We bought some fabric that will become the curtain of the photo booth. Hancock Fabrics are going out of business so I got 10 yards of a black fabric that hangs really well– on sale at $6.29/yd.

Also, we picked up plastic grommets to use when hanging the fabric on a rod so it can slide open and closed. They are two parts and snap together sandwiching the fabric. An X-acto blade cuts the center fabric out well.

Having a photo booth at your party has been vogue for a few years now. Celebrities often rented a booth for a shindig and rigged it for free pictures for their friends. Books have been published from the pictures; Andy Warhol used it to make his art. It's a trendy icon that never goes out of style.

I'm looking to create something of a photo booth but with an updated feature set. Apple unleashed an extremely useful tool called Photo Booth when they began including the built-in iSight with their iMac, MacBook and MacBook Pro.

With a little imagination, bits of hardware and some Applescript to hold it all together, I think I can make a memorable piece of installation art that will be a big hit.

I'm going to try and document the building of it but as everyone who knows me, I tend to forget about taking pictures of the progress of my work– I'm so focused on the end result.

Stay tuned.

A compilation of online image editing services. Some of sites require registration, others don't. These are great to use if you don't have access to Photoshop or don't need all of the features.

Pixer.us (no registration required)
Picnik.com
Phixr.com
myImager.com
Snipshot.com
Fauxto.com

Wired Gaming has a slideshow of some really inventive and original games that really shined because of the unique features of the Commodore Amiga. I'm a long time Amiga fan, dating back to my first Amiga 500, and I've played most of these games for hours when I was younger ( especially “Beast” and later “Shadow of the Beast” ).

Link.

I found this interesting article that explains how the THX sound was created (and how it was not created).

Link.

And if you find that interesting, you may also enjoy reading these:

The Microsoft Sound
Intel Inside Chimes

I was asked by my friends who run www.miiware.com to do a photo session for them as they were being interviewed by the Wall Street Journal in Japan. I obliged and shot about 400 pictures. A few pictures were selected and sent to the editor of the article and here are the pictures chosen (even if they did spell my name wrong).

I recently installed a Parrot Evolution CK3000 bluetooth adapter in my MINI. I didn't like the bluetooth solution that MINI provides as it didn't use the two phone buttons on the steering wheel. This solution uses them quite nicely. Plus it requires no cutting or splicing of the car wiring so it was plug and play.

The MINI harness came from www.newministuff.com located in Great Britain. The exchange rate sucks at the moment so the harness ended up costing more than the Parrot module (which coincidently I bought at QVC.com).

The install was pretty easy (I had some help from Jim) and only took about an hour from start to finish. The hardest part is stuffing all the cable and connectors behind the radio and under the dash.

The result is very slick– I can place a call by pushing the phone button on the steering wheel and announcing the name (that I have trained in my phone). I can also answer the phone by pushing the same button after hearing the subtle ring tone over the speakers. It pauses the CD while on the phone (the radio display says “RADIO” ).

Link to PDF version of install instructions I converted from newministuff.com.
Link to my small Flickr set of install pics.