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From the MAKE Flickr photo pool
While visiting family over Thanksgiving I witnessed this device in use - "Mark's Magic Box" displays song lyrics and note changes to simplify band rehearsals. The setup uses a laptop + LCD for storage and display - controlled via foot-pedal which was built from a mouse and housed in a handmade metal enclosure. A teleprompter for music - very cool!
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On O'Reilly Radar, Joshua-Michele Ross has an interview with the always-original and thought-provoking Kevin Kelly. The discussion covers various topics related to biology, technology, and net-connected culture. As Josh says:
This last section (at 7mins 30 secs) is the deepest and most provocative. Kevin assumes the point of view of technology to assess its needs and wants. This line of inquiry leads to some surprising conclusions. My favorite quote from the conversation: "We are the sexual organs of technology" Indeed.
I really like the observation that, unlike biology, technology is almost impossible to make extinct, and that it's hard to find any technologies from the past that aren't still being used in some fashion today. For instance, there are more human beings making arrow heads today, Kevin claims, than were making them in pre-historic times.
"Technology is the 7th Kingdom of Life" - A conversation with Kevin Kelly
More:
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Get four volumes of CRAFT year two, combined in a special edition collector's box! CRAFT: The 2nd Year includes volume 5, volume 6, volume 7, and volume 8 and is now for sale in the Maker Shed.
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Sakura Koshimizu's waveform jewelry uses actual audio as its source -
Waveform Series is the laser-cut shapes of the waveform of the sound in sound editing software environment. I used some human sound such as yawn, atchoum, giggle, wow, and the sound of church bell.- Waveform Series Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Crafts | Digg this!
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In 1986, I had a meeting with Guy Kawasaki when he worked at Apple. I showed him an early version of one of our products, we had thrown the kitchen sink into it, every half-baked R&D idea, cause our company was failing and this was our last chance. One idea intrigued him. He said everyone at Apple was hand-designing foils to print on Laserwriters (they were new then). He took a piece of paper and drew a box around one of our pages, and asked if we could do that. Of course we could, and we did, and we immediately sold 1K copies of the product for Apple people, but more importantly, they were so excited by it, they in turn sold many more thousands to their customers, and our company went from being in the brink of shutting down to gushing cash. All because (drum roll) we listened to a user. Ask Guy if you don't believe me, he's on Twitter.
Every professional performer always does the same thing at exactly the same moment in every show they do. What I like are things that are different every time. That's why I like amateurs.-- Andy Warhol
What Andy Warhol said about professionals vs. amateurs is true not just in theatre, but in lots of DIY pursuits such as brewing your own beer. Homebrew is better because each time it's different.
The beer that you buy is made by pros with the goal of replicating the same recipe each time; the same ingredients, the same process, the same consistent result. If you make your own beer, you can forget the same-old, same-old. In fact, it's rather hard to brew the same exact thing each time following home-made processes. As an amateur, you get to enjoy these small but noticeable differences. Homebrew has its own design goals, mainly exploring lots of variations that allow you to see how different beers can be. For instance, we've used fresh hops that I've grown when they're in season; we can dry the hops for use later in the year. We'll also buy hops from the brewing supply store.
I've got a setup for all-grain brewing at home and it takes about six hours to get a batch ready for fermentation. In the photo below, you can see the underlying IPA recipe and my notes outlining the steps. The notes help me structure the process and remember to do everything I need to do. I also use the notes to record times and other measurements.
The photo at right is next-to-last step, siphoning the cooled-down brew into a 7-gallon glass carboy. We'll add yeast and the fermentation will start. It takes several days for the sugars to be converted into alcohol. I like to check on the batch and see this vigorous activity up-close.
Brewing is fun to do with a group of people. The brew room, like a workshop, becomes a hangout and you get to talking while you're doing something. My daughter's fiance, Ryan, is learning to brew along with me. Ryan understands much more of the science behind brewing. We made a tasty Pumpkin Ale for Thanksgiving. Yesterday, we started a batch of light-colored German-style beer, which we'll eventually bottle for holiday presents.
