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I have an extensive cassette tape collection (Chicago house music) so naturally I was stoked to see that Designboom featured the awesome typography of Turkish designer Ersinhan Ersin. Ersin made all the letters and designs from deconstructed cassette tapes, and aptly calls it Tapeography. More pics on Ersin's Behance Network page. Here's hoping no good mixes were harmed in the making of his creation.
EFF legal director Cindy Cohn and author Johnathan Lethem do a fine job of explaining why this matters and what we'd like from Google in order to withdraw our legal objection to the settlement.
Lethem is one of several authors -- including Michael Chabon and Cory Doctorow -- who have signed on to a campaign to pressure Google Books to offer greater privacy guarantees for its readers. The effort was organized by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.Google Deal With Publishers Raises Privacy Concerns (Thanks, Hugh!)"They know which books you search for," says Cindy Cohn, legal director for the foundation. "They know which books you browse through; they know how long you spend on each page."
It's the same kind of information that's produced by someone surfing the Web. But Cohn believes books should enjoy greater privacy.
The EFF and the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California want Google to keep reader data for less time than normal Web searches. Ideally, they say, the data should be deleted after a month.
Here's a video of Neil Gaiman reading my short story "The Right Book" at the World Science Fiction Convention last week; Neil did the reading for an ambitious short story collection publishing experiment I'm working on; we recorded audio too. The story was written for the 150th anniversary of Britain's The Bookseller magazine -- the brief was to imagine the next 150 years of bookselling. Neil did a wicked reading.
Gerber Crucial, a good-looking, functional multitool
For me to love a multitool, it has to be smart, strong, compact, and good-looking. The new Gerber Crucial is all of that -- it folds up into a neat little less-than-4-inch long rectangle, has a knife with a straight and serrated blade, screwdriver heads, a bottle opener, pliers, and a wire cutter. Portability is important, too -- I like that it has a carabiner for hooking and a belt clip for clipping onto things. The green and gray color combo is very classy.Available for $45 at the Gerber Store in September, and at some online retailers now.
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My husband and I have battled continuously for years about whether scraping the mold off the top of -- well, anything -- makes it OK to eat, or if once a spot of green invades the top of a barely used jar of jam we've got to call it a loss and toss it out. I'm always willing to scrape off the top, cut off the moldy crusts, etc., and carry on with the meal. My husband, not so much.
Well, turns out the USDA has weighed in on the argument with interesting findings. My favorite part of the Safe Food Handling fact sheets is this chart on how to handle moldy foods (very, very carefully is not one of the answers):
An article on CNN takes it one step farther, suggesting that you shouldn't eat the pizza you left out on the counter overnight (What? Even my husband finds this to be absurd). And I never would have thought about eating moldy sausage, hard or not.
In the end, experts and the USDA report both recommend throwing out most moldy foods. I admit, the idea of threads of mold weaving their way into the bottom of the container gives me a moment of pause; but if you read about what happens if you eat a slightly tainted dollop of sour cream, the most likely effect will be a stomach ache.
 |  |
I've had stomach aches from eating myriad meals over the years, made by friends, family, and fast food joints, so this news isn't likely to change my habits. After all, we all know about the happy molds found in blue cheeses and on the outside of Bries and Camemberts. Now there's some mold I can sink my teeth into.
Anyone out there have any experience working with molds in cheese-making, or have a gruesome tale that will cure me from my "just scrape it off" attitude? Tell me about in the Comments.
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It's a simple fact that users outnumber us. But Canadian users involved in the online debate are so adept at leveraging the internet and social networks to their advantage, there's a danger that your voices as Canadian creators and publishers will be drowned out by the chatter.Think about that fact for a second. Access Copyright is talking about customers here. The people who actually determine the real value of whatever content creators make. And Access Copyright is flat-out insulting them, by making them out to be an unruly mob that content creators need to fight. Copyright is supposed to be about what's best for society as a whole, in encouraging the production of more works. It should be a win-win situation. But here Access Copyright is stating flat-out that the desires of users to protect their own rights is somehow something that needs to be forcibly denied.
