starbucks coffee cup camera in 10 minutes

A few days ago I was musing about devising an upgrade for the juicebox spy camera to allow ease of photo shooting in public areas. I decided that the design point was to be able to improvise something in a few minutes from easily available components. Okay, I know you need a digital camera as well, but that's really the point of the post.

Walking along the street with a colourful juice box and drinking straw may be a little unusual but the preponderance of people carrying Starbucks, Costas, Pret a Manger or Coffee Nation "To-go's" is pretty high.

So here it is.

Starbuck's coffee cup camera
1) Drink the coffee first. Mine was a grande latte. Don't try with expresso.
2) Check that the camera will actually fit into the cup. Mine did 'portrait' style.
3) Stand the camera next to the cup, observe where the lens hole need to be and tear out a small opening. Mine was right over the small logo face on the back of the cup. I tidied the hole with scissors later.
4) Grab some cardboard packing (eg from another cup) and wedge behind the camera in the cup. Mine was outer packaging from chocolate brownies (don't ask).
5) Put on the sucky lid.

And zippy clicky, you should have a working StarCam (r) (c) rashbre inc. You need to know the position of the on-off and clicker button and then simply squeeze the cup in the relevant position. Fabulously, my clicker button is right by the 'shots' tick box on the side of the cup. And when walking along, its easy enough to have one's hand around the lens area until the moment of the picture.

Just don't use the flash.

I'll see what happens in live use. You may get some pictures of me being chased by an angry crowd. Later.

traffic

I've changed my plans which were originally to go to the town of Reading later today, because I've spotted that there could be some above average traffic disruptions.

Reading has a mysterious and overloaded traffic system at the best of times and now its augmented with the side effects of the end of Ramadan (رمضان).

The Eid celebration(عيد الفطر) is this weekend and apparently 80% of the taxis in Reading are Muslim operated and will be out of action. I can't work out whether that means there will be more or less traffic, but I suspect the answer is more.

For Muslims, Ramadan is the month of fasting and Eid-ul-Fitr is the celebration to mark its end, at the showing of the new moon marking the start of the next lunar month of Shawwal.

I can remember from my time in the middle east, that after the celebrations, a lot of folk take an extra six days in fasting because one day of being good by fasting is repaid ten times over. So 36 days of fasting pretty much covers the full upcoming year.

So I expect Reading will be pretty lively tonight, with the combination of late revellers waiting in lines or simply staying on because they can't get easily home. I'll be on a Plan B.

pootered

It would appear that even space has bugs.

And thanks, cartoonlife, for the suggestion about a bass-line for that synthy thing.

Here's a slightly buggy bass enabled space cathedral version.

phat space reason

affair

I see a part of the USA is really catering for all eventualities nowadays with the recent West Hollywood billboard advertisment for the dating service for people who are currently married.

And now there's the related advertising for the divorce lawyers. Don't they just think of everything?

everything except compromise

For part of yesterday I was with Johnny in the basement mixin' up the medicine.

And then Mark Ronson did this, which I happen to think is rather good.

reason

Minimalist music today.

I'll be honest, I don't really get on with the old school patch map based synthesizers when I mess around with music. All the wires and analogue instability which some people love, but it seems to leave a lot more to chance.

So although I have a copy of Reason, which I used to experiment with on a PC, it has never made it across to my macworld.

Until today.

It's an old copy, and I thought it would be interesting to see what would happen if I simply set up a few mournful arpeggiates on a couple of the synths included.

So it is not really a tune, more a few sweeps of sound. Perhaps it could use a bass-line.

no reason with two nn-xt

nuts

Crunching a couple of Grilled Steak and Theakston's Old Peculiar crisps, whilst I mused the derivation of Jack Straw's reference to "discombobulation" today, I noticed the disclaimer on the back of the crisp packet.

Recipe : No nuts.
Ingredients: Cannot guarantee nut free
Factory : No nuts.

What can it all mean? A disclaimer on a bag of potato crisps that havn't been anywhere near nuts, that there may still be some inside?

