Bitter Sisters Cocktail Mixers
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Murray sez, "I recently launched a podcast at the UK-based harmonica website www.harpsurgery.com. The episode here features five young players aged 14-18 (with one 22-year-old to mess up our average) who are playing WAY beyond their years... and in some cases, pushing harmonica-playing into dark scary places where it was never meant to go.
The podcast is a little ragged but the playing is great. I thought it pertinent to send this through after Roger Daltrey's shabby harp solo at last night's Super Bowl show. Any one of these kids could destroy Roger Daltrey with a single fog-horn like blast from their instrument. All he'd leave behind is a smoking pair of hush puppies."
Damn skippy: these kids are honkin' and smokin'.
Harmonica Podcast: The Kids Are Alright
(Thanks, Murray!)
Gakken Premium Gramophone (Thanks, Alan!)
The player is produced by world-class hobbyist supplier Gakken, and the quality shows. This gramophone supports all record sizes, features speed and tone adjustment, and even lets you record music! No file formats to worry about, no batteries to replace, and the warm, nostalgic sound of analog - this just might be the perfect music player.
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Our favorite armchair astronaut, Rachel, is sleeping off all the adrenalin and exhaustion of covering the STS-130 shuttle launch for MAKE. (Great job, Rach!) So, we crowd-sourced a few more pictures from Make: Online member Volkemon, who was also on-hand for the big blast. Here are a couple of his pics (that's him and his mom in the top one, the causeway and the moon before launch, and the launch). There are a few more pics, and others from previous launches, in his Flickr sets. Thanks, Volkemon!
More:
Gray Matter: Batteries Out of Thin Air @ Popular Science...
A battery that runs on air? Why, that’s almost as good as a car that runs on water! Those cars are fantasy, but batteries that run on air are actually quite common, especially among older people. Tiny zinc-air batteries are widely used in hearing aids, where they have replaced toxic mercury-based batteries in providing a small but steady stream of power. They supply more energy for their size than any other battery, because they draw some of their power straight from the air.Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Electronics | Digg this!
Nikon has released the AF-S Nikkor 24mm F/1.4G ED wide aperture prime lens for full-frame DSLRs. It features an anti-reflective Nano Crystal coating and both ED and aspherical lens elements to help minimize distortion and chromatic aberration. The lens comes in a weather-resistant body and includes a Silent Wave Motor for quieter autofocus operation.
Nikon has announced the worlds first image stabilized ultra-wide angle zoom for full frame cameras. The AF-S Nikkor 16-35mm f/4G ED VR lens includes a Silent Wave autofocus motor and VR II technology, which Nikon claims gives up to four stops benefit against camera shake when hand-holding. Other goodies include Nano Crystal coating to combat flare, a magnesium alloy barrel, and weather sealing.
The Nova Albion Steampunk Exhibition takes place March 12-14 in Emeryville, CA. Organizers promise "the best elements of traditional science fiction and fantasy conventions, [combined] with the passion, ingenuity, and hands-on workshops of Maker events, in a steam-powered, neo-Victorian setting that spans the 1830s through the early 1910s, from the cultured salons of gaslit London to the rugged coast of San Francisco." Sure sounds fun. I'm delighted to see a number of folks we've covered on Boing Boing before, including Jon Sarriugarte, Kimric Smythe, and The Neverwas Haul Crew in the "kinetics" portion of the event.
[ Image: Neverwas Haul, photo by Redteam. ]
Previously:
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"We didn't change anything... AT&T never discussed any specific requirements with us."Perhaps what actually "changed" was the fact that the FCC has become interested in AT&T blocking apps in anti-competitive ways... Funny that AT&T didn't mention that part.
Mount Everest may be the tallest mountain on Earth, but that's only if you're measuring from sea level. Thanks to the curvature of the planet, Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador is the highest if you're measuring from the center of the Earth. In fact, by this system, Everest comes in fifth. (Via Chris Pasco-Pranger)
Standard vaccine injections, done with a 1-in.-long needle, aren't as effective in obese patients. Instead, they need a longer needle to get the same level of immune response. Researchers aren't sure why, but it's possible that fat prevents shorter needles from delivering the vaccine directly into muscle, where it has better access to immune cells.(Via Ivan Oransky.)
The whole American food system, from farm to fork, accounts for about 10% of the energy we use in this country. Of that, the largest single portion, 32%, is the energy involved in household food storage and cooking.
Put it another way: If we reduced agricultural energy use by 5%, nationwide, we'd save about 20 trillion British Thermal Units of energy a year. Them's no small potatoes.
But if just 5% of American households got a more efficient refrigerator, we'd save 54 trillion BTU.
Context: I'm spending today and tomorrow at a conference on energy efficiency in agriculture, put on by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy. Those stats come from a presentation by Martin Heller, a researcher with the University of Michigan's Center for Sustainable Systems.