More serious home-brewers try to perfect a recipe and repeat it each time, especially those who enter competitions. But not everyone needs to have that goal. To cite a phrase made popular by Perl programmers, there's more than one way to do it. That's what makes homebrew so interesting.
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With the Thanksgiving turkey behind us, here's something else you don't eat regularly: meaty balls. Check out The Testicle Cookbook: Cooking with Balls by Serbian chef, Ljubomir Erovic. This multimedia cookbook tells you how to peel and slice animal testicles to make such wonders as Testicle Pizza - just add your own toppings!
Wouldn't you know *it* tastes like chicken. But *it* works like Viagra!
Ever since I was a little boy I listened to the elderly talking about testicles, when well prepared and cooked, can stimulate sexual activities. It seemed funny and stupid to me then, until as a grown up man I tasted delicious goulash at a party sometime at the end of the ‘80s. I was told that it was a rabbit goulash. I couldn’t sleep that very night because I became incredibly aroused and felt a real ``charge of positive energy`` that I had to use somehow. I had never experienced anything like that before.Gentlemen, don't be squeamish, fire up the barbie and invite the neighbors over. See what kind of positive energy you can cook up at home.The next day, after the wild night, I found out from a friend that the dish we ate was testicle goulash. I suddenly realized that it could be a great way to help the sexually troubled ones and through the cooking contests discover the strongest aphrodisiac to conquer the world. The way to better sexual life through food and not drugs is the idea that keeps running through my mind.
If I had to choose one recipe from my book and recommend it to someone who's eating testicle meat for the first time it would have to be Erovic Style Goulash with Stallion or Bulls Testicles. This is because Stallion and Bulls testicles are the tastiest, and the combination of flavours works best with the testicle meat. It also happens to be my favourite recipe, which I created myself!
Like every other meat, testicles taste differently depending on which animal they come from. But in general it is quite similar to other white meats, and once it is cooked a lot of people think it is actually chicken!
From Erovic's introduction to the Ball Cup, the Testicle Cooking Championship.
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I don't generally do a lot of food posts over here, but I thought this was really clever - love noodles, but getting bored with your same old combinations? Consult the Noodlr, the noodle soup idea generator cooked up by Serious Eater Michele Humes. Via Angry Chicken
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Photo credit: Elizabeth Hanson-Smith
Education isn’t only about creating employees. It’s about empowering individuals to become individuals with the ability to manage effectively the increasingly faster transformations of a complex world like ours.
This is why, one should measure education by looking at how tangibly such goal is achieved rather than by measuring the number of tested and certified students the school system is capable of producing. True education, when successful, must essentially prepare its students for dealing with greater and more complex problems. But not those served in a neat and sanitized math test, but rather those emerging from the clash of the multidisciplinary realities we inhabit.
Learning how to handle uncertainty, as well as how to rapidly adapt to fast changing environments is the real blockbuster formula to an education approach that provides the mental tools to cope with whatever can come your way, rather than pre-emptying you with static notions and arid, reality-isolated formulas..
Here all the details:
Over the last 12 weeks, Stephen Downes and I have facilitated a course on Connectivism and Connective Knowledge. The final “project” for enrolled participants is to reflect on the quality of their own learning networks.
Wendy Drexler has posted a video of her final project that is (deservedly) getting significant attention: Connectivism: Networked Learner (also available on YouTube)
I received an email recently asking for my definition of emerging technologies for learning. To enlarge the conversation, I asked the question on Twitter. The following are responses:
Dave Snowden is well-known in the knowledge management field. He has been kind enough in the past to present to online conferences that we have hosted at University of Manitoba (most recently, our Future of Education conference). Over the last few years, his writings / presentations have taken a turn that very much fits in with concepts presented in this forum and in CCK08.
Dave started blogging about two years ago, but I’ve been following his work through his publications and contributions to ACT-KM. I could be imagining things, but his shift to blogging seems to coincide with his increased attention to the fragmentary nature of information.
