Edward L. Platt

New Work from the Center for Civic Media from MIT CMS/Writing on Vimeo.

A bunch of spectacular 5 minute updates on 2013—2014 research projects from the Center for Civic Media, where I work. Mine are at 11:00 (What We Watch) and 26:05 (Media Meter), but they're all wonderful.

Ed Platt: "How to Make Bread" from MIT CMS/Writing on Vimeo.

I gave an "icebreaker" ignite at the 2014 MIT/Knight Civic Media conference. The theme was "The most interesting thing I learned this year" and I talked about how to culture your own yeast to make bread.

Here's a fun knot I worked out. It's essentially two slipknots securing each other. It forms a secure, single loop, and can be quickly released by pulling on the working end. I'd be interested to know if anyone has seen it used or know if it has another name. Warning: I'm not endorsing this knot as being useful for any particular purpose, use at your own risk.

Tying Instructions

1. This is a knot, get some rope.
2. Tie a slipknot.

The Earth has, just today, completed revolving around the sun three times for each finger on a typical human hand since the day I was born. To commemorate the occasion, I made an interactive visualization of my life. I've open-sourced the code as xsection.js and you can create your own custom version by modifying the data.js file.

Every few years, someone discovers that problem drinkers can return to moderate drinking—and they're always wrong. So when I saw an op-ed in the New York Times entitled "Cold Turkey Isn't the Only Route," I was disappointed, but not surprised. The op-ed, written by Gabrielle Glaser in support of her new book, has a simple message: for those who struggle to control their drinking, moderation is an alternative to abstinence.

This year at Maker Faire Detroit, I helped Matt Oehrlein and the team from i3 Detroit with their laminar flow fountain. The fountain is composed of three laminar jets. Each jet shoots into a barrel containing the next jet, creating a ring. The individual jets are controlled by an Arduino which wirelessly communicates with a Makey-Makey connected to three brass candle holders.

Drupal is an incredibly flexible piece of software, but that flexibility often comes at the price of slow performance. After several years working on Seltzer CRM, which I modeled after Drupal 6, I've realized that there is a simple way to get the same flexibility without as much of a hit to performance.

Last Friday, the CEO of i3 Detroit announced his resignation, and Bucketworks in Milwaukee announced that they were raising money to help make rent (they did). Both announcements generated a lot of valuable discussion about the sustainability of hackerspaces, but there are a few important points that I believe are often overlooked when talking about sustainability.

Here's an outline from my Penguicon 2013 panel "Communication for Geeks."

Here's an outline from my Penguicon 2013 panel "Sleep Hacking."