This fake New York Times paper is fake, but if you look at the date closely you will see its dated for July 4th 2009. The purpose of the project was to give you a glimpse at what things could be like if we organized our selves to do what we think is right!
The WAMI Dome got some exposure at the Electronic Social Club’s Annual Exhibit at Hunter College. Everyone really enjoyed to play with the little dome and its square wave sounds.
This is a video of the dome in action:
The Jimmy (WAMI Dome) at ESC Exhibit. from Oscar G. Torres on Vimeo.
What is the downside of having a sheet of rectangular shaped solar cells? When the sun changes position the light the cell traps decreases due to the angle that the light travels. An other problem is wind. When there is a storm and the wind gusts violently, the solar panel sheets will trap the wind and will try to fly off with the wind flow.
The solution to two of these issues is a new cell structure in the form of a cylinder. The Solyndra solar cell is shaped like a fluorescent lamp. Which solves the two problems. The cylindrical shape allows for angle changes with out the loss of direct sunlight to the unit. The shape of the cylinder array prevents the wind from building up underneath the cell set up, preventing potential for the unit to fly off.
Solyndra solar cells are claimed to be 12 percent to 14 percent efficient which is a pretty good number for commercial cells. The only question that I have now is the price. For some reason I doubt these will be affordable since they require a costly fabrication.
I am looking forward for solar inks to begin making a presence in the market. Although they are very innefficient ( 2 to 5 percent efficient.)They will be a lot more affordable per watt than any solar technology out there.
Solar inks:
innovalight.com
Printing Solar Cells:
We have begun to make modifications on the Piano to allow for the drink mixing mechanism to be installed. We made a bunch of holes on the wood cover flap to use as a bottle holders.
Florica was so exited about starting to add the switches to the keys that she took off all the keys with out mapping where all the keys belonged. Luckly we realized that the keys are numbered in order and eventually we untangled the mess, literary! =)
Mental note: Wires tangle up really easily.
Once we added the metal pieces, that will serve as a switch to the keys, we began the tedious process of putting the keys back on to the piano. Patience played a big part during this assignment.
Finally all keys where in place and we tested out the switches to see if they where working properly.
Surprisingly, they are not working as smoothly as we expected, but its not a big set back since we can adjust the switched to work better.
The most exiting thing about the circuit is that it works!
Now if those solenoid valves and relays get here eventually, we can get started on the liquid dispensing mechanism.
America is a nation that needs to adjust itself to the flux of time. This was the main idea of the constitution, a system of government that adjusts to the progression of society. It is very very hard to change the constitution (which is a good thing) but it is not impossible. Our founding fathers knew that systems of government that do not allow for change, eventually perish because times change and people change. Understanding and embracing change is the key to progress.
I heard both presidential candidates speak. My conclusion is that Barack Obama represents everything that makes America the greatest nation on earth. He is the result of the melting pot in the same way that cream rises to the top.
Barack is the type of person that will do what is better for everyone in our nation and not just the republic. He understands that America is not just one race, one culture, one intellect or one point of view. He sees that we will prosper by collaboration and not by division. His opponent on the other hand is, as Obama has stated before, more of the same.
Obama will trigger major progress in the states by investing in areas that have been overlooked in the past. Our government needs someone like Obama to bring back the energy and charisma that are catalysts for achievement. America needs to re-enforce its diminishing status as center of the world. I doubt that McCain will take steps to strengthen America’s position. As a Nation made up of people from every corner of the earth, we should have a government that reflects that fact. Obama will change America’s popularity and influence, the same way he changed his own popularity in the primaries and the general election; by listening to the people.
Knowing your people before making a decision is key to good decision making. Finding a middle ground that benefits both sides will be key to prevent individual nations from making policies that only benefit themselves. In our current era, all the countries in the world are economically tied and we depend on everyone to maintain the lifestyle that we desire. Since we depend on everyone, we should be on good terms with everyone. This is why foreign policy is vital.
