still dreaming…
Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal is one of my favorite films of all time, and the Landstriders are some of the coolest fantasy creatures ever thought up.
When I saw John Hodgman tweeting about it, I had to throw down with a tidbit of inside knowledge…. that Columbia Professor Robbie Barnett, founder of the Modern Tibetan Studies program, actually played and inspired these creatures through his background in the circus.
A random, but cool fact… glad someone found it interesting.
Eric Mill, of Mill Industries (a personal blog that has nothing to do with heavy machinery), attended my session at MobileCampNYC3 yesterday, and posted a positive note about it:
The first session I went to was awesome, about the Twitter Vote Report, which was actually not just a Twitter thing at all. Via SMS, calling in, Twitter, or native iPhone and Android(!) apps, you could report the quality of your voting experience on election day, even going so far as to specify a rating. In fact, they did an excellent job using hashtags on Twitter such that you could post “Had a #good time voting in #11216 no problems here #votereport” and the Vote Report project would pick up that someone had a Good experience in zip code 11216. Nathan Freitas, a cool guy, and Dave Troy, the guy behind Twittervision, were involved, and they have released as many visualizations and raw data as they can from it. PLUS, Nathan today released the source code to the Android app that he built in a day for it.
I felt a bit negative about the event at the end of the day (see this tweet) mostly because it seemd everyone either wanted to sell themselves or thought i was trying to sell them on something, instead of it just being an open relaxed forum for the exchange of ideas and knowledge. Fortunately, there are posts like this, which let you know people were actively listening, engaged and learning, that help make it all better.
Eric worked for Blue State Digital during the election and is now actively looking for his next gig, so if you are in need of a sharp, energetic thoughtful developer, mobile or otherwise, with political campaign experience, let him know!
I’ve posted the source for the TwitterVoteReport Android client on Google Code at: http://code.google.com/p/votereport-android/. This application was developed and released for use during the November 4th election monitoring effort at twittervotereport.com. Developed in one day, the application was downloaded nearly 3000 times through the Android Market and resulted in hundreds of report submissions on election day.
The code is released under the Apache 2.0 License.
The primary classes under the com.votereport.android package are:
There are also a number of subpackages (xml, view, ui, net) with helper classes in various states for doing things like parsing RSS, rendering maps and making HTTP calls. Feel free to take what you need if you are just looking for some ideas and inspiration.
In summary, this is still a work in progress, a snapshot of code written in one day, that can provide Android developers a starting point for their own geo-located data collection applications. I would love to have more developers join the project in order to move this codebase forward, including help implementing the MapView renderer, the Atom GeoRSS parser and so on.
Noelle, Noelle, Noelle, Noelle… born is the queen of New Jersey! Another niece, and boy does she have a lot of energy. Eager to share her big break news about something called the “The N & S Show”, though she doesn’t even know what an eggplant or “Ants on a Log” is! We also get to see her broken collarbone x-ray up close – beware, it is not for the squeamish.
The more I’ve been working out and about on a laptop, the more I’ve realized I need to have one of those snazzy laptop stands that helps you work hard all day without getting a crick in your neck. My requirements were simple – had to fit in my bag, while being sturdy and rugged enough to hold my 15″ macbook pro.
Fortunately, Eric Skiff of NYC Resistor, the Brooklyn-based hacker lab, has designed his very own model that fit the bill and is selling it on Etsy.
I ordered one right away, and since I know Eric, was invited over to NYC Resistor to customize my very own etched design on the sides of the stand, and watch the Epilog Laser Engraver cut it out of a sheet of clear acrylic right before my eyes.
Check out the flickr photo set to see what I came up with, and then go order your very own on Etsy
