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I’m really getting in to “fan made films” lately. Most are Sci-Fi and starting to become fairly high quality. While I was at the Seattle ComicCon I was surprised to see DVDs of all the ones I’ve viewed in the past for sale on tables with lots of other DVDs you can’t “buy” anywhere. Waxy.org posted a link to this one, a Thundercats fan film which is a fun watch. Other ones I’ve downloaded and used to test video playback on phones, devices, etc… have been Grayson, Duality, Fanimatrix, Hidden Frontier, and Starship Exeter. If you have any other cool ones post’em up!

Alex Moskalyuk over on Slashdot has a review of our first issue of Make Magazine. He gave it a 10 out of 10. I really like this part “Make is the magazine for people who like to look under the hood, who like to work on do-it-yourself projects and who feel great accomplishment when a project is over, even though its practical usability might be questioned”. Mark was IMterviewed over on Gizmodo about the magazine as well.

I just interviewed Brian Greene, professor of Physics and Professor of Mathematics at Columbia University. He is author of the best selling books “The Elegant Universe”, “Fabric of the Cosmos” and recently a NOVA special. His area of research is superstring theory, quantum theory of gravity as well as a unified theory of all forces and all matter. We talked about superstrings, branes, experimental ways to investigate all of this along with what tools he uses and how technology has changed the way physicists work together (they use AIM!). This will be part of our Make:Audio series to be released here soon. Brian, wants to build a telescope as a project (I’ve always wanted to as well). I think we’re going to definitely put that in a future issue. I’d like to build my own scope, then use one of my digital cameras to take photos.

I’m ordering a GloFish soon. GloFish are fluorescent zebra fish that were originally bred to detect pollution in the water. If the fish is glowing, then there’s bad stuff in the water. Recently, these have gone on sale as pets. The “pet versions” will just glow all the time. There has been a bit of a debate over these little guys, right now you can’t own, transport or sell them in California. Before my new glowing friend gets here I want to build an aquarium for him. For daytime viewing, a fluorescent or halogen light and for night time viewing a black light. The fish absorb light and re-emit light, apparently it’s quite striking to see it in person. Web cam, web controlled lights, and web viewable stats on the tank is what I have planned too. I’m currently checking out King Vinnie’s DIY aquarium site– if there are any others let me know.

Here are a few projects I’ll be kicking around soon using GPS. GPS tagged photos, using Google Maps with a GPS and GameBoy GPS. The one I think I might turn in to an article is the Google Maps one– with a high speed wireless card and a Tablet PC, I think that might make a good in car GPS system. Maybe I’ll tie A9 in to it and see where Amazon took all those photos. If anyone is doing stuff like this, let me know email, AIM/iChat or Skype me.