It's only right, it's only fair. Creators need to get paid.Sounds good, right? Except no one is saying they shouldn't get paid, so this is a total strawman. The question is just about how these laws should work to protect user rights, and how to make sure the laws actually live up to their key point: which is to act as incentive, not as some sort of welfare system or crutch for those too uncreative to come up with business models that recognize the role of abundance in a market.
The folks in the Maker Shed have put together a special bundle for our Family Challenge. The MAKEcation Trebuchet (Flingin' Things) Bundle contains Bill Gurstelle's book, The Art of the Catapult, our Mini trebuchet kit, and a Maker's Notebook. Read up on the history of this ancient weapon of war, build a lovely 4" x 9" x 14" (tall) wooden desktop model, and then use the Maker's Notebook to scale up your plans for your backyard version. The bundle is available for $40 ($39.97), deeply discounted from buying these items separately.
More:
The MAKEcation Family Challenge!
Let the MAKEcation solder-fest BEGIN!
MAKEcation Cooler Hacking Challenge
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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.
In my last online article, I discussed the concept of the flying car and how difficult it is to make a viable one. But designers continue the quest.
Hollywood set designer turned engineer Norman Bel Geddes came up with one of the first flying car concepts. His work yielded a design for something that looked much like a 1940 Chevy Coupe with wings welded onto the sides and the wheels replaced by a single rear-facing propeller.
Bel Geddes never got off the ground with it.
But since then, quite a few flying cars have been successfully flown. One of the first and perhaps most successful was the ConvAIRCAR.
On paper, the ConvAIRCAR was envisioned as the marriage between an automobile and an airplane. It promised to revolutionize the daily drive for thousands, perhaps millions, of commuters.
In November of 1947, a prototype ConvAIRCAR circled San Diego for about an hour and a half. It appeared, for a brief time, that the aircraft's developers had actually produced "the Fertile Mule," that is, a hybrid with a viable future. But, in reality, this airborne sedan was still a flying car, and therefore a single successful test flight proved little.
A few days after the test flight, a test pilot crash-landed the ConvAIRCAR on a dirt road when it ran out of gas. The only prototype of the ConvAIRCAR in existence was damaged beyond repair. And that's as far as that particular flying-car ever went.
Next post: Flying car tragedy
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Dude, where's my (flying) car? Part 1
I spotted these nifty stools on the Inhabitat blog and immediately had two thoughts -- these are super cool(!), and there's gotta be a way to use the 6 or so skateboards scattered in my yard to make one myself (or a close facsimile thereof).
After these thoughts, I immediately went to the maker's website to see how much one of the stools, just as a fallback you understand, would set me back. After all, the seat on top looks a little tricky to fabricate. I thought the $199 price tag was extremely fair for the workmanship involved, but it was just high enough to make me carve out a few hours in the coming weekend to do some experimenting. If I bring myself to actually cut the end off a couple of decks, I'll report back in the Comments. And if I prefer, I can always send my old boards to Deckstool for a custom job (and a 20 buck discount).
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Designer Paul Burgess created ColorSuckr to extract out the colors from any online photo you feed it. I tried it on this striking image from Wikimedia Commons of the Aurora Borealis by Joshua Strang. Oddly though, it seems to have missed the pink tones?
Keith has a nice write-up explaining the design of his constant current LED driver circuit. When lighting a large number of LEDs, this design is preferable to just using a current-limiting resistor because it supplies the same amount of current regardless of how many or few lights are connected to it, helping to protect against shorts or other failures that might occur.
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This isn't a card you'd want to hand out like club fliers at a bus stop, but for a very select few recipients, it'd certainly make a statement. For this week's EMS Labs project, Lenore shows you how she made these attention-getting cards.
Lego business cards for the rest of us
Two typographers (Pierre & Damien) and a professional driver (Stef van Campenhoudt) collaborated to design a font using a car as the drawing instrument. The car's movements were tracked using custom software by interactive artist Zachary Lieberman.
iQ Font [Thanks, Katie Wilson!]
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Artist Jay Nelson modified this Honda Spree to serve as a tiny expedition vehicle. Outfitted with surfboard rack, roll-out canopy, and plenty of storage, I imagine filling it with gourmet provisions and heading to a remote beach for some exploration and relaxation. Nelson's wonderful conceptual sketches lead me to believe he envisioned this as being built upon a lovely vintage Vespa, and make me wish I could draw like that.
