Everyone loves cats right? You just might not love the little dead critters they drag in or friends they invite in to feast upon your cat food. If you have a cat that regularly shows up with guests, you might find the Tweeting Cat Door just the thing to guarantee that only the cat which you want in your house...gets in your house. Invention and step by step directions available here.
Does it bother you if your cat jumps on the counter? Then check out Brain Gaut'sBlender Defender. It looks startling.
A couple of weeks ago I put out the call for people to submit contraptions they've built or are building. Moose, a Nerdabout fan on Facebook, answered the call with a unique take on flight simulators.
The 4th Annual Maker Faire in San Mateo, CA was this weekend. My husband and I have gone every year and it keeps getting bigger. We have to go both days of the fair weekend just to see everything. For those who don't know, the Maker Faire is put on by Make Magazine, a magazine for Do-It-Yourselfers, a growing movement. Well before the economy crashed, geeks of all sorts discovered the joys of hacking Roombas to make spirographs and turning trash into art. The Maker Faire celebrates those who make, build, sew, craft, hack, and teach. It's a brilliant concept.
Creativity reigns at the Maker Faire, both in the products that are displayed and demonstrated and in the people who display and demonstrate. Walking through the fairground, you can't look at a crowd without seeing people in costume (Steampunk, furry, or superhero), people representing the rebellious fringes of society (punks, eccentrics, hippies), or those just expressing a wild individuality (hair of every hue and length, squid hats, stilts). And, of course, the ever-present Utilikilt.
The displays vary wildly. There are always a lot of robots. They're a real crowd pleaser and people clearly love to make them. There are science teachers talking about demos they do in class. There are electronics for bikes, Christmas, and entertainment. There are always lots of things that shoot fire, such as the Crucible truck and the Flaming Lotus Girls' display. And let's not forget the over-the-top displays of making, like a life-sized Mousetrap game or the big metal giraffe that tools around the fairground or the human powered amusement park rides or the giant mechanical hand that picks up oil drums as if they're soda cans.
Ecology is a big influence for many of the makers. It shows up in big things like electric cars (my husband loves the Tesla) and in smaller ones like using recycled plastic bottles to make art. There's also a group called Engineers Without Borders which helps build wind turbines and provide water to countries in Africa.
A new feature this year was a Food Makers tent. A little sparse but promising, it offered cheese tastings, home beer brewing kits, tips on pickling, great chocolate, mushroom growing, and information on vegetarianism and local food. Since this Maker Faire takes place in the Bay Area, land of serious foodies and a huge local food movement, I expect this tent to grow in future years.
It's often hard to take time to sit down and listen to the presentations by makers since there’s so much to see. But there are talks and music all day long. We always make time for Adam Savage, co-host of Mythbusters, who spins a good yarn about what it's like to be a maker. This year he talked about failure in a funny and touching way. My husband caught a talk by a 14 year-old CEO who created a chemistry-based game called Elementeo.
As ever, a good time was had by all and a great deal of money was spent. On the way out, you can stop by the Maker Shed where they sell books and kits and materials so you can try your hand at being a maker or expanding your repertoire. I always walk out inspired to create. If I got nothing else out of the Maker Faire, that's definitely worth the price of admission.
Hey! What's clipped to your belt? We want to know so badly we're having a photo contest. You get to vote for the winner! The prize: a fabulous Nerdabout t-shirt and stickers.
The people who enjoy spending their time playing games with computer languages, also tend to enjoy using "natural" language to craft terse, somewhat cryptic statements as well.
Programmers, who work in a medium composed mostly of logical statements about how to make decisions, also seem to be fond of fashioning and repeating proverbs, laws, riddles and word games (just consider the existence, and continued popularity, of Unix's
fortune
command.
Therefore, the internets are loaded with
lists of programming laws.Jeff Atwood
has got a good list of programming quotations (not just "laws"), and so has
Paul Graham.
Here are ten of my favorite adages about software development, cribbed with care from only the finest of google results ;)
These are some of my favorite expressions of (what I think are) some of the core principles of software design and development. Whether it's called
new media Art
or called
computer Science,
building software for people is tricky and fiddly and often annoying. Here's why ;)
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