Distributed conversations, not packaged as they have been in the past through frameworks such as articles and books, in blogs provide an interesting experience in personal sensemaking.
In a recent presentation (.pdf of slides - why not slideshare?… podcast is here), Dave details seven principles of KM, including: “Tolerated failure imprints learning better than success.”
Click the image to go to the interface page
OECD has been learning from Hans Rosling and Gapminder. In order to make their data more accessible, they’ve created (or had someone create) an application for visualizing data.
I personally prefer gapminder’s interface, but OECD’s contribution is appreciated. If data is made more accessible it will be used more often as a guide for decision making (he says in his most idealistic voice).
Microsoft has been a favorite source of mockery for all the cool web 2.0?ers.
Microsoft is seen as too closed, too confined to the desktop, too late to search, and too out of touch with how people want to compute. In the face of this criticism, Microsoft continues to attempt a transformation - Personal Reboot: Web-Centric, But Beyond “The Cloud”: “Cloud computing may be trendy, but Ozzie says MSFT’s best course moving forward is a hybrid desktop/Web-based strategy… future success hinges on new products that win over the masses instantly.”
Short rant. Articles like - Education needs to be pulled into the 21st century - cause many educators to smile and nod in agreement.
The report broadly splashes all the latest and coolest terms that cause sensible educators to viciously agree: “In an increasingly complex and competitive world, teachers must understand technology and connect coursework to the global economy, curricula should eliminate less relevant material and incorporate modern skills such as global awareness, technology and media literacy, and standardized tests must include these new subjects”.Ok. That’s very nice. We are then treated with the typical mis-focused comment: “I hope to encourage policymakers to better equip our graduates for today’s and tomorrow’s jobs”. Education isn’t only about creating employees. It’s about assisting individuals to develop into the types of people that can tackle and handle the continual gyrations of a complex world. I don’t buy into the “education must prepare people for jobs that don’t yet exist” view. Education - as it always has - must prepare people for an unknown future. This isn’t new. When I was going to school, the particular job that I have today did not exist. How should we prepare people for, let’s say, the current financial crisis? By training people to be stockbrokers? No. You can’t prepare people for black swans. People must be capable of handling uncertainty, but also adapting as environments shift and change. At its most basic, education must move from epistemology to ontology. Getting back to the report: give us something useful. Statements as broad as those provided in the article (i.e. “develop new programs, standards, partnerships and assessment measures”) are hardly a basis for action. Perhaps it’s time that we stop focusing on what our curriculum is and start focusing on how we actually do curriculum in the first place.
We’ve experienced this in CCK08: Systems for Supportive Open Teaching: “I think it more valuable to think about how openness changes the basic praxis of teaching from an essentially individual activity to a shared activity.”But, as we’ve discovered, openness may produced shared activity at some levels (students helping each other, taking on leadership roles, connecting to others outside of the course, etc). Open teaching is really best seen as open learning. When we learn in transparent ways, we become teachers. But not everyone wants to learn in open ways. In CCK08, we had numerous participants who did not contribute by posting or commenting. Instead, they observed / lurked. They did not contribute in the way we would have expected. Lack of direct participation does not mean they didn’t learn - at least that’s what some participants have expressed here. Open teaching, therefore, means also rethinking our expectations of engagement. We simply can’t control students the way we have done in classroom environments. Open teaching will become a rather shallow concept if we bring too much of closed-classrooms to the process.
Grassroots activities in incorporating technology into teaching and learning goes a long way. Due to the current design of the education system, grassroots activities keep bumping up against barriers.
However, initiatives like this one in Minnesota will become more common: “To expand access, increase technology skills, provide exciting and inspiring course content, and maximize efficiency and use of taxpayer resources, Governor Tim Pawlenty and Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) Board of Trustees Chair David Olson today announced a goal to have 25 percent of all MnSCU credits earned through online courses by 2015.”It’s a start. I’d like to hear more about how they’re planning to develop the faculty to actually teach the online courses… and how they’re redesigning the existing education system to ensure that they aren’t only transferring content online, but that they are actually transforming the learning experience to utilize the affordances of the medium.