Triple Base Gallery images
via Notcot
Illinois Circuit Judge Daniel Rozak sentenced Clifton Williams to 6 months in jail for yawning in court. Rozak's contempt order stated that Williams "raised his hands while at the same time making a loud yawning sound," which was both disrespectful and disruptive.
The Chicago Tribune reports that Rozak, one of 30 judges in the the 12th Judicial Circuit, personally issues over a third of the contempt charges and has thrown more people in jail for ringing cell phones than "any other judge in Will County in the last decade."
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The researchers presented students with a computer screen flat on a desk, facing the ceiling. On it were the days of the week, in a vertical line with Saturday at the top, then Friday, Thursday, all the way down to Sunday at the bottom, nearest the participant. Commands were given that either provoked thoughts about moving through time, away from the participant (e.g. a meeting has moved forward two days from Sunday to Wednesday - please highlight the new day on the screen), or thoughts about time moving towards the participant (e.g. a shift down the screen, towards the participant from Wednesday to Sunday). Participants primed to think about their movement through time subsequently rated themselves as feeling angrier than participants in the "time moving towards them" condition."Angry thoughts can change the way we think about time." (Via Derren Brown)
Every other week, MAKE's awesome interns tell about the projects they're building in the Make: Labs, the trouble they've gotten into, and what they'll make next.
By Meara O'Reilly, projects intern
I'd been wanting to make a Chladni plate for years, and testing out Edwin Wise's Chladni plate project for MAKE, Volume 16, was just the jump-start I needed to start tinkering around with making my own voice coils and drivers, like this one:
One of my heroes, David Tudor (an experimental music pioneer and John Cage collaborator), used drivers as the basis of his famous Rainforest installations, turning ordinary household objects into speakers and creating suspended "forests" of whispering resonant frequencies.
The transducers that Tudor often used to drive these objects are still available today (Rolen-Star transducers from Stockton, Calif.), and I built a plate reverb a few years ago using a drum cymbal as the plate, driven by a Rolen-Star, and picked up and amplified by a contact microphone.
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Only a handful of these "pilot wheel" engraver's vises were custom made by the late John Madole. The wheel is turned to tighten or loosen the massive ball joint, allowing the user to set the precision jaws at any convenient angle. Information is scanty, but there's a couple more pics here at Lindsay Airgravers.
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Lisa from Sociological Images came across this grim animated commercial from the 1950s for Jell-O. It shows a haggard woman on a treadmill being assaulted by symbols of her daily grind. The look on her face is one of pure despair. The female narrator seems to be taunting her. The plaintive harmonica tune that's playing is both sad and intentionally insipid. At the woman's blackest moment, she gets covered up by a black scrawl. (I wonder if UPA designed the commercial?)
All is cured, of course, once she buys a box of Jello-O instant pudding.
My friend Jim Leftwich and I love the music of the Japanese surf band The Royalfingers. Here's a video with scenes from Japanese monster movies set to the music of The Royalfingers' "Black Sand Beach" from their 2002 (and only) album Wild Eleki Deluxe.
Here's another video. I have no idea what happened to the band and why they only put out one album. If anyone knows, please share in the comments.
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Instructable member (instructabler?) megatronix documented a simple yet interesting mod for electric guitar - isolating the bridge and neck pickup wiring into 2 seperate channels for stereo seperation. Hmm ... the hard-panning could make for some fresh recordings, and if not, using multiple effects chains & amps could be fun. Unfortunately no audio sample as of yet. Check out the instructable for the full hack.
Boutique Cycles is a site out of Australia featuring user-submitted pics of tricked-out custom bicycles. Shown above, "Glowing Batavus" fixie by Netherlands user Kars, with an antique frame, Miche hubs, and custom-painted rims. The frame glows in the dark.
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In today's New York Times, an article about psychologists Bruce Jessen (L) and Jim Mitchell (R) -- two military retirees with no Al Qaeda expertise, foreign language skills, or experience in conducting interrogations. Their lack of experience didn't stop them from pawning themselves off as top architects of America's "war on terror." They sold their psychological credentials and familiarity with the brutal tactics used decades ago by Chinese Communists to the CIA, which in turn paid them millions of dollars as contractors.The NYT story details how Mitchell and Jessen directed the torture and interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, who was at the time described as "Al Qaeda's No. 3."
