I successfully made my own flip folding device for t-shirts. It may not be glamorous, and it folds the shirt in a quasi-crooked fashion but twenty some wooden hangers were liberated from the closet in the process. The poorly cut lines of cardboard were covered up in ducted tape but the shirts will not know that when I use this nifty device.

The device was simple enough to make but if you are to try this on your own I would recommend using a thinner grade of cardboard. The one I used was very sturdy and made it tough to cut to precision, which lead to the shirts folding over in a crooked manner. If I had straight and proper lines on all three of the folding pieces I am sure this would not be an issue.

How to make your own shirt folder (1:31)

I also could not find a 72cm length of cardboard without a fold, or a bend in it but it did not affect the overall outcome. The most time consuming thing was cutting the pieces of cardboard, but that was partly due to the thickness of it. I would estimate about thirty minutes of effort went into constructing this and found that it worked pretty well.

This is a draft post and it contains partial thoughts. These are half chewed on ideas that lack a start and end. They only have a middle.

Ideas, turned into sentences, dance around with each in the text editor. Being moved around to a better spot in the story to tell their part, or removed entirely because their story will not be told today. They always hope to make the final revision and perform their choreographed steps for the public.

What makes these thoughts a draft? When does a thought, idea or rant go from the infant stages to being released in the wild? Will this still be a draft after I allow it to live amongst the other complete thoughts? Is this all a draft can hope for in life?

When words cannot explain there are links to an appropriate article or an inspiring photograph. This has neither, and without a subject to write on is this a draft? Am I just a manipulator moving this marionette of work, hiding behind the curtains and unseen by the audience?

Only at the end of his time on stage is a purpose given to the performance. The morale of the story is known, but only at the very last moment. The moment when the velvet curtains fall hard to reality and disrupt the dust on the neglected stage floor. The audience sit in silence for half a second, and in unison applaud as one.

I was searching for silhouettes of people, or a team, for a mock-up for a new CurlTV page and realized that silhouettes are really neat. I became my search with “face silhouette” and was a little surprised to find nudity in there. You can’t go anywhere without a nipple or three popping up.

After months of entertaining the notion I think I have decided to sell my Heritage H-550. I bought it nearly four years ago and I remember the months of research that lead up to its purchase.

I originally contacted the dealer while I was doing Dell training at NAIT and when the dealer first email came in I was ecstatic. What followed was weeks of emails back and forth and a very long shipping process, one that lead to me calling in sick so I could be home when the final delivery attempt was made. I have looked back on those emails and remember it like I am looking through a photo album.

Like several things, I have realized I am not an active participant in them like I was years ago; most notably guitars and concerts. When I started playing guitar I began on a simple acoustic but my dreams outgrew my ability and after a few months I got it in my head that a better guitar would make me a better guitarist.

If there was a book of obvious things that need to be told to people this would go in there so others would not make the same mistake I did.

I am not sure how to go about selling such an instrument, especially in Edmonton. I called Avenue Guitars but was told it would be a long time (not months, but years) until my guitar was brought out from their stock and put on display. There are other guitar stores in Edmonton but I trust Avenue Guitars, but if I want to go through a store perhaps I should contact a few other reputable places.

I have considered going through eBay, Facebook and Kijiji. The benefit of the last two is that the transfer would most likely be local so there would be no problems shipping the guitar or being subject of a money scam. When I get an idea in my head I want to act on it immediately, and just like the original moment I decided to buy a Heritage, I want to sell the guitar now.

Fortunately for me I have gained a little sense and will wait until we return from Mexico before preparing an online posting. Posting an ad and then neglecting potential buyers for two weeks could be bad for business. In the mean time I have put a word out to a few people at work that I am looking to sell Bethany and maybe something will come of that before I can post the guitar online.

Tell your friends.

Keepon (key-pon)
  1) Yellow snow cone that dances to the beats and rhythm of music
  2) Unexpected relationship with music from Spoon
  3) Something everyone wants to own

Need to know more information? Then familiarize yourself with Keepon from the two videos below that launched Keepon into our hearts.

Keepon dancing to Spoon’s “Don’t You Evah” (4:05)   

Keepon dancing to Spoon’s “I Turn My Camera On” (3:37)

Now that you know what I am talking about, this amazing little dancer will be going into production soon. Right now the device carries a $30,000 price tag and was hand built when needed but it will soon be available for researchers and eventually will see a consumer model released.

It seems so long ago that I first read about Keepon and my first thought was when and where I could buy one, I wasn’t alone in thinking that, and it seems our prayers will be answered soon. This is such a simple thing, like a revolutionized dancing sunflower, or an adult Furby and it will sell fast.

