RasterWeb!

Pro Apps (and then some!)

tools

In the world of professional media making (and other things) it often pays to learn not just the One Tool™ but some of the alternatives… especially some of the free/open source alternatives.

In the world of video, there’s Final Cut Pro, which will often do 95% of what you need done with video, but when you need that extra 5%, that extra push over the cliff, there’s other applications to make that happen. Things like MPEG StreamClip, FFmpeg, and VLC have become extras in our toolbox that we’ve come to rely on. MPEG StreamClip is killer for getting things into the needed format, and if it can’t do it, I’ll move on to FFmpeg or perhaps VLC. They’ve all got their specialties.

Even things like iMovie (the most recent version, as well as the older version) are worth keeping around… Same goes with iDVD, which is usually a simple and fast option when all you need is a looping DVD. Photoshop? I love it…. but sometimes iPhoto is exactly what you need.

On the audio side of things, we tend to use Logic, but we’ve also got room for things like Audacity. What’s that? Need an 8 bit/8kHz mono WAV file for an antiquated phone system? I can kick that out in Audacity in 1/10th the time I’d figure out the settings in Logic. (And yes, that’s something I had to do last week.)

NeoOffice, OpenOffice, LibreOffice? I’ve used them all, and believe it or not, they all have subtle differences which maybe of use depending on the situation. (In fact the one I left out is Microsoft Office, because I don’t use it, but years ago, if you used a Mac and wanted to open the latest Word files from Windows, you could only do so with NeoOffice.)

So here’s my advice…. Learn the pro apps, and learn them well, but spend some time digging through the open source/free tools as well. Figure them out, what they are good at (and bad at) and keep them around for that special task that they excel at.

Have you got any favorite “lesser” apps that complement your “pro” apps?

Tags applications, audio, media, video

Uncategorized

Hackerspace Passports at BarCampMilwaukee

Post author By Pete Prodoehl
Post date 2011-09-12

If you happen to run into Mitch Altman and he gives you a Hackerspace Passport, or if you make your own like I did, you should toss it in your bag and bring it to BarCampMilwaukee6, as I’ll have a nice #BCMKE logo to stamp in it.

BarCampMilwaukee is an event, but I also like to think of it as a “temporary Hackerspace” of sorts, since it does it exist for roughly 2 days per year, and has done so since 2006.

Tags barcamp, hackerspace, makerspace, passport

Uncategorized

MakerBot Hands-on

Wisconsin in Sketchup

After seeing the blog post about the United States Electoral Vote Map, I decided I needed to print out a 3D version of Wisconsin. So I grabbed one of the Sketchup files from Thingiverse and deleted every state except the one I live in. (Which, you know, happens to be Wisconsin.)

Wisconsin in ReplicatorG

Once I had our dear state all on its own, I used this “Sketchup to DXF or STL” plugin (download skp_to_dxf.rb) to export it as an STL file so that I could load it into ReplicatorG.

Yeah, I know it’s tiny. But since everything up until now was the easy part, and the actual controlling of the MakerBot and the print process was the (supposedly) difficult part, I decided to start small. Here’s where it gets hard.

See, last week when I had my first MakerBot Adventure, Drew (the owner/operator and fellow Milwaukee Makerspace member) did all the hard work, while I just handed him a file. This time, he wasn’t around, nor was the laptop that normally connects to the MakerBot, so I was on my own.

I wish I could say skimming this wiki page titled How To Print revealed the secrets to the MakerBot universe, but it took a whole bunch of wiki pages, and some Google Groups messages, and some random searching based on error codes, and at some point, I got it mostly figured out. Mostly. (I also had to remember that I was using a Cupcake and not a Thing-O-Matic, as they have a few differences.)

ReplicatorG Control Panel

Ah, the Control Panel… where the magic happens! Or should happen. Or something. All that digging around on wiki pages provided me with just enough info to be dangerous here, and put in some values I thought would work. The one thing Drew said was “As long as you don’t drive the extruder head into the platform, you should be good.” That was enough to scare me into being overly cautious, and my first attempts obviously had the head too high. The other issue was, the feed rate of the filament was zero. I tried really hard not to force things, but eventually applying more pressure got the filament moving. (Thanks Royce!)

One thing I noticed about the Control Panel is that the settings did not seem to stick, and I had to enter them over and over again. (Which is why I’m posting it here.) Besides that, ReplicatorG was fairly easy to use. I’m still not sure how to determine the size of the thing being printed, but I’ll work on that.

