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One more thing. Even though the loosely-coupled 140-char message network won't need URL shorteners (at least when messages aren't traveling over SMS) our two guests for this evening's Bad Hair Day podcast are Eric Woodward of tr.im and Brian Hendrickson of rp.ly. These guys are very interesting leaders in our little micro-community. If you recall earlier this week tr.im made headlines by first announcing it was shutting down and then in response to the incredible outpouring of support decided to give it another go. In the interim, Brian whipped up rp.ly -- and announced it on BHD 7.5 on Monday. It was a welcome surprise, which I wrote about the next day, in a piece that was reprised by Doc Searls.
The second annual Santa Rosa Handcar Regatta is taking place September 27th. A little birdy told me that a few racing slots are still open, so head on over to the site and apply!
What: Hand-Built Railcar Races, Arts, Performance, Live Music, Crafts, Fine Foods, Costumed Rabble & more!
When: Sunday, September 27th, 2009. 11 am to 6 pm.
Where: Railroad Square, Santa Rosa, CA, in Depot Park between 4th / 5th Streets & Wilson Street
Why: Why, for a Splendid Celebration of Art, Science and Ingenuity, for the Delight and Edification of all who attend, of course!
Crafters may also be interested in the Steam Trunk Craft Show, which is still accepting applications!
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During a time when many music fans are clamoring for free music, Heap's fans actually helped ensure her music wasn't prematurely leaked.While it does show the loyalty of her fans (and puts to rest the myth that fans will automatically try to get pre-released music), that strategy does seem a bit questionable and could result in eBay users losing their accounts. She claimed that she would make sure no eBay users were punished, but that's a decision up to eBay, not Heap. Still, overall, the entire story is definitely a great case study in really involving her fans in the process.
Cool video about the Hubble ultra deep field in 3D. A photo of utter blackness taken in "a patch of sky no bigger than a grain of sand held out out arm's length."
Squirrel Portrait, Banff (Via Andrew Hearst)My husband and I were exploring Lake Minnewanka in Banff National Park-Canada when we stopped for a timed picture of the two of us. We had our camera set up on some rocks and were getting ready to take the picture when this curious little ground squirrel appeared, became intriqued with the sound of the focusing camera and popped right into our shot! A once in a lifetime moment! We were laughing about this little guy for days!!
This is one of the largest DIY XY tables I have come across. Apparently it is based on an Arduino and a PS2 mouse. I'm not sure what it will be used for, or how accurate it is, but it's cool. Check out the skateboards used instead as linear rails. Does anyone know more about this project?
Mouse-A-Sketch found on YouTube
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During the three-month business relationship between Zer01 Mobile and Buzzirk Mobile, questions by the general public and journalists were raised about the business agreement and Buzzirk Mobile's ability as a distributor. "Overall, there were a number of news articles and blogs that misreported a lot of the facts about each company and its services," commented Ron Dresner, Zer01 Mobile spokesperson. First, Zer01 Mobile and Buzzirk Mobile are two very separate and distinct companies, only joined by this now dissolved agreement. Previous reports erred in applying facts about the questionable background of Buzzirk Mobile executives to Zer01 Mobile team members; Second, industry 'insiders' commented about the new Zer01 Mobile service stating their doubts about the credibility of the service because no details about the interconnect agreements were released. From the start, Zer01 Mobile stated that it needed to protect and honor the confidentiality of its business partners and could not release this information. It has invited any and all industry 'insiders' to visit with Zer01 Mobile at any of the upcoming industry conferences and use a Zer01 Mobile phone; Third, Zer01 Mobile has never promoted or mentioned facts regarding its service that were misleading. News reports specifically quoted Buzzirk Mobile sales associates sources as to communication speed rates and frequencies; and fourth, questions about Zer01 Mobile's patent pending technology in the news are totally unfounded and motivated by marketplace competitors. Any visit to the patent office will prove Zer01 Mobile's VMC technology registration."Well, well, well. So it seems that part one of the plan is to throw Buzzkirk/Global Verge under the bus. That's a good step -- though they haven't explained why it didn't happen back when the problems were first reported on. The rest, however, simply raises more questions. In mocking the so-called 'insiders' who are welcome to use a phone at any upcoming industry conference, it ignores the fact that Derek tried to do exactly that at CTIA and was not allowed. It also doesn't explain why it's failed to deliver promised test units to reporters like those at Laptop magazine. If the phones really are ready, why are they only ready at trade shows? In another part of the press release, Zer01 insists the reason it can't explain its wireless network agreements is due to confidentiality agreements. That's nice... except that the two national GSM providers both have denied working with Zer01. Perhaps they have other agreements in place, but given all the other questions raised without answers, hiding behind "confidentiality agreements" isn't particularly convincing.
"We hope that our actions and statements put many concerns to rest. We believe that statements made publicly about the nature of our relationship with certain entities and the legitimacy of our mobile products by certain third parties are erroneous and untrue and are not based upon sufficient knowledge of the facts involved. Currently, our counsel is in the process of preparing a response to these false and misleading statements. Our company reserves all its legal rights and remedies that may arise from any and all erroneous and untrue statements made by third parties. We consider the reputation and integrity of Zer01 Mobile to be of utmost importance to our future success and we intend to vigilantly defend it," concluded Dascotte.