Spotted in the MAKE Flickr pool:
Flickr user numist had a typerwriter that he wasn't using anymore, so he converted it into a teleprinter. What's that? It turns out that teleprinters are the basically a printer and a keyboard put together in a single device, but not directly connected. Instead, both are connected to a remote computer using a serial connection. When you type on the keyboard, it gets interpreted by the computer, which then prints a response on the printer. They probably don't make much sense anymore, but before electronic displays were readily available, these were one of the main ways of programming mainframe computers.
To make his version, numist took an old electronic typewriter, and added some electronics between the keyboard and printer board. He used an Arduino microcontroller to read in each key press and relay it back over a serial port to his PC. When it receives characters back from the PC, the microcontroller emulates the keyboard to feed them into the original typewriter circuitry, causing the typewriter to print. Now, I'm not entirely sure what one could do with such a modernized typewriter, but I'll bet there are lots of potential projects there. Got any ideas?
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Tom Igoe got his hands on a Peppermill circuit board, and took it out for a spin:
Nicolas Villar sent me a sample of the PepperMill, a new sensor board he and Steve Hodges designed at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK. It's a nifty little board. You attach a DC motor and the board can an output voltage when the motor is turned, and analog signals telling you the direction and speed of the motor. It turns a DC motor into a rotary encoder, of sorts.
Wiring is very simple. The motor connects to the two spring connectors at the top of the board. Direction and Speed pins connect to two analog inputs on your microcontroller. Ground connects to your microcontroller's ground. The motor generates voltage when you spin it.
Check out Tom's article for circuit diagrams, source code, and information on obtaining a Peppermill board to experiment with. Using PepperMill to turn a motor into a sensor
(Tom is a member of the Arduino team and the author of Making Things Talk).
Making Things Talk
Our Price: $29.99
Programming microcontrollers used to require an expensive development environment costing thousands of dollars and requiring professional electrical engineering expertise. Open-source physical computing platforms with simple i/o boards and development environments have led to new options for hobbyists, hackers, and makers. This book contains a series of projects that teach you what you need to know to get your creations talking to each other, connecting to the web, and forming networks of smart devices.
In October 2009, after 2.5 years of using Twitter every day, I wrote a piece that explained the limits of Twitter that we'll have to look past Twitter to see solved, because Twitter doesn't seem to be trying to solve them. 
I usually don't subscribe to the idea that new products aimed at the user base of an established product are "killers" -- but it's been a long time since we've seen a product as ripe for killing as Twitter. (Lotus 1-2-3 was probably the last great example.)
This post is part of the IT Innovation series, sponsored by Sun & Intel. Read more at ITInnovation.com.
Of course, the content of this post consists entirely of the thoughts and opinions of the author.
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Kicking off our Maker Business series is this piece by Jeffrey McGrew, who along with his wife Jillian Northrup, and their trusty CNC machine named Frank, are a two-person (and a bot) design and fabrication juggernaut. From their design-build studio in Oakland, CA, they do custom interior design, furniture, and such artist wonders as the "Art Golf" course they've set up at Maker Faire. Here, Jeffrey shares some words of advice to those who may be thinking of going "Maker Pro." -- Gareth
We get a lot of friends and folks asking us about how we got started. And we know a lot of folks through the Maker Faire that would love to turn "pro." So, I thought I'd jot down the six big things that I see as being key elements to getting started in such a business. I hope they help, and I'd love to hear more from other folks! [Chime in via comments. -Ed.]
1. Get as debt-free as possible, and try your best to stay that way.
We would have never been able to buy the robot (or CNC machine) and make the jump to working for ourselves had we not had our financial lives in order first. Having six months in savings to fall back on, no debt, other than a half-paid off car loan, and not taking on huge debts to get started, made it possible for us to make a lot of mistakes and learn things instead of going out with a quick bang. I've met a fair number of people who want to start their own business, but simply can't, due to this single issue alone. No amount of great business ideas, hard work, or luck can overcome the burden of an unstable foundation on which to the start. Also, honestly, once you get your business going, you'll find that your priorities, and what you think is important, will change greatly. If you're really happy (which running our own business certainly make us), then you'll need less stuff anyways. So, save your pennies, don't worry about getting the latest and greatest, and pay off all those loans and credit cards before you take that leap.
2. Plans are worthless, planning is essential.
That quote from Winston Churchill sums up nicely a lot of what you'll need to do when you start a business. You don't need a perfect plan, with every step already outlined, in giant Gantt charts. But you do need a plan. And you need to be smart enough to change that plan as circumstances change. Running a business is more like sailing a ship than launching a rocket. What I mean is that you need a plan, and to be prepared, but honestly, at some point you'll just point yourself at the horizon and go. And then everything will change, you'll need to change direction, plans, and ideas. You'll re-aim for that spot you wanted to get to constantly as the world around you changes in response to what you're doing. And heck, sometimes you'll find when you're halfway there, you actually want to go somewhere else. So don't fret too much and over-plan everything (and therefore never get started), or freak out when things don't go according to your plans. But at the same time, don't aim for that horizon without one!
