DIY: Build a mousetrap with LEGOs

This post started out with three projects for building simple mousetraps from Lifehacker, the DIY section, such as "Make a DIY No-Kill Mousetrap with a Toilet Paper Roll," "Make a No-Kill Mousetrap with a Jar and a Nickel," and "Build a Better Mouse Trap with LEGO." (Check out the comments on this page -- not everyone agrees this mousetrap is better.)   These are all very good, simple, and fun projects, but the other useful things you can build with LEGO won my write-in vote today.

This Lifehacker McGyver Challenge was to "hack something cool with LEGO pieces."  Note that the McGyver series is written by fellow Google+ member, Walter Glenn.  The mousetrap won this challenge, but the other entries are also notable.

Weston's laptop stand:

BBombers' Rotisserator Refrigerator:

From the Gallery of LEGO docks to hold any smartphone is this Star Wars-inspired iPhone 5 dock by Zombklr (click on the Comments tab to see Zombklr's repertoire):

And did you know there's a First LEGO League that is international and grants innovation awards? -- Marge

2011: Year of revolution

You may not hear much about it now, but the Occupy Movement movement continues.  You know, the one that states "we are the 99%."  But before I expand on what's current with the movement, let me give a little more background.

The Occupy Wall Street movement started in Zuccotti Park in September 2011 and was soon followed by Occupy London, Occupy Oakland, and other Occupy <locale>s.  According to this article, "Occupy Wall Street: From A Blog Post To A Movement,"  by Bill Chappell, Occupy Wall Street was inspired by the Arab Spring. (The comments following this article are of interest.)  Both revolts began in 2011.  Many news sources cite the self-sacrifice of Mohamed Bouazizi in December, 2010, as the event that touched off the Arab Spring.  To help refresh your (and my) memory, here are timelines for the Occupy Movement and Arab Spring.

V masks became a symbol for the Occupy Wall Street movement, according to this article in the Huffington Post.

Also, a poster was produced by street artist Shephard Fairey: 

Currently two websites document and carry the Occupy Movement forward:  Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Together.  There are four Occupy offshoots -- Rolling Jubilee, Occupy Sandy, Occupy Our Homes, and Occupy Student Debt -- working on making a difference according to a blog post by Stephanie Whiteside at Current TV.  Two publications (that I know of) have news pages that regularly report Occupy news:  The Huffington Post and The Guardian.

By February 2012 all of the American protesters had been evicted and the movement essentially shut down.  Fortunately the Arab Spring fared better.

-- Marge

Cartoons: the Pope has left the room

Don't know about you, but I was surprised to hear that Pope Benedict XVI resigned.  For a possibly biased report on why, take a look at Michael D'Antonio's article "Immunity for Rome's Rottweiler: Why The Pope Resigned" at Huffington Post.  An interesting news tidbit is this article -- "German cartoon predicted Pope’s resignation" from The [London] Times (aka Times Newspapers Limited).

Editorial cartoonists the world over had a take on this topic.  See some of the mostly American output below.

This first one is by Nick Anderson and was found at Time Magazine's Cartoons of the Week:

From U.S News & World Report gallery on the Catholic Contraception Controversy there's this one by Chan Lowe:

Three are from the San Jose Mercury News' cartoon slideshow titled "Pope Benedict resigns."  The first is one by Cameron Cardow:

Next is one by Rick McKee:

And lastly, here's one done by David Fitzsimmons:

Pax vobiscum.

-- Marge

DIY + Easter

Easter is fast approaching (March 31 this year).  While you may not be one who celebrates this religious event, who can resist celebrating the profusion of color and renewed spirits of spring.  So get your food coloring out and gather any other crafty items you might need and give one of these do-it-yourself projects a try.

At Curbly, a "DIY design community for people who love where they live," user CapreeK has posted a Roundup of  "12 Modern Easter Egg Ideas."  Below is a sampling of the ideas offered:

At Babble, a Disney blogging site, contributor kenziepoo offers "6 DIY Easter Ideas for 2013."  My favorite is this paper mache (vs. papier-mache) bunny:

Scraphacker, "the hub for 'scrap-cycling' innovation & D.I.Y. innovation 'scrap hack' inspiration," is offering Easy Easter DIY tutorials.  This is the perfect site for pack-rats (like me).  How about chocolate birds' nests or edible placecards?

Divine Caroline, part of the Ladies' Home Journal Real Girl Network,  offers "A Completely DIY Easter Party" by user FaveCrafts.  Links that are associated with the projects suggested in this article  take you to a FaveCrafts site.  While the ideas are good ones (Wild Misted Easter Eggs by Terri Sproul are shown below), I felt I was trapped in someone's sales campaign.

