprin believes that a random small error (which was actually part of a joke by an Anonymous Coward on Techdirt) gives him proof that all copyright critics are clueless? Even if you consider the "errors" of equal magnitude, we're talking about an anonymous quick jokey comment vs. a "professional" book by one of the nation's top authors, from a top publishing house with (one assumes) an editor.
So should Helprin have been ashamed that he stole the farmer's food. Of course he should be! What kind of confused mind would think it right to take another person's property? There are a million reasons Helprin's juvenile behavior was wrong, not the least that it would deprive the farmer of a chance to profit from the food he was growing. Helprin's taking that ear of corn meant that the farmer couldn't sell it. It is inconceivable that this should even have been a question for him.Of course, as Lessig then notes, the quoting is fair use -- but according to Helprin's own corn-story description of the importance of never stealing even an ear of corn, any "taking" of one's words would also be stealing. So, by that reasoning, considering how he quoted (by my count) 12 separate comments from the Techdirt story, one can conclude that Helprin clearly believes he has stolen from the commenters here twelve times. If he's willing to send us our royalty check, I'll make sure the money is distributed to our commenters. Mark, we're waiting! In the meantime, I can't wait to see what comments you guys make on this post. Be sure to provide only the best quality stuff, since it may be the raw material for Mark Helprin's next book!
But what's less clear is what Helprin thinks follows from this moral tale. Does he think that it shows that one can't "take" another person's words? That when, for example, I quote a sentence from Helprin's book in this review, I am doing the same thing he was doing when he stole some corn?
Tiny Art Director (via Waxy!)
The Brief: A dinosaur eating a R and an O and an S and a I and a EThe Critique: That's not what I want. That's a Brachiosaurus. I want a T Rex. He's supposed to have the other letters in his mouth too. See look! He's only eating that one. What letter is that?
Job Status: Rejected
Coral CrossIn late 02007, the Health Dept approached myself and Jake Dunagan (now my colleague at Institute for the Future -dp) after they noticed our independent FoundFutures exstallation in Chinatown, Honolulu, manifesting tangible scenario elements of a bird flu outbreak in the year 02016. A year later, by September 02008, they had won a federal grant to do a demonstration public engagement project about preparing for a possible flu pandemic scenario. Wearing our Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies hats, we pitched them on an Alternate Reality Game as a way of getting people into the mindset of what that could feel like. There had not been an actual pandemic in 40 years (Hong Kong flu, 01968) and enabling this type of engagement against a backdrop of indifference and invisibility would be our major challenge. The ARG idea came about because I was just gearing up to serve as Game Master on Superstruct at the time, so ARGs were in the air. Also, it seemed a way to scale up the narrative depth of the scenario, while building on the work of others in for example After Shock and World Without Oil, as well as on what we had learned from doing FoundFutures projects, futures artifacts etc.
Our design team worked intensively on the project in the early months of 02009, planning to launch in the last week of May to coincide with public meetings about pandemic preparedness that were being planned by the Health Dept. The narrative was set in Hawaii in 02012, and the vehicle for telling the story was a nonprofit, grassroots organisation called Coral Cross of Oahu, set up in September 02011 after a category 5 hurricane devastated the island. Each day of gameplay would represent one month of narrative, so in the space of two weeks, visitors to the in-world website would experience a calm leadup to the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Cyrus, followed by the sudden onset of a flu pandemic, and the tumultuous six-month wait for a vaccine to become available. In the context of this story, they would tell their own, discuss the implications of the sudden social, economic, and political changes wrought by the virus, and develop a better sense of how they and their communities could respond to pandemic conditions.
In late April, however, reality overtook our alternate reality scenario. We watched in disbelief as, over two or three days, the swine flu epidemic in Mexico took hold, panic about it possibly going global began to spread, and the WHO and CDC raised their official alert levels. It was surreal. One day, we were filming a mock press conference set in 02012 and announcing the outbreak as part of our narrative introduction, and literally a day later, we were watching a real one on TV.
Our design team turned on a dime, proposing right away that, rather than being cancelled due to the early arrival of the future, the project be reoriented around current events. The result is that we maintained the late May launch date but over the last few weeks have completely reimagined the project as an Emergent Reality Game, the first of its kind. Rather than telling a story about a pandemic in the future, Coral Cross is now an experiment in using gaming mechanisms to support real-life pandemic preparedness today, and to try to outpace the flu with information that may help mitigate its spread. Players also have the opportunity to discuss the potential life-and-death questions of who should be prioritised in a vaccine queue for this or a future strain of influenza.
So, can information catch up to the virus? Let's hope so. People can follow the progress of the spread of our message at coralcross.org and sign up for notification when the full game goes live early next week.
Buy 'em here. I'm traveling in Guatemala, so I'm a few days late blogging this, I hope there are some left!