From the MAKE Flickr pool
Well, sadly there's little info besides the above seen pic of Yuri Suzuki's long barreled spouted musical kettle -
I wanted to contribute to the design of daily domestic noises. alarms, mobile phones, a doorbell; he is of the opinion that not enough thought has been given to the noises they produce. The musical kettle is a part of series 're-design soundscape'. As the kettle boils it whistles your favorite tune.Wait, not only does it play music - it can somehow deduce what your favorite song is?! … Oh, s'pose that's just a figure of speech (still … seems threatening!) Well that terminator/rifle look is likely due to it's flute-like functionality - each hole capped with stealthy black solenoids.
Oh, almost forgot - yes, it does run on Arduino =]
[via the Boing Boing]
Hmmm … a likely ally -
More:
Cylon coffee pot model 0001
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Yesterday Marshall wrote a story about the Twitter subscription lists app that I put up as part of the rssCloud project. As a result a few hundred people tried it out, and in the process I cached their follow lists.
Les Paul (June 9, 1915 – August 13, 2009) was an American jazz guitarist and inventor. He was a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar which "made the sound of rock and roll possible." His many recording innovations include overdubbing, delay effects such as "sound on sound" and tape delay, phasing effects, and multitrack recording. His innovative talents extended into his unique playing style, including licks, trills, chording sequences, fretting techniques and timing which set him apart from his contemporaries and inspired many of the guitarists of the present day.
In 1948, Capitol Records released a recording that had begun as an experiment in Paul's garage, entitled "Lover (When You're Near Me)", which featured Paul playing eight different parts on electric guitar, some of them recorded at half-speed, hence "double-fast" when played back at normal speed for the master. ("Brazil", similarly recorded, was the B-side.) This was the first time that multi-tracking had been used in a recording. These recordings were made not with magnetic tape, but with acetate disks. Paul would record a track onto a disk, then record himself playing another part with the first. He built the multi-track recording with overlaid tracks, rather than parallel ones as he did later. There is no record of how many "takes" were needed before he was satisfied with one layer and moved onto the next.Paul even built his own disc-cutter assembly, based on auto parts. He favored the flywheel from a Cadillac for its weight and flatness. Even in these early days, he used the acetate disk setup to record parts at different speeds and with delay, resulting in his signature sound with echoes and birdsong-like guitar riffs. When he later began using magnetic tape, the major change was that he could take his recording rig on tour with him, even making episodes for his 15-minute radio show in his hotel room.
This is an interesting project for gathering pollen samples for analysis. It's basically a fan controlled by a PIC16F690. The fan draws air over a piece of sticky tape for a specific amount of time in hopes of catching some airborne particles. Apparently it works quiet well. Be sure to check out the all the pictures of the pollen, spores, and "weird stuff" that was collected.
The idea is simple: a timer-controlled fan would produce constant airflow over a sticky tape and hopefully will make some of the airborne particles stick; attach the tape on a slide, pop it under the microscope and you are in business.
More about this DIY air sampler
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I don't deny the RIAA was entitled to bring all the suits it did (aside from the many false accusations of course), but the business of companies that want to sell mass market goods to consumers is not suing those consumers. The business of the RIAA may be doing that because it has to justify its own existence, but the business of business is business, not litigation. One would never know that from the industry's reaction to virtually every new digital technology that has come along; for example, the suit against MP3.com over storage lockers, and the eventual bankrupting of that company was, in my opinion, a terrible mistake and certainly anti-consumer. (I represented the defendant for awhile). There was no evidence that Mp3.com's security -- which required verification that the consumer had bought a legitimate CD -- had ever been broken; instead, the industry wanted to force consumers to buy multiple CDs of a work they had already bought, rather than letting them listen to it regardless of where they were.Indeed. Read the whole thing and be sure to subscribe to the blog...
The industry's suit against Launchcast, brought deliberately while it was being bought by Yahoo, was a similar anti-consumer suit. (Yes, I represented defendant there for awhile) too. Launchcast was engaged in the authorized streaming of music, in conjunction with intelligent software designed to learn consumers' test and that helped introduced consumers to new music. The service could never result in loss of sales; quite the opposite. The functionalities the industry objected to had nothing to do with violation of any rights remotely granted by the copyright act. There are many more examples in addition to MP3.com and Launchcast.
The industry's failure to offer any alternative after Napster isn't just a small oversight; in my view, when coupled with the industry's repeated suits against almost any business it had not authorized (read controlled), and the decision to send out massive cease and desist letters and suits against individuals, that failure is directly responsible for the highly negative attitude many people have toward the industry. The failure of the industry to provide a way for people to access legitimate product led consumers both to unauthorized product and to rightly conclude that copyright was the primary weapon being used to thwart consumers' desires. I really don't think these assertions should be controversial. I repeat that copyright doesn't create economic value, a statement that is not intended to disparage copyright; it is merely to state the obvious: it is only consumers' willingness to buy something that creates economic value.
Marshall Kirkpatrick, my partner in the Bad Hair podcast, has a scoop worthy of comment on Scripting News.
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It looks like the Dallas Personal Robotics Group (DPRG) would make a great team for our MAKEcation trebuchet challenge. Watch the video as a homegrown month-old squash gets squashed! Who said the DPRG only made robots?
More about the DPRG
Related:
Read more about the challenge here.
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Aeronvironment's flapper appears to achieve propulsion, stabilisation and control all at once using its paired wings. Details of the technology are confidential, however, under the US ITAR arms control export restrictions..."Hover no bother for flapping 'nano' aircraft"
DARPA has said it wants a 10-gram aircraft with a 7.5-centimetre wingspanMovie Camera that can explore caves and other hiding places, relaying GPS data and images to base. It will need to fly at 10 metres per second and withstand 2.5-metre-per-second gusts of wind.
