WATCHISMO TIME MACHINES - Timing is everything...
Rock family trees Gesture control system for drones HOWTO make a shamrock shake at home Hand-cranked Japanese vending machine works when the power's out Copyright troll stripped of copyrights, which are to be sold to pay off its victims Eyewitness to climate change Exploding manure terrorizes America's hog farms The Apocalypse will be a lot like flying coach Kony 2012 screening in Uganda results in anger, rocks thrown at screen Live discussion tomorrow: Electricity, infrastructure, and our energy future Tales of a great Pacific Coast earthquake passed down in legend X-Ray of a scorpion fish 3. 1415926535897932384 Yahoo's weaponized patents Apps for Kids 013: Match Panic "Scrolls" trademark tussle settled Petition to preserve the CBC's musical archive eBook Review: the Trilisk Ruins Ed Piskor interviewed by MTV Encyclopedia Britannica done with books 3D printable "look of disapproval" glasses turn you into a human emoticon New MAKE book about Kinect Hacks: Making Things See HOWTO make an Internet of Things camera The Scary Consequences of A Lost Smartphone NYC man "steals" his own bike in front of police stations, etc, and very few damns are given Is "Banksy on Advertising" Plagiarized? Mark's picks on Bullseye with Jesse Thorn The making of Skylanders' Portal of Power What is a game? Video: "Express Yourself" (Diplo ft. Nicky Da B) Rock family trees
By David Pescovitz on Mar 14, 2012 12:55 pm For more than three decades, veteran music journalist Pete Frame has specialized in creating fantastic Rock Family Trees that map relationships between musicians and bands. In the comments on my post yesterday about our Ed Piskor's Hip Hop Family Tree, commenter Preston Sruges pointed us to Frame's family tree of New York New Wave, featuring ...
Read in browser Gesture control system for drones
By David Pescovitz on Mar 14, 2012 12:38 pm As you might recall from, well, Top Gun, the crew on aircraft carriers use a series of hand signals to direct planes as they land and take off. Spurred by the increase in drone activity, MIT researchers are developing a computer vision system to guide those robot planes using hand gestures. (MIT)
Read in browser HOWTO make a shamrock shake at home
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 14, 2012 12:34 pm Bethany Nixon's husband claims to have found the exact proportions of peppermint extract, green food dye, and vanilla ice-cream to reproduce the seasonal McDonald's Shamrock Shake year round. This will certainly come in handy for those out-of-season snake infestations! Dan is one of those people that run out the door to get a Shamrock Shake ...
Read in browser Hand-cranked Japanese vending machine works when the power's out
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 14, 2012 12:32 pm Japanese vending-machine powerhouse Sanden has introduced a hand-cranked vending machine that operates when the power goes off. You just crank it 70 times and then insert your change. Crank this vending machine 70 times in emergency
Read in browser Copyright troll stripped of copyrights, which are to be sold to pay off its victims
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 14, 2012 12:28 pm Righthaven, the copyright troll that flamed out after a botched attempt to get rich by suing bloggers for quoting newspaper articles, has reached bottom. After having its domain seized and sold off to pay its legal bills, it is now faced with having to sell the copyrights to the aforesaid newspaper articles as well to ...
Read in browser Eyewitness to climate change
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Mar 14, 2012 12:23 pm Numbers can be powerful things, but they don't necessarily help the average person grasp what's actually going on in science. Instead, personal stories tend to make a bigger impact. And that's understandable. Things you can see—or things that someone can show you—are going to stick in your head a bit more than a barrage of ...
Read in browser Exploding manure terrorizes America's hog farms
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Mar 14, 2012 12:01 pm The manure pits on pig farms across the United States have been invaded by a mysterious foam—at Ars Technica, Brandon Keim describes it as "a gelatinous goop that resembles melted brown Nerf". It's probably the byproduct of some kind of biological process, though nobody knows exactly what. The larger problem, though, is that the foam ...
Read in browser The Apocalypse will be a lot like flying coach
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Mar 14, 2012 11:53 am What could possibly make a 1960s-era nuclear war worse than you'd already assumed it would be? How about being packed like sardines into a fallout shelter with 13 of your soon-to-be-closest friends? Frank Munger is a senior reporter with the Knoxville News Sentinel, where he covers Oak Ridge National Laboratory—a nearby energy research facility that ...
Read in browser Kony 2012 screening in Uganda results in anger, rocks thrown at screen
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 14, 2012 11:50 am [Video Link to Al Jazeera report] Invisible Children's "Kony 2012" video has been viewed by millions online around the world. By view counts alone, it is now the most viral video in history. It is now the first ever YouTube hit publicly screened in the northern Ugandan town of Lira—and it didn't go so well. ...
Read in browser Live discussion tomorrow: Electricity, infrastructure, and our energy future
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Mar 14, 2012 11:23 am Join me tomorrow at 11:00 am Eastern for a live chat with editors from Treehugger.com. They'll be talking with me about my new book, Before the Lights Go Out: Conquering the Energy Crisis Before It Conquers Us. The key message I want people to take away from this book: Our energy problems (and our energy ...
