Penny Earrings

These earrings started life as pre-1982 pennies. Pennies made before 1982 are 95% copper and 5% zinc, basically a high-copper brass, and solid all the way through. 1982 and later pennies are zinc with copper plating. I hate plating, it feels like lying to me. Electroplating is often only a few ATOMS thick, just enough to change the color. That said, I think the coating on pennies is thicker than that, but still...

This means that older pennies are actually worth about two and a half cents, just from the weight of the copper :-) But more importantly for me, it means that they can be hammered into interesting shapes!

 -Mark

ID Bracelet!

I like to go running, most of you reading this already know this :-)

I just got a new ID bracelet from Road ID. Its a silicone wristband just like all those advocacy bracelets out there, except it has a stainless steel tag that slips on it with your name and contact info. Its pretty easy to change the wristband, so I got a green one and a black one to indulge my vanity. I'm going to stick with purple for now, though.

The main reason I got a new ID was that the silicone bands are easy to wash. Things take a long time to dry up here in the Great Northwest and the webbing band of my last ID never really dried, Ewwww...

I've been wearing it all the time since I got it. I like wearing an ID tag, it makes me feel like somebody is watching out for me :-)

-Mark

AI in everything!

I was reading an article on Cracked.com the other day. They were talking about how computing technology is getting cheaper and faster, etc. Soon, they said lots of manufactured goods would have artificial intelligence (AI). They made this sound like a bad thing. I don't see why it would necessarily be bad. You just have to be sure you give it an intelligence appropriate to the item. For example, if you were going to give a car AI, how would you go about it?

How about making the car LOVE to do what cars do. Like a retriever that loves to fetch. Just program them to love nothing more than waiting around in a parking lot for their owner to get into them, and then love going places even more! Have them take a huge amount of pride in conveying their owners as quickly and safely to their desired destination. Here's the imaginary dialogue:

Owner: (opens door, tired at the end of the workday) "I'm headed home."

Car: (voiced aloud) "OK" (internal dialogue) "Oh boy! Oh boy! Oh boy! I LOVE driving home! I love it when owner tells me to go home! I'm gonna get to dodge around in rush hour again, it'll be more fun than when I did it yesterday because of the construction! Then when I get home, I'm gonna get to wait in the garage, I LOVE waiting in the garage! I just tingle with excitement, knowing that I'm ready to go anywhere for my owner, at anytime!"

Owner: (falls asleep)

See? We'll program them, they're machines. Why shouldn't machines love what they do? And thats only if we want them to have an internal dialogue at all. Although it may be that once the computer gets sophisticated enough, self-awareness will just spring into being. But even if that wasn't the case, modeling AI after dogs isn't a bad idea. We've been co-evolving for thousands of years, and our relationship is pretty good at this point.

Now, when you're driving down the street, you can think of your car sniffing the butt (tailpipe?) of the car in front of you, asking it where its going, and the best way for the two of them to take their owners where they want to go.

The future is going to be awesome!

-Mark

Window Spider

I have a spider that has set up a web in my window inside my room just about a centimeter away from the glass. It must be a good spot because she's been there for a while. The other day I heard a loud buzzing and saw a bee or yellowjacket flying around in my room. Then I heard a "thunk" as it hit the window and got caught in the spider's web.

Game on! The spider moved quickly to bite it, while managing to avoid the stinger (I assume a yellowjacket would attempt to use its stinger. I guess I'm not sure about a bee, since delivering the sting is fatal and that would seem to defeat the point of stinging to escape a spider's web.) Anyway, after some furious buzzing, the bee succumbed to the spider's poison. The spider wrapped her new meal in a nice burrito wrapping and tucked in to a gigantic meal.

Creepy, but also pretty cool. As long as you aren't afraid of spiders.

-Mark

Slug

I made this quite a while ago. While I was still in my apartment near Lake Merritt, and before I went to jewelry school.

Its a pun... Get it? I'm going to say, for those without the terminology at the tip of their tongues. Its a slug... made of slugs! Groan! It really looks a lot like a slug, if you ask me. The picture doesn't have any scale to go by, but its the same size as a real slug too.

Let me see if I can remember. The head is 9mm Parabellum, the two main body sections are .40 S&W, the next section is 9mm Makarov and the tail is 7.62 x 39. The antennae aren't made from slugs, just copper wire.

I mentioned above that I made this a while ago, I made the body a while ago, I added the antennae later, after I learned more about soldering. I couldn't figure out how to attach the antennae using the skills I had available to me at the time. After jewelry school, it was easy. I learned something!

Anyway, I think I'll show some of the things I've made over the years on this blog. Why? Because I can.

-Mark

Fan

Do you ever get the feeling that fans are watching you?


Well, they are.

They sit there, shaking their heads back and forth and heaving loooooong, disapproving sighs. You may get a little cooler because of the wind, but make no mistake. The fan is not satisfied with what you're doing. In fact, whatever you're doing, they're not a fan...

Fans are jerks.

-Mark

My Dimmer Switch

When I moved into my room, the light switch was missing the dimmer switch knob. Somebody had wrapped tape around the part of the switch the knob is supposed to attach to. I hate this kind of "fix" half-assed and ugly to boot.

Now, most normal people would go to the hardware store and guy a new dimmer switch and put it on and forget about it. Or, complain to the landlord and get HIM to buy a dimmer switch knob, and put it on.

Me? No, that would be too easy for me. So I went downstairs and made my own dimmer switch knob. I used copper sheet, brass wire I bought from the hardware store years ago, and a piece of scrap hardwood flooring that I picked up while I was in college, in case I could find a use for it later (I did).

Here's the result:

I gave the copper a nifty hammered texture. The hardwood (oak?) I finished with linseed oil I had leftover from finishing the stock on my M1A. I really like the finish linseed oil gives, it gives the wood a lovely glow and doesn't darken the wood much. You apply it by rubbing it in with your hand, which is very satisfying. It doesn't just coat the wood, it saturates the wood, so even scratches don't affect the waterproofing the oil provides. Not that this is likely to get wet, I actually really hope it doesn't , considering what it is... The brass is formed into rivets that hold the copper plate to the wood backing. Notice how the copper has begun to darken where I've touched it. I also like things that change/improve with age and that are maintainable.

Now, when I turn my light on, I can take pleasure in the light switch I have to push. Next? Well I still have some of that wood, and I need some coasters...