My idea for GPS and terrain intelligent cruise control, which I blogged about a year or so ago, is in development. Sweet! I knew that this one was only a matter of time. It’s good to know that I can have an occasional good idea- seems like everywhere you go somebody has thought of something already.
Hmm… wonder if I can call Volkswagen for a credit? 
Just put my $50 monthly payment into ING for my future 3d printer. I now have $501.62 in savings toward the little beastie. Slowly getting there!
*UPDATE* Found a good review of the Thing-O-Matic here. It’s a pretty clear run-down of the pros and cons of owning an early generation 3D printer, and a pretty clear explanation just why it is that I’m taking two years to save for one. Hopefully by the time I’m ready to hit the buy button they’ll have some of these issues (ReplicatorG to Skeinforge, competitive consumables aftermarket) worked out.
I got Erin the Lego Harry Potter (Years 1-4) for our Wii and we’ve been playing through it as a team. It’s been fun to introduce Erin to platformers and she’s gotten pretty good at managing the dual handed control system (moving with the left thumb and aiming/shooting with the “wand”). Since she’s such a HP fan it’s very engaging for her. Unfortunately, the game has already had 2 showstopping freezes accompanied by an annoyingly loud buzz from the console that requires a full hard reset. I looked online and saw that a bunch of people had this problem and that even if you endure through the increasingly frequent crashes the game traps you in a room at the end where you can’t finish. The publisher (Traveller’s Tales) is ignoring the problem in spite of a growing call to fix it and replace the discs.
It’s a bummer because we were really having fun playing it for an hour or so each night. It’s not often when a guy’s wife practically begs him to play video games with her. Nuts to Traveller’s Tales and their bad coding.
Beginning my plow through the Python programming language. Thanks to Sean (and co-worker) for pointing out this free online book. I had just put the book into my Amazon basket when he pointed out the free PDF version. Thanks, Sean!
*update* Just wrote my first program (my blog software won’t indent, but you get the picture):
#this is the number guessing game
import random
guessesTaken=0
print (‘hello! what is your name?’)
myName=input()
number = random.randint(1,20)
print (‘well, ‘ +myName+ ‘, I am thinking of a number between 1 and 20.’)
print (‘You have 6 guesses’)
while guessesTaken < 6:
print("Take a guess.")#There are four spaces in front of print.
guess=input()
guess=int(guess)
guessesTaken=guessesTaken+1
if guess < number:
print ('your guess is too low.')
if guess > number:
print (‘your guess is too high’)
if guess == number:
break
if guess == number:
guessesTaken = str(guessesTaken)
print (‘Good job, ‘ +myName+ ‘! You guessed my number in ‘ +guessesTaken+ ‘ guesses!’)
if guess != number:
number = str(number)
print (‘Nope. The number I was thinking of was ‘ + number)
I have been enamored of 3d printing for a long time. The ability to print up anything you want (as long as it’s a solid body form and can be made from ABS plastic) is so totally science-fictiony that it makes my little Maker heart skip a beat. I’ve waxed nerdish about this nascent technology on the blog for a while now, but I’ve always felt that it was just out of reach, both financially as well as technologically. The first version, the “Cupcake CNC“, was a little clunky, had a small print platform, and was very much for the tinkerer who didn’t mind early adoption woes.
They’ve solved the first few problems with the new version, the MakerBot Thing-O-Matic.
This 3D printer uses the same ABS-melting print-head design as the CupCake to slowly build up a 3d object using progressive layers of melted plastic. Think of an inkjet print head slowly going back and forth across the same spot of paper. Eventually the ink gets thick enough to start to rise up off the page. 3D printers use the same idea, except instead of tiny ink streams they use a spool of ABS plastic melted into much thicker blobs, like thin toothpaste from a tube. You feed the printer a design and it prints the bottom-most layer, then moves the print platform (that contains the newly printed and cooled layer of ABS) down slightly and prints the next layer up. Over a few minutes it builds up in 3d whatever design you fed it. Neat, huh?
The beauty of this system is that there is an incredible online source of free designs available to anyone with access to a 3d printer. There are literally thousands of things you can download and print. Currently, the machines are only capable of making plastic objects (no electronics or metal- yet), but even when you’re limited to plastic there is an incredible array of objects at your disposal. Here are a few examples:
First, some very simple and silly things:
Christmas ornaments:
Tree:
Porsch (it’s just a model!):
Cookie Cutter (any design you want):
These examples fall squarely into the “I need something simple with a little bit of customization” camp. Say you want a cookie cutter designed like a giant eyeball (doesn’t everybody?). Take the Thingiverse design, alter it a little bit in the free Blender program, and send it to the 3d printer. Come back in a few minutes and there’s your new cookie cutter, ready to make your gruesome cookies. Sicko.