That goal is a long way off, but DARPA programme manager Todd Hylton says Aeronvironment is on the right track. "Progress to date puts us on the path to such a vehicle," he says.
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."
As its name suggests, the Brooklyn-based quarterly magazine Cabinet is a wunderkammer between two covers, a Baedeker for psychogeographers, a random walk through the postmodern baroque.
Although many of its contributors are card-carrying members of the professoriat, a significant number are artists and some are "independent scholars," a discreet euphemism for defrocked academics; trust-fund autodidacts who've disappeared down the rabbit hole of their obscure obsessions; intellectual omnivores with a magpie's eye and a hummingbird's attention span who Want to Know Everything About Everything (a cardinal sin in an age of intellectual niche marketing).
Slavoj Žižek, the Plastic Man of continental philosophy, has called Cabinet "my kind of magazine; ferociously intelligent, ridiculously funny, absurdly innovative, rapaciously curious. Cabinet's mission is to breathe life back into non-academic intellectual life. Compared to it, every other magazine is a walking zombie." Zizek's emphasis on the importance of non-academic intellectualism is deeply political, a pointed jab at the intellectual foppishness and laughably extravagant self-regard of academe at its worst, typified by academic journals like October, a petting zoo for mandarins. Re/Search magazine's Industrial Culture Handbook, early Amok Press catalogues, Disinformation.com and The Baffler and Hermenaut in their heyday, Juxtapoz magazine (when it isn't taking its studious lowbrowism to sub-Bukowski extremes), not to mention the art criticism of Dave Hickey's Air Guitar and Ralph Rugoff's Circus Americanus, the Ballardian urbanism of Geoff Manaugh's BLDGBLOG, the edgy enthusiasms of New New Journalist Ron Rosenbaum, and virtually anything by Mike Davis, 21st century socialism's unchallenged master of intellectual parkour: all of these examples of bracingly original analysis are a standing rebuke to the timidity and claustrophobic self-referentiality of too much academic cultural criticism. They remind us that the academy doesn't have a monopoly on the Act of Thinking Deeply; that some of the most critically engaged analysis of the world around us is being done by thinkers willing to wade hip-deep into it; and, to belabor the obvious, that intelligent analysis---intelligence, period---isn't an academic prerogative. (Yes, some of the writers mentioned above have been academics, but most of them keep one foot in the popular arena, and tap much of their intellectual voltage from non-academic sources.)
According to founder/editor Sina Najafi, Cabinet is committed to "the politics of curiosity." And that rage to know is evident in every one of its themed issues. (I've always loved the editorial coherence, the intellectual holism, of themed issues. Granta uses this device to brilliant effect. Why haven't more magazines followed suit, I wonder?) Its post-postmodernism notwithstanding, Cabinet exudes a Victorian gentleman-scholar eccentricity, a mauve-glove, pince-nez appetite for the curious and curiouser. Call it Richard Dadd-aism. A bouquet of titles, gathered from the magazine's 34 issues to date: "Speaking Martian"; "The Celestographs of August Strindberg"; "Incorruptible Teeth, or, the French Smile Revolution: Laughter and the Birth of Dentistry"; "The Golden Lasso: Wonder Woman and the Birth of the Lie Detector"; "The Human Telegraph: Francisco Salva's Shocking Invention"; "Captured Lightning: The Fractal Beauty of Lichtenberg Figures"; "A Minor History of Useful Corpses: Not All Bodies Molder in the Grave"; "Ingestion: The Beast Within---The Tale of the Tapeworm"; and, apropos of nothing, the "Condensed Directions for Using the Drake Electrical Vibrator, 1922."
As it happens, I've appeared in a number of issues, including the latest, Issue 34: Testing (Summer 2009). My contribution to the titular theme is "Cortex Envy," a psychobiographical essay on the IQ test in which I refract the social history of the Wechsler and the Stanford-Binet through the prism of my intellectual anxieties, rooted in a suitably neurotic childhood. Trying to make sense of the enduring effects of an IQ test I took in early childhood, I peel back the scientific "objectivity" of intelligence testing in American society, revealing a muck pond of eugenicist social engineering. Then, I guinea-pig myself by confronting the IQ test again, at the age of 49---a revealing, if harrowing, experience. (And no, you can't see my scores. But I do disclose some revealing details.)
A snip from my essay:
For much of their history, intelligence tests have been rotten with the cultural and class biases of their makers, a diagnostic deck stacked against minorities, immigrants, and those at the bottom of the wage pyramid.
[Louis Terman, inventor of the Stanford-Binet test] begrudgingly conceded that environmental factors might play some small part in IQ-test scores. For the most part, though, he was a thoroughgoing hereditarian. "High-grade or border-line deficiency...is very, very common among Spanish-Indian and Mexican families of the Southwest and also among negroes," he notes, in The Measurement of Intelligence (1915). "Their dullness seems to be racial...Children of this group should be segregated into separate classes and be given instruction which is concrete and practical. They cannot master abstractions but they can often be made into efficient workers."
At the very moment that intelligence testing was sanctifying the race-based educational neglect of blacks, Mexicans, and other textbook examples of the "defective germ plasm," legislatures in 33 states were writing the compulsory sterilization of the "unfit" into law, a stroke of the pen that would lead, over time, to the coerced sterilization of 60,000 Americans. The black stork of the eugenics movement was spreading its wings across America, and in much of the era's officially sanctioned bigotry, the IQ test was a silent partner. "While America has had a long history of eugenics advocacy," notes the historian Clarence J. Karier, "some of the key leaders of the testing movement were the strongest advocates for eugenics control. In the twentieth century, the two movements often came together in the same people under the name of 'scientific' testing."
