RasterWeb!
This kitten, she is more insane than any kitten we’ve ever dealt with. So I present to you, the top 5 places kitten was today:
Photo by Windell H. Oskay, www.evilmadscientist.com
Good gosh! We’re less than two weeks out from MadCamp, which is what they are now calling BarCampMadison. It’s set for Saturday, August 27th, 2011.
So here’s the thing, I’m planning on doing a session titled “An Introduction to the Egg-Bot” in which I’ll show up with an Egg-Bot, my MacBook, and a whole bunch of eggs, and walk through plotting on eggs with a CNC drawing robot.
Here’s where you come in… You may have seen some of the things I’ve plotted before, and I’m trying desperately to create some new designs before MadCamp, but I will welcome anyone who wants to try their hand at it to bring an SVG, and we can try to plot it.
Maybe you want to check out Thingiverse, or OpenClipArt.org for some inspiration. It’s not quite that simple though… So here’s what you should do:
OK, that one bit, “Read this entire tutorial” may not be 100% necessary, but you need to at least skim it to understand how things work. You can’t have any filled areas, as everything is done with strokes. You can do more than one color, but you need to separate them by layers. Extremely complex designs can take 10+ minutes, and the session will only last about an hour.
Anyway, feel free to bring your logo in the right format, or some other piece of art you’d like to see on an egg. Or, you could send me the file ahead of time and I’ll try to prep it and give it a quick look over.
(For bonus points, install the Egg-Bot extension and the Hershey Text extension along with Inkscape and you can try plotting from your own computer.)
Maybe you’ll get an Egg Egg of your own!
The Doctor and I spent a few days at Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Here’s a hand-held panorama I shot, as I didn’t bring the tripod or panohead with me on vacation, since I was traveling light.
You’ll notice another photographer in the center of the scene, who happens to be shooting with a long lens, on the beach, which is something that typically only a “Creepster Photographer” does. But hey, I don’t know that for sure…
If you want the large large large version, head on over to Flickr.
Co. Design is a great site for people who love good design. Some of the stuff they cover would be called “high design” which is sort of like, well, stuff that may be really cool, but also really expensive, and chances are, you probably don’t need it.
This Jasper Morrison Alarm Clock is a clock that looks cool, and probably even has some cool features, and the article suggests that using an iPhone for your alarm clock is silly. I disagree.
I’ve got a pretty nice alarm clock, an old Sony Dream Machine from the mid-1990s, with dual alarms, a nice, big display, and a radio built in. The problem is, it’s on my wife’s side of the bed, and I get up earlier than she does. If I use it as an alarm clock, it will wake her up (not good) and it also requires me to either lean way over her to turn it off (not good) or get out of bed to turn it off (also not good.)
So I actually do have a clock on my side of the bed, but it’s a simple X10 controller and it tells me what time it is. As for an alarm, the iPhone is the best solution for me so far. I don’t use any 3rd party alarm app, as the built-in alarm works fine. I set the volume all the way down at night, and put the phone in silent mode. The phone vibrating is just enough to wake me up and not wake up the wife. The iPhone alarm is also easy to set, and I get up at different times depending on the day of the week, so that’s all preset. Since I also plug my iPhone in to charge it each night, it’s a win-win situation. Any notification apps I use tend to have the concept of “quiet time” and I almost never get messages/interruptions in the middle of the night. It works quite well for me, and I’m typically not the sort of person who uses my phone for everything, as I’ve still got a GPS I prefer to use, as well as an iPod I prefer to use.
I’m interested in what other people do… Do you have an alarm clock, or has your phone taken over that task?
After the Fukushima Nuclear Accident happened, I made a comment about the safety of nuclear energy. I’ll freely admit I am not an expert on such things, and a few friends called me out with some numbers, pointing out that more people died from coal mining disasters. (Though I’m still not sure that long-term, that’s true.) The difference in my mind, was that typically coal miners (and their families) are affected by coal mining disasters, while nuclear disasters have a greater chance of affecting the environment more, not just people, but animals, plants, and the world we live in.
After reading How I spent my Sunday in Fukushima by Sean Bonner, and seeing the fallout from this nuclear accident, I don’t know how anyone can think that nuclear energy is safe.
Again, I’m no expert, so if I’m missing something, please let me know.
The only good to come out of this disaster is the rise of Safecast, which is a global project working to empower people with data, primarily by building a sensor network and enabling people to both contribute and freely use the data collected. I’m a fan of data, and sensors, and sharing information, and if it can help people live safer lives, then all the better.