Nathan vs. Sump Pump Vapor Lock: How I Could Have Kept My Basement From Flooding With a Drill Bit

Carefully placing a hole in the drain pipe from a sump pump avoids vapor lock. Doing so 5 years ago would have saved me thousands of dollars, avoided damage to my finished basement, avoided multiple visits from a plumber, and saved me tons of stress. Since I drilled the hole there has been no vapor lock and there has been no flooding. But unfortunately I didn’t know what to search for. I didn’t know about vapor lock.

How To Keep a Toddler From Taking Off Their Pajamas and Diaper At Night

To keep a toddler from taking off their pajamas and their diaper and consequently wetting the bed (or worse!), put a safety pin through the hole in their zipper and fasten to either side of the top of their jammies.

Connecting Kindle 2 to Public Libraries

I would love to get one of Amazon’s Kindle 2 wireless reading devices, but I’d rather download books from my public library, books that I’ve already paid for with my tax dollars. Here are my thoughts on how it might work.

Pheromone Fences to Protect Migration Corridors for Jaguars and Other Wildlife

Can animals be herded using pheromone fences?
This thought occurred to me as I read the March 2009 issue of National Geographic, where Mel White contributes an article titled “Path of the Jaguar.” The article discusses efforts to preserve the corridor Jaguars follow as they range from Mexico to Argentina, which is referred to locally as [...]

Nerf Vulcan EBF-25 100-Dart Belt Mod Instructable

This video shows step-by-step instructions on how to modify the belts for the fully automatic Nerf machine gun. Sweet, right? You bet! In fact, you can string as many belts together as you like. I’d love to hear in the comments below how many belts you’ve strung together - so let me know. The cost [...]

Love and a Belt-Fed Machine Gun

Check out this video of Phoebe taking me out with the Nerf Vulcan EBF-25 fully automatic machine gun!

Tips: If you get one - which I highly recommend - get extra darts, and when you load the belt push the darts as far into the cartridge as possible. That way you’ll get longer, more accurate [...]

Interaction Design for Signtific Lab

In this post I will outline the interaction design for Signtific Lab, a website for massively multiplayer thought experiments. The marketing material for Signtific Lab reads “the platform provides a mechanism to rapidly generate cutting edge ideas about the future of science and technology.” At its core it is a what-if game that prompts [...]

Signtific Lab: Free Space Thought Experiment is Live!

The first thought experiment on Signtific Lab, Free Space, was launched today at Web Stock in New Zealand. Anyone can create a player, so head on over and get started!
Once you create your player, you can embed your profile and cards that interest you on any website. Here’s the embed for my profile, the [...]

Virtual Moleskine

You can read through a few of my thoughts and ideas in my Virtual Moleskine post. Sometime I’ll get all 6 journals online. But no promises when.

Snowqualmie Falls

Here’s a photo from my visit to Snowqualmie Falls outside of Seattle, Washington. I was on my way from IXDA09 in Vancouver, a trip I made with Earl Browne, who took this photo.