Google is experimenting with search. Basic idea: when you’re signed in to your Google account, you’ll see the option of voting results up / down and to add comments to results. This doesn’t (yet) impact the results others see. It’s supposed to help personalize search.
Results are mixed.
To learn more about George Siemens and to access extensive information and resources on elearning check out www.elearnspace.org. Explore also George Siemens connectivism site for resources on the changing nature of learning and check out his new book "Knowing Knowledge".
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GeekDad Holiday Gift Guide #4: GeekMoms!
Mom needs presents too! The GeekDads have come up their best holiday gift ideas for GeekMoms.
Hey You Guuuuyyyys! A New Electric Company Starts in January!
Once upon a time, before he became a brilliant movie actor with an Oscar and dozens of films under his belt, Morgan Freeman was known to a generation of children as the Easy Reader, Count Dracula, and hosts of other characters on The Electric Company. Starting in January, an entirely new generation of kids will get their own version of the show, being developed by Sesame Workshop and to be shown on PBS Kids as part of their Raising Readers effort.
Dwarven Forge Hammers Out the Boredom of Plain-Jane RPG Battlemaps
If you head out to your Friendly Local Game Store and observe the tabletop gamer in his or her natural habitat, you'll see that every gaming table is different. Some gamemasters are hunkered behind laptops, others are peeking over their screens. At one table, the clatter of dice is constant, while at the next, it's all about roleplay and the dice still haven't left their pouches.
Geekly Reader - "The Radioactive Boy Scout" by Ken Silverstein
David Hahn was a geeky kid growing up in the suburbs of Detroit during the early 1990's. Like most geeky kids, he was socially awkward and had an intense fascination with very narrow subject matter; in his case, science. But when David began working on his Atomic Energy Merit Badge, his rather obsessive pursuits nearly lead to an environmental disaster.
10 Geeky Movies That Were Terrible, but We Loved Them Anyway
What were the movies whose thin plot, or poor acting still won us over because they developed a level of geek credibility through excellent referencing, humor or attention to obscure details?
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Don't miss the rest of the posts: kids' stuff, fiction, gadgets and comics. Tomorrow I'll wrap it up with DVDs and CDs.
Good Calories, Bad Calories
(Gary Taubes)
Gary Taubes, whose NYT article on Atkins rekindled the low-carb eating movement, sums up his reserarch on low-carb eating
Original Boing Boing post
Transit Maps of the World
(Mark Ovenden)
Sheer subway-porn
Original Boing Boing post
Magic and Showmanship: A Handbook for Conjurers
(Henning Nelm)
Classic book about conjuring has many lessons for writers
Original Boing Boing post
Laika
(Nick Abadzis)
Graphic novel tells the sweet and sad story of the first space-dog
Original Boing Boing post
Mutter Museum Historic Medical Photographs
(Laura Lindgren)
Haunting book of Victorian pathological curiosities
Original Boing Boing post
Realityland: True-Life Adventures at Walt Disney World
(David Koenig)
The secret history of Walt Disney World
Original Boing Boing post
In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
(Michael Pollan)
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Original Boing Boing post
Clear and to the Point: 8 Psychological Principles for Compelling PowerPoint Presentations
(Stephen M. Kosslyn)
Cognitive science vs. crappy PowerPoint slides
Original Boing Boing post
Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
(Clay Shirky)
Clay Shirky's masterpiece
Original Boing Boing post
The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism
(Matt Mason)
To get rich off pirates, copy them
Original Boing Boing post
Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found
(Suketu Mehta)
Exhausting and beautiful love-note to Mumbai
Original Boing Boing post
Urawaza: Secret Everyday Tips and Tricks from Japan
(Lisa Katayama)
Make Magazine meets Hints From Heloise by way of postwar Japan
Original Boing Boing post
China Shakes the World: A Titan's Rise and Troubled Future -- and the Challenge for America
(James Kynge)
