Archive for the ‘DIY Blog’ Category

Instructables Pocket-sized contest

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

My entry, the Watercolor Kit in an Altoids tin, is doing pretty well. Please help me win by voting for me!

Click on the big “Vote Now” button!

Busy busy busy busy

Wednesday, March 19th, 2008

Sorry, no post tonight.

I looked for some interesting stuff and didn’t find anything useful.

Blame the internet for being boring tonight. You can always submit a link if you find anything interesting…

KipKay to replace Bre Pettis on Make:’s Weekend Projects

Tuesday, March 11th, 2008

KipKay to replace Bre Pettis on Make:’s Weekend Projects

After playing reruns of Weekend Projects for two months, Make Magazine has announced that KipKay will be taking over Make’s videos.

I wonder what happened to Bre Pettis. I’m sure he’s OK, I saw him over at SXSW (in the Threadbanger podcast) so at least I’m sure he’s not sick or anything like that.

I’m not too enthusiastic about this because Bre Pettis had a unique intelligent approach. I made the very first weekend project: the workbench. I doubt we’ll be seeing stuff like the “build a fugly one-speed city bike from old parts” from Kip.

Anyways, let’s not judge too quickly, but I hope that KipKay will be able to demonstrate some true Maker creativity, what he hasn’t done over at Metacafe. Hope he does because the make crowd is more critical than the kicked-in-the-nuts Metacafe crowd (no.

Kick it up a notch and the community will respect you. Oh, you should also use your real name if you want any credibility.

KipKay to replace Bre Pettis on Make:’s Weekend Projects [link]

Snowstorm in Montréal, part deux

Monday, March 10th, 2008

The Aftermath:

Snowstorm in Montréal, part deux

I don’t have any pictures as eloquent as this one; what my parents saw when they opened the door on the morning after the snowstorm! I was lucky enough to avoid this sort of thing because the wind was blowing the other way.

All in all, we got about 30cm, or 12 inches of snow. This was the second “thunder-snowstorm” this year. I never saw those before this year.

Snowstorm in Montréal

Saturday, March 8th, 2008

Snowstorm in Montréal

Tonight, I’m staying in because of the snowstorm that rages outside. We’re getting close to beating the 1970-1971 record of 381cm of snow for the winter. Before this storm, we were at ~320cm. I guess one more should do it. This is the 8th we’ve had this year, most boroughs in the city have already spent their 2008 snow removal budget (which also covers the beginning of next winter).

Hard to believe that in 4 short months it’ll be 30ºc outside!

Yeah, so instead of proposing you a DIY project tonight, I’m proposing you stay in and do nothing constructive.

See you on monday.

Lunar Eclipse Picture

Wednesday, February 20th, 2008

Moon

Here’s a picture I just took of the moon. I could have done better, but considering it’s like -10ºc outside and my fingers were frozen, I think it’s OK.

It’s from a Nikon D70 with n old Nikkor 300mm lens. Exposure is 2.5s and Aperture somewhere around f/8 or f/16.

BlitzWeekend: Design, Build, and Launch in one weekend!

Wednesday, February 6th, 2008

Thanks to Heri for bringing this to my attention:

The first - and hopefully not the last - edition of BlitzWeekend will take place this Weekend in Montréal. BlitzWeekend is a gathering of developers, geeks, technologists an entrepreneurs, divided into small teams, which each must design, build and launch a product in 48 hours!

Can’t wait to see what will come out of that.

Sad thing is, I can’t attend as I already had plans which make it impossible for me to attend or participate. I’ll definitely take a rain check though.

Sorry - I made a mistake: the event will take place on the weekend of march 1st.

site: http://blitzweekend.com

wiki: http://barcamp.org/Blitzweekend1

DIY Blog Widget

Sunday, February 3rd, 2008

See the “Get my blog as a widget” at the top of the right column? You can use it to add a nice widget that will display the latest entries on your website.

Question: How can I improve DIY Blog?

Saturday, January 26th, 2008

Do you like DIY Blog?

If so, why? If not, why not? How can I improve the site? What would make it more interesting? What would make it more sticky (make you visit more often)?

Share your thoughts with me: please leave a comment.

Thanks for taking the time!

Processing: Gallery

Monday, January 14th, 2008

Circle Packing

I added a Gallery of my Processing sketches to the site.

Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. It is used by students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool. Processing is developed by artists and designers as an alternative to proprietary software tools in the same domain.

Processing is an open project initiated by Ben Fry and Casey Reas. It evolved from ideas explored in the Aesthetics and Computation Group at the MIT Media Lab.”

You can find the Gallery in the right-hand site menu. For the moment, I added a single sketch called Circle Packing, but more will follow, as I experiment further. I’ll keep you posted as I add more content.

Processing: Gallery [link]