Open Knowledge

I support “Balls in Trees”

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 18:59:03 GMT

Want to own your own ball in a tree?

Original: craschworks - comments

Bubble isn’t over yet…

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:39:22 GMT

Original: craschworks - comments

Institute of Mosaic Art

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 07:26:52 GMT

The Institute of Mosaic Art has lots of cool classes. Here’s one I would’ve loved to take:

VISITING ARTIST SERIES: SHERRI WARNER HUNTER
Concrete Institute
Instructor: Sherri Warner Hunter
Sessions: 5
Times: Saturday - Wednesday: 9a.m. - 4p.m.
Level: Beginning/Intermediate
Cost: $650
Materials:$95
Institute of Mosaic art is proud to host Sherri Warner Hunter for this week long intensive. Hunter is the author of “Making Concrete Garden Ornaments” and “Creative Concrete Ornaments for the Garden.” This is a rare opportunity to learn from a concrete master.

Make your dreams concrete! This intensive course will cover a variety of concrete forming techniques including armature building, carving, modeling, and polymer fortified concrete systems. Participants will create three projects; a foam and polymer fortified concrete sculpture, a faux rock and a carved hypertufa planter. Each project utilizes a different concrete recipe and forming techniques. A variety of surface treatments will be demponstrated and discussed with plenty of opportunity for experimentation Bring sketches of concrete projects you’d like to realize for discussion. No previous experience with concrete is necessary.

Visual presentations, demonstrations and handouts will provide inspiration and information to take with you to utilize in your own studio.

PARTICIPANTS SHOULD BRING:
* Sketch or notebook
* Apron or wear work clothes
* Ruler, yardstick, carpenter’s square
* Sharpie Markers
* Scissors
* Angle cutters, lineman pliers, and needle nose pliers*
* Straight cut aviator shears*
(* These are good basic tools for participants to have for future sculpture and metal working projects. Instructor will bring some tools for student use if participants don’t have their own.)
* Small pointing trowel
* Steel trowel (flat rectangle)
* Plastic spray bottle
* Yellow (cleaning type) latex gloves
* Leather work gloves

(These items will be available for sale on site at Mosaic Studio Supply.)

Original: craschworks - comments

GEEK: how to add a user to the admin group on Mac OS X

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 06:52:15 GMT

Here’s how to add a user to the admin group using dscl:

dscl . append /Groups/admin GroupMembership crasch

Remove a user:

dscl . delete /Groups/admin GroupMembership crasch

Reading the membership of the admin group:

dscl . read /Groups/admin GroupMembership

Original: craschworks - comments

Pictures on the way to work.

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 04:59:19 GMT

My boss’s new car. It’s surprisingly roomy on the inside — anyone under 6′2″ tall would probably feel comfortable driving it. The fit and finish seemed pretty good, although the door sounds somewhat tinny when you close it.

Some flowers in the neighbor’s hedge.

Original: craschworks - comments

Linley’s birthday party

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 05:03:27 GMT

Held at Rockaway Beach, near Pacifica, CA. The beach was quite cold, so we retired to the Best Western Lighthouse hotel nearby.

Linley doing cartwheels

Original: craschworks - comments

Fire Arts Festival - July 12th, 2008

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 06:16:25 GMT

meredith was in town last weekend, so we went to the 8th Annual Fire Arts Festival in Oakland. (Note to self: when meeting a woman for the first time, don’t park in the empty underground parking garage.)

We arrived just as the gates opened, and the place was soon packed. The announcer said that over 2000 people were there that night.

My favorite exhibit was the Fire Vortex. Two guys dressed in silver flame retardant suits stood across from each other. Each held a long metal wand, from which they could shoot an aerosolized mist of fuel. Between them was a large ducted fan, which created a strong vortex of air. They would fire fuel from the wands into the vortex, and light the mist on fire, creating a tornado of fire.

Quite lovely to see.

My second favorite? The Omega Recoil, which consisted of a man dressed in a full body Faraday cage. He writhed underneath a giant inverted Tesla coil, which shot lighting bolts into his suit.

Meredith and I climbed up through the center of the Steampunk Treehouse. The Festival was held in view of the BART, and every time one passed, you could see the passengers looking out the window to watch the exhibits. It made quite a lovely tableau, with the crowds writhing around the burning fire exhibits, as a lighted train filled with passengers passed slowly along on the risers above.

