Today is Leo Laporte‘s birthday.
As a present, I decided to make him something that shows just how much time he spends doing the thing he does best. No, it’s not hosting a TV show. It’s…
Plugging: the Movie [12.6 MB MPEG-4 MOV]
(BTW: I’m currently working on a non-TSS big project. No more videos for a little while.)
Have a happy and safe Thanksgiving, everyone. Enjoy some time with your family (I’m writing this from my grandparents’ house) and remember to give thanks for all that you have been given in life.And don’t forget to eat well.
Well, I have to say I’m impressed with myself. After struggling to come up with an idea for tomorrow’s new media assignment, I finally came up with something. The goal of the assignment was to take a piece of junk brought in by one of my classmates and turn it into a useful tool, with a different function than the original item. I picked up what looked like a wall light; it had double standard light bulb holders on the top and the bottom and it looked like it attached to a wall. Two trips to Home Depot and a couple swipes of my credit card later, this is what I came up with (click ’em and they get bigger):
It’s going to be some sort of children’s toy. Imagine a long PVC tube of some sort coming out from the top. It’s a 2-inch to 3-inch PVC adapter on top of that thing with a whole bunch of duct tape. Inside the top is a light switch (the kind that’s very sensitive to turn on), and in the bottom canister: instead of a regular standard light bulb, there’s a string of 10 white Christmas lights (’tis the season) and two AA batteries wrapped in a glob of electrical and duct tape. It’s not pretty on the inside, but it looks OK so far on the outside. I think a child would drop a golf ball down the long PVC tube and it would hit the switch, causing the light to turn on. Do it again, it turns off.
Hey, I’m not coming up with the next great children’s toy, I know. But I successfully made a circuit with two batteries, a switch, and a string of lights. I’m pretty proud of that. Quite the engineer I am.
31 hours until Thanksgiving break – they’ll be tough to get through. I’m really impatient this year. You can keep track of the latest stats by looking at the Countdowns box in the right column (I’ve been doing countdowns for a long time on my sites, but the idea to put it on my blog was partially borrowed/stolen from Sam and others).
I now have Linkin Park‘s ‘Reanimation’ to get me through these hours, though. The album is easily one of the best I’ve ever heard. I especially like tracks 6 and 20, ‘P5hng Me A*wy’ and ‘Krwlng’. This’ll keep me going.
One month ’til Christmas! My rule is that I can’t start celebrating until there’s a month left, so bring on the music and the decorations! (I might put it off for, say, 31 hours this year, though.)
It’s been a month since I’ve put a referrers script on my site that lets me know where people are coming from when they visit my site. The best part is the Google referrers – people search for some strange things and find this site. Here’s a select few:
Be sure to keep up with the latest referrers.
Interesting how the exam over the material in which I’m most interested in social psychology turns out to be the hardest for me. Well, it’s over now. No more tests in any class until finals! (and only 2 1/2 weeks more in the semester)
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
from the Bill of Rights
Ian: You know, the mill smell’s changed. It doesn’t smell like cabbage and broccoli anymore.
Richard: You mean that smell that’s kind of like purified dog shit?
– in Technology & Society, somehow finding its way into a conversation about how Maine is portrayed to the rest of the world
This site made my night.
You have to check out the ones of Plucky from Tiny Toons. There are some other really good ones, too, but I’ve been looking all over for the Plucky ones.
“Ducky go down the hole…”
I just played Number Munchers for the first time in probably four or five years. Boy, that brought back memories. That was probably the first computer game I ever played – back with a computer with an 80 MB hard drive… of course, the program only takes up about 200 KB in DOS.