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Michael Dare's Adventures with Power Goo from Michael Dare on Vimeo.
I liked this a lot more than I guessed I would. The ones of Abe Lincoln are especially good.
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The James Dyson Awards have a simple brief: "Design something that solves a problem." The top video is for a conductive body paint (not sure what problem that solves, but still cool), the second is for a kind of fastener technology for consumer electronics that would make post-consumer disassembly much faster and cheaper (looks like a bonus app in hardware hacking, too!).
You can see all the entries on the link below - the winners will be announced in November.
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Last night Marshall and I did a flash call-in version of the Bad Hair Day podcast to discuss the acquisition of FriendFeed by Facebook. It was the first time I used BlogTalkRadio's call-in feature, and I liked it, and I want to do it again. 
And that imho is the answer -- we, the users, need to own a technology company -- and have it work to serve our interests. It has to help us achieve our goals to do what we are excited about. I believe the users are worth betting on, much more than I believe that Marc Andreessen or Larry and Sergey really had any idea how to tap into the potential of their inventions (with no disrespect to any of these brilliant people). The visionaries were the people who believed their stock was worth a lot more than anyone in Silicon Valley did.
Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding, co-creators, writers, and stars of the hit "psychedelic comedy" series The Mighty Boosh, stopped to talk with Boing Boing Video during a recent US tour.
Their show has been aptly described as "a Sid and Marty Krofft production engineered by Frank Zappa [with] fantastic plots, genre parody, warped songcraft and quick-witted off-road conversations." Barratt and Fielding crafted a weird, playful universe with odd characters -- a talking gorilla, a stoned shaman, a tentacled and disembodied hot pink head -- that quickly converts viewers into obsessed fans.
The Boosh gang were in the states to promote the US release of a three-season DVD set
In this interview, Noel and Julian speak about their crazed trufans (who craft outlandish, wonderfully nerdy costumes), why reviewers always think hallucinogenic drugs are involved in the show's creation -- and the guys kick things off with a Boing Boing crimp. What's a crimp? Watch and enjoy.
(Special thanks to Mark Kleiman and Stefanie Fletcher for their generous support of this Boing Boing Video interview series.)
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Great stand-up bit about homeopathy, new age "thinking," and other follies. (Salty language ahoy) (Via Derren Brown)
I'm glad I came across this photo, because readers enjoy photos of disappointing popsicles almost as much as videos of girls playing the ukulele!
(Via Bits & Pieces)
More arboreal architectural awesomeness, here brought to you by German architect Marcel Kalberer and the Sanfte Strukturen group. The first structure, called the Auerworld Palace, was constructed in 1998, in Aeurstedt, Germany, and was their first "willow palace" project, taking the efforts of 300 volunteers to build. Kalberer has gone on to... er... plant 70 living structures.
Sanfte Strukturen [via Atlas Obscura]
More:
Living root bridges
Houses woven out of trees
Here's a great interview with Eightball's Dan Clowes that didn't make it into Mike Sacks' book, Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers On Their Craft.
Q: Were you even a fan of Cracked?Shown above, Dan Clowes cover for DC's Bizarro Comics, which was rejected. I thought it was fitting for this rejected interview.A: No one was ever a fan of Cracked.
Growing up, my friends ? okay, "friend" ? and I used to think of Cracked as a stopgap. We would buy Mad every month, but about two weeks later we would get anxious for new material. We would tell ourselves, Okay, we are not going to buy Cracked. Never again! And we'd hold out for a while, but then as the month dragged on it just became, Okay, fuck it. I guess I'll buy Cracked.
Q: It was like comedy methadone.
A: Right. Then you'd bring it home, and immediately you'd remember, Oh yeah, I hate Cracked. I don't understand any of the jokes, and [Cracked mascot] Sylvester P. Smythe is the most unappealing character of all time.
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Jesse Dill writes about the Garbasail kite on Build/Make/Craft/Bake:
I first found out about Garbasails when they were featured as Urban Dictionary's word of the day. A few curious clicks later, I was completely hooked on the idea. It's a simple formula: trash bags + duct tape + a lot of rope = one very large, very impressive-looking kite. My friend Harish and I decided to make it happen, and we hit the hardware store.Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Toys and Games | Digg this!
Mark Dery is guest blogger du jour until August 17. He is the author of Culture Jamming, Flame Wars, Escape Velocity, and The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium. He's at work on The Pathological Sublime, a philosophical investigation into the paradox of horrible beauty and the politics of "just looking."
Unloved, underfunded, and more or less untended, the Museo Storico Nazionale dell'Arte Sanitaria---"National Museum of Healthcare," in your correspondent's me-talk-pretty-someday Italian---is, like so many of Italy's obscure museological gems, a study in abjection.