Read in browser Tales of a great Pacific Coast earthquake passed down in legend
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Mar 14, 2012 11:13 am Last year, the Eastern coast of Japan was struck by a massive 9.0 earthquake and tsunami. Since that happened, you've heard researchers talk about how it was not the first time that region had experienced an earthquake that large. Although the 2011 Tohoku earthquake has been called the biggest earthquake in Japan's recorded history, that's ...
Read in browser X-Ray of a scorpion fish
By Maggie Koerth-Baker on Mar 14, 2012 10:45 am The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History has a new exhibit up dedicated to x-ray portraiture of fish. All the shots were taken by Sandra Raredon, a museum specialist in the Division of Fishes (which is kind of a wonderful title, yes?) I dig this because, on verbal description, this sounds rather dull. X-rays of ...
Read in browser 3. 1415926535897932384
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 14, 2012 10:16 am 6264338327950288419716939937510 58209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679 82148086513282306647093844609550582231725359408128 48111745028410270193852110555964462294895493038196 44288109756659334461284756482337867831652712019091 45648566923460348610454326648213393607260249141273 72458700660631558817488152092096282925409171536436 78925903600113305305488204665213841469519415116094 33057270365759591953092186117381932611793105118548 07446237996274956735188575272489122793818301194912 98336733624406566430860213949463952247371907021798 60943702770539217176293176752384674818467669405132 00056812714526356082778577134275778960917363717872 14684409012249534301465495853710507922796892589235 42019956112129021960864034418159813629774771309960 51870721134999999837297804995105973173281609631859 50244594553469083026425223082533446850352619311881 71010003137838752886587533208381420617177669147303 59825349042875546873115956286388235378759375195778 18577805321712268066130019278766111959092164201989 38095257201065485863278865936153381827968230301952 03530185296899577362259941389124972177528347913151 55748572424541506959508295331168617278558890750983 81754637464939319255060400927701671139009848824012 85836160356370766010471018194295559619894676783744 94482553797747268471040475346462080466842590694912 93313677028989152104752162056966024058038150193511 25338243003558764024749647326391419927260426992279 67823547816360093417216412199245863150302861829745 55706749838505494588586926995690927210797509302955 32116534498720275596023648066549911988183479775356 63698074265425278625518184175746728909777727938000 81647060016145249192173217214772350141441973568548 16136115735255213347574184946843852332390739414333 45477624168625189835694855620992192221842725502542 56887671790494601653466804988627232791786085784383 82796797668145410095388378636095068006422512520511 73929848960841284886269456042419652850222106611863 06744278622039194945047123713786960956364371917287 46776465757396241389086583264599581339047802759009 94657640789512694683983525957098258226205224894077 26719478268482601476990902640136394437455305068203 49625245174939965143142980919065925093722169646151 57098583874105978859597729754989301617539284681382 68683868942774155991855925245953959431049972524680 84598727364469584865383673622262609912460805124388 43904512441365497627807977156914359977001296160894 41694868555848406353422072225828488648158456028506 01684273945226746767889525213852254995466672782398 64565961163548862305774564980355936345681743241125 15076069479451096596094025228879710893145669136867 22874894056010150330861792868092087476091782493858 90097149096759852613655497818931297848216829989487 22658804857564014270477555132379641451523746234364 54285844479526586782105114135473573952311342716610 ...
Read in browser Yahoo's weaponized patents
By Rob Beschizza on Mar 14, 2012 10:07 am For Wired, Andy Baio recalls how Yahoo went about filing the "defensive" software patents that it now threatens competitors with. For years, Yahoo was mostly harmless. Management foibles and executive shuffles only hurt shareholders and employee morale. But in the last few years, the company's incompetence has begun to hurt the rest of us. First, ...
Read in browser Apps for Kids 013: Match Panic
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 14, 2012 10:00 am Apps for Kids is Boing Boing's podcast about cool smartphone apps for kids and parents. My co-host is my 8-year-old daughter, Jane Frauenfelder. In this week's episode Jane and I talk about Match Panic, a game where you have to tap on the left side or right side of the screen to match the characters ...
Read in browser "Scrolls" trademark tussle settled
By Rob Beschizza on Mar 14, 2012 09:52 am ZeniMax has settled a trademark claim against Minecraft-famed Mojang and its forthcoming fantasy-themed card game, Scrolls. ZeniMax is the holding company for Bethesda Softworks, creator of Skyrim and other games in the Elder Scrolls series of computer role-playing games. In the settlement, Mojang—which won early court tussles in its native Sweden—is permitted to publish the ...
Read in browser Petition to preserve the CBC's musical archive
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 14, 2012 09:23 am Spider Robinson writes concerning a petition to rescue the 100,000 items from the musical archives of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that are in danger of being purged: "To waste the precious musical treasure the CBC has painfully accumulated and indexed for us would be a self-inflicted cultural lobotomy, akin to burning down the Alexandrian Library ...
