I only wish I was smart enough to come up with things like this:
Of course, if I was that smart, I could probably afford a MacBook.
While I know the source image, I didn’t really know that much about the artist.
Archive for June, 2006
Ceci n’est pas une pomme.
Thursday, June 29th, 2006If I was more of a Geek.
Tuesday, June 27th, 2006I would TOTALLY do this.
It’s a computer controlled Disco floor. I’ve wanted one of these since I saw the MIT one. (Which also introduced me to DJ Shadow, check the movies page.) Then the Washington U. one just made me jealous.
I wouldn’t want to make it a floor per-say, I’d rather it as a wall installation over my couch or something. Ideally running visualizations from the stereo, but we’ll see.
The problem is that you have to be seriously Geek to do this. Soldering the boards together is a bit much to expect of me, and programming the ROM is downright silly.
But it’s something to shoot for… someday.
More information on the Newest and Bestest floor can be found at Better then Everyone.
No Fear.
Sunday, June 25th, 2006‘No Fear’.
Now a hopefully forgotten brand of clothing from the 90’s and my musicial philosophy.
Do Not be afraid of music you like. Still like New Kids on the Block? Then sing it loud, sing it proud.
Do Not be afraid to listen to something different. Music favors the bold.
I pretty much signed up to see what differences MOG offers over Last.fm. ( http://www.last.fm/user/WiwiJumbo/ ) I’m going to try to run these concurrently for a while (maybe continously) and see what happens.
I, Too, Dream in Colour and in Rhyme
Friday, June 23rd, 2006We are all here for a reason on a particular path
You don’t need a curriculum to know that you are part of the math
If I were of the highest cliff, on the highest riff
And you slipped off the side and clinched on to your life in my grip
I would never, ever, let you down
[Listening to: Never Let Me Down (featuring Jay-Z & J.Ivy) by Kanye West off the album The College Dropout (5:24)]
The Soft Touch
Thursday, June 22nd, 2006SoftSqueeze is a software emulator of a Slim Devices Squeezebox.
I don’t have enough money at the moment to actually buy a Squeezebox (tho I hopefully will someday) but I do have access to an old laptop. So I am now running both the SlimServer and SoftSqueeze off of it and trying to make everything work pretty.
So far… not so bad!
The server is pretty straight forward, tell it where the music is and it’ll do the rest. The problem is that it’s not as full featured as a jukebox as iTunes is. You don’t seem to be able to assign ratings, or disable a song from playback and other stuff. They try to get around that with the ability to read the iTunes library file so that any playlists you generate will be available in Slim Server. I can’t get that feature to work just yet, it might be due to the fact iTunes and my music is on another machine. Perhaps I’ll get that figured out later.
The client emulator also works pretty well, tho it’s written in Java. Which just never seems quite as tight as apps written natively. Performance is a little sluggish mostly because the laptop is kinda slow. I’m currently running it “headless” so that it doesn’t have to mess with drawing UI elements to the screen, I think I can see an improvement.
But without a screen, it’s kinda hard to get the full experience of a Squeezebox, but it’s not really that big of a deal because I don’t have a remote control for it either. So I pretty much have to go to a laptop and access the server controls through a webpage. I’m planning to fix that last part.
I have a few scrap IR receivers that plug into a serial port. I know the receiver works, I can see it. I’m having trouble finding useful software. WinLIRC is downright pathetic. Even when I can get it to see the remote I can’t it doesn’t seem to actually do anything! And there’s so little documentation it’s a joke.
*sigh*
There is hope. I purchased a iMON from PC Cyber last year and it has some fantastic software for it. The only problem is that it’s overkill. The remote has something around 30+ buttons and all I really want is about 4. (I even have this excellent little remot that would be perfect with 3 buttons: Play/Pause, Skip & Back. Perfect!)
Still much to do with it yet. I need to get AudioScrobber hooked into it for my Last.fm pages for one thing. Can’t miss out on all that personal data!