The Museo is housed in a 17th-century building, in the middle of a complex that some claim constitutes the oldest hospital in Europe: the Ospedale di Santo Spirito, erected in around 1198 by Pope Innocenzo III on the site of the Borgo Sassia, a hotel-cum-hospital for pilgrims to the nearby Holy City. "Its historic memory as an institution, recorded on its walls in frescoes ranging from the 15th to the 18th century, goes back to the 13th," writes Milton Gendel in his article "Rome's Unknown Museum Of The Holy Ghost" (PDF). But "the history of the hospital and hospitality on the site is at least five hundred years older than that," he notes. "Nero's grandmother, Agrippina, owned a suburban villa here on the right bank of the Tiber, and it was on this land that her son Gaius, known as Caligula, built his circus. In Nero's reign, St. Peter was crucified head down in the middle of the race track, having been condemned for proselityzing the Christian religion, which was held to be an anti-state activity before the Emperor Constantine, three centuries later, was himself converted." (Somewhere, Sam Harris heaves a sigh of regret for All That Might Have Been...)
During the 15th century, the hospital accepted unwanted babies via a revolving drum built into a wall, which enabled mothers to make ATM-style deposits anonymously by pushing their babies through, then yanking a bellpull, which alerted nuns on the other side. The foundlings were reared as wards of the hospital. "If the consigner did not care to remain unknown a receipt was given," writes Gendel. Either way, "the child was tattooed on the right foot with the double-armed cross of Santo Spirito."
The Museo is of interest to us because of the Sala Flajani, whose heart is the anatomical collection of the physician Giuseppe Flaiani (1741-1808). A musty salon whose four walls are lined with antique cabinets, it contains dried anatomical preparations; the odd---and I do mean odd---fetus swimming in preservative, its features blurred by decay; a collection of stones removed from the livers, kidneys, and bladders of Santo Spirito patients during the 19th century (collect them all!); and some wax anatomical models executed in the late 1700's by the sculptor Giovanni Battista Manfredini in collaboration with the anatomist Carlo Mondini. (Mondini is best known for his research on the anatomy of the eye and on the causes of deafness; he identified the congenital deformation of the inner ear known as Mondini's dysplasia. But what endears him to me is his 1777 discovery of the location of eel ovaries, "which for centuries had been sought after in vain," according to an 1879 U.S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries report. Who knew?)
Manfredini is renowned---okay, renowned among medical historians and connoisseurs of the irretrievably weird---for his terracotta obstetric models, a set of which are installed in the Museo Universitario di Storia Naturale e della Strumentazione Scientifica in Modena, Italy. With expressions familiar from the iconography of Catholic kitsch, yet posed salaciously, like anatomical strippers---one model peels back her flesh to expose her gravid womb---Manfredini's women inspire a kind of semiotic indigestion. And that, as Martha would say, is A Good Thing.
We orbit the room, taking in the dessicated fetus, a mummified Alien Gray, old beyond imagining yet so young it never saw its first birthday. A time traveller frozen in the wind tunnel of years, it leans into the oncoming days.
We stare at a jaunty trio of malformed doll skeletons sharing a joke: one is talking his arms off, living up to the Italian stereotype, while his death's-headed friend grins broadly, as all gaping skulls do.
We look pityingly at a pair of pickled foetuses clinging to each other in a bottle of formalin, the Romulus and Remus of the carnival midway.
A full-sized wax model of a man stops us dead in our tracks, his body unzipped from his upper lip all the way to his groin, the flaps of flesh peeled back for our edification. But he has the last laugh, waggling his tongue obscenely, eyes closed, savoring the moment.
Weirdest of all is a display of two crudely sculpted clay heads, fitted with false teeth and glass eyes. They'd look more at home on a Santería altar than here, in the inner sanctum of an 18th-century medical museum. Beside them lolls what appears to be a skinned, inexpertly stuffed human infant, head propped pensively on its hand.
The Sala Flajani is Jame Gumb's idea of a garage sale. A cabinet of wonders curated by Joe Coleman. The waiting room for Disney's Haunted Mansion, as reimagined by Julia Kristeva. Or all, or none, of the above. Perhaps Babelfish puts it best, with that crackbrained, syntactically fractured robot wisdom that sometimes manages, by dumb machine luck, to eff the ineffable. Translating the museum's webpage, it describes the Sala Flajani as housing "a merciless sample of birth deformity or morbid. These preparations anatomo-pathological...include skulls of fetuses and small skeletons, some of which macrocephaly and a two-man. In addition to this overview of deformities in wood shelving in the purest pink empire is gathering a collection of wax."
And what macrocephalic two-man, anywhere in our purest pink empire, can argue with that?
Museo Storico Nazionale dell'Arte Sanitaria
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Snip from an essay by artist Michaela Melián on Hedy Lemarr, the Austrian-born American scientist and actress who was once described as the most beautiful woman in the world by MGM's Louis B. Mayer. Art Fag City Editor Paddy Johnson says, "Not only was she the first actress to simulate an orgasm onscreen in 1933, but her frequency-switching device (now known as frequency hopping) developed with partner George Antheil, is the technology upon with cell phones are built."
Melián assembled this online essay for Art Fag City's annual IMG MGMT which, in which artists are invited to curate image essays on the blog. She also wrote a score to accompany the old school style slide show, which is embedded in the post.
Image above: Michaela Melián, Frequency Hopping, 2008, C-print, watercolor, thread, 35 x 28 cm.
