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I’m super excited to have just pre-ordered a Thing-o-Matic from MakerBot Industries. It’s a fully automatic 3D printer (aka CNC rapid prototyper) that can also be outfitted with different material nosels (aka extruders) to draw in 2D, print designs for circuit board, and even dispense frosting and peanut butter. (Not joking.) Here’s a great example of what you can do with it. (Skip to 3:00 for the cool stuff.)

Here’s another video of the machine printing parts for copies of RepRap Mendel, another F/OSS CNC RP machine design:

This is a new model that won’t ship won’t ship until November 2010, unfortunately, but I’m sure it’ll take a while to get some cool designs done, anyway. The idea here is that if anyone else would like their own desktop 3D printer (RepRap, CupCake, Thing-o-Matic or other F/OSS design), you’ll be able to print about 50% of the parts for it on this original “parent” machine and order your own electronics and other assembly hardware online.  🙂

*Giddy with excitement.*

It’s the first day of class at the ASU Polytechnic campus in the East Phoenix valley, and I’m illegally parked without a permit. Some fun facts for you:

1. A single-course, single-semester adjunct position for the 2010 year pays approximately $6K, before taxes. (Thus, around $12K pre-tax for the academic year.)
2. An annual faculty and staff “Red Lot” pass costs $480 out of pocket. Everyone allegedly pays for these out of pocket either up front or automatic payroll deduction, though I know this to be false in some cases. These passes are “…[a]vailable only to faculty and staff. Some covered spaces available in red lots on a first-come, first-served basis.”
3. Ergo, a part-time adjunct (such as myself) can expect to pay around 4% of their contract value just on the parking space.

Nice.

Thanks for the love this past weekend at Desert Code Camp! Here are the presentation materials used in both my sessions…

• Concurrency Using Threads – [slides] [sample code] (Many thanks to Jim Weirich for the original Keynote slides and example code.)
• 3D GUI Development With ruby-processing – [slides] [starfield] [twiverse]

1. Relentless.
2. Dehabilitating.
3. Stress.

Right now, in an alternate quantum reality, I’m laughing my ass off…