Open Source book on Open Source Hardware?

Went to the post office to pick up a book. Open Source Hardware Vol. 1 arrived today. Well-wrought, and shaped like a Gary Larson album.

Wow. Page 173 says the book will be an open source project, an editable wiki, where you can edit and add to it. Projects at Liquidware seems like a good resource. Like Instructables, but Arduino-only.

(By the way: Larson’s famous. Real fame. Neologism-spawning fame. Proof: thagomizer.)

The other Fedora

In case you were wondering about “Mark Leggot’s project”, Islandora, the Drupal-based frontend for the other one that was supposed to be “a repository for every kind of human knowledge”, which was also capable of transforming its contents to any current useful format: Fedora Commons is its website.

Fedora refers to the Flexible Extensible Digital Repository Object Architecture, under which name repository management software has been publicly available since 1998.

Librarians, check it out.

Fallout Fandom

Never since… very long ago did I have a cultural product to long for. Computer game Fallout 3 has been one of those products. And it seems to be well worth the wait.

Had it put aside yesterday, and today, the game’s Euro release date, I picked it up. Fanboy economy at work.

“Review” after 2 hours play: it’s a bit like Bioshock, but with more gotta-catch-em-all gameplay. A bit “Morrowindy“. I’m no hater, though. Just a bit tired.

More FabLabbery, and Siert’s windmill

Rather than going back and editing my earlier post about that Icelandic guy, here’s some salient linkage on the subject. This is so exciting I almost skipped breakfast to watch it.

Iceland’s FabLab wiki, which is run by Smári, from a previous post.

A Dutch video with music about a FabLab workshop. Video unpacking and demoing plotter and CNC mill.

Mediamatic has an overview page of FabLab technology.

I met a guy called Siert at Reboot this year. He runs a FabLab in Holland. Siert’s windmill project (Dutch text, and a demo video).

Storytelling is hard

I did a lot of thinking about storytelling this weekend. Marketing is good stories. “Stories my dad can tell” is my benchmark. No story has hit that mark better than Skype. His enthusiasm for it, and the simplicity of its value offer was refreshing.

Talking to an American who’d moved to Sweden and taught himself Swedish, I realized this. We, the IT community, need to come up with a virtualization story that he could tell. About why VMWare images (or the equivalent) are so practical and useful. It’s a packaged appliance, already “tuned in to the right channel”. No configuration. No setup. That kind of thing, but good.

FSCONS: Smári McCarthy on abundance




Smári McCarthy Originally uploaded by Wrote

The man in the picture is Icelandic, outlandish, with lots of fancy words.

FabLabs (a set of machines to make any plastic object up to 1 meter in size) point to a future, and McCarthy talked about that future. No scarcity, everything “non-exotic” (which is not imbued with aura, like say, the Eiffel tower) is… available.

The intersection of hackers and anarchists: substantial, but not complete.

Freeganism got a mention in the talk. And “turkey sandwich”.

He got a government grant to run his FabLab. He said he’d looked around him, seeing only fishing industry. Digital fabrication might be a future for a place like that. A clean break with tradition.

Open Farm Tech was mentioned. OS tractors. Smari is credited with the prototype code for CNC (you know, extruders and such) on the website. The tractor is called LifeTrac. Design-for-disassembly. I’m very taken with this project. Update: See comments for direct links to videos and such.