Adam sent me a stumble of a DIY vinyl wall art project on Instructables by Britsteiner. Immediately I was inspired by her project and went to work. Her Instructables project used contact paper and after a quick trip to Lowe’s and the local dollar store I decided contact paper would not work for my project. I wanted specific colors – brown and green – that I could not find as contact paper. I wanted to make a tree.
I recently had an MRI and wanted to make an animated GIF out of the images. I found a couple of great little programs that made this task a breeze.
The Rocketry of Central Carolina (ROCC) hosts rocket launches using their rocket pad for rockets from 1/4 A motor size all the way up to gigantic K size motors. Adam and I have gone several times just to watch the launches, and a few times Adam has launched his own rockets. I much prefer this to the times he used the car battery to launch a few homemade rockets at our home. Watching rocket launches is free and a small donation is recommended if you use the ROCC launchpad. See some of our ROCC adventures after the jump.
I have had some issues dealing with “experts” at local music stores and even reviews of products online; in particular dealing with USB condenser microphones used for music recording. I though that since I could see how so many people claim to be experts, yet give misleading information, I should do my part is dispelling some myths about USB audio hardware using a particular example.
Even some “experts” at the music store will have no clue what they are talking about, so let me enlighten you something so you won’t fall prey to their stupidity.
I like to record music from time to time on my computer. Nothing special, a riff here or there on the guitar, or a cover song or something. I wanted to have the simplest method for recording so when I chose to, I can focus on recording music instead of setting things up. I found the MXL USB.006 Condenser Microphone to be perfect for my application, however everyone and their brother advised me against it. Even the guy who sold it to me at “Guitar Place” said it wasn’t as good as running a standard condenser mic through a mixer and using a USB sound card. The one he recommended was the Behringer UCA202. So I bought them both to see the differences.
Now that some time has passed, I am able to reflect thoughtfully and professionally over the Maker Faire that was held in Durham on Sunday, April 25th.
From a teacher’s perspective, four makers in particular presented things I just “need” to have in my classroom. This is my wish list:
Find reasons and more information about each of my choices after the jump.