Jul 09
Check out my new ride
Author: Mayor Awesome | Category: Nerdy Stuff No Comments »Just got myself a Pontiac GTO… in a manner of speaking.
Apr 09
Twitterers Throughout History (and the future)
Author: Mayor Awesome | Category: Nerdy Stuff No Comments »I <3 my Tweeple, I really do. Twitter helps me reach out to the citizens of Awesome Town and let them know what their Mayor is eating for breakfast and how my cats are doing. Little do most people know, Twitter has been around since the dawn of man (and a little into the future as well). Here are some Twitterers throughout history 
[link]
Apr 08
Sudo Make Me a Sandwich
Author: Mayor Awesome | Category: Funny Stuff, Nerdy Stuff No Comments »
Inspired by one of the funniest goddamned XKCD strips of all time, Bre Pettis and Adam Cecchetti have built a “Sudo make me a sandwich robot” that makes a sandwich when you tell it to.
Apr 07
Siftables
Author: Mayor Awesome | Category: Games, Nerdy Stuff No Comments »Siftables are a collection of small, self-contained input / display devices wirelessly link together to form an independent mini-network, or a control system for a PC. The cubes feature OLED screens, a 3-axis accelerometer, Bluetooth, flash memory, and a haptic actuation driver, and feature additional ports for attaching other devices.
Early Siftables Interaction Demos from Jeevan Kalanithi on Vimeo.
There are more videos here. Visit their site here.
Here’s a TED talk about Siftables:
Feb 20
My Laptop was on BoingBoing Gadgets
Author: Mayor Awesome | Category: Nerdy Stuff 2 Comments »Wewt!
Boing Boing Gadgeteer John Brownlee asked his reader to submit pictures of their duded up laptops. I sent a pic of my little MSI Wind in and he posted it. Weee! Some of the other laptops are pretty cool too. But, objectively speaking, mine’s the awesomest.
[Link]
Feb 17
TED: Woody Norris: Inventing the next amazing thing
Author: Mayor Awesome | Category: Awesome Videos, Design, Nerdy Stuff No Comments »Feb 16
Topobo Kinetic Robot System
Author: Mayor Awesome | Category: Nerdy Stuff No Comments »
Now here’s a toy worth goofing around with. Although crazy expensive, it might be worth it, if only to have something to annoy my cats with. From BoingBoing Gadgets:
Topobo is a construction kit with “kinetic memory”, which mostly means that you teach the little motors in its joints how to move by physically twisting and shaping them with your hands. Some parts will respond directly to your ministrations, while others are slaved to “queen” parts and mimic her movements.
[via BoingBoing Gadgets]
Feb 15
Guy Building Giant SpiderBot In Vermont Wilderness
Author: Mayor Awesome | Category: Design, Nerdy Stuff 1 Comment »From Bot Junkie comes a (long) series of videos of a REAL man. If the zombie apocolaypse happens (oh, and it will happen), I’m going to this guy’s house. He’s basicly building a giant hexapod robot that he can drive around in. Here’s a picture of his plans:
Check out his website. I havent’ gotten through all of the videos, but in order to build his robot, he first has to build a workshop. So he starts there. Did I mention that’s he’s completely off the grid? Yeah. Dude is making this robot from scratch, with very little resources.
[via BotJunkie]
Feb 15
Long Exposure Photography
Author: Mayor Awesome | Category: Nerdy Stuff, Photography No Comments »
Here are some pretty nifty long exposure photographs. Recently on a rock climbing trip to Joshua Tree some buddies and me took some of our own long exposure photographs, just goofin’ around really. Here’s two:
Pictures were taken by my buddy Val.
Jan 20
THIS SONG IS INTENSE!!!!
Author: Mayor Awesome | Category: Funny Stuff, Nerdy Stuff No Comments »SCREW OZZY! THIS GUY IS THE NEW PRINCE OF DARKNESS! AARhrrhaHAHGA!111ONE!!
Jan 20
Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn’t seen it)
Author: Mayor Awesome | Category: Funny Stuff, Nerdy Stuff, Science Ficion No Comments »Jan 10
MAKE Presents: The LED
Author: Mayor Awesome | Category: Nerdy Stuff No Comments »
MAKE presents: The LED from make magazine on Vimeo.
Jan 02
Shouting at Disks Causes Latency
Author: Mayor Awesome | Category: Nerdy Stuff No Comments »Here’s something I’ve experienced first hand and it was a head-scratcher to be sure. I was video taping a concert with my camera (Canon HG20) and after a while, it would freak out. It would complain of a buffer overflow. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? I asked myself. I was trying to trouble shoot it while loosing some really nice footage of a live concert. I downgraded the data rate on my camera for a while and broke out my phone in the mean time to try to figure out what was going on. I found this guy’s blog who had a similar problem. Basically, the noise from the concert was causing the hard drive to vibrate. The fellow on that blog theorized the drop sensor was kicking in, and causing the hard drive to park itself, and video to go into a buffer. It happened so much the buffer would fill up and the camera would have to stop recording. I tried turning off the drop sensor (in addition to lowering the data rate). It might have helped the situation a little bit, but it still happened. I think the only solution to recording a concert or loud event like that with a hard drive camera is to get some foam padding around the camera and cover everything up except the lens and get an external mic for the sound.
To demonstrate this theory, check out this video:
