Inspired by the tv-b-gone by Mitch Altman Coded.be now presents the first alpha prototype of the power-b-gone!

Are you also sick of all those electrical devices? Do you want a longer break at work? Don't worry, now there is Power-B-Gone!

• Just plug it in & Boom! Turn off ANY power system*
• This device will turn off any system on the same circuit without a UPS!
• Scematics soon to be released Open Source!

 Thanks for the guys at Whitespace for the technical help!

(We are considering to open a Kickstarter project for this, let us know what you think!)

* this alpha version only turns off belgian & german power systems, next version will support more systems.

(don't try this at home, this is an alpha version, I'm not responsible for damages)

(Repost of http://batistleman.com/content/tool-productivity)

First of all, I'm a huge fan of Getting Things Done. I think it's a great way to structure the process of channeling new ideas, and trying to create them.

Over the years I tried many tools to help me with the process. Software tools, web tools, Moleskines, etc... but none of them completely satisfied me. And I think this is completely normal. The quest for the perfect GTD tool is an unsatisfiable one because we are human and our thoughts are not linear. We tend to forget that sometimes.

So a while back I decided to cut back on all task managing programs and keep it simple:

• Gmail to organize my tasks, every email is a pending task, when it's done, I archive it. (I also use the Multiple Inboxes labs feature to keep track of mails awaiting reply.)
• Dropbox for file sharing
• Evernote to sync pictures taken with my phone to my pc. (where is Android Cloud?)
• And finally my "Simple Notebook":

Simple Notebook

My requirements for a good notebook are quite simple:

• No lines: I get distracted by all those lines in most notebooks. I literally can't read words on them. Or rather: there is no instant focus on the important stuff
• Pages should be fixed: For a while I used map full of regular printing paper, I liked it, but after a while it gets messy, the pages get scrambled up, etc.
• Every page must be the front page for a certain time. When I take the notebook out of my bag I don't want to search for the page I'm focused on, it needs to be just there.
• Often I put my notebook in front of my laptop, the notebook needs to fit between the laptop and my belly. A horizontal A4 fits.
• A notebook should not be tiny. I need to make sketches, note miniature drawings. An A4 fits.

Front of the notebook, just make some cover up! 

Ring detail, nice in metal.

Start with a blank sheet!

Some of my sketches

Landscape drawing using a fine stylus.

GUI sketches using a large marker

Buy Now!

Feel free to leave a comment, or to send me pictures of your own notebook!

"A newline marks the end of a line and moves the cursor to the next one. One could see it as a sign of progress. A newline gives you a whole new line to be filled. We are happy to announce that we see a newline ahead of us, namely the one that marks the beginning of our second year of existence.
Last spring we opened Whitespace and the space has grown in members, projects, usage and infrastructure ever since. To celebrate this, we invite all of you to our first anniversary weekend.

The event is planned for Friday the 25th and Saturday the 26th of March 2011 at Whitespace, Ghent, Belgium. Friday evening will be a social event. Saturday will be a day of talks and workshops followed by a fun activity in the evening."

As from the whitespace blog: http://0x20.posterous.com/

You can register here: eventbrite (no real registration is needed, it's only for estimation purposes)

For more details you can check the schedule, and if you are not from Ghent, you can find some accommodation.

Some of the awesomeness going on:

• Power over ethernet. Cool!
• Climbing on the interwebs in disguise with TOR. Awesome!
• Reverse engineering USB protocols. What!? Demax maat!

I only hope they have a cloning workshop in the morning...

See you there!

This is the stuff we do at Robovision. Basically these machines put stems in trays. Completly automatic. The specialness of this automated process is the recognition of stems. Each stem is completely different, and oriented in a different way. That makes it almost impossible to do this with standard vision algorithms. And that's where we come in :-).

My job in this is to make sure the machines are calibrated correctly. Lightning, alignment, precision, etc.  

The password for this clip is: 'factory'

Steksteek Machines from Batist Leman on Vimeo.

It's an old trick in the book, but still:

I needed a rail for the shower curtain in our bathroom, and I didn't want to use a stick for it (to long, to short, two parts, bowing in the middle... etc.). So I bought two 14mm wallplugs, a tensioner, some 3mm steelwire, and a loop tightener.

It's quite solid, the wallplugs are sitting 50mm deep in the bricks, the steelwire should handle 3000kg load. (horizontal) Wondering what would wearout fastest... we'll see :-)

Anyway, the frogs seem to like it.

For my website I wanted to create a simple yet flashy web gallery. Searching for ajax enabled webgalleries I came a cross a very simple one: galleria.aino.se/ 

Very slick, but I don't want to put the picturenames manually in the html. And I want multiple albums. And I don't want a crappy webuploader flash thing.

So what I do want:

• upload my albums with ftp to eg: .pictures/[albumname]/[photos]
• actually... that's all

So I came up with this very simple code:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
        <title>Batist leman photoalbum</title>
        <script src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js"></script>
        <script src="http://batistleman.com/photos/src/galleria.js"></script>
        <script src="http://batistleman.com/photos/src/plugins/galleria.flickr.js"></script>
	</head>
	
	<body style='color:grey;font-family:Verdana;'>
		<style type="text/css">
			body{background:#000;}
			a:link {color:grey; text-decoration: none} 
			a:visited {color:grey; text-decoration: none} 
			a:hover {color:black;background-color:grey; text-decoration: none}
			.content{width:620px;margin:20px auto}
			#galleria{height:400px;}
		</style>
		<script type="text/javascript">
			function loadGalleriaData($title, $data)
			{
				document.getElementById("title").innerHTML="<h2>"+$title+"</h2>";
				
				document.getElementById("galleria").innerHTML=$data;
				
				Galleria.loadTheme('http://batistleman.com/photos/src/themes/classic/galleria.classic.js');
				
				$('#galleria').galleria();
				
			}
		</script>


		<div class="content">
			<center>
				<br /> - 
				<?php  					getDirectory('./pictures');	  					function getDirectory( $path = '.') 					{ 	 						$ignore = array( '.', '..' );   						$root = dir( $path );   						while( $album=$root->read() ) 
						{ 
							if( !in_array( $album, $ignore ) )
							{ 
								if(is_dir( "$path/$album" ) )
								{ 
									$galleriacontent = "";
									
									$files=dir("$path/$album/.");
									
									while($filename=$files->read()) 
									{
										if(!in_array( $filename, $ignore ))
										{
											$galleriacontent .= "<img src=\\\"$path/$album/$filename\\\">";
										}
									}
									
									$files->close();
									
									echo "<a href='#' onclick='loadGalleriaData(\"$album\",\"$galleriacontent\")'><b>$album</b></a> - ";
								} 
							} 
						}
						$root->close();
					} 
				?>
				<br />
				<div id="title"><h2>choose a photo album</h2></div>
			
			</center>
			
			<div id="galleria"></div>
		
		</div>
		
	</body>
</html>

You can check out the result here: http://photos.batistleman.com/

It looks something like this:

Feel free to copy, suggestions welcome.

Cheers,
Batist.

This is awesome! Brady C. Jackson did a remake of the simplebot. And how! Check this:

You can read the full and in depth blog post here: http://bjcovertaction.weebly.com/1/post/2010/09/ardie-version-10.html

Great work!

 I'm proud to launch azumuta today! :

Quite some years ago I played as a kid with these wooden Kapla blocks. Now I'm playing around with them again, this time for my job.

Not only can I play with blocks, I also play with (Denso)robots. How awesome!