Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Eye-Fi camera cards

A year or so ago I purchased a card for my digital camera from http://www.eye.fi/.  This simple little card makes me happy at least once a week.  It's genius: it is wifi aware.  Which means that once you take a picture, it tries to connect to the internet and upload the new pictures.  You can have it save just to your computer, or automatically upload to Flckr, Picasa, or a number of other sites.

Here is my happy use case.  Often while at work, I'll get an email that looks like this:

Which means that the family at home has been taking pictures, and my day is interrupted by a cute and often candid update of what my fantastic family is up to today.  

The new cards will also upload videos, which means that I rarely, if ever take my card out of my camera anymore.  

Overall, this is one technical gadget that makes my life easier and has extremely low friction.  Exactly what a quality item should be.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Mont Blanc Fountain Pens

I grew up admiring my father's Montblanc fountain pen, having worked through scores of fountain pens myself I have yet to make the leap. Maybe when I grow up.

Here is a long soliloquy of an article, with lots of nice pictures.
http://www.luxist.com/2010/11/16/birth-of-a-montblanc-making-the-worlds-finest-pen-and-why-you-sh/

Monday, November 15, 2010

Studio day

I feel like I'm making good headway.
IMAG0310
The kiln is cooling.

Made a couple more pieces just in case.
IMAG0311
Theo even helped with one of those bottles. it was fun.

There are for or so bowls drying around the studio, this platter form I've been working on, IMAG0312 and a bigger tray IMAG0313.

Oh, and this guy
IMAG0314
showed up at one point.

I think I may just fit in one more bisque firing before loading up and heading out to the firing with Simon and they guys this weekend.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Some mud work

IMAG0308

Firing coming up soon. I suppose I should do some backwards math. If I'm heading out Thursday night, then I need Thursday to cool the bisque kiln, which means I need to fire on Wednesday. Since I don't own a microwave anymore to quick dry pieces, I should give it a day or two or more to dry which means Sunday wheelwork would even be pushing it. Ahhh the excitement of the chase.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

carrying on

Mostly keeping up with making something every day. The last couple days have been working on mote digital creations. Went to a great networking event tonight with some very smart techie folks. Got some good ideas on how to make the Macalester web apps.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

GAE with GWT

Today's creating is admitadly a bit techie.  I wanted to port a glaze storage application I had made some years ago to python and hosted on Google App Engine, then I got distracted by the shiny object that is GWT.  So I made a GWT app hosted on Google App Engine.

cledwyn-gwt.appspot.com

Nothing more than installing the IDE, and uploading with minor tweaks, but hey, it's still something.