In late July 2002, Dr. Jessen joined [Dr. Mitchell] in Thailand. On Aug. 1, the Justice Department completed a formal legal opinion authorizing the SERE methods, and the psychologists turned up the pressure. Over about two weeks, Mr. Zubaydah was confined in a box, slammed into the wall and waterboarded 83 times.The torture biz worked out pretty well for these guys. Million dollar homes, $1,000-2,000 per person per day from the CIA, even spinoff startups -- one bizarrely named "Wizard Shop." As one person familiar with their pay arrangements told Vanity Fair in 2007, "Taxpayers [were] paying at least half a million dollars a year for these two knuckleheads to do voodoo." More from today's NYT story:The brutal treatment stopped only after Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Jessen themselves decided that Mr. Zubaydah had no more information to give up. Higher-ups from headquarters arrived and watched one more waterboarding before agreeing that the treatment could stop, according to a Justice Department legal opinion.
Dr. Mitchell could keep working outside the C.I.A. as well. At the Ritz-Carlton in Maui in October 2003, he was featured at a high-priced seminar for corporations on how to behave if kidnapped. He created new companies, called Wizard Shop, later renamed Mind Science, and What If. His first company, Knowledge Works, was certified by the American Psychological Association in 2004 as a sponsor of continuing professional education. (A.P.A. dropped the certification last year.)2 U.S. Architects of Harsh Tactics in 9/11's Wake (Scott Shane / NYT)
Related research: "Educing Information,"a 2006 report by top interrogation experts that examined which methods work in interrogations. The report effectively debunks Mitchell and Jessen's credentials and torture techniques. PDF of report, and FAS.org post about the document.
Related news items:
* Waterboarding, Interrogations: The CIA's $1,000 a Day Specialists (ABC News)
* Rorschach and Awe (Vanity Fair)
* The CIA's torture teachers (Salon)
* Senate probe focuses on Spokane men (Spokesman Review / WA)
* The Story of Mitchell Jessen & Associates: How a Team of Psychologists in Spokane, WA, Helped Develop the CIA's Torture Techniques (Democracy Now)
(Images courtesy ABC News)
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Jeremy Leung and a bunch of hackers, DIYers, crafters, and wood/metal workers are looking to get a hacker space in Phoenix, AZ up and running. They're calling it HeatSync Labs, which is an appropriate double entendre if you know how hot it is there. If you're interested in getting in on the fun, they're having their second public meeting Thursday at 8pm:
We will be discussing:
1. The Hacker Space idea, what it means to us and the fun that can be had.
2. What direction we intend to go with the group.
3. Getting started on finding a location to lease/purchase for the HackerSpace.
4. A couple current projects.
5. A means to collaborate on projects while looking for a space.
6. Poll for contacts for legal(non-profit) and accounting expertise.
Snacks, drinks and good company will be provided!
Second public Phoenix hacker space meeting - HeatSync Labs
Thursday, August 13 2009
Mesa F.O.P. Lodge
1452 E. Main St., Mesa, AZ 85203
They also have a Facebook group and Twitter.
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What happens when automatic level generating software meets skilled Mario-bot software? - the above effortless automation apparently. Hmm, not so quite as exciting to watch without the possibility of tripping up. Though, there was a classic wall-jump save near the midpoint.
Not much infos available from the vid, but after a bit of sleuthing it seems this AI project from RobotCaleb may be what's running the above bot.
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Just Posted: Our preview sample gallery from the Ricoh GRD III. Ricoh has been kind enough to lend us its latest photographer's compact, the GR Digital III. It combines an F1.9 28mm-equivalent lens with one of our favorite compact camera user interfaces so we've all been keen to have a go. We're unlikely to have a chance to review the camera in the near future but wanted to give a flavor of what it's like. Comments Off [link]
Just Posted: Our preview sample gallery from the Ricoh GRD III. Ricoh has been kind enough to lend us its latest photographer's compact, the GR Digital III. It combines an F1.9 28mm-equivalent lens with one of our favorite compact camera user interfaces so we've all been keen to have a go. We're unlikely to have a chance to review the camera in the near future but wanted to give a flavor of what it's like. Comments Off [link]
"underpins the failure of major labels--they think, it used to be this way, so it ought to be this way." Their ethos is, "Please go away. Make the future die."Not much new, but the quote is definitely a succinct way of explaining the position held by some at the major record labels over the past decade. Rather than deal with reality, they just want it to go away.
