Moby Dick
Been reading Moby Dick lately on my Nook Color. What a great, antebellum stew of literature, science and technology. So may great quotes, so many scientific observations that still hold true 160 years later (and an amusing smattering of notions that have been turned on their heads in the interim).
You can download a copy from Project Gutenberg. I used EPUB format on my Nook. Very readable, and I love the embedded highlighting and annotation features.
And to close, here’s my most recent highlight, from a section where the Pequod slaughters a Right Whale solely for the sake of using its head as a counterweight to a Sperm Whale head attached to the other side of the boat:
“Didn’t I tell you so?” said Flask; “yes, you’ll soon see this right whale’s head hoisted up opposite that parmacetti’s.”
In good time, Flask’s saying proved true. As before, the Pequod steeply leaned over towards the sperm whale’s head, now, by the counterpoise of both heads, she regained her even keel; though sorely strained, you may well believe. So, when on one side you hoist in Locke’s head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kant’s and you come back again; but in very poor plight. Thus, some minds for ever keep trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish! throw all these thunder-heads overboard, and then you will float light and right.
Microbial Cellulose — 2 A2 Sheets Worth
Back in mid September, we made a batch of Bacterial Cellulose in two 44″ x 18″ tray bioreactors, using Adam Korshid’s “blanco cellulose” medium (sugar, yeast and apple-cider vinegar in ratios carefully measured by eye and tongue). About two weeks later, one of the cultures had essentially failed, but the other had blossomed with a vengeance, coughing up a giant, off-while pellicle that was about 3/8 inches thick and probably weighing a good 10 pounds. For what it’s worth, it was also quite a smelly beast. In fact, the smell largely motivated the timing of the harvest (kind of a “get-that-friggin-thing-outta-here” situation). One unexpected benefit of the stench was that I was able to identify butyric acid as the main offender — so the absence tea in the culture seems to result in increased butyric acid production. Possibly a consequence of the low nitrogen content of the “blanco” medium? It might be interesting to research the topic …
At any rate, the 44×18 sheet was ultimately dried and delivered to Ann Saintpeter as promised. We’ll see what she prints on it, if anything. While the sheet was drying, I discovered that you could kill the smell by dusting it with baking soda. It also turns out I was late to that particular party — apparently baking soda is renown as an odor killer precisely because it forms salts with organic acids that tend to be some of the main components of many unpleasant odors.
The sheet ultimately dried to look very much like a giant, soft tortilla, complete with a dusty surface (courtesy of the baking soda). It also ended up with some mild scorch marks, since I was trying to dry it in a hotel room, using the courtesy hair-dryer and iron. If nothing else, the scorch marks helped with the tortilla-like appearance.
I’m currently embarking on a little experiment to study factors influencing cellulose production, including density of the substrate (i.e. how much sugar to hit the production “sweet spot”, so to speak) and substrate type (supposedly glycerin is the ultimate feed-stock). If there are any results worth publishing, we will do so — possibly with hardcopies on microbial cellulose paper.
Hive76 Open House at NextFab Studio — A very Hacking Wintertime
We are excited to announce a very hacking winter-time Hive76 open-house hosted by NextFabStudio:
Hive76 Open House
December 20th, 7pm – Midnight
@ http://NextFabStudio.com/ @ 3711 Market Street
This Hack-tacular event will be at NextFabStudio and will get us free access for the night to some of their most awesome tools, such as: CNC plasma, CNC embroidery, e-textiles, electronics, 3D printers, shop bots… Check out all their equipment.
There will be food too.
So Awesome.
Now we need to brainstorm project ideas, let’s start things off in this email thread. Please reply-all so the proper NextFab people (cc’ed above) can tell us if this is possible and, if so, the logistics for how to make it happen.
All details are here on the Wiki
I’m proposing the first project (we can have many of them!!)…
A double-set of Hive76 chess pieces and boards. This will make use of their lasercutters, embroidery equipment, and possibly the electronics and 3D printers too. I really want a double-set (4 different colors) so we can play Bughouse Chess (You will love this game)
If we get really creative maybe some magnetics and electronics could be enabled as well.
Let’s get hacking!
Pass Me Another One of Those Hive76s
Well as we all know I’m completely infatuated with Blender, the open-source awesome-o 3D modeler, renderer, animator, and general all-around nice program. I’ve been making tons of high-res schematic diagrams for work related stuff, but it’s been so much fun that I’ve been exploring the intensely excellent Blender 3D interwebs community of fantastic artists and professional nerds.
So when I saw this tutorial video and instructional on an Energy Drink Ad by Andrew Price at Blender Guru, of course I immediately saw an opportunity for our favorite friendly local Maker Space to star in it’s own desktop background.