Snip:
IMG MGMT: Life As A Woman, Hedy Lamarr (Art Fag City)In her ex-husband's Salzburg villa, the immigrant had seen plans for remote controlled torpedoes, which were never built because the radio controls proved to be too unreliable. After the outbreak of the Second World War, she worked on practical ideas to effectively fight the Hitler regime. At a party in Hollywood, Lamarr met George Antheil, an avant-garde composer who also wrote film scores. While playing the piano with the composer, the actress suddenly has an important idea for her torpedo control system. Antheil sets up the system on 88 frequencies, as this number corresponds to the number of keys on a piano. To construct it, he employs something similar to the player piano sheet music that he used in his Ballet Mécanique.
In December 1940, the frequency-switching device developed by Lamarr and Antheil was sent to the National Inventors' Council. A patent was awarded on August 11, 1942. The two inventors leave it to the American military to figure out how to use the device. Lamarr's and Antheil's Secret Communication System disappears into the U.S. Army's filing cabinets.
Finally, in 1962, as the Cuba crisis brews the technology now known as frequency hopping is put to use. Its purpose is not to control torpedoes, but to allow for safe communications among blockading ships - whereupon the principles behind the patent become part of fundamental U.S. military communications technology. Today, this technology is not only the foundation for the U.S. military's satellite defense system, but also used widely in the private sector, particularly for cordless and mobile telephones.
Twitter and Facebook were paralyzed this past week by DDOS (distributed denial of service) attacks. As I understand it, those attacks are still ongoing. In this Wired Epicenter blog post by Eliot Van Buskirk, open source advocates propose that the only real solution to this vulnerability is to engage in another DDOS: "distributed delivery of service." As Bittorent is to filesharing, the thinking goes, so would an open microblogging network be to 140-character thought-blips.
“The total failure of Twitter during the DDoS attacks highlights the fact that, with Twitter, we're relying on a single service for mass communication of this type,” said open microblogging supporter and Ektron CTO Bill Cava. “Most everyone understands it's ridiculous to expect one service to provide email support to the world. The same is true for micro messaging. The reality is, it can’t and won’t continue this way for too much longer.”Open Source 'Twitter' Could Fend Off the Next Twitpocalypse (wired.com Epicenter blog, thanks, Matt Katz)The OpenMicroBlogging standard already exists -- it’s just that Twitter’s not playing along, possibly because it could lose market share if the open standard succeeds before it manages to monetize its service. One platform that adheres to the Open MicroBlogging (OMB) standard is Laconi.ca, an open-source Twitter-style network launched by Status.net on July 2 of last year (others include OpenMicroBlogger and Google’s Jaiku).
Laconi.ca, which seems to have gained more traction than the other two OMB platforms, forms the backbone of Identi.ca — an open-source Twitter clone with features Twitter lacks (image uploading, trackbacks, native video playback, OpenID) that lets you post updates to its own network as well as Twitter and Facebook. Status.net will soon add the ability to follow Twitter and Facebook feeds using the corresponding APIs, so users will soon be able to make Identi.ca their default short messaging communications hub -- even if those services won’t use the open standard.
Want to try your hand at a new programming language without the hassle of downloading and installing it? Well, now you can with Python thanks to Sculpt. The project is still in an early phase, but they note that they intend to support as much of the language as possible (and full source code is available, if you're interested).
If Python isn't your game, why not try Ruby, Basic or even Logo? These would be a good way to get some practice in when you're on the road! Does your favorite programming language have an online version?
[via O'Reilly Radar]
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Criminals -- mostly drug gangs -- tap remote pipelines, sometimes building pipelines of their own, to siphon off hundreds of millions of dollars worth of oil each year, the Mexican oil monopoly said. At least one U.S. oil executive has pleaded guilty to conspiracy in such a deal. On Tuesday, the U.S. Homeland Security department is scheduled to return $2.4 million to Mexico's tax administration, the first batch of money seized during a binational investigation into smuggled oil that authorities expect to lead to more arrests and seizures.Read the full story here: AP NewsBreak: US bought oil stolen from Mexico (Associated Press via Google, via Jack Shafer)
Mysterious Burmese facility revealed on Google Earth (Sydney Morning Herald / Australia)The main facility, which measures 82 by 84 metres, can been seen on satellite images published on both Google Earth and Google Maps Earth is showing a mysterious building in Burma's jungle that some commentators think may be linked to activity by Burma's regime to develop their own nuclear weapons like North Korea.
It features a pitched, blue corrugated roof, which, at first glance, makes it look like an over-sized swimming pool. The large industrial complex is located in a rural area of central Burma, east of Mandalay near the town of Pin Oo Lwin.
That's the same zone in which defectors recently told two Australian researchers that the Burmese army had been building a nuclear research and engineering centre with support from North Korea and Russia.
Arduino based pedal-for-more bandwidth exercycle... from Matt and Tom.
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They want the court to order the union:Pretty much all of those requests seem like very questionable attempts to censor and silence organizing workers, rather than any legitimate attempt to protect trademarks against confusing use in commerce. And, of course, in doing so, all Wal-Mart is doing is drawing a lot more attention to these union claims... and to the fact that Wal-Mart appears to be acting like a big bully.
