There is something so amazing about these pants and this idea. It really has changed my perspective.

My friend Dan from the other side of the globe had a wonderful idea that is all about the people behind the pictures on flickr. He has launched interviewr.net to dive into details about people on flickr.
I was honored to be the first person interviewed on the site and I thought it might be fun to share this with you. It’s was fun doing the interview and I look forward to seeing more interview on the site. There are a ton of people on flickr that I would just love to learn more about.
I’ll be keeping my eye on the site and hope you will too.

Hey Portlanders, you have till Tuesday the 15th to get your proposals into Ignite Portland.http://www.igniteportland.com.

I sent in a proposal a while ago. I probably wrote the thing sometime around 3 in the morning so, I’m not too sure if it sounded coherent or not. You can read all the proposals and submit your own if you would like at the Ignite Portland site. If you are passionate about anything at all and would like to share that passion, you should submit.

[If you have a great proposal and need help putting a presentation together, please don't hesitate to ask. I'll gladly help you implement your idea into presentation form for this]

The first event was amazing and the upcoming 2nd Ignite event should not be missed!

I hope to be presenting this time, if not, I hope one of you will. It would be great to see the proposal board explode with entries. I certainly can’t wait till the event.

Why didn’t I think of that? I just have to say how awesome these things are. Walgreens sure has some wonderful items for sale.

8 seconds to peel a potato! I wonder if it would work with apples too.

When I saw the video above a while ago I was really excited.

After checking out Instructables I saw they had just announced another laser cutter contest. I felt that my endless sketchbook was a really fun entry but, if I was planning on winning this time I was going to have to come up with something extraordinary. This brings me back to the Jeep waterfall display. I was thinking that it would a lot of fun to make a small scale mechanical version of that display.

I added this idea to the MoHDI think tank and started thinking about the design of such a display. At some point it occurred to me that instead of making a fountain type of thing, I was thinking it might be easier to use bubbles to display a variety of images and animations. Instead of falling like the waterfall, the bubbles will rise.

Since I just love mechanical things I was also thinking it would be great to build mechanically. Mechanical animations are just amazing if you ask me. I think if I can get it done in my little spare time, I will try to design, build and enter this into the new laser cutter contest. I think it might have a decent chance of doing ok.

Here are some of my notes about this project. I’ll explain some of my thinking after the image.

The basic idea of this is that through a series of holes that constantly rotate and allow air to pass I’ll be able to manipulate the air bubbles enough to make out some recognizable shapes and text. There are numerous difficult tasks in order to achieve what I would like. For instance I might have to somehow strobe the air and the water. I was also thinking that when the air bubbles go up, water will come down a pump at the bottom of the device might be needed.

My thoughts go to a double cylindrical shaped device where I could have air bubbles go through the main section in the middle then use the outer cylinder to actually pump the water back up.

Information…
You won’t get it….

My thinking about storing the information on a mechanical device is rather interesting. I have a number of ways to actually do this, each might be a disaster when it actually comes to working with the water and such. I’m thinking of creating something that would work a lot like the old player pianos or music boxes. The simplest idea is basically spinning a disk with only a slice of this disk being allowed to have air escape through the holes. As the disk spins different holes are exposed and different imagery will occur as the air passes through the water.
This disk with the holes in it idea gets really fun when instead of a disk you think about a sphere or a series of rotating spheres to allow you to work in more space.

Now I say water but, depending on the speed of the bubbles and quickness of the animation I might have to try a variety of liquids to actually get the desired effect.

I’m not sure how much information could actually be placed one single disk but, I would imagine it wouldn’t be a lot. Perhaps a word or two. The actual cool thing is being able to think in 3D space instead of flat and be able to have a variety of images pass through. ….

I’m sorry if it seems like I’m rambling but, I just want to get some of my many thoughts about this idea out there. I’ve been experimenting with some things and hope someday to have something to display..

Who knows perhaps this might be a way to display 3D shows someday. Maybe you could take and display pictures or something with this thing or it might lead to something much bigger….

I made Symmetry is Beauty a while ago it’s another CoNad I build but hadn’t looked at for some time. After putting some illustrations in the tool I spent a good chunk of time just playing around with this.

Once you start playing with the controls you will see what I mean. Load in your own images and feel free to embed this on your site if you please. Click the image for some random movements.

Symmetry is Beauty bigger

Symmetry is Beauty smaller

More CoNads are in the works.

I certainly do love Portland. Wednesday I just had to venture downtown to see Laura Gibson play for free in the Music on Main concert series. Despite not venturing downtown too often, I really have been enjoying my recent trips. There is so much going on in Portland it’s not even funny. Right now if you go downtown you will notice about 30 large monolithic boxes for RedBulls up and coming illume exhibit. Downtown is great for people watching too. Even though I prefer SE Portland, I really appreciate visiting all of the quadrants of the city. I know first Thursday is going to be insane.
Located just outside Higgins Restaurant is a brilliant showcase of a hundred dollar idea.
The Re-News is a paper box that sells old papers. That’s about it. For $.50 ($1.00 on Sundays) I purchased a paper from May 28th, 1980. Awesome.
I think that the most useful piece of information in the old paper is in the classifieds. Since I’ve still been hunting for a new place to live, it should come as not shock to find out that in the places I’m looking at now probably rented for about 1/4 the cost in 1980, I guess that was like 27 years ago though.

Re-News is freaking brilliant and yet another reason why I love Portland so much.