RasterWeb!
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.
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 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.
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.
You may remember me writing about the Virgin Mobile MiFi I picked up last year, and if not, that’s fine, but I’ve got an update, so you can just read this post…
For the most part, the MiFi has worked well as a 3G modem. Connection is hit & miss. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s crap, but it mostly works. I ended up taking it on a recent trip which involved minimal airport waiting time and things went bad. I fully charged it up the night before using the AC charger, and all appeared well. So in the morning at the airport I turned it on, got a few minutes of use, and it died. I wasn’t too concerned since I was just wasting time at the airport.
When we got to our destination I plugged it into the AC charger and charged it up, except it didn’t charge up. The charger got warm, so I assumed it was working and decided the battery had died. Ugh. Annoying. Still, not a big deal, as I got free WiFi from our host.
So when I got back from my trip I ordered a replacement battery from Amazon, which was less than $5.00. When it arrived I determined that it was not the damn battery, but the damn charger! I confirmed this by charging it up using a USB cable. Also, the charger doesn’t get warm anymore, so I assume it’s dead.
Besides that whole adventure, I learned something new. See, I got the MiFi partly as a backup to my home Internet connection, figuring that if it went offline, I could use the MiFi. The only issue was that you connect to it via WiFi, which my Mac Pro does not have. I never charged the MiFi with USB before because USB charging is typically slower than AC charging, but now that I’m doing it all the time, I’ve found the secret to using it via USB instead of WiFi. (I say secret because I kept seeing questions as to whether it was possible, and people saying it was not.)
Disclaimer: I use a Mac… I’ve not done this under Linux or Windows.
Plugin the MiFi, and you will see it mounted in the Finder. Now, for many USB devices if you just want to charge them, you unmount (eject) them, and they keep charging.
Here’s the trick with the MiFi… Eject it! Once you do, it’ll show up as a new network connection and you can see it in the Network Control Panel, and you can click the “Connect” button.
Hey, we are now connected! You can see the send/receive data, and if you click the “Show in menubar” checkbox, you get a handy little menu. (I didn’t need to fill in any values like the account name or password. It seems to load them all properly from the MiFi somehow.)
I’m still not 100% sure it charges up while using it in this fashion, so a bit more testing is needed, but hey, it’s progress…
Update: I’ve got an addition to what is posted above.
I tried the above on another Mac Pro I have and it did not see the MiFi until I ran the installer you see when you first mount it. After that, it showed up fine in the Network Control Panel, but the magic values were not filled in. (I also did not reboot, like the installer asked me to.) I ended up getting the Account Name from connecting to the MiFi (using WiFi) and finding it under the WWAN -> Diagnostics menu (listed as NAI) and the password was my 6 digit account pin. A bit more hassle, but now you know where to look.
Welcome to Part II of my self-awarded skill badges! (See Part I for background.)
Speaking of badges, there’s been some talk of badge systems, and some hackerspace/makerspace things happening where we might get to the point of awarding badges to members, maybe using Les Orchard’s Badger code, or maybe something else. It’s in the works… that’s all I can say right now. (And that’s pretty cool, right!?)
Programming: I will award myself the Programming badge based on the fact that I’ve gone from BASIC in the 1980s to Perl in the 1990s to PHP in the 2000s and Processing in the 2010s. That’s like 30 years of programming!
Robotics: I’ll pitch Friday Night Drawbot for this one… Some of the other things I build have bot in the name, but this might be the only true robot. (Plus, I just built a second Drawbot.)
Soldering: Heck yes to soldering! I first learned to solder when I was a teenager, and I did take electronics classes in high school. I’ve learned in the last two years though that my technique was crap. No matter, it’s much improved lately. I’m only doing through-hole stuff, but I think that counts.
Welding: This one is questionable. I did a bit of welding at a demo we had at Milwaukee Makerspace, but I’m still not at the point where I could do it all on my own. I should do more welding this year…
Over on Twitter I said:
I’m considering creating a web site to demonstrate how messed up America’s political system is… Anyone wanna help?
And here’s where that came from… I was listening to public radio and there was talk about how many of the people voting in the presidential election will be casting their vote against a candidate as much as they will for a candidate.
For most of my adult life I’ve taken the position that choosing an elected official is an exercise in choosing between the lesser of two evils. I’m not sure if this idea is right or wrong, but I wonder if we can prove it, so here’s an idea.
Let’s ask people to tell us if they voted for a candidate, or against a candidate.
I don’t care who you voted for, I’m more interested in if you really truly support the person you vote for, or if you’re just voting against the other guy. If we find out that the vast majority of people are actually voting against someone rather than for someone, then the system is broken.
How do we implement this? Here’s a few ideas…
Twitter
I’m sure we could come up with some hashtags like #votefor and #voteagainst and attempt to get people to use them. This is a low barrier to entry idea, and it could work. (Though it does restrict the data to just those with Twitter accounts.)
Text Messaging
Utilizing Twilio it would probably be fairly trivial to build an application to allow people to text their for/against status. They could even submit right at the polling place. You could have people sign up ahead of time to be reminded/asked on election night. (There would be some cost involved with this idea. Text messaging is cheap, but it ain’t free.)
Website
The whole thing could just be done as a web site, which would require registration/login and all the fun of building a site that is easy for people to sign up for, and use, and all that jazz. It’s doable, but it’s also (probably) more work than the other ideas. (The text messaging idea would still need a web site, but probably a less complicated site.)
The problems:
I see a few problems with the idea. The first would be adopting widespread use of it. Each of the three solutions I mentioned above have their own pros/cons, but they all rely on technology to submit data. Some voters aren’t big into technology. This could be solved by having people ask others if they voted for or against and then compiling the info. (Remember, we don’t care who you voted for, just if you voted for someone or against someone.) Have people ask other people could expand the sample beyond just the tech-savvy folks who use Twitter, mobile phones, and the Internet. (We’d like to think that’s everyone, but I’m not sure it is.)
Another problem would be determining what it means to vote for or against. Can it be expressed in binary like that? Do we need a sliding scale, or percentages? My first though is that such an idea would just complicate things. Every vote for someone is a vote against someone else, and vise versa, so at some point people just need to decide yay or nay.
Anyway, that’s my idea, and I don’t know if it’s original or not, but I’m sharing it, and really hope that someone runs with it, and does something with it, and by November I’m letting you know if I voted for someone or against someone.
Thoughts?
