Category: Uncategorized

Categories
Uncategorized

Bad Date Data

Bad Dates

And people wonder why I complain so much about date formatting… (See Also: raster’s rants on 4-digit years.)

Take this example from Nikon’s web site, captured lovingly in the screen shot above.

If you’re in a hurry, and don’t have time to read everything (I hear that covers 75% of the people who use the Internet) you might need info on the D4 and see that it’s at the top of the list, and hey… looks like it was updated December 4, 2010! At least that may be your assumption by seeing 12/04/10.

You also need info on the D40, and you see 08/04/04 and think “Wow, it was last updated in 2004!” which is weird, because the D40 didn’t come out until 2006. (And yeah, the D4 wasn’t around in 2010 either.)

If you scan the whole column, you’ll see that first part of the date is the year, followed by the month, and then the day. While I do prefer year, month, day, I definitely prefer YYYY-MM-DD.

This isn’t 1975, you’re not saving vast amounts of computer memory by typing “08” instead of “2008” and all your really doing is creating opportunities for people to get confused.

Yes, I know people should actually read things in a critical fashion especially if it has to do with an SDK for hardware, but this is just one example of many.

Categories
Uncategorized

Laser. Cut. Files. (Part III)

SVG file in Inkscape

NOTE: See the latest post on this subject: Laser. Cut. Files. (Part IV)

SVG file in Inkscape
SVG file in Inkscape

After my last post on the subject, Laser. Cut. Files. (Part II), I figured that I had something that worked… but then something came along that worked better!

Thanks to a comment from old pal Thomas Edwards on the Part II post:

Have you tried Inkscape Save as EPS, then Preview EPS to save PDF? (Inkscape Save as PDF might work as well, but I find Corel Draw gets messed up by fonts unless I start as EPS and then go to PDF)

I decided to give PDF files from Inkscape a try. They didn’t work. CorelDraw gets some crazy error trying to open PDF files I create in Inkscape on Mac OS X… but what did work was a two-step process!

Again, my goal is to do all of my design work on Mac OS X, typically using Inkscape, and then moving my files to the Laser Cutter PC running CorelDraw on Windows (yuk!)

PDF file in Preview
PDF file in Preview

So for now, my process is the following:

  1. Create vector art in Inkscape
  2. Save (original) file as an SVG
  3. Save (a copy of the file) as a PDF from Inkscape
  4. Open the PDF from Inkscape in Preview and Save as a PDF
  5. Copy the new PDF file to Laser Cutter PC
  6. Open a new document in CorelDraw and import PDF file

Save as a PDF (again!)
Save as a PDF (again!)

Windows and Linux users, your mileage may vary, and obviously you don’t have Preview.app, but on Mac OS X this process works for me. And as for the note in the comment from Thomas about fonts, I’d be sure to convert any fonts into outlines after I save my SVG file, but before I save my PDF file. (It’s an old print design trick.)

Categories
Uncategorized

Spring Gallery Night 2012

Spring Gallery Night 2012

I’ll be joining my fellow makers from Milwaukee Makerspace for Spring Gallery Night this Friday, April 20th, 2012 at the World Famous Bucketworks in Milwaukee, Wisconsin…

The last month or so has been crazy-busy, and it’s been difficult to find the time to work on a project, and I ended up shelving a few ideas and building something I’ve wanted to build for the last two years or so. It’s another drawing machine… sort of. It’s still very much in-progress, but you can stop by and check it out (along with much cooler stuff from some of my friends.)

Arc-O-Matic 328

ArtWorks for Milwaukee will also be there, and they do some great work with Milwaukee-area youths, so even if you don’t like our crazy mix of art, technology, noise, and robots, come on down and show your support for the ArtWorks crew.

Categories
Uncategorized

Printed Chairs

Big Printer

Big Printer

Didn’t I say something last year about 3D printing being the future? Well, it is. There’s even a guy printing chairs from old scrap appliances.

Double-points for using recycled materials and a robot. (Lots more cool stuff at the Milan Furniture Fair as well!) Check the video below to see the awesome in action.

Categories
Uncategorized

More Tracking (Please!)

Boston

Remember last year when I wrote about how your iPhone tracks your location? (Sort of.) Some people find this stuff creepy, but I’m a fan of geo-tracking, and I want more of this data. It’s part of the reason I use things like Foursquare and Google Latitude. A fellow Milwaukee Makerspace member is even working on a device to seamlessly let your office mates know which office you are in. (See Marco.)

Last 30 Days
Last 30 days of tracking, via Google Latitude

The fact that Google Latitude only shows the last 30 days is (to me) a bug, not a feature, and it means that if I want to save that data, I probably need to dig into the API and write my own code to do it. I wrote some code to grab and save all my Foursquare data, and it worked great until they deprecated the API. I haven’t upgrade my code to use new API because it’s an OAuthMess, which I haven’t wanted to deal with yet.

Delete!
A sad list of choices for hardcore geo-nerds

I understand that many (most?) people don’t want this data public, or shared, or kept, or all of those things. I mean, look at the options: Show timestamps, Export to KML, Delete history from this time period, Delete all history. Half of your choices involve deleting data.

When I look at some of the mapping crazy-geo stuff that Aaron has done… I’m floored by it, and I want to see more of that, not less. Again, it’s not for everyone, but for the people who want their own data, or the ability to share/republish their own data, there’s some good potential there… and I hope to see more of it in the future.