#641; A Long Day in the Chair

#641; A Long Day in the Chair: "

Click for a closer look

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What can I say?

Coffee table made from old computer parts

Coffee table made from old computer parts: "

This coffee table made from old computer parts is both pretty and geeky.

It's mainly made up of boards/drives from old Intergraph 6000 series machines built in the late 80s early 90s. They had nice big boards. It was a good way to keep around my first real computer after I could no longer find parts to keep it working, an Intergraph 6880 with Edge II graphics. I learned computer modeling, rendering and animation on it and think of it as a mentor. There are also old 2800 baud modem parts and other random parts collected over the years.

No real pattern other than just getting it all to fit together like a puzzle. The LED lights along the perimeter worked out better that I had hoped. I have it wired so it automatically goes on when it gets dark.

The News is Broken [via Make]

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Cheap nanomaterial won't grow bacteria

Cheap nanomaterial won't grow bacteria: "

A paper in ACS Nano describes the use of graphene (nanoengineered, one-carbon-atom-thick material) as an antibacterial surface: 'Such graphene-based nanomaterials can effectively inhibit the growth of E. coli bacteria while showing minimal cytotoxicity. We have also demonstrated that macroscopic freestanding GO and rGO paper can be conveniently fabricated from their suspension via simple vacuum filtration. Given the superior antibacterial effect of GO and the fact that GO can be mass-produced and easily processed to make freestanding and flexible paper with low cost, we expect this new carbon nanomaterial may find important environmental and clinical applications.'

Graphene-Based Antibacterial Paper

(via Medgadget)

• Ian McDonald's DERVISH HOUSE, superb novel of the mystical nano ...


• Antibiotic-resistant bacteria (now on your junk)


• Firebox Cyber Clean gak for computer keyboards Gadgets

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101 Patterns for Influencing Behaviour Through Design: Oblique strategies for changing and controlling behavior

101 Patterns for Influencing Behaviour Through Design: Oblique strategies for changing and controlling behavior: "

Dan Lockton, the technology scholar whose Architectures of Control in Design has been one of my favorite reads for several years now, has just released a deck of Creative Commons-licensed cards called '101 Patterns for Influencing Behaviour Through Design.' They are an outcome of his research toward his Ph.D., a set of illustrated cards showing how design can be used to change, prevent, or encourage certain behaviors. Mitch Kapor quipped that 'architecture is politics,' and Dan's research is the proof of it: the way that spaces, objects and systems are designed heavily influence (or even determine!) the way that we live our lives around them. They serve as both suggestions and critiques, showing how spaces and objects are designed to control us for better or for worse.

Dan sells the decks as a neatly boxed set of 117 cards for £24.50, or you can download them and share them for free. This is quite possibly the most provocative set of quick-read, random-access idea-bombs I've seen.

Download the cards

Order the cards

(Thanks, Dan!)

• Psychology, design and economics of slot-machines


• Anti-sit technology photo gallery


• Architecture critic worries that ubiquitious surveillance isn't ...


• Should "skinny mirrors" be banned from clothing stores?

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Radiohead hits covered on ukelele: Amanda Palmer

[You KNOW you want it. Trust me, it's worth it. 84 cents (or more). -Egg)

Radiohead hits covered on ukelele: Amanda Palmer: "

Punk cabaret diva
Amanda Palmer today released a 7-track digital album of Radiohead ukelele covers. Choose from 320k mp3, FLAC, and other formats, download for all of a whopping 84 cents. Includes many of my own favorite Radiohead tracks: Fake Plastic Trees, High And Dry, No Surprises, Idioteque, Creep, and Exit Music (For A Film).

Amanda Palmer Performs The Popular Hits Of Radiohead On Her Magical Ukulele

(amandapalmer.net via Kristie Lu Stout)

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Top Secret America: 2-year investigation by Washington Post into huge, post-9/11 security buildup

Top Secret America: 2-year investigation by Washington Post into huge, post-9/11 security buildup: "

The Washington Post today unveiled a two-year investigative journalism project, 'Top Secret America.'

To ensure that the country's most sensitive duties are carried out only by people loyal above all to the nation's interest, federal rules say contractors may not perform what are called 'inherently government functions.' But they do, all the time and in every intelligence and counterterrorism agency, according to a two-year investigation by The Washington Post.

What started as a temporary fix in response to the terrorist attacks has turned into a dependency that calls into question whether the federal workforce includes too many people obligated to shareholders rather than the public interest -- and whether the government is still in control of its most sensitive activities. In interviews last week, both Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and CIA Director Leon Panetta said they agreed with such concerns.

The Post investigation uncovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America created since 9/11 that is hidden from public view, lacking in thorough oversight and so unwieldy that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

Top Secret America project home. Story archive here, and interactive map here. More about the project here.