(disclosure: I earned a few hundred bucks from this, which I plan to donate to a family-run nonprofit that does sustainable technology development work in indigenous communities here.)
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Riders can plan a bus trip on an interactive map, surf the Web, monitor their real-time exposure to pollutants and use their mobile devices as an interface with the bus shelter. They can also post ads and community announcements to an electronic bulletin board at the bus stop, enhancing the EyeStop's functionality as a community gathering space.EyeStop
“The EyeStop could change the whole experience of urban travel," said Carlo Ratti, Head of the SENSEable City Lab at MIT. "At the touch of a finger, passengers can get the shortest bus route to their destination or the position of all the buses in the city. The EyeStop will also glow at different levels of intensity to signal the distance of an approaching bus."
In addition to displaying information, the bus stop also acts as an active environmental sensing node, powering itself through sunlight and collecting real-time information about the surrounding environment.
“EyeStop is like an 'info-tape' that snakes through the city," said project leader Giovanni de Niederhousern. "It senses information about the environment and distributes it in a form accessible to all citizens.”
Space Invaders soap set (via Wonderland)
Shark Attack Hat
I made this hat for my son - he wanted a mean shark. I saw the dead fish hat pattern and loved the idea - I just varied the pattern quite a lot to make different looking species. And felted it so it looks like it jumped out of the water and landed on his head... I basically cast 90 stitches onto a size 9 circular needle and winged it from there. I used Patons wool and it felted great.
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I came across this interesting profile of Heather Brooke, the UK-based reporter who tried to get Parliament to release expense records by using UK disclosure laws, and whose efforts clearly led to the leak that the Daily Telegraph got.Former UW student shakes up British government (Thanks, Glenn!)Brooke started her journalism career in Seattle at the University of Washington, and learned via a newspaper internship from an old-school editor how to dig up public records--expense records, in particular.
The profile is fascinating because it shows one of the key functions of newspapers and similar periodicals that's been ignored as the quality of such publications has dropped: investigation, and management that supports investigation.
We've been lucky in Seattle that both local papers (one remains in print, the other online only) were long interested in funding very long-form, very long-running investigations. Who will fund this kind of reporting in the future? What editor will teach a future Heather Brooke to dig behind the public statements and facile information at hand?
This isn't a tirade in defense of dinosaurs. Rather, I legitimately wonder where the funding comes that allows reporters to devote the time. Hyperlocal news is great, and so is citizen journalism. But Brooke spent five years (and was scooped in the end) on digging out these expense reports.
(Rudy Rucker is a guestblogger. His latest novel, Hylozoic, describes a postsingular world in which everything is alive.)
All on their own, ordinary processes can make incredibly convoluted shapes. Consider, for instance the field lines of some magnets moving around each other, as shown in this video by Daniel Piker, who has a great blog of computational gnarl called Space Symmetry Structure.
William Rood has created a somewhat inscrutable---but mind-boggling---gnarl investigating page, just click on the screen-captured image below. It's like flying an alien spaceship, with control buttons that you don't understand. No matter, keep on clicking and gaze your fill.
Owen Maresh, another young investigator, is posting some exceedingly gnarly videos on his YouTube site. Here's one that starts out calm---like an egg---but then goes ape via some folds through the subdimensions.
And finally, how about an explanation from the old Professor himself. Here's my dada video: "What is Gnarl?" (with a narration that's partly in imaginary Norwegian).
You just don't get this kind of information anywhere except on BoingBoing!
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"Moonshine to Mexican marijuana: Family gets busted"Faulkner, who is suffering from cancer, was handed a 20-year sentence last month and is to head to prison in August. "Twenty years, that is a death sentence," said Giles Jones, Faulkner's attorney, adding that he has appealed the sentence.
He said Faulkner was a "full-time mountain shiner" who could talk moonshine until he was "blue in the face," but knew little about the Mexican marijuana operation. Jones said the old man's son "threw his ass under the bus" to save himself.
"It's a situation where I guess you're just looking out for yourself. It's every day as every day, man," said Jones.
Not so fast, said Cathy Alterman, the defense attorney for Smith, Faulkner's son.
"Michael didn't throw his father under the bus. His father threw Michael down the drain when he was 16 years old," Alterman said. "If the father got a longer sentence, it's because he's a lousy father. ... He was never there for his son, except to be a bad example."
My favorite portrait painter Drew Friedman created a label for McSorley's Irish Lager, produced by the oldest (or second oldest) bar in New York City. It's been on East 7th Street since 1854. Drew says, "For this job, I just asked to be paid in beer."
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(Rudy Rucker is a guestblogger. His latest novel, Hylozoic, describes a postsingular world in which everything is alive.)
Over the years, I've come to think that everything is alive, even a rock. In academic philosophy, this doctrine is known as "hylozoism"---the word even appears in Wikipedia.