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.
A flying car is, to many futurists and makers, the epitome of technological progress; the holy grail of personal technological achievement. A car that flies from Chicago to Fort Wayne and an airplane that one can drive to the Piggly Wiggly to pick up eggs and coffee, all in the same package -- that's what I want.
We're a clever group, so here's an obvious question: Why is there no flying car in your garage? It's well into the 21st century, it seems like we've had plenty of time to tackle this. Over the next few days, I'd like to a look at what progress (or lack thereof) various individuals and companies have been made towards realizing my dream machine. It's a long story, and to be honest, not a particularly pretty one.
So, let's begin considering this question with the words of recent Louisiana gubernatorial candidate Patrick Landry.
"As Governor, I shall seek investors who will bring their capital to Louisiana in an effort to design, develop, and eventually mass-produce an aeromobile. This vehicle, which would revolutionize transportation in America, would be a cross between an ultra light aircraft and an automobile. The intended purpose is to create the ability of lift-off between 55 and 75 MPH, flying at low altitudes for short distances, and conceptually, look similar to an Indy racecar."
-- Unsuccessful 2003 Louisiana Gubernatorial Candidate Patrick "Live Wire" Landry
Patrick E. Landry first threw his hat into the political ring in 1999. Landry, called "Live Wire" because of his background as an electrician, claimed that among his qualifications for high office was his virginity.
Obviously, Landry was something of a fringe candidate. But his virginity, his plan to nuke Baghdad, and his Flying Car Development Platform, got him over 10,000 votes. In fact, in the 2003 governor's race, Landry came in eighth out of seventeen candidates.
The flying car idea didn't start with animated cartoons in the 1960s, although most baby boomers probably first imagine something like what George Jetson dropped off daughter Judy of at Orbit High in. Actually, it's a concept that's been in the air since airplanes were first invented.
This is the flying car, designed by Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria in 1885. Everyone said he was nuts. But now, 120 years after his death, German scientists have shown him to be one of the unsung pioneers of flight.
Ludwig, whose fantastical castle at Neuschwanstein aptly featured in the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, drew up plans for a flying car more than two decades before the Wright brothers took to the air, but when he tried to build it he was declared insane and stripped of his crown.
Recently German aeronautical experts re-studied Ludwig's designs and say they would have worked. Sketches recovered from letters between the ruler and Austrian engineer Gustav Koch show the monarch had planned to create a fleet of flying machines that would take him across his beloved Alpine lakes to his many castles, including the fairytale Neuschwanstein.
In my next article, I'll look at a couple of attempts that came close...
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The motion picture industry has become one of the gravest threats to modern democracy. I've given up on hoping that they'll see the light. Now I just hope they'll go bankrupt before they can bring on a new dark age, all in the name of preserving the future of fifth-rate sequels to Z-rate adaptations of schlocky comic books.
FACT director Tony Eaton says that his organization doesn't have a problem with judicial process - as long as it's on their terms.Movie Studios Want Own Version of Justice For 3 Strikes"The concern is that we send out 1000 infringement notices, and then someone says, `The way to stall this is let's all go to arbitration', and a year later we could still be going through that same process," Eaton said.
"Do we get to the point where we have 1000 cases to be heard by the Copyright Tribunal? If everyone brings their lawyer, we will only do five in a day," he added.
By anyone's measurement, even given the lack of accuracy inherent in some anti-piracy evidence, 100% error rate and 100% appeals is a little pessimistic to say the least and to suggest everyone would bring a lawyer is absurd - the cost would be hugely prohibitive. Nevertheless, Mr Eaton said he would prefer to be able to present evidence in bulk to the tribunal - in search of corresponding disconnections in bulk, no doubt.