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Spiral Eye Needles

Spiral Eye Needles: "

These ingenious sewing needles can be threaded blindfolded. You pull the thread into a spiral from the side, and for the most part the thread will remain in the eye as you sew. That is not true for calyx eye needles (invented a hundred years ago) as a solution to the vexing problem of threading the eye. It's as easy for the thread to slip out of the open slot at the end of the calyx needle as it is to slip in, and this wavering can fray the thread. The spiral eye needle doesn't snag, but in my experience it will occasionally let the thread slip out. Expert sewers might find that annoying. It is dead simple to slip back on, and the thread is not frayed, so I can put up with that small inconvenience.

Spiral Eye needles are expensive: $5 each. However they should last a lifetime if you don't lose track of them (they look very similar to regular sewing needles). What I really want is a side-threading sewing-machine needle. Schmetz makes some in limited sizes, but of a less ingenious design.

-- KK

Sprial Eye Needle

3 for $16

Available from and manufactured by Spiral Eye Needles

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Neil Gaiman's Cthulkhelele

Neil Gaiman's Cthulkhelele: "

David sez, 'Neil Gaiman posted this beautiful Lovecraft-inspired ukelele on Twitter.'

Cthulkhelele

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Light My Fire Firesteel

Light My Fire Firesteel: "

Made in Sweden, the Light My Fire firesteels are a remake of a classic. Use them to light dry tinder if you are in Daniel Boone mode. For the rest of us, they cast off a perfect spark to light any sort of gas camp stove, from the 2 burner Coleman car camp special to the micro backpack models. They also work for the previously CT reviewed DIY alcohol stoves.

Firesteels come in 2 sizes, small for survival-backpacking and a slightly larger size for those other times. Some of the most distinctive advantages are that it works when wet, it has no moving parts, no fuel to run out of, and lasts nearly 3,000 strikes.



I've used them for everything from car camping in the VW camper van to mountaineering stoves on Rainier climbs and they always are flawless. The smaller one always has a place in my first aid / survival kit; the larger one comes on car camping trips.

-- -- John Godino

Light My Fire Firesteel

$16

Available from Amazon

Manufactured by Light My Fire

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Clock that knits a scarf

[OMG, how incredibly cool. -egg]

Clock that knits a scarf: "

Industrial designer Siren Elise Wilhelmsen created this knitting clock that cranks out a two-meter scarf every year. It's called '365.' From Design Boom:

'365' seeks to give a physical manifestation to the change of time. drawing from the
change that is witnessed through the growth of human bodies and hair, the same concept
is found in '365' which translates time through the growth of knitted material. the clock
houses a circular knitting machine with 48 needles, a thread spool, a thread holder and
roll of yarn. moving in clockwise direction, one day leads to a complete round...

Knitting clock (Thanks, Sally Applin!)





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The Guy Who Worked For Money: A Shareable future

The Guy Who Worked For Money: A Shareable future: "My sometimes-collaborator Benjamin Rosenbaum has written a story called 'The Guy Who Worked For Money' for Shareable.net's 'Shareable Futures' series, science fiction stories about a future in which sharing is the norm. Other installments are Bruce Sterling's 'The Exterminator's Want-Ad' and my 'The Jammie Dodgers and the Adventure of the Leicester Square Screening':

'I didn't mean it like -- you're a banker?' Nera sent an urgent message to her mouth to stop talking, but apparently it had to go by carrier pigeon. 'Literally? Is that even legal?'

'Oh Nera, come on,' Malka said, laughing. 'Do you read anyone's page before you meet them?'

'It's definitely legal,' Jörg said, 'Outlawing money exchange would lead to even more extreme distortions in our metrics than we've got.' His fingers flicked, his eyes briefly on a point above her head, and more incoming green pinged at the corner of her vision, but she wasn't going to read his goddamn footnotes in the middle of the party. 'The Free Society doesn't compete on force or fiat, it outperforms on joy. Wherever there's a reversion to the money economy, that's a signal of a deficit of either trust, satisfaction ability, or information flow. It's better to let that signal manifest rather than --'

'All right, all right,' Malka said, patting Jörg on the shoulder. Jörg smiled his goofy grin.

The Guy Who Worked For Money

(Image: 337/365: The Big Money, a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivative-Works (2.0) image from daviddmuir's photostream)

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GPS Drawing: Tracing the Environment at Scale 1:1 Completely on Foot

Traverse Me [gpsdrawing.com] is a complete map of the campus of the University of Warwick, drawn on foot at scale 1:1. It required over 238 miles of GPS tracks which were walked over 17 days.
The author, Jeremy Wood, responded to the structure of each location by avoiding walking along roads and paths whenever possible. The route was recorded with GPS technology and was traversed in different stages over the 300 hectare site. Security was called on him twice on separate occasions and he lost count of how many times he happened to trigger an automatic sliding door.
See also:
. Biggest Drawing in the World
. Locative Disposition
. GPS Diary
. GPS Drawing (back in 2005)
Via @jwoodx.