The other day I stumbled across a method of making DIY shrinky-dinks.1 Today my daughter and I gave it a shot – they turned out really well! Here’s how you can make your own:
Cut Plastic Pieces
Locate polystyrene which is easily identifiable by the number 6 in the recycling triangle
You’ll find clear plastic polystyrene is used in plastic salad bar containers, to-go trays, and plastic cookie trays inside boxes of cookies
Shape the plastic as desired with scissors and a hole puncher to round edges and make holes
Decorate Plastic Pieces
Color or draw with permanent markers (Staples usually has some kind of deal on a pack of colored Sharpies)
Bake and Shrink
Preheat oven to 375
Place plastic pieces on a piece of parchment or aluminum foil (colored sides up) on a baking sheet
Put the baking sheet in the oven
You’ll notice the pieces curl or warp significantly, possibly even rolling around. They will eventually flatten out.
Once all of the pieces are flat, pull the baking sheet out, take the parchment off the baking sheet and let the pieces cool
When they shrunk down, the “hole punch” holes are the perfect size for adding a small metal ring for use in a necklace or charm bracelet. With a slightly larger hole you could probably make a decent keyring fob.
A little while ago I purchased an LG 38c “Optimus Dynamic” Android based touch screen “pay as you go” phone.1 Frankly, this phone has come in WAY more useful than I ever though it would. Here are a few ways in which I’ve actually used this phone recently:
I recently purchased a cheap pay-as-you-go Android smartphone with no intention to ever use the phone feature. After removing several non-essential apps from the phone, I installed the following useful (and free!) apps:
This app allows you to let your WiFi through the phone’s “Airplane Mode.” All cell phones, even those that have never been registered with any phone carrier, will periodically communicate with nearby cell towers. Using this app, I can turn off that ability – while still leaving the WiFi untouched. By turning off just the cell radio in the phone, I was able to extend the battery life significantly.
There are several apps that don’t require an internet connection to provide turn-by-turn navigation. The tradeoff you have to use the app to download “OpenStreetMap” maps of any area through which you wish to navigate through.
I found the user interface to be confusing. I suspect it is most useful for letting people create GPS maps while they hike, backpack, or travel. Uninstalled.
Great app if you enjoy the occasional chess game. I use it to play against friends2 all the time.
IMDB Movies & TV
Sometimes you just have to know the name of the actress who’s playing the barrista.
Shazam
Sometimes you just have to know the name of a song playing in a movie or TV show.
Netflix
It is downright ridiculous to me that I can buy a $20 appliance for watching movies over a wireless connection.
Also, once you install apps on the phone, you’ll want to go to the app manager and move them to “internal memory.” Although it sounds the phone is asking you if you want to move all the apps to the very limited 1GB of the phone’s internal memory, what you’re really doing is moving the apps to the “internal memory” of the 4GB microSD card.
I recently purchased a cheap “pay-as-you-go” Android smartphone after reading about it on Slashdot. The phone in question is an “LG 38c” being sold under the name, “LG Optimus Dynamic” with triple “Tracphone” minutes which you can pick up from Amazon for $19.99.
Before you rush out and get one, the processor is underpowered, the screen is small, it only comes with a 4GB microSD card and very limited internal memory, the viewing angle is relatively narrow, the touchscreen is a flexible plastic rather than sturdy glass, and runs an older version of the Android operating system that can’t handle many apps.12
That said, you would be hard pressed to be able to build or buy a device for $20 that is as capable as this little phone. The phone can use WiFi, can run the Netflix movie viewing app, be used as a web browser, alarm clock, MP3 player, digital camera, digital video recorder, GPS navigator, send and receive email (over WiFi), and run many useful apps available from the Google Play store. Also, you may not be aware of this or not, but every single cell phone out there – even those without any cell phone plan – is capable of dialing 9-1-1. ((Obviously, this phone can be as cheap as it is because the phone company is subsidizing the cost, hoping you make it up by buying phone minutes. Although I’m basically breaking this business model on a small scale, I just don’t seem to feel that guilty about it.))
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One amusing downside to buying a crappy burner phone is that your wife will look at you like you’re crazy. She’s not going to think you’re a super spy or a drug dealer or anything cool like that. [↩]
Between taking most of “Maker Faire” week off work and getting ready1 for MakerCon and Maker Faire, May was a hectic month. I remembered pretty much everything I needed for a successful2 – except “maker cards” and a metric ruler. With a few additional tweaks, I’m sure it can be even better next year.
In case you’ve never set up a booth at Maker Faire, you get an area with several folding chairs, a few long folding tables, and a chain link fence on at least one side of you.34 To have an interesting booth, you’ll want something to put over your table and on the chain link fence.
Since my entire booth was basically a wooden box that unpacked into a robot that made decorations for my booth, set up was rather easy.