Read in browser eBook Review: the Trilisk Ruins
By Jason Weisberger on Mar 14, 2012 08:07 am Recommended by several readers in the comments, I read the Trilisk Ruins by Michael McCloskey. There is visible evidence of aliens and their technology, but humanity still hasn't met a live one. Life is pretty tough for Telisa, a xenoarchaeologist in a universe where the UN has banned free access to alien artifacts -- how ...
Read in browser Ed Piskor interviewed by MTV
By David Pescovitz on Mar 14, 2012 01:03 am MTV Hive interviewed our own Ed Piskor about his awesome and epic "Brain Rot: Hip Hop Family Tree" comic that you can read here each week! From MTV: You find yourself listening to more old-school hip hop than new? Yeah, for sure. Everybody asks me when I'm going to end this. I'm not sure when ...
Read in browser Encyclopedia Britannica done with books
By David Pescovitz on Mar 14, 2012 12:19 am After 2.5 centuries, Encyclopedia Britannica has stopped printing encyclopedias. Seems time, as the dead tree books now represent less than 1% of Britannica's sales. From CNN: "Everyone will want to call this the end of an era, and I understand that," (Britannica president Jorge) Cauz says. "But there's no sad moment for us. I think ...
Read in browser 3D printable "look of disapproval" glasses turn you into a human emoticon
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 13, 2012 10:06 pm These "Look of Disapproval glasses" from Thingiverse gives you a 3D-printable option for turning your face into an emoticon. They're the first contribution from user Plasma2002, and the Makerbot folks have put out a call for the entire spectrum of human emotion to be captured in 3D-printable glasses. Here's what I'm thinking for an emoticon ...
Read in browser New MAKE book about Kinect Hacks: Making Things See
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 13, 2012 09:49 pm [Video Link] I'm excited about Greg Borenstein's new book for MAKE, called Making Things See: 3D vision with Kinect, Processing, Arduino, and MakerBot. Greg's a grad student at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program and this book is a result of his interests in special effects, miniatures, motion capture, 3D animation, animatronics, and digital fabrication. This detailed, ...
Read in browser HOWTO make an Internet of Things camera
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 13, 2012 10:29 pm Following on from their Internet of Things Printer, the good folks at Adafruit have produced a set of plans and a kit for making an Internet of Things Camera -- a tiny, standalone gizmo that turns an Arduino, a webcam's guts and an EyeFi card into a device that can wirelessly transmit photos to a ...
Read in browser The Scary Consequences of A Lost Smartphone
By Christopher Maag on Mar 13, 2012 08:49 pm If you're one of those people who tend to lose their phone shortly after putting it down, then you'll want to read this. According to a new study, if you lose your smartphone, you have a 50/50 chance of getting it back. But chances are much higher -- nearly 100 percent -- that whoever retrieves ...
Read in browser NYC man "steals" his own bike in front of police stations, etc, and very few damns are given
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 13, 2012 09:44 pm Filmmaker Casey Neistat writes in the NYT about his recurring project to steal his own bicycle in really obvious ways in places across New York, to see if anyone intervenes. Very few people do. I recently spent a couple of days conducting a bike theft experiment, which I first tried with my brother Van in ...
Read in browser Is "Banksy on Advertising" Plagiarized?
By Amy Seidenwurm on Mar 13, 2012 08:27 pm It appears that the (kind of great) Banksy rant about advertising that's been going around lately is excerpted from his 2004 book Cut It Out and was actually written/inspired by Sean Tejaratchi circa 1999. Here's a bit of Banksy's Piece from this year: Fuck That. Any advert you see in a public space that gives you no choice ...
Read in browser Mark's picks on Bullseye with Jesse Thorn
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 13, 2012 08:06 pm Jesse Thorn had me back on his terrific radio program and podcast Bullseye (the successor to his previous show, The Sound of Young America). I talked about the Zeo Sleep Manager and the art blog Gurney Journey. Bullseye: Mark Frauenfelder's Recommendations, week of 03/13/12 Mark's recommendations on Bullseye with Jesse ThornLawrence Weschler on BullseyeJesse Thorn ...
Read in browser The making of Skylanders' Portal of Power
By Mark Frauenfelder on Mar 13, 2012 07:47 pm Blake Maloof has been covering the Game Developers' Conference for MAKE, and he interviewed his colleagues at Toys for Bob about the game, Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure, which my 8-year-old daughter loves. It has a wireless "Portal of Power," upon which you place little vinyl characters as you play the game. The characters have RFID chips ...
Read in browser What is a game?
By Cory Doctorow on Mar 13, 2012 08:34 pm Back from the Games Developers' Conference in San Francisco, Raph Koster weighs in on the perennial debate about what makes a game, starting with his own classic formulation, "Playing a game is the act of solving statistically varied challenge situations presented by an opponent who may or may not be algorithmic within a framework that ...
Read in browser Video: "Express Yourself" (Diplo ft. Nicky Da B)
By Xeni Jardin on Mar 13, 2012 06:51 pm [ Video Link. Content warning: Contains vigorous azz-shakin' ] Via New Orleans native Clayton Cubitt, who says, I'm gonna say this again, for those of you who yearn for the energy and danger and artistic vitality that NYC had in the 70s/80s, you need to drop everything and get yourself to New Orleans right now. ...
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