Shipud writes "There are ten times more bacterial cells in our body than our own cells. Most of them are located in our guts, and they affect our well-being in many ways. A group at Washington University has recently reported that although our gut microbes perform similar functions, it appears that different people have completely different compositions of gut bacteria: every man is an island, a unique microbial ecosystem composed of completely different species. One conclusion is that the whole division of bacteria into species may well be over-used in biomedicine."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Joel Johnson of BoingBoing TV gives us a peek into what goes on behind the curtain at the Electro-Harmonix sonic factory in NYC. Quite awesome to see how very hands-on and down-to-earth their staff and production process is. Keeping it this real is likely the only way one could maintain a rep for such creative and quality work - and a wall of vacuum tubes doesn't hurt either.

Hrrrmm ... now I got me a hankerin' for some effects-building. - BoingBoing TV visits the EHX factory in NYC

More:

alt.CES: Electro-Harmonix Voice Box

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Like the leaders of many pro sports leagues around the world, the people who run English Premier League soccer are worried that the proliferation of sites that stream their games online will hamper their ability to get broadcasters to sign multibillion-dollar TV rights deals. Now the league says it's planning "an aggressive campaign to protect its intellectual property rights" to protect the TV deals. It's the usual stuff: more cease and desist letters, balanced with calls for governments to get more involved and for ISPs to become copyright cops. The article in The Guardian says that the league is "terrified of following the path of the music industry, which saw its business model collapse after it failed to combat digital piracy."

This is typical rhetoric, painting the recording business' problem to be inadequate technological and legal defenses against piracy. It's plainly obvious the issue for the music industry is the failure to adapt its business model to changing times -- and the same could be said for many sports leagues. While the leagues seek to crack down on streaming sites, their existence merely points out missed opportunities for the leagues and their teams to generate business. People don't choose to watch these streams instead of attending a game, or in lieu of watching a crystal-clear legit TV feed in a bar or with friends; they watch them because they're the only option. If piracy is as rampant a problem as groups like the Premier League suggests, it's not a problem -- it's a captive market upon which the league (and perhaps its broadcast partners) should capitalize.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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VonGuard writes "This year marks the 25th anniversary of the GNU Operating System. A major part of that system has always been the GNU Compiler Collection. This year, some of the earliest bits of GCC also turn 25, and yet some of the collection's most interesting years of growth may still be ahead. The GCC team announced today that the long-standing discussion over how to allow plug-ins to be written for GCC has been settled. The FSF and the GCC team have decided to apply the GPL to plug-ins. That means all that's left is to build a framework for plug-ins; no small task to be sure. But building this framework should make it easier for people to contribute to the GCC project, and some universities are already working on building windows into the compilation process, with the intent of releasing plug-ins."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hello, I am a ukulele player I lives in Tokyo , Japan.
This ukulele is "Cake ukulele" I decorated.
It might be tasty. But I can not eat.
This cream?is Imitation?and
ice cream is made of clay.
This ukulele can be good played.
I played "Crazy G" with this cake ukulele.

Mike sends along a couple of items of interest to those anxiously awaiting the era of production electric vehicles. First, there's the upcoming Aero EV, which Shelby Supercars claims will charge in just 10 minutes and will be able to produce over 1,000 horsepower, powering the vehicle from 0-60 mph in less than 2.5 seconds. Then there's the announcement by Aptera of the first pre-production model of the Aptera 2e, which will have a top speed of 90 mph and go around 100 miles on a charge. This EV also features a strong and aerodynamic body, a lithium-based battery, front-wheel drive, and an improved door design. Release is planned by October of 2009.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ever been in need of a photo tripod, but only had a mic stand? - yup, been there too. Consider this instructable for building your own simple adapter to secure the shot. Perhaps somewhere on Earth an obscure adapter exists for this express purpose, but just grab some PVC caps, hose and nut/bolts and you're set - Mic Stand Camera Mount

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Dina sez, "We thought you might like this old-timey string band song called "Phone is Tapped (And I don't care)" by Montreal band Lake Of Stew.

Phone is tapped and I don't care (2x)
If anyone's listening, let's be clear,
Makes no difference what you hear.

CCTV on the post (2x)
Lookin' over all the ghosts
I'm gonna be the TV host.

Taking pictures from the sky (2x)
Smiling up at the satellite
You'll wish you were here with us tonight.

Send the patrol cars around (2x)
They'll find the string band throwing down
They just can't stop that joyful sound.

MP3: Phone is Tapped (And I Don't Care) (Thanks, Dina!)

This long NYT retrospective on the seminal news-photos of some guy named George Bush during his presidency ends with photos of the man on his way to his farewell address, during which it appears that he's been crying in the bathroom. I've looked at it several times now and I'm not sure I agree that's what's going on -- this facial expression seems to contain a lot more than mere sorrow.

And I turned to one of my editors — First I said, “Oh, my God.” And he said, “What?” And I said, “You’ve got to see this picture of Bush. This is really stunning.” And I flipped it over to him to process and his first reaction was, “Wow.” And I said, “If he wasn’t just back there behind that door crying, I don’t know what that look on his face is.” Because he just looks absolutely devastated as he comes through this door after essentially ending his eight year presidency. And it’s just really striking. He just looks absolutely devastated.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall (Thanks, Teresa!)

(Image: REUTERS/Jason Reed)

While the RIAA insists that it's stopped its lawsuit campaign, it's still moving forward with existing lawsuits -- including one against yet another woman who claims not to have even owned a computer on the date she was accused of file sharing. Now it's possible that the woman is lying -- but if that's the case, she's going to be in a lot more trouble than for sharing some music files. This is not the first time the RIAA was found to have sued people without a computer either -- which again just serves to raise significant questions about the RIAA's "investigative" techniques.

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jamie found a story on research about what concussions do to athletes, with the insights coming mostly from the study of the donated brains of dead athletes. The NFL has the biggest profile in the piece, but other sports make an appearance too. Turns out that repeated concussions can result in depression, insomnia, and the beginnings of something that looks a lot like Alzheimer's. "The idea that you can whack your head hundreds of times in your life and knock yourself out and get up and be fine is gone," said [retired wrestler] Nowinski. "We know we can't do that anymore. This causes long-term damage."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Very cool - Franky wrote up a MIDI code library for use with Arduino. It handles the basic serial setup, interprets and filters incoming messages - also sets a pin to control the optocoupler chip (no worrying about incoming data messing with sketch uploads). Plus it handles MIDI out/thru transmissions as well - super helpful. - MIDI Library

In the Maker Shed:

Getting Started with Arduino

All this week we have a 10% off sale this week in the Maker Shed, use code "2009OX" at the time of checkout - Happy Chinese New Year!

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Speaking of guitar strings, D’Addario & Company (my longtime favorite string brand) is looking for a Web Applications Developer in Long Island, NY. Could be the perfect opportunity for an axe/code shredder (insert better witty geek/music pun here). #

theraindog writes "Intel's X25-E Extreme SSD is easily the fastest flash drive on the market, and contrary to what one might expect, it actually delivers compelling value if you're looking at performance per dollar rather than gigabytes. That, combined with a rackmount-friendly 2.5" form factor and low power consumption make the drive particularly appealing for enterprise RAID. So just how fast are four of them in a striped array hanging off a hardware RAID controller? The Tech Report finds out, with mixed but at times staggeringly impressive results."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

One of the more interesting questions I've come across in the past is how does intellectual property function in an educational institution. We already know that thanks to the disastrous Bayh-Dole Act, universities have become a lot more interested in enforcing intellectual property rights for profit, rather than focusing on their charters of sharing information and educating. In many ways, the concepts of intellectual property and education come into significant conflict with each other. And that brings us to a story submitted by Joe Reda, concerning a nameless economics professor at an unknown university supposedly forcing students to destroy all their notes at the end of the semester, officially to avoid having such notes fall into the hands of future students.

To be honest, I find the story so incredible that it's difficult to believe it actually happened. If there's anyone out there who can confirm that it actually happened, and provide details on the university and professor, that would be helpful (assuming there are multiple students in the class, and the professor has done this more than once, there should be at least someone else who can corroborate the story). However, if it actually did happen, there are numerous problems with it. First, and most importantly, it's unlikely the strategy would actually work. What about students who took notes in an electronic form (increasingly common these days) and had backup copies elsewhere? There's simply no way the professor could actually destroy all the notes. Second, it's difficult to see how the professor has any claim, whatsoever, to the notes unless she was discussing specific handouts over which she owned the copyright or, perhaps, verbatim copying -- but even then, you'd have to think that such notes wouldn't be under the complete control of the professor such that she could demand their destruction. Honestly, if the story is true, you'd simply have to question the quality of such a professor who seems to have confused the main purpose of her job: educating students vs. preventing cheating. It's almost like the entertainment industry so focused on preventing piracy that they forgot about creating good content and entertaining people.

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Over at Audio Cookbook, John Keston has been running a few experiments with using image filters in Photoshop to process sound. Running the audio data through a Gaussian blur or Spherize filter, he was able to create some incredibly diverse effects from a simple electric piano input.

To test this concept I created a simple pattern with an electric piano patch and opened it in Photosounder. Without changing any settings I immediately saved the sound as a bitmap image. Next I opened the image in Photoshop and started experimenting with filters. Once I had some filtered images I loaded them back into Photosounder to see how they sounded. Gaussian blur and Liquefy created some unique effects, but my favorite of the bunch was Glowing Edges. This filter seems to transform the electric piano into a haunting choral passage.

