Vacuum

on bringing the laptop into the shop for repairs

My Mac is in the shop. It's getting a new wifi card, and while they are at it they'll replace the chipped case. The chip fixing means that labor is free for the wifi fixing so it's a very reasonable cost.

The last time I had any kind of extended computer downtime I remember it being a strain, since I then had so much of my personal computing stuff actually on my computer. Now more than ever that's not the case, and I get along just fine with occasional logins from library computer systems or even the ultra-basic stripped down version of apps that I get on my not-very-smart Blackberry.

At some point, everything that you care enough about is also in the cloud somewhere. That might be for backups, so that if you lose a system you can carry on with minimum restore time. It might be to increase the power of whatever web-enabled terminal you log into, so that whatever public system you connect to has most of your stuff even if that stuff is private. Mostly though things go into the cloud and stay there because all physical media are fragile. The consequences of relying on anything in your own possession - especially something that gets knocked around a bit - are too great, and it's better to have those things also or primarily somewhere else that feels safe.

My year without the internet (as suggested by my son)

"When you retire," he says, "you should go offline for a whole year."

The idea is to sell all of your computers, turn in your cell phone, and generally shun any computer technology. Perhaps you'll still write, but it will be longhand or on a typewriter. If there's a phone call to be made, you'll have to be there to receive it, since there is no answering machine. No Twitter, no Facebook, no blogs. Whatever money you save in computing and telecom costs, you spend on pens and paper and postcards and stamps.

I'm not certain what this word "retire" means, but it's an appealing idea. For me, it would mean rewinding the technology clock back to the early 1980s.

A piece of the inspiration for this is the late Steve Cisler's unconnected project.

art on a shovel, some sources: metalworking

Getting ready for a February art on a shovel project ("shovel ready!"). Here's some sources of inspiration.

Masks from recycled shovel blades, John T. Unger.

Plasma cut steel shovels, Cal Lane.

Shovel art, Texas Lone Star, Iron Signs and Designs.

Each of these involve some serious metalworking, generally with round point dirt shovel as the starting point.

art on a shovel: looking forward to February

February is thirteen months long in Michigan. - A Primer, Bob Hicok, The New Yorker

Looking forward to February, a civic project: a Marcel Duchamp readymade project, a retrospective civic installation of his work Prelude to a Broken Arm (1915). See Shearer, 1997 for more.

The installation would provide a convenient hook for each of these readymade pieces. Care must be taken to ensure that the works of art be completely decorative and not functional.

More: Tout-Fait, the first interactive, multi-media journal focusing on the French-American artist Marcel Duchamp.

More: Archaeology, Modernism, Modernity, an introduction by Jeffrey Schnapp, Michael Shanks, Matthew Tiews in Modernism/Modernity, v11n1, 2004.

More: in An apprehensive aesthetic: the legacy of modernist culture By Andrew McNamara, p. 118.

Awesome homebrew USB Lego printer printed "Hello World" from a Mac

The critic says "I like Lego City better."

Vacuum cooking: the Gastrovac

When you write a blog called Vacuum, you get all kinds of traffic to your site that you don't expect or plan to see any sense in. Then, slowly but surely, you feel an unexplainable compulsion to be an "internet expert" (i.e. someone who quotes really well from real experts) in all things vacuum.

Thus, this note on vacuum cooking, and the remarkable device called the Gastrovac.

A photo of this apparatus on Flickr (I'll thumbnail it here when I get permission).

Time Magazine: "Adoring a vacuum", Sept 2006

The patented Gastrovac is the result of that kind of collaboration. To design it, Torres and Javier Andrés, of Valencia's well-regarded La Sucursal restaurant, joined forces with a team of scientists at Valencia's Polytechnic University. But there's a big difference to the Gastrovac's goal: while Adrià and Blumenthal routinely rely on kitchen alchemy to turn one food into another (this summer's menu at Adrià's El Bulli in Rosas, Spain, features gelatin and olive oil made into "false olives" and melon turned into caviar), the Gastrovac uses technology to make food taste more like itself.

International Cooking Concepts: Gastrovac, the vacuum revolution

The Gastrovac is a compact appliance for cooking and impregnating in a vacuum. It is patented in over 160 countries and developed with the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia and the cooks Javier Andrés (La Sucursal Restaurant, Valencia) and Sergio Torres (El Rodat Restaurant, Jávea). It functions as follows: by creating an artificial low pressure, oxygen-free atmosphere, the Gastrovac considerably reduces cooking and frying temperatures, maintaining the texture, colour and nutrients of the food. Moreover, the Gastrovac creates the “sponge effect”: when the atmospheric pressure is restored, the food absorbs the liquid around it, allowing infinite combinations of foods and flavours.

