Maker Media's Dale Dougherty, still guest blogging on Boing Boing, has posted an appeal to the incoming Obama administration to let travelers take pocket knives onto planes (if things like knitting needles and cork screws are allowed).

The following is a special message from American Security Theatre (AST), a group that seeks a dramatic reversal of Transportation Security Administration (TSA) policies.

We hereby petition the incoming Obama administration for a modest change, an immediate change that would signal a new direction for air travelers, a new freedom for frequent fliers. Here it is: recognize the need of Americans in the friendly skies to bear tools that fit in their pocket, by which we mean the ever-so useful pocket knife, also known by its brand names, the Swiss Army Knife and the Leatherman Multi-tool.

The Right to Bear Pocket Knives

More:

• MAKE's Dale Dougherty on Boing Boing

Here's a video interview with The Black Swan author Nasim Nicholas Taleb and his mentor, mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, who say the current economic situation could be worse than the great depression.

"The banking system, the way we have it, is a monstrous giant built on feet of clay. And if that topples, we're gone."

Maybe that's why the US Gov't has pledged $7.7 Trillion (half of America's annual GDP to fix this). I wonder if it'll work?

(Via Homegrown Evolution)

Robert Pearlman, editor of the space history and artifact website collectSPACE, says:

Here's a really neat video recorded tonight from NASA TV that shows Dr. Don Pettit demonstrating his zero-g coffee cup. Not only is it cool space food, but its a science lesson, too!

Related:

* NYT writer drinks NASA water distilled from the finest astronaut pee and sweat.
* NASA astronauts answer questions from on board the Space Station via YouTube

Rebecca McKinnon reports on 27 year-old blogger Zhou Shuguang, aka "Zola," whom the Chinese government have banned from leaving the country as a "potential threat to state security." Snip:

The tagline of [Zola's] blog says in English: "You never know what you can do till you try." He seems to be hitting up against the limits of what the Chinese authorities will let him do.

Zola has stirred up controversy by turning himself into a commercial brand while at the same time committing citizen journalism. He has been called many things by many people: The "nailhouse blogger." "Enfant terrible of the Chinese blogosphere." A Chinese journalist-blogger friend of mine calls him "post-modern."

Now Chinese authorities say he is "a potential threat to state security." For that reason, they barred his exit from China to Hong Kong on Sunday. He was on his way to Germany to serve as a judge for Deutsche Welle's Best of the Blogs awards.

I first learned of Zola's detention on Twitter, where he posted live updates about what was happening - which other people in his Twitter network quickly relayed across the Internet. He posted an update on his blog about the situation on Saturday afternoon, telling his readers to follow his Twitter stream for the latest developments. (A Google News search at 4pm Hong Kong time today turned up no mainstream media reports on his situation, which shows how slow the MSM has been to take advantage of the Chinese twittersphere...or they don't consider this news...)

Palestinian journalist and blogger Daoud Kuttab has an interesting essay up today about cultural ripples from Obama's election throughout the Arab world.

It seems like an appropriate enough cartoon. The depiction of the president elect Barack Obama with the US flag behind him and the bubble quoting Obama as saying the change has come to Washington. Looking up to the Obama depiction was an excited Egyptian woman congratulating the African American senator, reminding him not to forget that people around the world have been hoping and praying for his success. This was followed by the Arabic phrase uqbal inna, meaning "may the same [change] happen to us."

According to the opposition weekly Sawt al Umma, the cartoon appearing the leading Egyptian daily Al Ahram, caused a sense of an emergency among the Egyptian leadership. The independent weekly stated that 150,000 copies of the paper's first edition were quickly removed from the streets and destroyed and the "troublesome" phrase disappeared from future prints that day. The before and after cartoon depiction appeared in Sawt al Umma.

This is certainly not the first time that a political cartoon has caused powers in our region to be worried about losing their powers. But the paranoia of the Mubarak regime is a reflection of the concern by many Arab autocrats about the Obama euphoria empowering those calling for change. Obama's victory on the change mantra was not lost to people around the world yearning for political reform. Jordan's leading blogger Mohammad Omar says that the victory of the son of a Kenyan immigrant gives minorities, immigrants and unrepresented groups hope. Imagine a Palestinian who was born in Jordan fifty or sixty years ago and has tried very hard to be part of the political scene looking at the son of an immigrant in America being elected to the top executive position. The winds of hope don't stop at the American shores, Omar insists.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tokyomango posted a funny "stare down" video by a 22-year-old former supermarket cashier from Florida who "now spends a bulk of her time making YouTube videos of herself staring blankly into the camera, babbling elementary Japanese, and striking cutesy poses. Her popularity in Japan catapulted when Japanese online publication JCast wrote an article about her in January of this year." American YouTube manga girl making waves in Japan

Over on the Make blog, Phil Torrone posted a wonderful guide to chemistry sets and books from the past and present. The Chemistry gift guide - Celebrating chemistry and inspiring the next generation of chemists!

