MetaFilter Projects

Bitstreet Framework

KHinds10 — Wed, 23 May 2012 21:00:05 GMT

I've been developing software for around 8 years. I've discovered the basic problems people need solved over and over again to have a successful presence online. I've managed to come up with a project that has almost all of them solved from the beginning. This allows you to continue doing what you do best without having to find ways to "send email newsletters" or "create a calendar of events"; these basic needs will already be figured out for you. The best part is you can have some powerful software to focus on the success of your organization, not the troubleshooting of technical problems.

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One Week One Band

pxe2000 — Tue, 22 May 2012 23:12:12 GMT

does exactly what it says on the tin. Every week, a trusted music blogger writes about their favorite band or one they think deserves more attention. This week, I am turning my attention to a beloved, forgotten Boston band, O Positive. They were my favorite band in middle school.

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Crush On Radio

SansPoint — Tue, 22 May 2012 18:35:55 GMT

A weekly podcast about music fandom, talking about what we like, what we don't like, and—most importantly—why.

Featuring me, blogger and all-around good guy Andrew Marvin, and fellow MeFier revsungmyungme, aka Matt Keeley, we have a round table discussion of music, music fandom, and stuff that you should hear. We're three episodes in, and getting better.

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Weddings Connected

dgran — Tue, 22 May 2012 18:35:54 GMT

My service enables people who can't attend a wedding in person to view a live video of the event. There is almost always some key guests on the invite list who can't be there and my goal is to help them feel more connected. I would be delighted to get unvarnished opinions about the service and the web site.

[Link]

Botaday

mmrtnt — Tue, 22 May 2012 00:35:29 GMT

A daily posting of art and humor. I have been working on it since 2005. I have recently (last four months) doubled-down on it, stopped maintaining two other blogs and have tightened up my act and my artwork.

Not a blog, but not really a webcomic either. I post an image every day that may or may not have a message attached. If there's a message, it's usually a joke.

I also occasionally post how-tos and observations as well as relate some of the (it is hoped) less boring insights from my "Artist's Journey"

I have gotten more hits for a single image from one comment on Metafilter than anywhere else in the known webiverse.

This tells me that Metafilter might be a great place to get the word out about my work to people who might enjoy it.

At this time there are almost 1000 posts/images, but only the most recent 60 or so are representative of my renewed focus.

I'm really looking for some help here - if you like what you see, please tell people and hit the ReddTwitStum buttons if you are so inclined.

Please take a look when you have time, and let me know what you think.

Thanks,

MjM

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Kicksaver: Find and save Kickstarter projects ending soon.

ecmendenhall — Mon, 21 May 2012 13:05:36 GMT

Kicksaver finds Kickstarter projects that will end soon without meeting their funding goals. If you have a few dollars to spare, you can help tip a struggling project over its goal and prevent it from losing the pledges made so far. It also tweets endangered projects a few times a day. This is a weekend project I made as part of my continuing effort to teach myself programming. It's completely noncommercial, open source, and not affiliated with Kickstarter in any way (although I do think they're pretty great).

You might notice that project funding levels are sometimes out of date: the site will occasionally show a funded project or an inaccurate amount from the project goal. Kicksaver only crawls for new projects a couple times a day, so this happens once in a while, but it shouldn't prevent you from finding interesting projects to rescue.

For this project, I learned to use the built-in webapp framework on Google App Engine, figured out how to interact with the Twitter API, and made my first foray into using Javascript on the browser side. Once I got the hang of the DOM, I was pleasantly surprised by how much Python knowledge transferred over. All the code is available on GitHub under an MIT license. I hope you'll check it out and save a struggling artist or two!

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"Shredding" by CPI

Theta States — Mon, 21 May 2012 05:30:57 GMT

A performance based on the sounds of industrial shredding, accompanied by a video of things being shredded.

This piece primarily consists of video of SSI shredders, but also includes Weima and Triturador shredding systems.
Music, mastering and editing by CPI, sound recorded live at Pitch Black. All video sources are promotional material from the respective companies.

