mirrorsheeting.com

mirrorsheeting.com:

Tensioners for Making Mirrors

These make it possible to achieve a mirror by pulling the four corners tight. It includes an eyelet screw

that goes into the wall and a clip that bites into the mirror sheeting and an adjuster with a wing nut

to apply tension, you need one on each corner to pull the sheeting tight. Includes: 1 each, eyelet screw, adjuster with wing nut, and clip.

You can put this in a stud in the wall, or for a portable mirror screw it into a pvc piping frame

"Tensioners for Making Mirrors

These make it possible to achieve a mirror by pulling the four corners tight. It includes an eyelet screw

that goes into the wall and a clip that bites into the mirror sheeting and an adjuster with a wing nut

to apply tension, you need one on each corner to pull the sheeting tight. Includes: 1 each, eyelet screw, adjuster with wing nut, and clip.

You can put this in a stud in the wall, or for a portable mirror screw it into a pvc piping frame"

MIT team plays with fire to create cheap energy | csmonitor.com

MIT team plays with fire to create cheap energy | csmonitor.com

Inventor responds. Not a blogger, but have a few minutes of free time.

One square meter of solar dish aperture is worth one barrel of oil per year (burned at 85% efficiency) in Colorado climate. Each m^2 should cost about $100… simple one year payback against oil and two years against natural gas, all without solar subsidies — very important for global warming mitigation.

China and India have told me they have raw materials and massive causal labor. They want rapid scale up with no new tooling nor capital bottlenecks.

Nothing new about solar dishes. The news is construction simplicity (without special tooling) and low dish materials cost.

Smaller dish size is cheaper due to the ground, rather than steel, supporting mirrors.

The frame was made from all identical parts. Only a paraboloid has that potential.

The mirrors are flexed into near perfect parabolic curves with force rather than with conforming substrates.

Two flexed dishes have survived record breaking hurricanes with zero damage.

Our first dish is 30 years old and the exposed mirrors (glass/silver/copper/paint) are in good shape with only minor degradation. The MIT mirrors are off-the-shelf low-iron glass/silver/palladium/paint and are even more durable ~ $1.65/square foot (Guardian Industries).

Amory Lovins recommended I put this into the public domain. NASA engineers advised a patent to pay for engineering improvements. A sole US patent was a compromise.

The question in search of an answer is: How cheap can solar get?

Background: http://www.harbornet.com/sunflower/pvdish.html

code_swarm - Python on Vimeo

code_swarm - Python on Vimeo


code_swarm - Python from Michael Ogawa on Vimeo.

ShapeWriter iPhone App Product Profile

ShapeWriter iPhone App Product Profile

Shapewriter looks like a winner to me. (And I've looked at a LOT of alternative writing schemes!)

Phonographantasmascope | MetaFilter from Video Thing by Wiley

Urbi: a new parallel & event-driven script language for robotics, games and more

Urbi: a new parallel & event-driven script language for robotics, games and more

CamSpace - any game, any webcam

CamSpace - any game, any webcam

Sea-Water Air Conditioning Plan for Honolulu, Hawaii Finishes Funding : TreeHugger

Sea-Water Air Conditioning Plan for Honolulu, Hawaii Finishes Funding : TreeHugger

Toronto, Canada is working on this type of downtown-core building cooling system as well.

http://www.toronto.ca/environment/initiatives/cooling.htm

I say cached snow and ice is Rochester's next cash crop.

Vara Software : ScreenFlow - Professional Screencasting Studio

Vara Software : ScreenFlow - Professional Screencasting Studio

• Download Now
• View Screencasts
• Read the FAQ

Record Everything You don't need to pick an area of the screen for capture, ScreenFlow has advanced algorithms that only encode areas of change on your screen. The application is powerful enough to simultaneously record from your iSight or DV camera at the same time as your screen (and your microphone and computer's audio!).

The Best Capture ScreenFlow has the best screen capture available. Using a custom multithreaded SSE & Altivec accelerated, 64-bit enabled compression system, ScreenFlow can handle everything from capturing DVD video & audio to fast moving Keynote presentations.

whoisi.com: Jon Schull

whoisi.com: Jon Schull

Jon Schull - Stop Following Add Another Site Edit

Flickr photos

Jon Schull's Weblog

Cloud 3.0 5 days ago

This talk is only marginally about "Green Computing"; his main point is that IT as we know it is unsustainable and provides a good description of what the next IT(s) will be.P.S. I'm not sure he quite says it, but I think part of Cloud 3.0 will be the notion that clients that connect to the cloud will provide computing resources TO the cloud.

Security through Obscurity 10 days ago

via Bruce Schneier

Python Code Swarm (Evolutionary Infoviz and Python. What's not to like?) 10 days ago

code_swarm - Python from Michael Ogawa on Vimeo

JonSchull's shared items in Google Reader

Google Talk As a Social Network 1 hours ago

Shared by JonSchull one ring to rule them all

Google Talk As a Social Network 2 days ago

Smart Nodes in An Organization 19 hours ago

Cloud 3.0

This talk is only marginally about "Green Computing"; his main point is that IT as we know it is unsustainable and provides a good description of what the next IT(s) will be.

