MakerLab Blog » Go on, be curious

18 Feb

I am surrounded by people that Work.

The creative tendency is as much burden as it is joy. To be by nature a maker is to live with the knowledge that all …

20 Aug

The King of 0,0

Something else the maps don’t show is that just off port-side is a frothing mass; a baitball of crackling and clicking, screaming and groaning plastic and metal and synthetic polymer. Everything fighting to be where their programming says they should be. It smells awful.

18 Nov

Augmentia Redux

As I’ve been working through this I’ve kind of ended up with a “Collection of Curiosities”. I’ll try to shout them out as I go.

03 Nov

Augmentia

Augmented Reality isn’t just an academic or even safe exercise. It connects in a very primal and critical way to who we are as humans.

02 Oct

A turnkey deployment of Ushahidi Swift

Swift is intended to be used in rapidly evolving crisis situations such as a tsunami or a civic disaster. Over the last year as the Swift app has been being developed there have been a number of events that fit the profile. The Mumbai terrorist incident is a good example. Each crisis has helped us improve the engine, hopefully soon it will be able to provide real value to help out in crisis situations. In this post we review how to build an instance of Swift.

14 Aug

How to opt out of Google and protect your privacy: Move to remote village

How to opt out of Google and protect your privacy: Move to remote village: Google may be the top search engine in the world, and …

13 Aug

Best of Craigslist: girl who dumped me over the phone at 1:30am – m4w

girl who dumped me over the phone at 1:30am – m4w: “You called me at 1:30 AM to tell me over and over that you …

07 Aug

Programming, Graph Theory and a Request For Help.

And a visual editing tool that lets an ordinary user easily drag and drop objects together, to create and break relationships between objects, and to edit the attributes of objects. Something I can simplify or tailor the view of.

04 Aug

GOSH (Grounding Open Source Hardware) in Banff

A global meetup, across all disciplines- creative, strategic, user experience based and business-minded. The Grounding Open Source Hardware (GOSH!) Summit at The Banff Centre serves …

03 Aug

Makerlab News! Anselm + BNMI + Mountains (Mt. Rundle)

Anselm moved to Banff to work at the Banff New Media Center. He is the lead mobile engineer in the Advanced Mobile Research Lab. The …

31 Jul

Accidental art

Something about this really bothers me and something about it really cracks me up. It reminds me of indie cinema- sorta psychadelic and out there, …

17 Jun

FormTroopers is rather pretty.

11 Jun

Paige’s MFA Exhibit is up

Hey everyone I am going to try hard and pick back up with my life now that school is done! I wanted to post some links …

20 May

Olson code timezones geekery

The backstory is that the OpenBSD folks wanted help to automate configuration of timezones for installs. What we did was take the geolocation of their IP and use it to look up a timezone code.

19 May

DIY for CHI workshop

re-posted from Leah Buechley’s Flickr

19 May

Water Sensor

re-posted from bluematt

16 May

What advances in TECHNOLOGY scare you?

Image via Wikipedia Are you harrassed by electronic devices? Yes/No. Are you often devising plans for escape? Yes/No. Do you know what you want? Yes/No. Are you satisfied with who you are? Yes/No. What …

16 May

Thomas Dolby’s Airwaves

Strange how the scale forms in tiny patterns on my antenna and the Five O’clock Show, hello hello… Brooklyn is crawling with famous people I turn my vehicle beneath the …

20 Apr

Reproducing Chuck Close isoluminant paintings.

The work of Chuck close demonstrates an almost algorithmic perception of the visual image. One wonders if in fact he actually sees the world in this manner. There’s a quality to this work that creates a tension with human perception. We are seeing the overall sense of an image but the individual features of that image are in a way unrelated.

13 Apr

@kissmehere and there! and there! and there! Kissing Booths FTW!

Last night at makerlab we were talking about dating sites a bit – commenting on how strange it was that they didn’t leverage social networks. For fun today I threw a fun idea together as a test of how to make dating more social. It isn’t terribly serious but perhaps amusing. I like to combine talk with praxis. Here it is:

02 Apr

Iraq Deaths TwitterBot

We’ve posted an update to our Iraq Deaths agent at http://twitter.com/iraqdeaths . Here I’m going to journal and document the work involved in making this actually …

26 Feb

Biomimetic signaling in Twitter

Anselm: Have you noticed how it is that the beasts in nature can in some circumstances appear to move as one? Socrates: Indeed. One has to look no further than to witness the swifts descend upon the Chapman chimney tower in Portland.

18 Feb

tshirts for the thesis

17 Feb

Commmunity in Watch Advertising

17 Feb

OMG I fell off the planet

Hey all, So I have not been posting quite as much as I would like to these days because I have been spending all of my …

17 Feb

Can You Listen to the Sea?

