Topics

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Living Room / State of US Nuclear Silos (60 Minutes)

« on: April 28, 2014, 09:20 AM »

This is a pretty crazy look at how out of date our nuclear silos are here in the US. It was a story on 60 Minutes last night. 8' floppies? From the 1960s!?!

http://gizmodo.com/inside-the-us-nuclear-silos-where-floppy-disk-are-still-1568609439

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Living Room / Arduino/Raspberry Pi - The perfect bonding experience for geek/techie couples?

« on: February 11, 2014, 08:22 AM »

This past weekend, my boyfriend and I spent the entire weekend making things with Lilypad/Arduino. I did the coding and sewing (I'm making wearables) and it turns out that he was really into electronic components as a kid so he started with that. Then I hit a glitch in my code and he had something wired wrong and we both worked through the logic on both things and fixed the problem. Talking to Mouser about it and how much fun we had, we realized that this could be a great thing not just for kids but for adults who are looking for something that's geeky fun! Give it a shot!

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Living Room / LillyPad Arduino Projects

« on: February 04, 2014, 08:28 AM »

Hi everyone! I'm waiting on my LillyPad Arduino Design Kit to arrive in the mail and I thought I'd start a thread here to see if anyone else is working with Arduino with or without LillyPad. When I get going I'll post pictures and tips I learn from my sewing/electronics/programming voyage!

Here's the kit I ordered: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/12073

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Living Room / It's that NaNoWriMo Time of Year Again!

« on: October 27, 2013, 08:03 PM »

Hey fellow DC peeps!

It's charchu from the #donationcoder here to remind people that in a few short days, National Novel Writing Month will be upon us again! What's that you say? Well, you can learn more and sign up here: http://nanowrimo.org/ But basically you write 50k words in 30 days -- a novel in a month!

Who else from DC is participating this year?

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Living Room / Help me get my back back!!!

« on: November 26, 2012, 09:37 PM »

Hi everyone!!

Some of you know that I've been in massive pain for a long time and I can't walk much and I've been losing feeling in my legs. I'm doing an online fundraiser at http://www.gofundme.com/1kgcu4

Anything you can give -- DC credits work too -- would be greatly appreciated! And if you are on FB, you can add me as a friend (Michelle Hinn) and follow along as I update the fundraiser. Please share on your social networks if you can! I'd really, really appreciate it.

I'll be keeping a blog at http://spineadventures.com/ that will tell people all the details about back surgery and more! I just started it and my back is saying "are you crazy" right now so I must lie down for a while. But stay tuned!

Thanks!
VRGRRL/Charchu/Michelle

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Living Room / DC Sci Fi Book Club!

« on: October 07, 2012, 02:31 PM »

Hi everyone!!

So I'm finishing Cloud Atlas (bought it for my Kindle and started it before I knew there was a movie version coming out in a few weeks!!) and I thought it might be fun to start a DC Sci Fi Book Club for those inclined to chat about their favorite sci fi books and discover new ones they haven't read before!

I cannot believe it took me so long but I just read Snow Crash and Diamond Age and loved them both. What are your favorite sci fi (particularly steam punk) books?

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Living Room / Attention Writers! Camp NaNoWriMo Starts June 1st!

« on: May 28, 2012, 01:07 PM »

Hello DC Writers! Have you ever wanted to try your hand at writing a novel in a month during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) but find it hard to do in November? Well you are in luck! They have TWO camps this summer with the challenge of writing 50k words a month. The first one starts June 1st and the second August 1st!

Who's in with me? Note that during "camp" you can have virtual cabinmates to help cheer you on -- maybe we can have some DC cabins!

Here's the link to "Camp"!

http://www.campnanowrimo.org/

See you "there!"

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Living Room / National Novel Writing Month Has Started!

« on: November 01, 2011, 08:34 PM »

Some of you might know already know about National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo for short) but for those that don't...it started today! The challenge? Write a 50k novel in 30 days! Find out more at http://www.nanowrimo.org

And if you'd like to read a snippet from the beginning of my novel this year, go to: http://vrgrrl.blogsp...imo-has-started.html

If you are participating this year let's all support each other on DC!

Michelle

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Older Newsletters / VRGRRL Blogs In Live from the Game Developer's Conference in San Jose

« on: March 19, 2006, 11:27 AM »

hey peeps!

long time no chat but mouser asked me to keep you posted about happenings at the GDC (http://www.gdconf.com).

well, so far it is OFF THE HOOK. really. i'm not there yet. i was supposed to arrive last night and finish my presentations at the hotel before the marathon that is gdc starts this afternoon. well, thx to the illini women's tennis team and the men's golf team who bought up all the luggage room on the fucking plane, i got bumped...to 6-fucking-am this morning.

so now it's 11:22am and i'm am sitting on the floor of the dallas airport where the weather is shitty and planes are getting delayed all over the place and this place has the most fast food chains per capita that i've ever seen at any airport and you can feel the grease entering into your skin the longer we sit. i'm supposed to arrive around 2pm (san jose time) so i have a good four hour-ish flight ahead to finish my ppt. why start too early to do something that will be finished at the last minute anyway?

my hair is gdc red so it matches my icon more closely now. and i'm wearing my helvetica shirt (yeah, a brown shirt simply with the word helvetica...you know, the font?), my ipod, this laptop and getting weird stares from military returning through this airport...ok, i *am* a little noticeable with bright red hair.

ok...more from GDC...once and if i get there!

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Older Newsletters / Columnist Central

« on: December 10, 2005, 12:38 PM »

Hi all! I thought that since we've archived the old columnist central that we could have a columnist central forum. Mouser said I should give it a shot...so in the DC spirit, let's give it a go and see what happens!

VRGrrl

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Living Room / Nice story about a canine "cat of the year" award winner

« on: November 10, 2005, 08:48 PM »

ok...i know that this is WAAAAAAAY off topic. but i thought this was a nice story. the ap just reported about a dog who won the 1998 cat of the year award</url> at the Westchester Cat Show for her work at rescuing endangered cats. sadly, she died in august at age 17, but left quite a legacy. it's a nice story for our time where we are at war for oil, killing each other in the name of religion, and hatred for those who are different than us seems to be increasing every day. if the dog and cat world can do it, why the f*** can't we?

check out ginny the rescue dog's memorial website at http://www.ginnyfanclub.com/

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Unfinished Requests / EXISTS - IDEA: Printing your file window

« on: July 15, 2005, 08:14 PM »

Ok, now I seem to remember that Apple had this in their OS -- it'd be cool if there was a way in winXP to let you print the contents of, say, your mp3 folder...

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Unfinished Requests / IDEA: Babies on keyboard

« on: July 15, 2005, 08:10 PM »

mouser, wasn't this your idea??? i seem to remember you telling me about this...so it was something that "sort of" locked the keyboard when babies and other kids start banging on the keyboard but then turned into a fun game for babies. I don't know...something with interesting colors and shapes or small animations? I have all kinds of friends with all kinds of babies (I don't know what I mean by that...). I was thinking that it'd be cool.

VRGirl

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Unfinished Requests / IDEA: Custom message loader

« on: July 15, 2005, 08:06 PM »

Ok...here's another. My win xp machine just reminded me of this -- you know when win xp gives you a little yellow pop up message near your icon tray on the lower right hand side of the screen? you know, like, connected to "mynetwork" or "there are new downloads available"? I want a little program that lets me put in messages to pop up randomly to say "hi" or "don't forget to buy milk" or "my cat's breath smells like catfood." Maybe it's something that works off of a "to do" list or something. Not sure. Just another idea.