If the kids aren't keen on slumbering Empire-style consider this excellent example of Rebel-based bedding. Wow - hard to believe the home its installed in is up for sale! [via Gizmodo]
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Star Wars AT-AT loft bed
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Our final main event for MAKEcation 2009 is our "Family Challenge," as in the Hatfields vs. the McCoys, the Lancasters vs. the Yorks, the Macs vs. the PCs. Okay, we really don't want it to get that entrenched and bloody. It's not even that much of a proper competition (in the end, the winner many be judged by us on criteria like who looked like they were having the most fun, whose device looks the coolest, etc.). We want this to be all about the fun, getting your family together to work on a project, and to have a little friendly rivalry between maker clans.
So, what's the challenge? Build a backyard trebuchet! The family that builds our favorite, and sends us the documentation, will get a $100 gift certificate from the Maker Shed. Five runners up will get a Maker's Notebook and their choice of The Best of MAKE or The Best of Instructables. As with the soldering and cooler hacking challenges, we have a Camp Counselor to help with inspiration, advice, dos and don'ts. For the trebuchet, there's probably no better choice than our very own Bill Gurstelle. Bill is the author of The Art of the Catapult, Whoosh-Boom-Splat, and Backyard Ballistics. So he knows about flinging stuff through the air. Here, he explains the guidelines for the challenge:
Your MAKEcation family challenge involves building a medieval siege engine. When
it comes to putting the fun in physics, it's hard to top a homemade trebuchet. A trebuchet is a type of catapult or hurling machine that uses a counterweight to rotate a throwing arm. The arm, in turn, flings the projectile in an arc towards a target.
Trebuchets scale nicely and can range from table-top models sized to fling golf balls, up to the sixty foot high monster currently flinging boulders for tourists at Warwick Castle in
England.Your MAKEcation family challenge is to get your clan together to build a gravity-powered hurling machine capable of tossing a five ounce projectile as far as possible, using a counterweight weighing no more than 25 pounds.
Send us a video of your machine in action and verify your results on the honor system. Swear that they are truthful and accurate, i.e. play fair, don't cheat.
Bill will shortly start doing some posts on the project on subjects like constructing a sling and choosing a catapult trigger. If you have any trebuchet building experience, ideas you're interested in trying out, or if you want to start talking smack about your genius clan in the comments, please do.
More:
Let the MAKEcation solder-fest BEGIN!
MAKEcation Cooler Hacking Challenge
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"They have the copyright. That's the issue here right? They have the copyright. They have the right to exclude."This is only partially true. The have some rights to exclude, but those rights are limited. The question is whether or not Real's actions fall outside of that limit. But Judge Patel seems to disagree entirely with the Kaleidescape ruling on that point.
While I really like a lot of the "mechanical animism" folk-art sculpture that's out there -- people making robot sculptures out of found objects and retro appliances, comical scenes and dioramas using electronic components, cellphone charms and jewelry made out of electronic parts, etc. Most of it's immobile. Silent. So, I particularly like this scorpion made from ICs and discrete components by Flickr member iamgeekhearmeroar. Here are the details:
A "brain" PCB is glued underneath the DIP IC body. It controls all the LEDs and generates MrScorp's voice. The PCB contains an Atmel ATtiny26 microcontroller, a 32kHz high-pass filter to filter out ambient light from the IR detector, a 32Kx8 SPI EEPROM for audio clip storage, and a low power oscillator. The oscillator is used to wake up the microcontroller from a low power state at a 4Hz rate. Each time the microcontroller wakes up, it uses the IR emitter/detector pair to "see" if anything is in front of MrScorp. If anything is, one of MrScorp's pre-programmed "performances" will occur.Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Crafts | Digg this!
If you own a N97 and think the UI could use a little eye candy, you should check out this detailed tutorial by Vaibhav Sharma. In as little as five minutes you could be up and running with these custom transition effects.
[via TheSymbianBlog]
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Check out this video for an insider's look of Custom Bike builder Jordan Hufnagel's workshop. Filmmaker Jared Souney created this segment for Level magazine. I always enjoy seeing where people work, especially makers. Be sure to check out the photo gallery too!