Eric Gradman, the hacker who gave us the awesome TRS-80 bluetooth hack, sent us a link to his NotPocketSimon project. This was a quick and dirty collaborative version of the Milton Bradley Simon game from the '80s that he put together in just 8 hours. He took it to the most recent Mindshare event.

...the highlight of installing this piece at Mindshare was that Nolan Bushnell who invented the damn game (originally called TouchMe at Atari) was in attendance and had nice things to say.

BTW: Eric is also part of the awesome Mutaytor circuspunk troupe. Keep an eye on them as circuspunk becomes a growing phemon (we predict).

NotPocketSimon: Collaborative Simon for Your Next Party

More:

• Simon Stabs
• Trampoline Simon
• Simon Says Christmas Wreath...
• Sing-Along Simon game

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We hereby petition the incoming Obama administration for a modest change, an immediate change that would signal a new direction for air travelers, a new freedom for frequent fliers. Here it is: recognize the need of Americans in the friendly skies to bear tools that fit in their pocket, by which we mean the ever-so useful pocket knife, also known by its brand names, the Swiss Army Knife and the Leatherman Multi-tool.

Ever since 9/11, pocket knives and their owners have been separated at airport security checkpoints everywhere, never to be reunited. According to the TSA, knives are prohibited, except "for plastic or round bladed butter knives." Who carries a butter knife in his or her pocket or purse? The TSA's unhelpful "Summer Travel Tips" says: "Pocket knives, self-defense sprays and other potential weapons are also prohibited." What a huge misunderstanding! Pocket knives are tools. If you consider them to be weapons, certainly they are Weapons of minimal Destruction (WmD).

Talk about sweating the small stuff, missing the forest for the trees, looking for love in all the wrong places. If pocket knifes are prohibited, why are nail clippers and corkscrews allowed? Why not allow an all-in-one pocket knife, which best prepares a person for any emergency? Especially, what with emergencies on the rise!

We can bring screwdrivers, wrenches and pliers under seven inches on planes but not 3-inch pocket knives. Hammers and saws are not allowed, nor are cattle prods but none of these fit in your pocket. We don't seek permission to bring an entire toolchest but we need to go places with all the tools that a good pocket knife provides. Scissors and knitting needles were once confiscated but they are now permitted. The TSA could re-classify any of these humble items as potential weapons or as useful, personal tools.

So, on behalf of readers of Make magazine, I submit this petition with high hopes that the new administration will hear our plea. Many of us have been carrying Make's imposing Warranty Voider, a branded Leatherman Squirt, and we're losing them to the TSA. The prohibition seems absurd. We should be well-equipped when we travel.

On a recent trip, I had to buy safety razor blades and batteries, and back in my hotel room I found myself in a struggle with clamshell packaging that would not submit to fingernails and teeth. I regretted not having my pocket knife handy. No, I was mad that my pocket knife was unable to join me on my trip. Then, I had a flashback to when I went through airport security, where an elderly man was pulled aside by the TSA because attached to his keychain was a small pocket knife. Obviously, he had not reviewed the list of prohibited items. The poor man was upset at first; he did not understand that he had to remove the pocket knife from his keychain. This was hard enough for him to do but he couldn't believe that he also had to turn the pocket knife over to the TSA -- for keeps -- when he finished the task. He asked the TSA why they needed his pocket knife and the uninformed officer was unable to give him a satisfying answer. I thought to myself, pitifully, that I was glad I had not accidently brought along my pitiful pocket knife. In my hotel room, I felt bad that I had not responded with more empathy to my fellow travelers plight. Maybe I should spoken up then and there.

All I could think of was that another confiscated penknife was destined for Ebay, an abundance of utility without a home. How sad! You'd think the TSA would have the good sense to re-distribute the pocket knives to the truly needy.

The TSA prides itself on trapping innocent people. Here's a story found on the TSA site from April of this year.

On the morning of April 16, security officers in Wisconsin discovered a 4.5-inch knife hidden inside a Barbie doll box in a passenger's carry-on bag. When the passenger was questioned, he said that he forgot which Barbie doll box he put the knife in and thought the box with the knife was in his checked luggage.

