Talking Trash #1 - “Sharing”
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Loading ...My experience with Ponoko (Part 2 - Reality)
Some stories are best told through pictures:
The flat box:
I guess this is unboxing porn.
6mm Italian Poplar. It’s got some kind of adhesive on it for protection.
Poked-out:
But does it fit together?
I know you like close-up shots:
Holy crap:
Receiving package to putting final product to use? 10 minutes:
All of the pieces fit snugly and no glue or extra fastening is needed - just like I hoped. It isn’t obvious from the photos but there is one piece that doesn’t fit correctly. It’s the 3rd support beam that should be in rear. I miscalculated the depth of the groove. No biggie - it is the least important piece.
Overall I’m very impressed. It’s extremely sturdy, looks cool (vaguely like an elephant), and smells like a camp fire. I was hoping the keyboard (not pictured) would create a little more space while stowed, but that’s the way it goes.
(Rate it!) Loading ...My experience with Ponoko (part 1 Digital)
Ponoko produces cut materials for you of whatever design you can imagine that can be made from thin and flat pieces. You design in a vector-based drawing program (ie. Illustrator), upload it to Ponoko, choose a material (basic woods and plastics), and they cut out your design with a frikkin laser. Then they mail you the pieces and you hope it fits together.
Most examples so far on their site are junky plastic necklaces, but there are a few clever lamps and a laptop stand. Laptop stand! Good idea.
First I made some sketches on paper - nothing fancy:
(I kind of liked the elephant idea)
Then I took some measurements of my laptop (Dell Inspiron 9300), downloaded Inkscape, an open-source alternative to Adobe Illustrator, and started working it out.
An early attempt:
Still elephanty at this point. Once I got the rulers, grids, and snapping working correctly in Inkscape, it wasn’t too difficult. The hardest part is imagining how it’s all going to fit together. A decision I made along the way was not have the design require any separate fastening or glue, which means all the components need to fit snugly and securely.
Before uploading to Ponoko, your design needs to be in EPS format. Here’s the final design:
It took about a week (evenings) of trial and error to complete.
I am currently waiting for Ponoko to cut my design and send it to me. I chose the .6mm Italian Poplar for the material. Hopefully I didn’t overlook any catastrophic design flaws and blow 70 bucks.
(Rate it!) Loading ...7 days a week mail delivery
The United States Postal Service should deliver mail on Sundays. Give me a break.
(Rate it!) Loading ...Can-Do Sign: Think
So you can read, listen to music, watch TV shows and movies, and molest your cell phone in public. But, did you know you can also think? You can do it right out in the open. In front of everyone.
(Rate it!) Loading ...Can-Do signs tell you what you can do
Being told what to do is bad, but not half as bad as being told what not to do. The world is full of crappy, negative signs, telling you what you can’t do. Don’t eat, don’t drink, don’t play your ghetto blaster, and so on.
Here’s the first in a series of Can-Do signs. They’re for reminding you of the different stuff you can do until you’re able to do the stuff you want to do.
(note: it’s implied, but not required, that you speak with another person.)
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There’s Blood in This Movie, Too
(Rate it!) Loading ...Cancer cancer
(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5) Loading ...Broken mirrors and the rules of bad luck
(Notes from Tuesday’s subway ride)
Breaking a mirror gets you 7 years of bad luck. Got it.
But what if you break the same mirror into many pieces? Does that multiply the bad luck? If I break one mirror into 3 pieces is that 3×7 (21 by my estimation) years of bad luck? Or do you not count multiple breaks occurring in a single breaking incident?
What about this: I break 2 mirrors, lets say one today and one tomorrow. Is that 14 years of bad luck or 7 years of really bad luck?
And this: you’re carrying a mirror and trip over someone’s boot. Do you get to share the bad luck with the owner of the boot? 3 1/2 for you and 3 1/2 for them? Then again, you’re the one who dropped it, sucker.
Not all mirrors are created equal are they? Some have got to be more durable than others. What if a feeble old lady walks along, drops a mirror, and sends it shattering into a million pieces? Would she drop dead on the spot from 10 million years of instant bad luck?
Let’s say you were flying a F-15 fighter jet and bombed a mirror factory. Would the rest of your life, so impossibly crammed with bad luck, be plagued by totally improbable events? Your luck is so bad there is not enough time in a day to experience ordinary bad luck, so crazy stuff would happen to you like every time you lifted your hand you’d poke your self in the eye.
Who makes the rules and who enforces them? Or does nature keep tabs? Is there a bad luck fairy? There’s probably so much bad luck to keep track of and dole out you’d need specialists. Like one guy who keeps tabs on people walking under ladders and opening umbrellas indoors.
And how do you tell the difference between bad luck and just shit that happens?
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