Some pictures:

A view of the Burning Skull from the top of the Steampunk Treehouse

Carriage by firelight

A trapeze artist swinging from a branch of the Steampunk Treehouse

The Burning Man

Meredith at the top of Steampunk Treehouse

Original: craschworks - comments

Pork and Beans by Weezer

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 21:35:14 GMT

I love Weezer’s Pork and Beans video. Via boffo.

Original: craschworks - comments

Sean Tevis’s XKCD style campaign

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 20:02:42 GMT

I don’t agree with many of his political positions, but Sean Tevis has an awesome campaign website.

Via riotclitshave

Original: craschworks - comments

Marcus II: Goodnight Moon

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 12:01:17 GMT

Original: craschworks - comments

Marcus II: I bet I can eat that

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 11:41:39 GMT

Nom, Nom, Nom

Frickin’ paparazzi

Holding court

Bathtime

Burrito

I bet I can eat that

Tickles from Daddy

Original: craschworks - comments

GEEK: Running a ruby script via crontab

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 04:42:47 GMT

So, I’m trying to set up a ruby script that screenscrapes another website, writes the results to a local file, then rsyncs the file to another machine behind a firewall. This post details the problems I ran into while trying to get cron to run the ruby script and rsync to the remote host.

First of all, to test that crontab is running at all, you can add this command:

* * * * * /bin/echo "foobar" >> /tmp/crontabtest

This should cause “foobar” to be appended to the file /tmp/crontabtest every minute.

Next, the crond daemon doesn’t know anything about your environment variables. So you have to set them in the crontab file. If you can manually run the script from within Terminal, but you get error messages when you run it from your crontab (or nothing happens at all), there’s probably a problem with the environment variables.

Here’s what beginning of my crontab looks like:

% crontab -e

SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/usr/local/bin:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin
HOME=/var/log
MAILTO=crasch@myaddress.com
CRASCH_ROOT=/Crasch
SVN_ROOT=/Users/crasch/Projects/trunk
RUBYOPT=rubygems

Note that the order of the path is important to ruby, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me. If I put /usr/local/bin at the end, like this:

PATH=/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin

I get this error message:

/usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/thread.rb:5:in `require': No such file to load -- thread.so (LoadError)
    from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/thread.rb:5
    from /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:85:in `require'
    from /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:85
    from /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/ubygems.rb:10:in `require'
    from /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/ubygems.rb:10

If I put /usr/local/bin at the beginning of my PATH:

PATH=/usr/local/bin:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin

…the script executes fine.

Setting RUBYOPT environment variable is also important, if you plan to use any Ruby gems. By setting the RUBYOPT environment variable to the value rubygems, you tell Ruby to load RubyGems every time it starts up.

If you don’t set it, you’ll likely see this error message:

/Users/crasch/Projects/trunk/Scripts/build/bin/loadpath.rb:24:in `require': no such file to load -- getopt/std (LoadError)
    from /Users/crasch/Projects/trunk/Scripts/build/bin/loadpath.rb:24

You may also need to set these variables:

RUBYLIB=/Crasch/lib/ruby:/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8:/usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8
GEM_HOME=/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8
GEM_PATH=/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8

You can find the GEM_HOME/GEM_PATH with this command:

gem environment gemdir

On my machine, this returns:

/usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8

Next, you’ll need to make sure you can rsync to the machine behind the firewall.

I had already set up passwordless ssh authentication between my local machine and both the firewall machine and the target machine. ssh-agent handles private key requests, and I use keychain as a frontend to the ssh-agent.

In order to use my existing ssh-agent process, the cron process needs to know the following environment variables:

SSH_AGENT_PID=338
SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/ssh-EAw1mq6I1l/agent.337

You can find out the current values of these variables with this command:

env | grep 'SSH_A*'

However, these variables change whenever the ssh-agent is restarted (such as after a system reboot). I set them by sourcing them from my keychain file before executing the script of interest:

*      *      *       *       1-5     source ~/.keychain/crasch2-sh; $SVN_ROOT/Scripts/build/bin/loadpath.rb >> $CRASCH_ROOT/Logs/loadpath.`date +%Y-%m-%d-%H%M` 2>&1