John has a number of MP3 samples on his site. To get the audio in and out of Photoshop, he's using a tool called Photosounder which translates a waveform into bitmap data and vice-versa. I've never used the app, but from looking at the output images, time is represented on the x dimension, y represents the frequency, and the brightness of the pixel is determined by the amplitude at that frequency/time coordinate.

Anyone interested in writing a sound to image converter in Perl?

Processing Sound Using Photoshop
Audio Cookbook
Photosounder

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Peter Redmer, of Caffeinated Pixels, is one happy little wirehead. For Christmas this year, his dad, an electrical engineer, built him a tube amp and a set of speakers for his iPod. Here's dad on the specs:

Amplifier: In order to keep the design small, I am using a hybrid design for the amplifier. A push-pull driver using a OP275 dual opamp is used to drive a pair of 5902 output tubes for each channel. A small amount of negative feedback is employed to control distortion and level the frequency response. The amplifier produces about 1.25 watts per channel. The overall gain of the amplifier is set to be used with the output from a portable MP3 player. The volume control on the MP3 player is used to set the output level.

Speakers: The system also needed a pair of small speakers to go along with the amplifier. A two inch full range driver was available from HiVi. I put the numbers into BassBox Pro and worked out a design. I ended up with a ported box of about .035cubic feet in size. The speakers have a low frequency point of about 120HZ. They sound much better than most desktop computer setups. A subwoofer would be a great addition, but that's a project for another day!

One cannot underestimate the value of a thoughtfully handmade gift like this, whether hi-tech or low. My wife had a dulcimer that her father made for her one year when she was a teen. She cherished that thing more than just about any other possession. You can tell how thrilled Peter is by his father's gift.

One of these days, I swear I'm going to break down and build a tube amp like this myself. Has anyone here built a small amp like this for portable audio?

My Homebrew Vacuum Tube iPod Stereo Amplifier and Speakers

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cweditor writes in with an updated version of a story the likes of which you might have read before, What the Web Knows About You. But reporter Rob Mitchell found out vastly more about himself (his research subject) online than he could have even a year or two ago. The big difference is that state and local governments are putting online digitized records, often with Social Security numbers and other personal details intact. Mitchell ends by questioning how much good it does for banks or credit card companies to require 4, 5, or more independent identity "factors" before providing access to account details, when most or all of the factors they request can be found online about nearly anyone.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

When the US first instituted its Do Not Call list, there was some fear that unscrupulous telemarketers would actually use the list as a "good list" of people to call. In fact, many people were nervous to use the list at the beginning for just that reason. However, for the most part, there haven't been that many abuses of the list (there have certainly been some, but it's not nearly as widespread as many expected). Unfortunately, it appears the same is not true in Canada. The Canadian list works by allowing anyone to buy it -- supposedly so they can cleanse their own lists of any DNC numbers. But, it can also be used by unscrupulous scammers -- such as those offshore -- who apparently are buying the DNC list in order to have a "verified" list of people to call with scams. It's reached the point that many claim they're getting more telemarketing calls (for much more scammy reasons) than before.

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After Professor Fzz's wireless base station died, he found himself continually looking at where it use to be to monitor the activity lights during downloads. He wanted to replace it with something else to help him visualize this data -- the Internet Pressure Gauge was born.

The electronics are probably overkill for this application, but they work well. A Devantech USB-to-I2C convertor takes commands from the Mac over USB, and sends them via an I2C bus to an SD21 21-channel servo controller board. I'm only using one channel at the moment, so expect more computer controlled hardware in the not too distant future.

...

The software is pretty trivial, comprising a 40 line program in C to send commands to the servo controller, and a 30-line script to get the network statistics and call the C program.

Too bad you could do pressure gauges for blog comments, with a pressure valve whistle that releases when things get over-heated.

Internet Pressure Gauge

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LWATCDR writes "Mozilla has given the Wikimedia foundation $100,000 to fund Ogg development. The reason is simple: 'Open standards for audio and video are important because they can be used by anyone for any purpose without royalties, and can be inspected and improved by an open community. Today, video and audio on the web are dominated by proprietary technologies, most frequently patent-encumbered codecs wrapped into closed-source player widgets.' While Vorbis is a better standard than MP3, everything I have heard about Theora is that it is technically inferior to many other video codecs. I wonder if wouldn't be better to direct effort to Dirac, perhaps putting Dirac into an Ogg container. No mention was made of FLAC or Speex funding. If more media players supported Speex it would be an ideal codec for many podcasts and audio books. It really is too bad that these codecs so often get overlooked."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I got to spend some time with the organizers of Midem when I went there last week, and beyond doing an incredible job putting together a great event they actually have a really comprehensive view of what's happening to the market. Unlike some of those in the industry they serve, the Midem organizers not only have a really clear understanding of the market changes, but they seem to be working quite hard to adjust to the times -- and they've done it before. Midem actually started (and still functions) as a "marketplace" for buying and selling music rights around the world. So, for example, deals would be made where someone would buy the European rights for a hot new American artist or whatever. Somewhere along the way, the organizers realized that with so many folks from the industry all there together, it made sense to go beyond just a marketplace, and they added a conference on top of it. Then, ten or eleven years ago (well before many other folks) they realized that the internet and digital technologies represented a profound shift in the marketplace -- and they added MidemNet on to the beginning of the event, having two days that are just focused on digital issues.

There was one thing that struck me, though, during the event -- which is that separating out the digital part as a stepchild doesn't necessarily make much sense anymore. While they do include some digital/online things during the rest of the event, having the digital part as a "separate" event feels like it's a minor side issue, rather than a core trend changing the market. I had thought of bringing that up to the organizers... but, not surprisingly, it sounds like they're already ahead of me on that. Hal Bringman has a writeup on Midem for Digital Media Wire, where he notes that the director of the event, Dominique Leguern, says that they're considering merging MidemNet into the wider Midem as the industry is evolving into a fully digital domain. Also, Leguern made a key point that plenty of people have been making for a while:

"It's not a music industry crisis, it's a CD crisis."

Indeed. It's great that Midem is in such good hands. As an "insider" music industry conference, it wouldn't surprise anyone if the organizers acted like some of the old school execs in the industry -- focusing on the past and creating an echo-chamber of people trying to recapture a lost marketplace. Instead, they've been forward looking for many years, and working to change along with the market -- and even trying to help pull some of those execs along with them.

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mattnyc99 writes "This next week marks the anniversary of three sad days in NASA's history: three astronauts died in a capsule fire testing for Apollo 1 exactly 42 years ago today, then the Challenger went down 23 years ago tomorrow, followed by the Columbia disaster six years ago this Super Bowl Sunday. Amidst all this sadness, though, too many average Americans take our space program for granted. Amidst reconsiderations of NASA priorities from the Obama camp as the Shuttle nears retirement, then, the brilliant writer Chris Jones offers a great first-hand account in the new issue of Esquire — an impassioned argument against the impending end of our manned space program. In which camp do you fall: mourner or rocketeer?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mikey and Wendy created a wonderfully concise wine-making video:

Just what I needed to get over the "there's too many interesting things to read about this project and complications to explore before ever getting started" barrier. $3 gallons of wine, here I come!

Skeptical about the quality? Check out the first recipe on this page. Who knew Welch's grape juice concentrate was capable of such greatness?

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DIY sonar garment - Bat detector jacket... Lynne writes-

Sonar garment to assist the visually impaired with navigating the built environment. Made from Lilypad main board, LV-MaxSonar ultrasonic range finder and a LilyPad vibeboard. The range finder can be set to locate a solid object X distance in front of the user and turn the vibeboard on alerting the user to stop before walking into a solid object.

This project was inspired by attending the unveiling of the award winning facilities for Anchor Center for Blind Children designed by star architect Maria Cole. During my visit one of the former students came up to speak with me because she could 'see' what I was wearing (a confetti fabric coat) and she too wanted to design clothes. Just goes to show ya never know where the next project is coming from!

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MojoKid writes "Today Western Digital is announcing their WD20WEADS drive, otherwise known as the WD Caviar Green 2.0TB. With 32MB of onboard cache and special power management algorithms that balance spindle speed and transfer rates, the WD Caviar Green 2TB not only breaks the 2 terabyte barrier but also offers offers an extremely low-power profile in its standard 3.5" SATA footprint. Early testing shows it keeps pace with similar capacity drives from Seagate and Samsung."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Giant image of inside the Space shuttle cockpit - a real space ship, gorgeous...

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Gloves with measurements, clever... (Thanks Mike!)

Fashionable and fun, these work gloves can be worn either with the grip design in (on the palm) or out (on the back of the hand). Useful for protecting your hands and increasing your grip when doing chores, gardening, driving or sports. Made from lightweight 100% polyester with acrylic resin grips, the gloves have been tested for comfort and fade resistance. Each glove pictures approximate finger lengths and other fun measurements.

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Dampeal writes "Ok, a little while back I ran a somewhat large USB Flash Drive Comparison with 21 drives compared, today I got part two of that comparison. I've taken the 8gig and 4 gig drives, nine in total, and formatted them FAT32, NTFS and ExFAT and ran all of the tests over again for a comparison of how the file systems work on the drives." Good news — after some exhaustively graphed testing scenarios, the author comes to a nice conclusion for lazy people, writing "[I]n my opinion the all around best choice is FAT32, or the default for most all USB drives out there today, it seems to give us the best average performance overall."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In the last few years, as more and more problems with the patent system have come out, we've seen some defenders of the patent system try to categorize and compartmentalize the problems. They'll say things like "well, maybe patents cause some problems with software" but they're important elsewhere. The problem is that in pretty much every area they claim patents "work" for, the actual evidence suggests otherwise. For example, there's been a belief among many that patents are hugely important to scientists. A few years back, we saw that this wasn't necessarily true, with many scientists complaining about the damage done by patents -- especially when it came to collaborating and sharing ideas -- a key and important element of creating useful and compelling research.

