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.
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Loading ...7 days a week mail delivery
The United States Postal Service should deliver mail on Sundays. Give me a break.
(Rate it!) 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?
(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5) Loading ...Announcement: added rating system for posts
I was going to go back to school and learn php, html, css, mysql, ajax, and javascript and get a computer science degree so I could build a rating system for this site. Then I googled for “rating system wordpress plugin”, so now I don’t have to.
The 5 stars are Netflix style. Please rate the posts on how awesome you think the idea is. 1 star being “utterly asinine”, unless you love stupid things and in that case you might want to go with 5 stars.
So rate the idea on your subjective positive/negative response, rather than a pseudo-objective judgement on the novelty of the idea as compared to all other ideas throughout history.
The WP-PostRatings plugin is developed by Lester Chan.
(2 votes, average: 4 out of 5) Loading ...If you aren’t that sick, maybe it’s just a semacode
Print out the image below and then put it everywere. That way any nerd with a semacode reading cell phone can discover this awesome website.
If you’re interested in making your own (I don’t know why if you’ve already got mine) you can do it at the official Semacode page, or at Kaywa.
(1 votes, average: 3 out of 5) Loading ...New Blog: written by Larry David’s left arm
I was riding the subway the other day, and this question pops into my head: “What if Larry David’s left arm had its own blog?”
What would it talk about? Does it like Larry? Does it think he’s a funny guy? Maybe not! Maybe it has a beef with Larry, and feels neglected like so many left arms.
It could tell funny behind-the-scenes anecdotes from the set of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Maybe how it has a crush on another star’s arm. Maybe it’s got taxi-driver type tidbits of wisdom. You know, real stuff from the streets. Maybe it’s a closet homosexual, and it confesses it to the world in a blog post. Maybe it has embarrassing taste in pop-music. Maybe it feels that Britney Spears was unfairly ridiculed for her lackluster performance on the MTV music awards.
Who can really say what Larry David’s left arm thinks about?
(1 votes, average: 3 out of 5) Loading ...Steal My Ideas written about in a NEWSPAPER
Frank Sennett, columnist and blogger, for the Spokesman-Review in Spokane Washington, wrote about a bunch of idea blogs. I’m not sure what a blog is, and he doesn’t explain it in the article, but it’s still a decent read.
It’s fairly obvious after reading the article that Steal My Ideas (this one, not the stolen one) is his favorite.
Here’s the article.
He lists other idea blogs as well.
I almost forgot: this was published July 2.
(Rate it!) Loading ...Bristled scrubber and rubber gloves for bathroom
Need to get these. I think there’s black mold growing on the shower curtain.
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Join P.A.P. right now.
This is a screen-shot of a website I created in 1997, based on an idea I had one day. The site itself didn’t actually do anything - the links highlighted when you moused-over them. There was a FAQ, too, but everything you needed to know was contained in the first page. Oh yeah, the yellow ring animated through the white areas for no reason.
It’s probably the best idea I’ll ever have.
(Rate it!) Loading ...Christmas Card 2006!
Christmas cards are fun. This is the one I sent to everyone this year. Maybe I’ll post the other ones from Christmases past. You will need to beg me first.
Until then, you’ve got this beauty to feast your eyes on:
(Rate it!) Loading ...Holiday Idea: Christmas Themed Yarmulke
Merry Christmas, Jewish people.
(Rate it!) Loading ...Pigeon Mobile
I moved to New York City last summer, and every day for 3 months I sent (mostly) unsolicited résumés to local businesses. This was very boring. At one point I became convinced that Hotmail was broken because I couldn’t believe not 1 in 100 businesses would give me so much as an automated reply. I would have taken a robot over continual silence. Then again, I like robots.
On the tougher days I would gather up some loose change and buy a cup of coffee, wander the streets hugging myself, watch new mothers roll around their gross little babies - dogs pissing everywhere and sniffing each other’s asses, pigeons sharing sun-warmed bits of discarded lunchmeat.
Sure, it was tough times, but that’s all behind me. Now I’m a just another Wall Street millionaire banker. It’s pretty cool.
Only one physical artifact remains from those dark, tear stained pillow, times.
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