Dedicated to GX Jupitter-Larsen, who fostered an appreciation for the sounds of destruction in a generations of kids.

If you are not in to the noise I recommend muting the video and accompanying it with your favourite instrumental music.

[Link]

Special Needs Parenting Blog

plinth — Fri, 18 May 2012 02:18:29 GMT

I've been keeping a blog that details my experiences as a parent of a child with multiple disabilities. In 2012, I started interspersing a series of articles that are a set of simple projects that any parent can do to help their child with Down syndrome (or any child with gross or fine motor issues). Finally, in a bout of craziness, I have signed up to run the Falmouth Road Race in order to raise money for the Massachusetts Down Syndrome Congress, an organization that has been immeasurably helpful to our family and so many others.

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A Cat Named Timmy.

Charlie Lesoine — Thu, 17 May 2012 13:33:39 GMT

A Simple photo blog devoted to the world most charismatic cat and his numerous sobriquet.

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New York Was New York

davidjmcgee — Thu, 17 May 2012 06:21:19 GMT

We take historical photographs of New York City and add contemporary captions. We think they're funny.

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Canadian Vinyl

The Card Cheat — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:01:54 GMT

These are all records I collected for my old Canadian music audioblog Five Bucks On By-Tor. I'm not posting to that site any more, and many of these records have been carted back to the thrift store, but I thought it would be nice to have photos of them all in one place.

[Link]

Otto, Protector of the North Woods

COBRA! — Tue, 15 May 2012 15:19:05 GMT

is my latest comic venture. An existential horror-comedy set in northern Minnesota on the shores of Lake Superior, it just wrapped its first storyline, which features a gang of foul-mouthed ghost sailors.

[Link]

Free Book: Wicked Problems: Problems Worth Solving

jkolko — Tue, 15 May 2012 13:51:50 GMT

It feels like our world is spinning out of control. We see poverty, disease, and destruction all around us, and as we search for ways to make sense of the chaos, we're turning to new disciplines for answers and solutions. New, creative innovations are needed, and these new approaches demand different methods and different theories. This book is presented as a handbook for teaching and learning how to design for impact. In it, you'll learn how to apply the process of design to large, wicked problems, and how to gain control over complexity by acting as a social entrepreneur. You'll learn an argument for why design is a powerful agent of change, and you'll read practical methods for engaging with large-scale social problems.

This book was started with the intent of changing design and social entrepreneurship education. As these disciplines converge, it becomes evident that existing pedagogy doesn't support either students or practicioners attempting to design for impact. This text is a reaction to that convergence, and will ideally be used by various students, educators, and practitioners:

One audience is professors and educators of design, who are challenged with reinventing their educational curriculum in the face of a changing world. For them, this book should act as both a starting point for curriculum development and a justification for why this development is necessary—it should answer the question "what should design and social entrepreneurship education look like?"

Another audience is made up of fresh-out-of-school designers, who are bored and uninspired by their jobs. For them, this book should answer the question "how can I redirect my design efforts to something meaningful?"

Finally, a last audience is made up of practicing designers and entrepreneurs, who are looking to achieve social impact in their work. For them, the book should answer the question "what tools and techniques can I use in my work to drive impact through design?"

[Link]

A new website for an old cloth.

veryape — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:41:00 GMT

The Harris Tweed Authority is the guardian of Harris Tweed, the only textile in the world protected by an Act of Parliament from Shearing To Stamping.(Vimeo film).

The Harris Tweed Authority is a tiny but powerful organisation based in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland endowed with the legal protection of the Harris Tweed name and reputation. We produced a website for them with supporting weblog social media and a short promotional film documenting the process they protect. The online work brings them into the 21st century after decades in the dark.

[Link]

WAKING UP: the ebook and Minecraft map

mothershock — Tue, 15 May 2012 00:36:17 GMT

My digital short story Waking Up launched today on Amazon, and to accompany the 14K-word ebook is a hellaciously difficult Minecraft map (by evil mastermind Vechs, of course) based on the world of the story.

