robotmonkeys

the monkeys know all

Author: jonathan

  • Diaspora

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    I ditched Facebook. I’ve grew tired of:

    1. RSS feeds not updating.
    2. Being frequently mysteriously logged out
    3. Having applications being added just for accidentally clicking on a damn Farmville-esque wall post.
    4. Being straight, and yet being served ads for gay dating sites.
    5. Applications getting all your information.
    6. Seemingly,. everyone getting your information.
    7. Being tracked.

    Facebook always gave me that shit tasted walled garden feeling of the late 90s. I hated how it how it seemed that more and and more techsavy people actually used it to send messages, rather than – you know – email. I like that status updates. I liked that sharing of links, but when I visted CNN.com after viewing Facebook, and seeing my friends’ activity on CNN, I flipped. There’s no reason why that information should be shared. I don’t think I got one of those damn pushed malware apps from Facebook, but I don’t know. Sure, I could have just configured some firewall to block a bunch of stuff, but voting with my feet is much more satisfying.

    Still, I like the social aspect. I am going to miss Mike and Lisa‘s comments. I really will. I like the sharing, but I want an archive of my activity. I want control. What should I do?

    Enter Diaspora.

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  • Golden Shield Music

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    The Great Firewall of China (officially known as “Golden Shield“) is lovely creation that tries to maintain a “harmonious” Internet experience. When I was in Beijing, I I noticed that it used a combination of DNS filtering (tibet.net, the official website of the Tibetan Government In Exile, does not resolve), and packet filtering on keywords. (“The connection has been reset.”). Tor got around it easily, but that may or may not be the case today. Like every other attempt to stamp out “undesirable” content, the ways to avoid detection were well known. How often they’re actually employed, is another question.

    So what use is the Great Firewall beyond being an somewhat effective tool of oppression? Marco Donnarumma has the answer. He uses it to make music. The IP addresses of the twelve “most screened” websites, are fed into a MIDI synthesizer. A single note is transformed by four voices based on the four bytes of the IP address. The notes are ordered by the number of pages blocked on each site.

    Via Unknown 8bit.

  • Crappy Coffee Table Concluded

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    So we got a real coffee table of Craigslist for free. It’s nice, much better than this thing. I still went ahead and made the table though. There was no real reason not to, since we can find something to use it for. I give it a C in high school shop. I talked to my dad, and put it together with pocket screws using a Kreg Jig Jr kit. I tried using the right angle clamp, but I never got it to work. Whenever I’d lock it down, it would pull out of the pocket hole just enough to slide down, destroying the flat inner surface so you couldn’t put it back in the same hole. (My dad gets the clamp to work, but I never did.) If I had to do it over again, I would have gotten just a normal corner clamp.

    I don’t really like it, but I guess it’s okay for being made out of scraps. I just wish I paid more attention when put the pocket holes in.

    It’s heavy, and it’s square. I’ll give it that.

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  • Crappy Coffee Table

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    A couple of months ago Ming and I decided redo the closet in the bedroom, since it was falling apart. We replaced the rod, and was going to replace the bent shelf with a new shelf long shelf, and then add some side shelves. So we went down to Home Depot and bought one of those crappy particle board covered in white melamine. Unfortunately, we had the guy cut the side shelves an inch too narrow, and left the long board way too wide. (Lesson: Always bring a ruler, and know exactly how big you’re talking about.)

    While we were able to hack together something to use side shelves, we were left with three unused side shelves and long shelf. Since we need a better coffee table than the one we’re using, we decided to knock together one from the failed closet attempt. I think the only parts I’m going to need is a saw (probably will by a handsaw since this isn’t really worth buying a jig for), and probably a four half inch square by 18 inch long blocks so that I have something to screw into. Maybe, I’ll need another two solid blocks that are 23 inches long for the back as well. Maybe even four more 23.5 inches long to run along the top too.

    While I like the idea of building a table, this is going to look so horrible, it’s not even funny. Wood screws right through the sides, chipped melamine, and peeling edge tape. It’s going to pretty embarrassing. So why am I posting about this? I don’t know. I’m stupid I guess.

    Well, maybe it won’t look that bad.

    Sketch Up Model

  • And Now Your Bansky News

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    Bansky is purportedly in SF. Follow Uptown Almanac for all your breaking news. Of course, when your popular, and your art is stencils, there’s a definite possibility of copy cats. So all this talk about “confirmed” is total bullshit. Still. It’s worth seeing.

    Valencia and 20th Street in The Mission and SOMA

    More photos and locations after the jump.

    What’s more interesting, is that the fabled “recluse” might have been outed.

    I present you, the rat himself.

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  • Benjamin Gets a Face Lift

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    It looks good. It looks modern. The only problem I have with the design is that big freakin’ blue stripe down the middle.

    Compared to the $5 unveiling in 2007, the video for the new $100 bill, it’s well produced. The music. The animation. The design of the bill, all says modern, says 21st Century. It’s down right patriotic. Honestly, when I see the difference between these videos (and the 2007 video is down right embarrassingly bad) and and the change in administrations, I think it’s intentional. The government runs poorly under conservatives, because they want to say the government does a bad job. Just like how health, safety, tax, and other regulatory enforcement goes down under these “law an order” administrations, because they don’t like the law, but don’t want to be put on the spot arguing for say, more arsenic in drinking water. But I digress.

