Pyroblogg

Over Labor Day weekend Brit and I decided to try making a super bubble wand.

This idea came from this video of Sterling “The Bubblesmith” Johnson.

We went to the Chief Lookings’ Village park in Bismarck which overlooks the Missouri river.  The park is very open and has a large hill that slopes down to the river.  There was a nice breeze, perfect for making super bubbles.

We started off with a clothesline rope that seemed more absorbent, which I thought would help.  It didn’t work very well.  Next, we tried simple cotton string.  After running the twists out, it worked perfectly.

It took a few minutes to get used to opening and closing the wand, but after we got the hang of it we were in business.

We did at times have a 12 foot “bubble tube” running from tip to wand.  We also got some watermelon sized bubbles to float a good 20 yards or so over the edge of the hill, and smaller ones well over 100 yards.  The wind got a little bit too strong and uneven to get some of those really large bubble tubes to actually release and stay in one piece for very long.

While we were blowing the bubbles we had a few vehicles pull up and just hang out for a few minutes watching the show.   I said we were just so popular it was because everyone was calling their friends. lol.

Here’s some other photos of our adventure!

Here are the links to everything I found to make the wand and bubble solution. Enjoy trying this out for yourself.

Wand: http://www.instructables.com/id/GIANT-bubble-blower/

Bubbles: http://www.soapbubble.dk/en/bubbles/bubblemixture.php

Yesterday, February 8th was my 23rd birthday.  I received ‘The Sandman: Preludes & Nocturnes‘ , a Bliptronic 5000 and a fantastic dinner from my girlfriend, Brit.   I know of a few other gifts that should be arriving in the mail any day now…   As a ‘gift’ to myself, I’m putting another $25 into Kiva.org for a cycle or two of lending.  Check it out for yourself, Kiva is a great way to help people accomplish their goals without making them charity cases.

Finally, to celebrate; here is a wonderful performance of the birthday song by my dad.

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PS Prepare yourselves, all ye who leave me phone messages.

PPS My blog was taken down for a few days due to a snafu in a configuration file and the fact that I was celebrating my birthday over the weekend.

I was worried for a bit that I’d lost everything.  Thankfully fixing one line of code make everything work just fine again.  Also, I recently signed up for an account with Backupify to backup my social media endeavors in case the worst happens.  Things like this are also nice* wakeup calls for better routine db backups and maintenance.

I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.

Happy Holidays by zachschwoebel

I hope that you are enjoying the holiday with your family or other close loved ones.

If you faced travel I hope it went smoothly and you arrived safely at your destination.  If you were snowed in by inclement weather or otherwise unable to celebrate I hope that you will still make the best of it.

Now get off your computer and go have some fun!

In case you skipped through or missed the Facebook privacy update stuff earlier this month I’ll give you an update.  In an effort to be more social,  Facebook now considers the following, Your Name, Profile Picture, Gender, Current City, Networks, Friend List, and Pages you are a fan of to be “Publicly Available Information.”  And by social,  I do mean it *is* easier now for people who might want to friend you to do so.  However, it also gives advertisers and others access to more of your information to target their ads.  They no longer have to “ask” for this “privileged information,” it’s just out there for everyone to see.

Some of the information, like your name, profile picture, and current city is actually less invasive than having your name, number and street address in a public phone book.  But the rest of them are things you used to have a degree of control over.  I reckon most users felt ok with their circle of friends knowing that they’re a member  ”I’ve partied in a cornfield” but I don’t think they were planning on sharing it with  everyone on Facebook, and beyond (make no mistake, it’s available to a lot of people/companies now)

Users gave this information to Facebook with a respectable degree of confidence that they got to decide who had access to it.  You knew that if you joined “My hometown can out drink your hometown!” your friends might see it.  But not, say, your employer whom you’ve specifically not friended because they have no business knowing who your friends are, what pages you like or what things/ideas you personally associate yourself with.  Now, theoretically, everyone can get access to this information, it’s “publicly available.”

The reason Facebook has pulled this bait and switch on it’s users is because it’s actually part of their business model.  Get users to input trusted information, use that information in combination with information gathered from their friends to sell targeted advertising, Profit.  Letting you keep your information to your self, if you so chose, was costing Facebook money they could have been bringing in from more specifically and more easily targeted ads.  By labeling this information “public” and completely removing your control from the loop, Facebook has made it easier to make more valuable associations and thus make more money.  All without caring what your intent was in having a Facebook profile in the first place.

