Category: MakerBlock

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

Playing chicken

Marty, STOP READING NOW.

is selling over at Amazon – but as I procrastinate purchasing it, the price has been falling.  From about $60 to $52 – with the non-Amazon options as low as $42 or so with shipping.

So, do I pull the trigger now or wait for it to drop a little more?  I don’t often buy DVD’s what with a Netflix subscription and all.  But, any time I have watched a movie (or show) more than a few times, it’s probably worth having a copy.  I’m not a completist or collector – I don’t own any other seasons, but this last one has been so freaking good.

Facebook, why are you so damned creepy?

It seems every time I visit a website it already knows my name.

When I walk into a favorite lunch hang out and I’m greeted by name, that’s nice.

When I walk into a store I’ve never been in before and they greet me by name and drop the names of a few friends…  well, I get a creepy icky feeling and want to leave.

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Occupational Hazards

I love coming up with ideas, poking holes in those ideas, and trying to think of every way I can to make the idea fail.  For even more fun, I like to try to twist ideas into things that they were never really meant to be.  If an idea stands to that kind of poking and prodding, maybe it isn’t so bad.  Playing my own devil’s advocate, as it were.  I find this activity endlessly entertaining.  It’s like a little game – Can I disprove the idea?  Can I find an exception?  Can I twist it so that it does something more or different than intended?  Are one of these failure modes more interesting than the intended purpose?

So much so that I feel compelled to do it all the time – even with other people’s ideas.  Ideas can be like children and people can be similarly possessive or protective of them.  So, I suppose it’s not entirely surprising that this little game of mine isn’t always welcome.

Why do I mention any of this?

Upon seeing the phrase, “only good things come from CC” I was immediately tempted to think of the most evil possible application of CC.1

  1. Sorry @kio! [↩]

Brute force

So, a brute force password attack would mean trying every combination of keys until you hit upon the proper combination for a password.

Here’s the stupidest, but cool in a bloody-minded sort of way, use a possible OpenSCAD randomizing function:

A script that generates a pile of random keys so you can brute force attack a lock.1

  1. See?!  I can think of a frivolous use for anything! [↩]

OpenSCAD and randomness

A quick google search tells me that OpenSCAD doesn’t have a random number generator.  That’s a bit of a bummer.  I was just thinking how cool it would be to have an OpenSCAD file that would give you little variations on itself every time you generated an STL.  I’m thinking snowflakes, giant fingerprints, and other things that have a little bit of chance and chaos built in.

Or, perhaps some kind of Mad Libs-esque system where you tell it to create an alien or monster figure and you get a random number of eyes, heads, noses, arms, legs, and tails.

Now, I figure with CloudSCAD it wouldn’t be terribly difficult to add a little bit of javascript that can include a random number with given parameters…  So, it’s at least possible.

WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT???

For a totally different website I have a client whose representative only e-mails me USING ALL CAPS.  I cannot imagine what would possess someone to want to communicate like that.  Sure, I could just put up with it – but it is so so so difficult to read.  Last week I ended up responding to his e-mail with a polite phone call, answered his question, then asked for a small favor – to QUIT E-MAILING ME IN ALL CAPS.

It’s 3:00AM, welcome to my groove

I’m NOT a morning person.  I’m a late afternoon to late evening person.  I really don’t hit my groove until around 2AM to 3AM.  It is during this time of the quiet hum of the refrigerator and laptop fan that I am seriously hitting my stride for the day.  Who am I kidding, even when it’s noisier at 3AM I’m still more productive.

We really have Ben Franklin to blame for the stigma on night owls.  Just because of one dude all of a sudden people who like getting up in the morning1 are possessive of some kind of virtue?  Bah.

</rant><workingagain>

  1. Or at all [↩]