Are they embarrassed that they don't know whether they've included nuts by accident, or that they feel the need for an allergy disclaimer even when they don't need one?

Perhaps they couldn't make up their minds? Perhaps, like, Gordon Brown (according to Mr Straw) they were discombobulated.

If we are not going to have a General Election in the UK until 2009, despite Mr Brown's closest advisors telling the press it was 'game on', then maybe a certain confused embarrassment will now flicker over Gordon's face. A sort of discombobulation.

Recipe : Truth and trust
Ingredients : Cannot guarantee spin free
Factory : confused

tags technorati : rashbre election gordon brown jack straw discombobulation

why (fi)?

If, like me, you are busy roaming a major city this weekend, but still feel the need to go online, than this tee-shirt could be quite useful. Who needs keychain detectors when you can also operate as a public service with this black number?

The wi-fi detector tee-shirt displays glowing bars to indicate signal strength. A couple of minor problems though? It picks up peer network enabled PCs and the batteries are NOT included.

tags technorati : rashbre wi-fi t-shirt clothing street

snappy slurpy

Debra wrote a few days ago about photographing a street scene and then being semi accosted by a drunk who she had randomly captured on film. It all played out okay, but did also get me thinking.

In some places it quite easy to look like a tourist and take purposeful pictures with crowds of people in a fairly innocuous way. Other times its best to look like 'an artist' trying to take 'the perfect shot' without overtly paying attention to the folk around.

In reality, like a spy, its always good to be aware of the surroundings and the possibilty of attracting unexpected attention. Being out in a group can help and tiny digital cameras don't draw so much attention.

If I take pictures of single individuals, or small groups where they are really the focus, then I try to ask for permission. If its a 'busy street scene' or similar, then I think its fair game when the people are really an incidental part of the composition. It is like there is a line between 'street' and 'candid'. I suppose on average I'm more often waiting for people to get out of the frame when I take pictures rather than capturing them.

But I must confess my inner mad scientist is urging me to make an anonymous Starbucks coffee cup camera - because I can, if you know what I mean.

tags technorati : rashbre camera spy drink mad scientist

North West Frontier Art

Great to hear from friend Imran this week. He's been putting together a bit of a portfolio and I'm expecting great things in the future as he expands it into a gallery of some type. Imran is one of those people with a great eye for the scene and I'm looking forward to online galleries at the very least and hopefully a proper facility somewhere too!

tags technorati : rashbre art photography liverpool

travelling companion of the earth

Fifty years ago, on the 4th October, the first Russian Sputnik was launched and marked the start of the space race. Firing a silver beachball with four antenna into space led to America then galvanising the Apollo program to get Neil Armstrong and friends on the moon just 12 years later.

Sputnik Zemlyi helped give a name to the beatnik generation and heralded the Americans and Russians doing amazing things with relatively ancient high-technology - old space capsules are filled with relays and electro-mechanical componentry.

Of course, part of the agenda of sputnik was Russia's attempts to build ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missiles) and the sputnik was a first attempt to get a payload into orbit. The agenda of both superpowers continued to be around advanced weaponry and the Americans built the halls at Canaveral big enough so that rockets could be assembled ready to fly rather than having to be upturned and then fuelled (which could take more than a day).
So using today's custom Google, I checked the name of America's first satellite...Explorer 1, which orbited some four months after Russia's first success. And less than four years later the Russians put Yuri Gagarin into space in April 1961. Right now there's some 25,000 man made satellites orbiting earth with some 8,700 still in managed orbit and the remaining 16,000 or so in various stages of decay. Russia accounts for 10,000 of the broken units and the USA has around 4000 of the ones still active.

So, a few days ago, when I was looking at the International Space Station, there's some comfort to knowing it is at least a symbol of co-operation between the major countries involved, rather than owned by a single superpower with a big ray gun.

sputnik zemlyi beep beep (mp3)
fireball xl5 theme tune (mp3)

Oh, alright then, here's the Fireball XL5 tune with the credits

tags technorati : rashbre sputnik russia space race satellites

OTA : Wordless Wednesday

Every balloon a winner from Saturday's school reunion

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