Watch the video of Jordan Hufnagel: Bike builder [via NotCot]
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Conductive body paint and Arduinos... Nilay @ Engadget writes -
And you thought conductive paint was boring. Say hello to the Humanthesizer, a joint creation between electronic musician Calvin Harris, Sony Music UK, and Bare conductive body ink, which turned 15 bikini-clad ladies into a giant Arduino-powered synth capable of playing Harris's track "Ready For The Weekend" though Max/MSP and Ableton Live. Each patch is triggered by one of the girls closing a circuit with her hands or feet -- you can see the "wires" painted on their arms and legs if you look closely -- and the final performance bounces right along in that blurry space between dancing and playing.Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arduino | Digg this!
This looks like a great start to making a cheap vinyl, or stencil, cutter. All it needs is the addition of some kind of Z-Axis control. There isn't a lot more information about the build, but there is a promise of an instructable soon. If anyone is interested, I could always make another How-To Tuesday about making stepper motor drivers with an Arduino? If you're interested, leave a comment below. Thanks!
This is an old printer turned Etch A Sketch. I used two potentiometers; each one controls the speed and direction of either the y-axis stepper motor, or the x-axis dc motor. I just used some duct tape to stick a gel pen to the side of the ink cartridge. It is pretty simple to program simple shapes so the user does not fiddle with the pots, but whats the fun in that. Now Im just one axis away from a 3D printer.
A little more about the Arduino Etch A Sketch Printer
In the Maker Shed:
MotorShield for Arduino Kit
This is a follow up to our post late last year about "RealDVD" Realnetworks DVD back up software - the NYTimes is reporting that Realnetworks cannot sell their DVD copying software...
The court did not appear to address the central question of whether consumers have the right to make backup copies of their DVDs, but rather said it was illegal for companies like Real to sell such tools. In a statement, Dan Glickman, chief executive of the Motion Picture Association of America, said:We are very pleased with the court’s decision. This is a victory for the creators and producers of motion pictures and television shows and for the rule of law in our digital economy. Judge Patel’s ruling affirms what we have known all along: RealNetworks took a license to build a DVD-player and instead made an illegal DVD-copier. Throughout the development of RealDVD, RealNetworks demonstrated that it was willing to break the law at the expense of those who create entertainment content.
RealDVD is being touted as one of the only legal ways to "back up" DVDs. It seems to make a copy on your drive, keeps the DRM and adds more Real player style DRM.Here's the funny part about all this - awhile back (1999) a ton of people were sued and got in trouble for trying to back up their DVDs, it still happens to this day although rare.
That said you can't build a DVD jukebox without getting sued.
Most people nowadays rip DVDs using many of the free open source tools (lots of posts on MAKE about that). Back to 1999, when the encryption(s) on the DVDs were broken allowing copies to be made (DeCSS) - they key actually came from the XingDVD player, from Xing Technologies, a subsidiary of RealNetworks. I'm pretty sure to this day 2600 magazine cannot even link to the DeCSS program, source, or anything.
I'm sticking with HandBrake, it's free.
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Instructables user Romado12187 writes:
Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Home Entertainment | Digg this!My TV was mounted onto the wall using a bulky bracket. From the left and right sides of the TV, the brackets would show. I covered them up by making two smaller sized boxes to fit and block the bracket area. I just recently remodeled my room, so I thought it would be nice to do something a little more creative than a standard shelf. The hidden shelf looks like a stack of dvds, but is in fact a hidden door.
Adafruit Industries spotted this fantastic book from 1964. There's one available on ABE.com for $7, but probably not for long.
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12 vintage walkmans @ oobject...
Apple may be the king of portable media in this millennium, but years ago, electronics giant Sony was dominating the market with its portable Walkman cassette player. The Walkman came in all forms, playing AM/FM radio, cassette tapes, CDs, MiniDiscs, video and eventually, MP3s. These are some of our favorite models, encompassing a broad period of time where the Walkman was on the top.
And the best new "Walkman" of all time? The "DIY Waterproof iPod Walkman Case" -- based on the RetroPod. In 2004 a maker creator an iPod case called the "Retropod" - the makers did a great job, learned about foam/cushioning and made a great case from old (and soon to be thrown out) Sony Walkmans. Surely Sony would be thrilled people are recycling, reusing and celebrating the days of sporting a Walkman, no - they sent a cease and desist and the Retropod was never sold...