Adjusting the available .blend file and related stuff took a couple of hours, adjusting the rendering took a couple hours, and the final rendering took over an hour (2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, not the fastest kid on the block anymore).
As you may know, the original Blender rendering engine is being deprecated, in favor of the new hyper amaziness that is the Cycles Rendering Engine. But before we leave behind the Blender Internal renderer for good, it’s nice to have one last Hurrah.
If you want to make your own version, here’s a package of all the source files (56.4 MB), they retain Andrew Price’s Creative Commons Non-Commercial Non-Ported Attribution License and I apply the same to my files that are in there. Rendered with Blender 2.60.0 build 41438.
Enjoy!
Making Things Maker-Friendly
(A longer version of this post is at my blog)
Think about your microwave or mobile phone. How easy would they be for an average consumer (or perhaps even you), to repair? Very difficult – in fact, stickers on many appliances note that there are “no user-serviceable parts inside”. If you have an iPhone, you’ll notice that it uses special, rare screws that it’s difficult to find a screwdriver for. Even the battery is encased within the phone and impossible to replace without serious intervention.
There are some legitimate reasons for this. Microwaves, for example, probably discourage users from fiddling around with them for product liability reasons – if a user tries to repair their microwave and injures themselves, a small appliance manufacturer wants to be able to say that they told you not to mess with it. But there are also lots of reasons why you should be able to take apart, and perhaps then modify, the things you buy. Continue reading “Making Things Maker-Friendly”
MMMM: Monitoring Motion
- photo by peej
That time is once again upon us! This coming Monday, October the 10th, is our second installment of the Monthly Monday Microcontroller Madness series!
This month’s workshop will feature the concept of motion sensing in relation to microcontrollers. We’ll be taking a look at passive infrared sensors (PIR) for motion detection, ultrasonic range finders for distance measuring, and even looking at how to integrate a webcam into your Arduino project for motion analysis. These sensors and techniques are great for adding to your Halloween projects (wink, wink).
In addition to talking about motion, we will be offering our usual advice and guidance to those currently working on projects, or looking where to get started. All skill levels are welcome and we look forward to seeing you on Monday!
UPDATE: Here’s a link to the Arduino Reference page for the Parallax ultrasonic sensor and a code page for the Parallax PIR.
Manufacturer information can be found here and here, respectively.
Next open house project: Making Springs!
Ever work on a project and find yourself needing a spring? Ever go to
the hardware store looking for one, and have to compromise because the
offerings are so slim?
At the next Open House (Sept 28th) we will have materials for
making simple coil springs. If you have a project in need of a spring,
or if you’d just like to check it out, come on by. We’re certainly no experts and you wouldn’t want to mass produce them this way, but adding
a new tool to the toolbox is always fun and may come in handy one day.
If you have a project in mind, try to bring as much information as you
can so we can take a stab at making you something that will work. We
can do extension-, compression-, and torsion springs. Note that the
final heat treating process takes about 2 hours so I will probably do
that part at home and bring the completed springs in to the following
Open House.
Insane 3D Printing Resolution: Putting UltiMaker Under the Microscope
Last week I got to attend the Open Hardware Summit and Maker Faire NYC. Both events were really excellent.
There were so many wonderful things it was hard for me to pick a favorite. That is, until I hit the Ultimaker Booth. Ultimaker is another open source 3D printer offshoot of the RepRap Project. Erik de Brijn, Martijn Elserman, and the rest of their team have been hard at work perfecting v1 of the Ultimaker (and now Ultimaker+). The quality of this machine continues to amaze me (I’ve seen a previous beta version in person at Botacon). New this year, when mixed up with the newest firmware Marlin (which was recently ported to 3D FDM printers and is based on GRBL, the same firmware codebase picked to run Lasersaur), the Ultimaker is able to get insanely high resolution prints. You can get the Marlin firmware for RAMPS and RepRap from HERE on Github.
Erik gave me one of the high res Yoda prints (Thanks Erik!) which I put under the microscope last week. You can see with the scale bar… we have 162 pixels = 1 mm. The average layer height in that pic is around 12 pixels, or 0.074 mm (That is 74 microns). And that orangey low res looking thing on the left? That’s not a print… that’s my finger. Click the image to see in higher detail!
Apologies to my buddy Dave Durant, but Ultimaker just beat your high res Cupcake record. And they’ve gotten even thinner layer heights than those, recently. Join their google group to learn more and stay apprised of the latest.
w0w. The future for FDM is so bright. Really Amazing.
Hacktory Happenings
Our friends at The Hacktory are hosting an event this Friday from 7 – 8:30PM to discuss their experiences at the Chaos Communication Camp. I hear tell they will have popcorn, which is quite something. I wish I had gone just to see Disco Lenin.