Knowing what a blunt instrument the IQ test is, what a dark and storied history it has, why am I so nervous about taking the WAIS [Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale test]? Why am I so inordinately proud when I knock a few softball pitches---What is the speed of light? Where were the first Olympics held? Who was Catherine the Great? What is the Koran?---out of the park? Why do I experience a near panic attack when I can't name three kinds of blood vessels or (to my undying chagrin) the seven continents?
Read the rest in Cabinet 34: Testing, available---forgive product placement---here.
IMAGE TOP: Prison inmate taking the cube-pattern performance section of the Wechsler-Bellevue Intelligence Scale, 1939. From Paul F. Ballantyne, American Schooling, Administrative Reform, And Individual Ability Testing: Assimilation and Sorting before World War I.
IMAGE MIDDLE: Additive Structure of Human Intelligence, from Peter Sandiford, Foundations Of Educational Psychology (1938). From Paul F. Ballantyne, American Schooling, Administrative Reform, And Individual Ability Testing: Assimilation and Sorting before World War I.
Here's a quick video snapshot I took over the weekend from one of my favorite local hikes here in Southern California: the Solstice Canyon trail above Malibu. The video's nothing special, but as I was shooting it (on my iPhone 3GS, with a twig for a tripod) I thought "this might be an inspiring little ambient morsel for BB readers to zone out to during their work day. So here it is. I mention the device used because I was pretty wowed by the video and audio quality. Here's my Flickr set of more video snapshots from the waterfall (others are higher-quality and less compressed than this).
There are some spots on the trail where you can look out over the Pacific, and if the season's right you may view a migrating gray whale or two. According to an LA Times article published in 1988 when this land became a state park,
[The site] was formerly used as a laboratory to test payloads for space shots for TRW Inc. and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. (...) [T]he aerospace firms picked the site because they needed a "non-magnetic setting," or an area far removed from telephone lines and electrical cables. One of the buildings had a removable roof so that heavy equipment could be lifted from the structure.Near this 30-foot waterfall, there's an old stone cabin from the late 1800s, one of the oldest residences in the area. Also on this trail: the burnt-out remains of an amazing midcentury ranch mansion designed by African-American architect Paul Revere Williams. I love walking through those ruins. More on that after the jump.
Above, what was once the view from the breakfast nook in the now-destroyed Roberts home. The building was constructed in the 1950s, and burned down decades ago. There are lots of wildfires in this area, even a big one just last year.
Snip from a website about the architect who designed it:
In 1952, Fred and Pearl Roberts bought land in Malibu Canyon and had Paul R. Williams design a rustic but elegant home for them. The house was built of stone and wood, fitting naturally into its canyon environment. This interior photograph illustrates a Williams' architectural feature, bringing the outside in as part of the design. Assemblyman Fred Roberts, a lifelong Republican, was a contemporary and political sparring partner of the progressive Charlotta Bass, owner and editor of the Eagle, an influential African American newspaper in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, Roberts died from injuries sustained in an automobile accident before he and Pearl could move into the house Williams designed for them.(Image: Residence, Roberts Ranch House, Los Angeles, CA Julius Shulman Photographic Archive, Research Library, The Getty Research Institute)
I agree that, in the event I post, or allow to be posted, any images (still or video) on a personal website or a website controlled by a third party, that (1) in the event Burning Man notifies me that any such images must be removed, for any reason whatsoever in Burning Man's sole discretion, I will promptly remove or cause to be removed those images; and (2) I will place, or cause to be placed, on any website in which such images are displayed a notice that the images can be used only for the poster's personal use and not for any other purpose and that downloading or copying of the images is prohibited. I further agree that, in the event any third party displays or disseminates any of my images in a manner not authorized by this agreement, I assign to Burning Man the copyright so that Burning Man can enforce against the third party any restrictions concerning use of the images, and I appoint Burning Man as my attorney-in-fact to execute any documents necessary to effectuate such assignment.Free expression! Except if we don't like it.
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(Image: Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times) Happy mutant architect Wilfred J.O. Armster designed this fabulous spaceship/boat/floating orb residence from steel, copper and concrete. One of the factors that influenced the design of this building was the need to fit it within a very narrow site. The home was even featured in a 2002 Zippy the Pinhead strip. Snip from NYT profile of the man and his house, by Penelope Green:
"Monstrous," is how a few described the project in an article in The New Haven Register. In the local public school, an eighth-grade teacher held up the article, which was accompanied by a picture of the building's design, and proclaimed, "This is the kind of building that should not be built here." What the teacher didn't know was the name of the architect -- perhaps she hadn't read the article carefully -- so she was unaware that his daughter, Nicola, was in the classroom. "Nicola stood up and debated her," Mr. Armster said proudly.The Spaceship Down the Street (New York Times)The public hearing to approve the project has become a local legend, said Mr. Portly, the engineer, who remembered it vividly.
Guilford residents packed the town hall, and stood up one by one to announce their objections: that the structure wasn't Colonial enough, that it didn't fit into the town's heritage, that building it was a kind of heresy. One woman said it would ruin her view as she sailed on the sound. When the litany of complaints had finished, Mr. Armster began to speak.