Even the Huffington Post is has DIY articles.  Huff Post blogger Kathryn Kattalia writes about Sock Bunnies from A Creative Cookie, a blog at Blogspot:

Arggh! Blogs, blogs everywhere.  My apologies if it got confusing.

-- Marge

It's Congress vs. Post Office

A while back I received a request from Credo, full name Credo Action, to sign a petition titled "The post office isn't broke -- it's being robbed."  Credo's parent company is Working Assets.  The home page for this petition states:

It's true the post office faces financial challenges. But the financial problems are in large part a direct result of an onerous and ill-considered 2006 law called the "Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act" (PAEA) that mandates pre-funding the postal service retiree health care and pension benefits for 75 years — something that no other government agency or private company is forced to do.

The vast majority — 85% — of the budget red ink comes from this pre-funding mandate despite the fact that, according to the post office Inspector General, the pension is over-funded and reserves for retiree health care are far higher than the federal government as a whole, the military and almost all Fortune 1000 companies.

In October 2012, the USPS (United States Postal Service) hit its debt limit, as reported by Jennifer Liberto at CNN Money.  In an effort to handle its money woes the USPS has proposed ending Saturday mail delivery.  Details on the request to alter its business model presented to a Senate committee hearing can be found in this article by Ron Nixon at the New York Times.

For some background on the U.S. Postal Service, take a look at "5 things you need to know about..." by Brianna Lee at PBS.org.  Delaware Senator Tom Carper also offers some information on his web page about "Reforming the Postal Service," including the following factoid:

[The postal service is] an industry that employs some 8.5 million people and generates more than $1 trillion in sales and revenue each year.

As noted earlier grassroots efforts are afoot.  Freelance journalist Diana Reese posted the question "Will social media help save the Postal Service and Saturday delivery?" this last Valentine's Day at She The People, a blog about politics and culture by Melinda Henneberger.  Sorry, we missed the Saturday event at Facebook.

And where would we be without a cartoon?  This one is by Chan Lowe:

-- Marge

Cartoons aimed at Congress

After starting, then rejecting the topics of budget sequestration (see "the sequester," fiscal cliff) and Obama's drone policies (too much vitriol), I finally settled on cartoons aimed at Congress.  This august body seems to want and need it.  All of the cartoons below are from U.S.News & World Report's site, the Congress cartoons category, and there are plenty more.

Drew Sheneman, "Where Agendas Go To Die"

Steve Breen, "According to a recent popularity poll (no joke)"

Chan Lowe, "Flu Season"

David Horsey, "The Road block"

Matt Davies, "Negotiating Table"

Jack Ohman, "We've avoided the fiscal cliff..."

What do you think it will take for Congress to get its act together?

-- Marge

[NOTE: finger-pointing icon from Free Icons, web design & web graphics]

The knottier side of Love

For Valentine's Day I'm offering some posters and artwork found at the Motifake site in an attempt to counteract the current flood of sugary-sweet sentiment.

"Love Is" by greeny:

"Choices" by rerun:

"Hate" (is just a phase) by gas:

"Some Broken Hearts Never Mend" by greybeard:

Dare I say "Happy Valentine's Day?"

-- Marge

Second Life therapy

It's my firm belief that frequenting virtual worlds has more benefits than simply entertainment.  In support of this is an article, Woman with Parkinson's Reports Significant Physical Recovery After Using Second Life - Academics Researching, published by Wagner James Au at New World Notes. A follow up article about the support site was published the next day.  Here's a screenshot:

Many research projects studying virtual worlds and articles discussing such worlds, especially Second Life, are available online.  For background, take a look at Newsmaker: A brief history of the virtual world, written by Daniel Terdiman and published by c/net in 2005. Duke University has a case study -- Reality in the Virtual World - A Study of Second Life -- available online.  The University of North Carolina at  Pembroke has a Center for the Study of Virtual Worlds (data copyrighted 2011).  MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) has what looks like a virtual world portal, where it invites you to  "Step into another world and explore the 'other' MIT..."  How to get there is not clear.  Checking in Second Life, I found that a number of other universities have campuses there, but not MIT.

One university very active in Second Life's art scene is the U of Western Australia.  Here's a screenshot of the campus' enchanted forest.

Virtual worlds as interactive 3D virtual environments, especially ones that offer the opportunity to build, interest me most.  If you would like to see what building in a virtual world is like, try a visit to Bowling Green State University's sandbox and rez something there (menu items: build/select build tool/create tool, then place the object on the ground).  You'll need to download a viewer and join first -- both free.