Book captures the grand sweep of changes in the most populous nation on Earth
Original Boing Boing post
Punk House: Interiors in Anarchy
(Abby Banks, Timothy Findlen, Thurston Moore)
Communal homes of the anarcho-syndicalist lifestyle
Original Boing Boing post
The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need
(Daniel H. Pink)
Optimistic and iconoclastic career guide in manga form
Original Boing Boing post
Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture
(DJ Spooky)
Essays on the future of music edited by DJ Spooky
Original Boing Boing post
Arts, Inc.: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights
(Bill Ivey)
How the DMCA, Clear Channel and copyright extension are killing culture
Original Boing Boing post
The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It
(Jonathan Zittrain)
How to save the Internet from the Internet
Original Boing Boing post
The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey
(Emmanuel Goldstein)
Best of 2600 Magazine anthology
Original Boing Boing post
A People's History of American Empire
(Howard Zinn)
Fantastic comic-book adaptation of Zinn's classic A People's History of the United States
Original Boing Boing post
Secrets of the Mouse: An Unofficial Behind-the-Scenes Guide to Disneyland Park
(Alan Joyce)
Insider Disneyland guide
Original Boing Boing post
Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School
(John Medina)
Oliver Sacks meets GETTING THINGS DONE
Original Boing Boing post
My Mother Wears Combat Boots: A Parenting Guide for the Rest of Us
(Jessica Mills)
Kick-ass punk-parenting book
Original Boing Boing post
True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society
(Farhad Manjoo)
The science, history and economics of self-deception
Original Boing Boing post
The Quirks & Quarks Guide to Space: 42 Questions (and Answers) About Life, the Universe, and Everything
(Jim Lebans)
Bite-sized answers to the massive questions of inquisitive astronomical ponderers
Original Boing Boing post
Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future
(Cory Doctorow)
Collection of my infamous articles, essays, and polemics. championing free speech and universal access to information
Original Boing Boing post
The Baby Sleep Solution: A Proven Program to Teach Your Baby to Sleep Twelve Hours a Night
(Suzy Giordano)
The best parenting book I've read
Original Boing Boing post
How Children Learn
(John Holt)
Cllassic of human, kid-centered learning
Original Boing Boing post
The Hungry Scientist Handbook: Electric Birthday Cakes, Edible Origami, and Other DIY Projects for Techies, Tinkerers, and Foodies
(Patrick Buckley, Lily Binns)
Nerdy cookbook for kitchen hackers
Original Boing Boing post
Eat Me: The Food and Philosophy of Kenny Shopsin
(Kenny Shopsin, Carolynn Carreno)
Memoir and cookbook from Shopsin's, the best, most eclectic eatery in Greenwich Village
Original Boing Boing post
How Children Fail
(John Holt)
Angry lessons from failures to teach
Original Boing Boing post
Alan's War: The Memories of G.I. Alan Cope
(Emmanuel Guibert)
Extraordinary graphic novel memoir of a US GI who arrived in Europe at the end of WWII and stayed
Original Boing Boing post
Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street
(Michael Lewis)
A timely moment to revisit 20-year-old memoir of the rise and fall of a financial bubble
Original Boing Boing post
The United States Constitution: A Graphic Adaptation
(Jonathan Hennessey)
US Constitution in graphic novel form
Original Boing Boing post
Bat-Manga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan
(Chip Kidd)
The lost Japanese Batman comics of 1966
Original Boing Boing post
Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China
(Leslie T. Chang)
Amazing memoir by American-born Chinese journalist
Original Boing Boing post
Bound by Law?: Tales from the Public Domain
(Keith Aoki, James Boyle, Jennifer Jenkins)
The "Understanding Comics" of copyright, in a new edition
Original Boing Boing post
The Essential Groucho: Writings by, for, and about Groucho Marx
(Stefan Kanfer)
A book of fine grouchovian material that contains at least five guaranteed laughs on every page
Original Boing Boing post
Corrupted Science: Fraud, Ideology and Politics in Science
(John Grant)
The history, cause, effect and state of bad science
Original Boing Boing post
Don't miss the previous installments: kids' stuff, fiction and gadgets!
