Pappmaskin.no

Not the most advanced mod but I liked how our “brave” cat reacted when I tested a meowing Darth Vader on him.

Conclusion: Darth Vader still has the power of the dark side! :)

Cat Communication

I later learned that only kittens meow. Adult cats only meow to communicate their needs to humans, they won’t meow when communicating with each other. Instead the rely on body language, purring and growling. So when your cat meows at you, it is basically playing kitten with you.

Toy Mashup

This is a first in a series of Mini-DIYs where I will try mashing up parts from different thrift store toys.

This how-to takes you through the steps you need to hook your Rock Band guitar controller up to a real guitar. And, of course, to a pair of boxing gloves.
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The makers of the H1N1 robot-line soon came to regret their choice of name as sales numbers plummeted. The H1N1 was soon replaced by the wildly successful R2D2-line.

The H1N1, here holding a tasty complementary H1N1-beverage that came with each model sold.

The last remaining H1N1 know to exist was last seen roaming the deserts of Mexico.

Half shelter, half no/all-religion shrines, placed in the most remote
and wild places of Norway, only accessible by foot. All glass should
be recycled, and the dome should be modular, to be easy to transport,
repair, and replace. I want each module to be hollow, so it can be
filled with brightcolored pieces of glass (or plastic) by local
school-children, or local artists.

12 more images for inspiration and reference.
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Well, SOMEBODY has to! :) This is part of my new little project: Repairing things for me and for others. It is so easy to just throw stuff away when they no longer work, and often to expensive to take them to a repair shop, so I thought I would do my part for our planet by repairing as many things as I can.

Check out my other repairs on Flickr.

David Byrne & Brian Eno publishes their latest collaboration online. You can listen to the entire album and even embed it in your own site for free. The album “Everything that happens will happen today” is only sold though their website http://www.everythingthathappens.com/ and is available in many different digital and physical formats.

I guess David Byrne is following his own preachings, here is the blurb from a panel he participated in last year at SXSW, titled Record Companies: Who Needs Them?:

Rock renaissance man and Talking Head David Byrne explores the state of the music business from an artist’s perspective. With the rapid fall of recording costs and distribution costs, the economics of the music industry have tilted in the favor of the artist. What kinds of business models make the most sense for the artist, what are their ramifications, and most importantly, what should artists be aiming for in the long run?

David Byrne has popped up all over the place lately, but I especially liked his wonderful Playing the building-project, which you can see more from in the boing boing tv video embedded below:

photo credit: PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE

Readwriteweb wrote a post a few days ago about the lack of some New New Ideas for web startups, which I commented on. I wrote down a few old ideas I wish someone would like (and then steal):

photo credit: Whatsername?

1. Anything that uses the web to connect people to each other in a physical location

Any service that makes it as easy to approach people on the street etc as it is on Twitter or Facebook. There are heaps of services that touches on this field, but not many that works or have enough members to make it work. So maybe there is room for a service that connects it all, and shows you on a mobile map where people who are open to “hellos” are. It could be a facebook app (facebook has 1 million members in Norway, of 4.7 million inhabitants). Your mobile phone would simply broadcast itself with a “hello, talk to me” to a google map or a perhaps bluetooth. A cross between facebook, twitter and friendfeed, but with the purpose of connecting physical beings in a physical location.

photo credit: rick

2. A web based service that lets you record video from any television channel.

It makes no sense for everyone to own their own PVR/TIVO/Mediacenter and record to disk at home, when you could do it sentralized and distribute it with bittorrent. The business model is like this: 10 gb storage for free, if you are too lazy to delete, or simply want to keep things online longer, you pay extra. Everything you program to record is automatically downloaded to your harddrive if you want to. The gold: You get access to EVERY channel on the planet. I wanted to create this in 1998, but never got around to it, so you can have that idea :)

3. 24/7 live streaming video from your mobile device, with a twist

Livestreaming from a cellphone is not new, it exists today, but here is the twist: 1) a small sensor analyses your brain-response to what you see or hear, and anything that creates an “unusual” reponse is indexed and flagged for later. 2) it also has a built in visual “thesaurus” (think wikipedia meets The Terminator), that can look up information on your surroundings in semi-realtime. So if you wanted to know wether or not to eat that delicious-looking red mushroom with the white dots, the system could advice you not to.

Did you know that american kids can identify 1000 products before they start school, but only know the name of 10 local plants (according to the movie The 11th hour)?

4. A google earth for the body

Read more about “A google earth for the body” here

Discarded ideas 02.04.2008, originally uploaded by mskogly.

My son Leo (4 years old) decided to go through my idea-box (the golden box in the picture above) and do some heavy handed editing!

