crackblur

The O’Reilly Factor in a Minute | I got a chuckle out of...

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 13:25:29 -0400

The O’Reilly Factor in a Minute | I got a chuckle out of it.

Clay Shirky discusses Institutions vs. Collaboration at TED...

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 11:57:27 -0400

Clay Shirky discusses Institutions vs. Collaboration at TED 2005.

How to Make a Custom Ringtone for iPhone 2.0 (via GarageBand '08)

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 00:25:00 -0400

UPDATE: TUAW has a MUCH better method than this.

GarageBand ‘08 has a nice “Send Ringtone to iTunes” option under its “Share” menu. This will take your current GarageBand project, add it to iTunes, and prepare it for Ringtone syncing in one step. Here’s how to make a ringtone out of music/sounds you (legally) own and sync them with your iPhone using this admittedly cool feature…

1. Make your ringtone. I simply used the iTunes “Convert Selection to AIFF” and exported a song to my desktop. (You must have AIFF selected as your Export file type in iTunes preferences.) Then I opened the file in Quicktime and trimmed it to a Ringtone length. (iTunes will only allow 40 seconds or less for a ringtone.) You may want to then re-export it in Quicktime at a lesser quality (i.e. monotone) to save some space.

2. Backup a copy of a stock GarageBand “Sound Effect” loop AIFF and replace it with your AIFF file. The loops are located in /Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/iLife Sound Effects/. I replaced a one of the “People” directory’s .aif files with my desired song. Make sure you back up the original file first or you won’t be able to use it again!

3. Open GarageBand, create a new project, and add a track using your replaced loop. Open the Loops panel (with the “eye” icon at the bottom) and find the loop set you just altered (i.e. “People”). Find the replaced loop, and drag it into the work area as a new track. Nevermind the fact that the preview it plays doesn’t sound right…that’s presumably because preview expects the loops to be of different settings/lengths. When the track is made, the loops should sound just as they did when you created them.

4. Select “Send Ringtone to iTunes”. After adding song info (which you must fill out), GarageBand will convert the track and send it to iTunes and Playlist you defined. Feel free to alter the track’s info before syncing the Ringtone to your phone.

That’s it. The Ringtone is now ready to be sync’d to your iPhone!

Running Processing (java) apps on an OpenMoko Neo FreeRunner

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 17:04:41 -0400

Tom Igoe asked me to mess around with an OpenMoko Neo FreeRunner device for a few days to see what can be done with it. The first thing I did was attempt to reflash the OS, which went from disastrous to awesome. The unit was unbootable for a while, but this turned out to be a good thing because I learned a LOT about the OpenMoko while trying to resurrect it. (The culprit was a bad kernel file.)

One of my goals was to get some Processing (Java) apps running on it. Fortunately, the folks at Evolvis have ported their Jalimo java stack to the OpenMoko. I managed to get it installed properly using the OPKG package manager. To get the java apps to run using the cacao commandline java stack, this is what I did:

1. Export the app in Processing to get the .java source file (not necessary if you know all the imports and such, but handy)

2. Create a project in eclipse and add core.jar as an external .jar in the project properties

3. Put the .java source file in the project’s /src directory and open it in Eclipse

4. Eclipse will make a .class in the /bin file when you make any changes to the file…so do something to make this happen (i.e. add/delete whitespace & save)

5. Use the Export command in Eclipse to export a .jar to the /bin directory

6. Move these files (core.jar, yourJavaApp.jar, yourJavaApp.class) to the Neo wherever you like

7. Run the app with “cacao -cp core.jar:yourJavaApp.jar yourJavaApp” command. This tells cacao to use core.jar and yourJavaApp.jar in its classpath, and call the yourJavaApp class, which is in the .class file. (Many thanks to Matt Parker for elucidating this syntax!)

According to the Jalimo wiki, you can create .ipkg packages of your java apps using Maven, but I did not have a chance to try it.

Aspen Independence Day Parade | Pitkin County Democrats marched...

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 11:52:43 -0400

Aspen Independence Day Parade | Pitkin County Democrats marched with a Prius, Pitkin County Republicans marched with a Pickup Truck. Classic.

Peak Oil, Schmeak Oil. Where's my flying car?

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 10:55:30 -0400

Having a good discussion on Peak Oil over at Swerdloff.com. After reading The Bottomless Well, I am firmly convinced that we need to port our transportation system to electricity ASAP, with gasoline/electric hybrids as a decent transitional technology. More R&D needs to go into electric drivetrains, and NOW. (It should’ve been there all along.)

Electricity is our most promising power supply because we get the highest efficiencies from massive power generating facilities. Additionally, these power plants rely on little to no oil (nearly all of our oil goes into transportation and heating). Instead, they are mostly coal burning, with a bit of natural gas, uranium, and renewables thrown in.

There’s no doubt in my mind, however, that greatly expanding our use of nuclear fuel is the best solution to reduce our carbon footprint while satiating our increasing demand for electricity. It is by far the cleanest and safest type of generation. People point to the 1979 Three Mile Island partial meltdown as a reason NOT to build new reactors, but that’s just asinine. That was 29 years ago. Technology has vastly improved since then. Not only that, but the containment system worked as designed, and only a very small amount of radiation leaked into the environment. The accident could have been easily avoided had better monitoring systems been incorporated (and are now required by the DoE). I won’t even bother mentioning Chernobyl, because, as Huber and Mills put it, “The Soviets couldn’t build a safe toaster.”

