Knowledge - Information - Scholarship

February 15, 2011
Alan

Mark Pauline on taking the long way around and spine robots

Shortly after I gave my talk at the Sonoma CountyÂ Museum as part of the Mad Science show Mark Pauline, founder ofÂ SurvivalÂ Research Labs gave his talk about founding SRL. Mark and the SRL crew had their new Spine Robot installed as part of the show, and they did one of their […]

February 11, 2011
Alan

The Future of Art

March 23, 2010
Alan

Lecture on the relationship between Art and Science

Last week I had the great pleasure of of speaking to the National Cancer Institute about the relationship between art and science. Below I’ve posted the visual part of the presentation, but sadly there is not audio or video recording to go along. Here is a brief summary of my […]

December 7, 2009
Alan

Dog Park Science Part 2: The Neurobiology of Dog Training

Last week I delivered the second of two talks on “Dog Park Science,” at the Exploratorium.Â You can find the audio of the first talk here.Â The two talks are on very different topics.Â The first is on the evolution of the dog, while this second one is about some […]

May 25, 2009
Alan

Dog Park Science: Part 1 — The Evolution of Dogs

In honor of my dog Piper, who had a very bad day recently when he got a huge fox-tail stuck in his nose, I’ve posted the audio of a talk I delivered a few weeks ago at The Exploratorium about the evolution of the domestic dog. If you have ever […]

April 1, 2009
Alan

Maps of science

This is literally a mapping of the influence that various scientific fields have on each other generated by Eignfactor.org: Orange circles represent fields, with larger, darker circles indicating larger field size as measured by Eigenfactor scoreâ„¢. Blue arrows represent citation flow between fields. An arrow from field A to field […]

December 19, 2008
Alan

A Number of Numbers

December 19, 2008
Alan

Quotes on Design

From Quotes on Design Design in art, is a recognition of the relation between various things, various elements in the creative flux. You canâ€™t invent a design. You recognize it, in the fourth dimension. That is, with your blood and your bones, as well as with your eyes. â€” D. […]

December 16, 2008
Alan

This New Ocean: The History of Space Flight

This New Ocean: The History of Space Flight is a fantastic, brief and broad history of space flight focusing, obviously, on or means of getting into space — rockets! Allot of great images and information. There is even a midterm and final exam for the eager.

September 6, 2008
Alan

Gear Template Generator

Here is a fantastic little web app that generates templates for spur gears. Once you put in all your specifications (metric only) it generates a sing or a set of gears that can be printed and transferred to wood or metal. Another option allows you to download a file that […]

August 13, 2008
Alan

Fantastic Contraption

Awhile back I posted about Phun, an on-line, physics based game.Â Well I’ve come across another one called Fantastic Contraption. The goal is to move an object into a goal area by building a simple device from a series of passive and active wheels and rods.Â Below is a screen […]

July 29, 2008
Alan

Incra Rules

Those who have worked with me in the shop know how much I like my precision tools. Check out these rulers by Incra that I am currently drooling over. The prices are not bad either.

April 14, 2008
Alan

Iron vs Steel Rivets — Why the Titanic Sank

Can you imagine my pleasure today in finding a front page New York Times article that has two of my great loves: science and metal fabrication. The article In Weak Rivets, a Possible Key to Tianic’s Doom, lays out the accumulating evidence that it was the use of cheaper, weaker, […]

March 18, 2008
Alan

Creating Your Own Fonts

A Wired wiki entry on creating your own fonts.

March 12, 2008
Alan

Tube Coping Calculator

I’m a big fan of on-line calculators while designing and fabricating. I regularly use a host of trigonometry and geometry on-line calculators and there are tons of others on the web. But sometimes you need to calculate something very specific to metal working — like a tube coping — that […]

February 28, 2008
Alan

Time Travel Mart

826LA, which is the Los Angles version of 826 Valencia, the famous San Francisco Pirate Store, had their opening recently and in keeping with the “store front” theme (see also the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Store) they are a Time Travel Mart. Well done and quite clever. This is all from […]

February 27, 2008
Alan

Heron Videos

Heron of Alexandria was a bad ass (obviously or else he’d been forgotten) Greek mechanical engineer and fabricator who made incredible kinetic devices involving the movement of air, water and steam. (I’ve bloged about him in the past) My current interest in Heron focuses on his Aeolipie — a steam […]

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