23 Jan

Friday Night/Sat Night Music::: Sir Head Fake Selector & Sir Rolling Dollar Selector & Gentleman Matthew

Musical Masterpiece :: Downtown Librarian plays Uptempo Soul and African Funk Friends – This weekend, if you find yourself near: Valentine’s Friday 1/23 Tiga Saturday 1/24 Drop in and …

23 Jan

Gary Wiseman writes on Socially Activated Art and the Role and Place of Art

Coming In From The Cold: Towards the Demarginalization of Creative Practice The Artistic Method: Self Reflexivity In Socially Activated Art Gary Wiseman at IGLOO Gallery December 2008 ‘The …

22 Jan

Great Diagrams in Anthropological Theory Group on Flickr

19 Jan

Yes Yes Ya’ll – Buy CD’s! Buy CD’s! Buy CD’s!

Here is some future for you. It is the CD. You should buy it. The music website, YesYesYall has released it. If you are not yet …

18 Jan

Long Live the Glitch: Dexter Season 3 by kansasliberal

17 Jan

It’s Better Than Butter – It’s Spreadable Media!

Here, I would like to share some videos with you. This is what the Internet is for — spreadable media. Rafter “Juicy” Music Video By Dax …

17 Jan

Stereoscopic Video

Whatever happened to Stereoscopic Video anyway? Whatever happened. Well, let us think seriously about this. Some things move on. Value is fleeting in a liquid environment …

17 Jan

Sunday Skill Share with Makerlab at IGLOO

SUNDAY Skill Share and Events at IGLOO- EVERYDAY MAGIC This Sunday, January 17, 2009 starting at 4pm. Good Beer is the Best by Eric Steen Eric Steen will …

17 Jan

Zip Hoodies – That is the Title of this Post

We all know the Zip file. We use it all the time to compress larger chunks of data into smaller ones. But what about Zip files …

16 Jan

Makerlab <3 ‘s Social Media Webapps: Volume 1

A short list of websites that are radically reshaping how my life is lived. Examples of positive change in the world around us. Companies that …

15 Jan

Bariloche and Patagonia Hike Planning

I’m planning three weeks of fairly straightforward hiking in Argentina – leaving Sunday January 19th 2009. Just for fun I thought I’d share whats involved in this process.

15 Jan

Loose Joints Dance Party at IGLOO Gallery this Friday

January 16th at 9pm- till like all the free booze runs out or I get cranky .__ …

14 Jan

most things look better

13 Jan

Boombox App the new Muxtape? At least, reminds me of it…

This is pretty freaking radical. A new Boombox app for the iphone that reminds me so much of Muxtape that it hurts. The app just …

09 Jan

PMMNLS – Every Monday Night at PSU

I always always always have too many things going on to go to this. Which is horrible since it is one of the most amazing, …

09 Jan

Everyday Magic with Makerlab at IGLOO Gallery-January Events

Everyday Magic is in month 2 of 2, a series of events open to the public based upon the, uh, everyday miracles we love to …

09 Jan

A visit to the Library at PNCA

Yesterday I was soaking wet riding my bike around town. So I pulled over at PNCA where I go to school to spend a …

02 Jan

Riffing on modeling ecosystems

How can we build tools that help people make better decisions about the kind of large scale civic planning issues that affect them and their …

27 Dec

TaPuMa – a Tangible Public Map from the Tangible Media Group at MIT

Recently, I’ve been studying some of the interesting things that have come out of The Media Lab at MIT. One of the most interesting departments …

27 Dec

Nicholas Negroponte – Founder and Director of the MIT Media Lab

Lets face it – it is pretty important to watch historical material dealing with a subject or ecosystem one is currently immersed in. This is …

26 Dec

Join us for a Candy Factory Tour!

Join Us for a Candy Factory Tour! from Amber Case on Vimeo. While driving around Denver, Colorado, my family and I saw a sign for a …

26 Dec

A story about a Robot and his Dog (and a Duplication Machine)

A Story about a Robot and his Dog (and a Duplication Machine) from Amber Case on Vimeo. What’s one to do when snow attacks your current …

26 Dec

Join Us on a Candy Factory Tour!

While driving around Denver, Colorado, my family and I saw a sign for a free candy factory tour. We called the number to get the address …

25 Dec

Looking At Solutions From The Ecologist’s Points Of View

Last time, I talked about how the designer and economist see and gauge the effectiveness of a solution. This time, we’re moving into the third territory: …

25 Dec

Soccer Playing Dog Found in Southern Oregon

Soccer Playing Dog Found in Southern Oregon from Amber Case on Vimeo. Salem Ore – Ticket, a soccer playing dog, was last seen near an elementary …

25 Dec

Anselm Makes a Frankenstein

Anslem makes a Frankenstein from Amber Case on Vimeo. We were supposed to be making Tamales!! Did it work? NO! Well — kind of. Here is …

22 Dec

DIY Synesthesia with Drawdio – Draw Audio!

