I think these are especially awesome because they’re a better execution of my own LED spray cans I built for the 2006 Burning Man project, “The Ephemeral Graffiti Wall.”  I built this project with my friends Jonathan Mayer and Erik Gilling.

The Ephemeral Graffiti Wall was a 40 foot long plywood wall painted with glow-in-the-dark paint.  One “painted” on the glow-paint using the LED in the spray can.  The pictures below show the spray cans I made for the wall, some of my original notes for the spray can design, and a picture of what “painting” on the wall looked like.  My friend Girts even riffed on the spray can, using a microcontroller to make a light printer.

Aissa Logerot’s lucite spray cans are gorgeous.  They also incorporate a feature I wanted in my own spray cans: a shake-to-charge mechanism.  I opted against this feature due to cost and time constraints, instead using 4 AA batteries and a marble for shaking effect.

I’m pleased to report that after 1 week on the playa and 3 years later, several of these “spray cans” remain operational, still with their original batteries.

Jonathan has a collection of photos on Flickr showing the wall from conception through execution and final destruction.

Back in May I saw these fine gentlemen walking along the Powell-Hyde Street line, lifting each removable metal cover over the cable car cable. These covers allow access to the rollers that the cable runs in and these workers were responsible for checking that each roller was in good repair. This picture was taken at the corner of Hyde and Northpoint.

They were happy to stop and pose for me, and stopped long enough to let me snap a picture of the cable and the roller.  If you’ve ever walked over the cable car line you’ve heard the metallic whirring noise that the cable makes when it slides through these rollers.

Cable Car Cable and Roller

No, this isn’t part of the cast of Teletubbies 2010, this is a Taiwanese “guidance and security” robot.

Via Engadget:

The An9-PR is a multi-tasker, meant for showroom floors and malls, where it can display advertisements, directions to the restroom, and missing children alerts on any of its three touchscreen LCDS, and it’s got WiFi and face recognition capabilities, making him a decent security guard, too! The robot weigh about 440 pounds, and is on four wheels to make it easier to move.

I’d love to see what would happen if the Oakland Police used one of these downtown.

We just now discovered that somebody found it, way back in 2007.

w00t!

My son Ethan pipes up and says “cover the slot with your finger.” He held is pointer finger out horizontally to demonstrate. Sure enough, the money was accepted immediately by the machine. Ethan’s friend Max chimed in “works every time.”

This provokes several questions for me:

1. Is stray light affecting the dollar bill reader?
2. If not, what about putting your finger there fixes the problem?
3. Why didn’t I know about this trick already? I’m a reasonably tech savvy guy who must have fed over $1000 into vending machines by this point in my life.
4. How do kids figure this stuff out?

The bottom line seems to be “if you’re having a technology problem, ask a kid for help.”

More study is necessary. Watch this space for results as they come in.