As for transportation, electric cars have been the goal of environmentalists for years. The Chevy EV1 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1) was somewhat promising…but the economics just weren’t right considering $28 barrels of oil. GM decided it was cheaper for them to sue for relaxed emissions regulations rather than actually innovate in this realm. Now that we’re in the $130+ range, with little reduction in sight, perhaps it’s time to dust off the ol’ plans? If we don’t, I can assure you Japan (and China) will. The US is already embarrassingly behind in build quality and gas mileage.

The elephant in the room, in my opinion, is airline travel. One domestic flight can easily surpass a person’s yearly gasoline consumption for their car. According to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (http://www.natca.org/mediacenter/bythenumbers.msp#1), there are roughly 87,000 flights a DAY over the US. (30,000 are commercial flights.) People are used to flying to cover long distances, and for most of them their only other alternative is driving because our national rail system is such a disgrace. There is research being done on alternative fuels for jets (i.e. hydrogen), but that is a LONG way off. I’m glad Boeing took the gas-efficient route with the new 787, but it may be too litte too late. We may be headed back to the days when air travel was affordable only to the rich elite. If only we had been given the flying cars we were promised…

APML - Attention Profiling Mark-up Language: The open standard for Attention Metadata

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 16:12:11 -0400

APML - Attention Profiling Mark-up Language: The open standard for Attention Metadata: APML allows you to share your own personal Attention Profile in much the same way that OPML allows the exchange of reading lists between News Readers. The idea is to compress all forms of Attention…

PodiPodi

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 02:03:11 -0400

PodiPodi: PodiPodi is an experimental project in Interaction Design born with the aim to give web designers a way to enhance their websites with two new levels of interaction: 1. an additional fast and easy to…

Starbuck & Starbuck @ Starbucks | via Fark.com

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:46:37 -0400

Starbuck & Starbuck @ Starbucks | via Fark.com

280 Slides

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 03:58:43 -0400

280 Slides: An excellent (and free) Keynote-like presentation app for your browser.

BeagleBoard

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 03:58:43 -0400

BeagleBoard: The Beagle Board is a low-cost, fan-less single-board computer based on Texas Instruments’ OMAP35x device family, with all of the expandability of today’s desktop machines, but without the bulk,…

PDF Version My final presentation for the HeadTrack (formerly...

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:13:11 -0400

PDF Version

My final presentation for the HeadTrack (formerly HeadJack) project.

Proximity Detection Perfection: Bluetooth + Asterisk + iPhone

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 21:56:55 -0400

Proximity Detection Perfection: Bluetooth + Asterisk + iPhone: Give your Asterisk server the ability to detect the presence of multiple mobile phones, and route calls directly to them when it has detected you are no longer present.

A brief history Internet Memes

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 03:17:14 -0400

A brief history Internet Memes: Here’s a fairly comprehensive timeline of the most popular internet memes since 1996. Well done.

SwiftLock - Conductive Velcro

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:14:31 -0400

Product: SwiftLock

Company:

Swift Textile Metalizing LLC
PO Box 66
23 Britton Drive
Bloomfield CT 06002
Tel: 860-243-1122
Fax: 860-243-0848
http://www.swift-textile.com/products.htm

Swift-Lock is a reusable electrically conductive hook and loop for grounding static electricity and closing shielding jackets. It can also be used as a soft switch to close conductive upholstery coverings, garments, or to piece together multiple fabrics as needed.

Alternate HeadJack Diagram

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 12:47:12 -0400

I think I like this one better.

SwiftLock - Conductive Velcro

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:07:19 -0400

Product: SwiftLock

Company:

Swift Textile Metalizing LLC
PO Box 66
23 Britton Drive
Bloomfield CT 06002
Tel: 860-243-1122
Fax: 860-243-0848
http://www.swift-textile.com/products.htm

Contact Juggling - I first saw this skill, like many other...

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 12:11:27 -0400

Contact Juggling - I first saw this skill, like many other geeks, in the movie Labyrinth. This guy blows that out of the water…

Current limiting Resistor calculator for LEDs

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 03:39:48 -0400

Current limiting Resistor calculator for LEDs

Final Project Sketch: HeadJack - An Alternative to Wireless Headphones

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 02:04:00 -0400

It has taken electronics companies years to release a decent pair of wireless headphones, and they still have not gotten it right. Yet people are sick are having a four foot cable dangling from their heads to their pockets.

Enter HeadJack.

HeadJack is a jacket that routes audio signals from the collar to a pocket, where the signal can be input via a standard 3.5mm headphone cable. The collar will contain two thin pairs of conductive fabric…one for the signal and one for common ground…that runs around half the perimeter of the collar. Behind the collar there are two sets of narrow & flexible strip magnets. HeadJack comes with a pair of earphones, each of whose conductors terminate in two magnets. These magnets are intended to snap onto the collar through attraction to the strip magnets. The poles of both the earphone magnets and the collar magnets will be positioned in such a way that the common ground and signal connections will always be attracted to the appropriate conductive fabric strip.