thestranger_rss

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/01/05/thats-two-in-one-day-democrat-sen-chris-dodd-announces-retirement

But this one will probably help Dems hold on to a seat.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

xkcd_rss

http://xkcd.com/685/

make_podcast

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/01/10_sci-fi_weapons_that_actually_exi.html

10 Sci-Fi Weapons that actually exist @ Wired's Danger Room...

Sure, the gear may look like it came straight out of Avatar or Battlestar Galactica. But all of the laser weapons, robots, sonic blasters and puke rays pictured here are real. Some of these weapons have already found their way onto the battlefield. If the rest of this sci-fi arsenal follows, war may soon be unrecognizable. Read on for a look at some of these futuristic weapons being tested today.

make_podcast

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/01/touch-free_interface.html

Here's a cool project out of the Ishikawa Komuro Laboratory: a touch-free, in-air typing interface for mobile devices. Using a custom-built parallel image processing board, they are able to track objects in 3d using a single camera. It looks like interesting technology, I hope it comes to fruition! [via theo's gallimaufry]

thestranger_rss

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/01/05/robotic-connoisseurship

Want to know if your art is a fake but don't want to bother with pesky human historians? Sparse coding! I can't believe they haven't done this before, actually. This is the mystery I want to see sparse-code-solved first.

(Via Culture Monster.)

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

og_news

http://gallifreynewsbase.blogspot.com/2010/01/another-record-for-bbc-america.html

http://gallifreynewsbase.blogspot.com

textualdeviance

• 22:37 Oh, good grief. The furries are descending upon Avatar. Unsurprising, I suppose. May explain why it creeped me out a little, though. #
• 15:30 Just found a truly delicious picture of Jim Parsons. Sometimes, my job can be at least slightly awesome. #

make_podcast

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/01/make_visits_microrax_hq.html

In November, I had the opportunity to travel to Seattle for a Magic: The Gathering tournament. While I was there, I visited the headquarters of TwinTech, a small company run by identical twin brothers, Steve and Chris Burrows, who manufacture a small rack-building set called MicroRAX. At the time, a similar set, called MakerBeam, was hot in the news for its innovative funding angle -- getting capital via the microfunding site KickStarter. I was intrigued because MicroRAX was a nigh-identical product, lacking only MakerBeam's marketing moxie. But also unlike MakerBeam, it was a product already on the market, with starter sets available from TwinTech's online store.

Chris Burrows picked me up at my hotel and we drove to TwinTech's workspace. The company works out of a small warehouse, sharing it with other small industrial firms. Set up in one corner of the space, the workshop was gloriously messy, filled with a variety of machinery and half-finished projects.

TwinTech's core business is making couplers that let you connect multiple tubes at once, however, it was the MicroRAX that interested me. Obviously they had tons of beam lying around. In addition to boxes of beam waiting to be cut -- both plain aluminum and their awesome black anodized version -- there were numerous examples of the MicroRAX used for practical purposes. The Burrows' rule is that they won't build anything for the shop (e.g., shelves or an iPod stand) using any other material besides MicroRAX.

Unlike some systems where you're expected to use the sizes of beams you're given, MicroRAX fully assumes you're going to hack off specific lengths off the standard .9-meter beams available from their store. This also means that if you had a need for larger pieces, the guys can cut it special for you -- I saw lengths of MicroRAX beam in the 5-10' range used for practical purposes around the shop, as well as huge cardboard boxes holding uncut 12' beams they'd gotten back from the extruder.

I asked Chris about the open-source angle. One aspect of MakerBeam which appealed to potential donors was their claim to be open source, though this is not the case thus far -- still in alpha, it lacks the documentation, user-contributions, and open standards that are the hallmarks of open projects. A better example might be Contraptor, a fantastic VEX-esque building set that sets the benchmark for openness and community cooperation.

While MicroRAX isn't open, Chris told me that when you deal with engineers, you can't hold anything back. A company can't really have an industrial product like TwinTech's multi-tube couplers or MicroRAX without divulging everything to a potential customer. They'll want to know the precise dimensions and characteristics of your product before they'll buy it. From an end-result standpoint, how is that really different from publishing your 3Ds?

The brothers are thinking about taking MicroRAX open, but in the meantime, they published their core product design, the "snowflake" cross section of the MicroRAX beam, to Thingiverse, potentially allowing anyone to extrude their own beam.

make_podcast

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/01/whoa_keanu_supports_first.html

Keanu Reeves doing a public service announcement for FIRST robotics. Wait a minute, should Neo be a spokesperson for robots/AI? [via Robots Dreams]

FIRST

thestranger_rss

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/01/05/rip-kenneth-noland

The artist best known for his paintings of rings of color died today. (Roberta Smith's obit here.)