But above these simple things are some more complex and intriguing objects:
Broom Head mount to fix broken broom:
Motor mount and gear sets for custom applications:
wind turbine blades for science projects:
Water pump (just add cheap electric motor):
Espresso tamper:
Now things are getting interesting. These objects represent a second tier of complexity. A person might be forgiven for scoffing at your expensive 3d printer if all it does is print plastic stars, mini Porsches, anatomical cookie cutters (pervert!), but when you start saying “custom motor mount”, “water pump”, and “espresso tamper” then you’re starting to get into the area where even the uninitiated sits up and takes notice, because each of these things was formerly only available either at a traditional store, or in the case of the custom motor mount, through an expensive and time-consuming custom manufacturer. Remember that all of these designs are completely free to download and use. They only cost the few pennies in raw plastic and maybe a couple of cheap components to get something useful. And soon even the cheap extra components will be printable.
Finally, we get into the truly interesting, high-level printable objects. These represent days or even weeks of patient trial and error design by someone out there in the world. Each design is optimized to print on the 3d printer, solves a real-world problem, and is totally free.
Ball Bearings:
Musical instruments:
Printable gyroscopic copter (add electronics):
Early replacement game tiles (or even a complete game):
(wait a second… Hasbro isn’t going to be too happy about that)
Even (most interestingly) the plans to print up an identical… 3d printer.
These last two items, the game tile and 3d printer offspring, are the most interesting. They represent the legal challenges and technological promise of this new tech. If I can print out a perfect (or even just “workable”) version of something that I would previously go purchase, what happens to the idea of going to Toys-R-Us to get a Scrabble game? What happens to the idea of a “stuff-based” economy? Will patent/I.P. holders get more serious about enforcing their intellectual property? Will the idea of the knockoff become forbidden?
And when a new 3d printer- an entire 3d printer- is as easy to print up and gift to a friend as that cookie-cutter, just what does that mean to society? I don’t know, but it’ll be interesting.
What we’re talking about here is a new technology that will change the world as much as the computer did. As much as the standardized screw did. As much, I believe, as the idea of standardization itself. True, it’s still in the early-innovation, messy-hobbyist phase. But that is exactly where computers were in the late 70′s. A decade later the database spark caught on with businesses, and a few years later computers were starting to infiltrate the home. 3d printers are at that early stage right now: nascent technology that is being frantically improved upon by a subset of tinkerers. The only difference this time is that the previous technology – computers – is being used to bootstrap 3d printers to make them better at a much faster rate. An accelerated, Darwinian, online process of rapid development and experimentation is taking place behind the scenes that will soon spill out into society. Go check out the Thingiverse or search for “Mendel RepRap” if you don’t believe me.
Soon, everyone will have a 3d printer at home. We might not be able to print iPhones and microwave ovens soon, but for a very, very large proportion of what we use in our everyday lives, a few minutes at the 3d printer will replace a trip to Wal-Mart. Give one to a small village in Africa and the world trembles.
All these thought were spinning through my head early this morning while lying in bed (one of the very few benefits of chronic insomnia is lots of undistracted processing time). I’ve wanted a 3d printer since I saw the early MakerBot CupCakes, but it was hard to justify the price for the limited utility of this early-adopter model. Just recently, MakerBot Industries announced the new and improved version- the Thing-O-Matic (nice hat tip to Nick Park there, btw). The Thing-O-Matic has a larger, heated, moveable build platform for multiple unattended builds (the just-printed object is rolled out of the way so a new one can print), a bigger print area, and improvements to the print head and electronics. Overall, it’s a big improvement on the CupCake. But it’s $1250. Ouch.
There was no way that I could responsibly go out and spend that much money on the thing all at once. World-changing or no, it just felt like too big of a step. But then I remembered the ancient and almost forgotten concept of saving for something. Crazy, right? This morning I opened up a sub-account in ING titled “MakerBot”. My plan is to put $50/month aside. Fifty bucks isn’t a distressing amount. It’s what I put in my gas tank every time I fill up, and since I work from home, that only happens once or twice a month. At $50/month, in a mere 2 years I’ll have enough to order my very own Thing-O-Matic. Christmas 2012. Even better- in 2 years they will have either introduced the next version, or made big improvements to the current Thing (all printable on current machines, naturally).
I normally don’t talk finances on the blog, but I figure anyone can see what these things cost anyway, so why not? Plus, I hope that those of you that share my enthusiasm for these kinds of geeky things might want to vicariously experience a 3d printer with me. And if you’ve read this far, you’re one of those.
