Piano Gloves by Scott Garner

Piano Gloves from Scott Garner on Vimeo.

I just love what this guy has done with these gloves, check out the link on Scott's website.

Happy Holidays from Baltimore

So 34th street in Hampden (Baltimore) goes crazy during the holidays and really does it up. I love it.

Happy holidays and merry Christmas.

PS Apologies for the lack of blogging, I'll be better, I promise.

Data mining example. How to figure out how many users Digg has by scraping some info.

As I've been reading and working my way through Ben Fry's book Visualizing Data I'm starting to understand how simple it is to collect some really interesting data. One instance that comes to mind is John Graham-Cummings exploration of how many users digg.com has.

I obtained this number by finding random Digg users and extracting their user id. The user id is in a hidden HTML form input field on each Digg user's page. The Digg user page also gives their date of registration. Using this I was able to plot every month from December 2004 (when Kevin Rose registered) up to this month.

What I haven't been able to discern is if he did this by hand or by code. I would assume by code in order to get a reasonable large enough sample but then again if digg is indeed auto-incrementing their user id's then perhaps by hand would be enough. Regardless, I would be curious as to what a script to scrape this kind of data would look like.

How to hack into the FBI to get records about yourself

This is actually a really easy hack, all you need is a printer, envelope and a stamp. Oh, and the power of the Freedom of Information Act.

All you have to do is mail the sample letter below with your information to this address:
Director Federal Bureau of Investigations Washington D.C., 20535

<YOUR NAME>
<YOUR ADDRESS>
<CITY, STATE, ZIP>
<YOUR PHONE NUMBER>

Dear Sir: I am requesting a copy of any personal file which you may have on myself (SSN <Your social security number>).
In addition, I am requesting copies of all files, dossiers, documents, or materials referring to myself. If you consider some material exempt from disclosure, release the material to me with deletions indicated and specify your legal support for having made those deletions. Finally, I require a response within ten working days, as provided by the Freedom of Information Act. I appreciate your time and your compliance with my request and the law.

Thank you,

<YOUR NAME>

Happy hacking the FBI!

VIA Reddit.com

A Handful of Graphic Design Students + Processing + Breakout (Atari) = Some Really Cool Outcomes

One of the great things about processing is how accessible it is. Indeed the following is a video of some sketches made with processing from a modified version of the old school Atari game Breakout. This done by graphic design grad students who hardly had any (if any) previous experience coding during a six our long workshop. To see what they've explored within the processing library is really amazing, you can see that they've built complicated shapes, colors, physics and even created things that were viewtiful. You can read more about the project here.

game mod from steph thirion on Vimeo.

Video and Timelapse from the Saturday’s Pedal Hacking workshop

So this weekend I worked my way through Monte Allum's BD-2 Blue's Stack mod for my Boss BD-2 Blues overdrive pedal. Overall I would consider it a success, the pedal responds very nicely now. For instance the gain is smoother and more crip, it doesn't splatter when it's maxed out. Additionally, the tone is more crisp the the bass is even and doesn't rumble all over the place.

The only difficulty I had was at the end when I was replacing the LED, I kept shorting it out and then blowing the LED. I wish that the instructions had mention to be very careful about that. Fortunately I had multiple spare LEDs but it would be cool to have a different color then red.

Some more media is available via my flickr and Baltimore Node's website. (Thanks to Jon for putting together the time lapse and the short video of me playing around.)

Compact Flash, Daily Fresh Photos from Jerrold

A friend of mine, Jerrold Adler has started a really cool project where he does a daily photo composition and puts it online. The project is called Compact Flash and you can check it out here.

I'm inspired to undertake such a project myself but I'm currently in the process of resolving an "err 99" problem that I'm having with my Canon Rebel XT. I.E. I'm sending it back to Canon today :(

Anyhow, best of luck to you Jerrold!

Birds On A Wire: Composition Created By Jarbas Agnelli

Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

Bumper stickers galore (Baltimore representing)

Day trip to the DC Zoo

Sorry I didn't take more photos, my camera has been giving me a strange error that I'm in the process of resolving.