As part of our on-going Awesome-August effort, I just completed my FPGA-based DNA sequence alignment accelerator! Behold!
This bad boy can reach 1.8 Giga-cell-updates-per-second when aligning two DNA sequences, all while running off of less than 2.5W from a USB port. Step 1 in my evil plan to take over the world is complete!
While on vacation on Cape Cod, I got a chance to see Fritz of Fritz Glass, working his craft. Glass Blowing is a very technical art and he was a master craftsman, and was happy to share the process, answer questions, and talk while he worked. His open workshop felt a lot like Resistor, full of the tools of his trade and evidence of current hacking (he also builds his own furnaces!), and it was fascinating to watch the process, so I figured I’d share the video here.
Took a break from the lite brite to make this pornj glowy shirt using coolneon wire. One of many costumes I’ll need for burning man. I’ll probably wear it at the party next week too. Make sure you RSVP!
For Awesome August I’m trying to make something of this ebay toy piano that got smashed by UPS.
The music is Philip Glass’s "Modern Love Waltz," inspired by toy-pianist Margaret Leng Tan
From Engadget
Hazzah! She’s alive! I’ve got a few more tweaks to make before I show you the guts, and then I gotta make lots and lots of pegs.
Gizmodo kicked off their “Summermodo” event yesterday with a post asking if you’re a “nerd that can tan“, and they chose to use this hilarious photo of me and Bre showing off the fangs we made for a Halloween episode of the show that Bre was working on a few years back. I guess there’s nothing quite as pasty as a vampire geek, so kudos to Gizmodo for pulling that photo from the archives.
By a funny coincidence, I’m on a beach vacation for the week, so I figured I should present some photographic evidence that, yes, Resistors (and geeks everywhere) actually can get a tan.
And yes, that is a scene from Super Mario Bros made of seashells beside me. 😉
It's not from a scooner it's from a sail boat.
So, here’s some big news you’ve probably already heard about. Rhode Island, our friendly and gun loving neighbor to the north will be hosting a New England Maker Faire. Currently they are accepting calls for submissions. Obviously we’re not the only ones who are caught up in the fever of Awesome August.
Looks like the event is scheduled to occur across a wide expanse of days from Sept 6th through Sept 19th. However, it seems that it’s a composite grouping of a number of events. From what I can tell the event on Sept 19th is the culminating event, and where they will be showcasing most of the projects on display.
If you want O’Reilly to take Maker’s Faires in the North East seriously, we’re going to have to be out in force to support this one. So, take advantage of twitter outages and stop slacking. Submit a project to the Rhode Island guys, and show up to support all the other Maker’s out there.
Read more about how to do that here:
Good Luck RI!
After instigating Awesome August and challenging myself to finish 4 projects this month, my first order of business was to start putting the finishing touches on my 8-bit album, “Resistor Anthems”. The overarching theme for all of my Awesome August projects is “open everything” and accordingly, this album is released under the super-permissive Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. That means you are free to download the music, use it however you like, mix it up, mash it up, and use it in podcasts, videos, or commercial projects however you see fit, so long as you provide attribution, preferably like so:
Music: [Track name] by Eric Skiff, http://glitchnyc.com/music
In the interest of making the music as open and easy to repurpose as possible, I’m also putting out many of the Garage Band files used in the making of this album, which contain direct dumps of each nanoloop channel. I wasn’t 100% organized when I started putting this album together, but there should be some great samples you can pull out of there, and if there’s anything you hear on the album that you’d like to work with but can’t find, just let me know
This album was composed primarily on a Gameboy using nanoloop 1.3 and 1.5. Thanks to Bre for lending me his cart and vintage GB!
You can listen to individual tracks after the jump:
Awesome August is already spreading! Twitter user Eric Weinhoffer tagged a post #awesomeaugust and linked to his amazing 3D printable 3D puzzle which you can make on printers like Makerbot and Reprap. Outstanding work, and great use of the #awesomeaugust tag!
Download the album free!