    The color is tasteful. While it’s bolder than the post-2003 $20, $50, $10, and $5, it’s still predominately green, and still looks American. I really like the color shifting liberty bell in the inkwell. While the microlenses in the blue stripe are interesting, that strip is just horrible. It looks like someone forgot to take a plastic wrapper off of it or something.

    I would love to see every bill similarly redesigned. And while I understand, that printing new $2 bills is somewhat sporadic due to concerns of flooding the market with them, (Last printed September 2006.) I’d still love to see a new $2 bill and a new $1 bill. It irks me to no end that, that the last time I had a wallet containing American currency with a consistent look was 1999.

    What would the other bills look like? Would the color of the portrait’s face, and low-vision numerals change? Would the background image and inkwell and liberty bell to somehow reflect on the person pictured? If so, what would they be? I want all these questions answered. Damnit, bitch. Give me my money! 😉

  • Winscape

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    Way back in 2002, and then later in 2004, Ryan Hoagland (old site) became both a brief old and new media sensation with both his Cityscape and Virtual Windows hacks.

    Well he’s back, with Winscape, a motion corrected update of Virtual Windows. Using two plasma televisions hooked up to a mac mini, wiimote, and an IR necklace, static photos and video can be perspective corrected for the viewer with the necklace.

    He says he’s planing on selling it as a kit for somewhere between $2.5k and $3k, which really isn’t that much when you consider that’s the cost of the hardware. (Alternately, the software is only $10.)

    Video after the jump.

    Previously.

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  • Plantas Nómadas

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    Now this is nifty.

    We Make Money, Not Art interviews, Gilberto Esparza about his Plantas Nómadas (Nomadic Plants), an autonomous walking robot that is powered by a combination of solar cells and a microbial fuel cell. When the fuel cell output drops beneath some threshold, the bot seeks out a water source, extends a proboscis and refills the fuel cell. Additional water is used nourish a colony of on board plants.

    Gilberto’s earlier work is equally interesting. Parasitos Urbanos (Urban Parasites) (flashless site) was a series of robots inductively powered from electrical transmission lines that would move through the urban environment mimicking sounds they encounter.

    Previously.

  • iPad

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    I played with an iPad for a few minutes at Red Rock in Mountain View, and since everyone else to talking about it, I might as well too.

    It’s a big wireless touch screen display. That’s how you have to think of it. It’s not a “big iPod Touch,” anymore than an SUV is just a big Chevette. Big isn’t just better, it’s different.

    It’s not a replacement for the laptop or the desktop, since you can’t type long on it. It’s an addition. It’s for when you want to browse the Internet, and a laptop is too much. It’s for when you want to lookup something on IMDB while watching television. It’s for reading PDFs or finishing tweaking a presentation on a plane. It’s a device a for consumption, not creation. As commenter BadUncle put it on the Awl, “Steve Jobs has reinvented the clipboard.” (An iPad would have been perfect for all the years I helped my dad do end of year paint inventory.)

    Do I want one? I’m kind of ambivalent about it. I’d use one if I was given one, but I can’t imagine using it enough to be worth $500. It’s a toy. It’s a better looking Chumby.

    Does it foretell a dystopian future of locked down computers? Maybe. I can see the AppStore model being expanded into the traditional software market, and I really really do not like the AppStore. I don’t have a problem with the existence of the store. It provides a list of apps to download. I even don’t have a problem with Apple vetting the apps in the store. That’s useful for users. These apps are safe. Fine. What I don’t like is that there’s no other way to distribute applications for the iPhone and iPad except through the AppStore. That’s what really bugs me. That and the hypocritical and schizophrenic application of Apple’s rules, and that if AT&T or some other “strategic partner” doesn’t like your app, you’re shutdown. That’s telling me and my users how to use our machines. No one has that right.

    So in conclusion, I give it a warm maybe.

  • Ukrainian Easter Eggs

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    Like many people, growing up, my family used to decorate Easter eggs, Only our eggs tended to be decorated like Ukrainian Easter eggs, or pysanky. My mom learned how to do this from a friend of hers, that truly an artist at it. Every year, we’d break out the beeswax candle, heat our styluses and attempt to draw deer or weave patterns, dots, or crosses on the eggs. Some years, we’d even bring out a hypodermic needle and a syringe and extract the yolks so we could keep the eggs for years.

    I decided that I wanted to decorate eggs this year, but all we had was the crayon and dye that’s in a Paas kit, and the new dye containing cotton swabs. (Using the swabs are pretty fun.)

    I pretty much resigned myself to not decorating eggs with candle wax for many many years, since I had no idea where to buy the stuff you need. Then for some unknown reason I checked out Make’s Top 10 Easter Themed Posts. In the list was a Ukrainian easter eggs. Following a couple of more links, I found out that that The Caning Shop in Berkeley sells everything. Hooray! Surprisingly, the book about how to make the designs my mom has had all my life is still in print.