The launch of the Do Not Call List yesterday generated 1,562 calls per minute, according to the CTRS. The website, which was down for me throughout most of the day, had received nine million hits by mid afternoon.

If there was any doubt that this system would not be popular then the Canadian public spoke very loudly! When the 30-day grace period ends and our number will be skipped on phone lists Jenna and I will be down in Mexico but upon our return we should have no fear of answering the phone.

If we do see 1-800, or 1-866 flavor number we can assume that it is from a company we deal with and finally learn about the new deals Presidents Choice Financial, Citi Bank Mastercard or Rogers Canada have to share with us.

Flip Fold For All

Last weeks season premiere of The Big Bang Theory showed Sheldon using a t-shirt folding machine named the Flip Fold. I originally saw this device in use during a YouTube video years ago and loved it. It puts everything in a neat and proper form and a single shirt is completed in seconds.

I could never justify the $20 retail cost for a few plastic pieces but admired the idea. When I saw the Flip Fold in action again last week I became determined to make my own using a tutorial like the one below. Once I complete this cardboard machine expect a complete trip report.

How to make your own shirt folder (1:31)

This idea seemed so obvious that it was a sin that it was not already in production. It would not be a profitable notion but it would have been extremely handy. Allow me to give you some history with a conversation I had with Scott yesterday.

Sean: I wonder how far away Hawaii is from the United States compared to Japan?
Scott: Hmm, if only Google Maps allowed you to do the distance between places; not give you a route or anything but just how far apart it is.
Sean: That is a brilliant idea, suggest that to Google now!

We couldn’t find a ’suggestion box’ right away and our conversation wrapped up thinking we had thought of the addition to Google Maps. Right along side being able to track Hurricanes, California forest fires and road reports having a distance calculator would be all you ever needed. I was so proud of our brainstorm that I told Jenna about it that night and never gave it a second thought.

This morning Scott tells me that he found this ‘distance’ add-on to Google Maps here, and it does exactly what we wanted. We played with it for a bit, measured distances and looked to see where it would curve around the globe and that was that. A wonderful addition to Google Maps was already there for us and our brilliant idea was late to the party.

In case you were wondering it is 4,100 KM from Honolulu to Los Angeles and 6,200 KM from Honolulu to Tokyo.

The recent coverage on Hurricane Gustav really piqued my interest in the science of hurricanes and everything surrounding them. I kept track of Gustav as it came across the Dominican Republic and read how New Orleans was preparing for what Mayor Ray Nagin called the storm of the century.

Once New Orleans was in the clear a tropical depression in the Atlantic Ocean was upgraded to hurricane status and given a name. This really got me wondering. How do they select names? Why do they have names anyway? My curiosity is your key to answers.

Apparently there is a six year cycle of names for the Atlantic hurricanes (there are other lists for the rest of the world) and if a name is retired then the list is revised. Hurricanes are named to avoid confusion and to make it easier to report on a Hurricane Samantha instead of referring to it as a number or by using the coordinates of the storm.

While it feels like all hurricane names in recent memory (Katrina, Rita, Wilma) have been female they are rotating between both genders for names and have been doing so for nearly three decades. Sadly for most of you out there your name is not on the six year naming convention cycle, but mine is, with the correct spelling to boot.

2011

…
Rina
Sean
Tammy
…

In three years, if enough hurricanes are named Sean will be taking flight through the Atlantic. For those living along the Atlantic coast I hope that there are not enough hurricanes to make it down to my name but the selfish side of me is curious to hear my name announced on national television as I approach America.

My Tube Challenge

September 2 turned out to be a very exciting day for us in the technical department at Statusfirm. Like the energy around Christmas day we all waited for Google to release its new browser named Google Chrome.

My excitement for the release of Chrome built when I read Gizmodo, Tech Crunch and Digg posts from over the weekend. When I went to Chrome’s main site and was a little worried that this was all a cruel form of an April Fools joke. Although by lunchtime the download was released and I was following initial reactions of the browser on Twitter.

There is a little bit of tradition around the office when a new browser is released, and today was no exception. When Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 was released we visited all of the sites we had developed to see how badly the page rendered and to our surprise the results were not very ideal. Once word came out that the download became available we all rushed to download and install the browser and see how much memory allocation the pages needed and how they appeared to the user.

Once my installation was complete my first stops were to RawVegas.tv, CurlTV.com and TheEnergyNews.com and was pleasantly surprised when all three sites loaded correctly. A new browser means another browser to test and develop for and will no doubt cause the browser debate to begin again at work.

It is days like this I am glad I work with other like minded people because I don’t think Jenna would quite appreciate me shouting out features I am finding, warnings about people standing behind you, nerd stats or referencing stills from the Chrome Comic.