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Making limited-edition, very high-value stuff is awesome. We sold 100 Lifetime Membership USB drives for $100 each (lifetime admission to any IFD show, free digital content for life), and that was a huge $10,000 boon for us.All that said, it appears that he still thinks the only way to become a success today is to do a deal with a label -- and preferably a major one. I've always said that if bands don't want to really do what's necessary on the business side, there's nothing wrong with working with a label, though I think most musicians who end up signing a standard record deal may end up regretting it. It may speed up the ability to get attention, but it may make it more difficult to actually build a sustainable career. Oddly, he seems to suggest the opposite, noting:
My last big concern about the 1,000 true fans model is longevity. Most of the people using it work through the internet, and everything on the internet has an exponentially shorter shelf-life than it's Real Life corollary.The problem is that on a typical record label deal, things don't really work that way for most musicians, either. It may work for the top of the top -- the ones that catch on quickly and become big. But for the majority of bands that sign with a major record label, they fail to really get big enough to matter, and the labels very quickly drop all support and the band becomes yet another unrecouped wonder. That's not a sustainable model at all, and it's certainly not a model of "making as much as you can while you're hot," since many signed bands never actually get hot enough to really make that much money anyway. It seems like a bottom-up approach that relies on building a strong relationship with the fans has a lot more chance of being long-term sustainable than a career fueled by a sudden rush of major label hype, followed by being dropped into the obscurity bin.
I just think there's very little data right now on how long an internet music career can last. Most traditional music careers, even people with a hit record, are lucky to last more than a decade, and so traditional music business literature says to make as much as you can while you're hot and save it up for when your career's over.
What's the new model for that? Is the expectation that an internet music career is longer than a traditional one? I suppose one could argue that, but it's a tough sell for me. The internet is fickle, and tastes change. I guess we'll see the truth of that as time goes on too.
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For the next few months, in concert with our "Your Desktop Factory" themed issue of MAKE (Volume 21), we're going to be exploring the world of "maker business," turning your passion for making things into a means of making money. We'll look at everything from casual commerce, selling small numbers of goods online, at places like Etsy and the upcoming Makers Market, to the running of a more serious and sustainable small business. We'll be talking to, and have guest articles by, maker businessfolk across this spectrum, from those just starting out, to those who are making a comfortable living as self-employed makers. We'll also be touching on everything from the most philosophical questions of why to the more pragmatic nuts and bolts of how.
Do you run a small "maker business?" If so, we'd love to hear from you. If creating such a business is something you've thought about, what questions/concerns do you have? What would you like to see us cover in this series? Let us know in the comments, or email me (gareth at makezine). We'd love for this series to be a useful service to you, especially if going into such a business is a fantasy, but you have nagging questions or reservations that hold you back, or just need a little encouragement from those who've made this sort of career change work for them.
From MAKE magazine:
MAKE Volume 21 is the Desktop Manufacturing issue, with how-to articles on making three-dimensional parts using inexpensive computer-controlled manufacturing equipment. Both additive (RepRap, CandyFab) and subtractive (Lumenlab Micro CNC) systems are covered. Also in this issue: instructions for making a cigar box guitar, building your own CNC for under $800, running a mini electric bike with a cordless drill, making a magic photo cube, and tons more. If you're a subscriber, you may have your issue in hand already, and can access the Digital Edition. Otherwise, you can pick up MAKE 21 in the Maker Shed or look for it on newsstands near you!
San Francisco's famed science museum, The Exploratorium, recently transformed into a giant cocktail lab for an evening fundraiser. The Science of Cocktails featured interactive exhibits and presentations demonstrating the physics, chemistry and biology of cocktails and drinking.
Presentation topics ranged from "Ice and Thermodynamics in Cocktails" to "Anatomy of a Hangover". I also studied the effects of vodka on gummy bears. Image above right.
Recipes and videos after the jump.
In addition, San Francisco's top mixologists were strategically placed around the museum serving up an amazing array of cocktails. Heaven's Dog, Alembic, 83 Proof, and 15 Romolo were all represented.
Erik Adkins from Heaven's Dog explained that coldness and dilution of a cocktail is heavily dependent on the type of ice, shaking time and vessel used. Basically, it's all in the wrist.
Alembic's Daniel Hyatt opened our minds when thinking about infusions. The time necessary to steep ingredients vary widely. Most of us don't waste good booze, so if it is already interesting, it may not need to be infused.
The crowd was also treated to a bitters contest. We were asked to vote based on best use of bitters in a cocktail. It's a hard job, but someone has to do it.
The hit of the evening was the Old Cuban Cocktail aerated with nitrous oxide into a foam and frozen with liquid nitrogen, which was mixed up by Doug Williams of Liquid Alchemy. Instead of drinking this cocktail, it is best eaten with a spoon. This nitrous infused and frozen Old Cuban Cocktail was light, crispy and boozy.
