Mike’s Digital Laboratory

RIT – Imagine RIT: Innovation and Creativity Festival
“Experience education and entertainment through a fusion of art and technology…” – Saturday May 3rd, Don’ t miss it!

I knew it! Disco was brought to this planet by aliens from another world. Alright, so I know the artist, she’s my daughter! Yikes, Does that make me an alien too? I better buy the mug.

This handmade box took me over a year to complete with various stops and starts along the way. It is made of Cherry, Maple and Cocobolo inlay. All the joinery was done by hand. This box started as an exercise in building an 18th century replica during a class taught by Tom Meiller during the winter of 2007. The frame for the lid was shaped using one of Tom’s antique molding planes. Using one of these is an incredible experience and I’m gald I got the chance to try. All the joints are reinforced with either splines or dovetails.

The lid uses special “butterfly” inserts to reinforce the miter joints. These are small hand cut double dovetail shaped pieces of cocobolo that were inlayed after the miter joints were glued up.The course was offered by the Rochester Woodworkers Society where you can also see some of Tom’s Work. Last week I gave the box to my daughter Melanie as a much belated Bat Mitzvah present. (She’s 14 now, so I’m oh so late on this.) Didn’t matter. She loved it.

So my friend Jim asks “Cool, I see you have beer in your title but where’s the beer?”. Answer: Beer is everywhere, yet nowhere. Ok, so no beer really, perhaps “beer talk”. The real question is what do I blog about. Well, woodworking, that’s the wood, Computer “stuff” that’s the silicon, and well, everything else I might want to blog if I was sitting around talking to you and having a beer, “beer talk”. But its not. Its just beer.

Beer Advocate – Respect Beer.

If there is one thing we can be sure of in life it’s change.  Whether the process is cooking up chicken soup or building the next enterprise widget the quality and nature of everything that goes into the “recipe” is bound to fluctuate, change in some way from one meal to the next or one project to the next. In a sense “variance” is the norm.  And so it goes that in an environment that is heavy handed with regulation and control around process those in power often feel they are working to control the outcomes to achieve consistent results.  The idea however that “consistency” in process yields consistent results is a myth.   In a world where variance is the norm, consistency in process is sure to lead to inconsistent results.  Perhaps this is why no two batches of chicken soup my wife makes ever come out the same.  Luckily she never uses a recipe so every batch tastes wonderful!

Registration for the 2008 Semantic Technology Conference is now open. This is a pretty cool conference. At least last year it was. The line up this year looks just as good. This year I’ll be giving a talk on how we are using Semantic MediaWiki at Excellus Blue Cross Blue Shield. I’m pretty excited about this. This will be my first time presenting on this topic and there is a lot to talk about.

But it’s not all about me, I didn’t know this unitl today but it looks like Steven Forth and Nell Davie will also be talking about SMW. I’ll be sure to catch their talk on this topic as well as many others I hope to see there. And of course a must see talk will be Kent Bimson’s update on Year 3 of his project down at Cape Canaveral. Kent’s the one that got me hooked on all this semantic stuff. His project is pretty interesting and it’s a working solution not just a demo.

Thanks Greg for your Thoughts on Dovetails. Spending an obsessive hour surfing on the web wondering if some day I should buy the Akeda Dovetail Jig or the Leigh Jig I stumbled upon this reminder that hand cut dove tails and other hand tool operations, while sometimes it take a little longer, It doesn’t usually take longer than  a factor of 2x. Maybe a little longer than using a power toll. but I agree maybe about a third longer is a good estimate. But then that’s why I do woodworking anyway, to spend the time and enjoy the process. So no, I don’t think I’ll buy either and save the $500.00 or so… Yeah! obsessive moment passes with no money spent. Nice.

Mariannes’s new web site Woo Hoo!