Personally, I keep my Facebook account to keep occasional tabs on friends, and increasingly, family (I just friended 3 aunts in 2 days, and they all found me.)   I didn’t ask for, nor do I want, anyone outside of the people I’ve accepted as friends to know which groups i’m in or pages i’m a fan of.  I didn’t join those  groups or friend people for that information to be in the public record.  This is in contrast to my website, blog or Twitter, for example, where from day 1 I had the expectation that every character I typed would be in the wide open for a lot of people to see.  I expected the exact opposite from Facebook and am very disappointed.

What Facebook should have done is made the control of these settings more granular, not removed it completely.  I really like the new privacy control over the status updates, where you can select whom you’d like to share each individual post with.  They should have extended this control to your friends list, groups, and pages.  If I have a Facebook account and I really don’t want you to use my information (like it was in the past!) I should be able to make that decision for myself.

If you look, not even that hard, you can find a lot of information about me on the internet. Information that in large part, I have put there with the intention that it was going to be on the open internet.  I’m really not afraid of having my name around the internet, what i’m upset about is the means by which Facebook has come to this point with the private information of millions of people.

For you, Facebook might really be the only “web presence” you have and you may have considered it your little corner of the internet, accessible only to the people you choose.  Well, it’s increasingly becoming less and less of your corner and more and more of Facebook’s file on you.

I say something because apparently Facebook cares about what their users think, and I want it to be a better experience for all of its users.  But when they have the authority to amend their terms (and rightly so) without notifying you or requiring any action on your part and then  suddenly redefining how they handle your information it makes me think they really are barely listening at all.

End Rant.  Care to comment? I’d like your opinion if you have one, even it it’s “meh, who cares.”

PS Don’t ever say anything sarcastic or vent on Facebook.  The world might react, and take off your head.

BisHack.com Launced Today!

BisHack is my attempt to spark some interest for a hackerspace in Bismarck.  I essentially want to continue the great times I had back in Minneapolis with the folks from TC Maker.

Since I’ve set up my workbench a few weeks ago I’ve been working on a few projects and I’ve really started to miss meeting up with other makers and chatting about/showing off the projects we’re working on.  Ultimately I would still like to have a place to actually meet up with makers and work on those projects together.  I’m hoping I can find some people to start a small space, or at least meet up for drinks.

If you know any makers/hackers in the Bismarck area, please send them to BisHack.org

Two of my good friends, Ryan and Molly, were married last friday.  Their wedding was fantastic (not too much crying)  and the reception was a really fun party for the two of them.  The happy couple is now honeymooning for a week out in Yellowstone.  I wish them many many happy years together!

Congrats to the Burfs!

Check out MtBurf.com!

The Burf Bros. Ryan and Jeff loved the name so we launched the site.  Be sure to check out the photo gallery.  I’ll be talking to Ryan about sketching out a few maps of the trail when he gets back from his honeymoon with his bride Molly!

Some of my friends have built a single-track off-road bike circuit on the hill behind their parents house. I’ve been photographing them and am in the middle of building them a website. While the final name is yet to be settled it’s currently being developed under my domain at bike.pyrodogg.com

Check it out and let us know what you think, of the trail and website

After leaving the IEEE room in the EE building on campus late last night something broke in one of the nearby restrooms and flooded the area of the building with upto 1 inch of water.  Thankfully someone came in and picked my backpack up off the floor before it got too wet (I didn’t feel like lugging it home at 2am).    Some papers are a little damp, but my computer is fine.  Some of the desktop machines that were on the floor had to have water poured out of them.  They were off at the time and we’re still waiting for them and the rest of the room to dry before we do anything with them.  In all of the rooms along the hallway are blower fans trying to get the water out of the carpets.  Hopefully the damage isn’t too bad to make my last few days at school here a pain in the butt

I would like to build dynamic map of the U’s tunnel system. Something like google maps where you can choose start and destination buildings and it’ll show you how to get around. I think they’re pretty under used in the winter because people are afraid of getting lost down there somewhere.