Michael Geist points us to a recent survey of scientists who say that IP protection has a negative impact on their research. It's greatly slowed down the ability to do research, as universities (thanks to the dreadful and damaging Bayh-Dole Act -- which has significantly hurt progress in scientific research) are trying to hoard anything that can be patented for the sake of profit, rather than scientific advancement. Of course, advancement doesn't work that way. It works through collaboration and sharing ideas -- and what patents do is add a huge bureaucracy to the process, encouraging secrecy, not sharing and hoarding, not collaboration. Once again, we're seeing that about the only folks who really truly benefit from patents are the lawyers.

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Softhaus writes "The guys at Blood Frontier have been busy for the last two years working on a new FPS called (surprise) Blood Frontier . This game is an enhanced Cube 2 engine with original artwork and new gameplay (including a kid-mode, which optionally turns off the blood — a nice option for a change). Add the new paintball mode and you have a real 'game community' here. The code is all there (complete for you to play with), the team listens to feedback from the community, and the game is great! It's nice to see these talented guys showing a true free software attitude. They've mentioned that the first actual release is scheduled for next Friday. Does anyone know of other great open source games that are truly 'open?'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This week I am going to show you how to get up and running with the 3pi by Pololu. I will be going through all the steps needed to upload the line following program that is included from Pololu. Getting started with the 3pi isn't too difficult, but there are a few applications and drivers that need to be installed.

Note: In this tutorial I will be using a PC running Vista. You can program the 3pi on a Mac running OSX or Linux, but it's a different procedure. You can even program the 3pi through the Arduino IDE!

What you need:

• Pololu 3pi Robot - Available in the Maker Shed
  
• Orangutan USB Programmer - Available in the Maker Shed
  
• USB A to Mini-B cable - Available at most electronics stores
  
• (4) AAA batteries
  
• Electrical tape
  
• Computer running Vista or XP
  

Optional Items:

• 3pi Expansion Kit with Cutouts - Available in the Maker Shed
  
• 3pi Expansion Kit without Cutout - Available in the Maker Shed
  

Part 1: Setting up the 3pi

Unpack and add the 4 AAA batteries. You need to remove the LCD to insert (2) of the (4) batteries. Just carefully lift it up and it will come off easily.

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Listeners Applaud Program Modern Mechanix, 1937 -

BY PRESSING an electric switch, radio listeners may express approval of a current radio program. Holding down a small switch attached to the base of a small lamp placed near the radio, the increased current drain is shown at the local power plant or substation.

Now being used in France, the idea was first tried out by an American power company working with an eastern broadcasting chain.

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billybob2 writes "CoreBoot (formerly LinuxBIOS), the free and open source BIOS replacement, can now boot Windows 7 Beta. Videos and screenshots of this demonstration, which was performed on an ASUS M2V-MX SE motherboard equipped with a 2GHz AMD Sempron CPU, can be viewed on the CoreBoot website. AMD engineers have also been submitting code to allow CoreBoot to run on the company's latest chipsets, such as the RS690 and 780G."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hey folks, we've wanted to do this for a long time and now it's happening! Transcripts and closed captioning for our videos (YouTube). It will take some time to do all the videos but we're going to experiment and see how it goes. The first one we did was "MAKE presents: the LED" - if you view it on YouTube you can click the little box in the lower right (CC) and see the captions. For straight up text, visit the video page on MAKE.

From - "MAKE presents: The LED" LEDs are in technology all around us, familiar and helpful for sure but you may wonder - Who invented them? How do I use one? Is it possible to make my own LED?!? Learn the answers to these baffling questions and more in... now with transcript and closed captioning on YouTube.

This isn't free for us - we pay a service to help us with this, but we think it's important to do - so if you'd like to support these types of efforts stop by the Maker Shed and pick up a kit - for this week we have a sale 10% so you can save a few bucks too, use the code 2009OX on check out (it's Chinese New Year!).

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We've seen a bunch of examples recently of indie bands embracing changes in the market and technology to create success stories, but this is a first: an indie band sent us a press release (and, yes, we normally ignore press releases, but this one is interesting...) hyping up the fact that it's one of the most downloaded bands on The Pirate Bay. Specifically, the band, Georgia Wonder seems positively thrilled that its EP -- which was purposely put on file sharing sites -- quickly jumped into the top twenty "most shared" songs on The Pirate Bay. And, of course, the press release includes a link to their songs at The Pirate Bay.

Obviously, the band is hardly the first to actively put its music on file sharing sites, or be happy to see it on The Pirate Bay, but it is worth pointing out that this is an unsigned band, and was able to make its way up the most shared list quite quickly (within days), and is so thrilled with the promotional value of it, that it's promoting it even further. And yet, politicians and entertainment companies still insist sites like The Pirate Bay need to be shut down. At some point, maybe the politicians will realize it's not because The Pirate Bay represents "theft," but because it represents competition as a distribution mechanism.

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As promised here's how to make your own Tweet-a-Watt, a twittering power meter that can show your friends, your followers and the world how much power you are (or are not) consuming. We entered this in the Green Gadgets design competition, wish us luck!

We're calling it "Wattcher" for now and some of the documentation is in progress - but a lot of people really really wanted to get started so we're posting everything up as we work on it...

Resources:
Wattcher start back (links on the left).
Make it!
Listen!
Resources
Downloads

This is an open source hardware project, anyone can make them - we've even heard from a few makers out there already that plan to make their own versions and sell them.

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The Optical Society of America has a very cool site about the science of light. I found instructions for making lenses from Jell-O and ice, with a great explanation of how lenses work.

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Instructables user imaseahawksfan made these LEGO valve stem caps for his motorcycle. I think they look great, and this technique is easily translated to all sorts of valve stem caps. I'm thinking they would look great on my bicycle!

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An anonymous reader writes "AMD has no replacement planned for the aging Geode low-power chip, creating uncertainty for its use in products like future XO laptops made by One Laptop Per Child. There won't be a Geode successor and the company has no core microarchitecture planned to replace the chip, AMD executives said. The comments end speculation about the future of Geode, an integrated chip used in netbooks like OLPC's XO laptop, ultramobile PCs and devices like set-top boxes."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chickan writes "'A puff a day might keep Alzheimer's away, according to marijuana research by professor Gary Wenk and associate professor Yannic Marchalant of the Ohio State Department of Psychology. Wenk's studies show that a low dosage in the morning of a certain canavanoid, a component in marijuana, reversed memory loss in older rats' brains. In his study, an experimental group of old rats received a dosage, and a control group of rats did not. The old rats that received the drugs performed better on memory tests, and the drug slowed and prevented brain cell death.' My fine university's dollars at work!" Maybe it works even better in combination with brain-preserving sips of coffee.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Verunks writes "Ars takes the KDE 4.2 release candidate out for a test drive on Windows. The popular open source desktop environment has moved beyond Linux and is becoming increasingly robust on other platforms. Even KDE's Plasma desktop shell is now Windows-compatible."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pre-PMA 2009: Next in the line is the Panasonic DMC-FX550 digital camera. It incorporates a high-resolution 3.0-inch touch-screen interface for easier navigation of options, combined with a faster Venus Engine V processor. Along with a 12.1 megapixel sensor and a 25-125mm equivalent zoom, it features a host of Panasonic’s latest compact camera features such as Intelligent Auto mode and Face Recognition.

Pre-PMA 2009: In Panasonic's fourth announcement of the day comes the the DMC-TZ6 compact digital camera, successor to the DMC-TZ5. The new camera's lens has been extended to offer 12x optical zoom, starting at 25mm equiv. and the sensor resolution increased to 10MP. The TZ6 features the Intelligent Auto Mode that combines Intelligent Scene selection with AF tracking, Intelligent Exposure, Face Detection, optical image stabilization, and Intelligent ISO Control for ease of use.

Pre-PMA 2009: Panasonic has also introduced the DMC-FX40 ultra-compact digital camera. It incorporates a 12.1MP sensor, 2.5 inch LCD and a 25mm wide-angle lens with 5x optical zoom (25 - 125mm equiv). The FX-40 also sports Panasonic's latest Venus Engine V processor and includes features such as Intelligent Auto mode, Face Detection with Face Recognition, Mega O.I.S. (Optical Image Stabilizer) and Intelligent Scene Selector.

Pre-PMA 2009: Panasonic has launched the DMC-FT1, its first rugged digital compact and the world's first to feature AVCHD lite HD video recording. The FT1 is designed to be dustproof, waterproof up to 3 meters and shockproof up to 1.3 meters. It incorporates AVCHD Lite video compression in 3 quality levels to allow longer HD video recording. A Wind Cut function helps block out background wind noise during video recording. Sporting a 12.1MP sensor, 28-129mm equivalent lens and 2.7" LCD, the camera also includes features such as Intelligent Auto Mode, Optical Image Stabilizer and Face recognition.

Pre-PMA 2009: Panasonic has announced the release of the DMC-TZ7, the first of six new digital compact cameras, and also the first camera to record AVCHD lite HD videos. The TZ7 is also packed with some impressive video and audio features such as 48kHz sample rate and Dolby Digital Stereo Creator for high quality audio, a Wind Cut function and Intelligent Auto mode for video recording. This 12MP camera also comes along with a 3 inch hi-resolution LCD, 12x optical zoom (25-300mm equiv), Optical Image Stabilizer, and Advanced Face Recognition.