As Stephen Wolfram and I have both pointed out, any gnarly, chaotic natural process embodies a classical universal computation. And at the quantum level, even dull-looking objects are seething with universal quantum computations. When I look at a stone, I think of ten octillion balls connected by springs. There’s a lot going on in a rock, enough to support universal computation, enough to run a mind.
How do I know a rock is alive? If I let go of it, it's smart enough to drop?
Or maybe, in the right frame of mind, I can feel an affinity to the rock---in a way, there's no telling where one thing starts and the other thing stops.
* The text and a video of my "Psipunk" talk about the notion that everything is alive.
* A slightly more academic paper by me, called "Everything is Alive."
Pirates! The team discusses the history of piracy and some of their favorite pirates including: Blackbeard (Edward Teach), Bartholomew Roberts, Henry Every, Thomas Tew, William Kidd, Emanuel Wynn, Anne Bonny, Mary Read, Calico Jack Rackham, Jean Lafitte and more. Also, a brief rant on modern (digital) piracy and modern copyright. Issues discussed range from the DMCA, RIAA, MPAA and the book "Free Culture" by Lawrence Lessig. Music is provided by the talented Madison band The Pints.Pirates!In addition to real pirates, the Tank Crew reviews pirate movies including Treasure Island, The Black Swan, The Princess Bride, Cutthroat Island, Pirates of the Caribbean, and more. Viktor also reviews the films X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Star Trek.
Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.
Instructables user cr8ive1 writes:
This is how I make steel doming punches to shape soft metals (gold, silver, copper, brass) for jewellery making. Doming (or dapping punches as they are often referred to by jewellery makers) punches are expensive for what they are- basically highly polished pieces of curved steel. I have a few commercially made punches and a brass dapping block but I needed larger ones for a project. I couldn't justify the expense knowing they would only see occasional use, so I made my own. For this project I've used an old carriage bolt (domed bolt). As I don't have a lathe to remove large amounts of material a piece of preshaped steel was important to reduce the need for labourious hand work (this project is about saving money not losing time).
Hey jewelry makers, how do you improvise your own tools? Post in the comments.
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So the great age of piracy began [after 1714], and it lasted about a decade. During this period, between 1,000 and 2,000 pirates terrorized the seas at any given time. That may not seem like many, but keep in mind that the entire population of the North American colonies back then was only about 150,000. Navies and merchant sailors outnumbered pirates, with 13,000 men in the British Navy alone, but pirates had the better gig.Blackbeard Economics: The surprising, and surprisingly tame, self-organization of pirates.Leeson begins with a look inside the piratical pocketbook. In peaceful years, annual pay for legit sailors was £25, equivalent to around $4,000 today. A big haul for a pirate crew, on the other hand, might bring in between £300 and £1,000 per man for a few months’ work. If legally sanctioned sailor pay was bad, the working conditions were worse. Captains on merchant ships held absolute power over their crews, and they regularly ordered floggings, revoked pay or rations, or tied men to the mast. Sailors could sue when they got home, and they occasionally won, but that’s cold comfort when you’re six months at sea, stripes from the lash stinging your back, and ordered to forfeit your rum ration.
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I intend to serve exactly the same Universal Internet Explorer 6 CSS for all sites (give or take a little branding here, or a touch of customization there). This will pay dividends for me, reduce wastage for my clients and give end-users a well-designed, well-presented view of what they come for — content.
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• Set your DVRs: Oprah will be tackling Skype today (5/21).
• Netbooks made from biodegradable cellulose are cheap. But will we think of them as disposable?
• A head-to-head review of the Jawbone Prime and BlueAnt Q1. Which headset wins?
• Microscale models of Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture -- in LEGO.
• An ionic-cooling laptop that may not set your crotch ablaze.
• 8bitone: a chiptunes synthesizer for the iPhone.
• The Myca set-top box reviewed; click here for the verdict.
• An infallibly polite alarm clock with the voice of Stephen Fry.
• The Gear of War: a gallery of war bots, UAVs, retina scanners, and more.
• HOWTO make low-inductance speaker cables.
• An inhaler for consuming cocoa powder: only .8 calories!
• Alarm clocks constructed from a 200-year-old barn in Switzerland and painted by a skateboard artist.
• A bottle opener shaped like an elephant.
• Buildings damaged during WWII get a makeover -- with LEGO!
08 is a time-capsule of the events leading up to the 2008 election, starting with the stinging GOP defeat in the 2006 mid-terms and continuing up to election day, and as with many such recent histories, there's a certain vividness that comes of reading the recent past recast in historic terms, a combination of distance and closeness that comes from feeling like you witnessed events that are now part of history.
But more than that, 08 is a beautiful book, its page layouts stark and emotional at the same time. The art and layouts serve as a major illumination on the text (I was reminded of the graphic novel adaptation of the 9-11 Commission Report). Some are so good I wanted to clip them and have them framed.
