Throw the Mind [dot] Com

The Expendables

Nathan — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 17:19:41 +0000

It was a Friday afternoon, and I was sitting at work wondering what my night was going to bring. Was Jason going to come out and try to kill me since it was Friday the 13th? Or was I going to go to the shop and hang out all night. Turns out neither happen. What did happen was Tandy giving me a call and asking me to go see The Expendables. I convinced her after seeing The Expendables we would go see Scott Pilgram. This is exactly what we did, well with a visit to Waffle House baked in the middle.

The Expendables looked ridiculous from the first time I saw a preview. But also from the preview I knew it was a movie I had to see. With Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Steve Austin, and Terry Crews how could I not see the movie. Yep all those action stars in one movie. Can you believe it? So many action starts how could this movie be bad?

The movie wasn’t so far as bad, as it was just ridiculous. It was a mid 90′s action film. You know the ones with tons of killing, helicopters exploding and a plot that came from the back of a cereal box. That was exactly what this movie was. There were some great comedic lines, don’t get me wrong, but really the movie was kill kill kill, take short break, kill kill kill. I still liked the movie, but only because I love Mid 90′s action films.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

P.S. Sadly no Steven Seagal

Tags: Movie, Rating, Tandy

Playing with a Maker Bot

Nathan — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 15:28:42 +0000

A couple of nights ago, Bob and I started playing with a Maker Bot one of the Makers Local 256 members left at the shop. I asked the member who owns it if I could try to get it working while he was gone on work travel. Of course he said “Yes”. He had been trying to get it to make a shot glass for a while. Bob and I started playing around. We installed the latest version of ReplicatorG and some new firmware. Bob then determined that the head needed to be about .6mm off the printing service. After he tagged me in, and I started playing with laying down a raft. After a few failed attempts where the head didn’t seem like it was moving up the Z-axis enough, I learned to set the Flow Rate of the plastic to 230 instead of 250 in skeinforge. Along with Bob’s findings we seemed to have found a very nice solution. I was able to make a coin, most of a shot glass (something happen 3/4 the way through), and a companion cube.

Tags: CupCake CNC, MakerBot, MakersLocal

Inception

Nathan — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 18:31:02 +0000

This movie was awesome. One of my top favorite movies of all time. The story was perfect, the visuals were perfect, and my lack of knowledge about the movie was perfect. I knew nothing about the movie before seeing it and I’m glad. I was surprised by everything including Ellen Page. I don’t want to spoil anything about the movie, so I’m not going into detail here. I just wanted to give it my star rating and tell everyone to watch it.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars +1 for being that awesome.

Tags: Movie, Rating

My First Kit – The Brain Machine

Nathan — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 22:12:10 +0000

When at The Next HOPE I bought The Brian Machine electronic kit for $20. It’s a product I have heard lots about and really wanted one. I figured I would spend the money and actually make it myself rather than buying a pre-made one.

The kit went together fairly easily once I figured out how to do it with a little help from other Makers Local 256 members. It took me a couple of hours to complete the project. I had a ton of fun making it and think I’m going to make more kits.

Tags: Electronic Kit, HOPE, MakersLocal

Locker Story from Junior High

Nathan — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 18:42:47 +0000

Seventh grade was when we all moved out of elementary school into junior high. Junior High had lockers. With lockers came the annoying feature of having to be unlocked multiple times a day. Some kids figured out jamming paper at the bottom kept the lock from locking. The problem with this solution was that you could tell from the outside who used this trick. For them security went from “locked” to “Look at me I’m an unlocked locker”. I decided the better solution was to just remove the back side of the lock. Thus keeping the locker looking like it was locked, but in reality just as unsafe as others. Security through obscurity.

This worked out great for a few weeks, I even removed the lock for my girlfriend at the time. Then one day she had her locker searched. Gig was up, “destroying school property”. Luckily only she got busted and didn’t rat me out. To be safe I put the lock back on my locker. Only problem was at some point the combo lock had fallen off and I had put it on upside down. So now my locker was locked but the combo was upside down. I tried a few time to unlock it with no success.