Tomorrow's nonfiction day, and Monday'll finish up the series with DVDs and CDs.
Laika
(Nick Abadzis)
Graphic novel tells the sweet and sad story of the first space-dog
Original Boing Boing post
The Perry Bible Fellowship: The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories
(Nicholas Gurewitch)
Hilarious, surreal webcomic
Original Boing Boing post
Invention of Hugo Cabret
(Brian Selznik)
Award-winning steampunk graphic novel for kids
Original Boing Boing post
Good as Lily
(Derek Kirk Kim)
Ass-kicking girl-positive graphic novel for young readers
Original Boing Boing post
The Plain Janes
(Cecil Castellucci, Jim Rugg)
Funny, spirited little story about a gang of girls named Jane at a strait-laced high-school, rejected by the mainstream, and their art adventures.
Original Boing Boing post
100 Days Of Monsters
(Stefan G. Bucher)
Book showcases blob-to-monster art
Original Boing Boing post
Army @ Love Vol. 1: The Hot Zone Club
(Rick Veitch)
Romance/war comic deals out the offensive yuks
Original Boing Boing post
Three Shadows
(Cyril Pedrosa)
Haunting and dreamlike graphic novel of love, bravery and sacrifice
Original Boing Boing post
St. Trinian's: The Entire Appalling Business
(Ronald Searle)
Ronald Searle's original dark, weird and hilarious St Trinian's comics
Original Boing Boing post
The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need
(Daniel H. Pink)
Optimistic and iconoclastic career guide in manga form
Original Boing Boing post
Cory Doctorow's Futuristic Tales Of The Here And Now
(Cory Doctorow)
A six-edition series of comics adapted from my short stories by an incredibly talented crew of writers, artists, inkers and letterers
Original Boing Boing post
Too Cool To Be Forgotten
(Alex Robinson)
Wish fulfillment graphic novel becomes something lovelier by far
Original Boing Boing post
A People's History of American Empire
(Howard Zinn)
Fantastic comic-book adaptation of Zinn's classic A People's History of the United States
Original Boing Boing post
TEKKONKINKREET: Black & White
(Taiyo Matsumoto)
Absolutely extraordinary comic fuses manga and French comics in a story of violence and lost boys in a surreal Japanese cityscape
Original Boing Boing post
The Mad War on Bush
(The Usual Gang of Idiots)
A truly superlative collection of parodical and satirical material from eight years' worth of Mad lampoon
Original Boing Boing post
Tekkon Kinkreet
(Lauren McLaughlin)
Absolutely extraordinary comic fuses manga and French comics in a story of violence and lost boys in a surreal Japanese cityscape
Original Boing Boing post
MAD About Star Wars
(Jonathan Bresman)
More than your average MAD anthology
Original Boing Boing post
Alan's War: The Memories of G.I. Alan Cope
(Emmanuel Guibert)
Extraordinary graphic novel memoir of a US GI who arrived in Europe at the end of WWII and stayed
Original Boing Boing post
The United States Constitution: A Graphic Adaptation
(Jonathan Hennessey)
US Constitution in graphic novel form
Original Boing Boing post
Bat-Manga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan
(Chip Kidd)
The lost Japanese Batman comics of 1966
Original Boing Boing post
Bound by Law?: Tales from the Public Domain
(Keith Aoki, James Boyle, Jennifer Jenkins)
The "Understanding Comics" of copyright, in a new edition
Original Boing Boing post
Al Jaffee's Tall Tales
(Al Jaffee)
Skinny comics with snappy humor
Original Boing Boing post
Mile of London Tunnels for Sale, History Included (Thanks, Organ Leroy!)