08: A Graphic Diary of the Campaign Trail
Two years later: new details on the long-dormant Katamari Damacy Online
Just when it'd almost fully receded from your memory (the last we heard of it was in January of 2007), andriasang notes a new article on the Korean-exclusive massively multiplayer Katamari Damacy Online.Unfortunately, the update only goes so far as to profile two new playable cousin characters, and a vague storyline, as translated by andriasang, that concerns "a black hole that forms after the King decides to hold a picnic," which players will seal off with their rolled up katamari.
The game is apparently, though, due for release in Korea this year by local external developer Windysoft, with no word from anyone on when or how or if it might make it out of that country.
Discuss this on Boing Boing Offworld
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This stylishly impractical backlit logo iPhone casemod involves a Dremel and apparently doesn't affect battery life. I'd be curious to see if there was any material on the build process as the video only shows the end result.
via Cult of Mac
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From the MAKE Flickr pool
Flickr member TheCase converted a busted RB guitar to an unusually compact version -
This is an initially unintended side effect of working on a Rock Band automatic guitar playing robot. The minimal set of electronics from a previously malfunctioning 360 wireless guitar (thanks Mig!) - also contains the relays needed for switching via a logic controller. All jammed inside a 6" x 3" x 2" enclosure.Hmm, with one in each hand you might be able to handle both guitar and bass roles at once. More info on Flickr. Read more | Permalink | Comments | Digg this!As I was building it, I decided to allow the controller to be used in a standalone fashion, independent of the sensors and logic controller (they can be conntected later via the 9pin D-Sub connector).
The buttons are just cheap old basic junk buttons, so moving around the "fret board" is a bit of a challenge. It is fun to play - has the feel of playing a tiny accordion...
Recently on Offworld we looked at a bold step forward in first person shooter stage design with Matt Bradley's DM-Spectrum (above), an Unreal Tournament 3 level that intersects the dance floor with the killing floor, created with 4300 (!) dynamic lights and due for an update that'll have players creating generative music alongside its light show.
We also saw new details on Katamari Damacy Online, a massively multiplayer version of the game that (for now) is a Korean exclusive, but will hopefully roll up on other shores by the end of the year, and watched a trailer for Messhof's terrifying low-bit helicopter/organ harvesting game The Thrill of Combat.
Elsewhere, we saw time shifting platformer Braid come to the Mac, Space Invaders as a carnival game, Battlestations: Pacific gone Harper's Index, Metroid in yarn, and heard Bubblyfish in Bit.Trip, Japan's voice-synth pop idol covering 80's new wave stars, and made chiptunes of our own with 8-bit Weapon/Sony's new sample/loop pack.
And the day's 'one shot's: a Super Nintendo 'nymphographics' intersection, Duncan Harris threatens to raise in-game screenshots to an art-form, and Team Fortress 2 channels Charles Atlas, only with jars of pee.
The folks at OharaRP used an ioBridge, an XBee wireless module, and an array of 8x8 LED modules to create a net-connected, scrolling display.
Wireless LED Sign - XBee + ioBridge
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And though it's considered wise to believe the contrary, these communications types are not constructing all these news items entirely (or even mostly) by lying. Flackery requires putting together credible narratives from pools of verifiable data. This activity is not categorically different from journalism. Nor is the teaching value that flackery provides entirely different from that of journalism: Most of the content you hear senators and congressmen reading on C-SPAN is stuff flacks provided to staffers....No, it's certainly not the perfect solution (but what is?). But the main point is that there are other ways to get investigations done and get information out there... and then there's still lots of room for others to pour through the info to see what's real and what's not. I don't think that PR people will replace investigative journalism by any stretch of the imagination, but it's worth thinking about how they certainly may pick up the slack in some areas.
But the idea of public relations (and its many fancy permutations, from "image management" to "oppo research" to "crisis") replacing objective journalism becomes less scary when you reflect that, pace Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the cast of High School Musical 3, we are not all in this together. Communications is a highly competitive environment, and it is becoming more competitive. Frequently the most valuable information comes out just because somebody wants to make somebody else look bad.
From the MAKE Flickr pool
Strolling about my neighborhood last weekend, I happened upon an unusually shaped case at the site of a local memorial. Further investigation revealed the cases contents - a large wooden lightning bolt nestled in foam padding. I'm guessing either a former student of Sister Nicodema thinks she 'totally rocked' or a local artist decided to make a public offering - judge for yourself on Flickr.
