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Been busy over the past few months but I’m kicking back now with the dog to write a few blog posts.

Rebranding Teachers

I’ve often thought that one of the great tragedies of the teaching profession lies in how teachers are perceived by the general public. So I was excited when I saw these great images at the Hyperakt website. WNYC’s Studio 360 asked them to create new visuals to help show teachers and teaching in a new light and I think they’re wonderful.

Maker Faire NYC

Just came home from NYC Maker Faire at the NY Hall of Science. Some highlights…

MakerBots were in full force – they were everywhere, not just at the MakerBot Industries booth  (seen here) but at the booths of many designers.

Bamboo bikes by Bamboo Bike Studio. Only metal parts are forks, rear drops, bottom bracket, seat, and head tubes. All else is bamboo, epoxy, and carbon fiber tape.

Ultimaker (web pic – mine from Faire were too blurry!)

Though Makerbot (MB) obviously had the most presence at the Faire, I was impressed by the Ultimaker, made by a Dutch team. Elegant design (no electronics hanging off the sides) and a nice large bed over 64 sq in. Unfortunately it costs more than the MB (€1200 ) and they have to ship from the Netherlands. Curious to see where this thing goes.

Smarter way to board a plane

Finally, someone has determined a way to do at least one thing faster at airports. Physicist Jason Steffen developed a method for boarding passengers onto airplanes twice as fast.

(via swissmiss)

Machinist Videos

Since purchasing the Bridgeport mill this year, I’ve been trying to learn as much as possible about more refined techniques of metalworking and machining. As we all know, YouTube videos are a wonderful resource for learning anything, and metalwork is no exception (I’ve been recently been watching  videos by tubelcain (mrpete222)).  The author of  MachinistBlog has recently put together a new site called MachinistVideos.com which aims to be a pool for all the best in machining videos. I’m planning to spend a good amount of time over there.

Parts!

Today making some parts on the Bridgeport for Sara VanDerBeek’s upcoming show at the Hammer Museum in LA. More pics later.

Tweetelier

A few months ago my awesome clients over at CreativeFeed asked me if I could develop a device that could send Twitter posts every time a glass of wine is poured. Tweetelier is the result & I’m quite happy with the way it came out. Check out the video – very cool!

Affordable Oscilloscope?

Just saw this scope over at Make. Don’t know much about the specifics and so I will definitely wait until someone does some tests with it.  But $300 for a full functioned dual-channel scope? Incredible. Check it out here.

via Make

New Bridgeport Mill

After years of searching for a good deal, last month I bought a beautiful used Bridgeport milling machine for the shop.  Awesome!

I bought it in Bridgeport, CT from a guy selling a lot of equipment from a mold making shop that closed. Originally interested in a small M-head Bridgeport with a small work surface, I saw this variable speed beauty and couldn’t resist.

I got a great deal with all this, and was able to throw in all kinds of extras! A vise in good shape, a rotary table, a high-quality drill bit chuck, a box of misc. mills and a bunch of collets! Here it is at the warehouse with all the good stuff:

And transporting wasn’t as much a problem as I thought. I drove a Penske truck up to the warehouse in Bridgeport, popped the head off (with much friendly help from the forklift operator) and they loaded the beast onto the truck with a pallet. Strapped that sucker down & good to go:

Off-loading was not TOO bad. It would have been a bit easier if I had (a) borrowed a forklift, or (b) asked for any help whatsoever. But amazingly I did get it off the truck and into my shop with nothing more than a pallet jack. The tricky part was compensating for the fact that the truck was too low for the loading dock at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. I had to back the truck up on ramps I made from some 2 x 10 boards lying around. Then I had to work the pallet slowly toward the back of the truck (since I was working against a bit of a slope). This took some time, moving forward a few inches at a time, and screwing a board to the floor of the truck to keep everything from sliding back again. Anyway, it all worked out. Here it is safely on the loading dock:

Once in the shop, I borrowed a friend’s chain hoist & popped the head back on:

Moved everything in place with the pallet jack, and all was done!

Hooray! Time to get to work:

Deciphering Stuxnet

Most viruses try to do stuff like steal passwords, credit card numbers, or secret information. Very few try to actually affect our physical world. The Stuxnet virus, on the other hand, was developed for one purpose: to surreptitiously and gradually destroy centrifuges at a specific nuclear facility in Iran. It was deployed via usb sticks, expoited four zero-day weaknesses in Windows, and executed subtle but damaging changes in centrifuge speeds in very specific machines. There’s a great article over at Wired about how computer security analysts (in particular Liam O Murchu at Symantec) analyzed & eventually determined the purpose of this unique malware.

via slashdot