But it was not long before the documents had to be moved again to make room for a secure international telephone center that the government deemed necessary as relations between Washington and Moscow grew tense. During the cold war, the British government instructed its telephone department, which later became BT, to set up a secret communications system based on the latest technology that would be able to survive a nuclear attack.It was the beginning of the busiest period for the tunnels, with almost 200 workers spending their days and nights underground to route up to two million calls a week across the 6,600 phone lines. In 1963, the hot line established between Moscow and Washington after the Cuban missile crisis ran through the London tunnels.
The buzzing complex soon became known as “underground town,” with its own recreation room complete with dartboards and billiard tables, a movie theater and two dining halls. Workers often spent the night in sleeping rooms.
Photography by Amber Henshaw
The area around the house of Azmeraw Zeleke in northern Ethiopia is littered with burnt-out mortar shells left over from a war with neighboring Eritrea.
For months, Azmeraw wondered what he could do with them as he saw them being sold around Mekele town (about 800km from the capital, Addis Ababa). They were being used for washing clothes or for crushing things. Finally, he struck upon the idea of converting the shells into the inner workings of coffee machines.
The shells stand about 1 meter high. Azmeraw cuts off the pointed ends, seals them, and puts holes in the aluminum cylinder. The cylinder then channels the water, coffee, and milk.
Coffee is a major export from Ethiopia and plays a big role in life. After meals, the traditional coffee ceremony allows family and friends to get together to share news and discuss the issues of the day. Coffee shops are also popular. Each of Azmeraw's machines costs about $1,300, which is relatively cheap compared to imported machines. A local coffee shop owner, Haile Abraha, says the machines work well and make great coffee.
Azmeraw thinks he has sold hundreds -- he's not sure exactly how many -- since he started production five or six years ago. But he says it can be difficult to convince people in the area to buy the machine because of the mortar shell. "These shells have all been used. We all need peace and we don't want war, but once these shells have been used, we should use our skills to do something with them," he says.
"Sometimes I think about the fact they were used for war, but I want to change them to do something good. They could be a symbol of war, but I am doing something good out of the bad."
Azmeraw has big plans for his small business. At the moment, he works out of three ramshackle rooms with gaps in the corrugated roof. His staff of six sells the machines to coffee shops and restaurants in the area. In the future, he hopes to sell them even farther afield -- perhaps even to Eritrea.
From the column Made on Earth - MAKE 10, page 20 - Amber Henshaw.
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The iPhone dev team, hard at work as usual, announced a successful iPhone Linux port today. It's still at a very early stage, but the kernel boots on first and second generation iPhones and the first generation iPod touch. A framebuffer driver and a working Busybox installation point to an exciting open source future:
What we have:
- Framebuffer driver
- Serial driver
- Serial over USB driver
- Interrupts, MMU, clock, etc.What we have in openiboot (but hasn't been ported yet):
- Read-only support for the NAND
What we don't have (yet!):
- Write support for the NAND
- Wireless networking
- Touchscreen
- Sound
- Accelerometer
- Baseband support
If you're a Linux hacker and want to pitch in with the porting process, hop on the #iphonelinux IRC channel at irc.osx86.hu.
iPhone Linux - Official Announcement
It's just a demo at this point, but if you can't wait to see this running on your own phone, here's what you need:
Installation Instructions
iphonelinux-demo.tar.gz
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Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The attacker's name is Donald Kercell, a 49-year old. I searched for his name and found this SacBee story from 2007, and archived in a library service.
Kercell is a 48-year-old resident of Rio Linda. In his youth, he discovered two things. One was that he had a talent for working with concrete. The other was methamphetamine.The former, coupled with an impressive work ethic, kept Kercell gainfully employed much of the time. The latter put him in prison.
Little Brother UK launch/signing at Forbidden Planet London, Nov 29Saturday 29, November, 1:00PM - 2:00PM
Forbidden Planet London Megastore,
179 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, WC2H 8JROur Price: £6.99
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Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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