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Make: Repairs is a periodic column written by Kyle Wiens and the fine folks at iFixit.com. As you probably know, iFixit is the go-to source for Apple-related do-it-yourself repair info and parts and for gadget first-looks and teardowns. Kyle, Luke, and company are in a unique position to know what the common complaints and sticky-points are in DIY personal tech repair. In Make: Repairs, they'll show repair solution to some of these more commonly-requested or gnarlier repair issues. - Gareth
Hard drives fail. It's a fact of life. When moving parts inside the drive wear out, you'll hear the signature "death whine" of a failed bearing, or the clatter of a dying drive head. Even if your hard drive is happily purring along, hard drive prices have fallen enough that it might be time to upgrade. New 320 and 500 GB drives are readily available for the MacBook Pro, but there's a few things you should know prior to installing one in your computer.
Whether or not things take a turn for the worse, we can show you how to replace your drive with something newer, more robust, faster, and with higher capacity. However, we cannot recover your lost data. Backups are your friend -- nobody but you can save your complete and unabridged collection of Lost episodes.
Apple released three major versions of the MacBook Pro prior to the current Unibody design. We have written detailed information on each model and how to differentiate between them: Core Duo, Core 2 Duo Model A1211, and Core 2 Duo Models A1226 & A1260. Each of these has slight internal differences that impact the way you disassemble them. We took photos of a Penryn (Model A1260) for this article, but the general approach applies to all of Apple's older MacBook Pros.
Safety comes first. Remove all power sources for this procedure, including the battery. Apple uses sliding switches on these machines rather than the coin-operated MacBook battery latch, which is fortunate, because you're probably all out of coin from upgrading to the higher-end Pro model. However, the Pro's dual latches do not make battery removal easy for one-armed people.
Removing the battery exposes the RAM shield, which is held in place by three Phillips screws. This is a great time to "check under the hood" and possibly upgrade the RAM while you're at it. MacBook Pros come with only 1 or 2 GB RAM standard. Depending on your model, you can easily upgrade to 2 GB (Core Duo), 3 GB (Model A1211), or 6 GB (Models A1226 and A1260).
You'll need to remove 18 screws to open the top case: four on each side, two on the back, and eight on the bottom case. The screws look quite similar to one another, but will not fit correctly if inserted into the wrong hole. Try printing out the handy MacBook Pro PDF screw guide to keep track of all the screws. Alternatively, egg cartons or ice cube trays can also be useful for this purpose.
Once you've removed the screws, you can carefully pull up the upper case. The case still has a cable that attaches the keyboard to the logic board, so it's not a wise idea to pull it off quickly.
A spudger is a flat plastic prying tool that can be very useful under the right circumstances. Taking the trackpad/ribbon cable off the logic board is one such situation. The spudger's flat tip -- not unlike a flat-blade screwdriver, but with less destructive potential -- can squeeze itself in-between the board and male connector. A gentle twist of the spudger will separate the male connector from the socket without harming anything inside the computer. Make sure that the yellow tape is peeled back before removing the ribbon cable.
Steampunk Beholder Miniature robot sculpture (Thanks, Daniel!)
Since I was I kid I've been a fan of Dungeons and Dragons. The Beholder has always been one of the most feared monster... Here's my first Beholder-Steampunk-Robot . I plan to make bigger one, this one is only 4 cm large .Right upper arm: You can imagine that arm shooting a disintegrating Newtonian beam.
Left upper arm: Triple saw made from vintage brass clock gear.
Top arm: Made from mysterious yellow amber.
Bottom arm: a single magnetic wheel for an alternative transport and stability.
Beholders floatshover above the ground. They are known to be obsessively tyrannical.
From the MAKE Flickr pool
Pixl8ed's auto Etch A Sketch is wireless and hands-free - built using a stepper motors, SparkFun EasyDriver boards, XBee wireless module, and custom CNCed support hardware. Check it out on Flickr.
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Computerized Etch A Sketch @ Maker Faire
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At last year's Maker Faire Bay Area, Nathan Johnstone of Abney Park debuted a violin at the Saturday night show modded by artisan (and MAKE contributor) Molly Friedrich. Later in the year, at the Steampowered convention, Nathan debuted the Von Slatt Strat, a guitar modded by MAKE, Volume 17 cover maker Jake von Slatt. This year, Nathan returns to the Faire with a free-form group of amazing Seattle musicians, as part of Carnivale Mechanique, a steampunk encampment (with a lot of the folks who created last year's Contraptors' Lounge and some exciting new additions). At this year's event, the Von Slatt Strat will be joined by a worthy amplifier, this radio-cabinet special, again crafted by Von Slatt.
Nathan's violin by Molly Friedrich
Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.
