Earth is not a sphere

Apr 8

3D map of Earth’s gravity. It’s the (exaggerated) shape of the Earth’s surface if completely covered by water. If someone mentions that Earth is a sphere you can correct them, if it makes sense to do so. Animation here.

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Overlay comparisons

Feb 11

While looking for some new fixed-width fonts I came across the below image which is a really intuitive way of visualizing the differences between a given set of fonts, created simply by overlaying corresponding letters.

Searching to see if this idea was used elsewhere and found it used in a comparison of large planes on Wikipedia. The removal of any interior plane detail makes the comparison not visually cluttered by any extraneous information and the overlaying of the planes makes scale comparisons instantaneous.

It is additionally a simple effect to produce, needing only scaled and aligned overlayed layers. Below is an image I created of the two most recent Arduino development boards.

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Something's small head

Nov 21

More fantastic small-scale photos from Nikon Small World Awards.

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634 W Main St

Sep 1

I created my first downtown building using Google SketchUp, which made it into the Google Earth 3D buildings layer where anyone/everyone can see it.

I did a little walk-about around town looking for a good first building to make, i.e. geometrically simple and easily photographable and found a good fit at 634 West Main Street in an old brick building.

It was actually easier to create than I thought it would be, although it did take a bit of time but just following this tutorial was all the direction needed. More to come.

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Board layouts using math

Jul 28

A unique and visually interesting way to make printed circuit boards layouts, inspired by a type of mathematical diagram. It looks a lot different than the more traditional, angular lines of the boards on the right.

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Wisconsin entrepreneurship

Jul 27

Yes, Wisconsin has more to offer than food and beverages. It has startups too, says TechCrunch, which if mostly pretty valley-centric in it’s tech coverage (not without reason though). But it’s nice to seeing Wisconsin getting some deserved attention.

As mentioned in the article I did not know that Forbes ranked Madison as the 7th most innovate city in the country, but it is not at all surprising. As a student at UW it’s pretty easy to see the cornucopia of offerings in terms of resources, support and overall encouragement to start a business venture. From contests, classes, departments, subsidized spaces available, seminars, events, and more. And that’s just the university affiliated stuff, which is complemented by many entrepreneurial networking groups, mentoring services, governmental programs and angel investors.

It really is an active, multi-faceted community of people perusing that entrepreneurial urge.

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Tube shelves

Jul 26

It’s simple: I needed some storage space and didn’t want to spend more than $15 so I made some shelves out of the cardboard tubes used for concrete posts. It’s got that honeycomb look going for it, can be reconfigured easily, and is easy to build.

Verdict: they of course work (how could they not?) but a little is left to be desired. Load it up with some books and it starts to seriously sag, and not a good sag. A better, stronger tube material would be a major plus.

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Wood block light

Jul 14

Interesting lamp design as it’s using a material not really known for it’s translucency, especially in block form. When off it looks like a wooden cube with a cord sticking out of it. The purpose is initially unknown, giving it a little mystery.

Also, can be used for clocks.

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Lightning backdrop

Jun 29

The Terrace hosts concerts regularly during the summer. The backdrop to last Friday night’s music was lightning a few miles away across the lake the lit up the clouds in a semi-epic way, semi-similarly to the more epic video below of the same storm’s lightning hitting the three tallest Chicago skyscrapers simultaneously.

If I would’ve had my hypothetical high-speed camera on me I would have made a similar video, hypothetically speaking.

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Tropical storm equals hole?

Jun 1

I don’t get it. A tropical storm leads to a gaping hole in the ground? The Earth is being an a-hole lately, what with global warming and all. It needs to be put in it’s place somehow.

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