kip/bot/blog

One of my favorite things about my Kindle (which I’m already quite over the top about) is the idle screen function. When you don’t hit a key for more than five minutes, it gives you these really nifty prints from old books, like so:

It’s like stuff out of bibliodyssey. I’m trying to figure out if Amazon loads new ones onto the unit (I really hope they do), and I will sometimes deliberately sleep the unit to see more pics.

What tickles me most about this, though, is that idling the screen is completely unnecessary. These screens don’t burn, and they don’t draw power by staying on (e-ink technologies don’t require screens to be re-drawn x times per second — once it’s rendered, nothing else happens until a button is pressed.

More pics of the idle screen on my flickr photostream.

I’m thinking of switching to a Nokia — partly to connect to the ways the rest of the world is connecting, but partly cuz I’m no longer convinced of the awesomeness of the iPhone.

I bought the iPhone about three months after the release. I had resisted the urge until I unpacked my bag for work and saw an iPod, a phone, a camera. I went and bought the iPhone and dumped the other stuff from my bag, a savings of two devices, charging time and hassle, and some carried ounces off my back.

Today, however, I’m back to three devices. The iPhone camera sucks too much even for me; I tend to load it up with so many boingboing TV, TED, coolhunting videos, and the occasional West Wing for late or bleary subway rides, that I seem to never have the right music on hand for work; and the hassles of email with entourage/exchange/whatever plus my continued non-adjustment to the keyboard leave me calendarless and hesitant to answer work mails (since replies go to gmail). Yes, that last will be fixed in June (as apparently, will be the mideast problem and global warming, if you listen to the more energetic Mac rumors), but I think I’ve lost too much love for the iPhone to hold onto it.

And, oh yeah, EDGE sucks.

Is it possible that Apple, usually so well-known for providing more to customers by doing less stretched itself too thin? I don’t think I’ve ever had an Apple device that so infrequently delighted me (I mean delighted me, like making me say Nice!) and so frequently frustrated me.

The other half of the abandon iPhone equation is professional. As non-touch screen phones become more important in people’s lives (due to price point, durability, and, in developing countries, non-theft-worthiness), I feel out of touch with emerging design sensibilities and mobile behaviors. I’m not ready to go back to a crappy phone, but, seeing that the N-Series is the direction cheap phones will go rather than the iPhone, I may make yet another expensive shift.

While catching up on MAKE videos (where is Bre Pettis? nothing against Kip Kay, but I had grown quite fond of Bre), I saw a plug for RSINVENTIONLAB.com — the Radio Shack Invention Lab. It looks like a user-generated and curated set of projects using the stuff you find in the cabinets at the back of Radio Shacks.

Some design problems (though none of them caused by the pegboard and the tape and scrap paper look and feel) make it hard to find out what’s going on. But they seem have to some seeded projects (arduino, some MAKE b rolls) and then user-submitted stuff. The one above shows the charm and weirdness of this subcommunity: a box designed to capture EVP (electronic voice phenonomena). I would love to see this grow, as I am saddened every time I see a Radio Shack that doesn’t sell soldering irons.

Nuts and Volts is one of the few magazines I subscribe to that I go through cover to cover each month. This is odd, cuz I don’t really understand it and read very little of it. It’s one of those magazines, like certain books I own, that I aspire to read and which I benefit from looking through.

For the uninitiated (or well-adjusted), Nuts and Volts is an electronics hobbyist magazine. It’s got product reviews, news (including the circuited contact lens), projects each month, loads of advertisements (which is a big part of the charm - electronics geeks writing copy and figuring out images that sell), tutorials, circuit walk-throughs.

My knowledge of electronics came from a month between jobs where I mucked around with the Arduino and some solderless breadboards. I’m better than a beginner, but the intermediate stuff in Nuts and Volts is beyond me right now. So, each month I browse it looking for content that helps me past my current plateau of understanding and, more importantly, I revel in the making culture that I admire.