"I said something like: 'I know you're all Republicans and businessman and I know you think I'm a communist or a socialist. But it seems to me that you are objecting to this building because you don't like the way it looks.' "
tdarnell writes -
I've recently discovered an animation that was rendered using the measured redshift of all 10,000 galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image. I've written a short script that leads you through a quick history of both deep field images and this video ends with a fly-through of the Ultra Deep Field. Every galaxy in the image is in its proper distance as viewed from the telescope line of sight. As if this image wasn't amazing enough.
Got a cool Arduino game project that you're having trouble fitting into a cooler? You might want to check this out: the folks over at Brico Geek are holding an Arduino game contest. There are only 11 days left, so you'll need to act quickly to get your entry in. Here is what they say about the contest:
All you need is to make a game with an Arduino board. You can use any version of the boards available but it must be playable so user can interact with your project. For example you can make a Simple Simon game or even a world domination multiplayer game with a graphic LCD and sounds. Just let your imagination flow and do it. The jury will be judging on presentation, originality, documentation and execution of your project.
[via Hacked Gadgets]
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How to Handcraft an Achingly Self-Referential Virtual Commodity Fetish Object (For Fun and Profit!) (instructables.com)Materials:
* one literary property (written but not owned by you)
* one arguably enforceable end-user license agreement (can be custom-ordered from an intellectual-property law firm or cribbed from software packaging and/or online terms-of-service agreements)
* one Second Life user account
* one United States Federal Reserve note or other tangible piece of currency (optional)
* basic bookbinding materials (available at most art-supply stores)
Building a robot army, one cuddly bot at a time... @ The Guardian Open Platform-
Have you ever missed an important announcement from a friend because you only check Twitter late in the day and couldn't be bothered to scroll through 8 hours of posts from your friends? Did feel guilty when your feeble "congratulations!" Tweet was sent 2 days late when you found out your buddy got married? Would you like to build your very own robot army? Then this is a post for you!Meet the Guardian Robot: This friendly little fellow stands on your desk and monitors your Twitter feed for "happy" and "sad" posts by your friends on your Twitter feed. But unlike conventional alert systems, this robot encourages you to interact with the posts it finds.
For example, when it finds a "happy" post, the Guardian Robot raises its head and arm in triumph. It holds the pose until you give it a "high five" by pushing the switch in its raised hand. Once you do that, the robot pass the high five on to your buddy via a reply Tweet.
(Ed. Note: We recently gave the Boing Boing Video website a makeover that includes a new, guest-curated microblog: the "BBVBOX." Here, folks whose taste in web video we admire tweet the latest clips they find. I'll be posting periodic roundups here on the motherBoing.)
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The bank replaced all the money that wasn't extensively damaged, and the ATM has continued to work just fine. The mouse also got a reprieve: He was evicted from his nest but set free outside the station."Mouse builds nest in ATM with $20 bills"
Flickr user Streetwalker credits this elegant handmade tool to Mr. Norberto Arriagada, a Chilean plumber.
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Tonight VH1 is airing a Timothy Leary documentary as part of its "Lords of the Revolution" series. Here's an excerpt from the show featuring our pal, R.U. Sirius (Ken Goffman). Our friend Michael Horowitz was also interviewed for the program.
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In Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture, author Ellen Ruppel Shell asks, "What are we really buying when we insist on getting stuff as cheaply as possible?" Her answer: a low-quality food supply, a ruined economy, a polluted environment, low wages, a shoddy educational system, deserted town centers, ballooning personal debt, and the loss of craftsmanship.
In the introduction to her book, Shell admits that she used to be obsessed with bargain prices, but says a "boot incident" changed her. She went to a shoe "mini-outlet" to buy a pair of boots for a New Year's party, and asked for "something special." The clerk showed her a pair of "buttery" leather Italian boots, but they were too expensive so she bought cheap knockoff boots from China that cost one-quarter as much as the Italian boots. After wearing the boots just once, she decided that they were "clunky and so uncomfortable" that she threw them into the back of the closet with the "heap of other unwearable 'good deals' in bad colors or unflattering shapes: a bargain hunter's pile of shame."
Cheapness, argues Shell, has ruined just about everything. Main streets, with knowledgeable clerks and friendly service, have been decimated by discount stores like Wal-Mart staffed with ignorant employees who don't give a damn. Customer service has all but vanished (A sign on the entrance of IKEA stores reads, "No One Will Bother You"). Factory outlets have become the "fastest growing segment of not only the retail industry but also the travel industry." Jobs were lost when manufacturers moved their factories overseas and used cheap labor to produce mountains of cheap junk. Products now come in two categories: stratospherically priced luxury objects or slipshod discount crap, with few mid-priced, well-crafted objects available, because craftsmanship can't compete in the mass market. (As Roger Price, author of The Great Roob Revolution said "If everybody doesn't want it, nobody gets it.")
So, how do we get ourselves off the cheapness drug? In her concluding chapter, Shell says individuals have to shake the habit themselves: "We can set our own standard for quality and stick to it. We can demand to know the true costs of what we buy, and refuse to allow them to be externalized, We can enforce sustainability, minimize disposability, and insist on transparency. We can rekindle our acquaintance with craftsmanship. We can choose to buy or not, choose to bargain or not, and choose to follow our hearts or not, unencumbered by the anxiety of that someone somewhere is getting a 'better deal."