- to refrain from using the names Wal-Mart or Walmart as a trademark alone, or with other indicia, in any form or format
- not to use the expressions "Walmart Workers Canada" or "Union for Walmart Workers" in any form or format
- not to use the expression "Get respect. Live better." or any other expression which constitutes a play on Wal-Mart's trademarked slogan "Save money. Live better"
- not to use photos or images of WalMart employees or people purporting to be such employees
- not to use an oval, circular or semi-circular design similar to the Spark Design that includes spokes or figures in association with trademark Walmart in any form or format
- to take down the website www.walmartworkerscanada.ca
In his latest art print Drew Friedman perfectly captures Deputy Barney Fife's look of smug authority, right down to the chin dimples.
Don Knotts portrayed high-strung Mayberry Deputy Sheriff Barney Fife in the 1960s sitcom The Andy Griffith Show. Fife was a quixotic smalltown crime-stopper projecting a veneer of situational command that didn't fool anyone (including his acting peers, who accorded him four Emmy Awards for the role). The Museum of Broadcast Communications described Fife as "self-important, romantic, and nearly always wrong. While Barney was forever frustrated that Mayberry was too small for the delusional ideas he had of himself, viewers got the sense that he couldn't have survived anywhere else."Drew Friedman print of Don Knotts as Barney Fife
[Rahm] Emanuel displays many characteristics of a hypomanic temperament. This mildly manic disposition—which is not a mental illness—comes with assets that could propel someone to the top of his field: immense energy, drive, confidence, creativity, and infectious enthusiasm. I have found through interviews and historical accounts that hypomania has animated many leaders, from Alexander Hamilton and Andrew Carnegie to Emanuel's former boss Bill Clinton.There's something very American about an over-the-top personality running the White House staffBut it also carries a cluster of liabilities: overconfidence, irritability, and especially impulsivity that often pitches the hypomanic into hostility. Drives are heightened and impulse control is weakened, making the hypomanic brain like a Porsche with no brakes. In keeping with his hypomanic temperament, Emanuel doesn't need much sleep and he can't stay still. "He's like a shark that always has to keep moving or he dies," says John Lapp, who worked for Emanuel. And, like Clinton, Emanuel is highly creative, not least because his hyperkinetic mind can't stop generating ideas. "He's an idea machine," Sabato says.
In the wake of dance legend Merce Cunningham's passing, BB pal Richard Metzger says he's happy to learn that "punk" ballet dancer and choreographer, Michael Clark has been creating new work. Metzger points to some amazing archival video of Clark's work from the '80s, including the embed above, choreography to accompany music from the UK band The Fall
I followed Michael Clark's career closely in the 1980s and early 90s and was always curious about what had happened to him. Back then, Clark seemed touched by the gods. His angular, asymmetrical, yet bizarrely graceful form of movement caused a sensation in the dance world. On a trip to London I caught an astonishing performance of I am Curious, Orange, his ballet conceived around the music of The Fall, who played live while Clark and his company danced. I was completely and utterly floored. It was one of the best things I've ever seen. I thought Clark was a genius. Nijinksy with a mohawk.HAIL THE NEW PURITAN: THE RETURN OF MICHAEL CLARK (Dangerous Minds)
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Richard sez, "This ingenious hacker from Egypt put a fifth wheel, mounted perpendicular to the other four, on the back of his beater car. The wheel can be raised or lowered, depending on if he is parking or driving. The purpose is so that he can get in and out of the very tightest parking spaces. Probably better than having two brawny men lift the car into place!"
egyptian invention
(Thanks, Richard!)
Adobe's Stupid Licensing System
(Thanks, Kirk!)
Reader Billy Baque recently pointed me at the blog of knife- and tool-maker Peter Atwood, who seems to be living the Maker dream: Every week or so he makes up a run of one or two dozen of his carefully-designed pocket tools, posts them for sale on eBay, and announces it on his blog. They usually sell out within a day.
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The Web's Dirtiest Site (Daily Beast)
When AT&T recently blocked access to a hugely popular hackers' Web site, 4chan.org, many of us Internet old-timers froze in place. It was like one of those bad Westerns, when an arrogant newcomer sits down in the saloon, and then insults the baddest, most trigger-happy gunslinger in the county. People move to the side of the room, climb under tables, and wait for the shots to fly.The 4Chan community--a diehard, if ever-changing assortment of the Net's most-desperate, most-anonymous, and most-wanted, well, punks--smelled censorship, top-down control, and an evil corporation trying to keep down the world's last squat for hackers. They went batshit. The site's founder posted a note telling his minion's to write and complain to AT&T, and the dog whistle having been heard, a posse called "Project AT&T," quickly formed, dedicated to revenge.
It turns out AT&T was really just trying to protect the site, and its own servers, from a typical "denial of service" attack. (Hackers create a feedback loop of pings and requests that overloads the target Web site.) AT&T's solution--to move 4Chan to a new IP address--was crude but ultimately effective. Project AT&T called a temporary truce, the bar piano started playing again, and the world went back to normal.
