Category: MakerBlock

All things MakerBlock: RepRap, MakerBot, Cupcake CNC, open source, and plastic building toys!

Why I am not a gambler

SMBC Comic
SMBC Comic

See, I’m not a gambler.  For any amount that I’d feel comfortable wagering, it would literally just be easier and take less time for to work a few extra hours.  I recognize that if you’re an actual mathematician you could basically assure yourself of coming out ahead, but I’m just not interested in investing the time of time and resources to assuring myself of a successful gambling attempt.  Again, it would be easier and less time consuming to just work a few extra hours rather than figuring out how to game a system.

In any case, anyone who enjoys gambling would probably tell you it’s the uncertainty, the rush, the thrill of gambling that they enjoy.  If you offered them a way to increase their odds through strict mathematical approaches, they’d probably reject it.  I am not able to enjoy it at all.  I find gambling very stressful.  The moment you put your money on the table, you’re already down and you’re hoping to break even or come out ahead from that point forward.

This is the long way of saying that you’ve got to love entrepreneurial spirit of the guys who’ve figured out how to game the Massachusetts lottery system…

My pseudonym is my name

When I began blogging for MakerBot, it was with the stipulation that I would be able to continue to blog under my pseudonym.  This was not a problem at all.  In fact, I was assured that many people go by their adopted ‘nym’s which are more reflective of who they are than their given names ever were.  I’m saddened and disappointed that Google+ does not recognize this and is apparently banning people from their Google accounts for using pseudonyms.

Seriously, guys?  E-mail addresses, logins, Google accounts, they’re all pseudonyms of some fashion.  If Google+ is supposed to be the equivalent of posting my driver’s license online to confirm my name, physical address, and organ donor status, you can delete my account right now.  If, instead, it is about letting people use the names they’ve chosen to participate in social interactions with people who really only know them by those names…  Then stop banning people.

</rant>

Day 30

So, I’ve been on a self-imposed diet for the last 30 days.  I’ve lost about 10 pounds so far by just not eating like a piggie, which is pretty cool.

I’ve been using Fitday.com1 very sporadically since April of 2004.  I know this because I can go back and see what I entered for what I was eating and what I weighed back then.  It’s a pretty cool feature.  Kind of like Google Analytics for health.2  Friday was day 30 of my diet.

Unfortunately, Days 31 and 32 weren’t nearly as successful as days 1 through 30.

Here’s to tomorrow!  Another day!

  1. A free website for helping to track food, caloric intake, activity level, and weight changes [↩]
  2. Haha! [↩]

Why I am cutting back on Netflix

First, let me preface this by saying that my current plan is 3-DVD’s at a time, with free streaming movies, for $20/month.  As of 9/1/2011 that price will increase 20% to $24/month.

I get that streaming subscribers cost Netflix less and they make more money.  I couldn’t care less about the “It’s just a latte” comment.  Here’s what I don’t like – they want a 20% increase with no additional offering.  They’ve increased prices over the years, most recently just last year.  This morning Netflix VP of Corporate Communications Steve Swasey was interviewed by Michael Krasney on my local NPR station, KQED.

When asked about this, Mr. Swasey said, “What we’re trying to convey is that this is an improvement in Netflix service.”  (You can listen to the entire program here.)  He then goes on to attempt to reinforce that Netflix is still a good value.  I suppose it might still be a good value.  But, that’s not the point, is it?  Netflix is claiming that this is some kind of “improvement in Netflix service.”  Talk about lattes all you want, but do not lie about what you’re doing.

The e-mail from Netflix, the Netflix blog, and everything talking about these increases make no mention of any change, let alone improvement, in the actual service.  DVD’s won’t be delivered faster, the discs will still arrive scratched, there will still be a backlog on new movies, and there will still be the “window of delay” when new movies are released for sale.

Do you have an old Pez dispenser?

I’m in the process of designing a disc magazine for the open source disc shooter.  Ideally, I would like it to have a snap-together design and use rubber bands where possible.  However, it occurs to me that any standard or readily available piece of hardware could be useful too.  To that end, I thought that a Pez dispenser might operate in a fashion very similar to what I require for a disc magazine.

However, I don’t recall ever taking apart a Pez dispenser to examine the spring inside.  Given the length of a Pez dispenser and the thinness of the discs I’m using, this spring could very well be ideal.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a Pez dispenser handy.  I’ve searched Google and Flickr for people having looked inside the dispenser, but haven’t had any luck.

So!  Do you have an old Pez dispenser?  Would you mind destroying it, examining, photographing, and posting details about it?

ProfileMaker – Crippled, but back…

At least for the time being.  :)

I’m guessing that only about 10% of ProfileMaker users were using the complete profile feature.  For those of you who didn’t use it, this feature would use your inputs to create an entire Skeinforge profile, zip the whole thing, and e-mail it to you. 1  However, this 10% use case was probably accounting for a huge portion of the server load.

I’ve disabled the e-mail-a-profile feature to see if this will help.  Let’s cross our fingers and hope!  As a friend of mine always says, these are good problems to have.

  1. Pretty convenient, really. [↩]

Alas, poor ProfileMaker, I knew you well…

I launched ProfileMaker on March 20, 2011.  After serving up more than 3500 awesome Skeinforge profiles, my website hosting company has actually started to complain that I’m using too much of the shared hosting environment’s resources.  As a result, I’m going to have to disable temporarily and potentially discontinue ProfileMaker.

I suspect it is the Skeinforge profile creation feature that has caused the most trouble.  Every time this feature it used, it creates a temporary file and incorporates it into a full Skeinforge profile, which is then ZIP’ed for e-mail delivery.  It’s possible that disabling this one feature may dramatically reduce my site’s server load.