Shrug, Corkboard, Shrug

After much hemming and hawing. I picked up an Android phone this week.

It feels like settling. It solves a couple short term problems – but overall, it doesn’t really move the needle.

Additionally, I’m reminded of something I wrote 2 1/2 years ago.

“After years of hauling multiple toolboxes from rented apartment to rented apartment to rented apartment, what I really needed was a better understanding of how use use these tools.”

“The corkboard shrugged.”

Finally, The Future We Were Promised

“The DisplayCabinet presents itself as a glowing ring on a side table. Placing items in the ring pops out relevant information about them. We started with keys and a wallet as it is typical to store these on a side table and doesn’t involve changing the users normal behaviour.” – Dan W. Williams

DisplayCabinet from bashford on Vimeo.

Added Bonus:

“Seriality is a serial connectivity browser plug-in that enables web pages to communicate with microcontrollers via Javascript. Seriality is physicality for the Web.”

First Crack #126. Hardware Startups with Matt Bauer

PedalBrain‘s Matt Bauer and I talk about the challenges, capital requirements, and multi-year timelines inherent in bringing a retail hardware product to market.

He talks about the recent epiphany he had with PedalBrain and how that enlightenment has helped him through these challenges.

Listen to Hardware Startups with Matt Bauer. [31 min]

Tour the Neighborhood via Sketchup

Over on the Minneapolis Craigslist, I saw this post:

“I need some people to help create 3D models of residential homes using Google sketch up or any other 3D software. Please send an example of your work (inside, outside, both) and your rate sheet for what you can offer. I am a Realtor and have an order for 10 homes with plenty more to come. “

I think this is a tiny glimpse into the future of real estate; sales, open houses, tours, remodeling, redecorating, etc.

The hard work is creating the house’s avatar.

After that – it’s the fun stuff; overlaying property lines, changing colors, and moving walls, making copies and doing walk-through tours.

Especially once enough more than a handful of the homes in your neighborhood are in Sketchup (and then placed in Google Earth).

Then you can finally determine if you should move to that house 1-block away or not.

Stone Arch .5K – Sat., May 7 · 2:00pm

“This race is for everyone and it is not too late to start training: .5 Kilometers is 50,000 cm–.31 cruel miles, for those of you who reject the metric system. It’s about the distance covered in four city blocks. Pro tip: practice running one side of a block per week, adding another side every week for the next month, and you’re there. This is my patented couch-to-.5K method to stamina, physical endurance, and all around excellence. You can do it!”

More training tips:

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Why, Yes, I Do Live East of the Mississippi

Earlier this week, I gave my Wide Open Faces talk to the web design group at Hennepin Tech. Much of that talk is a dive into the differences among open source licenses (specficially OFL, GPL, and X11/MIT).

My personal preference is the X11/MIT license. It’s short (4 sentences) and basically says; while the copyright is held, you’re free to do what you need to with this software.

To my surprise – my preference for the MIT license has more to do with the location of my current residence.

Hard to imagine that if I lived 2.5 miles further west, I’d be favoring the BSD.