But the whole episode reminded me that, in spite of the Web's seemingly secure and consumer-friendly facade, there is still some Wild West left out there. And 4Chan is the OK Corral. So like a middle-aged Australian businessman going on walkabout, I decided to spend a couple of weeks embedded in this famously depraved, raucously fertile community.
Doug's new book: Life, Inc.
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Here's a neat little reference card for figuring out resistors on the go. Download, print, and paper fastener together.
More:
Wallet-size LED resistance calculator!
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Krugman: Let me show my age here. What you came out believing if you went to the New York's World Fair in 1964 was that we were going to have this enormously enhanced mastery of the physical universe. That we were going to have undersea cities and supersonic transports everywhere. And there hasn't been that kind of dramatic change. It's not just that airplanes are no faster. My favorite test, which shows something about me, is the kitchen. If you walked into a kitchen from the 1950's it would look a little pokey, but you'd know what to do. It wouldn't be that difficult. If someone from the 1950's walked into a kitchen from 1909 they'd be pretty unhappy - they might just be able to manage. If someone from 1909 went to one from 1859, you would actually be hopeless. The big change was really between 1840 and the 1920's, in terms of what the physical nature of modern life is like. There's been nothing like that since. So we can do fancy information searches in a way that no one envisioned 30 years ago - as one of my colleagues at the Times, Gail Collins, likes to say all the time where are the flying cars?A fireside chat
People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.How House Bill Runs Over Grandma (via Dispatches From the Culture Wars)
Pressure sensitive keys have been used in MIDI keyboards for a while now, but good ol' qwerty keyboards seem to have missed out on the feature til now. Hardware developers from Microsoft's Applied Science group built this prototype using membrane layers with resistive coating plus opamp board to convert the analog data over to USB. The potential applications demoed in the above vid seem quite promising.[via Procrastineering]
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This is a pretty simple, clever way of controlling sound by creating these pins wheels with holes in them that spin over light sensors and change frequency and modulation as light levels change. Different wheels can be swapped out.
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Michael Niggel took a look at Journey Under the Sea, and mapped out all possible paths. It turns out that death and unfavorable endings are in fact much more likely than the rest.Choose Your Own Adventure - Most Likely You'll Die
(via Waxy)
It seems as though as the App Store game entries grows exponentially, our true, heartfelt suggestions have dropped off inversely, but recently on Offworld we made one of our strongest, most unreserved recommendations yet with Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor, the debut game from the former Thief/Splinter Cell devs at Tiger Style.
It's a game that works brilliantly on two levels: first, as an intuitive action game that sees you finger-flicking/spinning webs to catch the insect inhabitants of the long-abandoned titular manor, but second, and just as wonderfully, unraveling the secret narrative that's running underneath, just under your nose if you're careful enough to look -- it's instantly become one of our top 3 iPhone games of all time.
Elsewhere, we took a look at two of the best meta-games to come to the web in recent months, with the one level exploration of, er, This is the Only Level and the self-purchased enhancements of Upgrade Complete, and listened to both a wonderfully diverse Songs to Frag By videogame mixtape, and the live house/trance styling of PixelJunk Eden director Baiyon.
Finally, we saw the first dazzling entry in the AI-controlled Mario contest, made our own Noby Boy catnip toy, saw LucasArts/Double Fine dev Tim Schafer reveal his hidden Rubik's talent, and our 'one shot's for the day: the geographical secrets of Left 4 Dead and the amazingly ugly excesses of the women of Leisure Suit Larry.
Behold the earth-shakingly epic introduction to the MIDI-harmonica fusion instrument better known as the Millioniser 2000! The device's slogan "It comes from tomorrow, but it's here today" doesn't seem to hold true nowadays as the Millioniser has become quite rare is since its release back in 1983.
All smoke machines and spooky voiceovers aside, it's seems like a pretty sweet little controller - particularly interesting is pitch slide/mouth control somewhat reminiscent of the Ondes Martenot. If you happen to be making a similar breath-controlled instrument (or heck, even something completely different), consider making an appropriately jamtastic launch video as per above … please? [via Create Digital Music]
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It's often said that the best camera is the one on you. These readymade snap-on lenses for the iPhone are a fun addition to a spur of the moment snapshot.
[via TalkiPhone]
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Former Make: Online contributor Jonah Brucker-Cohen wrote in to tell us about ReFunct 09, a symposium of the Irish Museum of Contemporary Art, that he's involved with. This series of events will combine workshops, discussions, performances, and an exhibition on hardware hacking and circuit bending. On August 22, Jonah will be presenting one of his Scrapyard Challenge workshops:
Participants will build simple electronic projects (both digital and analog inputs) out of found or discarded "junk" (old electronics, clothing, furniture, outdated computer equipment, appliances, turntables, monitors, gadgets, etc..) in order to create audio/visual outputs. At the end of the day, the workshop participants will demonstrate and present their creations in a performance / presentation open to the public: Data Event 36.0.
Other events in the series run through to September 12th.
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Incredible Pictures Formed by Thousands of US Soldiers
(Thanks, Bill!)
Musical Kettle 2008
(via Cribcandy)
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In the Future, Doing Science Is Like Blogging• Can I really make major science discoveries just by reading "nonsense poems"?
