Arduino Project Box
Hey, check out my fine art blog to see my new arduino project box. Here’s a little preview video:
arduino project box construction timelapse from stevecooley on Vimeo.
Technorati Tags: arduino, stevecooley
Archive for the ‘tools’ Category.
Check how different browsers render your web page
There are a few websites out there that do screenshots of URLs based on how specific versions of browsers render pages… Here are two that I’ve found that are free.
This one does a huge list of browsers, with a somewhat significant waiting period for your results.
This one does just IE (5.5, 6, 7, 8b), but it does it fast.
Technorati Tags: browser, render
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xcode: tab through arguments for autocompleted calls
when in xcode, you can start typing just about anything and hit escape or f5 to get it to give you a list of suggested things to automatically complete what you started typing.
Once you select one of the items in the list, hit control-/ to go forward, control-shift-/ to go backwards through the list of arguments… handy!
Technorati Tags: apple, bignerdranch, xcode
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Techshop, The SF Bay Area’s open-access public workshop
Techshop, The SF Bay Area’s open-access public workshop:
Jim sent word about the Techshop grand opening! - Hey, Makers! If you like to build stuff but you don’t have the tools, equipment, space, or know-how, TechShop is for you!TechShop’s Grand Opening is Saturday, September 30 and Sunday, October 1, 2006 from 11:00 AM through 3:00 PM both days. There is no charge to attend the event.
Show And Tell at the Grand Opening (Saturday and Sunday) - If you have a project you would like to show to other Makers, bring it along and either show it to people yourself, or make a sign that explains what it is. We will supply tables on which projects can be displayed. Any project is fine as long as you think it would appeal to people who like to make things….
Wow. Wowow. $1200 for 24×7 access to an insanely huge list of industrial tools for a year… $100 a month, or $30 for one-day access. For a year, that’s about the cost of one three unit university class, isn’t it? I think the trick here is to know what you’re going to need to do, plan everything out ahead of time, swoop in and do what you need and get out. This place is just far enough away that it’s kind of a trek if I were going to go two days in a row or longer… I dunno, maybe when I get my financial independence up to speed, I can swoop in during off-peak hours and it will make sense.
Technorati Tags: techshop
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New camera hotness
Behold the Canon A620 - rechargeable double A battery powered 7.1 Megapixel, 640×480@30fps hotness.
Behold again, Kiahuna Plantation, Kaua’i, 15 second exposure, 10:38pm, pitch black of the night. Larger photo here. Full rez (2304×3072) is there too, I’ll leave it to you to figure out where… it’s a big file. It’s pretty awesome, though.
Technorati Tags: canon
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free wifi in portland
The San Jose airport could take a clue from portland: free wifi in the airport. It’s funny how greedy the technology center of the planet is when it comes to it’s own product. Lots of other airports are starting to understand…. free wifi isn’t a luxury, it’s part of attracting and keeping business to your airport and putting a shiny spot on an otherwise uncomfortable, sometimes miserable experience. Portland’s making a solid effort to make the airport someplace you wouldn’t mind flying through: free wifi, kid’s play area, comfortable chairs… plus, no armrests on the seats in the gates means you can stretch out when you get a 3 hour layover at 6am. Now if only they had a pile of clean blankets and pillows…
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iSight as digital camera
here’s the ol’ pro tripod iSight mount in action… acting as a digital camera while my regular one is in the shop… I’m using BTV Pro to manually control the camera’s mechanical focus… that works pretty good. Yes, those patches again.
Technorati Tags: diy, isight, make, omg, omgwtf, patchisi, wtf
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Professionally, what am I?
I guess it depends on who you ask. To a designer or marketer, I’m a programmer. If you ask an application developer, I’m a “scripter”. If you ask some web technologist, I’m a programmer, and graphics people get lumped in with scripters. What? Wait, what scripts are people doing that aren’t programming anymore?
Technorati Tags: programming, scripting
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Garageband: awesome podcasting tool
So much to like in the new iLife 06, garageband getting a ginormous update, holy crap… including the ability to easily record audio (and video stills!) from iChat:
With GarageBand 3 and iChat, you can host your very own talk show as easily as carrying on a friendly chat with a few pals.
So even if today’s guests are in Paris while you’re in Peoria, you can still put on a podcast together.
Just start an audio chat using iChat and hit record. GarageBand simultaneously records the audio from your chat and assigns different tracks to each participant — identified by buddy name and icon — so you can edit everything seamlessly. And if you’re using iSight cameras to conduct a video chat*, GarageBand even captures a real-time still image every time each guest speaks.
See? Instant podcast talk show. And you didn’t even have to dodge a flying chair.
