Daniel Kottke demos the Microwriter (Photo by Avi Solomon)
Avi Solomon interviewed Daniel Kottke at his home in Palo Alto on 2nd September, 2011. He says:
— Read the restI had a wide-ranging conversation with Daniel Kottke (Apple employee #12) on Silicon Valley's innovation culture.
Video Link: The late Steve Jobs introduces the Apple Macintosh, in 1984. Never trust a computer you can't lift. Rest in peace, Steve.
Here I am, days after I was born, being held by my father in front of the family Macintosh.
Our family has spent an enormous amount of time and effort growing with Apple. My brother and I spent years playing with Kid Pix and Shufflepuck Café. — Read the rest
Phil Jones writes, "Went out and bought a toy car spare tire because I thought this tiny tree needed a swing."
(via Super Punch)
I knew Amy Seidenwurm had good taste in music when I saw that she had painted the names of some of my favorite bands on her beehives. Amy worked in the record business at Enigma, Elektra, Virgin and Sub Pop before she got sucked into the technology vortex. — Read the rest
There's no additional info for this photo, so I'm not sure how this bizarre car-parking lift worked back in the glory days of running boards, but I'd sure love to see it in motion!
I really like "Uncle Six Eyes," a 10" high bust based on Travis Louie's painting of the same name.
(via Super Punch)
Venkatesh Rao (one of my favorite provocative thinkers) noodles around with the idea of "streams" — demographics of people who follow a particular international course, in long, stable, weird, nearly invisible arcs. Rao calls this "Globalization as liquefaction" and says, "Globalization signifies an incomplete process, not a state. — Read the rest
This is a such a fun project. Steve Hobley make a "ball whacker" that uses a simple circuit consisting of a 555 timer chip and a photoresitor to create a feedback loop. When a ball (or a plastic egg) suspended from a string blocks the light source from the photoresistor built into the arm, the circuit triggers the arm to hit the ball, which exposes the light on the photoresistor. — Read the rest
Kirk Withrow, a surgeon and cigar box guitar maker, imparts a good deal of maker wisdom in this lovely CNN profile.
— Read the rest"I absolutely don't want to make them to support myself. Once you switch from making something because you feel like it to doing it because you have to it takes away from it," he said.
Paola C's Cuore is "two glass carafes shaping a human heart when joined together" — made from blown Pyrex.
(via Neatorama)
The "PX1020 Easy Hang Up" is a device for people who a) still have landlines and b) hate phone solicitors. Simply press the button and hang up, and the person on the other end is played a pre-recorded message (for example, you, telling them to remove you from their list). — Read the rest
You probably have heard of the TV-B-Gone. If you haven't, it's a small wireless gadget that will turn of any TV. Now, for people who hate the TV-B-Gone, or for people who hate it when someone changes the channel on a TV set in a public space, there's the IR Jammer Kit. — Read the rest
Redditor Fakeproject shows off his annual Hallowe'en costume, a skull drawn on with eyeliner — bald guys get all the fun on Hallowe'en!
(via Super Punch)
Math Girls is Hiroshi Yuki's immensely popular series of fiction and manga about math geeks ("Like Glee for math nerds"), and the stories themselves are a potted education in all sorts of mathematics. The first volume of Math Girls is to be published in English shortly by Bento Books, and they've posted a brief excerpt in PDF form. — Read the rest
Thom Buchanan says: "If you're a fan of Frank Frazetta, and I know a couple of you are, The Pictorial Arts Journal has just published its latest on-line issue that just might interest you."
Did you know that, with a properly conducted series of clinical trials, it can take upwards of 20 years before a medical discovery makes it from the lab to the hospital?
Judy Stone, an infectious disease specialist who does clinical research, has a guest post on the Scientific American blog network today, explaining the basics of clinical trials—where they came from, and how they can go wrong. — Read the rest
This hair-washing robot, introduced by Panasonic at a public demonstration in Tokyo last week, is actually a pretty practical idea. Washing your hair involves a decent amount of small motor coordination and finger dexterity, things that people often lose when they have a spinal injury or other kinds of nerve damage. — Read the rest
A Filipino man named Herbert Chavez has undergone extensive surgery to make himself look like Superman: a nose job, a chin implant, collagen in his lips, and (randomly) hip implants.
Pinoy goes under knife to look like Superman
(via Neatorama)
The fun thing about the Nobel Prize in Physics is watching pundits try to explain to the public the research that won. It doesn't always go well. Physics is not, shall we say, the public's best subject. (And I include myself in that "public".) — Read the rest
