Blog of Josh Hall

TED talks are great.  There’s just so many of them, that it’s hard to know which ones to watch.

Well, here’s the 10 most viewed:

http://www.news.com.au/business/executive-lounge/brains-trust-ted-talks-most-viewed-videos/story-fng3e17m-1226520145281

Do you still sign in to instant messaging programs from home?  I still use IM at work, but that’s it.  In my single life, I was signed in 24/7 and I’d be up all night talking to anyone that wanted to chat.

Recently, I guess I linked gchat to my google search profile or something, because I was searching for something and an IM popped up from a friend.  I didn’t know what to do with it.  I had been so removed from the whole IM interface outside of work and I forgot it existed.

I still have no desire to introduce that back into my life of distractions, but I was curious if anyone else had dropped off the IM radar too, or if I was the only one.  I know a few people still plan times to do video chat, but I think that’s a separate category since it’s planned and it’s video.

When I was kid, we had an uncle that would give us a $100 bill if he were in town during our birthday. He was in twice for my birthday, and both of my $100 bills got spent at the fine establishment of Toys R US. In 1 trip each. The first time, it was $100 worth of Micro Machines and the second time it was $100 worth of LEGO sets. I Can’t believe my mom didn’t say a word. I think the Micro Machine packages were $3.99 each, with 3 or 4 cars in each package. I still remember the young blonde cashier’s expression as her eyes got big as if to say, “Really?? You’re buying that many?!?” I proudly returned a satisfied smirk as if to say, “Yep, ring ’em up.”

I grew out of micro machines after a few years. I enjoyed them immensely, but it was certainly a toy that required you to “act out” and I wasn’t so into that. I enjoyed displaying, collecting, and building. So, yeah, I still have the pieces for the LEGO sets, but the micro machines were all sold at a flee market that my mom took me and Travis to. Yet again, I’m surprised she didn’t say a word when I let my entire micro machine collection go for dollars. I don’t remember the exact amount, but I’m sure it wasn’t $100. I’m sure it wasn’t $50.

That said, thanks, Mom. Thanks for letting me take risks, make mistakes, and learn from them on my own. In a time where we were on food stamps, living on potatoes and onions, you let me live. You let me play. For those that know me well today, just think how uptight and boring I could have been if I were told my whole childhood I couldn’t have anything because we needed to save every penny or else.

“Home is where your heart is; work is where your laptop is.”

Crazy.  These are just wood shavings beautifully arranged.   These have to take so much vision and time to produce.

http://www.designswan.com/archives/incredible-wooden-chip-artwork-by-sergey-bobkov.html

I’m a part of Steel City LUG, and we’re displaying at LEGO KidsFest this weekend, so I wanted to put together something special for it.  I was imbued by the Batman/Joker of Arthur Gugick, who was inspired by Christopher Doyle’s Dorian Bley.  I originally had a different idea, but it was my wife that came up with the more kid appropriate Harry Potter – Voldemort pairing.  Might still do that other idea eventually…

I used the same planning method as I did with the Pittsburgh Pirates mosaic, where I exported the output from special software to Excel to print of special paint-by-number like instructions for each of the 4 32×32 stud plates.  Every other column corresponds to either Harry or Voldemort, so we placed 4,096 1×1 cheese slopes back to back.  Once all the pieces were placed, it takes a lot of time to critique and manipulate the image to its optimal presentation.

The biggest challenge for this one was scale.  If you look back at Arthur’s, they’re much larger.  With mosaics, the larger they are, or the more pieces you can fit in, the higher the overall resolution, which means the easier it is to get a better looking image.  Of course, the larger it is, the more money you have to spend on pieces.  I decided on this scale because it wasn’t cost prohibitive, but I also felt confident that we’d be able to tweak the images enough to pull off a great display.

It took about 30 labor hours to put this all together over the past month or so.  Jordan Otto, Matt Redfield, Ryan Duchene, and my Wife, Kallie, all were part of the design, time, and tweaking.

Here’s a video of the transition: