the real world

Mutoscope for Fernando, on the SIP Blog

My work for the Public Laboratory is partially funded by a grant from the Shpilman Institute for Photography, who’ve featured my Mutoscope on their blog.  Gr...

Topographic maps from fled kites

I just started building fled kites, but my fellow Grassroots Mapper Nathan Craig is already doing 3D topographic scans with them. ** He’s using **AgiSoft’s P...

Kite Fishing in Indonesia & Melanesia

Traditional Kite fishing in Indonesia, using the motion of a kite to give bait a constant motion. ** A little more history here**. I think this is the one of...

Reed Arts Week

The talk and workshop went great. I was too busy to photograph the flights, but will get photos soon.  Su Liu came up with a great double-layer heat seaming ...

Reed Arts Week, RAW: Geographies

I’m proud to be participating in Reed’s Art Week. I’ll be giving** a lecture and demonstration of aerospace in the arts and Grassroots Mapping tools on Satur...

Kite Balloon Development @ PLOTS

Follow the kite balloon working page over at the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science.  There’s a lot of research in there that I’ve only now go...

kite balloon futures and histories

To follow on my love of kite balloons, and the kite balloon action at the grassroots mapping list.  here are a few awesome kite balloon histories.

I feel this way a lot

“When sophistication loses content then the only way of keeping in touch with reality is to be crude and superficial.  This is what I intend to be.” Paul Fey...

Grassroots Mapping PDX: test conclusions

With help from my Dad, RJ Steinert, Samantha Mitchell, Robby Kraft, and Molly Danielsson, I’ve been flying balloons most weekends since the workshop in June,...

GrassrootsMappingPDX: Heat Seaming

Here’s the instructional video from the workshop on heat seaming balloons.  If you have the space and equipment, this will produce a lighter, more air-tight ...

warhol while you wait

I’ll have photos and videos from Grassroots Mapping up soon, Special thanks to Dustin Zemel for documenting.

Solar Blimp to Cross English Channel

While I’m preparing for a workshop where we’ll build some solar hot-air balloons, a very different solar aerostat, running of photovoltaics, is set to cross ...

Helium Dispersion Through HDPE

In conversations on the Grassroots Mapping google group we’ve been wondering how long a homemade Polyethylene helium balloon could stay aloft.  At what rate ...

Links

Updated the books I’ve been reading section.  Check out Inter Ice Age 4.

Quick Links

I’ve been very busy with a trans-continental move and more… So I’m going to try to just post links regularly, rather than longer things.

No/Low Tech Magazine

Kris de Decker produces some of the most insightful and well-researched articles on technology anywhere on the internet.  He has a simple premise- novel “hig...

A Mutoscope, nearly finished

Fernando Renes’ animation finally came back from the printer’s last weekend, and Molly helped me bind it into a mutoscope reel.  since my last post everythin...

The mutoscope running for real!

Some photos of the **mutoscope **from the last week.  It runs, it projects!  Everything needs to be tightened up (and quite a bit re-built) so it can be ship...

Katie Festinger’s Farm, pt 1

Molly and I have been working/staying at Katie Festinger’s nascent farm in Chimacum, WA (near Port Townsend) on and off for the last 3 weeks.  Katie sought w...

A Pattern Language Picnic Table

Our first project in Chimacum was a social one- the farm lacked an outdoor public space.  Beth really wanted a nice central area, so we cleared out storage u...

Blast Domes and Opaque Projectors

A good chunk of Toorcamp occurred in a Titan 1 missile silo amongst a complex of hemispherical blast domes.  The power dome is the largest and least obstruct...

Aerospace at Toorcamp

Several amateurs played in aerospace around Toorcamp, and many more space lovers and hobbiests were present. JonM from Hackerbot, who is one of the leads on ...

Simple Solar Balloons (and spacepunk?)

After my ignite talk I met Alex Peake, who is trying to fund efforts in human potential and space exploration through the sales of a Tactical Corset (it look...

Magnificent Flight, Failed Recovery

I spent the last two weeks of March in the SF/Bay Area, and while there decided to try a new balloon. My intent- record the sounds of California by air. I...