Man Recreates Ewok Treehouse Village in Oregon

I have no idea why anyone would do this, but perhaps you can figure it out after watching the video.

Sound Machine

"An instrument for performing electronic music. Three units, which are resembling standard record players, translate concentric visual patterns into control signals for further processing in any music software. The rotation of the discs, each holding three tracks, can be synced to a sequencer."

I couldn't have said it any better myself.

Soundmachines from The Product on Vimeo.

Infographic: Hollywood's Long War On Technology

From BoingBoing.

Fun Time! TARDIS Built By German Schoolteacher

I can't improve on this by writing about it. Just watch.

Material ConneXion

Are you looking for stuff? For some project. And you don't know what you need, but you know how it is supposed to perform. Or you have some item and don't know if it will take the stress of its intended use. Or you're just tired of using the same old stuff for your work and want to explore something new?

You need the use of a materials library. Same thing as a library for books, but they are for stuff instead.

In a materials library you can explore thousands (or more!) of items and find out information about properties, performance, durability and just about anything else you'd like to know.

Most large tech companies have them, but they might be hard to get into. Material ConneXion has offices around the world and maintain the world's largest collection of, well, stuff. With libraries on three continents, they are a resource for designers of all disciplines - industrial, furniture, packaging, graphics, fashion, interior design, landscape architecture and transportation -  that are looking for the latest new materials.

They also have a cool book for designers. It's a bit pricey, but full of great ideas and lots of...STUFF!

Where Does Your Food Come From?

Have you ever wondered just where your food comes from? Well, now you can find out.

Real Farms is a crowd-sourced, on-line food guide that tells you exactly where your meal comes from.

Happy eating!

Travel Photo of the Week - BONUS! Time-Lapse Video of Yosemite National Park

As George Takei would say, "Oh, my!"

How Neutrons Might Escape Into Another Universe

"Oh, the place you'll go!" once said Dr, Suess. Some physicists believe that our universe may exist in parallel with other universes and this raises the idea that travel between these universes may also be possible.

Here's an article in MIT's Technology Review that discusses Michael Sarrazin's work at the University of Namur in Belgium on how matter might make the leap in the presence of large magnetic potentials.

Dr. Suess probably didn't imagine that.

RAW Week

No, I'm not going to go on a food diatribe. RAW refers to Robert Anton Wilson, author of so many books on the Illuminati and conspiracies that I can't keep count. He was one of the last great '60s figures, a friend to Timothy Leary, William Burroughs, and Buckminster Fuller. He was  also a very funny man.

Last week was Robert Anton Wilson Week on Boing Boing. I'm just a little late posting about it, but you can catch up HERE.

He certainly changed my way of thinking about things, especially conspiracies. He wrote that if you don't believe that conspiracies are real and effect many aspects of our lives, just look at those around you. At any given time people are conspiring all the time. He then asked what makes you think it isn't going on at all levels of society?

I'm not going to write a whole bunch about Wilson. You can find out about him for yourself.

Middle School With Björk

Björk has been nothing if not eccentric, innovative and groundbreaking. Her musical program is now a standard part of Iceland's middle-school curriculum. Her recent album Biophilia is based on the biophilia hypothesis that suggests that there is an instinctive bond between human beings and other living systems.

Although she is not going to tour this project in America, she is going to do a brief residency in NYC with it in February at the New York Hall of Science in Queens starting February 3 and the Roseland Ballroom starting February 22. You can read more about it HERE.

Below is a short video of preparation for the shows. Now who else would have thought about making music with a Tesla Coil?

Fun Time!

Jud Turner made a life-sized Columbia Mammoth skeleton from 95% recycled material, mostly old farm equipment. It was created as a commission for Pacific Studio, and will be permanently displayed at the new Moses Lake Museum and Art Center, in Washington state. Oh, boy!

20 Top Predictions For Life 100 Years From Now

Lots of folks like to predict the future. I do it all the time. BBC's news magazine polled their readers about what they thought life would be like in a hundred years and then had futurologists Ian Pearson and Patrick Tucker give their opinions those ideas.

My favorite? Number two:  We will have the ability to communicate through thought transmission.

Bamboo Buildings, Beautiful School, Amazing People

    

Travel Photo of the Week

Haleakala National Park, Hawaii 

Superstuff: When Quantum Goes Big

If you don't think the future is going to be exciting, you haven't been paying attention. Check out this article and video.

City Without Ads

Having worked in advertising (producing and directing TV commercials, doing print and radio), I've come to the opinion that the vast majority of it is mind poison.

I think this is especially the case with mass advertising. I'm not going to go into my reasoning, you can do that for yourself. Just watch your kids eyes glaze over at the site of the latest shiny piece of useless junk shown on the tube (then after you buy it, watch it sit in the corner unused because it's actually boring or broken because of its shoddy construction).

And you sit there thinking that you've grown out of that kind Pavlovian response, even as you salivate over some car ad.

