| Modernism, in a Nutshell: |
[Jul. 6th, 2009|12:25 pm] |
"The extent to which you have a design style is the extent to which you have not solved the design problem."
~Charles Eames
I am very ambivalent towards modernism. But that's a really great description of it. |
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| O____________O |
[Jul. 5th, 2009|11:34 pm] |
THERE WILL BE BRAWL
Like Zarla says-- there are tons of gritty takes on the Nintendo mythos out there, but this one is the best.
I MEAN SERIOUSLY. YOU MUST SEE THIS. |
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| UH2 gonna be a bit late... |
[Jun. 29th, 2009|10:05 pm] |
No later than noon tomorrow, but probably not tonight.
And this is because it's quite detailed and NOT because I wasted half of today on Starcraft.
Really. |
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| The Cybernetic Elephant in the Room |
[Jun. 29th, 2009|07:20 pm] |
I'm beginning to suspect the Singularity is becoming a bit of an elephant in the room for geek culture. Those of us who think it's coming don't talk about it in mixed company for the obvious reason that eschatology is kind of the dead center of many religious belief systems, and if you have one, the Singularity represents a competing one.
Which is when the trouble happens.
I like to think most of those who think the Singularity is an even that will happen think as I do that this shouldn't be confused with an End of time but really just another transitional period of evolution, one which we have the audacity to suspect we might be around to see, and further that we might be slow-living enough to see the whole transformation. This is not an eschatology.
But we have to act like it is. And we feel obligated to make light of the idea.
This bugs me. |
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| Steam Punk |
[Jun. 28th, 2009|01:41 pm] |
I've been hearing a lot that Steam Punk is dead, which has me a bit worried that I'm going to be like one of those people who followed Disco well into the 1990's, because I still freaking love it.
Then again, I kind of think a bowler hat with working, exposed clockwork is just inherently cool, outside the concept of what's "trendy". |
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| Motor Clip! |
[Jun. 28th, 2009|10:22 am] |
Yeah, she don' look like much but with repeated trials I got a clip that holds a motor securely to a sturdy plastic frame. From here, there's lots of other challenges, but the MakerBot has sure nailed this one! |
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| Dodecahedron Shot Glasses |
[Jun. 22nd, 2009|10:18 am] |
Skeinforge settings will have to be fiddled a bit to make 'em watertight, but the printer's doing pretty good output lately. |
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| Printing Again, Parametrically |
[Jun. 21st, 2009|07:56 pm] |
There are still a few bugs left in the system, but it's definitely doing better. The above spirals were generated parametrically, without the use of skeinforge. I think parametric objects have some potential, especially for mathematical shapes like these. |
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| Ar-doo-EE-no |
[Jun. 21st, 2009|12:57 pm] |
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I find that if I pronounce Arduino Ar-doo-EE-no it sounds a whole lot less annoying than if I pronounce it Ar-dwee-no. The board is awesome, so it can have an annoying name if it wants, but I'm still going to pronounce it my way. |
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| Thermistor Variance |
[Jun. 20th, 2009|11:32 pm] |
I think the thermistor replacement has a subtly different temperature curve. The plastic doesn't start to melt until what this one reports as 250C or so. This is about a thirty degree difference from the actual operating temperature, which means I should probably be doing a robust recalibration of my thermistor, with mineral oil baths on a burner, a nice candy thermometer and so on.
I'm probably just going to hack a couple of codes near the op point and call it good. X_X |
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| Oh. |
[Jun. 19th, 2009|06:04 pm] |
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| I'm working with the best people ever. |
[Jun. 19th, 2009|12:13 am] |
Because of this.
The Printing on a MakerBot checklist:
1. Get an STL file
2. Run STL file through Skeinforge to generate GCode file
3. Open ReplicatorG and connect to CupCake CNC
4. Position nozzle for printing
5. Open GCode file with ReplicatorG
6. Say/Yell/Scream 'Fire the MakerBot' in a funny accent.
7. Click the 'Build' button. |
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| HAY GUYS I FOUND THE END BOSS |
[Jun. 18th, 2009|03:52 pm] |
The Medea Hypothesis
Pretty frightening hypothesis-- what if life is fundamentally unstable? Makes sense, right? That whole bit where the aerobic bacteria killed off nearly everything on the planet always bugged me. The mass extinctions are common. We're just fulfilling out purpose as another agent of mass extinction...
Unless we don't.
If this is right, then our imagined ideal of not killing off most of the life on Earth and of living Happily Ever After as intelligent beings, "celebrating the gift of consciousness until the stars themselves run cold and dim" as Planet of Alpha Centauri would say, is an affront to nature itself.
I say we do it. |
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| Damn, dude. |
[Jun. 17th, 2009|10:15 pm] |
Amadeus is awesome. I don't know why I waited so long to finally see that.
Salieri... Oh such a beautiful villain he is.
So beautiful.. |
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| The MakerBot Pen Plotter |
[Jun. 16th, 2009|09:22 pm] |
Okay that was FUN.
Still can't find an SVG-to-GCode converter that works though.... |
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maskedretriever's journal