The passenger surrendered the knife, but had to re=book on another flight.

It's too bad Inauguration Day doesn't come earlier so that we could get this change in place for the busy holiday travel season. There's also another item on the list of prohibited items that's going to bring huge disappointment for the holidays: would you believe, Santa, that the TSA won't allow Americans to travel with snow globes in their carry-ons?

Another point to be made, although not as sharp as the others, is that many people have successfully carried pocket knifes through security without detection. Most of the time it is unintentional but they are surprised to find that the TSA didn't notice. A lot of prohibited items are not caught. I hear people bragging that water bottles go through just fine in the pockets of cargo pants. I now know that I can forget pulling out my personal toiletries, even those over 3 oz., because they go through in my carry-on without detection. I've come to rely on it. The TSA doesn't seem to notice. It's only when you're honest and declare that -- oops -- you've discovered a pocket knife on your person or in your carry-on, only then do you lose it. That's not a way to keep people honest.

So, if this tiny change is too much to ask, if we haven't made the case that pocket knives are safe and essential everyday personal items, indeed tools just like combs and toothbrushes, or like cellphones, consider quietly crafting a compromise whereby the TSA agrees that when a pocket knife passes through, the uninformed officers intentionally ignore it. Let's apply a "don't tell, don't ask" policy. I won't tell a TSA officer that I have brought my pocket knife with me and an officer won't ask me if I have one.

The new president won't even have to make this policy public but he can let us know. President Obama can give us a "wink-wink" when he names the new head of the TSA and we'll know that old policy is on its way out with Michael Chertoff and Kip Hawley. The AST thanks you in advance.

Justin and Michael come from vinyl listening parents. At some point in the last decade or so, they were pressed into dragging their folks' record collection into the digital age. Between them, they have translated hundreds of records into computer friendly formats. Here are their tips on converting music.

Justin is a great guitar player, and his father Dan has the largest record collection of any person I know. I met Dan a long time ago at a party just after he returned from a trip to Africa where he had a hand in creating a documentary recording of Radio Freedom, the communications arm of the Anti Aparthied movement.

At that time I worked at the local college radio station, which was then using the call letters WUSM, we then have an outlet for world music, so I passed it on to the reggae guys at the Roots Radical Connection. The station has since changed its call letters twice and frequency once, but still has an enormous collection of vinyl. Reggae is still on Saturdays. Dan now spins at WRIU in Rhode Island.

Anyway, enough about Justin's Father. Justin is an accomplished musician, and student at Hampshire College. They have some neat projects, one of which is an on campus recording studio. He is has worked on digitizing much of the Hampshire College student and faculty creative content and creating a web presence for it.

A few years ago while visiting, Justin was making digital copies of records in the collection. After making a recording, he was using a database to find the name of the album, titles of the songs and all kinds of stuff that would take a lot of time to enter by hand.

Justin says:

The most important part is the interface part. The one my dad uses is a cheap, puck-sized 1/8inch -> USB interface called an iMic (Griffin Tech.) which acts as a bare-bones digital preamp, boosting and translating the signal so that the computer can hear and read it. While it still functions, it's pretty archaic, and I'm sure there are some better, still cheap options out there, as well as much more expensive and complex ones.

Software wise, my dad uses Analog Ripper, which is a pretty solid Mac editor with a Track Hunter (for automatically dicing tracks by looking for spaces of silence) and decent iTunes integration. It was a little buggy at first, but it's good with updates. $20 shareware. Again, not a lot of thought went into the purchase, I went for cheap functionality and an easy system for a not-so-computer-literate baby boomer. But it's worth a look.

You can get pretty crazy with vinyl rips. Many audiophiles rip at 24 bit / 96 kHz, above the capabilities of most motherboards / sound cards, to make sure everything is captured. There's also ClickRepair software, which I believe is Windows-only. I haven't delved too deeply, as the 320kbps MP3s my dad rips sound good enough (at half CD quality) and fit on my iPod.

There are private torrent trackers which specialize in music (as well as software, books, and eLearning videos), and we're always looking for new vinyl. Some of them have databases of close to 200,000 albums, but you must upload as much as you download (which with torrents and a broadband or similar connection isn't that hard). There are also pretty decent forums with users who know a lot about digitizing vinyl.

And the word from Michael:

Ok, here are the requirements:

1) You have to really really really want the digitized copy of that vinyl, because by doing this you are about to open a black hole that will consume hours upon hours and spit out an mp3 or two.