Details in the owner's manual (pdf)

IN ORDER TO CAUSE THE “SPONGE EFFECT” DURING THE VAUUM BREAKING PROCESS, IT IS ADVISABLE TO PRESS THE VACUUM BREAKING BUTTON SEVERAL TIMES (AS MANY AS POSSIBLE) UNTIL THE MEASURE GAUGE INDICATES ABOUT -0,5 BAR. ONCE THIS LEVEL IS REACHED, WE CAN THEN DISCONNECT THE VACUUM HOSE FROM THE OUTLET ON THE LID, OR PRESS THE VACUUM BREAKING BUTTON UNTIL THE MEASURE GAUGE INDICATES 0. THIS PROCESS WILL HELP THE PRODUCT TO ABSORB THE LIQUID WHERE IT IS DIPED

Technorati Tags: vacuum, gastrovac, food, sponge-effect, la-sucursal, valencia, google-mobile-docs

Identity swap

When Jim Benson opened up his web browser one day, he discovered that he was someone else. One of the perils of using borrowed hardware to establish a temporary identity is that if you are not really careful, you can leave quite a bit of your identity behind.

This is as good a reason as any to put your temporary identity on a thumb drive, so that you don't leave droppings behind that cause confusion (or worse). Jeremy Wagstaff's Directory of Programs Designed for USB Drives is a good place to start for mostly Windows setups; Lifehacker's Carry your life on a thumb drive is good too.

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) demo by Hakon Wium Lie

from Youtube via Ridhi D'Cruz and Michael Gurstein on the community informatics list.

Also on OLPC, this TED Talk from Nicholas Negroponte:

Technorati Tags: olpc, opera

Crank power: generating electrical energy from human power

Every summer, or so it seems, the power goes out. And every summer we wish we had enough at-home generating capacity to keep a radio working, to keep our cell phones charged, and perhaps even to keep some computing equipment going.

I collected some reviews of human powered energy devices under the tag crankpower. Here are some excerpts from what I found. Note that I don't have a good answer just yet from personal experience.

Low power, handheld, suitable for recharging a cell phone: the sort of device you're looking at would be similar to a Datex SuperBattery. It's hand cranked, offers a flashlight plus a series of power tips for a variety of phones. You'll see these in flashlight only configurations in any hardware store but the power takeoff is less typical in retail.

Hand crank with a radio: you're looking for something with the feature set of an Eton radio, which does hand crank powered battery driving a radio, lantern, and again some kind of cell phone charger. These have been given out as premiums to public radio station supporters. Again these tend to be relatively low power output.

Foot pedal operated, portable: the device of most interest is the Freeplay Weza, a treadle operated (also 120V and solar panel ready) generator and battery capable of jump starting a car. You pay for the extra battery capacity, but with the variety of input devices this could be the core of a small off-the-grid power system. An exceptionally good review here

I plan on keeping this little puppy. It will do exactly what I wanted. It is a source of emergency power that will keep small electronics up and running indefinitely. I also purchased a 12 volt battery charger for AAA - D sized rechargeable batteries. I was affected by the multi-state power grid failure about three years ago. I realized that if something like that lasted more than about 5 - 7 days, there will be no gas for generators. Solar is a very good option, but it is not easily portable, and is of course sun dependent and needs a storage battery. For real emergencies , this unit would be easy to transport, and should be ready whenever needed.

Bicycle style, stationary: a variety of homebrew devices beckon, calling the skills of the amateur cyclist who is also an electrical engineer. Typical is this discussion on Otherpower of a project that reuses an old 3-speed bicycle, a furnace blower motor and hard drive magnets to generate 100 watts of power. The author notes

I'll have to admit...it's kind of wobbly and a little bit scary when pedaled at full speed.

Bicycle style, mobile: a good extended discussion at Metafilter about adapting a SON dynamo hub to power on-bicycle electronics. The best detailed information is in German only on Rad Forum Lader with a series of plans for making the conversion. It's an electrical engineering challenge, since the SON puts out

nominal 6 volt, variable frequency, variable voltage power, which greatly restricts your choice of parts for voltage transformation and DC conversion.

Technorati Tags: crankpower, energy, generator, power

Overheard in Union Station, Washington DC

(not an exact quote)

"My entire life is on my Blackberry - they said it would take 72 hours to repair it, I couldn't imagine being without it for that long."

Technorati Tags: crackberry