Awesome progress shots of Justin Gray’s (Graywrx Sculptural Welding, Oakland, CA) latest project: a jet turbine-powered tracked robot. You can see pictures and videos of some of his other flame-throwing robots on his blog.
Unnamed but almost finished 7/5/08 [Flickr set]
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Windows only: Free application ProcessQuickLink adds small icons to the left of every running process in the Windows Task Manager that—when clicked—tell you what that process does. The app looks up its information from ProcessLibrary.com, which provides a description of the process and recommendations for whether or not you should feel comfortable disabling it. When your computer seems slow and bogged down with running processes you can’t make heads or tails of, ProcessQuickLink’s seamless integration with Task Manager seems like the perfect way to hunt down and eliminate your unnecessary processes. For a full snapshot of all your running processes and their priorities, check out previously mentioned ProcessScanner. ProcessQuickLinks is freeware, Windows only.
I love the creativity found in this “next-gen” remote-controlled vibrobot. It has a PICAXE brain, uses a 16-pin DIP socket as its vibro-feet, and a universal TV remote as its controller.
SOCBOT - the next generation vibrobot
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From the MAKE Flickr photo pool
Steven Goodwin shares tips and measurements for making the perfect study hall instrument -
If there’s one piece of science that every kid knows, it’s that twanging a ruler on the edge of the desk makes a noise, and by changing the amount of overhang will change the pitch. Give anyone a new ruler, and the first thing they’ll do is twang it, to see how it sounds. This is an interesting fact of life.
[…]
So, to bring an element of fun back to the proceedings, we can combine these facts to build a very simple ‘rule organ’. By taping thirteen rulers to a nearby desk, each with a different amount of overhang, we have a rudimentary musical (?!?!?!?) instrument. So, how much overhang is necessary, and how do we do it?
Head over to his site for the specifics - Rule Organ
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I love the creativity found in this “next-gen” remote-controlled vibrobot. It has a PICAXE brain, uses a 16-pin DIP socket as its vibro-feet, and a universal TV remote as its controller.
SOCBOT - the next generation vibrobot
Read more | Permalink | Comments |
From the MAKE Flickr photo pool
Steven Goodwin shares tips and measurements for making the perfect study hall instrument -
If there’s one piece of science that every kid knows, it’s that twanging a ruler on the edge of the desk makes a noise, and by changing the amount of overhang will change the pitch. Give anyone a new ruler, and the first thing they’ll do is twang it, to see how it sounds. This is an interesting fact of life.
[…]
So, to bring an element of fun back to the proceedings, we can combine these facts to build a very simple ‘rule organ’. By taping thirteen rulers to a nearby desk, each with a different amount of overhang, we have a rudimentary musical (?!?!?!?) instrument. So, how much overhang is necessary, and how do we do it?
Head over to his site for the specifics - Rule Organ
Read more | Permalink | Comments |
Artist Ruth Whiting had a show up in Asheville, NC of her oil paintings of cables and plugs. Many of the paintings celebrate the details of the cable much in the same way plants are often rendered: luscious. Via BoingBoing.
More:
Artist Ruth Whiting had a show up in Asheville, NC of her oil paintings of cables and plugs. Many of the paintings celebrate the details of the cable much in the same way plants are often rendered: luscious. Via BoingBoing.
More:
I always wondered what went into those high-end speaker cabinets, and instructables user billbob has resolved my curiosity. He covers electrical construction, but mainly focuses on making really stellar speaker boxes, and has tons of pictures and tips. I know just as well as anybody around here that electronics projects aren’t always that great looking, but here’s an anomaly.
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Yesterday, I sent a quick email to let people know what time I was arriving on site. It was something simple like: “Brad will be there at 9:30AM. Thanks! EOM”. Within seconds a reply came back “What does EOM mean?” In my smartypants way I responded: “End of message. Used it to save you the time of opening the message and having to reply, which by virtue of you replying has defeated its purpose. Now that I am replying to your reply, it’s defeated doubly so.” Ultimately, my response was even worse because they thought it was so funny, they forwarded it to half the office. But once your co-workers understand what EOM means, it can save you tons of time and unnecessary email back and forth.
To me, EOM means much more than End of Message. It means “good use of time.” It means “concise.” It means “clarity.” But GUOTCC doesn’t have the same ring as EOM, so let’s stick with it. Here are eight great reasons for you to adopt EOM while crafting your email messages.
1. EOM saves your recipient’s time.—Don’t you value your time? Isn’t it nice when others value your time too? By keeping your subject line short and using EOM you are showing the people you send to you value their time. They’ll thank you for it (when they know what it means).
2. It saves you time. Why write the body of a message if you don’t have to? Is it really that important for quick answers?
Here’s the old way:
The EOM way:
3. You craft better subject lines.—One of the reasons people might glaze over when they receive your email is a subject line that doesn’t grab them or give enough information. With EOM, you have no choice but to create a powerful subject line. The space for subjects is limited. You create better subject lines because you can’t write a whole paragraph.
4. You can easily paste EOM subject lines.—You can cut and paste a well-crafted subject line into calendars, task lists, and notes. Have you ever gotten a request for a meeting that had nothing in the subject? What an annoyance. In order to create an appointment, you have to go into your calendar, type a meeting subject and set the schedule. Nobody would have this problem with an EOM message.
Example: “Let’s meet in Conf. Room 223 RE: the Orange account at 3pm 8/21/08 EOM”
You can drag and drop that email right into your calendar as-is. You know the topic of the meeting, the time, the place, the date and the subject. You’ve saved yourself and everyone else time fumbling with the request.
5. EOM encourages others to EOM.—Once people see the resulting effectiveness of EOM, they will begin crafting EOMs of their own. It’s win-win. You get concise, non-time wasting emails and they get the same.
6. EOM facilitates one-on-one discussion.—Have you ever gotten an email that, if it were printed would be five pages long or more? Of course you have. These emails are annoying, because it would have been more efficient if you had met for 10 minutes.
When you begin to utilize the EOM philosophy, you become keenly aware of when an email should really be a discussion. You can use the formula below to determine:
7. EOM forces you to keep email messages focused on a single topic.—Good email etiquette says you should keep the number of topics in an individual email to only one. If you have only one subject line to work with, you cannot cover more than one topic.
8. EOM guarantees 100% readership—We’ve all had the frustrating experience of waiting waiting on someone to read our important email and respond. Sometimes we wait a long time and follow up to find out they haven’t even read the message at all. Perhaps the most powerful advantage of EOM is 100% readership. Why? Because your entire message is in the subject line. Your message becomes impossible to ignore because it comes in front and center—no need to double click.
Do you use EOM in your email subject lines often? Post up your tips for efficient email usage in the comments.
Brad Isaac writes about goal setting at his blog, Persistence Unlimited.