Muddle mint with lime juice and simple sugar. Add ice and rum. Shake and strain into a Collins glass over ice or straight up in a cocktail glass. Top with sparkling wine.
Old Cuban
1 oz. Cachaca
½ oz. Fresh lime juice
½ oz. Simple syrup
Sparkling wine
Fresh Mint
Watch the video for more on the molecular mixology version of this classic cocktail.
Recipe courtesy Sagatiba Cachaca
The exhibits included a taste test using your different senses. Try tasting with your nose plugged, it makes a huge difference. Pictured at the top is the boozy progression of vodka soaked gummy bears.
They totally lose it as they soak up the vodka.
We attended a demonstration on layering drinks, but my favorite demonstration was Eric Muller's Bar Tricks. Member of the Exploratorium's Teacher Institute and author of "While You're Waiting for the Food to Come" showed us how to win some free drinks at the bar. There is good science behind all bar tricks. He used two shot glasses to demonstrate surface tension. Watch the video to see the trick.
This next trick utilizes 2 forks, a cork, toothpick, cocktail glass, lighter and a bit of physics. Master this and free drinks may be coming your way.
Back to the cocktails, my night was complete after trying Jacques Bezuidenhout's Black Opal. This cocktail is an amazing combination of Repasado Tequila, Guinness, port, agave nectar and bitters. May not sound good on paper, but tasty in execution.
The night at the Exploratorium exposed the complexity of mixology and everything that goes on behind that pre-dinner Manhattan. It’s more than just booze, bitters and ice.
Our settlement negotiations went on with full knowledge of what happened to the music industry. The RIAA (the Recording Industry Association of America) won victory after victory, defeating Napster and Grokster with ground-breaking legal rulings. The RIAA also went after countless individuals, chasing down infringement wherever they could track it down.While I applaud the Authors Guild for recognizing that suing (and even winning) don't help you innovate and can backfire massively in driving innovation underground, it does still feel like the Authors Guild got the wrong message out of this. Despite what it claims above, the "innovation among copyright [infringers]" did not really "abate" with the introduction of the iPod/iTunes. While the Authors Guild is correct that offering a legal solution is better than offering nothing or fighting innovation, it feels like it's overestimating how much of the market transformation its facing is due to infringement vs. how much is due to economic forces that will occur even without infringement in the market.
It didn't work. The infringement just moved elsewhere, in unpredictable ways. Nothing seems to drive innovation among copyright pirates as much as a defeat in the courts. That innovation didn't truly abate until Apple came along with its iPod/iTunes model, making music easily and legally available at a reasonable price. By then, the music industry was devastated.
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The owner of the Heart Attack Grill in Arizona, which offers a "quadruple bypass burger," is suing the owner of the Heart Stoppers Sports Grill in Florida. Both businesses are "heart-attack/medical-themed," with "sexy nurse waitresses." Both serve obscenely large stacked hamburgers, and side dishes of similar nutritional content. At the Heart Attack Grill, there's a scale over in the corner, and if you weigh more than 350 pounds you eat for free. More: Phoenix New Times, WSJ law blog, WSJ Health blog.
The food and the concept may be repulsive to many (ok screw it, by "many" I mean "me"), but what gets me the most is the Sad Sexy Nurse waitress, at far right in the 'shopped image above, photo courtesy of the Florida ABC affiliate TV station WPBF. Sexy nurse, why you so sad?
Incidentally, WPBF-TV (=stands for "West Palm Beach Florida") is pretty rockin'. As I publish this blog post, their top headline is "Elderly Man Accidentally Shoots Self Outside Gun Store: 80-Year-Old Airlifted To Hospital."
(via Veggie Grill, which is totally awesome.)
The occasion of Dmitri Mendeleev's birthday seemed like a good opportunity to recognize another great hero of the periodic table and to relate one of my favorite anecdotes about him: Glenn T. Seaborg (Wikipedia), who, among his various stellar achievements, won the 1951 Nobel Prize for "discoveries in the chemistry of the transuranium elements." By the time of his death in 1999, Seaborg had participated in the discovery and isolation of ten superheavy elements. Shortly after the official 1997 recognition of the name seaborgium for element 106, Jeffrey Winters, writing in the January 1998 issue of Discover Magazine, made the following observation:
Not only is Seaborg the first living scientist to have an element named after him, he's also the only person who could receive mail addressed only in elements: Seaborgium, Lawrencium (for the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory where he still works), Berkelium, Californium, Americium. But don't forget the zip code.
Naming an element after a living scientist generated significant controversy among the international chemistry community of the time. At a talk in 1995, Seaborg himself famously quipped: "There has been some reluctance on the part of the Commission for Nomenclature of Inorganic Chemistry of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry to accept the name because I'm still alive and they can prove it, they say."