I heard an amusing anecdote from someone at Make who said they put a lot of time and energy into figuring out a good spot for all the makers. Apparently they were a little concerned about having three drawing / art style robots next to one another! I had a great time hanging out near PicassoBot and PancakeBot! [↩]
My daughter later pointed out there were three robots, in a row, all with a “P” in the start of their name [↩]
As a Maker, I could eat at the Maker Lounge, but the credit card machine was intermittent [↩]
This could be a whole topic in itself. Two days is not enough to catch all the talks from just one stage. With multiple stages, multiple demonstrations, mini-concerts all happening at the same time [↩]
Or not. There were several booths giving away these stringy sack kind of backpacks [↩]
Maker Faire is big and there’s a lot to see. Although there are a lot of food options, you don’t necessarily want to drop what you’re doing just to go find food [↩]
I like designing in the open. This is not really the same thing as “open source” design, although I love that too. An open source design means that you’re sharing your source files, ideally with lots of comments to explain what you’re doing and why. I think of “designing in the open” as talking about1 all the experiments, design ideals, design choices, mistakes, dead ends, and breakthroughs that come along with working on an open source design.
These are really parallel and complimentary tracks. If you’re designing in the open, anybody can come along, read through your notes, ideas that you’ve considered but not really explored, and build their own project based off your thoughts. Open source projects allow anyone to come along, build your exact project, and make changes as they see fit. The two together however, allow the next person to use your source and stand on your shoulders, to learn from all your mistakes, and truly grok the design.
Two of my projects “designed in the open” that I’ve done the most work on was a large wall hanging drawing robot2 and a tiny drawing robot. At the time of this writing, I’ve got about 83 posts on the large drawing robot (including literally thousands of words about just about every aspect of the design of each plastic part) and 23 posts on the small drawing robot, exploring all the design ideas that didn’t pan out, different approaches other people used, and what did and didn’t work for me, and why.
When it came to building my own big drawing robot, Sandy Noble’s website and forums were absolutely invaluable. Using these resources and with patient guidance and help from Sandy himself, I was able to build my own robot, making variations informed by the experiences of others.
Designing in the open is more than about just documentation. Documentation tends to be more about explaining why something is the way it is and now not to go wrong. It doesn’t tell people about all the mistakes and tragedies that went into the creation of the thing in first place.
So, why am I droning on about blogging about mistakes and dead ends? I’m embarking on a new project where there has been some truly incredible work so far. As I look at the designs, it is difficult for me to see what aspects of the designs are absolutely critical, which parts are vestigial remnants of earlier designs, and what parts are merely cosmetic. When it came to working on my own big drawing robot, I tackled a similar problem3 by creating exhaustive lists of pretty much every variation I could find, examining the differences and similarities, and pondering/brainstorming about why different decisions were made.
Part of the problem with this new project is that so much of the content is in Google Plus or on Thingiverse, both of which are incredibly difficult to sift through for information. Thingiverse is great for sharing design files, works in progress, and sharing instructions. However, the comment system handled by Disqus is very finicky and doesn’t allow linking to specific comments. Google Plus is a fair system for facilitating group discussions and comments, but it requires an invite, doesn’t allow “reshares,” and is pretty much impossible to link to for reference.
All that being said, while a blog is an excellent way for a very small number of people to share their work, it’s kind of terrible for larger collaborative discussions. Although I haven’t tried collaborative work through a wiki, that might be a reasonable way forward. While I don’t know the answer to the community conundrum, I know it is not Facebook or Google Plus. Overall, the best system I’ve seen so far may be Sandy’s blog + forums.
In any case, to the extent you have an open source project you’re working on, please consider how your choice in community platform can facilitate designing in the open so that viewing and searching don’t require invitations/registrations, comments don’t require registrations or log ins, and easy linking to prior discussions and comments.
Probably blogging about – but forums work well too [↩]
If you’re looking for a way to fix the flickering or flashing LCD display on your Fitbit Ultra, I’ve got a few tips to help you on your way. This post is basically broken into three parts – how to revive a Fitbit Ultra, my experiences with Fitbit’s support, and an update about me.
How to Fix the Fitbit Ultra LCD Display Flashing “FITBIT 4.14”
I bought my Fitbit Ultra about 15 months ago and misplaced it about six months ago, only finding it again on Wednesday. The device was entirely unresponsive, so I plugged it into the USB charging base overnight. The next morning it would flicker and flash the LCD display saying only “FITBIT 4.14”. Here’s what I did:
Found Fitbit Ultra, plugged into USB base overnight. The result was the LCD display flickered and flashed only “FITBIT 4.14”.
Unplugged Fitbit, pressed the button, and discovered the only thing it would do is flicker “FITBIT 4.14”.
I plugged it back into the USB base, pressed the button, and it still flickered the same message.
With the Fitbit connected to the USB base, I turned the base upside down and inserted the end of a paperclip into the recessed reset button. The Fitbit still flickered the same message.
I let the Fitbit remain connected to the USB base for another entire day. At the end of that day I discovered that I could cycle through the display options – but the time on the Fitbit was entirely wrong.