(image of solar-powered 802.15.4 node from Tom Igoe's Making Things Talk)

The Christian Science Monitor has an article on wireless sensor networks being used to sense and gather data from the environment:

The hand-sized yellow objects poking up among the lush canopies at Camalie Vineyards aren't a new variety of monster grape. They're electronic devices that can sense soil moisture.

Viticulturist Mark Holler says these wireless sensors sprinkled throughout the leaves help him manage the high cost of irrigation and improve his yield.

"Wireless sensor networks extend the Internet ... out into the environment," says Mr. Holler, a retired Intel technologist who owns and runs the 4.4-acre vineyard in Napa, Calif.

While the networks won't necessarily make someone a better vintner, they do have a practical side: During the 2007 drought in California, Holler figures the technology saved him several thousand dollars in water costs.

These networks are the same thing makers are building on the cheap. Tom Igoe's Making Things Talk shows how you can use Arduinos, XBees, and a variety of off-the-shelf sensors to build your own inexpensive wireless sensor networks. (Use code 2009OX on checkout for a 10% discount for the week of January 26, 2009.)

Christian Science Monitor: New networks take nature's pulse

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?Thomas Keeley makes some really interesting sculptures that integrate human figures and parts (such as eyes) into inanimate household objects. This tooth brush integrates a small group of people waiting in line while his "camera" puts an eyeball into the lens of the camera. Check out the link below for more interesting creations that merge product design with human emotion.

Thomas Keeley Art

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From the MAKE: Flickr pool

ALH84001 wanted to use a surface mount 3-watt LED off-board but they're quite dependent on a PCB plane to drawing away all that hot, hot heat. Hmm, what to do?

his is an Everlight EHP-AX08LS 3-watt red LED, soldered to a piece of bus bar, which was then crimped to a TO-220 style heatsink with some lithium grease to help heat transfer. the zip tie keeps stress off of the solder joints. the heatsink reaches about 50 degrees C with the LED burning steadily at 980mA.

with this LED, the heat pad on the back is internally connected to one of the LED terminals, so its important not to short it out on accident.

I might build a few for my bicycle.

Sure to make quite the bangin' bike light … perhaps some diffusion could help avoid eye pain - 3W LED heatsink hack

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Pre-PMA 2009: Last of the Panasonic announcements is the DMC-FS25 digital compact camera. This 12.1MP camera is designed with a prominent grip and an Intelligent 3.0" LCD that adjusts its brightness according to the lighting conditions. Other features include an Intelligent Auto mode and  a new ‘Photo Frame’ mode that lets users put borders around the pictures taken.

Dale Grover of a2geeks wrote us note about an awesome screening event for folks in the Ann Arbor area. Check out local Makers and organizations, and even vote on which episode of Make: television to watch.

Sounds like a lot of fun:

Calling all Hackers, Makers, Crafters, Artists, and other creative DIY folks!

Please join us next Thursday, Jan 29, 7 - 9 PM for our first a2geeks movie night - a special advance screening of the first episodes of O'Reilly's new Make magazine TV series on PBS. Details, directions, and discussion here:

http://a2geeks.org/display/geek/a2geeks+Movie+Night+1+-+Make+TV

We'll be in the shiny new CSE building on the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI) North Campus, and have reserved the building's atrium for networking, mingling, lockpicking demos, and other tomfoolery after the event. We'll have tables available for you to set up if you'd like to share your projects/ideas with the community, so bring out what you've got!

We're hoping to have projects/demos from a2geeks, GO-Tech, YAAARC, DC734, Shadow Art Fair, U of M's 3D Lab, and others.

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History is littered with examples of new technologies causing people to freak out. When automobiles were introduced, laws were passed forcing people to walk in front of the cars, waving red flags. Years ago, I read a great article about how when regular film cameras were first introduced, there were regulations against them, due to fears about privacy violations (I could have sworn I wrote about it on Techdirt, but now I can't find it...). It seems that a similar concept may be showing up with cameraphones, as John writes in to let us know of new legislation in Congress that would require all cameraphones to "click" when taking a photo. The idea, of course, is to "protect the children" so that predators can't secretly take photos. The law is similar to one found in South Korea, so it's hardly a new idea -- though it still doesn't make much sense. Someone looking to do something illegal with their cameraphone will easily figure out a way to take silent photos. All this law will actually do is annoy those who have perfectly legitimate reasons for wanting to take photos quietly. Hell, you could just as easily come up with some silly scenario how this law would be damaging to children... such as if someone wanted to photograph a predator stalking children without the guy knowing... Anyway, vote on what you think of the law below:

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CWmike notes that after a US Senator urged Microsoft to lay off H-1B workers first, Microsoft says it is cutting a 'significant number' of foreign workers as part of the layoff it announced last week. But experts say there is nothing in the law requiring a company to cut the jobs of H-1B workers before US workers. David Kussin, an immigration attorney, said, 'In fact, the law is very well designed to say that you have to treat H-1Bs the same as US citizens in all regards.' Another H-1B critic, UC Davis professor Norman Matloff, said the Senator's letter would help their fight. 'If Microsoft doesn't state that they will lay off the H-1Bs first — and they won't state this — then it would be awfully tough for Bill Gates to come back to the Hill and urge an H-1B increase, wouldn't it?'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This motorcycle made from woven baskets is a really nice juxtaposition of materials and function. Driving this might be a challenge, but at least it can hold a lot of stuff as a home shelving unit.

via FFFFFOUND

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Mike Una points out this demo of Denha's discreetly modded Gakken SX-150 synth under analog sequencer control. A quick YouTube search reveals just how popular this kit has become.

All this week we have a 10% off sale this week in the Maker Shed, use code "2009OX" at the time of checkout - Happy Chinese New Year!

SX-150 Analog Synthesizer Kit

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Dirk McQuigley of Daily Kos has an enraging editorial about the practice of flight crews punishing unruly passengers by having them put on terrorist watch-list. I had this happen to me once, on the way to my wedding in Toronto in October. My wife made to put the baby on the floor in front of our seat for a while so she could play, and a flight attendant told her it was absolute iron-clad British Airways policy that babies had to be in reach of the ceiling oxygen masks at all time. My wife pointed out that we'd let the baby play on the floor of many BA planes in the past 10 months, and it probably wasn't practical to expect the kid to go 10 hours without a little floor-time. The flight attendant was insistent, and my wife, in exasperation, said, "OK, but it's bullshit."

A minute later, the purser steamed around the bulkhead, in full dudgeon -- "You've violated our zero-tolerance policy for 'abusive language' and I can have you arrested and taken off the plane when we land if you don't stop it." It went downhill from there, with him vowing to have our "BA flier records" changed to note that we were "abusive passengers" so that every flight we took from now on would involve increased scrutiny and strictness. Needless to say, when I called BA later, they apologized and swore that there was no such record, and needless to say, we weren't arrested when we landed.

So I'd assumed that he was just a little puffed-up martinet making idle threats, but it appears we got off lucky. According to this, plenty of passengers who disagreed with a flight crew are now classed as "terrorists" in international databases and subject to incredible hassle and are even at risk of being detained when they fly.

Not a bad business to be in: for most companies, all they can do when a customer has an argument with a rep is ask them to leave. Airlines get to punish their customers by having them arrested as terrorists. I guess we're lucky the record industry doesn't have the same ability.

Take the case of Tamera Jo Freeman. Traveling from Los Angeles to Oklahoma City in 2007. Freeman gave each of her children three whacks on the backside when they spilled her airplane Bloody Mary in her lap.

A flight attendant confronted Freeman, who responded by hurling a few profanities and throwing what remained of a can of tomato juice on the floor.

The incident aboard the Frontier flight ultimately led to Freeman's arrest and conviction for a federal felony defined as an act of terrorism under the Patriot Act, the controversial federal law enacted after the 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.

"I had no idea I was breaking the law," said Freeman, 40, who spent three months in jail before pleading guilty.

Worse than that, Freeman lost custody of her children as a result of the conviction. Moreover, she was barred from flying and her probation required her to stay within Oklahoma which effectively prevented her from traveling to Hawaii for a custody hearing.

The severity of the incident was disputed by a witness that happened to also be a defense attorney. The attorney said that initially there was a loud exchange but Freeman calmed down BEFORE she became unruly. The attorney said that he sympathized with Freeman.

Patriot Act, DHS and who is a "terrorist" (Thanks, Patrick)

I sat down with Tim Jackson in London before Christmas to talk about LendAround, his fun new social entrepreneurship startup that makes it easier for you and your friends to share the stuff you've got lying around the house. He's starting with DVDs, and launching a service for people in the US, but I'm looking forward to the day when I can use it to figure out who can spot me a lawnmower for the afternoon. Tim sez,

LendAround is a free, legal site that helps you lend and borrow things with your friends, starting with DVDs. Unlike swapping or trading, it's about stuff you love, not stuff you want to get rid of -- and it's about your friends, rather than anonymous people on the other side of the country. We're in private beta now, but any Boing Boing readers in the US who'd like an invitation can email me up to 2 February at boingboingUS@lendaround.com. Tell us what kind of movies you like and how much you trust your friends or work colleagues, and we'll see if we can get you in.

LendAround

The "Future Pirate Radio" project is a combination of a cellphone application that reads QR Codes and printable stencils for graffiti artists to put up the codes on local walls. When photographed, the codes produce radio broadcasts streamed live over the Internet. Although it seems like a hard way to find a radio broadcast (searching the streets) we will most likely see more of these types of apps surface through our mobile devices.

