Why bother with Marshall McLuhan?
August 10, 2011
mcluhan
In light of my recent posts on Marshall McLuhan, it was really interesting to see this article from The New Atlantis, entitled “Why bother with Marshall McLuhan?”. Although I know that McLuhan is a fairly influential communications theorist, I was wondering this myself.
The article gives some very helpful background. One particularly unsettling story involves McLuhan’s responses to those who didn’t understand Understanding Media; his original response to bafflement was that baffled readers were simply “unable to recognize the very large structural changes in human outlook that are occurring today.
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Your sketchbook, your portfolio
August 8, 2011
entrepreneurship, open source, portfolio, sketchbook
As I’ve mentioned in some previous posts on this site, I’m currently working on a project that is a site for sharing, and talking about, business ideas. I’m combining a social voting site (like Digg), where people can submit very brief descriptions of ideas to be voted on, with a Wiki that people can use to collaboratively work on them.
I’m making a lot of progress and will probably be able to soft-launch the site in the next week, or if not then, in early September.
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Introducing the "donuffin"... a donut-muffin hybrid. With beets!
August 3, 2011
beets, betacyanin, betalain, betaxanthin, cupcakes, donuffin, donuts
[caption id="attachment_1409" align="alignleft" width="400" caption="Cake muffins on top..."][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_1410" align="alignleft" width="400" caption="...donuts on the bottom. The donuffins' color changes from yellow on the bottom of the donut side, to magenta on the muffin top. My theory is that the donut side gets hotter in the oven (since it is face-down), so relatively more of the molecules responsible for beets' red pigment (betacyanin) are deactivated on that side."][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_1411" align="
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Where is open source 3D printing going?
August 3, 2011
3d printing, makerbot, open source, open source hardware, ultimaker
Today, while looking at the Make Magazine blog, I noticed a post about the Ultimaker, which the magazine suggested might be a “Makerbot killer”.
I remember the first time I heard about Ultimaker earlier this year. I watched the clip from Dutch TV of these guys demonstrating their product, which you can see at the right. If the full potential of this machine is achievable by a typical consumer builder, that’s amazing.
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Oil-poached turbot
July 29, 2011
lemons, olive oil, parsley, poaching, potatoes
[caption id="attachment_1392" align="alignleft" width="400" caption="The completed dish."][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_1393" align="alignleft" width="400" caption="Setting up the turbot, parsley and lemon in a cast-iron pan"][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_1394" align="alignleft" width="400" caption="The oil shimmers ominously as it heats. It will need to reach 300 degrees."][/caption]
[caption id="attachment_1395" align="alignleft" width="400" caption="The oil poured over the fish, lemon and parsley. Next, it goes in the oven to bake for a few minutes."][/caption]
There’s a technique that’s been on my list for quite a while to try - oil poaching.
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Building a vacuum forming machine
July 29, 2011
3d printing, instructables, makerbot, reprap, vacuum forming
[caption id="attachment_1380" align="alignleft" width="400" caption="The entire apparatus. The frame, which is on top, has a sheet of plastic in it. It's put in the oven (just like an oven shelf - the balsa wood on the top and bottom hooks into the ledges inside the oven). It will then be brought down on top of the parts you see in the picture, and air will be sucked through the hole in the middle of the plate.
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Why I dropped Pligg for Drupal's Drigg
July 28, 2011
cms, coding, development, drigg, drupal, entrepreneurship, open source, php, pligg, social voting, web, wordpress
In this post, I talked about the idea of an open-source business plan website.
I’m planning to set it up with a few components: a Digg-like voting system for entering ideas and voting on them, a random idea generator along the lines of my cheese plate generator, and possibly a Wiki for writing more detailed notes, which is tied in with the voting system (e.g. each idea has a Wiki page assigned to it upon creation).
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What's the difference between curly and flat parsley?
July 27, 2011
parsley
[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="400" caption="Parsley. From flickr user brucegilbert"][/caption]
Mmm, parsley. Every time I smell it, I’m reminded of being about 5 and running around on the lawn behind my grandmother’s apartment building in London. I have no idea whether parsley actually grew there, and yet I remember it very well…
These days, I have occasion to relive that memory often since I constantly use parsley in one dish or another.
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"It was a nice party anyway": the wonderful history of the Whole Earth Catalog
July 23, 2011
entrepreneurship, making, whole earth catalog
[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="The first Catalog."][/caption]
I was in the library the other day doing some research for a project on small publishers. What a surprise to find, within a book called “The Do-It-Yourself Publishing Handbook”, a brief first-person history of the founding of The Whole Earth Catalog.
The _Catalog_, for those who don’t know, was a collection of creative and sustainable-living products, and sort of an icon of the counterculture in the late 60s and 70s.
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Mushroom soup
July 23, 2011
carrots, cream, leeks, mushrooms, onions, parsley, stock, thyme, white wine
[caption id="attachment_1364" align="alignleft" width="400" caption="Soup!"][/caption]
This is a great, and fairly easy to make, mushroom soup. It’s creamy and earthy, and the leeks actually help to bring out the more subtle mushroom flavor.
One sort of unique thing about this soup is that you make the stock for it from scratch. I’ve never actually made stock before (please don’t get too upset), but I’ve heard homemade stock is much better than the stuff you buy at the store.
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