MPAA executive admits to tampering with key evidence in Finnish topsite trial HOWTO make a spiral oak staircase out of cheap IKEA countertops 20-foot dinosaur made from balloons Building a Human: new retrofuturist short by Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz Guatemala: Genocide trial may soon restart; Obama to meet with Central American leaders Apple won't fix your computer if you smoke near it HOWTO make a magnetic detachable stapler for center-stapled booklets and the like Pirate Cinema up for Canada's Aurora Award MPAA executive admits to tampering with key evidence in Finnish topsite trial
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 28, 2013 09:06 am In Finland, a long-running prosecution of six men who were accused of running a piracy "topsite" ended with disappointment for the big rightsholder groups when two men were acquitted and the remaining four got comparatively mild sentences. Now, TorrentFreak sheds some light on the situation with the revelation that the prosecution was forced to admit, ...
Read in browser HOWTO make a spiral oak staircase out of cheap IKEA countertops
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 27, 2013 08:41 pm Bryce Phelps made himself a beautiful oak spiral staircase and saved a ton of money by cutting up cheap IKEA oak countertops for the treads: I went with a 4" steel pipe from the local steel yard buying 18'. Also purchased some angle and flat steel to frame out the stairs. My treads needed to ...
Read in browser 20-foot dinosaur made from balloons
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 27, 2013 06:38 pm This 20-foot-tall acrocanthosaurus is made out of twisted-together balloons. It was created over four days by Larry Moss and Kelly Cheatle's company Airgami for the lobby of the Virgina Museum of Natural History. airigami (headed by larry moss) has completed a 20-foot long acrocanthosaurus--a dinosaur from the early cretaceous period. this is not the first ...
Read in browser Building a Human: new retrofuturist short by Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz
By Xeni Jardin on Apr 27, 2013 06:10 pm Robert Popper (electrocuted) and Peter Serafinowicz (electrocuted) are back with a new "instructional film made by The Visitors for Human Collaborators on Edité-Frignim (Earth)." Markets of Britain, a short film by Lee Titt Peter Serafinowicz has a new book out Looking back at Look Around You with Popper and Serafinowicz ... Peter Serafinowicz: Boing Boing ...
Read in browser Guatemala: Genocide trial may soon restart; Obama to meet with Central American leaders
By Xeni Jardin on Apr 27, 2013 05:28 pm PHOTO: James RodrÃguez/mimundo.org. "Protest demanding continuation of Genocide trial aganst Rios Montt." A brief Saturday update from Guatemala, where the genocide trial of former US-backed military dictator Rios Montt and his head of military intelligence Rodriguez Sanchez has been on hold after a series of legal actions involving various Guatemalan courts. In case you're just ...
Read in browser Apple won't fix your computer if you smoke near it
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 27, 2013 05:21 pm Consumerist's Laura Northrup rounds up several years' worth of stories from Apple customers who say they were denied warranty support on their computers because they'd smoked around them. As an annoying ex-smoker, I can sympathize with a tech who doesn't want to work on a machine that smells like an old ashtray, but that's what ...
Read in browser HOWTO make a magnetic detachable stapler for center-stapled booklets and the like
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 27, 2013 03:14 pm On Instructables, DIYHacksAndHowTos has a great method for separating a cheap stapler and sticking magnets on both halves, enabling you to center-staple booklets and the like. Every year or two, I do something zine-like that requires this sort of thing, and I always end up wasting money on a long-reach stapler that's always lost by ...
Read in browser Pirate Cinema up for Canada's Aurora Award
By Cory Doctorow on Apr 27, 2013 01:36 pm The 2013 Prix Aurora Award ballot has been announced, and I'm delighted to see that my novel Pirate Cinema is up for the prize in the Young Adult category. The Auroras are a people's choice award given for Canadian science fiction and fantasy, and I'm delighted to be recognised in the land of my birth! ...
Read in browser Meet SparkTruck, an “educational build-mobile” for the twenty-first century.
Dreamed up by a group of Stanford d.school students and funded through Kickstarter, SparkTruck is a mobile maker space currently traveling across the United States. At schools and summer camps and libraries around the country, the SparkTruck team offers workshops to help kids “find their inner maker” as they design and build projects like stamps, stop-motion animation clips, and “vibrobots.”
[video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmRKXqDwieY&feature=plcp]
This might seem all shiny and new. And it is—but only in part. What’s so striking (and exciting) about SparkTruck is the way it combines old and new. It does so in the tools it gets kids using, which range from pipe cleaners to laser cutters. It does so in its educational approach, which combines cutting-edge (get it?) STEM and design pedagogy with the fundamentals of an old-school shop class. And it does so in its method, which combines the iconic, century-old technology of the bookmobile with the hot new form of the maker space.
In doing so, SparkTruck joins a growing number of libraries which are combining time-tested principles (like equal access to information) with new technologies (like 3-D printers), putting in maker spaces and media production labs alongside bookshelves and meeting rooms. As I’ve argued over on bookmobility.org, these combinations make sense because reading and making actually have a lot in common. They’re both creative processes that take existing materials and combine them in new ways. Getting people engaged in those kinds of processes—through imaginative thinking, contemplation, hands-on problem-solving, and collaborative learning—is what both maker spaces and libraries are all about.
Taking that commitment on the road with scissors and hammers and 3-D printers and a great big bookmobile-like truck, SparkTruck serves as a laboratory for new approaches, as well as a reminder that trying new things doesn’t have to (and probably shouldn’t!) necessarily mean tossing old ones out.
After all, what would those vibrobots be without classically crafty pipe cleaners and tongue depressors? And what would a library be without the creative, participatory, straight-up awesome experience of reading?
SparkTruck schedule [sparktruck.org]
How to arrange a visit from SparkTruck [sparktruck.org]
SparkTruck YouTube channel [youtube.com]
Signature: --Derek Attig, bookmobility.org
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