I re-downloaded the Fitbit Ultra software, re-installed it, re-logged into the software, and let it sync with the Fitbit. After a few minutes of this, the Fitbit was back to life!
Experiences with Fitbit Support
In trying to revive my Fitbit, the first thing I tried was searching the Fitbit website and support forums, without success. After that I reached out to Fitbit’s support team explaining I tried the basics.1 The response from Fitbit’s support was that their records reflected my Fitbit was out of warranty and that they were making a “a one-time offer, for one (1) Fitbit One Tracker” for $49. I found this response incredibly disappointing. I would have appreciated something, even a token effort at helping me to fix my Fitbit instead of an upsale. I realize they’ve got a business to run, but offering “one-time offers” for upsales it not a suitable substitute for actual product support. While I would assume a warranty would cover a product’s functions, I wouldn’t have expected that they would abandon support after the warranty period.
Personal Update
A little over a year ago I bought a Fitbit Ultra to help me track steps, activity, etc towards my ambition to lose weight and be more active. While I tried to introduce more activity and made a point of checking out the steps I had logged, using an online food diary called FitDay.com was easily the mosthelpfulthingforme.
Last year was very successful, overall. From 222.5 pounds in January 2013 I dropped to a low of 193.0 in June. Since that time I’ve slowly gained a some weight – back to 203.5 now. The most important things I did to lose weight were to eat something for breakfast, walk a little more, and eat less. I tried to cut out or cut back on potatoes, bread, pasta, and rice and increase eggs, cheese, yogurt, protein, nuts, fruits, vegetables, and drink more water.
In the months since June, I haven’t been walking as much, have been eating more delicious pizza, sandwiches, and burritos. I want to feel a little remorseful about this, but I just can’t. :)
This is not how chicken should be served – shaped to look like a human child
This last year the office Christmas party was held at Ruth’s Chris where I was served an unappetizing and inedible dish.1
Setting aside the profound service issues and the presentation, the dish was just not edible. Now, I like cheese – I even like a lot of cheese. But, there was so much cheese inside and underneath this piece of chicken that I was just not able to scrape enough of it off to be able to eat it without coating my entire mouth and tongue. I only managed to eat a few bites before having to give up entirely.
If the meal itself was inedible, the presentation was actually worse. The dish looks like a little girl with pigtails was scalped, had her head was stuffed with cheese, and baked until golden brown. Below is an animated GIF of what the dish looked like to me.
I’ve been blogging on this site since 11/2009 – almost 4-1/2 years.1 In that time I’ve published just over 1,000 posts23 and I’ve got more than 200 just sitting around in draft form. Those are posts with partially finished ideas – possibly just a title or a link or a sentence. Others are almost entirely done, waiting for a small spark of creativity or maybe just an interesting photograph.
February 2014 was the first month in nearly 4-1/2 months that this site went without a new post. I am a little bummed about that. There were reasons – but reasons for not having done something are just excuses. Thus, instead of giving you an excuse, I will offer up this post as a bald-faced lie. It was “published” on 2/28/2014 at 11:59pm.
Now that my lie is out of the way… I wanted to add a little bit about the post I have/going to publish about working with paper mache. In January and February my daughter was working on a project for her science fair – which involved “The Brain and the Sense of Touch.” As part of the display, she created a paper mache model of the brain so she could point to the different regions and explain what each does. She says her favorite part was applying the strips of paper and then painting it. She enjoyed applying the gluey bits of paper and actually making something. She also enjoyed the painting because she loves painting and colors and being artistic.
I’d say I started noticing a change in the keyword stats reported on my websites about six months or so ago. Instead of seeing all of the keywords and search terms people used to arrive at my websites, most of the search terms were showing up as “Unknown search terms” in my WordPress Jetpack stats plugin and “(not provided)” in Google Analytics.
Apparently this is all due to a number of changes with Google. As Google pushes more people to be logged in or stay logged in to their Google, Gmail, or Google plus accounts, the more their searches will be done over SSL. This has the “side effect” of making their searches opaque to website owners. However, that same data is of course available to Google themselves. I say “side effect” because I’m not so sure this is unintended, rather than one of their actual goals.
Why then do I accuse Google of breaking their social contract? Here I am, an owner of multiple domains who has been running Google Analytics tracking bugs in all of my sites since their various inceptions. The entire point of doing so is that I might be able to better understand the search terms and patterns of people coming to my sites, with an eye towards improving traffic. In exchange literally allowing Google to insert code inside my websites, they were supposed to help with these insights. Insights they are no longer providing.
I’m not so naive as to think Google ever promised or contracted to provide this information to me. I’ve never read their Terms of Service and never plan to. When every piece of software includes click-shrink-wrapped terms of service, it’s impossible read, comprehend, or provide knowing consent to these things. All I can go on here is that I’ve continued to let Google inside my websites – and they’re not giving me the very thing I had been lead to believe would be provided in exchange.
That said, Google Webmaster Tools is still pretty useful.