Future Pirate Radio

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Dana's excellent hamemade Ondes Martenot ring controller uses a multiturn potentiometer + pulleys making possible quite a lovely version of "When You Wish Upon a Star". The note-marker indentations on the fingerboard are a nice touch likely improving note accuracy by far.

Here is part two of my progress, building an Ondes Martenot-style controller for my modular synthesizer.
Feel free to use my ideas, but no, I will not be building one for you! ;)
I built this around my beloved DX-7, but it only uses that keyboard for visual reference, while playing the ring controller. You could use ANY keyboard for your own reference.

[via Synthtopia]

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While there are still some concern about what the UK gov't is planning concerning ISPs in relation to the recording industry, reports are coming out that kicking file sharers off the internet with a "3 strikes" policy is off the table -- at least according to David Lammy, the Intellectual Property Minister in the UK. That's a good sign, and fits with what the EU Parliament has said. The full government report is expected later this week, though no one has yet explained to us why the government is stepping in to what is effectively a business model issue, and trying to force a different industry (ISPs) to help deal with a problem created by an industry (the recording industry) that has spent a decade trying to hold back new business models that would solve any "problem" it faces.

Meanwhile, of course, Lammy's comments have (not surprisingly) upset the recording industry. Folks at BPI are particularly pissed off that Lammy compared file sharing to swiping a bar of soap in a hotel room you rented (i.e., a minor issue, not something to arrest someone over). BPI's representative claims he's "appalled" that the IP minister would say such a thing, and even says it shows a lack of understanding about intellectual property. Generally, if you're pissing off the established recording industry folks, you're probably doing something right these days.

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This is an amazing Transformer made entirely out of LEGOs. There isn't a lot of information about the build, but there are more pictures of the completed project on the web site. I thought the police car was nice, never mind that it transformed into a giant robot!

More about the LEGO Transformer: Barricade [UniqueDaily]

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Jason sez, "DePauw University presents a series of videos on how to program the PDP-11. They present all of the steps: toggling a loader, reading and punching paper tape and running an assembler. A must-see for retrocomputing neophytes! Just one Jon-Lovitz-warning: ACTING!"

ZOMG, these are utterly fantastic!

Using a PDP-11/10 to Teach Content and History in Computer Organization Courses (Thanks, Jason!)

Stephen Larson alerts us to the out-of-court settlement of Gatehouse v NY Times, a lawsuit that attempted to stop the Boston Globe from linking to headlines and excerpting initial sentences from a competitor's Web site. At issue was the Globe's practice — barely distinguishable from those of Google News, Yahoo, and others — of linking to another news source's coverage of local news. The upshot is that the Boston Globe will stop the linking. No judicial precedent was set, because the case was settled before reaching a judge.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Artist Rachel Bernstein made this soft anatomical sculpture of foot out of felt, embroidery floss, plaster armature and polyfil. Something especially nice about a plush anatomical tchotchke.

Inferior Retinaculum (via Craft)

Here is a simple way to attach an Nseries Nokia phone to your bicycle. I'm sure this design can be modified to work with other types of phones. Projects like these are becoming more popular as our phones get more functions like GPS.

I live in Bogotá, Colombia, and the traffic is just insane. Usually most of the time the best way to go around for small trips is using a bicycle, which has been my ride for 15 years now. It was frustrating not being able to follow my trip on Sportstracker, until I read about a cradle ideal for sportstracker here on The Nokia Blog. It was exactly what I needed but according to Mark, it was a prototype and no one knows if it will hit the streets someday. Therefore, I made my own one with the materials I found handy.

More about the DIY Nokia N-series bicycle cradle

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How did I start with my professional web publishing career? What was I doing before? How did I get to name myself Robin Good from Sharewood? What do I see in the future of those wanting to find a way to leverage the Internet to do and live off what they are really passionate about? If you want to find out a bit more about my story as an online independent publisher, how I started and how converted my total resistance to advertising into a win-win partnership, my unrehearsed performance / presentation at the 6th Girls Geek Dinner in Athens, Greece, this past weekend, is definitely a good opportunity to know a bit more about how it all came to be. Here's the entire video (29 mins) with a full English text transcription:

The Story Of Robin Good

Duration: 29'
Full English Text Transcription

Intro

I'm going to tell you a little bit about my story, how I became the first Italian probably and one among the first Europeans that has been able to live completely off the Web. That is: my dream was to stop to have some customers, some clients, some people to consult to, because one way or another, I always ended not liking the situation. Either because they had you work too much and they paid you too little, or because they have you work too little and they pay you a lot but they never pay you, or because you have to go to the lawyer to get your money, or the bank doesn't get you that check for two-three-four-five-six months. This is life I think not just in Italy, although we have our peculiarities about business, but I think is a matter of everywhere you live. Business is business, and there's always smart people trying to get the greater part of your business, and somebody taking advantage of you, and so I'm a very raw, sincere, direct type of person, and I didn't like this thing, because the wheel kept going. You have to find a consulting job, and then when it's over, assuming you've liked it and you've made some money, you got to find another one, and another one, and another one. For all of your life. And then you have to pay the rent, the leasing of your car, whatever else. This to me is not life. Life for me is the ability to do what I like to do. All of the time, as much as I can.

My Past Work As Communication Consultant...

What I was doing before was to be a communication consultant. I worked for international organizations like those that help Third Word countries, war situations, and they bring rice, they bring money, they bring volunteers help. Humanitarian type of organizations. And in Rome, Italy, where I was born, there are a lot of these organizations. It's like Geneva, it's like Washington. There's a concentration of them there. So, since I knew very well English, I decided way before that the Internet came about and the idea of working for niches, to specialize myself for an English-speaking market. I was in Rome, I didn't want to have any competition, what could I do? I said: "I know English well, who can I talk to into business?" The embassies and these international organizations came to mind. I started to work with them, and I said:

"What a great idea to work for organizations that are helping the world become a better world. Isn't that nice? I'm not just doing an advertising for a big company to promote their products, which I don't care anything about maybe, but I'm helping, in my head, the poor guys out here and there across the world live or get out of the trouble."

That's what I thought. And I spent quite some years, ten or fifteen years working for those organizations. What i did for them was help them put together the communication products. Manuals, books, brochures, which are usually in five languages: English, Arabic, Chinese, French and Spanish. Or do CD-ROMs first, and then the Internet came about. It's been a very fantastic university for me because in that environment, no matter how much money I made, I was able to work with lots of different things, lots of challenges, lots of new things.

...and Coach

The other thing I did for them was to immediately give back to them what I was learning through that job. That is: if they give me a project to do something, I would discover some tools, some methodologies to do this, and so I'd offer this same organizations that I would do some training for them.

"I'm doing this project for you, and this other one. You liked them very much, why don't I come and train your people, so next time you don't call me, you can do this by yourself?."

I did ten years of training. I would have classes about eight, ten, twelve people, and would do training on all the topics that dealt with communication and technology. So, you start with PowerPoint. Everybody's using PowerPoint. I hate it personally, but most people use it, so you got to know not only to click and what to do, but also how to communicate a little more effectively with the tools, how to do web publishing, how to do information design, that is how to use text and graphs in a way that this is more effective than the work we can get out of PowerPoint, or Excel, or Graph. These are the things I did for them. Then, all of a sudden, I said: "But this world here is not very different from business world." Even here, the big boss maybe was coming from Africa, but it was a big boss inside the organization, would say: "Make this thing inside here just a little green, I don't like it blue, or this thing put it a little like that." They were spending tens of thousands of dollars and then they were changing the color because the boss liked it more. That really gave some bad feelings inside my blood. I said:

"This is not the type of organizations that I thought. These are not really always helping the people, maybe there is some other way that I can get some satisfaction from what I'm doing."

The Turning Point

Because, do you know what my problem was? Not the money, not the work, because it was always different, but the personal satisfaction. They can pay you all kinds of amounts of money, but if you're not able to do what you can do best, and see the people use it, or appreciate it, I feel like shit. I don't know about you, but that's what I feel. What I did, since I felt very depressed by the fact that I had all this work, they paid me well, but I didn't like it, I said: "Let me do something that I really like." And so, it was about 1998, I said:

"I have all these names of these people that have come to my courses. Why don't I tell to these people, when they come to the course, and they give me the feedback, let me put an extra box that says: "Do you want to receive some information from me? I've got a newsletter, and I'm going to send them something." "

And all the people in the courses said: "Yes, I want to have some information from you, I liked your course, give me more". And so I started a newsletter. What did I write in the newsletter? Everything I learned in my work. What tools I used, what approach I took, what was a better methodology to do this or that, and so the newsletter gave me immediately the satisfaction that I wanted, because people started to build up in number. 20, 30, 100, 500, 1000, 5000. "Wow! - I said - 5000 people reading my stuff!", and I wasn't even using a web site. I did have a web site, but it was... nothing. It was a brochure, like everybody when you start a website, you kind of do these dead thing: "I am this company, I do this and that", but is nothing like we see today where there are conversations going on many things. I said: "Maybe the brochure on the site is not very up-to-date, maybe I should change that". S,o I started publishing the stuff of the newsletter on the web site. That's kind of the opposite that the people do today, but that's how I started. I took the newsletter stuff and put it on the site, every week and I got this newsletter bigger and bigger, and bigger. 30, 40, 50 pages. I couldn't print it and read it back home myself. It was so much writing. I said: "This is amazing. I'm happy I'm doing all this, but there must be something beyond." I didn't know where this was going t go.

AdSense and The Final Decision

One day two friends of mine, Antonella and Massimo, came to me and said:

"Robin (actually the said "Giggi", because I wasn't Robin at the time), why don't you put some advertising on side of your site? Are you stupid, what are you doing? You got all these readers and you don't make any money out of this."

I hate advertising, I really cannot stand it. It really bugs me every time I read something. I don't want that stuff. It's distracting, it's not what I want. I want to help people, I want to share what I know, I want to give to others things that they like.

"Oh you're just stupid, you don't understand. Look there's a new advertising program from Google that's called AdSense. You should look into that."

"Google? AdSense? Let's go see". Some of you've already seen this, but some of you have not. This advertising program is based on something completely different from traditional advertising, because,

1. first of all, the ads are generally just text. A small text information with a link.
2. And secondly, what was really revolutionary at the time (and we're talking about 2001-2002) is that these ads come up intelligently.

If you write an article about loaf, or cooking, the ads that will come up are about eating spaghetti and getting a great pizza, and what is the restaurant to go have a dinner tonight. I said:

"That's not distracting, that's complementary information. If I write about Bruce Lee killing somebody, then there's Judo shoes, or punching gloves. That's cool. Let me try this, let me put those ads on the page."

And a miracle happened. Because, again, I never started with the idea of becoming a web publisher, of making money online, or even living off of it. But once I put these ads on the pages, the money started to come. And I was in trouble, right away, immediately, because AdSense was not available in Italy. So, I said: "How am I going to get paid? I'm making money, but I can't take it!" So, I called my friend Kelsey in California, and I said: "Kelsey, you got a bank account? I need a favor. I got this AdSense money that is coming in and I don't know where to put it. Can you take them from me, and then you once in a while send me some?" "Sure Giggi, no problem, I can do that." "Ok, fantastic!" And so the money started to come up. 1000, 2000, 3000 dollars per month. "Whoa! - I said - they were going! I can do whatever I want, I can go to the tropical island and keep writing, and the money keeps coming! Is it possible?" And I realized it was seriously possible when Kelsey called me back:

"Giggi, my wife is asking me where is all this money going? Whose these money? She's telling me where I'm sending all these money. I cannot do this anymore. It's too much money every month. You got to open your own account."

And happily Google decided, it was about 2003-2004, that Italy was ok and that we could have our own accounts and receive the money, and so I was even happier. But that wasn't the end of the story, because we were talking... what? 4000, 5000 dollars every month, and that was pretty much what I was making as a consultant. I had one foot inside the international organization, and one foot inside my publishing stuff and Google AdSense. I said: "As soon as I make 4000 or 5000 dollars these feet are gonna be both there." And in fact they moved automatically, I didn't have to do any command. I just found myself here. The international organizations gave some bids, I said: "I cost 2.000.000 (dollars)" and so they said: "Forget it"." I just made myself loose out all the competition, so that I didn't have any regret or say: "I should be doing this or that. That was my old business, is secure, oh, but stay here." I wanted to stay in the risky business, because it gave me so much more satisfaction and energy that nothing beat that.

How I Became a Google Premium Partner

What happened next, was really the most amazing thing. That is: Google itself came to me and said: "You're doing such a great job, we want you to be our premium partner". Whoa, I had read this word before, "premium partner". I said: "What did I do wrong? I read to be a premium partner you got to have 10.000.000 visitors. I don't have 10.000.000 visitors! Maybe there's a mistake..." So, I wrote them back and said: "I'm very happy, what can I do for you? How can you help me being a premium partner?" And they said: "You got to do nothing, we're going to just help you make more money." "You are going to help me make more money? How?"

"We're gonna give you just a few tools, and we're gonna dedicate an account manager in Dublin, Ireland, for you. You can call her anytime you want. Plus we're going to give you some secret stuff that you can put inside your pages that are going to make your ads even better."

"Whoa - I said - I'm not going to say no. Give me everything you've got." And they really gave me lots of valuable tools to make my job better. And so, jumping about four years ahead, here I am.

My Business and My Partners

I have now about 600.000 unique visitors from around the world who come every month. I publish my site in English, and I write in English, but I've also been able to build some partnership with some very nice people. I have an edition in Italian, a Latino edition for Spain and Latin America, and a Portuguese edition for Brazil and Portugal. I had also got that Russian edition, but I've lost my editor, so it's sitting there sleeping. I haven't got a Greek edition, because I haven't got to know anyone of you yet, but I'm definitely looking all the time for more partners and more languages. Because the partnership that I've made up is very simple. When I find somebody who's very reliable and trusted, and who's passionate about the stuff that I write - and I write about how to use these communication media to communicate more effectively, and if you want to become self-sustainable - if they're passionate about this, I tell them: "Look, you just translate what I write in your languages - I have policies, I can use some training - and the we split 50 / 50 all of the advertising money that your edition creates". If the Latino edition makes 5000 dollars in a month, 2500 are yours, 25000 are mine. And this has worked really well, because some of these people are not writers, but they're passionate about what I write and what I research, and so for them is double good. They learn something, while they translate and they write it, they make good money, and they get a lot of visibility as well. That's the story, the business story. There's a lot more data and you are going to ask me some of this.

Why Robin Good?

The second question people generally ask me before I give them the microphone is: "Why did you choose to call yourself Robin Good?" Robin Good! Robin Hood is my uncle. He lived in... did you know where Robin Hood comes from? Sherwood. S-H-E-R-WOOD. The wood of Sher. I'm Robin Hood nephew, and I come from a nearby village that's called Sharewood. But is spelled S-H-A-R-E, the forest where you share stuff. "Robin Good from Sharewood, you're really out of your mind Robin, how did you get all these stuff in your head?" You have to know that each one of us has a little Google engine inside his / her head. Most people don't know, they think that they have bad memory, because they don't know how to use their internal Google. One day I said:

"I want to use my internal Google, and I want to find out how can I make myself some kind of a brand, something that people are going to remember. One because the name is easy, and secondly because my name is going to tell them something."

Because my name, beside "Giggi", is really a lot difficult, kind of aristocratic name that nobody can say correctly, when I travel to other countries, they all reverse it all around. It's really displeasing. By the way, it's Luigi Canali De Rossi. So I get to be, Mr. Du Rossi, Mr. Luigi, Canali Di Rossi. They never get it right! I said to my internal Google:

"Listen, Google, I have to find a name that I can use over and over that it's easy to pronounce wherever I go and that is going to represent me. That when I say it, I feel I'm that one. It didn't choose my mother or my father, it's my choice."

Do you know how this Google works? You know when you say: "Shit, I don't remember that stuff, I have it here... it's not coming to me..." When you say "shit", you're telling Google: "Don't search for it. Forget it, I don't know it", so he just doesn't find it. Pay attention to this. Some of the time you say: "Oh, it's just there, hold it, it's going to come then you're going to say something else, and bang! It comes!" Because you said to the internal Google it's coming, so he's working there! he listens to your commands. "So, Google, I know you can work with my commands. I know it's going to take you some time, just go and do your job." And so he went and did his job, he completely forgot about it. Three months went by. Then one day, I was there on my motorbike, doing my own thing, looking at the red light... bang! "Robin Good from Sharewood." It just came, all done, in the package ready to use. How can you say no to such a great name? It represented me fully! I'm the person who likes to share with a lot of people, that is what gives me satisfaction. I didn't get into the web publishing business to make money, but because I enjoyed the sharing with other people. And Robin Good.. that's fantastic, he's the guy who's stealing from the big guys and giving to the poor, so "What's the correspondence in my world - I said - Maybe who do I still from? Microsoft?" At the time I would give to Google, but now... you don't know anymore who to steal from... but the idea is to get these fantastic ideas that are all over the place, and give them out to people, because to be successful online doesn't really take a lot of money, and a lot of investment, but a lot of good thinking and asking lots of questions, and looking around, and talking to people. That's what it takes.

Be a Guide For Other People

These are the typical two things that people ask me, when they invite me: "What's your story, and how do you make all this money, and how you got to name yourself Robin Good". The rest maybe you want to venture asking me something else, because I've plenty of things that I could tell you about newsmastering, or which type of content can make more money, but I would really like to serve you not to be here, to celebrate myself. I'm here to have fun. So you're very welcome if you're a small entrepreneur, a video producer, or somebody who's venturing out on the Internet and want to get a different point of view, not the Bible. I'm not that. Let's talk a little bit. Is anyone out there trying to make some money on the Internet? Raise your hand. 1-2-3-4-5. Anyone of you have some immediate questions or do you want me to provoke you? Maybe... some people ask me often: "Is that Google AdSense really the panacea, the perfect recipe for being successful?" And that is only one way. Today there are many different ways, and think the little pearl, of value that I want to give you out today, is the fact that what is going to work extremely well and some of you today, the presentation, I could not understand the words, so I didn't know the names, but this beautiful girl who's in front of me me introduced a thread that is going to be a winning one. Maybe the way she's interpreting it's the wrong way, but the idea is this: In the near future, because of the economic crisis, because of the way schools are, because of the need to learn continuously new stuff, because no matter what job you do, doctor or traffic cop, you got to learn new stuff, new rules. Things change continuously and they do change faster and faster. It doesn't take to be Leonardo da Vinci to understand that the business of the future is helping others get where they want to get. There are a number of people that want to get somewhere, there must be some other people who help them get there. they cannot go there by themselves. It doesn't matter if you're an expert about cultivating tropical flowers, or if you're an expert about healing rats that fill your house. It doesn't really matter. What matters is dealing today with the most valuable thing, after knowing English and the computer, is being able to communicate effectively to others. Because if you can communicate effectively to others, you have a huge business ahead of you that is not going to end. We're entering an era in which each one of us that wants to, is going to become an independent teacher, a guide, a mentor for others. This is what is meant to be.

The Value of True Education

You don't hear this story very much around, because schools and universities have the monopoly on education. But on a fake education. Especially the schools, because what you get out of schools is just learning how to pass an exam. What is the most intelligent question a student today can have? "What's going to be in the exam?" That's all they want to know, they don't care about the Sumerians or why they did certain things ore others, or the Egyptians, or the formulas, because the teachers expect them to memorize stuff and repeat it at the time of exam. There is very little understanding or knowledge. There's very little communication and discovery going on, but there are plenty of possibilities to change this if we don't leave it to the schools only. We can't destroy the schools, we don't want to have a revolution, we don't want to shoot the teachers. We want to have a quite, peaceful upheaval, change, revolutionary approach to education. And each one of us can start. Because when you're having dinner with your kids, with your daughters, and with your family, that's the time where instead of just talking about what the weather is, you can inject some of the true knowledge, you're discovering every day. You just forget that the true learning that takes place everyday, takes place when you're just not thinking about it. When you're talking at the water cooler with somebody and he says:

"I've discovered this hat and this is fantastic stuff, because it's not just like Velcro, this one when you open it creates energy and then there's a light that lits up here, and so when you're going..."

You discover stuff by talking to people, by searching on Google, by asking others, by going to places where there are all the people there and you hear the stories. But this is not what we do in school. Absolutely not. Nor we learn anything about "how to do this". To end my story: future, successful revenue business models for Internet, a great deal of them, are going to be based on your ability to share your knowledge. And you don't have to talk about astrophysics. You can talk about anything you want, because there are people interested in about mostly anything, and when they find somebody who they can see is sincere, is generous, is going to listen to them, they are going to say: "Hey, you got to tell me how much money you want. I want some stuff from you. Man, woman, give me something." That's what happens when you like somebody. It's natural. If she sits with me and she tells me for an hour ten secrets of video publishing that I've never heard before, I say: "How can I take you to dinner, where can take you tomorrow?" And so, when you're doing business, that translates into: "Can I buy your DVD, can I come to a workshop where you tell me this? Can I come to a teleseminar and ask you questions?" Whatever you give them, they're going to want it if you're good, passionate, serious, and sharing

Originally shot and recorded by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia and first published on January 27, 2009 as "The Story Of Robin Good At The Girls Geek Dinner 6 In Athens Greece".

Photo credits: Intro - Girl Geek Dinner 6 ...and Coach - Jiri Kabele The Turning Point - Aaron Amat Zaragoza How I Became a Google Premium Partner - Ryan Pike Be a Guide For Other People - zts Intro - IreneK

It still makes little sense to us to delay the digital TV switchover beyond February 17th. The switch has already been delayed for nearly a decade, and anyone who doesn't know about it yet isn't likely to know about it when June roles around either. Yet, for political expediency, it looks like the Senate has approved plans to move the transition back to June, which will end up slowing the rollout of various wireless services, thereby harming most consumers a lot more than this helps them. Hopefully, in June, politicians don't roll over again and push back the date again.

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Ross sent in these neat little DIY cases that keep your expensive electronics safe and sound. They are made entirely from recycled juice boxes. It's a great way to reuse what is otherwise a very hard thing to recycle. Check out the link for some tips and a nice pictorial how-to on making your own juice box cases. [Thanks Ross!]

I've invented an environment friendly way to make cases for expensive electronics! They disguise your gadget as something less expensive, and are funky, chic and sleek in their own right. For your iPod, digital camera or other gear.

More about DIY iPod & iPhone cases made from juice boxes

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What Will Save the Suburbs? by Allison Arieff... Interesting, maybe some of these places can become "TechShop" like tool centers...

...Take as an analogous example their symbiotic partner, the big box store. As I learned in artist Julia Christensen’s new book, “Big Box Reuse,” when a big box store like Wal-mart or Kmart outgrows its space, it is shut down. It is, apparently, cheaper to start from scratch than to close for renovation and expansion, let alone decide at the outset to design a store that can easily be expanded (or contracted, as the case may be).

So not only does a community get a newer, bigger big box, it is also left with quite an economic and environmental eyesore: a vacant shell of a retail operation, tons of wasted building material and a changed landscape that can’t be changed back.

The silver lining in Christensen’s study are the communities she’s discovered that have proactively addressed the massive empty shells they’ve been left with, turning structures of anywhere from 20,000 to 280,000 square feet into something useful: a charter school, a health center, a chapel, a library. (And, in Austin, Minn., a new Spam Museum.)

The repurposing of abandoned big-box stores is easier to wrap one’s head around: one can envision within a single volume (albeit a massive one) the potential to become something else.

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Tibor the Hun writes "NPR reports that Susan Solomon, one of the world's top climate scientists, finds in her new study that global warming is now irreversible. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concludes that even if we could immediately cease our impact on pollution and greenhouse gasses emissions, global climate change would continue for more than a thousand years. The reason is the saturation of oceans with carbon dioxide. Her study looked at the consequences of long-term effect in terms of sea-level rise and drought."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

We've covered the story of the South Korean blogger who went by the name Minerva, and who was arrested for "spreading false rumors." The whole episode seemed troubling to us. It seemed as though the blogger was just posting his thoughts online, and the government didn't like what he was saying. Now even more information is coming to light, including reports that what he said (about the Korean gov't telling banks not to buy US dollars) wasn't quite as false as the government claimed. Apparently it wasn't an official order -- but banks were urged to avoid dollars. This has plenty of people up in arms over what seems like a clear politically motivated arrest of a guy for telling the truth that the government didn't want people to know about, rather than any sort of "false information."

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Champion of Guitars, a reinvention of Guitar Hero as a text adventure, is now playable online. Brandon has the details over at Boing Boing Offworld. From the game:

The current management of this rather seedy venue doesn't much care about appearances, apparently. Nonetheless, it's become one of the hottest spots in the area, attracting surly alcoholics from all around. A variety of local acts, the vast majority unrelentingly terrible, play here every Tuesday night. Coincidentally, it's Tuesday night.

"Champion of Guitars: text adventure Guitar Hero gets real"

In 1981, the first Motorola cellular phone, consisting mostly of a big battery, was marketed almost exclusively to police and emergency services. Few other customers could afford it.

The development of technology that could “hand off” a call from one cell tower to the next was a huge achievement at the time. I like the way the museum curators adjusted the appearance of this display, using Lucite and perforated steel to capture that “modern” 1980s look.

I have a DVD of an early Hong Kong gangster movie in which actors talk into Motorola DynaTAC phones. I wish I owned one. Imagine pulling one of these monsters out of your briefcase during a business lunch.

There's an interesting dichotomy that goes on in captialist societies. We all know that markets grow and innovation occurs through competition and the ongoing process of companies trying to out-innovate each other -- but each individual organization is always looking to monopolize its own world. In fact, that is what innovation is all about. You innovate to get a monopoly on whatever that innovation is, for as long as you have it. The problem, however, is that too many have build up the belief that these monopolies should be lasting, or even permanent. That's not true. For the health of society and the company, they absolutely should be fleeting monopolies. That's the only way to make sure a company changes with the times and is flexible enough to handle market changes. But that quixotic and dangerous pursuit of permanent monopolies leads to dangerous situations -- often using or demanding protectionist policies from gov't regulators.

Eliot Spitzer (yes, that Eliot Spitzer) makes some interesting points in a column where he attacks both the SEC and GM for focusing on protectionism rather than competition. When it comes to GM, the argument is easy to understand. GM has done much to try to resist novel and useful innovations in the interest of protecting its own business. As for the SEC, that's a bit more of a stretch -- and obviously stems from Spitzer's own efforts back when he was NY's Attorney General and attempted to take on Wall St. while the SEC resisted any such investigations and lawsuits. Thus, to him, he represented "competition" and the SEC tried to block out such competition (which brings up some weird questions concerning whether or not it's good to have competition within the regulatory structure).

But the key point Spitzer makes is that we need to build a "culture of competition" into American organizations, rather than protectionism. That sounds good, but I'm having trouble seeing how you could actually make that work directly. There are some things you can do on the margins -- and, in fact, research has shown that making noncompete agreements unenforceable actually does increase competition (is it worth pointing out at this time that noncompetes went from unenforceable to enforceable in Detroit in the 80s...?). But, you can only do things like this at the margin. There is no way to flat out change a culture in this manner. Instead, I think you actually need to create incentives for companies to take a longer term view, rather than the short term view we get today. With the quarterly report set up, everyone has a 3-month time horizon on pretty much everything they do (in some cases one year, but never more). If companies actually had incentives to look at the significantly longer term, they would recognize themselves that ongoing competition and innovation are the only way they're going to continue successfully serving a market in the long run. But until someone comes up with a way to create incentives that allow for both transparency and longer term views, then it's likely that companies will focus on beating down competitors rather than winning through innovation.