Imagine you could draw musical instruments on normal paper with any pencil (cheap circuit thumb-tacked on) and then play them with your finger. The Drawdio …

20 Dec

How To Identify And Make Great Mistakes

Unconventional wisdom often stresses the importance of “making mistakes” in problem solving. Its justification: making more mistakes allows one to continually learn more and suck …

14 Dec

Makerlab Reaches for the Moon…

…and why the heck not? Tonight was the closest its been in 15 years. Don’t believe it? This source may help. Tonight, we did …

14 Dec

Snow and Makerlab and Delicious Soup

Snow and Makerlab and Delicious Soup, originally uploaded by caseorganic. souptacular. red lentils, yogurt and avocado

14 Dec

Snowcamp at Makerlab – Red Lentil Soup with Greek Yogurt

Today it snowed. Not a lot, but enough that people were talking about it all day and it added a lot of mood and fun …

14 Dec

Case, meet Cayce

http://blog.makerlab.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/pattern_recognition.jpg

13 Dec

Making Sound with the Arduino

Dorkbot – Focused Workshop, 30Nov08, Making Noise with the Arduino from Amber Case on Vimeo.

13 Dec

Light Color Picker App at Dorkbot PDX

Light Color Picker App at Dorkbot PDX from Amber Case on Vimeo.

13 Dec

Romanesco Cauliflower – The Delicious Fractal Vegetable

Vegetables are important. They are also good for you. Here we have an especially important and delicious vegetable called the Romanesco Cauliflower. But what exactaly is …

12 Dec

Running with Words

Books that taste good together and should be paired together more often Architecture and Feminism by Debra Coleman, Elizabeth Danze and Carol Henderson, editors Tantra for the …

12 Dec

Mushrooms – peril or menace?

@reidab on mushrooms

10 Dec

Makerlab Skill-Share Sunday December 7th

Sunday Events Re-cap This past Sunday at IGLOO Gallery was pretty festive. Nathan Langler from the PNCA Grad program came over and taught us how to …

08 Dec

Hard at Work on the Makerlab Blog

So, we would like to give you a better experience here at Makerlab. So we’ve been working very hard. In fact, we have now spent …

08 Dec

Makerlab Sunday with Mustaches

Yesterdays’ activities involved mustaches, live music, beer-making and computer pizzas IMG_2080.JPG, originally uploaded by paigebuilt.

08 Dec

Digital Cities: London’s Future

Proboscis Announcements The Building Centre, Store Street, London WC1E 7BT November 21st 2008 to January 24th 2009 Proboscis is exhibiting works from Snout, Feral Robots and Social Tapestries …

08 Dec

IGLOO Gallery Makerlab

We had a good night at Makerlab We all grew mustaches. Bram’s was very nice. Kelvin’s migrated. And then it worked! See you next time!

07 Dec

Not to kill a thought: The impact of language on curiosity, creativity and scientific inquiry

Steve Davee is one of my favorite members of the Portland Dorkbot scene. Part of his awesomeness stems from the fact that he is …

07 Dec

Haptic Strings and Radio Trowel at DorkBot PDX

Dorkbot tonight was pretty epic. There was a concert. Collin Oldham The RT (radio trowel) and The Cellomobo from Amber Case on Vimeo. It was pretty cool. …

07 Dec

Shelly Farnham of Dorkbot Seattle on the Intersection of Technology and Art

Tonight, Shelly Farnham presented a more national perspective Viewing a scene in the air (a camera attached to a hot air balloon) with VR goggles. …

07 Dec

CyborgCamp Occured Recently…

At the CyborgCamp PreParty, WardCunningham’s wore a Cyborg Transmitter. He gave a speech the next day on Seeing. Everyone concentrated a lot. Miss Burrows talked …

07 Dec

A Google Tech Talk on the Acceleration of Everyday Life

Vannevar Bush’s 1945 article, “As We May Think,” has been much celebrated as a central inspiration for the development of hypertext and the World Wide …

03 Dec

The Aleph No-Op

In ‘Castle to Castle’ by Louis-Ferdinand Celine the author comments “Take the impressionists. They took their paintings out into the daylight, they painted out of doors; they saw people really eating lunch on the grass. The musicians worked in the same direction. It’s a long way from Bach to Debussy. They revolutionized sounds and colors.”