The script should now be able to rsync the file to the remote machine. Here’s a script I used to debug and test my crontab and ruby settings:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

require 'date'

STARTTIME = Time.now
TODAY = STARTTIME.strftime("%Y-%m-%d")

# prints out ruby's load path
puts $LOAD_PATH

# prints out all the environment variables that Ruby knows about
ENV.to_hash.each {|key, value| puts "#{key}=#{value}"}

# Trying loading a common RubyGem
puts "Trying to load getopt..."
require 'getopt/std'
puts "getopt/std loaded"

# Create a sample file
filename = "/tmp/test.#{TODAY}"
`touch "#{filename}"`

# Copy the sample file to the /tmp directory on the target machine
`rsync -avv -e "ssh firewall.machine.com ssh" #{filename} crasch@targetmachine:/tmp >> /Crasch/Logs/test_rsync.#{TODAY} 2>&1`

Original: craschworks - comments

Birth of a super villain

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 07:17:39 GMT

Via kitiara.

Original: craschworks - comments

Crossfit Games 2008

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 06:38:07 GMT

On Sunday (July 6th), I went to the 2nd Annual Crossfit Games in Aromas, CA. A lot of fun. Incredibly fit, half naked people everywhere. Sort of like Woodstock for jocks.

A view of the farm as you enter the games pavillion.

Saul, my Crossfit instructor, was one of the volunteer officials.

I got to meet faustin and freckletash for the first time in person, which was a real treat. I was also pleased to see Lexi and Matt later in the afternoon. Here freckletash applies sunscreen to faustin

faustin getting ready to lift

Concentration

Mid-lift

Jason, one of the people in my Crossfit class, was in the top 25 competitors. Here he prepares for a lift.

Mid-lift

Completed lift

Jason was the last to finish in his heat, so the whole crowd was watching his progress. When he finished, everyone broke into cheers.

Jenni “Jelly” Orr prepping for the event. She’s a cheerleader for the Miami Dolphins.

Another female competitor. (I don’t know her name.)

Breanna, one of the people in my crossfit class

Post lift hug

Checking the scores

Jason, Saul, and Breanna, after the competition

Original: craschworks - comments

Straight Line Designs

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 18:30:32 GMT

Judson Beaumont makes some really cool stuff:

Via flutterby

Original: craschworks - comments

Garbage Bag Balloon Animals

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 20:52:09 GMT

Artist Joshua Allen Harris Turns Garbage Bags Into World’s Greatest Balloon Animals

Original: craschworks - comments

Getting Creative Work Done (and some other good links)

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 16:37:07 GMT

Ira Glass (of This American Life fame) talks about Getting Creative Work Done. (Via cspowers).

“Key message: If you want to create a thing, you already love it and you have good taste and high expectations. When you are starting out, there is a gap, possibly abig gap, between what you can produce and what your standards are. Can’t let yourself be discouraged by that. Must be willing to admit to yourself that the gap is there. Face the music. Best way to close the gap is to produce a large volume of completed work. On a schedule. Put yourself on a schedule. Or better yet commit yourself to a schedule for others to recieve your work, even if it’s not paid work.”

———

No one does a better job of skewering Cosmo, than Cosmocking. (Via kitiara.)

While ordering dinner, caress up his leg as high as you can get away with. If you’re feeling super-daring, reach inside his pants, and slip a hair tie around his penis–this gutsy move will keep him slightly stimulated all night.

“Honey, what are you… GACK! Okay, that feels really weird and annoying and I have no way of taking it off out here. I’m going to waddle to the bathroom now and I hate you.”

———

If you’re not reading Ursulav, creator of Blackbeard’s Rugged Tampons:

May I suggest you remedy this post haste?

Original: craschworks - comments

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:00:14 GMT

Candidate of change, my ass

Original: craschworks - comments

Gorbachov: The Music Video

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 21:13:22 GMT

GORBACHOV: THE MUSIC VIDEO - BIGGER AND RUSSIANER from Tom Stern on Vimeo.

A technical note on what it took to make this awesomeness:

“….Hey thanks for the kind words y’all! infoPimps question, I shot this on two Panasonic HVX 200s at 720P, then edited in Final Cut Pro and composited in After Effects CS3. It took about 3 months of post work with three animators working for about 6 weeks and me finishing it myself for the rest of that time (after I ran out of money to pay animators)….”