Here are some of the ideas he “didn’t like”:

1. A 100-mile gallery, inspired by the 100 mile diet, to only display works from artists living with a 100 mile radius. I thought it was a great idea, but Leo does not agree. I also like the idea of the 100 mile suit, as a concept for a local clothing store. Perhaps one could put all three together?

2. Falu-korv shaped like the Batman symbol. I was sure this would be an instant hit with the kids!

3. A magnetic dinner plate for children. By placing a powerful magnet underneath the table it is harder for a child to up-end it, or even move it. If you have children you know why this would be a great idea!

4. Thing library. A very old idea of mine, that has been implemented in many libraries all over the world, but I still want to create a local one. I had a web based personal thing library for a while, it is still online, but not really updated.

5. An anthology of poetry, short stories and images with an “Outdoors” theme. You know, nature. Working title Outside.

6. A website for giving yourself carbon credits and a better environmental conscience. There are plenty of carbon calculators out there, but they all seem to focus on how much you suck. I want to create one that shows how good you are. Actions that gives you free carbon credits are borrowing things from friends or libraries, recycling, not buying something new when you could or wanted to, buying something used instead of new, buying something green instead of not, buying something local instead of imported, doing nothing at all, using energy saving appliances instead, etc. You could still buy carbon credits if you absolutely wanted to, but is is far better if you give them to yourself as a reward for being green. Perhaps you could even sell them, or simply give them to a friend who has to travel somewhere.

7. A permanent flea market in my area. There are a few overpriced second hand stores in my city, and a few one-day flea markets, but there should be something more permanent, like in Amsterdam, New York or London, a big thriving mess of a market where people could sell or swap their stuff.

8. A cute sketch for a “family crest”. Forest + Beach

9. A way to make a “Hotweels track” for my kids using recycled materials. My kids love playing with them, but they are super expensive and not environmentally friendly, but if there was a locally prodused and cheaper alternative created with recycled materials I would buy 50 meters and let the kids go wild. No reason why it is should be so expensive, its just plastic!

10. Hiring myself out to people who need to develop new ideas.

So what to you think, do you agree with Leo that these ideas should be “canned”?

m.

Update, 7th of february 2009: This photo is published under a Creative Commons Attribution lisence on flickr (as are all my pictures). It was recently used by communicatrix.com as illustration. Respect! :)

http://jyte.com/cl/you-are-evil.

http://jyte.com/widget/claim/web-3.0-will-involve-lasers

OpenId
I recently created an account on myopenid, one of several services that hosts your openid. Won’t bother to explain what OpenId is (that is what Wikipedia is for), suffice to say that if you are like me and love testing new sites, openid is pure GOLD, and lets you skip all that horrid business of filling out yet another signup form, confirming your email og drit og dra.

Who supports it
On http://openiddirectory.com/ you can find an index of sites that support OpenId. One of the most recent additions, and probably the first commercial site to support it, is Reeboks Run Easy site.

Personally, I wouldn’t run if you put a gun to my head (I WOULD knee you in the balls though, so don’t get any ideas) but now that I have a handy OpenId in hand, I can at least give the site a … run, check out the features etc, without having to excert myself. Or. Maybe. Not. *pant*

But still, a great initiative, and a great open source alternative to propriatary sollutions like microsoft live, google, and yahoo ids.

Jyte.com
Jyte is a great example of perfect OpenId implementation, as well as a cute service. I had an idea for something similar to the claim I have included here, a good/evil log, that you could include on your blog or have as a widget, with buttons you could push every time you did something good or bad, with the option to write about it, a sort of Karma-indicator that would alert you if your soul was in peril :) I probably never will have the time to make it, so jyte is a pretty good alternative. Give it a twirl! Be the first to agree to being evil!

Adding OpenId support to your site
For those (me!) who are interested in supporting OpenId login on their site, there are a ton of resources and libraries to pull from, available from http://openid.net/ (Update: Wow, their wiki has content! Respect!) Will have to look into it later, after I clone myself.

Parking space psychology, originally uploaded by mskogly.

– Taken at 9:23 AM on March 29, 2007 –

AKA: How to tell if your coworkers hate their job by watching how they park their cars.

I’ve been festering this theory…

Personally, when I finally get to work, after getting the kids to kindergarden and driving 20 km, I simply pull into the first available parking spot I can find, get my stuff and heads to my desk to crank out some bad code.

In “parking lot psychology terms”, this means that I like my job, as do most of my coworkers.

But every day there are quite a few people that take their sweet time, and actually backs their car into place, a process that takes up to 10 times as long.

I want to go home!
My theory is that the people who back their cars into a parking space like this, simply can’t wait for the day to be over so that they can go back home. They actually spend lots of thought and energy even before coming to work on how they can leave in the fastest way possible.

Check it out for yourself the next time you get to work, and see who among your coworkers would rather be somewhere else… :)