Panasonic has launched the worlds first 'Class 10' series of SDHC cards. Class 10 is a new speed specification developed by the SD Card Association, it inherits the attributes of the current 'Class 6' line with further enhanced speed performance of up to 22MB/s. In addition to its Gold series Class 10 cards, it has announced a Silver series of Class 4 cards with a maximum speed of up to 20MB/s. The Gold series will start shipping by the end of this month in 4, 8, 16 and 32 GB capacities. Comments Off [link]
Panasonic has announced the DMW-MA2M M-mount adaptor and the DMW-MA3R R-mount adaptor for its Lumix G Micro System. Both Panasonic adaptors allow the use of movable MF assist function, which enlarges a selected area when focusing manually. The new adapters add to the list of third-party adapters designed to attach Leica M or R lenses to the DMC-G1 and DMC-GH1. Comments Off [link]
Horacio Potel has posted, over the course of several years, without authorisation, and free of charge, full versions of several of Jacques Derrida's works, which is harmful to the diffusion of his (Derrida)'s thought.Ok. I can understanding the (incorrect and misleading) argument that posting such works should be seen as infringing, but I can't fathom an explanation that giving away the works of a philosopher online for free could possibly "be harmful to the diffusion of his thought." It would seem that the opposite would be true.
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Bruce Schneier, an internationally recognized security technologist, said whole-body imaging technology "works pretty well," privacy rights aside. But he thinks the financial investment was a mistake. In a post-9/11 world, he said, he knows his position isn't "politically tenable," but he believes money would be better spent on intelligence-gathering and investigations.Damned right. It's amazing how many people mistake terrorism's sworn cause as eliminating air-travel. Al Quaeda are not anti-aviation activists. They want to create terror, not ground airplanes. You fight that by arresting them, not by sticking airports in safes and throwing away the keys."It's stupid to spend money so terrorists can change plans," he said by phone from Poland, where he was speaking at a conference. If terrorists are swayed from going through airports, they'll just target other locations, such as a hotel in Mumbai, India, he said.
"We'd be much better off going after bad guys ... and back to pre-9/11 levels of airport security," he said. "There's a huge 'cover your ass' factor in politics, but unfortunately, it doesn't make us safer."
"Anything using RF energy -- we have the right to inspect it to make sure it is not causing interference," says FCC spokesman David Fiske. That includes devices like Wi-Fi routers that use unlicensed spectrum, Fiske says.FCC's Warrantless Household Searches Alarm ExpertsThe FCC claims it derives its warrantless search power from the Communications Act of 1934, though the constitutionality of the claim has gone untested in the courts. That's largely because the FCC had little to do with average citizens for most of the last 75 years, when home transmitters were largely reserved to ham-radio operators and CB-radio aficionados. But in 2009, nearly every household in the United States has multiple devices that use radio waves and fall under the FCC's purview, making the commission's claimed authority ripe for a court challenge.
"It is a major stretch beyond case law to assert that authority with respect to a private home, which is at the heart of the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable search and seizure," says Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer Lee Tien. "When it is a private home and when you are talking about an over-powered Wi-Fi antenna -- the idea they could just go in is honestly quite bizarre."
In the Huffington Post, Larry Lessig has written an in-depth review of the book, and the picture he paints isn't pretty. Starting from the question, "Why isn't copyright perpetual," Helprin goes on to totally fail to research this question, failing to inspect any of the arguments that have preceded his asking. Instead, he raises a bunch of tired old saws about copyright as property, and, on the way, characterizes the Internet as a colossal failure (though, as Lessig points out, it seems like it was the only tool he used to research his book), populated by "blogger-ants" (that would be me, I guess), and led by crypto-Marxist "professors in glasses" (that would be Larry, a former Young Republican).
But Helprin has spent precious little time actually researching the supposed copyright abolition movement he's so up in arms about. He apparently watched a video in which Professor James Boyle appears, because he talks about Jamie's "desire to appear almost English, an embarrassing phase some insecure colonials enter never to exit" (Jamie is Scottish). But that's about it. He thinks that Creative Commons exists to promote "freeware" software. He thinks Lessig is anti-copyright. He thinks "monopoly" can only be applied to commodities (because he looked it up in the dictionary, and it says so there). As Lessig sez, "Too bad the lawyers at AT&T didn't read the OED when Reagan's Justice Department intervened to break up its monopoly in 'telephone service.' I can hear Attorney Helprin now: 'Your honor, excuse me, but the government has no case here. AT&T is not a monopoly, because AT&T sells no 'commodity.' A commodity is a 'thing,' your honor. All we sell is telephone service."
It's amazing that 232 pages of (let's not mince words) badly researched twaddle made it off the presses at HarperCollins -- but it's nice to be sure that Helprin wasn't kidding after all.