Original: craschworks - comments

[SF Bay Area] Dating ideas

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:04:43 GMT

Some upcoming events I found while researching some dating ideas:

8th Annual Fire Arts Festival – JULY 9-12th
The Fire Arts Arena at Kirkham & 7th Street
http://www.thecrucible.org/fireartsfestival/

With all the bad rap fire is getting these days, it’s time for some
good, wholesome fire fun….like the kind you’ll find at our Fire Arts
Festival. Almost four acres of fire-spewing contraptions and gigantic sculptures — four fire-filled nights to celebrate the art of fire and light. For a real unique Festival experience, consider purchasing a Patron Pass for an extra $50! You’ll miss the long lines with your own private entrance, get exclusive entry to the Steampunk Tree House, and relax in the Patron Pavilion with bar and appetizers.

S.F. Zinefest, July 19-20
http://www.sfzinefest.com/

Zine Fest is returning! The San Francisco Zine Fest will be returning for our seventh annual celebration of small press, zines, comics, and all things DIY in an even bigger and better new location: The San Francisco County Fair Building, Lincoln Way at 9th Avenue in beautiful Golden Gate Park (the location of the recent Bizarre Bazaar and the annual Anarchist Book Fair). This year the Zine Fest will boast over twice the exhibition space as last year, and is sure to be bigger, better, and busier than ever! Special guests, exhibitors, workshops, and so much more; in a gorgeous and relaxing environment! And just like always, admission will be FREE. The SFZF will be open on both Saturday and Sunday this year, too!

Chihuly is glass artist currently showing at the de Young.
His stuff looks pretty interesting:

http://www.chihulyatthedeyoung.org/

Fireworks:

The fireworks display in Sonoma:

Date: Friday, July 4
Time: Activities start at 9:00 am, Parade at 10 am, Fireworks at dusk
Location: Vallejo Field, West Spain St
Cost: Free
More Information: Parade, Fireman’s Water Fight, art, wine, beer, and food for sale.
(707) 938-4626, ext.1

Berekely Marina fireworks

http://sf.funcheap.com/2008/06/17/berkeley-marina-4th-of-july-celebration/

Redwood City :

http://www.redwoodcityport.com/html/July4_2008.html

All are recommended here:

http://parents.berkeley.edu/advice/holidays/july4.html

The Bobs

“Grammy-nominated vocal acrobats, certifiable nutjobs, and perennial audience favorites, The Bobs—Richard Bob Greene, Matthew Bob Stull, Amy Bob Englehardt, and Dan Bob Schumacher—offer incredible live performances, witty, tuneful, original material, and outrageous covers of classic songs. In shows that are part theater, part comedy, part performance art, and utterly unique, this a cappella “band without instruments” uses voices and body percussion to fill a room with an orchestra of harmonious sound as they present a repertoire that ranges from soulful to satire, amazing to moving, and familiar to unimaginable.”

http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/810286/

Original: craschworks - comments

Douchiest phone message in history

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:28:08 GMT

douchiest phone message in history

Via radiantsun

Original: craschworks - comments

The Segway anti-terror task force

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:59:15 GMT

Via shanmonster.

Original: craschworks - comments

Evolutionary psychology in five pictures

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 03:42:02 GMT

Adriana Volpe - An ex-girlfriend.

Naomi Campbell - Another ex-girlfriend

Heidi Klum - Yet another ex. (But not before he impregnated her with a daughter. )

Elisabetta Gregoraci - his current wife.

So who is the hunky stud who won the hearts of all these world-class supermodels?

Meet Flavio Briatore:

He’s one of the co-founders of the Bennetton stores. He’s estimated to be worth $150 million.

Original: craschworks - comments

Reality Based Fighting Concepts

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 19:36:57 GMT

Anybody take this course? Thoughts?

From an email forwarded by a a friend:

"...I was fortunate enough to recently attend the two day course put on by Lee
Aldrige and Roger (Last Name Unknown) from Reality Based Fighting Concepts /
http://www.fightingconcepts.com/

First of all let me say that Lee and Roger exceeded my expectations in all
areas during this course. My money was extremely well spent. I would not
hesitate to recommend this course to both beginners and advanced students of
self defense.