Finally, how will I use a 3d printer? Well, the main thing that I can see immediately (and there will be many things I don’t anticipate) is in my prop business. I build props for the show that I write, and being able to design a prop, then print out a small version and place it in context on a scale model of an actual stage will be a tremendous help in visualizing what a prop looks like. I think potential customers might like that, don’t you? I even think that little extra service might earn me enough business to pay for the machine. Certain of it, in fact.
Check back periodically as I update my MakerBot savings account balance as well as periodically dip into improvements to the design. I’m really excited about this. I’m interested to hear your thoughts in the comments (or via email- I can post them as updates if you can’t get the comments section to work for you).
The Stuxnet worm. This is a terrifying development in technological tools. Crazily advanced.
Just noticed a lot of my comments are off. I set MarsEdit (my blogging software) to automatically turn the comments on, but sometimes it spaces out and leaves them off and I don’t notice. It’s not that I don’t like the feedback! Of course, the way the blog works, not everyone who wants to comment CAN comment, so it’s kind of a moot point.
Tab Candy for Firefox. This looks like a great addition. I really need this (I currently have about 30 tabs open)
We skipped the series finale of Lost last night due to a work party, so we were going to do what we always do and catch it on abc.com. Instead, we decided to ante up the three bucks for the full HD iTunes download so we could get it without commercials or without annoying stream pauses at critical moments (something that’s happened a lot in the past).
So I open iTunes on the mini downstairs and try to buy the last episode of Lost. Sorry, you must be upgraded to the latest version of iTunes to download content. Oh, okay. Twenty minutes later I’ve installed the newest iTunes and try to buy it again.
Sorry, you must have version 4 or greater of Safari to use the iTunes music store. Huh? The ITMS doesn’t even open Safari, and I use Firefox anyway. Grr…. So I go online again and update Safari. Whew. Okay Apple, here’s my money.
Sorry, this version of Safari does not work with your version of OS X. Please update your OS. AARGH!
I’m loathe to update the OS because the home automation software that runs the house on that computer works great, and doing OS updates has tended to make things unreliable in the past.
Look, I understand that you want to keep the user experience reliable, Apple, and one of the ways you do this is by making sure people’s software is up to date. But I seem to be running into this sort of thing a lot more lately, and I can’t help but wonder if there’s something else going on. Why all of a sudden have your engineers lost the ability to make stuff work well across a couple of different iterations of the software?
And before you think it’s because Apple just wants to stick me with a paid update to the OS or something, in fairness I have to say that all the updates I’d be required to do would be free inter-version updates (4.5.1 to 4.5.4, for example). Still it’s a hassle to have to keep all this stuff current across three machines. I would set stuff to auto update, but I’ve been burned in the past when a machine has updated software and broken a current application (Studio Vision Pro, Finale, etc) that I rely on absolutely for my income. I’d rather have control over my system, get things functioning smoothly, and then leave it alone until my season ends.
There’s got to be a better way. Maybe Virtual Machining is the answer?
The new MIDI interface is USB only. Max USB cable length is 16 feet (they make 20′ cables, but MIDI is very timing sensitive and subject to error on long runs). The MIDI interface is 18′ from the computer.
When I first wired my studio three years ago I was extraordinarily careful about not crossing power and data runs, about the order of equipment and heating issues, about careful and neat cable tying behind the racks, and about workflow and equipment access. I spent days deciding how everything should be laid out, drawing diagrams of each piece of gear. It’s paid off as I’ve almost never had an issue with buzz or noise in the system.
I may now have to completely disassemble and rewire my pristine studio layout based on the fact that a single cable is two feet too short.
I’m going to risk $15 on a 20′ cable from Amazon and see if the MIDI signals are reliable, but if they’re not…
Someone kill me please.
…Having created a medium in which the refractive index is less than one, Putz and Svozil’s idea is simply to immerse a computer in it. That simple act (and presumably some clever design to create an optical computer in the first place) would allow superluminal computation to take place.
Assuming that this device could actually be built, what could you do with a superluminal computer? That’s a good question that Putz and Svozil do not address directly. They say such a device would fall into a class of processing machine known as hypercomputers. These are hypothetical devices more powerful than Turing machines, that allow non-Turing computations. They were first discussed by Alan Turing in the 1930s.
I suspect a lot of this hype is of the not-as-good-as-it-sounds variety (i.e. maybe it’s technically “faster than light” because the medium has a slower value for c or something (kind of like Cherenkov radiation). Still, it’s neat sounding.
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