LED Throwies are an open source graffiti technology developed at the Graffiti Research Lab, a division of the Eyebeam OpenLab.

If you’d like to create you’re own LED Throwies, you can get more info on the instructable page, or watch this YouTube video.

I’ve already made some budget research on eBay:

• Pack of 50 multicolor LEDs: 16$ - 9$ + 7$ shipping from China - Search for “10mm diffused led“
• Pack of 25 CR2032 batteries: 7€ - 2€ + 5€ shipping from Honk Kong - Search for “CR2032“
• Pack of 50 magnets: 12.74$ - 7.99$ + 4.75$ shipping - Search for Neodymium Magnets 1/4 inch Disc N48 Rare Earth

Another place to buy packs of LED Throwies from China at hebeiltd.com.cn

Group Order closing date: Saturday 3rd February

These sales are a bit special, it gives the discount only when you order the same tshirt-design twice (

Full Threadless Catalog

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Pour les francophones:

Soldes de la Saint Valentin sur Threadless, on démarre un achat groupé pour avoir les tshirt encore moins cher!

Fermeture de l’achat groupé: Samedi 3 Février

Ces soldes sont un peu spéciales, il faut commander 2 fois le même design (peu importe la taille du tshirt) pour profiter de 10$ de réduction. Laissez un commentaire avec les designs qui vous intéressent, et on fera le lien avec d’autres personnes intéressées pour faire un achat réduit.

Le catalogue des tshirt dispo sur Threadless

Here is the list of the tees I’m interested in:

• Gold Rush!
• Many Many Monsters
• Think Warm
• Mozart Didn’t Like To Practice Either

Life

Sleep log: at last I can have a quick-view on my sleep pattern, which was somtimes really un-regulated this last month. Simple method to do it, every morning on the monthly calendar inside my moleskine agenda, I color a little grey bar inside the day cell.

Freelance launching: would it be done at last? I’ve been procastinating the legal registration process during all the month, finding perfect excuses with my willing to live abroad in the coming year.

German courses: could have been done before, but not without this christmas super-motivation-boots to go living in Berlin next summer. At the rate of one hour a day, which is really hard to maintain, I could be ready with some basic skills at the right time. Current level: basic understanding when reading a text.

Hand-crafting projects: I always need to do something from my hand: code and crafts. After origami last month that occupied some sleepless nights, time for duct-tape skills. Not really fond of it, I’m now looking some something a little bit more geekier like a vibrobot (solar powered).

Movies

Some people come to this blog just because of movie listing already existing in previous posts.

Thumbsucker: the typical kind of movie I really like: unknow actors, american style, sub-urban life with people having everyday-lik problems.

Herr Lehmann: just to know a little bit more about life before the berlin wall collapsed. Funny to retrieve some scene I’ve been visiting last month, hearing about some neighborhood. But I haven’t understand anything about hte recurring ‘electrolyte’ joke during the movie, if someone can help?

Cashback: everyday-life in another country: UK, a student taking a small job in a Sainsbury’s supermarket, navigating in thoughts during his sleepless hours. Good fun, and lots of nice reflexion about love.
This movie was a short first, released in 2004. If you have 15 minutes free, you can watch it on YouTube.

Prête-moi ta main: I usually do not go to watch this kind of comedian french movie, probably because of some cheesy memories from the 90’s. I feared a bit for this one, but I was really full of laught during the movie Lots of french clichés, with Alain Chabat as fun as he can be, and the mysteriously attractive Charlotte Gainsburg.

Music

Joshua Rabin: listened more than once during first weeks of January, begin to stop the addiction after getting ot the fact that it was really sticking on my mood. A music for to remember this month feelings.

Regina Spektor: send by Bertrand, a nice female vocalist with some great games in her songs.

Wax Tailor: discovered by Chris on her berlin-radio, they really sounds like The Avalanches with some tv/movie voice mixed inside electonic music.
You can listen their whole album on their website: http://www.waxtailor.com/

Reading

The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley, Chris favorite book. A witch-daughter not at her place in a Royal court, finding her way in the art of dragon-slaying. Always nice to know how to manage draong affaire!

The Pursuit of Emptiness by John Perry Barlow. The kind of text I’d like to read every few month to get back on rails about my life. Some really powerful quotes inside, just to ridiculize most of our westerners’ way of life.

And if your old projects are complaining after installing the new version, you just have to un-comment a simple line in your “config/environment.rb”:

  # Specifies gem version of Rails to use when vendor/rails is not present
  RAILS_GEM_VERSION = '1.1.6'

“In fact, one of the saddest but most common conditions in elementary school computer labs (when they exist in the developing world), is the children are being trained to use Word, Excel and PowerPoint. I consider that criminal, because children should be making things, communicating, exploring, sharing, not running office automation tools.”

Source: The Sugar UI by Coding Horror

Changing DOM className

Because my application needs to display some dynamic user selection of an avatar, a great way has been to change the CSS className of the selected avatar.

Here is how to do it with RJS:

page.select(".avatar").all() do |element, index|
  page.call 'Element.removeClassName', element, 'selected_avatar'
end

page.call 'Element.addClassName', @avatar, 'selected_avatar'

2007 will be the coming of One Laptop Per Child in the mainstream news networks.

I’d like to follow on this blog the coming interesting features of this new platform, because it could be the birth of a revolution.
Just imagine how access to Information Technology could change part of this world. Some people would argue that it would be more important to bring water, food, medecine… but today all we can bring is this new computer, to a very special population: children…

I predict it would be a hit, even children from occidental countries would dream about getting one of these wonderful new tech-candies. Let’s show some interesting features included in the package.

Interesting features

You can get more information about OLPC computer on The OLPC Wiki

Sugar UI

How to change people mind about computing? Just creating a new UI.

At the beginning, it’s just a piece of plastic, then it’s a metaphor on the world. Sugar is centered around people and activity, really social oriented. This is not an office, with a ‘desk’ and some ‘files’ to archive, this is about

“View Source Code” key

Which is the most boring key on all your 80’s keyboard? CAPS LOCK? Verr. Num.?

Special bonus for all geeky children in the world – it would probably not be more than 5% of final destination – there is a “View source code” key on the OLPC keyboard. This special key would allow children to read the code of the application they’re using, and probably modify it if they need too.

The stuff disturbing me here is that we won’t be able to know which improvements will be created on these platform by some of the most creatives mind, unless there’s a control on the computer code, or unless the children are smart enough to join or create some open-source communities, but that’s already a lot of steps to climb.

The Virgin Suicide experiment

For a few months, or probably a few year, I always wanted to virtualize a scene from The Virgin Suicide movie. In this scene, friends are phoning using music lyrics to make the conversation, with really great soundtracks. The idea I have is to do the same using mp3 and a kind of music chat room.

This morning, we tried to experiment with Sylvain it using CampFire from 37Signals as a music chat room and putting mp3 files inside this room. Well, this didn’t really work, as mp3 handling was really not working, and it was probably too easy to communicate directly to the other personn, not respecting the basic concept rule of speaking only with soundtrack.

A new idea for social audio

But a nice idea came from experiment: would it be possible to have a kind of audio social network? It would be like all these widgets for MySpace, or Pandora intelligent player, it’ll more be like a kind of radio where your friends are putting music inside, and you can just listen to your friend selection. A group interaction could create a kind of music timetable, with special music sessions at a certain hour, music getting random at the other time of the day.

I won’t implement this idea, it’s really a big job to do and it would need few months of dedicated time, but it’s really expected to work if nicely done.