The course lasted from 10am to 4pm on both Saturday and Sunday. This was a
perfect amount of time for the material that was taught. By the time Sunday
afternoon rolled around all students had learned basic strikes, the
Cowcatcher, weapon disarms, and had been exposed to basic ground escapes.

Beyond just being exposed to a series of techniques and applying them to a
pad holding partner the students had the chance to apply the techniques
under stress using both the Bulletman Suit and the Shocknife. In my opinion
validation is necessary to prove to the student the applicability of the
technique under stress. I was thankful that Lee and Roger gave us plenty of
this. The Bulletman Suit and Shocknife are outstanding training aids that
both enable the student to strike as hard as they can as well as feel the
stress of self preservation when being attacked with a knife.

Lee and Roger’s teaching style was very conducive to a group of adult
learners. Lee and Roger demonstrated the techniques, allowed the student to
test the technique on a pad, then quickly moved to applying the technique on
the Bulletman Suit to get the student used to striking a person vice a pad
– aiding in the student visualizing the technique’s use in a fight. In
addition to Lee and Roger being able to easily convey their curriculum they
were also able to answer questions from students about techniques they had
learned at other courses and why they are better or possibly riskier in
application then the RBFC curriculum.

Dino and Ashley were great hosts. Their facility was perfect for this type
of instruction and I would not hesitate to attend a course there again
work-schedule willing.

Now on to what I learned…

- Under stress I default to hammer-fists and elbows more then any other
strike.

- Under stress I forgot to buck when I was tackled and taken to the ground.
This is something I need to work on and when I asked to try it again Lee and
Roger obliged me by tackling me again.

- Lee and Roger’s curriculum for gun disarms is the best I’ve seen so far.

- The Bulletman Suit and Shocknife go a hell of a long way to building the
confidence of the student regarding their ability to hit hard as well as
control a knife wielding opponent with the stress of self-preservation
kicking in.

- I wore a heart rate monitor during a few of the scenarios and it peaked at
137 during the force on force scenarios. I was pleasantly surprised. It
returned to a “waiting for my turn again” rate of 80 within two minutes.

Overall if you haven’t yet had the RBFC experience you are missing out. I’ve
been to CQD, Crucible, and served as an Instructor with a PMC. Based upon
these experiences I know when I see great training and have no hesitation in
saying that Lee and Roger’s curriculum and their ability to teach is easily
on par with the best in the business.
Lee Aldridge
Head Instructor
Reality Based Fighting Concepts
www.fightingconcepts.com

Original: craschworks - comments

Wall-E, Herbivore, Salsa, Places in the Heart

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 07:01:36 GMT

WALL-E is superb. Go see it!

****POSSIBLE MILD SPOILERS****
My only criticism: I thought it had an excessively pessimistic view of the future of humanity. The movie depicted humans as rotund, bland cruise ship passengers, incapable of even walking without the help of their ubiquitous robot servants. And due to reckless disregard for the environment, the earth has been turned into a gigantic toxic waste dump.

I don’t think that’s happening. If anything, I think humans have become much more capable, complex beings than they were 100 years ago. And the environment is cleaner now (in the west), due to increases in wealth and knowledge. And I expect that trend to continue, as we become ever more efficient.
****END MILD SPOILERS

Today, I had lunch today with James, Kim, Alex, Darryl, and Kai, in honor of Alex’s soon departure for London. We were originally scheduled to have brunch at Universal, but it was too crowded. So, at Kai’s suggestion, we relocated to Herbivore. I had the green papaya salad. I’d never had it before, and I was expecting a green salad, with chunks of papaya added. It was, in fact, a huge mound of shredded papaya. A little would’ve been okay, but as an entire dish it was too much. I liked the decor though, and everyone else seemed to like their dishes. I’d go again.

It was fun to watch Kim’s reactions to the boy talk.

Immediately afterward I had private salsa lessons. I really should film myself. I’m sure my moves right now are comic gold.

After salsa, a nap.

Then dinner with Carly, Doug and Marcus. They’ve been in the typical new baby hermit mode–this was the first time I’ve hung out with them since Marcus was born six months ago. We had steak, baked salmon, fruit salad, and mashed potatoes. So yummy. Then we watched Places of the Heart. Sally Fields was so cute!

A fun weekend.

Original: craschworks - comments