2) Get a turntable and attach that to the best (hopefully tube) amplifier that you can find.
3) Using a 3.5mm stereo (headphone connector) to RCA (red and white) cable, connect the tape output (or whatever the output is on the amplifier) to the line in jack of your computer (usually labeled blue).

If you have to, you can use the mic in line, but that will give you grosser results, because it is usually pre-amplified.

4) Download Audacity
5) Start recording.
6) You will probably want to save to mp3 (download the LAME Mp3 codec package for audacity)
8) Add fade in's and fade out's to the beginning and end of the track.
7) At this point you have already dropped a chunk of time recording the tracks, but you will want to dump in some more time, cleaning up the pops and ticks imparted by the vinyl.

NOTES: From my experience many computers will add a really annoying background chatter to your recording.
Noise Abatement:
Grounding the heck out of everything usually helps
Find the computer with the best sound card possible
Sometimes older computers will have much nicer background noise properties (I do all of my recording on a PII HP pavilion, circa 1998) Just record on the old computer, and do the editing stuff on your super fast computer. This will allow you to multi task, with out the risk of destroying the song you are actively recording.

The time thing is the biggest problem, but definitely figure out how to do everything. The challenge of setting up a decent recording setup and dealing with noise is a really fun issue, and you will learn a lot in the process. Then when you know how to do everything move on to the next project.

P.S. If you buy the cable you are a pansy!! Make the cable yourself from dump-score components. (and shield the heck out of it while you are at it. I.e. wrap it in conductive material, and ground that to everything else)

I hope this helps,
Michael

So, have you got a bunch of black gold sitting in custom built cabinets in your parents house like I do? Are they getting eager to have your old record collection moved along so they can change their address to a place with fewer stairs and simpler upkeep? Did you work in college radio during the good old days of punk, new wave, techno or grunge when we could put a needle down on the record at the last second and still have it sound like we weren't winging it? Want to hear your old 45's or bootlegs? Digitize up your stuff and tell of your techniques in the comments!

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I understand Maker Faire Austin is done and gone, but I'm still thinking about how much fun it was. Over the next week or 2, I'll continue to share some highlights from the most make-tastic event Austin's ever seen.

Thanks to Austin Underground for this great video highlighting some of the more interesting vehicular creations at Maker Faire:

They've also made a highlight reel of the instruments on display:

More will be coming; check out their channel over the next few weeks to see more great footage!

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Huge POV (Persistence of vision) via Hackaday.



You can of course make your own version, maybe a little less "dangerous" using the POV kit we have in the Maker Shed store - propeller not included.

Science & the City / New York Academy of Sciences has a few seats left for their upcoming event "The Science of the Five Senses" - if you're in NYC check it out!

In this stimulating series, scientists at the cutting edge of sense research team up with cultural icons - including a gourmand, an illusionist, a filmmaker, and a songstress - to excite each of our senses and explain the science behind your responses.

Featured in The New York Times
"At the New York Academy of Sciences, researchers and artists will team up to explore this new research in a series of talks called Science of the Five Senses. Their conversations will raise a question for the amateur hedonist: If we had a better understanding of the signals our bodies send to our brains, might we take more pleasure from them?"

A Rose by Any Other Name: The Science of Smell
How does a particular scent conjure a memory in your mind? How does the brain interpret olfactory signals for food, danger, or potential mating partners? The head of Rockefeller University's Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior, Leslie Vosshall, and Avery Gilbert, the author of a new book on the sense of smell, explain.

See What You've Been Missing: The Science of Vision
Leading cognitive neuroscientist and visual perception expert Christof Koch (the research partner of the late Francis Crick) reveals the shortcomings of human sight, and sleight-of-hand artist Apollo Robbins demonstrates how readily the eye and mind are tricked.

Test Your Tongue: The Science of Taste
Eating and food have become two of the most popular lifestyle topics of our culture. At this event, smell and taste researcher Linda Bartoshuk and New York Times food columnist Harold McGee look at our understanding of the science of taste and the chemical underpinnings of flavors, foods, beverages, and other edibles.

What is Music to Your Ears? The Science of Hearing
McGill University music perception expert Daniel Levitin and Grammy-winning singer Rosanne Cash explain how the brain processes aural information and how our perception of sounds can inspire emotion. Cash will also give a live musical performance during this spectacular final senses event.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ok gang, here it is the largest collection of DIY Thanksgiving projects on the web from MAKE past and present - from how-to make a paper turkey, to how to fry one up, a real one that is...