For the last couple of years, I've been practicing pretty much what Shell recommends here. When I start thinking I need to buy something I first ask myself if owning it will truly make my family's life better in some way -- Will it save us time, or consume time? Do I have to learn a new user-interface to use it? What am I going to get out of it? What would happen if I put off buying it for a year? What else could I spend the money on that might be a better choice? Is it something I can hand down to my kids or will it break? Can it be serviced and repaired at home? Will it make our household environment more pleasant, or less pleasant? Will it clutter the house? how much storage space will it consume? These are then kinds of questions I now ask myself before buying something. The one thing I don't consider is how "cheap" something is. As a result, I don't buy nearly as much stuff as I used to (it turns out that my decision not to be cheap has made me more frugal and thrifty) and the things I do buy more often end up being well-made and improve the quality of my family's life.
Terry Trier has written a good tutorial on carving this classic whimsy from a single piece of wood.
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Recently on Offworld we've had a good slate of indie devs giving us a deeper look into some of the games already high on our most-wanted lists: chief among them is Castle Crashers devs The Behemoth officially beginning to reveal the mechanics of their cutely chaotic party/arena game still known as Game 3, and art game champ Jason Rohrer showing off a paper prototype of his Angolan conflict diamond-based DS multiplayer game.
Elsewhere, we got the first shot of Die Gute Fabrik's gorgeously illustrated swamp-opera adventure Mutatione, Edmund McMillen & co. showed off the first video of their pathos puzzler Time Ufck, and Taito revealed the first video of dual control methods in their upcoming Puzzle Bobble iPhone port.
We also saw Nintendo plunging their toes further into the social media space with the U.S. release of their free web-sharable DS flipbook animation app FlipNote Studio, Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner revealed the first draft script for a prequel to his PC adventure The Last Express, the EA Black Box team behind Skate gave us their top 10 user-made skate videos, and Team Fortress devs began dropping awesomely gentlemanly turn-of-the-century ephemera surrounding their latest game update.
Finally, our 'one shot's: the nostalgic simplicity of Six Flags' early-80s Pac-Man theme park, Metroid's Samus on a ZX Spectrum, 9 0 0 0 gives us a motivational ninja poster, and, as above, Brock Davis shows us the sobering tragedy of a Mushroom Kingdom hit and run.
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Subculture photographer Kyle Cassidy has a great new project: "Where I Write: Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers in Their Creative Spaces." I love the shots of Michael Swanwick, but the killer one for me is Samuel R "Chip" Delaney (shown here).
Still, I gotta say that I am immensely happy in my little nest in London (below), as shot by the talented NK Guy.
Where I Write: Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers in Their Creative Spaces
(Thanks, Michael!)
Using conductive wool, Hannah Perner-Wilson made these crochet potentiometers. The metal beads in the center work as the wiper.
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Electro-Harmonix has been running an interesting series of demo vids that recreate far-out & famous sounds using only guitar + their pedals - and resident effectologist Bill Ruppert does a great job formulating each installment. Now handing out a spot-on recipe for "Wont Get Fooled Again"'s spacey intro is neat and all - but pulling off a solid cover of the synth-classic "Autobahn" is just dang cool. Although there's no sight of the actual experimentation/process, relevant setup and setting info used is available here.
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Handy overview on getting help with your Arduino project from the Adafruit forums -- applies practically everywhere online and getting help with electronics projects...
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Samsung has also released the TL225 and TL220 (ST550 and ST500 in Europe), the world's first compact cameras with front and rear LCDs. The 3.5" touch screen LCD (1.2m dot resolution) of the TL225 and the 3.0" LCD (230k dot resolution) of the TL220, incorporate a Smart Gesture User Interface technology, enabling users to tap and browse through features. In addition both feature 1.5" 61k dot front LCDs for shooting challenges such as self-portraits. Both 12.2 MP cameras, which use the MicroSD memory format, sport optically stabilized wide-angle 4.6x optical zoom lenses starting at 27mm equivalent. Comments Off [link]
Samsung has released three compacts with a smattering of 'world's first' features. Top of the range is the CL65 (ST1000 in Europe), the first compact to offer a 3.5" touch screen LCD with 1.2 million dot (megadot?) resolution and multi-wireless connectivity. It features Bluetooth 2.0 and Wi-Fi connectivity allowing wirelessly connections to internet routers or DLNA compliant devices. Built-in GPS enables geo-tagging of images with location data. The camera, which uses MicroSD memory cards, also features built-in Intelli-Studio PC software to directly upload images online or e-mail them. The 12.1 MP camera also offers an optically stabilized 5x zoom lens (35-175mm equiv.) and HD video recording. Comments Off [link]
Samsung has also released the ST550 and ST500, the world's first compact cameras with front and rear LCDs. The 3.5" touch screen LCD (1.2m dot resolution) of the ST550 and the 3.0" LCD (230k dot resolution) of the ST500, incorporate a Smart Gesture User Interface technology, enabling users to tap and browse through features. In addition both feature 1.5" 61k dot front LCDs for shooting challenges such as self-portraits. Both 12.2 MP cameras, which use the MicroSD memory format, sport optically stabilized wide-angle 4.6x optical zoom lenses starting at 27mm equivalent. Comments Off [link]
Samsung has released three compacts with a smattering of 'world's first' features. Top of the range is the ST1000, the first compact to offer a 3.5" touch screen LCD with 1.2 million dot (megadot?) resolution and multi-wireless connectivity. It features Bluetooth 2.0 and Wi-Fi connectivity allowing wirelessly connections to internet routers or DLNA compliant devices. Built-in GPS enables geo-tagging of images with location data. The camera, which uses MicroSD memory cards, also features built-in Intelli-Studio PC software to directly upload images online or e-mail them. The 12.1 MP camera also offers an optically stabilized 5x zoom lens (35-175mm equiv.) and HD video recording. Comments Off [link]
This quick and dirty improvised iPhone flash/video light from Andreas Ødegård consists of a 3V battery and a high intensity Cree emitter. Sure, it's just an LED flashlight with a doc connector mount, but then again it was built in under 10 minutes with electrical tape, spare parts, and a hot glue gun. The result seems to knock the socks off your run-of-the-mill super bright LED mini-array.
A similar hack that pulls power from the iPhone dock connector can be found in the book iPhone Hacks.
In the Maker Shed:
Those who made it out to the most recent Maker Faire Bay Area will likely recall seeing & playing the "Interactivation" collaborative music console. What many attendees likely didn't know was that the device is actually the first assembled component of a much larger project. The work-in-progress known simplay as Lightning Temple will utilize the console @ its core to generate musical arcs of electricity. Envisioned in an ultimate performance @ Burning Man festival, the project's makers will be on hand @ this year's event with still other charged instrumentation (Red Lightning on Esplanade & 5:00 streets) Follow their progress via Twitter & the project's blog.
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From the MAKE Flickr pool
Ranjit makes the best of a not-so-awesome situation. After receiving his newly purchased tine piano, and noticing the heavy shipping damages. He wired the remaining musical skeleton for automation, seen above performing Philip Glass's "Modern Love Waltz". Very cool - and created as part of NYCR'sAwesome August!
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I try to set aside a little time each week to build cigar box guitars. They are easy to make and they sound really good. The best place to learn about making cigar box guitars is at Cigar Box Nation, where makers post photos, videos, and plans of their musical creations. Here, you'll encounter hundreds of ingenious variations on the basic theme of a stick, a box, and some strings.
Recently, I came across an essay at Cigar Box Nation by "C.B. Gitty" called "On the Role of Mistakes in the Process of Creativity." Gitty's insights on how mistakes are valuable teachers applies not just to builders of cigar box guitars, but to makers of anything.
Excerpt:
[I]n all but the most extreme mess-ups, something neat happens. The dark and dirty side of the joy that is CBG making opens up and the question is asked: OK, how can I fix this and make it look good. Make it look like this was all part of the design. And that is where, I have found, some of the best magic happens. In almost every case (except a couple where I really REALLY messed up), the end result has been better than it would have been if I had not made the mistake. And I come out of it with a new technique or two, a new idea for decoration or design, that I wouldn't have had.
I find what Gitty writes here to be absolutely true. It's a good thing to remember the next time you are making something and things go wrong. It just might open up an opportunity for something neat to happen.
(Above: my most recent mistake-riddled cigar box guitar. See close-up here.)
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They've got a "bust card" explaining your rights to you and the officers you interact with, as well as a sticker/poster design and a gallery of photographers holding "I'm a Photographer Not a Terrorist" signs.
I'm a Photographer, not a Terrorist (Thanks, Glyn!)
Photography is under attack. Across the country it that seems anyone with a camera is being targeted as a potential terrorist, whether amateur or professional, whether landscape, architectural or street photographer.Not only is it corrosive of press freedom but creation of the collective visual history of our country is extinguished by anti-terrorist legislation designed to protect the heritage it prevents us recording.
This campaign is for everyone who values visual imagery, not only photographers.
The campaign is run by a collection of concerned individuals and owes no allegiance to any single organisation.
We must work together now to stop this before photography becomes a part of history rather than a way of recording it.
FlyerPlanterboxes!
(via Beyond the Beyond)
The September issue of Bazaar features photos of several top supermodels (super powers unspecified) without their makeup, looking substantially more human (and better, IMO) than they usually do.
Keep It Real
(via Kottke)
Steampunk Skipper
(Thanks, Andrew!)
This sculpture by Márton András Juhász uses hacked electronic toys, stripped of their furry little pelts, and connects them to Twitter. Every time the term "art" is found on the Twitter feed, the toys will speak the tweet. I want one!
More about Twittering interactive sculpture: Where is your art?
In the Maker Shed:
DIY Design Electronics Kit
So many connections are missed because people feel superior to others.
I guess its unavoidable but we erect barriers to keep people out. We tell ourselves stories about how much better we have it than they do. Too old, too young, too fat, too needy. But you can always flip it around and imagine it the other way. I've seen ridiculous examples of people who had almost nothing, feeling superior to others, who it could be argued, are vastly better off than them. The mind can play some really huge tricks.
Take a deep breath, and repeat after me: "My [business model, product, business unit, brand, offering] has a finite life. I'm going to make that life as happy and productive as possible, but I also have to think about what's next."This is a major issue, and could be the underlying theme of a good percentage of posts around here. Companies or individuals who think that they have some inalienable "right" to have their innovation remain at the top of the market, even as others out-innovate them. It comes from a massive sense of entitlement, that if you innovated once, no one else should be allowed to out-innovate you, and the government should somehow protect your position as an innovative leader. We've jokingly referred to this as companies charging others with "felony interference with a business model."
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The annual Burning Man fest takes place at the end of this month in Nevada's Black Rock desert. El wire, fake fur, exposed titties, fire art, pill popping, light shows, bad techno, art cars, dudes with no pants, platform combat boots, utilikilts, on and on and on -- if you're reading Boing Boing you probably know what Burning Man is (and if not, read the prior BB posts linked at the bottom of this one).
