There’s been a nice flurry of activity over on the RepRap site (Link); lots of parts being designed and sent out for fabrication to be used in the initial units, a growing RepRap wiki and another participant.

For anyone who remembers my post on the glue gun fabrication device back in April (Link), Vic Olliver – it’s creator – has made excellent progress on the next, upgraded version. He’s also been posting entries on it’s development, including one on the gears shown above (Link). The parts are all FDM this time around and are all ABS I believe, but they’ll be great for a first unit which can be used to take a first pass at creating parts using the final device’s intended material. It might take a few iterations on the design to get something that can create the bulk of its own parts (in order to replicate itself), but this is a great start.

{Image Copyright © 2005 Vic Olliver}

Will Wright just blew my mind. This guy is great. It wasn’t so long ago he announced his forthcoming, ground-breaking videogame “Spore” (see some of my earlier posts regarding that videogame and it’s technology via this Link). But to see a theoretical side (with nice, supporting 3D charts and images), watch this video (Link) over on C|Net. When “Spore” is released, I’m going to create more Will Wrights.

“Itsa wha? Huh?” = My first thoughts.

This is a “Voronoi Structure”. I have no clue what that is (for now). All I do know is that a) it’s kinda cool and b) they used Rhino to assist in fabricating(?) it. So since I’m no help, here’s what the caption says over on the Archinect gallery (Link) where I found it:

First results of the integration of the qvoronoi alogorithm into Rhino as an interactive design tool. Currently research is done on how to exploit structural and spatial design capabilities of the voronoi graph. ETHZ, 3rd year, studio Gregor Eichinger

More questions? Email that guy.

{Image Copyright © 2005 Gregor Eichinger}

I’ve almost given up posting comments over on Bruce Nussbaum’s BusinessWeek blog (Link). It’s uniquely irritating to spend time writing a response only to find that one’s IP happens to be on the flavor-of-the-month ban list. Not that I don’t understand why they’re occasionally blocking a range of IP’s; everyone has blogspam issues. I just don’t care… because everyone has blogspam issues.

Since I’m already having my entries checked (they don’t post automatically; one has to wait a day or so), it’s the extra layer that makes no sense to me. If they’re going to use IP roadblocks, then as far as I’m concerned they should make it so the comments post immediately. If they’re going to hold the comments for approval, then they should do away with the roadblocks. Blogging isn’t easy in this regard. I and others understand that. But for some of us, if it’s not the blogspam or trackspam spam, it’s also the script-kiddies (just take a look at a few of my “Admin Notes” posts). Something tells me BW bloggers don’t have to worry about them… although they also miss out on watching the script-diaper-kiddies trying to figure out how to link the code they found online to the target site (sometimes it’s laughably obvious they’re not too bright, like the one’s I have today).

So anyway, my latest virtual hurdle? – Getting an OLD comment to finally post on that blog. I almost didn’t bother and tbh, I’m not sure that I will in the future. Here’s a Link to his post, “The true truth about design in China” (which isn’t so true, imo). Maybe some of you will think it was worth my time to point out the things that I did. Maybe not. But at least I got on the track. Moses would be proud.

(P.S. I’ve added some bold and tweaked this post a couple of times. I notice that the Trackback hasn’t pinged. Let’s see if we get multiple trackback entries on that thing with each Saved edit.)

From this article (Link) over on The Economist:

In-game money is, in short, no less real than the dollars and pounds stored in conventional bank accounts.

And it looks like they came to their own conclusion there too; not paraphrasing Castronova. That line alone will generate discussion and debate. Watch.

via Blue’s News