First up, how-to on frying a turkey. Check out the comments and cautions for lots of good advices/tips.

Underwriters Laboratories has some background on why they don't certify turkey fryers along with scary photos & video --

"A longtime food favorite in the southern United States, the delicious deep-fried turkey has quickly grown in popularity thanks to celebrity chefs such as Martha Stewart and Emeril Lagasse. While some people rave about this tasty creation, Underwriters Laboratories Inc.'s (UL) safety experts are concerned that backyard chefs may be sacrificing safety for good taste.

"We're worried by the increasing reports of fires related with turkey fryer use," says John Drengenberg, UL consumer affairs manager. "Based on our test findings, the fryers used to produce those great-tasting birds are not worth the risks. And, as a result of these tests, UL has decided not to certify any turkey fryers with our trusted UL Mark."

Still want to fry a turkey? Check out Alton Brown's Turkey Derrick - "Ask any professional fire fighter - they'll tell you -- every Thanksgiving they answer a slew of emergency calls... Maybe you've seen the videos of decks or houses going up in flames because of careless turkey frying? After some thinking, sketching, a few trips to the hardware store... the Turkey Derrick was invented as an ideal way to intelligently and safely fry a bird. Download the instructions to construct the derrick and fry the bird".

Here's a "kit" for turkey frying, also can fry 3 chickens at once (Jake) ... - $100:

"Bayou Classic Stainless Steel Cookware is the premium choice for those who demand the highest quality products for their outdoor cooking needs. The 30-Quart polished Stainless Steel Stockpot allows you to fry a whole turkey in as little as 45 minutes. With the included Skewer Set, this item transforms into a Gourmet Chicken Fryer, making it possible to fry 3 chickens in 20 minutes! The Stainless Perforated Basket is perfect for boiling seafood, crawfish, clams, and vegetables."

How Stuff Works has an uber collection of all things Thanksgiving-related, from stain removal to how pop timers work.

Make Your Own Turkey Plans!

Make Your Own Thanksgiving Turkey ... (M4V).

Thanksgiving Turkey-Making Instructions (including the 3D turkey PDF!!).

Made: Paper Turkey

Hack the Paper Turkey

HOW TO - Handprint Turkey Softie

A smoked turkey with an IP address...

HOW TO - Turkey Treats

HOW TO - Turkey Pops

Turkey baster head mounted musical instrument

Four Thanksgiving Knitting Patterns ...

Interview with a turkey fryer

HOW TO - Harvest a turkey

Making a thermocouple (measure turkey temperature)

Hah, this is awesome - a teaching assistant for a Psych class adds an extra page to an exam and says "draw a turkey" - here are the results, hundreds of hand-drawn turkeys (scanned, posted to Flickr)....

• 9 hungry folks drew a cooked Butterball turkey
• 5 had their turkey saying "eat me!" ... but 6 had the turkey protest "don't eat me!"
• 17 turkeys were gobble, gobble-ing
• 21 wished a Happy Thanksgiving
• 8 wore a hat
• 108 were "left handed" ... 72 were "right handed" ... although I counted freehand-drawn hands too, and wasn't very exact about how I chose some of the blobbier ones

Here's a useful Excel sheet you can use to calculate how much stuff you'll need to buy for Thanksgiving... Spacejockey writes - "Shopping calculator that will present a complete Thanksgiving shopping list, and how much to cook of each menu item, after just entering a few variables." - Link.

I happen to have Excel on this computer, but it should work in OpenOffice too...


Did we miss anything? Post up in the comments!

Kevin sent in this neat bicycle light made from a recycled Parmesan cheese container. This would make a great addition to a lot of the DIY bike lights that we have featured on Make. [Thanks Kevin]

This page describes the construction of a universal bike light battery with eight "C" cell rechargeable NiMh batteries. It is made from a Parmesan cheese container which is strong, lightweight, splash proof, dust proof, fits in a water bottle cage, and allows for complete serviceability of the batteries. High performance NiMh cells can raise the capacity of this unit to as much as 10,000 mAh.

More about the Universal Bike Light Battery

More:

HOW TO - Make a LED Bike light system

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The game this time was to write verse poetry about one or more recurrent Boing Boing obsessions, with the winner to receive a Gears of War 2 Special Edition Zune 120 GB. Readers responded with a thread over two hundred messages long that's full of charming, surprising, and even impressive poetry. And if you don't read the whole thing, you have only yourself to blame.