You bet you can, and that's why we're so glad you're at our Web site! If you can read a popular-science publication (and enjoy it), then you most likely have enough brainpower to help us make massive scientific breakthroughs.
• How do I know if I qualify for making these "mysterious discoveries"?
By displaying your linguistic comprehension of our stochastic scientometric ontological schemata!
From the MAKE Flickr pool
Flickr member alikins made this eentsy thumb piano that doubles as a pendant -
A very small kalimba I made for lintqueen to be worn as a piece of jewelry. It's about 1.5 inches by 2 inches. It is made out of laser cut purplehear and uses bobby pins for tines.Super cute - and functional! Check out the relevant blog post for a demo + build notes.
We're starting to see some fine submissions to our Teach Your Family to Solder MAKEcation challenge. So far, it's been mainly kids -- very little kids. While we're thrilled that MAKE readers aren't Nanny State types who over-protect their children, we'd love to see some older kids, teens, and more grown-ups. We're still offering Maker's Notebooks to people who post their pics to the MAKE Flickr pool. So get to it!
Shortly after [his first soldering picture] was taken, he got a little burn and I thought that would be it for soldering for a few years. But tonight, with just a little coaxing, he was back at it. The Wee Blinky kit we obtained from Maker Shed made the process a little easier. He and I alternated soldering joints and finished it up in no time. His excitement and satisfaction when the blinker came on was priceless to see. He is more educated and empowered today than he was ten days ago.
Way to go, Kidrocket!
More MAKEcation action:
Let the MAKEcation solder-fest BEGIN!
MAKEcation Cooler Hacking Challenge
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This project uses an Arduino to play back the IR sequences that were captured form the I-Sobot's remote control. The next step is to add some sensors, and make the robot fully autonomous. Check out the link for more information about the build, including the source code.
I decoded the Tomy Isobot IR protocol and made a shield for the Pro Mini 8Mhz to attach like a backpack to the Isobot. I have attached some quick pics. It is completely self sustained (runs off Isobot's 3 Nimhs), has an IR receiver to decode button commands, IR led to send to the bot, and an extra analog port for a distance sensor like my Maxbotics sonar (or a ping).
More about the Arduino controlled I-Sobot
In the Maker Shed:
I-Sobot in the Maker Shed
"It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it." - Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
No surprises here: A court in Myanmar (Burma) has issued a guilty verdict for Nobel laureate and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. She was accused of "violating an internal security law," and will serve an additional 18 months imprisonment under house arrest. She has lived under detention for 14 of the past 20 years.
Reuters, CNN. Guardian UK has a timeline of events related to the case.
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Like the fist of an angry god (Phil Plait / "Bad Astronomy" - Discover, thanks Ugly Canuck)It's not exactly clear what's going on here, even in this slightly zoomed shot. But it looks for all the world - or worlds -- like some small object on an inclined orbit has punched through Saturn's narrow F ring, bursting out from underneath, and dragging behind it a wake of particles from the rings. The upward-angled structure is definitely real, as witnessed by the shadow it's casting on the ring material to the lower left. And what's with the bright patch right where this object seems to have slammed in the rings? Did it shatter millions of icy particles, revealing their shinier interior material, making them brighter? Clearly, something awesome and amazing happened here.
Related: Saturn Images from Cassini (ciclops.org)
Sand castle QR code, via BBG. I love summer!
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While coverage of the official Defcon badge has been pretty heavy, there was a badge that was far more exclusive and talked about way more. For the last ten years at Defcon a group of hackers known as Ninja Networks hosted an invitation-only party for selected attendees. For the 2009 event, [cstone] and [w0z] created an electronic badge which acted as the ticket to the party. The badge is based around an 8-bit Freescale microcontroller (MC9S08QE8) which drives 10 individual 16-segment HIOX-format LED displays.The custom PCBs were manufactured by 4pcb, but all other assembly was done by hand with a huge team of volunteers in Boston, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas. Assembly space for this effort was provided by Redwire and Angel Valley Media. More than 500 badges were created. To help fund the effort, the Ninjas took on internet privacy company XeroBank as an event sponsor.
The assembly process is detailed in the video below which highlights a few interesting DIY techniques including using a $30 Target hotplate as a reflow oven.
In this short video Kris Madden shows you how to read faster. The trick, he says, is to repeatedly say "AEIOU" or "one, two, three, four," as you read. This prevents you from vocalizing the written words with your larynx. Once you train yourself, you can stop uttering "AEIOU," and you will be able to read much faster than before, or so he says.
Scientific speed reading: how to read 300% faster in 20 minutes
The best intentions appear to have gone horribly, double-entendre-ly wrong in a Singapore public service ad campaign which proposes that citizens use hand lotion as a weapon against child sex trafficking. Larger image here. From Aaron "@sfslim" Muszalski, who had this and this and this to tweet about the matter. His adventurous road-tweets from .sg really have been fantastic.
Bill Gurstelle is a Contributing Editor for MAKE magazine. His most recent book is entitled Absinthe & Flamethrowers: Projects and Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously. You can follow Bill on his danger-quest at twitter.com/wmgurst. He is a guest Make: Online author for the month of August.
Earlier this year, Michael Dubno invited me to his house to take a look at his Sand Table.