"Maybe," you say, charitable reader that you are, "he read the books, but just didn't cite them." And true enough: Helprin has this weird thing against citation. He quotes me criticizing him (on my blog): "Helprin barely cites anyone .... [He] doesn't bother with what others have written...." (164) but then defends his practice: "It's one thing to learn from others, but another to copy them." (164). True enough. But then it is a third thing to acknowledge a point you have drawn from another -- assuming, of course, pace solipsism, you believe that there are other people in the world, and they might possibly have something to say. At another part of the book, he mocks students who "support their assertions with crushing citations." (162) A sin, perhaps, but nothing as compared to an author who supports his assertions with no citations at all.The Solipsist and the Internet (a review of Helprin's Digital Barbarism)But if he actually read any of these books, he didn't take notes. The structure of his book is sprinkles of promises to make an argument, mixed with the most self-indulgent reflections upon his own life. And when Helprin actually gets around to argument, the arguments are a series of questions. (For example: "Where do they get the idea that copyright is a drag on artistic production? Are they suggesting that Pasternak could not write because Yeats had beaten him to the punch, that Tolstoy didn't write War and Peace because Moby Dick was copyrighted?" (140); or "What magic influence comes into play to convert a condition that does not hinder publication or however many years of commercial availability into a condition that then has the opposite effect?" (77); "Is the argument that books that go into print while copyrighted and stay in print for twenty years while copyrighted go out of print because they are copyrighted?" (77)) None of these questions are profound or new. None of them would be unanswered if the author had spent two weeks researching before he wrote. But Helprin apparently didn't have time to research. And who does these days? We're living in Internet time. It's work enough simply to keep up with the blogs!
National Economic Crisis Video Screenings & Forums (Thanks, Tiffiniy!)
Thanks to readers on Boing Boing and many others, the movement for dealing with the economic crisis has grown to 40,000 people in two months! But, so many people want to actually learn about what's going on, learn about the insider groups that are preparing to fight. Now, during the week of June 8th, thousands of people will get together at economic crisis house parties across the country to watch an ANWF-exclusive video that lays out how we got into this mess and a live webcast of economic crisis town hall forums in San Francisco, New York, and Washington DC. These events allow us to talk about alternatives for getting out of the crisis and take back the conversation from the technocrats who think that regular people like us shouldn't have a say.Brought to you by Alternet and A New Way Forward, Doug Rushkoff and Professor Dal Bo will be speaking at the San Francisco town hall, and in Washington DC, Simon Johnson, and Les Leopold in NYC. We're thinking of petitioning Naomi Klein to speak at our NYC event (we need women!)
ANWF is differerent, we're all volunteer and people have made this our fight to win. People need to register their house parties and help build the movement and spirit. You can register a public or private- we have tools and a guide for hosting your party.
So, it'll be exciting, we'll get to feel like we have town halls again! Get together with your friends, watch some video, share some drinks and snacks, and chat with other people about the economy. We need to start talking to each other in order to build the foundation for a people-powered bank reform movement.
Nathan's New Amp
(Thanks, Jake!)
"Evidence is increasing to suggest that excessive cola consumption can also lead to hypokalaemia, in which the blood potassium levels fall, causing an adverse effect on vital muscle functions."Excessive Cola Consumption Can Lead To Super-sized Muscle Problems, Warn Doctors (via /.)A research review carried out by Dr Elisaf and his colleagues has shown that symptoms can range from mild weakness to profound paralysis. Luckily all the patients studied made a rapid and full recovery after they stopped drinking cola and took oral or intravenous potassium.
The case studies looked at patients whose consumption ranged from two to nine litres of cola a day.
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Here's the latest project from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories:
The proliferation of spoof, nerd, science, and electronics merit badges has demonstrated that geeks like to show off their skills and accomplishments. One skill is particularly appropriate for the format: soft circuitry. By building your own soft circuit onto an actual badge you can demonstrate your mastery.
EMSL will be at Maker Faire, don't miss them!
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Electronic Embroidery/Sewing Kit
(Rudy Rucker is a guestblogger. His latest novel, Hylozoic, describes a postsingular world in which everything is alive.)
Guestblog brings you a special Friday evening music treat!
A playlist of NOFX videos! Yaaaar.
Best album of late? Easy. It's NOFX and Rancid, BYO Split Series Vol III. My two favorite punk bands playing each other's songs!
Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.
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This week's flashback installation comes from lucky MAKE Volume 13: the R-Tronic 8-Bit Toy Music Sequencer by Brian McNamara. Phil Torrone originally blogged this sequencer about 2 years ago. He had seen it on Etsy, made by seller RareBeasts (Brian's shop). Brian shared this how-to with us about a year later in Volume 13.
As Brian describes in the intro:
I wanted to make a unique present to give my daughter for her first birthday, a musical toy that she could sit down and play with immediately but that would also become more educational for her in a few years. So I built her the R-Tronic 8-Bit, a simple music sequencer that lets you build up, play back, and edit musical patterns. It uses wooden shapes as buttons, and LEDs instead of fancy displays.
I started on the project 3 months before my daughter's birthday, programming a Picaxe microcontroller with a speaker on a breadboard, using just enough software to make the sequencer's 4 noises. Then I added 4 switch inputs to trigger the sounds, followed by 12 LED blinkies. I ported the tangled breadboard circuit to a neat printed circuit board, and finally built the wooden frame and fit the electronics. The final wiring was completed the night before my daughter's birthday party.