Obama’s knowledge on how the modern world works, including the new frontier of the digital era, will be key in having the upper hand when it comes time to making new foreign policy to put America on top again. We don’t need any more wars to spread democracy. It is proven that we can co-inhabit this earth with communist nations and dictatorships. This is why we do so much business with China. It would be ideal for democracy to be the only political system but that will never be the case. What we need is someone who can collaborate with these nations and pressure them to make changes in their systems to improve things people care about, such as human rights, environmental policy and health policy.
This is why Obama is the person we should choose as a president.
Wassup 2008
“Wassup 2008″ was directed by Charles Stone III, It features Stone and several of his childhood friends - Fred Thomas, Paul Williams, Terry Williams, and Kevin Lofton.
From Facebook.com:
http://www.facebook.com/friends/?ref=tn#/group.php?gid=32436522444
“Wassup 2008” commercial spent around around $6500 according to Stone. All of the people that participated where volunteers and all sets where obscure public areas or private sets they used free of cost.
This commercial sparked a conversation online concerning the election and the policies of both candidates.
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/10/24/wassup-2008.html
The feedback from the community at boing boing was unusually positive. No racial comments or talk of not being qualified to hold presidency. there is a chance this may be censored. The worst comment was someone calling the movie propaganda.
http://www.youtube.com/comment_servlet?all_comments&v=Qq8Uc5BFogE&fromurl=/watch%3Fv%3DQq8Uc5BFogE
The first 16 comments where marked as spam.
these are the comments:
Leedster618 (6 days ago) Marked as spam ” *sigh* Funny but ultimately pointless…”
246forsale (6 days ago) Marked as spam “change fo-sho foo! cept that iss gonna be change fo da worse!”
gregarious24 (6 days ago) Marked as spam “Funny commercial, but what a crock.
Barack Obama will not fix the housing crisis, or the credit crisis, or the Iraq War, or natural disasters.”
fallinsk8er (6 days ago) Marked as spam “Vote for communism…er…Obama!”
ImTheDarkcyde (6 days ago)
Marked as spam
“1) It’s closer to socialism, 2) would you care to explain why that’s a bad thing, or would you rather just insist it’s bad because the mccaniac said so?”
BrianElstad (6 days ago) Marked as spam
“lol it’s more like
Outoftouch/religiousidiot ‘08″
More of the words used in the comments section include: WHORES 4 THE BANKERS , Assassination , race war, muslim/terrorist/space alien, Rome, IMMIGRANTS, Hitler, satan.
Positive comments included the words:
Speechless, 6 stars, FUCKING EPIC, FTW, High Art, Internet 100 , mcCain 0, Obama is Hope, Funny, Awesome, Amazing, well done, just to name a few.
after the 40th comment, the comments stopped being labeled ad spam.
ohsnazbot (6 days ago)
“people posting anti-obama comments for an obama video. YOU’RE SO EDGY!”
Eventually negative comments concerning race and advertising methods/ propaganda came up, along with Socialism, Communism and making references to Hitler.
priorzola (6 days ago)
“CONGRATULATIONS tool you are the 1 billionth neo-con use of the HITLER analogy to date”
The question now is; can everybody do what Obama did the week before the elections of 2008 (buy 30 min time slots on most of the major the networks except ABC?) in 2012 election?
Obama’s Half Hour Campaign Ad
“More than 33.5 million people watched Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s half-hour prime-time political ad Wednesday night, according to Nielsen Media Research.” - Rebecca Dana from the Wall Street Journal
“According to papers available at CBS’s headquarters in New York, the campaign agreed Monday to pay $961,000 for the entire 8-8:30 pm time period. It wasn’t clear whether that was in pattern, meaning it would run across all time zones at that period.
NBC will sell Obama the half-hour time buy for $891,250 gross and $775,000 net, according to documents from NBC available at its 30 Rock headquarters.”
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/
production cost range is estimated around $4 to 5 million range.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/29/campaign.muscle/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
Around 400 bookmarks on the delicious web site when this was written.
http://delicious.com/search?p=wassup+2008&u=&chk=&context=main&fr=del_icio_us&lc=0
The “Wassap 2008″ video received a substantial number of views in the first five days of its life on Youtube. According to Viral Video Chart over 3 million viewed it.
