IZation Labs

Well, it’s that time of year again: when college students around the world start to pull their hair out because they didn’t get enough work done the previous nine tenths of the semester, and now have to pick up the slack as finals loom. Oh? That doesn’t happen to you? Perhaps it’s just me.

Graduation cometh, and verily, in 13 days I shall walk, or die trying.

On to the fun! The small CNC Router we built a few years ago at IZation Labs is still kicking! It was used to make around 20 Wine Glass Holders for Christmas Gifts this past year. The following video shows the basic process from start to finish.

Yes. I do need to get more sleep.

-Lace

An elegant forum solution has finally been selected, and the new forums can be accessed by clicking the link titled ‘Forum‘ at the top of this page. Head that way if you have questions about IZation Labs, College-Now, PBLs, or even if you just want to shoot the breeze and bump brains for a little while.

-Lace

Just a brief update to any would be viewers;

I spent a few hours at the Kehoe center in Shelby today meeting the newest College-Now students and speaking to them about technology, all of which went very well, I’m excited to get to know and work with these new ‘eager young minds’.

Following the line of CNC machines, below is a video of a machine called the RepRap, a diy fabricated 3D printer that is capable of, for all intents and purposes, printing copies of itself. Just like how the CNC Router I posted in the last is now being used to machine parts for a similar albeit much larger machine, the RepRap  is a machine that can build itself. Neat, huh?

Don’t forget to subscribe by clicking the link at the top of the page!

-Lace

The following device has been unofficially dubbed the “Blasphemous Bible Box” by my roommate. It was built for my art class, in which we were instructed to create our own ‘box’ project. The limitations were few. The size and style of box did not matter. The concepts were to be approved by the professor, and it did not need to be comprehensible, ie, it could be extremely personal and secretive.

My project was built from a lightly modified inexpensive cigar box. From the outside it looks like a modern though simplistic black box, with a kind of hammered metal sheen.

The inside is lined with genuine leather, complete with a New Testament Bible. The Bible is stuck open to the book of Revelations. Specifically, the primary verses concerning the Mark of the Beast.

Hidden beneath the paper and leather is a bird’s nest of electrical wiring and components. Inside is an Arduino, six AA batteries wired in series, a five volt regulator, a servo motor, and an RFID reader.

This is an art project, you ask? Yep. Read on, there’s a video of it in action after the break.

Read more »

That’s right, you heard me. Today, to use the words most favored by my College-Now class, “The Macbook’s bust.”

Dead. Came home from a nine hour work day, and the system is frozen, the little spinning umbrella staring insistently at me, as if to say, “Just two more seconds, I promise I’ll start working again soon!” I let it sit for awhile, eventually become frustrated, and then hard reboot (hold the power button for 5 seconds).

First sign of trouble:

“Uh-oh. What’s that sound? Oh crap. No, I know that sound.” *smacks forehead* “No! NO! Come on!”

What was it I was hearing? It was the hard disk drive. Making the same sounds as a floppy disk drive out of the 80′s and 90′s. (I’m dating myself with that comment, but still.) A few loud crackle/scratch/grind sounds followed by the sound of a short, thin piece of metal ‘pinging’ once or twice.

“Well,” I think, “at least the screen is blue, like it’s going to boot. Wait. Oh no..”

Second sign of trouble:

This is it. This is all the Mac had to say? Not even a cryptic error message? I can just IMAGINE the confusion that would ensue if a typical, non techy Mac user (such as one portrayed by the…ahem, person in the Mac commercials) came across this image, blinking incessantly on screen where they expected their beautiful background and dock to be.

So I rebooted, knowing already that I was most horribly, utterly, (again, to use a common College-Now phrase,) hosed.

Third sign of trouble:

Upon reboot…
Oh well now we’re talking! This is much better! So informative and explanatory!

So the system is kaput, and I’m not sure what my next move is. I figure that I have two options, however.

One: I fix it myself. Who says Macs are inaccessible? I remove a (good few) screws and pop out the hard drive, then give data recovery a shot on my own, replacing the dead one with a bigger, hopefully more hearty MBPro compatible one. The con, however, is that it will void my warranty, which would be a shame, as the fans already need replacing because I’ve run them on full all the time due to the heat generated by rendering in Blender.

Two: I send it in to a (cr)Apple repair center. They fix it under warranty and two weeks later I get my system back, with no idea if the data would have been recoverable, or the security of the data that was on the hard drive, or really any information or guarantee that it won’t happen again. Great. At least I only lost about 2 weeks worth of data, the rest was backed up. Unfortunately, that two weeks included ALL the work on WNBG, as well as a bunch of daily models. :/

Opinions?

–Lace

As is the norm, I’m up late, blending. A College-Now grad (and good friend of mine), Matt Spring, is passed out on the sofa next to me. He and I have been hanging out just about all weekend. I’m too tired to be too talkative tonight, so instead, here are some late night renders that I’ll post while I’m waiting for my newest one to crank out.

The sword pictures will be explained in the next post, when I have the final image rendered. Night, all!

–Lace

Here’s a video made in Blender by Alex Polkinghorn, a College-Now Student at North Central State College. He made the fire by following a tutorial by Nion, in which particle effects do most of the work. Well done!

If anyone knows the link to the tutorial, please leave a comment below the article. Thanks!

–Lace