So, for many years now, the organization behind the event has enforced a highly restrictive set of policies around photography and video out on the playa. The argument for these restrictions involves protecting attendees' privacy rights. People do wacky stuff out there, in various states of undress and sobriety, and nobody wants their naked DMT yoga falafel rave dance routine to end up on some sleazy "Girls Gone Wild" DVD, right? But here's a snip from a commentary by Corynne McSherry on the EFF Deep Links blog which argues these policies go too far:
Most attendees have the entirely reasonable expectation that they will own and control what is likely the largest number of creative works generated on the Playa: the photos they take to document their creations and experiences. That's because they haven't read the Burning Man Terms and Conditions.Snatching rights on the playa (deeplinks via Wayneco)
Those Terms and Conditions include a remarkable bit of legal sleight-of-hand: as soon as "any third party displays or disseminates" your photos or videos in a manner that the Burning Man Organization (BMO) doesn't like, those photos or videos become the property of the BMO. This "we automatically own all your stuff" magic appears to be creative lawyering intended to allow the BMO to use the streamlined "notice and takedown" process enshrined in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to quickly remove photos from the Internet.
The BMO also limits your own rights to use your own photos and videos on any public websites, (1) obliging you to take down any photos to which BMO objects, for any reason; and (2) forbidding you from allowing anyone else to reuse your photos (i.e., no licensing your work no matter what is depicted, including Creative Commons licensing, and no option to donate your work to the public domain).
In response to my post earlier today about the Phoenix hacker space, Bob Ward wanted you all to know about Arch Reactor, a similar group in St. Louis. He writes:
We're calling ourselves Arch Reactor and we're going to be holding our first open house Wednesday August 19 at 6:00pm at our temporary space. We're in the process of incorporating and looking for a permanent space, and right now we just want to get the word out and get as many people involved as possible so we can get the best space we can find.
Show and tell projects welcome!
Arch Reactor Open House
August 19th 6:00 p.m.
4049 Shenandoah Ave.
Saint Louis, Missouri 63110
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Timelapse street light + bugs, lovely...
"During the summertime, I'll disappear for hours on long rides to nowhere and back. But I have to admit on some rides I've gotten so lost I have trouble finding my way home. Happily I was able to build a solar-powered GPS mapping machine, mostly from old computer parts and software I had sitting around my office." Author Brian Nadel's words in the introduction to his DIY Outdoors piece, "Solar-Powered Bike GPS," from the pages of MAKE Volume 10, are further testament to the fact that necessity is the mother of invention. Brian's homespun bike GPS cost him next to nothing to make because he had most of the parts on hand already (ah, the endless parts bin for that maybe-someday project do come in handy). He estimates the project would run about $150 total by combing through eBay and closeout retailers. Naturally, with the abundant varieties of bike, PDA, GPS receiver, and solar panel, you likely have to improvise for your personal combo but seeing how Brian set his up is the insight you need.
Here is the full article in our Digital Edition. No better time than a sunny summer day to get crackin on this project.
You can still pick up a back issue of MAKE Volume 10 in the Maker Shed.
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De-materialisation of creative content distribution is shaking up the business models of the creative industries, with both potential opportunities and potential losses and bringing new players into the media industries' landscape.It goes on to point out that the answers to these questions aren't going to come from lawsuits, but by recognizing how people (especially younger generations) view such things and putting in place business models that work. Still, the report does hedge in places, talking about the need for a "favorable regulatory environment," though it's not at all clear what's meant by that. But it's good to see a gov't report recognizing this is really a business model (and technology) issue, rather than a legal problem as many in the legacy entertainment industry would have you believe.
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If you're in NYC on Thursday and have a toga, this might be interesting....
During tougheconomic times, Imperial Rome distracted itself by staging naval battles inside a flooded Coliseum. Artist Duke Riley plans to wage a similar spectacle, only in Queens, N.Y.Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Events | Digg this!
Next week, city parks engineers are set to fill up a vacant pool on the grounds of the 1964 World’s Fair so Mr. Riley can launch his homemade armada of 30-foot-long Spanish galleons, Egyptian river boats, and Polynesian war canoes. All the vessels were made mainly from recycled materials and invasive reeds yanked from the nearby wetlands.
Much of the Thursday battle is still unscripted, but teams of artists and curators in gladiator gear intend to board their vessels and sink their rivals in front of spectators dressed in togas. Mr. Riley, whose tattoo-style drawings are collected by major patrons like Whitney Museum of American Art board member Melva Bucksbaum and the Brooklyn Museum, will be on hand himself and may dole out buckets of fake blood. He says he can’t afford to pay workers, so all the participants on the project are unpaid volunteers. Rebecca Goyette, an educator at the Museum of Modern Art who has been assigned to play Caligula’s wife, says she won’t mind getting splattered: “I want to fight.”
"When we were creating Street View, we were excited about all the everyday uses, like looking for parking or planning trips," Stephen Chau, product manager for Google Street View, said. "Bill's use of Street View, to inspire his paintings and to create a virtual community of artists, is a remarkable example that we hadn't imagined but are really excited to see. It's been amazing to see the possibilities that have opened up as Street View has been brought to more places around the world."The AP really ought to take note.
Got a nice Arduino project that needs to be battery-powered, but you want it to keep running for a long time?
Well, the fine folks at Lab 3 might have just the solution for you. They hooked up a photoresistor and a buzzer to an Atmega 168 microcontroller running Arduino to make a digital nightingale. The chip is put to sleep after every light measurement, and the built-in watchdog timer is used to wake it up again 8 seconds later.
By doing this, they estimate that they can increase the battery life of the project (powered by 3 AA batteries) from 4 days to about 3 years! I hope they're letting it run to see how long the batteries actually last.
See the project website for an explanation of the circuit and a copy of the source code.
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