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Best SNL skit since Black Flag was still together. Dave Grohl? More like Dave LOL. Video at Hulu, and alternate link which may or may not work for non-USA viewers. Or maybe this one. Sorry, region-blocking sucks. Alternates welcome in comments. (thanks, Sean Bonner)
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I think I could watch this ball-launching sculpture for a long time. Called parabola, it was created by youtube user MechanicalSculptor. I wonder how long it took to design a system that can launch balls with such precision? [via Hacked Gadgets]
(CC image: "Distributing surplus commodities, Johns, Ariz.," 1940, Library of Congress)
Not everyone has a large house to trade or a large sum of money to donate but look around you -- we have excess of stuff, talent, ideas, information--in our homes , in our communities, and in our organizations. We are over-producing and under-utilizing resources all over the place. Witness the recent example of clothing retailers like H&M deliberately mutilating and tossing unsold clothes in the trash. Many experts in retail concede that the practice is not uncommon--for some unfathomable "economic" reason it makes more sense to destroy clothes than to release them into a local community. The situation is even worse when it comes to food. We over-produce and waste a lot of it. According to the USDA, just over a quarter of America's food -- about 25.9 million tons -- gets thrown into the garbage can every year. University of Arizona estimates that the number is closer to 50 percent. The country's supermarkets, restaurants and convenience stores alone throw out 27 million tons between them every year (representing $30 billion of wasted food). This is why the U.N. World Food Program says the total food surplus of the U.S. alone could satisfy "every empty stomach" in Africa. How about empty stomachs in our own communities?Crowdsourcing Abundance or "Screw' em, Let's Do This Ourselves"
The list goes on an on. We have surplus of space--many commercial buildings, schools, corporate and government spaces are underutilized, while many small organizations and individuals are struggling to find spaces for their work. We also have excess of talent--musicians, artists, designers, educated unemployed people, young and old--needing audiences, venues to work in, or contribute ideas to.
"Giving the 'unconscious' a voice"
"I think we can be pretty confident that he is entirely conscious," says Owen. "He has to understand instructions, comprehend speech, remember what tennis is and how you do it. So many of his cognitive faculties have to have been intact."That someone can be capable of all this while appearing completely unaware confounds existing medical definitions of consciousness, Laureys says. "We don't know what to call this; he just doesn't fit a definition."
Doctors traditionally base these diagnoses on how someone behaves: if for example, whether or not they can glance in different directions in response to questions. The new results show that you don't need behavioural indications to identify awareness and even a degree of cognitive proficiency. All you need to do is tap into brain activity directly.
The work "changes everything", says Nicholas Schiff, a neurologist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, who is carrying out similar work on patients with consciousness disorders. "Knowing that someone could persist in a state like this and not show evidence of the fact that they can answer yes/no questions should be extremely disturbing to our clinical practice."
One of the most difficult questions you might want to ask someone is whether they want to carry on living. But as Owen and Laureys point out, the scientific, legal and ethical challenges for doctors asking such questions are formidable. "In purely practical terms, yes, it is possible," says Owen. "But it is a bigger step than one might immediately think."
"Cass Sunstein's Thought Police"Sunstein's proposal was not issued under the auspices of the government, but in an academic paper. Co-authored with Harvard Law School Professor Adrian Vermeule and published in The Journal of Political Philosophy in 2008 (it can be downloaded as a PDF file here), "Conspiracy Theory" surveys the existing scholarship on the origins and characteristics of conspiracy theories and contemplates whether or not governments should try to neutralize them. In general, it takes a social sciences approach, arguing that conspiracy theories are neither legitimate political ideas nor symptoms of a psychological disorder, but are rather the inevitable distortions of closed-off, self-reinforcing belief systems. Using government agents to inject "cognitive diversity" into those communities, it suggests, just might provide the body politic with an antidote to the thought contagions they inspire.
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Alarm bells come too late for Sony Pictures (Thanks, Fred!)The shift in consumer behavior toward rental? That was a function of wholesale pricing and the consumers' perception of value, which are entirely under the studios' control. If 40,000 supermarkets in America were selling new release DVDs for $8.99 by the checkout counter, how many consumers do you think would be lining up at the Redbox kiosk in the parking lot? How many supermarkets do you think would let Redbox on the premises?
Don't believe me? Then how is it the studios were previously able to alter consumer behavior from rental to purchase when they introduced the (comparatively) low-priced DVD to replace the high-priced VHS cassette?
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French author Jules Verne was born on this day in 1828. His father wanted him to be a lawyer and circumstances forced him to work as a stock broker, but eventually he shook off these humdrum vocations and became the world's first professional science fiction author.
Verne quickly gained a reputation for combining ultramodern technology (of the time) with clever guesswork and an affinity for adventure writing. His most celebrated works are found in a 54-piece canon of science fiction and adventure novels called Les Voyages Extraordinaires.