About a month and a half ago, my young adult novel GIFT was published, and to celebrate the launch, I commissioned a Minecraft map to go along with it, based on the world of the book. That went over so well that I decided to do it again -- this time for a short story.

Unlike the GIFT map, the WAKING UP map is really, really hard, and incorporates in-game challenges heretofore unseen in Vechs maps (or any adventure maps, for that matter). But even more exciting than that is the fact that this map is built on the 12w17a snapshot -- the update with readable, writeable, in-game books. Which means the player can read a book referenced in the actual book -- and even read the first chapter of the actual "Waking Up" book -- in the game.

Soon after starting the map, the player will discover a chest with a curious sign on it. Within the chest is a pamphlet (titled "Your Guide to Lucid Dreaming") that the player can open and read -- just as the main character in the story "Waking Up" does -- which sets the scene for the next stage of the map. Once the player moves to the next area of the map, they'll find, among other things, a chest with another book inside it -- it's "Waking Up," and it contains the entire first chapter of the real book "Waking Up" (which translates to about 12 Minecraft book "pages"). Then the player's real journey begins, as they must play through the map to escape the dream (or is it a nightmare?) they're trapped in.

Since the map is based on the 12w17a snapshot this is a kind of a sneak peek at the potential for in-game books once they are incorporated into a stable Minecraft update. (Players comfortable installing snapshots can of course play immediately -- otherwise, we'll be updating the map for whatever stable update including in-game books is released first.)

The WAKING UP ebook is available via Amazon for 99 cents, and the Minecraft map based on "Waking Up" is, of course, free.

[Link]

Saving Sasha

jacquilynne — Mon, 14 May 2012 14:46:22 GMT

I adopted a dog from a dog rescue and tried to teach her to love me or at least come when she's called. And then, because it's 2012, I started a blog about it. And then, because sometimes life is really shitty, I discovered that my brand new doggie is horribly sick.

[Link]

Your Mother, the Hacker

soma lkzx — Thu, 10 May 2012 21:29:33 GMT

Need help explaining your Internet-y job to your mom? We're here to help! We're sending out Mother's Day e-cards to clue her in on the nonsense that is the Web. Pick some terms and they'll show up friendly-like in her inbox this Sunday. Web servers, the Cloud, PHP, and a gazillion more await! There's also a version with holiday-appropriate floweriness.

[Link]

Lexcavator

aparrish — Wed, 09 May 2012 23:15:12 GMT

Lexcavator is an arcade/word game for Mac, PC, and Linux. The goal: guide your guy (@) deeper into an infinite of letters by clearing words from the board! Multiple game modes, detailed record-keeping, online global leaderboards—there's something here for everybody! Pay what you want (even $0, if you are so inclined).

Here's the trailer. You can also download the soundtrack from Bandcamp.

I've been working on the game for the past year or so. The goal was to make a fast-paced word game that rewards wits and tactics, but doesn't rely on having memorized every three-letter Scrabble word. Internally, the game uses n-gram analysis and Markov chains to ensure that the board is always filled with meaty, satisfying words. One reviewer called it "Words With Friends as an action game," and I am not going to argue with that characterization.

The game was programmed entirely in Python (using the excellent processing.py framework).

[Link]

Intervals, online time, task and project management software

johnjreeve — Wed, 09 May 2012 16:28:01 GMT

Intervals is an online app that I've been working on for several years. Our web design and development agency built it, and uses it, to track our time, tasks and projects. Thought I'd share it with other web-savvy types who might find Intervals useful. There is also a lot of great content in the blog as well, where we've been writing about web design and development for several years. Lots of great content there.

[Link]

Exploring The Abandoned Hospital Complex On Ellis Island

nycscout — Tue, 08 May 2012 19:12:21 GMT

Everyone's been to the Immigration Museum on Ellis Island for school field trips and vacations. But did you know that the south side of the island features a 29 building hospital complex that has been completely abandoned for nearly 60 years? A rare glimpse into what remains, and how it can be saved.

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