If I had any worries that she wouldn't like the R-Tronic, I needn't have. As soon as she saw it, she knew just what to do.
The R-Tronic loops sounds in sequences that are 8 beats long. LEDs along the top flash in series to show which beat it's on. Push one of the shape pegs, and it adds its corresponding sound into the repeating sequence, at the current beat, overwriting other sounds (or erasing it like a toggle if the same sound is already there).
Here's a glance under the hood:
And here is the project shared with you in our Digital Edition, so you can get started building for your favorite future circuit bender.
You can also still pick up back issues of MAKE 13 in the Maker Shed. Lucky 13 is the Magic issue, loaded with telekinetic pens, levitating heads, ghostly blocks, fireball shooters, plus dozens of other projects, ideas, tips, and tricks for doing everything from growing giant vegetables to finding lost screws.
(Download MP4 / Watch on YouTube)
In today's episode of Boing Boing Video, I catch up with our guest video contributor Miles O'Brien for an update on the space stories he's following this week.
The esteemed space, science, and aviation reporter brought us a story on an astronaut climbing Mt. Everest -- who just reached the summit! Then, Miles literally dove in to a floating "tool time" session with NASA astronauts tasked with repair of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Today, he brings us up to speed on these and other sci-tech stories he's following, and we hear what he'll be digging into next.
The former CNN anchor and reporter is exploring what independent online journalism is all about. In this episode, we learn what life is like for a 26-year broadcast veteran who has become a freewheeling freelancer. The short answer? Pretty good.
Catch his reports at True Slant, and follow him on Twitter: @milesobrien. Catch his space coverage at spaceflightnow.com.
RSS feed for new episodes here, YouTube channel here, subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video. (Special thanks to Boing Boing's video hosting partner Episodic).
This is a case from the Insight Community, a powerful new marketplace that connects companies with intelligent communities like Techdirt. Click here to learn more.
The business of print has always been a risky one. While the printing press made it much cheaper to print, there were still significant fixed costs involved. In order to make it economically feasible to print something, you had to make sure there were enough buyers, which involved significant forecasting. There were also significant costs associated with setting up each print run, such that it wasn't economically reasonable to do really custom work. Thankfully, in the past few decades advances in various technologies have made it cheaper and cheaper -- even as the rise of the internet has led many to write off the opportunities for print publishing, and even suggest that paper was dying.
Yet, what if that same trends, of ever decreasing technology costs combined with increasing quality and internet connectivity, enable a new era of print? These trends have the ability to enable things that simply couldn't be done before. We're seeing the beginnings of this with print-on-demand and self-publishing services, but where does it go from here? How far will these technology trends take us in creating totally new opportunities for print? When it's easy and cost effective to not just self-publish, but *micro-publish* suddenly the entire stream of possibilities becomes different. A photographer can publish a special magazine for every attendee at a wedding (even with the attendee's photo customized to be on the front). Or a novelist can let fans buy each chapter to be delivered fresh each month (or week!) as she finishes it. A textbook maker can create a totally customizable textbook, listing out a series of chapters online, allowing professors/teachers/students to create their own combination based on what works best for them.
And those are just a few starter ideas. HP is sponsoring this conversation about how these trends will enable all sorts of new possibilities and business models. What new opportunities will be enabled thanks to ever cheaper print-on-demand offerings that combine customization, high quality and the connectivity of the internet? What new businesses may spring out of this convergence? What new hobbies, side projects, cultural artifacts? We're looking for creative thinking on where these trends will take us and what they'll enable.
View Case Details at InsightCommunity.com
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Maker Faire Bay Area 2009 is a mere 10 days away, and today is your last chance to get advanced, discounted tickets. Save $5 on a one-day ticket and a whopping $20 on a weekend pass. The deadline is today, May 20th, at midnight PST. After midnight, up until the event, tickets will be full priced, which is still a great deal, but why not save a few bucks, right?
For those of you who don't know, Maker Faire is the biggest DIY event on the planet! In a nutshell, it's a two-day, family-friendly event to MAKE, create, learn, invent, CRAFT, recycle, think, play and be inspired by celebrating arts, crafts, engineering, food, music, science and technology. You don't want to miss it!
Get your discounted tickets before midnight tonight, and we'll see you there!
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This crazy bugger is trying to tweet the Mona Lisa. He writes:
Preliminary result of a little competition with the goal to write an image encoder/decoder that allows to send an image in a tweet. The image on the left is what I currently manage to send in 140 characters via twitter.
He's doing it in Chinese characters because UTF-8 encoding allows him to send 210 bytes of data in the Twitter 140 characters.
MonaTweeta II [Thanks, @mashable!]
65 queries. 2.942 seconds