So at this point, I had the extruder head down low enough, plastic was flowing, and the platform was moving. That’s right folks… I was 3D printing!!!

And how did it turn out, you may be asking? Well, here’s some amazing images of my first “all on my own” 3D print.

Wisconsin (with quarter, for scale)

Yeah, like I said… it’s tiny. No matter. I’ve made it this far… Now on to bigger and better things.

View the super large photo, or the alternate, at Flickr.)

Tags 3d, 3dprinting, makerbot, makerspace, plastic, wisconsin

Uncategorized

3D Modeling Applications

Well, the time has come… For years I ignored the third dimension, working only in 2D. Even then, I typically favored raster graphics in Photoshop over vector graphics in the likes of Illustrator. Of course the Egg-Bot brought with it the need to dig into Inkscape, and I’ve done well enough there, finding it useful enough for my vector-based tasks… but now comes…. 3D!!!

Now that I’ve got access to a MakerBot, I have this need to deal with 3D modeling software, starting out with converting formats, and eventually designing things on my own, and actually output STL files. So begins my journey, and a look at some of my options:

3DTin
I mentioned 3DTin.com in my last MakerBot post, and while it’s a great way to get started and have something usable in less than 10 minutes, I don’t know that it will be a serious tool for what I’d like to do. It seems to have no concept of converting formats. It’s still a great (although limited) tool, for what it is…

Google Sketchup
Our pals at Google have Sketchup (the free version) which seems pretty darn popular, and thanks to a few awesome plugins, I’ve been able to import and export STL files. (I haven’t tested the printing of any yet, but that will happen soon.) Sketchup confuses me. I should probably spend some time with a tutorial and figure it out. Is the free version limited? I know that they took out the ability to export DXF files in the latest version, and to get that back you’re expected to buy the pro version for $495. Yikes!

Blender
I must say, that without a doubt, Blender is one of the most confusing pieces of software I’ve ever used, and I’ve used Windows… at a large corporation even! I know Blender is powerful, and in the hands of @knellotron or another skilled operator, great things can be done. But even just trying to import and export a file was too difficult. The “File” menu kept disappearing!

123D
From the folks at Autodesk comes 123D. Windows only. I won’t even look at it unless they create a Mac OS X version.

OpenSCAD
Well, there’s always OpenSCAD, the “Programmers Solid 3D CAD Modeller.” But it’s all codey and programmey, and not visual, which may be cool for some things, but it’s probably not the best to start out with…

I even went so far as to fire up Processing and write code to output STL files via the unlekkerLib library, which is outdated anyway and I should be looking at the ModelBuilder library. Argh…..

So that leaves me with a “???” which should be obvious is a question to you: What do I do?

Tags 123d, 3d, 3dtin, applications, blender, makerbot, openscad, sketchup, software, stl

Uncategorized

Roundy’s Milk Chocolate Almond Bar

Post author By Pete Prodoehl
Post date 2011-09-07
1 Comment on Roundy’s Milk Chocolate Almond Bar

roundyschocolate01

It’s been quite a while since I’ve done a candy review, in fact, I may have last done one in an issue of Psychotherapy zine published (on paper) back in 1993. No matter…. you’re here for a candy review, and that is what you shall get!

Today we’ll be looking at the Roundy’s Milk Chocolate Almond Bar, and we’re going to try our best not to make too many direct comparisons to the classic HERSHEY’S Milk Chocolate with Almonds Bar.

But who am I kidding? The “Roundy’s Milk Chocolate Almond Bar” is a direct competitor to the “HERSHEY’S Milk Chocolate with Almonds Bar” in every respect. Think of the Roundy’s version as the “generic equivalent” that is cheaper, and maybe not quite as good…

Here’s an image courtesy of our desktop (candy) scanner.

Besides the design, which I find a bit uninspiring, you’ll notice that between the 3 samples, the amount and distribution of almonds varies wildly!

The first bar has 5, while the second has 4 1/2, and the third is the jackpot with 4 1/2 almonds on each side! This is the one you’ll want to break in half to share with a friend. Doing so with number 1 or 2 would leave either you or your friend seriously lacking in almonds.

As for the chocolate itself, I’d rate it as “ok but not great” and if I compared it directly to the chocolate from the fine folks at HERSHEY’S, I’d probably be more disappointed.

As for the actual ingredients and the “Nutritional Information” label? I don’t even look at those, because if I did, I wouldn’t be eating either of them.

Tags candy, scanner