Blog of Josh Hall

When they’re tired of the community faces,

Relying on everyone for everything,

When they just want to be left alone,

You’ll see homeless become suburbanites.

When they’re tired of the shared spaces,

Welcoming anyone to do anything,

When they want a fence around their home,

You’ll see children become suburbanites.

When they’re all armed with shields and maces,

Afraid of someone or something,

When they all retreat to their Thunderdome,

You’ll see us all become suburbanites.

Girls have a right to dance.

If you’re smart, you’ll never try to deny them that right.  Eventually, they find someone who will dance with them.

http://blog.kidrobot.com/pencil-tip-micro-sculptures-by-dalton-ghetti/

This is nuts.  This guy can carve the tips of pencils into just about anything.  I can’t imagine how many times he’s had to start over after breaking off a tip.

how often do you talk to people on the phone?  Answer the question for the people that are not physically close to you or that you don’t see in person regularly.  I’ve always had the desire to see people, but I’ve never really wanted to talk to people on the phone.  I just really dislike the phone.  When you do catch up with these people, how long do you normally talk?

[poll id=23]

Don’t do or say anything you wouldn’t have your mother know.

I can’t take all the credit for the work involved in this one.  There are 9 32 x 32 stud plates (which makes this 30 inches by 30 inches!) that I divvied up to the 9 kids in my class this year.  I used software to break a standard image down to 96 x 96 pixels.  Each pixel then corresponds to 1 lego stud, of which there are 9,216.  I then took an output of colors in each of the 96 rows and imported them into Excel, where I could manipulate cell sizes to match up to 32 x 32 cells per sheet.  Each student just had a print off to work from and mark which studs they filled.  The print outs were just black and white, so they had no idea what they were making.  I really liked the concept of using excel as instructions to make large scale mosaics, so I’ll definitely keep that in my bag of tricks for future works.

There are about 5,000 pieces in the mosaic.  The kids had no idea what they were building collectively until the center plate was done and put next to 2 other finished plates.  I did end up having to throw in a bit of time since 2 kids missed class and I wanted to make sure they would be able to finish it in the last class.  Total labor hours is somewhere in the 20+ hour range.

click on the images for larger views.