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Our day on Offworld started out deep inside gaming's roots, with a look back at a text-only MUD version of Pac-Man, and then, even more gloriously, got news of Champion of Guitars, a brilliant working text adventure version of Guitar Hero, after the parody mock-up we featured earlier in the month. We also had a whack at Hack-Boy, a single serve site that helps you hack Fallout 3's computers, saw that Metal Gear strategy card-game spinoff Ac!d was coming to mobile phones, browsed through the finalists of the Independent Games Festival's 2009 Mobile competition, and heard news that a downloadable version of Tetris Attack was coming to DS. Finally, we heard one -- very likely drunk -- Japanese man give us a hilarious play-by-play of Game Boy's Super Mario Land, got sucked into repeatedly watching hypnotic homebrew VJ kits produced for the PS2 and Game Boy Advance, and, best of all, played Legend of Princess (see above), a souped-up raucous sidescrolling arcade version of Legend of Zelda by Noitu Love creator Konjak.

Toe, The writes "Apple's 358-page patent application for their iPhone interface entitled Touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics has been approved after more than two years of review by the US Patent Office. Apple's claims include: 'A computer-implemented method for use in conjunction with a computing device with a touch screen display comprises: detecting one or more finger contacts with the touch screen display, applying one or more heuristics to the one or more finger contacts to determine a command for the device, and processing the command. The one or more heuristics comprise: a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a one-dimensional vertical screen scrolling command, a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a two-dimensional screen translation command, and a heuristic for determining that the one or more finger contacts correspond to a command to transition from displaying a respective item in a set of items to displaying a next item in the set of items.' As Apple seems eager to defend their intellectual property, what will this mean to other touch developers?"

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Ed Note: Boingboing's current guest blogger Gareth Branwyn writes on technology, pop and fringe culture. He is currently a Contributing Editor at Maker Media. Recent projects have included co-creating The Maker's Notebook and editing The Best of MAKE and The Best of Instructables collections. Back in the mid-80s, I used to have a little ritual I'd perform every year. I'd select a biography, autobiography, or session/musical history about The Beatles and I'd read it while listening to a housemates' pristine vinyl copy of the The Beatles Collection (from end-to-end) on a kick-ass stereo. I so loved and looked forward to each yearly immersion. Fast-forward to 2005 and a posting by David here that Boing Boing pal Erik Davis had authored a book on Led Zeppelin's fourth album, part of a series of books on iconic records, called the 33 1/3 Series. I ordered Erik's book and have been collecting the series ever since. I can't tell you how much I enjoy them and how much deeper they've taken me into the music I love so much. Each book is somewhat unique, there's no set formula, although they all focus on a single album and most tend to have a chapter or two to set up the album, a chapter for each track on the album, and then a follow-up chapter or two. The books are each about 130-140 pages, so they're a quick read -- unless you want to ritualize the experience like I do. For each title, after I buy it, I download the album onto my iPod. Every night, before bed, I listen to one of the tracks, read the chapter on that track, then I listen to the track again. It's really an amazing way of penetrating deeper into the music. Usually after I'm finished with a particular book/album, I'll obsess over that artist for awhile, tracking down and listening to their entire oeuvre, wishing there was a 33 1/3 book for each record. I just recently finished the 33 1/3 for Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica and then went off and listened to any of his records I could find. I think I understand his work (both his music and his painting) now in a way I never would have without having gone on this journey, little pocket tome in-hand. My next excursion is going to be Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures. Forthcoming titles I'm jazzed about are Kate Bush's The Dreaming and Brian Eno's Another Green World (although it's been perpetually forthcoming -- rarely a good sign). I got so psyched after reading Erik's book, I even proposed one of my own, for Eno's Before and After Science, but the timing ended up not being right for me (especially given the labor-of-love-sized advance). One caveat about these books – the quality is very hit and miss. There seems to be a lot of latitude for the authors to step out (the whole enterprise is very passion-driven) and follow where their muse takes them. Some end up in a better place than others. But even when a title draws up short, I've still enjoyed the ride, and the books are so brief, it's not like I've invested a lot of time or money. David Barker, editor of the series, maintains a blog about 33-1/3, which you can find here.

Instructables user Patenteux du Nord details the construction of these attractive lake bouys:

My parent's cabin does not have drinkable tap water, so we use a lot of water bottles, juice bottles and all kind of bottles (my father prefers beer bottles). There is also no recycling system in this area, so we have to bring all these containers back home. I found a way to reuse them (using only my father's tool box) by turning them into a useful, good looking and entertaining buoy for the lake. They can be used as seats for exhausted swimmers, anchor for your kayak or rock warning... It is also really fun to try to run on them like in a Japanese game show...

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There's a long tradition of many parents whining about whatever pop cultural element is enticing their children -- mainly just because it's different than the type of cultural elements they had when they were kids. In some cases, it even reaches the point of a moral panic. However, reader ChurchHatesTucker writes in to point to news concerning some research done into fandom around the Harry Potter series, which basically found that children need pop culture in their lives, as a way of building up their imaginations, and creating the framework for their own storytelling activities. It doesn't seem to matter much the quality of the content -- just that it gives the kids something to work with in order to craft their own imaginative worlds.

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Hugh Pickens writes "The chief executive of the British Library, Lynne Brindley, says that our cultural heritage is at risk as the Internet evolves and technologies become obsolete, and that historians and citizens face a 'black hole' in the knowledge base of the 21st century unless urgent action is taken to preserve websites and other digital records. For example, when Barack Obama was inaugurated as US president last week, all traces of George W. Bush disappeared from the White House website. There were more than 150 websites relating to the 2000 Olympics in Sydney that vanished instantly at the end of the games and are now stored only by the National Library of Australia. 'If websites continue to disappear in the same way as those on President Bush and the Sydney Olympics... the memory of the nation disappears too,' says Brindley. The library plans to create a comprehensive archive of material from the 8M .uk domain websites, and also is organizing a collecting and archiving project for the London 2012 Olympics. 'The task of capturing our online intellectual heritage and preserving it for the long term falls, quite rightly, to the same libraries and archives that have over centuries systematically collected books, periodicals, newspapers, and recordings...'" Over the years we've discussed various aspects of this archiving problem.

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I was introduced to Parallel Kingdom today in discussing mobile applications with a few friends. It's a role-playing game designed for cellphone users that you can play on the iPhone or Android.

The gameplay is what you'd expect: killing dragons, teaming up against enemies, upgrading weapons. What's different is that the environment is a Google Map that surrounds your current location by a few blocks, so you can only see other players that are nearby in the real world, and finding other monsters to battle means physically moving to a new location. The result is a combination of straightforward video game play combined with the fun of discovery found in geocaching.

This is a good start, but I'm curious what additional elements location awareness will bring to the mobile gaming experience. For the cellphone-owning gamers out there: what's on your wish list?

Parallel Kingdom

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This is believed to be a Roman boxer from 1,800 years ago. Well, a teeny marble bust of a boxer anyway. Archaeologists found the statue, just six centimeters tall, in Jerusalem's City of David. From CNN:

The archaeologists (from the Israel Antiquities Authority) believe a merchant family from the eastern part of the Roman Empire most likely passed down the "precious object" through the generations until the fourth or fifth century, when an unfortunate family member had it with him at a public building, perhaps a hostel -- and an earthquake struck...

Two tiny holes in the figurine suggest it was used as a suspended weight together with a balance scale, the archaeologists said.

1,800-year-old marble head unearthed in Israel

According to a British video-on-demand site, the most popular time for British people to watch its porn films is 11:16 on Sunday mornings. Meanwhile, Hitwise, which tracks internet traffic, says Sundays' most popular destinations are shopping and social-networking sites. But its most interesting bit of research is a bit buried: it contends that since September, social-networking sites have garnered more web traffic than porn sites. But, as the video-on-demand guy points out, it's possible, or even likely, that a certain amount of adult content has merely shifted onto the social networks.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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DJRumpy sends word that the US Senate has voted to delay the switch to digital TV until June. "The transition date would move to June 12 from February 17 under the bill that was fueled by worries that viewers are not technically ready for the Congressionally mandated switch-over. It would also allow consumers with expired coupons, available from the government to offset the cost of a $40 converter box, to request new coupons. The government ran out of coupons earlier this month, and about 2.5 million Americans are on a waiting list for them."

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I finally got around to seeing You're Gonna Miss Me, a documentary about the musician Roky Erickson. Erickson was the leader of the 13th Floor Elevators (here's a 1960s video of the band), a psychedelic group from Austin that was hugely influential to the more well-known San Francisco bands of the era.

The film chronicles Erickson's crippling problems with severe mental illness, which, for a long time, weren't able to stop him from writing and playing amazing songs (Here's a song . In fact, his music just got better and better (Listen to Two Headed Dog from 1980). He finally dropped out though, thanks in a large part to bad family dynamics, and for 12 years he lived in a squalid apartment doing nothing but sitting in a chair listening to all his radios and TVs playing at the same time (to drown out noises in his head?). He lost all interest in music.

The ending is uplifting; it turns out to be a moving documentary about the unselfish love of a man trying to give his brilliant older brother another chance. It's great to see how much better he is doing now, as seen here in this short clip.

You're Gonna Miss Me - a documentary about the musician Roky Erickson

This is the i-Shovel, a prototype of an autonomous snow shovel. It is meant to be left outside, waiting for snowfall. When it detects one inch of snow, it goes to work shoveling the driveway. I would have loved this as a kid!
Follow the link for more info.

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A reader writes, "The Darby Free Library, which was founded in 1743 and is believed to be the oldest continuously operating public library in America, will be forced to close its doors at year's end if somebody doesn't write a big check or a lot of little ones. It would be a shame if this old library closed. It is not only a vital resource for its community but also a symbol, as our oldest known public library, of our country's commitment to access to knowledge and education for everybody."

Friends of the Darby Free Library

Worth1000's' "armored animals" photoshopping contest has some fabulous entries -- I love this armored mosquito, my worst nightmare come true.

Armored Animals 2