* Discovered 24 Oct 2008
* 3,282,186 views
* 14 duplicate videos
* 1,141 blog posts
* 9,086 comments
These numbers show a big shift in media consumption and viewership that will definitely re-shape the way the politicians communicate their message in the future.
“I Got a Crush…On Obama” By Obama Girl
this video came out in June 13, 2007.
According to Viral Video Chart these are the number of views:
Discovered 14 Jun 2007
10,354,031 views
1 duplicate videos
1,748 blog posts
55,942 comments
cost: $2,000.
http://www.adrants.com/2008/06/obama-girl-could-take-the-white-house.php
The bottom line is that video content being created and distributed by means of email, social web sites and mobile web browsing, shows that the landscape is changing for media distribution.
Barack Obama’s campaign spent around 10 million dollars in air time purchases and production costs to air his 30 min. television Ad.
The ad ended up reaching 33.5 million viewers.
This is roughly around $0.30 average spent per person to see the Ad.
Ben Relles spent around $2000 on the original Obama girl video and to date, the video has been viewed by around 10 million people, that’s around $0.002 average spent per person.
Charles Stone III spent around $6500 for his “Wassup” video and reached 3 million people in a week. That is an average of $0.0019 spent per person to view the video.
The numbers are clear indicating that traditional media has a new competitor. Presidential candidates, organizations and individuals have a new medium of broadcasting a message with out the need to spend large amount of money. The effect of the conversations that occur in the “comment sections” of the social web sites where the videos are hosted is unclear. But we are gaining ground on the effect of these social interactions on the web.
So far McCain has spent $10,855,000 and Obama has spent $17,445,000 on Advertising. One thing that the candidates have not done, is to call upon the power of the people to create content to support them. It will be interesting when user generated content begins to out-power content generated by presidential campaign funding. This phenomenon is already taking place but it is hard to quantify due to the lack of data available to analyze.
A few Months back in a cold March day, I bought my MacBook Pro. Immediately after the purchase (approximately 10 min) my laptop’s “i” fell out! At this moment I knew that my agony had just begun.
Fast forward to this Sunday and the Mac does not fail to be a pain in the funny bone. Out of nowhere, very unexpectedly, the keyboard and trackpad stopped working! This was specially a pain in the but because I had a midterm due on Tuesday and this lack of ability to do work was especially stressful. I tried turning the laptop on and off a couple of times, but nothing worked.
The first solution was to borrow a mouse and USB keyboard from school. But this temporary solution sucked and was very inconvenient! So I did what anyone would do; search the internet for solutions. I found out some interesting insight as to why the keyboard freezes. According to a couple of forums I read, there seemed to be an indication that there was some type of software problem.
The second solution may not work for everyone but it definitely worked for me. I consider this to be a temporary fix until I get a window of time when I can take the laptop for a check up.
The fix was to take out the battery from the laptop for a good 5-10 minutes.
after that time, I turned the laptop back on and the keyboard was back to normal.
good luck.
We are making some good progress on the circuit for the Pianocktail. It may all look like a bunch of components thrown together (which they are) but they are working in semi-harmony.
This is an image of the circuit:
I got stuck trying to make the 11 shift registers work, it seems that I was loosing the signal of switches after the fifth shift register.
The solution to the problem was to set up groups of 5 shift registers going into the Arduion via Serial, Clock and Latch. This is not the best case scenario, since I am using 3 more pins of my Arduino, but its a quick fix to the problem. I was told to use a 1µf capacitor to boost the signal, but I have not tried that yet.
This is a video of the circuit set up:
Pianocktail Circuit - Inprogress from Oscar G. Torres on Vimeo.
Its done!
Jim’s WAMI dome is ready to be showed and played!
check it out:
Jim’s WAMI Dome from Oscar G. Torres on Vimeo.
How do you know what key a person pressed on a piano, and then translate that information on to making a cocktail? Our approach to the first part of that question is making a circuit that has 88 input switches to detect every single key in the piano. This is what the circuit is looking like so far. You can see 11 shift registers(shift-in) in a parallel set up to detect the keys and 6 shift registers (shift-out) to trigger the liquid to flow. I am having trouble with the signal past the 5th shift register. I have yet to figure out if its a voltage issue or a software issue.
I’ll keep you posted.
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