In Seattle, Noland's 1969 painting Relic will be familiar to those who haunt the minimalism gallery.

According to a web search of SAM's collection, the museum also has a very sweet untitled small Noland print from 1973; it was given to the museum by none other than Robert Rauschenberg, who died in 2008 (my obit here).

I wish I could do a similar web search of the collection at Portland Art Museum in Oregon, where they've got plenty of Nolands, given that they've got Clement Greenberg's personal collection. (I would link to that on their web site, but there would be absolutely no point; there are no images there.) Noland was a favorite of old Clem.

These days, you hear much more about Cady Noland, Kenneth's daughter, a difficult creature to pin down. In Miami she was a star of the Rubell Collection show (the one I griped about here). Triple Candie mounted a show of approximations of her works a few years back since the originals were so hard to come by. In writing about it Jerry Saltz opined:

Noland, not Barney, Hirst, or Gonzalez-Torres, is the crucial link between late-1980s commodity art and much that has followed; she is the portal through which enormous amounts of appropriational, political, and compositional notions pass. So mercurial, fierce, and originally poetic is she that I think of her as our Rimbaud.

Then, about a decade ago, for whatever reason, she absented herself. Noland hasn't had a gallery or museum exhibition in more than 10 years. When her work turns up in group shows it is said that she tries to have it removed.

My images of the Nolands at the Rubells.

• Cady Noland, This Piece Has No Title Yet (1989), beer cans, flags, scaffolding, paint, and mixed media

• Noland's gates piece at the Rubells.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

thestranger_rss

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/01/05/the-way-things-ought-to-be

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

thestranger_rss

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/01/05/larry-phillips-loves-the-gays

Democratic King County Council Member Larry Phillips wasn't super thrilled when I wrote yesterday that he had joined Republicans in blocking the appointment of the first openly gay county council member. He wanted to let me know, via his staff, that he broke rank with Democrats reluctantly, to break an impasse... because there was no other way (in a Democratic county with a liberal County Executive and liberal powerhouse organizations everywhere you look) but to join the Republicans on this issue. The four Democrats and four Republicans on the council—tasked with filling the vacancy left by Dow Constantine, who is now the executive—had been in a deadlock since mid-December. Last month, Phillips voted for State Senator Joe McDermott (D-34), the gay. Republicans wanted former City Council Member Jan Drago, a conservative by Seattle standards. But Phillips broke the deadlock. However, he wants folks to know that he likes McDermott. He adores gays. Here's his statement:

I strongly support Senator Joe McDermott to represent District 8 on the King County Council. I voted for him as my first choice for an appointment to fill the vacancy left by Executive Dow Constantine, and I strongly endorse his candidacy for a four year term on the Council. I support Senator McDermott because he has the demonstrated support of voters in the 8th council district and he has a proven and impressive track record of leadership on critical issues such as preserving the environment, budgeting, and protecting civil rights. It would be a historic achievement for Martin Luther King Jr. County to elect the first openly gay member to serve on the Council, and it would be an honor for me personally to serve alongside him.

The unfortunate political reality is that, despite having my vote and the votes of three of my colleagues, Senator McDermott did not and would never have the five votes necessary to secure an appointment to the King County Council. The Council was deadlocked, and the only way to ensure that the voters of District 8 have representation for the next eleven months was to support the appointment of a caretaker who will serve until the voters have the final word in November.

Phillips makes an irrefutable point: Something had to happen to break the impasse. But it's difficult to believe that, considering all the power Dems have around King County, that a Democrat had to cave instead of a Republican caving. Couldn't they have, you know, managed to scratch some Republican back? But it's behind us now. Jan Drago, technically a Democrat (but the favorite of Republicans on the council for obvious reasons), is on the King County Council for 11 months. And ahead of us, we'll see how much Phillips supports McDermott's candidacy for the county council. If he doesn't stump hard for McDermott's election—endorse him, campaign for him, etc.—Phillips will appear to be the council's Blue Dog Dem and draw plenty of ire.

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]

thestranger_rss

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/01/05/nordstrom-is-going-into-wamu-tower

Nordstrom has signed a letter of intent to rent all but two floors of the empty WaMu tower! Very, very good news for SAM, Regina Hackett reported.

That's Nordstrom admin, not retail. Nordstrom intends to start occupying the space sometime this year.

Will SAM come out of this whole WaMu debacle even after all?

"We're not going to know anything specific on the financial side until the details are final and the lease is signed," says SAM spokeswoman Nicole Griffin. "But it's a significant light at the end of the tunnel."

(Evidently Nordstrom sent out a press release about this on December 23 but I somehow missed getting it and am just catching up on reading now.)

[ Subscribe to the comments on this story ]