"Sony recently learned that you are selling a case for carrying an iPod personal stereo that is made from a WALKMAN tape player. The product is being offered at your website at www.retropod.com.Your use of casings for such a purpose is a clear infringement of the SONY and WALKMAN marks because it is deceptive. Consumers likely will be misled and deceived into believing that Sony is somehow connected with the iPod personal stereo when in fact it is not. Moreover, they will be misled into thinking that Sony is backward in its design of products and is going away from miniaturization, as the size of the tape player housing is quite large by today's standards.
Accordingly, we demand on behalf of Sony that you immediately cease and desist from selling, or offering to sell or distributing your Retropod product..."
Ever wonder how your computer can sort lists of data that you give it? No? Well, there is a whole field of research dedicated to what are appropriately called sorting algorithms. They can be a pretty dry (but important!) subject to study, but it turns out that they have a better use: making cool music!
Ryan Compton, a graduate student at UCLA, created some nifty videos to explore the acoustic properties of a few common sorting algorithms. The one featured above is the insertion sort.
If you are interested in how the algorithms work, Aldo Cortesi has created some pretty visualizations to show how the process works. In his drawings, lines varying shades of gray are sorted from lightest to darkest, starting in a random order at the left of the drawing and ending up sorted on the right hand side of the graph. Each time the lines switch places represents an individual step that the algorithm takes to achieve it's goal. For example, here is a graph the list insertion sort featured in the above video:
Ok, I fully expect to see a new synthesizer based on this technique. Perhaps it could use a digital camera to capture a pattern, then play back the steps needed to sort the colors into a recognizable pattern? Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Music | Digg this!
Today at Boing Boing Gadgets...
* Watch a cute French TV commercial that turns a Mac into a spaceship;
* SOS signs from Internet addiction camps in China;
* More on old-timey iPhone horns;
* A Disney-themed netbook;
* The future of bicycles;
* A ceramic kitchen radio;
* A new file format made by music labels;
* A review of a rugged iPhone case;
* iPhone playing cards;
* A new long-lasting battery from Sony.
Good night!
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b00m Arduino 017 is now available!
The open-source Arduino environment makes it easy to write code and upload it to the i/o board. It runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. The environment is written in Java and based on Processing, avr-gcc, and other open source software.
Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Arduino | Digg this!0017 - 2009.07.25[documentation / examples]
* Many new and revised examples from Tom Igoe.[core / libraries]
* Updated LiquidCrystal library by Limor Fried. See reference for details.
* Updated Firmata library to version 2.1 (rev. 25).
* Replaced the Servo library with one (MegaServo) by Michael Margolis.
Supports up to 12 servos on most Arduino boards and 48 on the Mega.
* Improving the accuracy of the baud rate calculations for serial
communication (fixing double-speed problems on 8 MHz Arduino boards).
Thanks to gabebear.[environment]
* Synchronized with the Processing 1.0.3 code base (rev. 5503), bringing
many improvements (listed below).
* New icons and about image by Thomas Glaser (envis precisely).
* Support for multiple sketch windows.
* The serial monitor now has its own window.
* Comment / Uncomment menu item (in Edit) and keyboard shortcut.
* Increase and Decrease Indent menu items (in Edit) and keyboard shortcuts.
* Support for third-party libraries in the SKETCHBOOK/libraries folder.
* Libraries are now compiled with the sketch, eliminating the delay when
switching boards and the need to delete .o files when changing library
source code.
* Arduino now comes as an app file (in a dmg) on the Mac.
* Adding the Arduino Nano w/ ATmega328 to the Tools > Board menu.
Glen E. Friedman, a photographer who chronicled the birth of skate culture, shares sad news:
If skateboarding was a town, this guy was its mayor. Andy Kessler, one of the good ones, died yesterday apparently of an allergic reaction from a wasp sting that led to a heart attack. This was a great dude, NO ONE could say anything wrong about this dude.Above, a portrait of Kessler around 1976 or 1977 which Glen says was among the skater's favorite.He was one of the oldest, if not the oldest, skater in New York City, holding it down, real since the 70's. Andy will be seriously missed by many including myself. Obituaries and discussion threads: ESPN, bulldogskates, newyorksurf, bulldogskates 2.
Another striking portrait, skating the streets of Manhattan, here.
After the jump: a 2007 video interview. Kessler immediately strikes you as a gentle, thoughtful person -- who could shred like nobody.
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