P.S. I'm not sure he quite says it, but I think part of Cloud 3.0 will be the notion that clients that connect to the cloud will provide computing resources TO the cloud.

Security through Obscurity

via Bruce Schneier

Python Code Swarm (Evolutionary Infoviz and Python. What's not to like?)

code_swarm - Python from Michael Ogawa on Vimeo

Bill Buxton's peroration

I just read Bill Buxton's very interesting Sketching the User Experience, the thesis of which is well-summarized here. (This is no substitute for reading the book!)

The last two pages of the book are hugely relevant and they really resonate with me.

Buxton quotes a Design Exhibition he was involved in:

Its not about the world of design; its about the design of the world.

and

Now that we can do anything, what will we do.

He quotes Toynbee...

"The 20th century will be chiefly rememered by future generations not as an era of polotical conflicts or technical inventions, but as an age in which huan society dared to think of the welfare of the whole human race as a practical objective."

...and then he comments, "Now, rather than just daring to think about it, in the twenty-first century it is time do do something about it."

He quotes T.E. Lawrence....

"Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wike in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers fo the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible."

And concludes the book with...

"May you dream in the the day."

Apple TV

Apple TV: Sync or stream differences and set up (software version 1.x)

• Last Modified on: March 03, 2008

• Article: 305270

There are two ways to get iTunes content from your computer to Apple TV—syncing and streaming. This document explains the differences between syncing and streaming on Apple TV with software version 1.x.

Coder Joe's Memoir

I just came across this year-old memoir about last Spring's Innovation and Invention class.

If I'd known about this post earlier, I'd have included it in my tenure materials!

I'd forgotten Joe was part of a trio. Interestingly, one of the trio thought the course was a complete failure. It ain't all roses.

Foldable stuctures

	http://www.aniadesign.com/pod/html/gallery.html

Warp mesh patch for Quartz Composer

Intended primarily for fulldome projection using a spherical mirror
Also used as a navigable movie player
Modelled after the warpplayer application

Written by Christopher Wright @ Kineme
Design by Paul Bourke

This is perhaps the most common type of application for planetariums using the spherical mirror projection technique. The input image is a fisheye and the only sensible navigation is rotation about the center of the fisheye. Note the use of the intensity mapping to compensate for the variable density of pixels, and hence light level on parts of the dome.

Learning at Evergreen

Faculty at Evergreen have transformed traditional education into an unmatched learning experience.

Instead of taking four or five separate, unrelated classes each quarter, you'll take one program that unifies these classes around a central theme, taught by two or three faculty from different academic disciplines. Since you do all of your academic work in one program, your faculty team will know how much work is being assigned to you, so there's no possibility of two tests on the same day or having to choose between a field trip and a conflicting class. This approach, which we call "coordinated studies," sets learning at Evergreen apart from other colleges.

Many Evergreen programs continue for two or three consecutive quarters. This allows you to build specific skills to produce highly sophisticated work, even in introductory offerings. You'll work most often in small groups with your faculty, beginning your freshman year.

At Evergreen, you'll be encouraged to voice your opinion. Your background, ethnicity, social class and preferred lifestyle will add to the multicultural perspectives here. You will find that attention to diversity, in the broadest sense, runs throughout the curriculum.

Because your learning is too important to be reduced to an arbitrary number or letter grade, you'll receive narrative evaluations from your faculty. Faculty will detail your accomplishments, list subject areas you studied and assign the credits you earn toward your bachelor's degree. Narrative evaluations give graduate schools and employers a comprehensive picture of your undergraduate education.

Truth or Consequence (Keep the price of gas high!)

Truth or Consequence

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: May 28, 2008

....No, our mythical candidate would say the long-term answer is to go exactly the other way: guarantee people a high price of gasoline — forever.

This candidate would note that $4-a-gallon gasoline is really starting to impact driving behavior and buying behavior in way that $3-a-gallon gas did not. The first time we got such a strong price signal, after the 1973 oil shock, we responded as a country by demanding and producing more fuel-efficient cars. But as soon as oil prices started falling in the late 1980s and early 1990s, we let Detroit get us readdicted to gas guzzlers, and the price steadily crept back up to where it is today.

We must not make that mistake again. Therefore, what our mythical candidate would be proposing, argues the energy economist Philip Verleger Jr., is a “price floor” for gasoline: $4 a gallon for regular unleaded, which is still half the going rate in Europe today. Washington would declare that it would never let the price fall below that level. If it does, it would increase the federal gasoline tax on a monthly basis to make up the difference between the pump price and the market price.
...
Barack Obama had the courage to tell voters that the McCain-Clinton summer gas-giveaway plan was a fraud. Wouldn’t it be amazing if he took the next step and put the right plan before the American people? Wouldn’t that just be amazing?