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A Life Time of Yeahs!

Yeah!

In 1987 the Rollins Band released the album Life Time, which was produced by Ian MacKaye of Minor Threat, Fugazi, The Teen Idols, and of course, Egg Hunt.

The album Life Time was groundbreaking, not just in showcasing the talents of Mr. Rollins as one of the greatest screamers of all time, but in cementing into our popular culture the use of the word “Yeah!” for emphasis. You may remain unconvinced that Mr. Rollins accomplished such a thing, so I listened to the album Life Time over and over and over again. Yeah! I! Did! I then fired up my audio editing software and collected all of the best “Yeah!” moments.

Obviously you know the opening of “Burned Beyond Recognition” (the first track) starts with five consecutive “Yeahs!” and you also know that “Turned Out” ends with a massive, some would say bone-chilling “Yeah!”, but there are so many more great “Yeah!” moments. After collecting the best “Yeahs!” I culled the list to just under 50 (it was not easy!) and I’ve provided them at the push of a button for the interactive piece titled “A Life Time of Yeahs!”

Yeah! Button

I believe “A Life Time of Yeahs!” stands as a testament to the positivity that Henry Rollins exudes in everything he does. From his position as a lead vocalist to a spoken word performer, and from his portrayal as an actor to his role as a talk show host, you can expect nothing but positive “Yeah!-ness” from Mr. Rollins. If you’re feeling down, maybe you’ve got the “gun in mouth blues” or you just need someone to agree with you… Mr. Rollins and “A Life Time of Yeahs!” has got you covered.

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Imperator Furiosa’s Skeleton Arm

Imperator Furiosa

By now I have to assume you’ve seen Mad Max: Fury Road, and you’ve probably said to yourself “Damn, Imperator Furiosa is pretty badass!” and then you remember that sweet skeleton arm on the door of the war rig and thought “I want one of those!” (Okay, maybe it’s just me…)

Imperator Furiosa's Skeleton Arm

Well, since I was unable to attain a high resolution image of the door of the war rig, I made do with a low-res version I found on the Internet, because that’s where you find pictures of things…

Imperator Furiosa's Skeleton Arm

Anyway, I traced the arm in Inkscape and made a nice vector image suitable for vinyl cutting. It’s about 18 inches long, so if you’ve got a Silhouette Cameo like we have at Milwaukee Makerspace you can use the 12″x24″ cutting mat, or just cut without a mat. The DXF file below should import into Silhouette Studio easily.

Or maybe you want to use a laser cutter or some other CNC machine to make an arm. There’s a vector PDF file, and the original SVG file you can easily edit.

Some people assume I drive an orange Honda Element, but really it’s a Honda War Rig. Special model, they only made a handful of them. (My old car was a V8 Interceptor. It was totaled in an accident.)

Honda War Rig

Honda War Rig (Close-up)

Maybe you don’t drive a Honda War Rig. Well, you can still get in on the fun with your Mad MacBook Pro. Just size the vinyl appropriately and stick it on the lid. Can you handle the “BADASS OS X Word Documents and Excel Spreadsheet” editing that’s about to happen!? I don’t think you can!

Mad MacBook Pro

Download the files and have a good time.

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Museums and Making and Work (and Fun!)

BBCM

Since the semester wrapped up at UWM and left me with a summer of no work or classes, I thought it best to get a job and return to the “normal” world of work. (I know, supposedly academics take summers off and don’t do anything. Kidding!)

I’ve accepted a position as “Technology Project Manager” at the Betty Brinn Children’s Museum. I’ll be working on developing a number of exhibits as well as a few other things, not the least of which is helping plan Maker Faire Milwaukee coming up on September 26th & 27th, 2015. This is pretty darn exciting for me. I attended my first Maker Faire just a few years ago and now I’m helping organize the largest Free Featured Maker Faire in the world. I’m passionate about people showing off the amazing things they create, so helping make that possible is pretty amazing. (Also, I’m now dealing with some of the folks I’ve known for years at Make in a day-to-day capacity. Neat!)

MakeShift MKE

I’m also helping out with things like MakeShift MKE, which is an adults-only event we have at the museum once a month which involves things like fire, drinking, making, and hacking. This takes place in BAM Space the “Be A Maker” Space within the museum. (Web site coming soon!) It’s basically a mini-makerspace that does programming for kids, but also caters to adults and families. It’s still in development, but it’s going to be awesome.

Oh, and because I never finished the multiple posts I started writing, this all came about due to some work I did with the museum last fall to develop a part of their Word Headquarters exhibit. At some point I will post more about that. I promise. Also, I’m working with Arduinos and Raspberry Pis and doing all sorts of prototyping, at work, and they pay me. I think. (I’ll find out next week. Kidding again!)

Basically, it’s gonna be a great summer!

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Laser Maze 2015

Laser Maze - Photo by Eric Schneeweis

You may remember the Laser Maze from Milwaukee MakerFest in 2013, or maybe you experienced it at Maker Faire Milwaukee in 2014. Well, it’s coming back! Somehow I volunteered to design & build the hardware for Laser Maze 2015!

Laser Pointers

Step 1: Acquire lasers.

I’ve got a big pile of laser pointers, so far so good. Now, I should mention I didn’t do the set-up in previous years, and I don’t have much to work from, so I’ll be making a bunch of decisions, and if they are terrible, let me know.

In the coming weeks I’ll be designing a 3D printed mount for the laser pointers. It will hold the front half, so we can unscrew the back half to change batteries without removing the laser from its position. There is a zip tie on the laser that slides and rotates into place to hold the button down. (A simple design, we’re going for simple on this whole thing.)

Scoreboard

The scoreboard is an Adafruit 1.2″ 4-Digit 7-Segment Display. I’ll probably use a Teensy 3.1 as the controller, and there will be a big green start button and a big red stop button. You press start at one end of the maze and the counter begins… and when you get to the end you press stop and you know your time from the scoreboard.

Oh, and the laser pointers… they bounce off some mirrors and hit solar panels connected to the Teensy. When you break the beam the voltage from the panel drops (which is recognized on the Teensy) and you get penalized. We’ll add time to your total as well. So if you’re 10 seconds into it and break a beam, the timer will suddenly display 20 seconds instead of 10 (or whatever, we’ll figure out the math later.)

There should also be a buzzer of some kind, for the start, stop, and breaking of the beam. I’m just using a piezo for prototyping, but we’ll make sure we have something LOUD for the event.

There are some notes about everything on the laser maze wiki page, but I’ll keep documenting here as I go.

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The Turndrawble [Video]

Here’s a video of the Turndrawble in action… Also, as an added bonus you get to hear the strains of a DC motor moving a gearbox to spin the platter. Turn it up, man!

Don’t forget to check out the blog post and the Turndrawble project page.