What's to do? Well, six years ago one city decided to ban outdoor advertising citing visual pollution. In 2006, Gilberto Kassab, mayor of São Paulo, Brazil, passed the "Clean City Law." Did all the businesses go under? Hardly. Here's a link to the website The Center For A New American Dream describing what happened.

Fun Time in NYC (part 2)

Here are the three videos we shot of the construction process. In the first Brian, the lucky man who makes Muppets at the Whatnot shop, introduces himself.

In the second Brian is gluing the eyes on.

And in the last we meet my finished Whatnot.

Here is a nice shot. I'm thinking of maybe naming him Walter. Any suggestions?

Fun Time In NYC (part 1)

For my birthday this year (which was actually last month), my daughter promised me trip to the Muppet Whatnot Shop at FAO Schwarz in New York City. If you didn't know, a Muppet Whatnot is one of the Muppet extras that you see milling about in scenes with lots of puppets.

The Whatnot Shop lets you make your own custom Muppet from various odd parts; eyes, noses, hair, all kinds of stuff and then you dress it in different tops.

Here are photos from our visit yesterday. Videos of my finished Muppet tonight or tomorrow.


Here I am about to start the Muppet making process.















I'm not sure if I'm about to punch him or he's about to eat my hand.



Here's a cute fellow.



Here's a whole slew of Whatnots. The variety is endless.

Learn To Code, Get A Job

Have you ever wished you code get under the hood of your computer and write programs? Now you can and without going back to college and spending more to learn than you'll earn (a big problem with colleges these days).

Codeacademy is a wesite that will teach you step-by-step...for free. The default page starts you coding right away with simple exercises to build your skills. You can even code (and compete) with friends and build your skills together.

NOTE: If all goes well, this week's Saturday and Sunday entries will be merged into a single "Fun Time." Normal daily entries will resume Monday morning.

I Love Kites

"This kite, called 'Three Cubes Colliding,' is made of carbon fiber spars, Cuben Fiber fabric, and 1,700 3D printed connectors, and the best part is it actually works."

Travel Photo of the Week

Fishermen on Inle Lake, Burma

7 Billion People (part 2)

Cubelets, A Modular Robot Construction System for Kids

These cool little modular blocks are a bit pricey ($520), but their potential for education would make them a pretty powerful tool in the classroom. As the website says....

"The cubelets KT01 standard kit comes with 20 magnetic blocks that can be snapped together to make an endless variety of robots with no programming and no wires. You can build robots that drive around on a tabletop, respond to light, objects, and temperature, and have surprisingly lifelike behavior. But instead of programming that behavior, you snap the cubelets together and watch the behavior emerge like with a flock of birds or a swarm of bees.

"Each cubelet in the kit has different equipment on board and a different default behavior. There are Sense Blocks that act like our eyes and ears; they can sense light, temperature, and how far they are away from other objects. Just like with people, the senses are the inputs to the system.

"On the flip side, the Action Blocks act as outputs. They do things. Some have little motors inside of them so that they can drive around or spin one of their faces. There are blocks that make noise, shine a flashlight, or display their information  through a light-up bar graph."

Here's a video. I'm impressed.

100 Things We Didn't Know Until Last Year

This is from the BBC News Magazine Monitor. So many things discovered last year. Who could've known?

Did you know that Elton John has no mobile phone? Or that people with full bladders make better decisions? How about that chickens feel empathy?

Doesn't all this change your world view completely? I'll tell you what my life changing discovery was...swearing relieves pain.

I feel better already.

Fun Time!

Claymation remake of John Carpenter masterpiece THE THING (1982).

More Tiny Homes

Here's an article from Jetson Green on 15 tiny home projects that they covered in 2011.

Cute Cardboard Robot Elicits Simpathy

This is from New Scientist. "Boxie," Alexander Reben's documentary-video-making robot, was designed to wander around shooting video of people it has asked to tell an interesting story. Enough stories were gathered to make the short film below.

Travel Photo of the Week

Buddha statue's view from Borobudur, Java, Indonesia.

Tiny House Porn

Here's a nice little website with lots of tiny home photos. It's a little shy on details, though.

Free College Education From Stanford

Last fall, Stanford University offered three of its most popular computer science classes to the public for free. Over 200,000 people signed up. Because of this, Stanford is offering seven more computer science classes beginning in January, and will expand its offerings to two entrepreneurship courses.

The online students don’t get credit for the classes. Stanford issues a "badge of completion" instead. Now a growing number of professors are invested in making knowledge available to the masses, regardless of their ability to pay. If this trend ontinues, an entire Stanford education may soon be available for free online.

I think I might take "The Lean Launchpad" class about taking my bright ideas and turning them into successful startup companies.

Happy New Year, Seven Billion People

Happy New Year, everyone on planet Earth! And that adds up to a lot of Happy New Years. Over seven billion of them. That's right, in case you haven't heard, there are now over seven billion people on the planet and just so you get an idea of where they all are on the tiny blue ball, here's a chart from the nice people at fathom.info:

Now we know where most of the problems are going to take place.