Level Headed
Thursday, June 22nd, 2006So I did it. I got myself a level.
But not just any level. Oh no! I got’s myself a fancy level. I picked up the Black & Decker Bullseye Auto-Leveling Laser w/ Digital Tape Measure.
This level is the Bee’s Knees. I has not 1, not 2, but 3 lasers! All at right angles to each other so once you place it you can do the traditional straight edges on a wall.
But that’s not all! Check this out, it self-levels. Put it mostly straight on a wall and flip the switch and the lasers will swing back and forth to they find balance giving you perfectly horizontal and vertical lines. Oh yeah baby!
It’s also got some stuff about being able to measure distances for you. I was hoping that it would be some sort of range finder, but no such luck. There are wheels on the bottom so you roll it along where you want to measure.
Meh.
One nifty trick with that tho is once you’ve measured your distance you can tap in the number of spots you want to mark and when you roll back along the distance you just measured it will calculate the equidistant between each mark and beep when you should mark the spot. It’s cool and all, but I don’t think I’ll use it. Ever.
One final point is literally that, a point. The lasers encircle a opening big enough to stick a pencil in a mark a spot, which is also useful for lining things up. Different attachments can plug into this opening allowing you to hang the level off a nail in the wall or use a pin to stick it straight into drywall.
I’ve since lined up the rest of my photos for my Tower wall and it was SO simple to get it right with this thing.
Trés Awesome.
One Laptop Per Wayne
Wednesday, June 21st, 2006The One Laptop Per Child project also known as the $100 Dollar Laptop is as pure and wonderful a concept as I’m as likely to see.
The goal of the OLPC, is to get cheap, useable, laptops into the hands of children in (mostly) 3rd world countries as a tool for education (and self-education), information, communication. And I’m willing to bet, self-expression.
As someone who believes in Better Living through TechnologyTM, I’m naturally a little excited.
I grew up in the 80′s, TV on the weekend’s were thick with infomercials on the starving in Ethiopia. 20 years later, they’re still on. I’m not saying it’s isn’t a worthy cause, but what I am saying is that it’s not a long term solution.
Real change starts with education.
Neal Steaphon’s novel The Diamond Age, while like all his books has an ending which makes you want to throw the soft cover into heavy traffic – very heavy traffic, is the story of a young girl who is essentially raised by a “notebook“. Granted, it’s a very advanced book, but I can see a little of that in the OLPC.
But there’s also something else I see.
As great as it would be to get these into the hands of Ndugu, the OLPC is also almost exactly what I would like in a laptop.
Small, cheap, low power consumption, rugged. I want a laptop for just the basics, something I can toss in a backpack and not worry about. At $100 dollars, the OLPC would almost be disposeable. Factor in that with a set hardware and open information for it, you’re going to see this hacked up like you would not believe. This will, at some point, be able to do anything.
I was planning at some point to get a (ugh) MacBook (It’s an iBook, damn it!), but they really didn’t do anything with the price, and now with reports of it getting so damn hot (and in some cases turning the casing yellow!), why bother with something I’d have to treat with kid gloves?
Maybe the Apple will pull something off to sway my head, but for right now, I’m eager for anything else on the OLPC!
Lucky 7′s
Monday, June 19th, 2006To celebrate Katie’s release from the Hospital today we went to The Works for supper.
And, since I promised her last time, got the Lucky Sevens burger. Labeled as a Desert Burger, I had been wanting to try it for a while but I was never sure if I was up to Nutella and Banana on a beef patty.
Wow was it good. It might not replace my #1 SK8R Boy (Peanut Butter, Bacon and Cheese!) but I will definitely be having it again sometime.
I don’t think I would have liked either the Nutella or the banana by itself, but together they sorta restrained each other and just let the awesome reign free.
Can you tell that I liked it? 
Policy Shift
Monday, June 19th, 2006A few years ago an ad campaign like this, promoting… well, they leave it kinda vague what they’re promoting, but you get the point.
It’s just remarkable how things have changed.