With my head hanging low I had to turn myself in. I didn’t have a choice. I was locked out of my locker. I was told to go back to class and it would be taken care of. About half way though the class I hear a drill start-up in about the same location as my locker. After class I notice some dents on my locker and a new lock. I head down to the office and am presented with a $27 bill to pay for the new lock.

I still say my locker security was better than anyone else in that school.

tl;dr – Locked locker to the point it had to be drilled open in the middle of school day.

Tags: Junior High School, Locker, School, Security

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Nathan — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:48:00 +0000

I had a great time watching this movie. Notice I didn’t say this was a great movie. I would explain this movie as exactly the same as She’s Out of My League with magic added. Basically Nicolas Cage is a sorcerer looking for “Neo”. Once he finds “the one” he starts fighting his arch-nemesis to save the world from being taken over by zombies. Jay Baruchel is “the one” but is also in love with a hot girl he shouldn’t really have a chance with. Throw in a couple more love stories, some fake science, a few huge Tesla coils and BAM! you have just made this movie.

I went to see it with Alii and Strages. Alii was a hoot, she was laughing hard at every little thing. It made the movie experience great. Strages and I were just floored by the ridiculousness of the movie.

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Tags: Movie, Nicolas Cage, Rating

Android Apps You May Love at July 2600

Nathan — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 08:02:34 +0000

Over the week I put together a few slides to show off some great android apps. The idea came from brimstone when we were showing each other cool apps we had found. I use qrCodes heavily in slides. It’s probably the easiest way to find the apps in the Android Market.

Android_Apps_You_May_Love.odp

Also the 2600 logo contest was finally completed. Benalene won with this picture.

Tags: 2600, Android, logo, presentation, talk

Buying Out North Alabama’s Supply of Parallax RFID Readers

Nathan — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 16:47:08 +0000

Yesterday Ratmandu and Myself headed out on a journey to find the last remaining Parallax RFID Readers from Radio Shack. We headed to Decatur first, where we found 5 in stock. From there we went to Florence and picked up another 4. According to Radio Shack’s database, north Alabama and south Tennessee no long have them in stock.

Also while looking around the Florence Radio Shack we found the Palm Pre Touchstone charger on sale for $16. We tested the output and its 5v. So basically for $16 I now have a wireless charging setup. I would like to put it in my phone, but it looks to be a pretty big challenge.

Tags: Deals, MakersLocal

June ’10 2600 Meeting

Nathan — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 15:51:26 +0000

Don’t forget today is the first Friday of the month. That means its 2600 time again. Stop my Newk’s on University between 5-8pm to see what craziness we are up too. We will be talking about our new logo, that is if someone brought one up. I might even to a talk about Bashrun.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the new mailing list.

Thanks
Nathan

Tags: 2600, Meetings

Iron Man 2

Nathan — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 20:24:45 +0000

I went to see Iron Man 2 over the weekend. I hadn’t seen it yet simply because I didn’t feel like fighting with a bunch of people opening weekend, and I was out of town for a while. Anyways I went to see is Sunday night at The Monaco.

First let me say, holy shit Scarlett Johansson hot. I just couldn’t keep from staring at her. Then the scene with her changing in the back seat! Oh man, just awesome.

Anyways, on to the film. I liked the film but thought the first Iron Man was better. This one seemed too “comic book like” is the only way I can describe it. I know that probably doesn’t make sense, but I don’t know how to explain it. I didn’t like how “I know best for the world” Tony Stark was. Also I didn’t like how through the entire movie broken glass was treated like confetti! Everywhere you looked glass was being broken, but not a sole was hurt by falling shards of glass. How many times do you think you can blow up a bottle of wine at a party before someone gets hurt. I’m guessing it’s like once. Not Iron Man, he just keeps blowing shit up.

Now I really dug Samuel L. Jackson. The scene with Samuel L. Jackson and Iron Man sitting having breakfast in a dinner was just awesome. It was reminiscence of the dinner scenes in Pulp Fiction.

So in conclusion I liked the movie, it was very entertaining but I felt the first one was better. Not by much mind you, just enough to give this one a 4.5 instead of 5 like I would have giving the fist one if I had seen it in the theater.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Tags: Movie, Rating