The April 2008 issue (cover above) had particular charms for me. The cover story is “High Voltage Power Supply”(!) featuring a nixie display board and the line: “It’s fun to collect and experiment with forgotten technology! But, you will need a stable high voltage power supply to get started.” This might be the equivalent of the swimsuit issue for Nuts and Volts readers . . . I really can’t tell.

I loved this piece, a project for a timed/self-monitoring bird feeder, requested by a reader:

Retired, limited income, limited mobility guy . . . and they do a project for him to build a bird feeder. love Love LUV it.

And, lastly, you gotta love the advertisements:

I’m pretty blah about my HDTV. There’s not so much content that I’m wowed all the time, SD content looks like crap, and I’ve watched enough seasons of TV shows on an elliptical trainer with my pre-Touch iPod to just think it’s a big TV. I always rave, though, when someone asks. After all, I spent $3000 on the damn thing so it damn well better rock.

But I am smitten anew and lasting. Connecting Apple TV to my girlfriend’s flickr account, I just saw her pictures from Savannah, Charleston and the Wellington Equestrian show in HD glory. The TV brought out the full resolution in a way that flickr on a computer can’t even come close to. The Ken Burns effect (which pans or zooms and pans across photos a la Ken Burns Civil War and other documentaries), sometime mucks things up, but usually does a great job of keeping it lively, making familiar pictures fresh, and enlivening dull pictures.

One of my favorite flickr’ers is Magic Fly Paula, a woman about whom I know nothing aside from that she lives in Portugal, and has cool sets like Invisible Cities, Imaginary Libraries, Imaginary Books, Star Diaries. Much of her work is photoshopped and there’s a mix of Jules Verne (wood and brass) and Umberto Eco (philology and polymath wordplay) and Calvino (fantastical).

So I put her photostream on my HDTV with Renaissance era masses and chants and it was incredible. I looked at J-Rube’s slides from Ecuador and got a great travelogue.

They just need to connect it to the interestingness feed, or the popular or most recent feed and it would be perfect. (Perphaps that’s a project for me to work-around.)

Just got a catalog yesterday for ExtremeGeeks. It has a bunch of very niche products that cure very specific headaches. Two favorites:

They have a whole section devoted to power cable liberation, including squid extensions, multi-patterned surge strips, and the above mini-extensions.

Then there’s the studio in a box:

I just spent some time last weekend shooting things for my sister to sell on ebay and this is exactly the audience they pitch it to.

While working briefly with some environmental groups, I became convinced that the best way to reach red (or at least non-green) America was through their garages. Real men love their tools and their tinkering. Americans profess to love ingenuity and entrepreneurialism. Environmental solutions are “Popular Mechanics” all over. Ecogeek is a blog that hits some of those notes (while staying just this side of Edward Abbey).

Below is a clever solar collector, which is cheap, cheap, cheap. Rather than having to spend money on creating optimally curved mirrors, Solar Bubbles inflates a bubble where the top is clear (allowing sunlight in) and the bottom is reflective (collecting the rays). The curve is created and maintained by the air inside. Balloons aren’t exactly manly Black & Decker workmate style, but this is so much more appealing than talking about breaking the oil addiction.

Another idea on the blog this week, is a revolving door that transforms the turning of the doors into power.

What I love about this post is its honesty:

Mostly, it’s just a demostration project though. The power generated would likely not be enough to ever pay for the device and many revolving doors are already heavy enough without the added resistance of a generator.

Still, it’s hard not to find the idea pleasant.

It’s a healthy attitude about innovation, recognizing the importance of exlploring dead ends, the iterative nature of invention and design. It’s also a good demonstration of sensibility and intelligence within a community that usually doesn’t get credited for having any.

Just bought the last one of this guy at Character, a store on Prince Street that has lots of Tintin and Asterix toys, along with all sorts of other little gifty things.  I can’t decide whether to give it to my sister or keep it for myself.  The heart’s an LED indicator, each limb is a usb port.  In addition to being an emotional design, it’s actually kind of helpful having the individual ports flexible and far apart.