01 Dec

Bill Joy | The Six Webs, 10 Years On

I first met Bill Joy at the Dow Jones Emerging Ventures 2006 with my friend Mario Landau-Holdsworth. We were there with a company and an …

30 Nov

Dorkbot – Focused Workshop, 30Nov08, Making Noise with the Arduino

This month, the Arduino Cult Induction workshop series focused on sound. This morning I woke up, ate some food, and headed to PNCA, where the …

30 Nov

Measuring the Speed of Social Networks

We can estimate the relative speed of social networks based on profile to response ratio. Twitter has a high profile to response ratio. Each environment and …

30 Nov

Virtual Communities and Technosocial Relationships: Omnipresence, Omniscience, and Omnipandemonium

To ‘go virtual’ is to free the self from the weight of the flesh incarcerated by ‘heavy modernity’. Cyber Ethnologist Sandy Stone discusses the theoretical …

29 Nov

A Discussion of Haptic, Sensuous Architecture

Information is something that we often experience with our eyes or ears, but rarely can we touch information and gain a kind response. The dearth …

29 Nov

Dorkbot presents Maxwell the Robot – Nov. 24 Meeting

The bi monthly DorkbotPDX meeting was last Monday, and the usual group showed up to check out what kinds of things people were working on. Anselm …

29 Nov

Here is Some Outside World Authenticity for Your Eyes

It is that time of year. The time when you should see some plants. You are inside, away from the outside. So with these images, I will bring …

29 Nov

Transformation and Manifestation of Analog Terminology in Online Spaces

Computers widen the arc of actions accessible to humans. A quick overview of all of the actions that we can do with computers is summed …

29 Nov

PodTech Recreates the Womb as a Technosocial Construct

The argument I am about to make most closely resembles the heart of what Cyborg Anthropology studies. I will probably never describe anything in the …

28 Nov

ME++ The Cyborg Self and the Networked City

A Lecture on Humans and Technology by William J. Mitchell “Throughout history, humans have created unique physical spaces in which to live, work and socialize. But …

28 Nov

Looking At Solutions From The Designer and Economist Points Of View

More often than not, solving all the problem coming our way simply isn’t possible due to budget and/or time constraints. But if we must choose …

27 Nov

Steven Wolfram’s Lecture on A New Kind of Science

Even with extremely simple rules, one can get extremely complicated behavior. -Stephen Wolfram Wouldn’t it be exciting, Stephen Wolfram wonders, to have a little computer program that …

27 Nov

Anselm’s words of warning…

“Little Rabbit Foo Foo Running through the forest Scooping up the door mice And bopping them on the head! Down came the Good Fairy, and she said: “Little Rabbit Foo …

27 Nov

My Thanksgiving: Writing a Thesis Proposal

So while all you guys were eatin’ Turkey and cold chillin’ with yo friends. I was at home alone working on my Thesis Proposal. This …

26 Nov

Ambient Findability – What we find changes who we become

I’ve been studying this concept by mapping out the Internet as if it were an actual space with geographic regions, crossovers, boundaries and cultural sectors. Time …

26 Nov

A Pattern Language

Christopher Alexander’s Notes on the Synthesis of Form is a staple of many architectural curriculm. How difficult is it to put these concepts into play …

26 Nov

Geological Data Dig – Fossils from 2006

I’ve been keeping a written/digital record of my existence since the age of six. I first began with a series of little notebooks, where my …

26 Nov

Looking At Solutions Spatially

I like to think of a solution to problem as occupying a three-way axis. Magenta: The Economist An economist’s view on solution is reflected by the magenta …

26 Nov

Now I am Going to Talk About Steve Mann

Computing sucks. We sit scrunched over our computers, and have to deal with the eventual back problems of sitting in place for too long. We …

26 Nov

Human Computer Interaction at Portland’s North Agency

Chris Teso and Steve Benoit of North Agency are currently working on a Gesture Recognition system. He’s using a more Flash-based system that is easier …

25 Nov

Fractal Production of Value: Transitioning From Real to Digital Value Structures

WATCH OUT! The value epidemic is here. Note: I wrote this at some point in college and just recently found it while on the plane to …

25 Nov

Lazy Sundays

Our Sunday skill-share this week involved eating copious amounts of breadfruit, shoveling compost, doing crafty activities and talking about the implications of place and place sharing.

24 Nov

Donna Haraway – Sensorium

In Donna Haraway’s essay in Sensorium (embodied experience, technology and contemporary art) she begins by remarking that “worldly embodiment is always a verb”. And that “in formation, it is ongoing, dynamic, situated, and historical”. That “its infoldings of the flesh are comprised of heterogenous partners”. To qualify she illuminates “the infolding of others to each other is what makes up the knots of what we call beings, or perhaps better , following Bruno Latour, ‘things’. Things are material, specific, non-self-identical, and semiotically active”.

24 Nov

‘Place Making’ by Anselm Hook

I periodically like to scoop up Anselm’s work and re-post it places. Mostly because he is freaking brilliant and I am not sure if people really understand this. Here is an essay he wrote back early in 2007 when we were first becoming good friends. It stems from part of his now legendary amount of work in the world of locative media (numerous projects…)

24 Nov