Picking the winner was tough. At great effort and expense, I brought in the head of the science fiction line at the world's largest English-language science fiction publishing house to help me judge it, but it was still hard to narrow the choice down to a single poem. Nevertheless … (picks up envelope) … the winner is:

SpatulaLilacs @41, "Sestina of a Reluctant Copyfighter." Which, O my word, is a rigidly formal sestina that maintains both natural language and perfect iambic pentameter while developing a coherent argument about copyright issues.

That's something you don't see every day.

Sestina of a Reluctant Copyfighter

I download stuff. Not all of it is "free" --
Or meant to be, at least. But people share.
It's all right if you take what I create.
I'd never copy-shackle my own art.
I have a hankering for the obscure,
And I will stay obscure as well, by rights.

I know, of course, i haven't got the right:
no "information-wanting-to-be-free"
or any other jargon can obscure
the fact that when we, as we put it, "share,"
we replicate another person's art.
Are copies something I should not create?

But in the past, we couldn't just create;
the learnéd men who scribbled out our rights
did not foresee this replicable art,
which makes another of itself for free.
And if they did, why tell us not to share?
Conspiracy? Some purpose more obscure?

I know, the artist's needs are not "obscure."
But I don't see the people who create
receiving, from the middle-man, their share --
they've all too often signed away their rights,
and found themselves endeavoring for free
to do a deed that's less and less an art.

But certainly this isn't all of art;
just most of art that isn't so obscure.
The margins (blesséd margins!) leave you free,
uncensored and unhindered, to create.
But on the margin, who protects your rights?
Forget your rights. Embrace your fanbase. Share.

If just a thousand, seeing that you share,
decide they love you and they love your art,
then you won't need to sweat about your rights.
You can be happy, healthy, and obscure,
as long as you remember to create
at least a couple things that aren't free.

So free your mind before you grab your share.
Don't litigate, just go create some art!
And let the lawyers sort obscurer rights.

JustKristin @28, "We heard a crunch before it died." Emily Dickinson does tech support. (You should get a look at Kristin's other pastiches. She has a fine ear.)

Olof @29: Boing Boing does Jabberwock, or possibly Jabberwock does Boing Boing.

Cloudform @74, "Annabel LED." A popular favorite, and definitely one of the poems that made it hard to pick a single winner.

Madeley @80, "Web Zen." A small but very cute pantoum. (Note: Be impressed. Pantoums are hard, like villanelles only more so.)

Rachelboing @84: a sonnet on feet.

Lumi the Valiant @85, "The Charge of the Boing Boingers," with muttered apologies to Tennyson.

ELloyd74 @114 had the sleekest rhymes.

TDawwg @113 argued with me, elegantly, in "A Poetickall Epistle Direckted at Our Moderator By Way of Metrickall Clarification."

HKDailo @130 rapped, inventively.

Jfaehnle @168, "Sex-Bot Villanelle; or, VW5yZXF1aXRlZCBMb3Zl.".

Other notables achievements:

Props to David Carroll @43, for constructing a crossword puzzle (and later, posting the solution).

Props also to Shutz, at various points in the thread, for doing some real thinking about future games.

As was only appropriate for a competition that started on 11/11, we got three notable pastiches of famous war poems: Mel Rodriguez @50 did Wilfred Owens' "Dulce et Decorum Est"; Jazzbo @134 did John Gillespie Magee's "High Flier"; and TaoArt @150 did John McCrae's "In Flanders Fields."

Some of the best poems in the thread were written by first-time commenters. I don't yet have a complete list of them, so I'll put that in the comment thread.

Kieran O'Neill @142, "Your country's gender disjunction," was the best poem written as a comment in a current thread. Second place in that category goes to MXJohnson @132 for From "Your shoe is jacked into my eye" and "Call to makers: woman wants webcam to replace lost eye".

Oskar @33 is to be commended for his presentation, and his attitude. Entertaining your readers by showing off really well is at the heart of the game.

Triscuit @72 wrote the best haiku.

Foetusnail @187 wins for Most Improved. Second place for Most Improved: JanusNode @151, "Ode to Boing Boing."

Frazbin @202, for the tidiest poem on the least hygienic subject.

MinTphresh @91 and @183, for spiritual truth.