Careful, you might get sucked in.

-- Marge

Facepalm Friday

A side trip to Motifake.com the other day revealed a wealth of comedic material in the form of demotivational posters.  According to the Urban Dictionary to demotionalize is "The act of taking a hilarious, cynical or poignant phrase or sentence and putting it on a demotivational poster with a relevant picture".  The topic I searched on at Motifake was "facepalm."  Again I quote the Dictionary:

facepalm

The only logical answer to a stupid question or statement.

    Guy 1: dude, how do I get my Siege Tank into Siege-Mode?

    Guy 2: *facepalm*

Here are four posters on the topic of facepalm, and an additional one I liked a lot:

Facepalm posted by Bovee:

This one posted by the1stCOMMI3:

Fan4camping posted this facepalm:

And jam1077 posted this:

This one is, to me, priceless if off-topic.  It was posted by motifayk.

And that's it for today, folks.

-- Marge

Udacity U: HTML5 Game Development

HTML5 Game Development is a course offered by Udacity, which is an e-learning platform.  Courses offered by Udacity, edX, and Coursera (to name a few) are called massive open online courses (MOOCs).  So far they're not accredited, but Udacity's and edX's offerings are free. And good information is a valuable thing.

Why HTML5?  It holds the promise of being able to code once and publish (probably with a few adjustments) to a number of  different mobile platforms, as well as the web.  Apple products support HTML5; and, according to this article found at Mashable, Amazon Embraces HTML5 for New Ebooks.  Amazon's developer portal is at developer.amazon.com.  If you're interesting in marketing a mobile app you've developed, take a look at mobyaffiliates.  W3C states "HTML5 Definition Complete, W3C Moves to Interoperability Testing and Performance" in a December 2012 release.  This Wufoo page offers the current state of HTML5 forms for different platforms (I hoping it's truly current).

Returning to Udacity, I'm currently looking at the optional javascript crash course (because I tend to have a mental block against any C-based language).  This is what I see:

An "Ask a question" button is below the video and the discussions on the topic can be very helpful. Note: looks like you don't have to be signed in to view the discussion.

In closing here's a demotivational poster on programming by Tom Distler. 

Time for class.

-- Marge

Street Art vs. Illegal Billboards

There's a war going on in Los Angeles between artists and corporations over what populates the city's outdoor surfaces.  An article in The Atlantic, titled "The Convoluted Path to Ending Los Angeles's Mural Ban," by Nate Berg gives some details on the issue.  Again corporations have demanded citizens' rights in the form of freedom of speech.  (For a somewhat biased, but accurate, description of corporate personhood, take a look at Josh Clark's article "Why do corporations have the same rights as you?")  As stated by author Berg --

In the late 1990s, the city was sued by the outdoor advertising industry, which argued that the city was unconstitutionally privileging one type of protected speech – murals – over another – advertising. As a result, the city enacted a ban on signage – including murals – in 2002. The rules were then adjusted, creating "sign districts" where signs and murals and billboards would be allowed. But what tended to happen in these districts is that large developments included space for signs, and that space tended to be allocated to paying advertisers rather than non-paying artists. As a result, large ads and billboards started popping up all over these areas, prompting outrage from many residents.

Another result was a crack-down on street artists. There's a movement afoot to save the murals, as you can see at the SPARC Save LA Murals site and in the videos below.  SPARC (Social and Public Art Resource Center) is "is a non-profit community arts center based in Venice, California."

Below is a three-part series by Voice of Art that was published on YouTube that gives the artists' viewpoints.  i am OTHER is "is a new channel and cultural movement dedicated to Thinkers, Innovators and Outcasts."

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As street artist Lydia Emily explains in Part 2, political art can be a difficult experience.

-- Marge

Political cartoons with perspective

Overwhelmed by all the controversy about gun control, immigration reform, the Boys Scouts of America, Sarah Palin, etc., etc, etc., I've selected the following cartoons on the basis of the viewpoints they present.  Their subjects are still based on recent news.

From About.com here's a cartoon by David Fitzsimmons:

Published at TheWeek is this cartoon by Eric Allie.  (Don't get me wrong -- I think it's great that we've finally got something that addresses health care.  But it's a first step and needs refining.)

There are many cartoons about gun control being published right now; this one at U.S. News & World Report and by Walt Handelsman may capture the basic problem.

From Time Magazine is this cartoon by Mike Luckovich, because it made me laugh.

And that's it for today, folks.

-- Marge