While most of these stories were rousing adventure yarns, what is most remarkable about them was Verne's ability visualize futuristic devices. He wrote about submarines when the technology was merely a curiosity. In his lost work Paris in the 20th Century he predicted that air conditioning, the Internet, television and electricity would become everyday conveniences. In From the Earth to the Moon he imagined a space program that would launch three astronauts from Florida, who were recovered after an ocean splash-down. In The Steam House he created one of the first visions of mecha,
He did it by imagining the possible, and defining it in terms his contemporaries could understand, a mission many of us undertake when we visualize a new project. And so, Jules Verne, happy birthday!
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Thirty two shish kabob skewers and 176 small rubber bands are all it takes to make a beautiful hyperbolid of revolution. This is an example of what is called a "ruled surface," meaning even though it is curved, it is made of straight lines.
Below is the same object seen from the top. Make one of your own following the instructions here, but be careful not to skewer yourself!
More:
Planning to overthrow the US government? If yes, and you live in South Carolina, you must pay a five-dollar subversive registration fee. (Via The Agitator)
Copyrighthater says,
My money's on BOTH.Here is a video documenting every violent act in the 2010 superbowl ads. i dunno what's dumber: the marketers for being this pathetic, or the consumers for giving marketers the impression we're this pathetic.
Skip James plays "Crow Jane" in 1967. (After watching this video, I had to go back and watch one of my favorite YouTube videos ever, "Inflatable tube man dances to Cream's 'Glad.'") (Via Tinselman)
Video above: Nuit Blanche, from Spy Films, directed by Arev Manoukian. There's a "making of" video here.
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Bre Pettis made this "first draft" hackerspace map. Suggestions for additions, anyone?
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This sign, spotted by James Fallows of the Atlantic in the Marina district of San Francisco, reminds me of that scene in Clueless where Alicia Silverstone donates her skis to the Pismo Beach Disaster.
(via @1bobcohn)
Emma says:
BirdBox is a physical bird box that turns an iPhone or iPod Touch into a nesting-box cuckoo alarm clock. Touching the clock face reveals the interior of the birdbox, whilst the alarm gently wakens you with the soundand sight of the nesting birds.BirdBox Alarm ClockThe BirdBox app is free and is on the App Store, whilst Birdboxes are for sale.
On January 28, 1986 a retired optometrist named Jack Moss captured the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster on his Betamax camcorder. He never showed it to anyone, but told his pastor, Marc Wessels, about it shortly before he died from cancer in December. Wessels, who is also the executive director of the Space Exploration Archive, found the tape and added it to the Archive.
It is believed to be the only amateur film in existence of the world's worst space disaster, recorded in an era before mobile phone cameras, when even home camcorders were rare.... "It took a while to find someone with an old Betamax video player, [said Wessels] then I had to watch four hours of gameshows and sitcoms from the 1980s, but when I found the Challenger film my reaction was that people really have to see this."
Challenger space shuttle disaster amateur video discovered after 24 years
I'm digging this melting table by woodcarver Rob Smith. Beautiful! [via Dude Craft]
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Born on this date in 1834 in the small village of Aremzyani, in what was then considered Siberia, Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev (Wikipedia) would go on, in 1869, to publish the first periodic table of the chemical elements. Mendeleev used the periodicity he'd observed in the properties of then-known elements to accurately predict many of the properties of germanium, gallium, and scandium, which had not yet been discovered. Mendeleev died in St. Petersburg in 1907, at the age of 72. Element number 101 is named mendelevium in his honor.
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The Open Heart kit V2.0 is a matrix of individually addressable LEDs that allow you to create customizable animations when connected to your favorite micro controller. Attach it temporarily to fabrics with headers that you simply push through, or sew it into a project with conductive fabric for a more permanent setup.
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As case classification goes, the BookBook, offered in black and red for 13" and 15" laptops, would fit in the 'hardback leather' category. But where, pray tell, does it go under Dewey? An iPad edition is planned, too. Wouldn't a real book, cut hollow and appropriately modified, do the trick for less than the $80 price? [TwelveSouth]
I've just posted a new short-short story to my podcast: "Sensored" was commissioned by the UK Open University's computer science department for use in My digital life (TU100), its ubiquitous computing course. It's licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. I'm pleased with how it worked out, and I'm honoured to be a Visiting Senior Lecturer in the OU's comp sci department.
One of the great things about being here at Kennedy Space Center for the launch of STS-130 is getting to meet some of the other space enthusiasts who are also here for the launch. The Space Tweep Society has proven to be a great resource for connecting with fellow space geeks (specifically those active on Twitter), and it was through this group that I met John Knight. John is a SmartGrid Program Manager for Whirlpool Corporation who describes himself as a maker, geek dad, space enthusiast, and Lego fanatic.
"I've been building since 1976," he said. "I have a lot of Lego and an entire room dedicated to them. My favorite building theme is Classic-Space."