Other poems that a different judge might have scored higher:

TangoBrain @152, "Encryptus." :: Chriziem @141, Chriziem @141, "Steampunk Elegy." :: Jmanooch @167, "Carousel: On a Reading of Boing Boing." :: Aila @158, "Guerrilla Gardener." :: MFGG @48, a panegyric sonnet. :: CK @87, who is funny and accurate. :: Mr. Orion @104, who is also fun to read, and would undoubtedly have scored higher if he'd labeled his work as a haiku sequence rather than a series of one-offs. :: Deviant @107's heroic quatrains about a boy and his sexbot making a stand against the zombie apocalypse. :: Boba Fett Diop @111 doing Lucas via Homer via Richmond Lattimore. :: WillAlex @173, a zombie sonnet. :: Met Ower @131, "Lurker Lament."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Exploratorium site has a section on cooking science - I found some neat info there about the science of sugar and a recipe for making rock candy.

The white stuff we know as sugar is sucrose, a molecule composed of 12 atoms of carbon, 22 atoms of hydrogen, and 11 atoms of oxygen (C12H22O11). Like all compounds made from these three elements, sugar is a carbohydrate. It's found naturally in most plants, but especially in sugarcane and sugar beets--hence their names. Sucrose is actually two simpler sugars stuck together: fructose and glucose. In recipes, a little bit of acid (for example, some lemon juice or cream of tartar) will cause sucrose to break down into these two components.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

?This physical version of an MRI scan is built with 60, 1-inch wooden cubes of which 94 of the outside faces are varnished and the 266 internal faces feature a square slice of the MRI. Pretty interesting way of visualizing the body in physical space.

via Info Aesthetics

From the MAKE Flickr photo pool

Evilsigntist retrofitted a trumpet with Guitar Hero controller hardware - plus added a breath-controlled switch made from parts from a car air system! Check the photo's notes for more info - guitar hero controler trumpet

More:

Jug Hero @ Maker Faire

From the pages of MAKE:


21st-Century Keytars MAKE:15, p.56 - Subscribers, read this article now in our digital edition

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Make a device that identifies dangerous liquids by analyzing light - By Eric Rosenthal...

After air travel security banned bottled water and baby formula, I began wondering why they didn’t use a device to determine the contents of liquids. If a liquid was detected to be safe, security could allow it on the plane. Spectrometers can identify the chemical makeup of a material by shining light on it and analyzing the precise mix of colors that bounce back.

CDM points out this video demo of and iPod Touch running TouchOSC software alongside a Novation keyboard controller. Much more than a novelty, some of these new apps from independent developers can add much needed enhancement to a pre-existing setup. The ITM suite of MIDI applications also come to mind as potentially quite useful. [via Create Digital Music]

Make your own hot sauce... via Lifehacker.

Makers, have a recipe? Post up in the comments!

Kits For The Holidays (hot sauce) - MAKE 04.

The "Speed Fit" is a human powered treadmill system that allows you to run on a stationary platform while your motion drives a small electric powered gear system below to actually propel you across a flat surface. This might be the 2000s version of the Flintstone's car although we wonder why they are not just running on the pavement itself?

Mr. Book sent in his strategy for controlling Arduino from a MIDI controller through Processing -

My implementation uses a single DAC IC chip, the MCP4921, which sells for about 2 bucks from Mouser. The current version uses the Arduino, only to read one byte, as a midi note, from the serial connection and sends that to the SX-150. I could have created the full midi circuit to make it a standalone solution, but that increases the cost and complexity of the physical connections. I'll probably do that on a later revision.

So, in order to receive midi data, I wrote a small Processing sketch that receives midi, and sends the note information through the serial port to the Arduino.

More:

HOW TO - control a Gakken SX-150 via MIDI

SX-150 Analog Synthesizer Kit

Bare Bones Arduino Board Kit (Unassembled)

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Mark Soppeland created a series of "Light Sculptures" that he posted on his website. It looks like he uses a lot of found objects in his work. Check out the link for a lot more pieces in the collection.

More about Light sculptures by Mark Soppeland

This is an interesting DC motor controller that uses a MOSFET H-Bridge with AVR ATmega8 micro controller. This looks like a nice start to powering your next robot project.

Here is a very simple project of controlling a small DC-motor (taken from an old personal cassette player) with ATmega8. The ATmega8 is having three PWM channels, out of which two are used here. PWM waveforms are fed to MOSFET (RFD3055) H-bridge.

More about Simple PWM DC motor control with an AVR

In the Maker Shed:


MotorShield for Arduino Kit

Brooke Stanton is the event coordinator of the Duxbury Art Association's 36th annual Craft Showcase. On the evening before the weekend show, she explains a bit about the juried showcase that includes craftspeople from across New England.