Here is a picture of it:
It's one of the cooler maker projects that I've come across this year (it's got that Zen sand-art thing). Michael Dubno is the younger of New York City's Dubno brothers, who are famous amongst gadget lovers for throwing the wonderful Gadetoff event. (Gadgetoff takes place annually in New York City. It's a celebration of technical and artistic innovation and a salon to ponder the future.)
More on the sand table from dubno.com
"The sand table is a functional piece of art. It is a complex electromechanical mechanism within a coffee table that draws patterns in sand.How does it work?
A steel ball bearing sits on top of a pan filled with sand and is moved by a magnet hidden underneath. The magnet is driven along two axes by a gantry controlled by a computer with a web-based interface.
The parts were designed with Autodesk Inventor. Everything was either machined by hand or obtained from parts suppliers.
The gizmo was built in Dubno's basement, which is no big deal except that he lives in a townhouse in a ritzy part of New York City's Upper West Side. Dubno may have the best amateur machine shop in Manhattan. Unlike most NYC apartment dwellers, he's got a full-sized industrial mill, lathe, and drill press plus all sorts of electrical equipment and hand tools.
This picture shows the X and Y axis stepper motors that precisely controls the magnet that drags the steel ball through the sand.
Here are the electronics that control the the positioning motors.
Michael took this picture of the table showing the motors and linear actuation devices prior to wiring in the electronics and adding the sand.
Examples of Sand Table Art
Near our starting point is the intersection of 2 highways 23 and 94 with convenient N (1), S (2), E (3), and W (4) options. I proposed that we eliminate the "east" option on our first roll, because I wanted to avoid the morass of highways around Detroit. Mrs. BBspot vetoed this idea and she promptly rolled a 3 (east) for our first direction. At this point we had to turn around and go back home to get our passports, because starting in Michigan there's always the danger that we'd end up in Canada. (see map at end of post for a look at our final route)Random Road Trip RecapI was a bit miffed at the first roll, but headed east anyway. Approaching 23 Mrs. BBspot rolled a 1, which turned us north. Phew, I preferred moving away from Detroit. At our next intersection she rolled another 1 and kept us going North on 23.
Unfortunately, randomness pointed us back toward Detroit when she rolled another 3 and we headed east on 96. Mrs. BBspot started getting a little perturbed at my disappointment in her rolls.
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From Dueling Analogs webcomic, click here for large size (via Wayne's Friends List)
Over at the WIRED "Underwired" pop culture blog, Hugh Hart has an extensive post up about cheesy, low-budget Mexican science fiction movies from the '50s and '60s. Above, a scene from Santo vs. the Martians (1967), which features the famous Mexican wrestler defending nuestra planeta against space-aliens. Snip:
Vintage Mexican Sci-Fi Beams a Blast From the Past, con Queso (WIRED: Underwired)These unsung heroes of vintage Mexican cinema mesmerized south-of-the-border moviegoers for a decade in low-budget pictures that threw together science, sex and action with low-budget abandon.
"Part of the charm of these films is that they are so atrociously underbudgeted and the effects are so cheesy," said UCLA Film & Television Archive programmer Shannon Kelley, who curated the upcoming free film series "Aztec Mummies & Martian Invaders: Mexican Sci-Fi Classics."
"To make something seem supernatural, they'd just add a strange warble sound effect in the background," she said. (...) "The aliens all wore these very simple Mylar costumes," she said. "Plus you have the posturing by the actors."
And if you're in Los Angeles, every Friday in August there are screenings of these films over at the Hammer Museum in Westwood. Looks like an amazing lineup, I hope to catch at least one of them: ¡ AZTEC MUMMIES & MARTIAN INVADERS !: MEXICAN SCI-FI CLASSICS
At this time we can only urge extreme caution to those interested in using or selling Zer01's service.And, yet, the "true believers" (some might assume "suckers") continue to show up in our comments insisting that this magic phone service is almost here. But exactly none of them has responded to Derek's original call, to find someone who's actually used a phone, noted where the company's engineers are located, where its towers are, who the network provider is and what the supposed patents are. Until someone can actually answer all those questions, it's pretty difficult to assume there's anything at all here.
I've pasted in the winners below, and thrown in a link to the Hugo Awards administrators' traditional infoporn dump of stats on who nominated and voted for what. My undying thanks to all of you who put Little Brother and True Names on the ballot. I've also thrown in the text of my undelivered Little Brother acceptance speech, because I can, and because it thanks a lot of people who deserve it.
Congrats to Boing Boing reader Jeremy Kratz on wiinning the Hugo Awards logo design competition!
Once I've got a fatter network pipe (this post is going out over the VIA Rail on-train WiFi), I'll upload my Hugo photos, which includes a shot of Neal Stephenson's undelivered acceptance speech for Anathem, which was translated into Ur by Jeremy Bornstein!