Technorati Tags: apple, garageband, ichat, podcast
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Donate to Homeland Stupidity
State of Homeland Stupidity - Homeland Security or Homeland Stupidity:
Bad Behaviour needs to continue to stay in development. And it’s developer has suffered a hardware setback (laptop died). So pop over and donate what you can to support development, and keep in mind, freeware doesn’t mean it can’t be supported financially. Think of it as tipping.
Bad Behavior is, of course, one of the first lines of defense for keeping comments free from spam in your Wordpress blog. If you’re not running Bad Behavior, you probably should be. He’s offering a link on his thank you page for a $10 donation, pretty sweet if you ask me. 
Technorati Tags: spam, wordpress
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Countertop demolition timelapse 2
here we are DIY-in’ it up again, making a one molecule countertop into about a bazillion molecules. It’s fun smashing all that shit up, woo yeah. Clearing it out and cleaning it up, not quite as much fun, but… doable. As you can see, we debated how to lay out the granite tiles a lot. I think that’s an important part of this kind of project where you have no experience, and you have no idea how it’s going to turn out… talk it over and try things out before you literally set it in stone.
Since this footage, I’ve cut the particle board “underlayment”, so to speak, overlapped at the right angle so as to flatten it out and strengthen it over time… we’ve gotten a good look at how we’ll lay out the tiles. Next comes securing it down and then getting on to cutting tiles for the front trim and the backsplash. This is going to be fun and scary at the same time.
Technorati Tags: demolition, diy, home improvement
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Tile counter top demolition timelapse
Welp, we decided that the original tile countertop in the kitchen was looking too much like a bad design decision. Dark grout and light tiles apparently tended to make you not realize how much crap was accumulating on the grout, so we’re taking it out and replacing it with some nice 12×12″ galaxy black granite tiles, fitted together without any grout.
Click the photo or this link for the timelapse movie of us getting started demolishing the old tile and discovering what lies beneath. An inch and a half of very crumbly cement, as it turns out.
Technorati Tags: demolition, home improvement, timelapse
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DIY Pro Tripod iSight mount
My dad is a master deal finder. Over the thanksgiving holiday, I traded him a broadband router for this super nice pro camera tripod that he located for $6.95 at his local Salvation Army store. The only thing it was missing was any way to mount a camera.. a problem I’m sure I can rectify with an inexpensive solution from a camera store, or an even less expensive solution from my garage. While my camera’s in the shop, I figured I can use it for a really great iSight tripod.
So, here I present a solution for a pro-tripod mounted iSight bracket. Even simpler than the last version, this only has 3 pieces. The mounting plate is cut from some scrap hardboard, and has two angle bevels sloping inward like this: /___\ Add to this, a tall piece of hard board of the same width as the mounting plate, and a small piece of hardwood or plywood … whatever, I mean.. this is so basic. The goal here isn’t to match the angles of the tripod’s mounting angles so much as it is to just get the length of the mounting plate such that the cam lever will secure it in place.
Glue it up, and add a couple of counter-sunk short screws for stability (offset from each other so as not to crash into each other in your backer block of wood), and voila, iSight tripod mount v.3… the pro-edition.
Technorati Tags: diy, make, tripod, tools
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DIY iSight Tripod Mount
Well, as you may know I like to shoot a timelapse video now and then… I’ve been using an earlier version of this iSight tripod mount for about a year, so today I thought I’d share the new and improved version:
It consists of a couple of pieces of hardwood braced at a 90 degree angle… I have one piece of wood with two holes in it (the mounting plate), and then a piece of wood that is 90 degrees to the mounting plate for the iSight bracket to grab on to, and then two triangles (with the corners cut off)…
On the mounting plate, I drilled a hole slightly smaller than the mounting screw on the tripod. The idea was to make the hole small enough for the screw to bite into, and then force it into cutting the mating grooves into the wood. The second hole is for the little pop up doodad to help with alignment. If your tripod doesn’t have this, it probably isn’t making sense, and it’s probably nothing to worry about anyway. Just screw the mounting plate down nice and tight, and you’ll be in good shape.
I got to thinking that if you turn the iSight bracket around the other way, that mould make it easier to adjust the camera if you were recording something like woodworking, or sewing, or what-have-you. I think I’ll probably end up leaving it like this.
Technorati Tags: apple, diy, isight, make, photography, tools, tripod, woodworking
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AJAX
I found a place for AJAX at work! It’s so rad! :D It’s not in a customer-facing application, but where I was able to use it, it’s increased the speed of the app by about 300% or so. I’d love to show you! but, I probably shouldn’t. You can ask me about it in general terms, though!
The application feels more like a desktop app now.. and a lot less like a web app. This is very exciting stuff, I just needed to find a place for it. Now I can see lots of other places for it.
Technorati Tags: ajax