The DAA Craft Showcase is open Saturday November 22, 2008 from 10 am to 5pm and Sunday November 23rd from 11 am to 4pm. The event is in the gym and cafeteria of Duxbury High School in Duxbury Mass.

Michael Pflüger makes interesting mechanical works or art. The website has a lot more pieces in the "machinery" gallery, including a few videos.

More about Michael Pfluger

Each week we all hear stories about the "good ole' days"of science, engineering and chemistry - decades ago kids had chemistry sets, made rockets, we invested in science everywhere - we were heading to the moon.

We can't live in the past though - only build on it, the best days of science are not behind us folks, they're ahead of us! - It's is up to all of us to do something about it, I don't know about you but I want to live through a "golden age" of science, it can start now. We are what we celebrate - if we celebrate reality-tv show "stars" and Britney Spears, that's what we'll get - if we celebrate all the cool things scientists, engineers and chemists do, we'll get our next generation of rock stars - and by that I mean geologists and astronomers :)

Each year at MAKE we put together a few gift guides: open source hardware, electronics, science, wood working and this year we've added chemistry. Before we dive in to *the* chemistry gift guide - here are some excerpts as well as an interesting look back at one Christmas morning by Robert Bruce Thompson, author of The Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments All Lab, No Lecture.

It was a Lionel/Porter/Chemcraft chemistry set, and the exact model I'd asked for. The biggest one, with dozens of chemicals and hundreds of experiments. Glassware, an alcohol lamp, a balance, even a centrifuge. Everything I needed to do real chemistry. I instantly forgot about the rest of my presents, even the BB gun. I started reading the manual, jumping from one experiment to another. I carefully examined each of the chemical bottles. The names of the chemicals were magical. Copper sulfate, sodium carbonate, sulfur, cobalt chloride, logwood, potassium ferricyanide, ferrous ammonium sulfate, and dozens more.

I used the balance to weigh something for the ? rst time. I put an object in one of the balance pans and carefully added weights to the other pan until the needle was centered. As I was about to jump on to something else, my dad brought me to a screeching halt. "Write it down," he said. "A scientist records what he observes. If you don't work methodically and write down what you observe, you're not a scientist. You're just playing around." I've been recording my observations ever since.

I soon lost interest in the other gifts, but getting that chemistry set was a life-changing experience. My mother told me years later that she and my dad had hoped that the chemistry set would hold my interest for at least a few weeks. As it turned out, it held my interest a bit longer. With my dad's help, I built a chemistry workbench in the basement, and later a photographic darkroom. I scrounged equipment and chemicals from every source I could think of, and saved up for things that required cash. I spent every spare moment in that lab, and went on to major in chemistry in college and graduate school. Even now, more than 40 years later, I have a chemistry lab in the basement. It's a much better lab than the one I had back in the 1960s, but the work habits I learned then stand me in good stead now.

What I experienced that Christmas morning was repeated in millions of other homes through the years as boys (and, alas, only a few girls) opened their first chemistry sets. From the 1930s through the 1960s, chemistry sets were among the most popular Christmas gifts, selling in the millions. It's said that in the 1940s and 1950s there was a chemistry set in nearly every household where there was a child. Even as late as the 1970s, chemistry sets remained popular and were on display in every toy store and department store. And then something bad happened. By the 1980s, chemistry sets had become a dying breed. Few stores carried them, and most of those sets that remained available were pale shadows of what chemistry sets had been back in the glory days.

Chemistry Experiment Kit 3000
Give the gift that will make our next generation of chemists possible! CHEM C3000 is the ultimate chemistry kit. Start with fun experiments to learn basic chemistry principles, then build a strong foundation with exposure to a broad range of chemical phenomena and hands-on lab experience. Pair this with our Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry.
Price: $199.95 (On sale, you save $40)

Let's dive in, keep reading!

There are some of my favorite posts from the CRAFT blog this week:

• Motherboard Dishtowel Embroidery
  
• Birdseed Skull
• Frank Lloyd Wright Embroidery
  
• Yarn Performance Video by Jeanne Jo
  
• Manbroidery Pool on Flickr
  
• Big Ideas For Decorating Big Wall Space
  
• Felt Club in the LA Times
  

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Discovered by a woman who was walking a trail, the Baldwin Acrosonic piano, model number 987, is intact -- and, apparently, in tune.

The piano was at the end of a dirt road, near a walking path to a footbridge in the middle of conservation land near the Cape.

Mystery piano in woods perplexes police

"Little Brother" auf Deutsch (Thanks, Christian!)

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