Image via Wikipedia Mark Frauenfelder is a man of many talents: Founded bOING bOING, a zine in 1988 with partner/wife, Carla Sinclair bOING bOING beget BoingBoing.net in 1995 as a basic website which became a weblog in 2000 Was an editor at Wired in the 90s Has published several books Is editor-in-chief of MAKE Magazine And as part of the research for his latest book, Made by Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World, Frauenfelder can add a few more: cigar box luthier, chicken coop constructor, and espresso machine modder. Here is an interview with Reason.TV to discuss the new book and the relevance of doing-it-yourself in a world of point-and-click:

Image by oddsock via Flickr After a lot of wrangling of PHP, HTML, a tiny bit of JAVA, a little CSS, and redirecting some RSS, BLHill.net is now on a new server running the latest version of WordPress. WordPress 3.0 is a massive upgrade from the previous version. For me the most important part was merging of WPMU, or WordPress Multi-User, into the code base. This allowed me to set up one installation of WordPress to host all of my websites. I am only running a few sites right now, but plan to add more. Some people are running thousands of sites using a single WordPress installation including WordPress.com, which hosts over 100,000 blogs. Now let’s talk about whom this release is named after – Thelonious Monk. Thelonious Sphere Monk was a jazz pianist. But saying Monk was just a jazz pianist is like saying Steve Wozniak is just a [Continue Reading...]

Museum Mishap sounds like the name of a hipster/indie-rock band combining a MIDI Accordian, a keytar and some claves… The cable holding a model of Foucault’s Pendulum snapped last month at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris, sending the 60-pound ball crashing to the ground. It was permanently dented in the fall. Léon Foucault’s 1851 experiment remains a mesmerizing evidence that the Earth does, in fact, rotate. Scientists were aware of this, but the fact that the pendulum swings through 180 degrees over the course of a day provides tangible proof that we are on a planet spinning in space. The Umberto Eco novel, Foucault’s Pendulum, made the mid-19th-century physics demonstration famous. The novel even opens at the Musée des Arts et Métiers. The pendulum played a key role in the high-literary conspiracy involving the Knights Templar at the heart of the novel. Via Geoff Brumfiel at Nature [Continue Reading...]

This is one of those Seinfeld moments… I used to be on the road an awful lot commuting to various jobs, and would see these cars with memorial stickers on them a couple times each week, if not daily. I’ve always wondered what sort of sociological and psychological factors might be at play. Southern Californians have always had deep relationships with their vehicles. The four-wheeled contraptions aren’t just a way to get from Point A to Point B. For many, the car is a toy, sanctuary or way to announce to the world that “this is who we are.” So perhaps it’s not strange that sedans, SUVs and pickups also have become forums for displaying sadness, for showing familial bonds, for paying tribute to the departed. “To the extent that cars are a central part of our life, it makes sense,” said Nicholas Christenfeld, a professor of psychology at the [Continue Reading...]

My kids and I love the episode where Squidward gets his clarinet stuck in his throat! A 12-year-old Long Island girl is crediting “SpongeBob SquarePants” for teaching her how to help her choking friend. Miriam Starobin and her best friend, Allyson Golden, were in music class Tuesday when Allyson began choking on her gum. Allyson turned red and started kicking her legs. Miriam — with thoughts of SpongeBob and the gang — flew into action and performed the Heimlich maneuver, and the gum popped out. In one episode of the Nickelodeon animated series, SpongeBob retrieves a clarinet lodged in Squidward’s throat. In another, Patrick revives Squidward after he swallows a fork. Miriam says she is also a fan of medical shows like “Grey’s Anatomy,” but never had any formal training in the technique. Via: Associated Press

After a massive redesign last year to KPAA’s website (including a blog component) hosted on the venerable Squarespace platform, I sort of let my personal site here languish. Late in the Fall, I also created a new site to showcase my wife’s photography. By that point, I was really burned out on web development… But then over the holidays, I had some much-needed time off and decided to revamp my online presence. I updated my WordPress install and added a great theme with some fairly heavy customization utilizing some of my wife’s artwork. Next I added a series of tumblr microblogs on various topics. By modifying some special RSS feeds, I was able to create a unique web publishing system based around Google Reader. With a couple of keystrokes I can easily distribute links from articles I find online to one of the following topical microblogs: AEC.BLHill.net (Architecture, Engineering, Construction [Continue Reading...]

A coworker saw one of these pictures the other day at work and asked me about it. That conversation got me to reminiscing about the event. In 2003 (I think), our company shut the doors to the office and everyone journeyed to the San Diego Wild Animal Park for a day of fun and photos. This really was one of the highlights of my professional career. Everyone had a blast and we got to see some things that most people never will experience. We were treated to some behind the scenes stuff as well as a really wonderful “safari ride” through the open enclosures where we were given the opportunity to hand feed giraffes and rhinos. (For some reason we weren’t given a chance to feed the lions, but maybe next time…) Good times.

I decided it was finally time to update this site and upgrade it just a tad. This is the new improved version of BLHill.net and it runs on the latest version of WordPress. Incidentally, the latest version, 2.5 is named after one of my first saxophone-playing heroes, Michael Brecker. Brecker passed away on 13 January 2007 following a long bout with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). He is one of the reasons that I decided to take up the saxophone professionally at the age of 12. Here is a picture of him. Thanks. Enjoy.

“The architect-couple Arakawa and Madelaine Gins who are responsible for the Reversible Destiny Lofts have a lot more in their ouevre of conceptual fountain-of-life-inspired structures… “The piece includes the life-enhancing apartment buildings, the colorful Bioscleave House made from eco-friendly materials with odd asymmetrical design and the weird-yet-great-website park called Site of Reversible Destiny” [ Cool Hunting link ]