Last year, John created a 7-foot space ship and moon base for an exhibit at an art gallery in St. Joseph, Michigan. His latest Lego project is smaller in scale, but has reached a much larger audience. He used Lego's Digital Designer, a tool that lets people create virtual sets, to create a set based on the Solar Dynamic Observatory that will be launched this week from Kennedy Space Center. SDO will study the solar atmosphere to help us better understand the sun's influence on Earth and near-earth space. John's set is a scale replica of SDO, and after working with the SDO team and representatives from Lego, the set was accepted for a much larger order than standard virtual kits (that can be ordered three at a time if parts are in stock) and is now available for purchase through the Lego web site*.
John described the experience as the perfect overlap between space geek and Lego enthusiast in the geek Venn diagram, and already has ideas brewing for his next project. His last non-Lego project was a working steampunk globe utilizing RFID tags and reader (Touchatag) to remote control Google Earth on a steampunked tablet computer.
* To Purchase this limited edition Lego set, follow these steps from John:
Step 1) Download the latest version of Lego Digital Designer.
Step 2) You should see a link to purchase the set. You will have to create an account with Lego.
Step 3) Please be aware that your SDO set may have different graphics than some seen on the web. Those were special "limited" edition sets.
Step 4) If you have ANY problems ordering please call Lego Customer Support at 1-800-838-9647 (US) or see Lego.com for other numbers.
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Pete Edwards does a bit of toy-megaphone turbo bending in this music video montage shot at the Casper Electronics lab. Dang - this makes me think I should start soldering to music myself!
Related:
How-To: Wet/dry control for a toy voice changer
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Here's the entire video of Jon Stewart's Fox interview with Bill O'Reilly. I know I'm biased, but I think that Stewart comes across as smart, funny and substantive and O'Reilly comes across as a defensive, deluded nut.
Man, it's good to see Jon Stewart again. It's been a year or so since Comedy Central started blocking Daily Show clips from the UK, where I live -- I know I could just use a proxy to get at them, but I'm always racing the clock and there's always something else that I can watch without messing around, and I somehow never get around to it. But I missed Jon.
Entire Jon Stewart Interview (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)
Mark usually has Boing Boing's ukelele beat covered, and Lisa's our go-to Japan expert. But neither of those guys are blogging today, so here goes. U900, "Diamond Head" Japanese Ukulele Duo! Features a crocheted bear and a bunny on a beach, and is the very definition of kawaii. They has a myspace, too. (thanks, Susannah Breslin!)
Update: Mark previously blogged an earlier video from these cuties, "Walk, Don't Run."
Hayyyyyy. How'd Pedobear get into the mascot lineup for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics in this highly esteemed Polish newspaper (hi-res scan JPEG)? Who cares! Buzzfeed article, and more here about the pedoshop disaster. Anything's possible on the internet, maybe the whole thing's a hoax, but it looks like this /b/eautiful art really did get published in Poland.
Update: More online news coverage indicates this really happened. LOL. And BB moderator Antinous points out that a sports blog in Spain did the same thing, even straightfacedly crediting the guy who altered the image as the artist behind the official mascot drawings. (via @veronica, @jpdef)
For years, it's been called the fuel of the future. But I wasn't expecting THIS vision just yet.
Hydrogen fuel cell technology was first embraced a few years back by carmakers eager to go green. The big obstacle? Hydrogen at the pump wasn't available, and was expensive to produce.
But one inventor hope to change that.
Hubbing through Hong Kong, Taras Wankewycz showed me a table-top hydrogen power station that can extract hydrogen from water to be used in fuel cells.
The Hydrofill uses electricity from the outlet (as well as solar panels if you're particularly green), and produces hydrogen that can then be stored in refillable cartridges. The system can pump out 2.5 watts of power.
(And brushing Hindenburg nightmares aside, the company insists the technology is safe.)
No word yet on the cost. Online chatter puts it at about $200 for the whole kit, but Taras himself is mum on giving an exact number because he's still in talks with retailers. He expects to have it on shelves at the end of the year.
Taras' company, Singapore-based Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies, is also pushing out a range of products which can use the cartridges to power up smartphones, lights and other devices including a zippy RC hydrogen fuel cell car.
Taras is confident his invention is the very first step to a so-called hydrogen economy where hydrogen displaces oil as our chief source of energy.
One interesting upside -- hydrogen is a compact and relatively light source of power... which is why the US military has been developing hydrogen-powered drones.
Of course, the obvious big upside of hydrogen is that it's clean. Hydrogen fuel cells produce only water vapor as a by-product. But power is still needed to produce the stuff.
My own private... wind turbine? (Hat tip to Constance Cheng, my Eco Solutions producer.)
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Canon has announced the development of the EOS E1 plug-in for Apple's Final Cut Pro video-editing software. It will enable EOS 5D Mark II, 7D and 1D Mark IV users to log and mark videos with timecode, reel names and metadata before importing into the software. A free Beta version of the plug-in will be available to download for testing in March 2010.
Canon has released the PowerShot SD1300 IS (IXUS 105 in Europe) and the SD1400 IS (IXUS 130), its slimmest PowerShot model to date. Both offer image stabilized wide-angle 4x (28-112mm equiv.) optical zoom lenses, 2.7" LCDs and incorporate 12MP and 14MP sensors respectively. The 17.8mm deep SD1400 IS also features 720p HD video recording using H.264 compression and an HD output.
Canon has released the SD3500 IS (Digital IXUS 210 in Europe) ultra-compact featuring a 3.5 inch touchscreen LCD with 460k dot resolution. It offers a 5x optical zoom lens starting at a useful 24mm and a 14MP sensor. The interface recognizes gestures for some commonly used features.
Canon has introduced the PowerShot SX210 IS compact superzoom that replaces last year's SX200 IS. Key changes include the ability to stow the pop-up flash, a flat body design, a 14.1MP sensor and increased, 14x (28 - 392mm equiv.) optical zoom range. It also features a dedicated video recording button and supports SDXC memory cards.
Canon has unveiled the latest in its long line of consumer digital SLRs, the Rebel T2i (EOS 550D). Highlights include 1080p HD video recording (with full manual control), an 18MP CMOS sensor, 3 inch 3:2 LCD with 1040k dot resolution and the 63-point iFCL metering system first seen on the EOS 7D. The new Rebel also offers a handful of less attention-grabbing upgrades, including redesigned buttons, 3.7 fps continous shooting, +/-5 stops exposure compensation and UI support for Eye-Fi cards. We spent a little time with a pre-production EOS 550D last week and have produced a detailed hands-on preview and (quick) gallery of Beta samples - check it out after the link...
Photo courtesy Flickr user Scoutj.
This article just drew my attention to the interesting story behind carmine, which is a pigment precipitated from carminic acid (shown below) extracted from the bodies of Dactylopius coccus, the so-called "cochineal" insect, of which the acid comprises up to 24% of dry body weight. The cochineal is a parasite of cacti of the genus opuntia, from which it has been harvested in South America since pre-Columbian times. It is carmine that produced the "red" of the famous British "red coats," and today carmine is still produced in great quantity for use in fabric, cosmetics, and as a natural food coloring. (Vegans beware!) [via Neatorama]
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Photo Courtesy CollectSPACE.com
When I interviewed STS-130 Mission Specialist, Bob Behnken last week in Houston at Johnson Space Center, I asked his advice for what to expect at my first shuttle launch. He gave me three tips: First, he said, "Bring bug spray." Fortunately, we didn't have to worry about that with this morning's cold, windy weather. Second, he told me to hope for clear skies. Night launches are all spectacular, he noted, but when skies are clear, you can keep eyes on the shuttle for up to eight minutes. When skies are cloudy, that visual can be as little as eight seconds. Finally, he repeated something I've heard from shuttle viewing veterans: put the camera down and just watch.
With mostly clear skies and a flawless countdown, my more-than-20-year-old dream was realized as the shuttle Endeavour lifted off before dawn this morning. The bright white light from the massive rocket boosters turned night to day in a matter of seconds. My brain could hardly process what my eyes were seeing, and when the sound finally hit my ears (there are a few strangely quiet seconds before sound reaches you) my entire body felt the force of this amazing vehicle. It was bigger, better and more exhilarating than I ever could have imagined.
I cried like a baby.
The tears started to come when Endeavour was given the final "go" for launch. They were slow as my heart rate started to pick up speed, and by the time the shuttle cleared the tower, I was completely breathless. Once Endeavour pierced the thin clouds and the entire sky glowed bright white, the sobbing came on hard. As I listened to the loud outdoor speakers blast the communication between Mission Control and Commander Zamka, and watched Endeavour sail through the sky as a bright star for a good seven minutes, I sat on the ground and cried uncontrollably. I cried for the spectacular images my mind was still reeling to process. I cried for the awe and wonder of such an incredible display of human ability and teamwork. I cried for the realization of such a long-held dream that I wasn't sure would ever happen. And I cried to think that this icon of my childhood, the vehicle of exploration that lit my imagination on fire so many years ago only has four more launches ahead of her.
As I finally settled back in to the press room and finally overcame my weeping spell, I found myself overcome with a smile that would not stop. I smiled for the amazing opportunity I just experienced. I smiled in gratitude of all the folks who helped make this dream a reality. And I smiled at the thought of this great crew unstrapping from their seats and floating as they start their time on orbit. I can't wait to watch them as they work through this important and complicated mission. And more importantly, I can't wait to share it all with you.
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"Personal payments to and from India and transfers to local banks in India have been suspended while we work with our business partners and other stakeholders to address questions they have about the service...."Apparently, this has been going on for over a week, which has to be seriously frustrating to many merchants, but a seriously good thing for various PayPal competitors.
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