Best Novel: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins; Bloomsbury UK)Hugo Award nominations (PDF)Best Novella: ''The Erdmann Nexus'' by Nancy Kress (Asimov's Oct/Nov 2008)
Best Novelette: ''Shoggoths in Bloom'' by Elizabeth Bear (Asimov's Mar 2008)
Best Short Story: ''Exhalation'' by Ted Chiang (Eclipse Two)
John W. Campbell not-a-Hugo Award for Best New Writer: David Anthony Durham
Best Related Book: Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998-2008 by John Scalzi (Subterranean Press)
Best Graphic Story: Girl Genius, Volume 8: Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones Written by Kaja & Phil Foglio, art by Phil Foglio, colors by Cheyenne Wright (Airship Entertainment)
Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: WALL-E Andrew Stanton & Pete Docter, story; Andrew Stanton & Jim Reardon, screenplay; Andrew Stanton, director (Pixar/Walt Disney)
Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog Joss Whedon, & Zack Whedon, & Jed Whedon, & Maurissa Tancharoen, writers; Joss Whedon, director (Mutant Enemy)
Best Editor, Short Form: Ellen Datlow
Best Editor, Long Form: David G. Hartwell
Best Professional Artist: Donato Giancola
Best Semiprozine: Weird Tales edited by Ann VanderMeer & Stephen H. Segal
Best Fan Writer: Cheryl Morgan
Best Fanzine: Electric Velocipede edited by John Klima
Best Fan Artist: Frank Wu
This is one of the finest moments in my life, the fulfilment of a dream I've chased since I first put pen to paper and wrote a story, in 1977, when I was six years old. My friends know that I watch the Hugos like baseball fans watch the World Series, pounding my feet and shouting when the books and stories and writers and editors I love are recognized by the WorldCon members.It's doubly rewarding that I receive this prize for Little Brother, a novel that is so near and dear to my heart, a novel that I tried to imbue with the hopes and fears of my comrades in the fight for technological freedom, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Free Software Foundation, ACLU, CIPPIC, and Open Rights Group to the thousands of hackers, librarians, activists, and dreamers whom I've had the fabulous privilege of working with over my career.
My sincere and everlasting thanks to my wife, Alice, who gracefully puts up with all the frustrations of living with a writer, even down to letting me get up at 5AM in our hotel room during our anniversary trip to Rome to finish this novel.
Also thanks to my editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, and to the people at Tor from Tom Doherty to Dot Lin and Irene Gallo and Pablo Defendini who made this book the success it is.
Especial thanks to my friend Scraps DeSelby, whose sensitive and intelligent copyediting immeasurably improved Little Brother.
Thanks to my literary agent Russell Galen and my foreign rights agents Danny and Heather Baror and my film agent Justin Manask for helping get this book into so many people.
And finally, thanks to all the readers, copyers and remixers who spread this book so quickly and so well all over the world. Without you, why bother with any of it?
The age-old dreams of universal access to all human knowledge and cheap group coordination to act on that knowledge are upon us. If we can keep the network free and open, no matter how many times the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse -- child pornographers, pirates, criminals and terrorists -- are presented as a pretext for shutting it down, then we can do anything.
So a lot of those books we sent them in the spring are now covered in water and sewage. And so are the bookmobiles. And the mechanical equipment for HVAC. And the data center. And $50,000 worth of new computers. The initial estimate is $1 million in damage, but they must just be guessing at this point.Louisville Free Public Library needs your help (Thanks, Joshua!)
Scoble it's time to use the web again to store our ideas, and instead of relying on Silicon Valley companies to link our stuff together, let's just use the Internet. That's what it was designed for.
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Pubic hair: Scent radiator, warmth provider, or chafe protection? The answer to why humans have clumps of hair in private places is still open for debate...Ten things we don't understand about humans (via Kottke)Teenagers: Even our closest relatives, the great apes, move smoothly from their juvenile to adult life phases - so why do humans spend an agonising decade skulking around in hoodies?
On Friday Mr Hughes had tiny titanium screws drilled into bone behind each ear during a 90-minute operation under general anaesthetic. Once the wounds heal and the screws have fused with bone, abutments will be screwed into the implants, and the processors, about the size of a postage stamp, are clicked into place.High-tech hearing aid the ultimate iPod accessory (via Neatorama)Older-style hearing aids amplify all sounds, making it almost impossible for wearers to hear conversations in noisy environments. They also interfere with frequencies used by mobile and fixed phones and often emit high-pitched whistling sounds. But the newer processors, costing about $6000 each, shut out background noise, giving users up to 25 per cent better hearing, and can be attached directly to MP3 music players or wireless headsets for talking on the phone, Cochlear's territory manager, Katrina Martin, said.
In a cease-and-desist letter Williams sent to Hachette Book Group, he provided comparisons from the two books of a wedding, a sex-on-the-beach episode and a passage where a human-turned-vampire describes the wrenching change.As you look at the details, it's almost always a situation where the jealous author is really just using the lawsuit as an attempt to get publicity for their book (which is why we're not naming the other book). As if to prove that, the author's lawyer claims:
As another instance of similarities, Williams pointed out that characters in both books call their wives "love."
"I think the fans have to read both books and make up their own mind, like a judge is going to have to," Williams said.Shouldn't there be sanctions for abusing copyright law to file bogus lawsuits just to get some press for your book?
Woman flies business class with pooch
(Thanks, Tamar!)
