Cable Anatomy 101: Key Factors To Keep In Mind

Pro Sound Web: Cable selection presents two primary challenges: myriad choices and overall quality. I’ve explored these challenges and have defined six factors that can help point you in the right direction.
These factors include appearance, durability, flexibility, sonics, conductivity and shielding. Let’s have a look.

Proposal Requires Clubs To Offer Free Ear Plugs

Pollstar: The ordinance proposed by Jacob Frey is a first of its kind, and would affect about 185 businesses, the Star Tribune reported.
“Going to one of these venues, a lot of people just don’t know about hearing loss,” said Brian Felsen, whose apparel company, Locally Grown, Globally Known, is working with the Miracle-Ear Foundation and 3M to coordinate and fund the campaign. The earplugs would be provided for free to the city and venues to give out.

“Jim Henson’s Creature Shop Challenge” TV Review on Syfy

Variety: Produced by the late Henson’s company and featuring his son Brian Henson among the judges, the eight-episode series features teams of competitors trying to fabricate utile creatures on extremely tight deadlines. Hosted by actress Gigi Edgley (and five points to those who immediately said, “Farscape”), the show features the contenders being mentored by Creature Shop artists before having their work evaluated by Henson, creature fabricator Beth Hathaway and designer Kirk R. Thatcher.

The Most Important Lessons in Woodworking

Popular Woodworking Magazine: Learning woodworking isn’t just about “how to” do something. A good example of this comes from my days as an apprentice in a commercial cabinet shop. I entered the experience with a misguided, romantic notion of working beside an experienced craftsman and being tutored in the fine points of cabinetmaking. I figured I would be coached and guided as my skills developed. That type of experience may exist in old books or in woodworking schools, but the real world is quite a bit different.

How the Jim Henson Company Is Turbocharging Puppetry With Technology

Underwire | WIRED: For decades Jim Henson was able to use television to bring the art of puppetry to massive audiences in a very intimate way on programs like Sesame Street and The Muppet Show. Because of his work, beautiful and masterfully crafted creatures were beamed into homes for years and ensured the popularity of puppets for generations.

How The Corvette Museum Rescued Its Cars From A Giant Sinkhole

gizmodo.com: In a story that united geologists with rare car enthusiasts last month, a massive sinkhole opened up beneath the National Corvette Museums's Skydome, swallowing eight rare cars into its cavernous depths. Since then, the museum has worked tirelessly to recover the cars and fill in the sinkhole so that the Skydome can open anew. But how do you undo a giant sinkhole?

A Twelve-Track Sequencer That Plays Analogue Music Boxes

gizmodo.com: It's hard to get excited over something as antiquated as a music box when the phone in your pocket can play back a symphony. But there's still something oddly appealing about this twelve-track sequencer that skips the digital samples for a row of random music boxes.

STAGE TUBE: Behind the Scenes of MOTHERS AND SONS with Tyne Daly & More!

www.broadwayworld.com: Mothers and Sons, the new play by four-time Tony Award-winning playwright Terrence McNally and starring Tyne Daly, is currently in previews at Broadway's John Golden Theatre, with an official opening night set for Monday, March 24, 2014. In the video below, go behind the scenes of rehearsals with Daly, Steggert, Weller and the rest of the cast!

LCD, DLP and LED Projectors — The Differences

Corporate Tech Decisions: Sometimes trying to figure out data projector technology is like dealing with the government, with all the TLAs (three-letter acronyms). LED, LCD, DLP…what do they all mean?
First of all, there’s two basic components in a projector: lighting, and the imaging/display device technology, says Joe Gillio, director of product marketing for Casio America Inc., in Dover, N.J.

Marcy Heisler and Zina Goldrich to Preview EVER AFTER at Roosevelt University's VIVID 2014, 4/8

www.broadwayworld.com: Chicagoland will get a preview of new songs from the Broadway-bound show, Ever After, by Deerfield native Marcy Heisler and Zina Goldrich, as well as experience some of the best in opera as Roosevelt's Chicago College of Performing Arts (CCPA) presents VIVID 2014 at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 8 at the Auditorium Theatre.

Chrome Plug-In Offers A Visual Map Of Your Internet Activity

PSFK: Iconic History is a Chrome extension that visualizes the user’s browser history as a massive series of favicons.
A favicon is that tiny icon associated with a website. It usually shows up on the browser address bar or next to the name of the website in a list. Iconic History displays the favicons of all the sites the user has visited in the past four months in one page. The favicons are sorted based on when the user accessed them.

The Two Most Controversial Topics In Music Production

Pro Sound Web: As engineers we tend to form strong opinions. We base our decisions on what we hear and what we feel. And it’s important to trust these sensibilities with confidence.
Oftentimes, certain subjects will come up in which we lack technical understanding. But we don’t always need technical understanding — we need results.

NFTRW Weekly Top Five

Here are the top five comment generating posts of the past week:

The best and most influential special effects in recent film history

sploid.gizmodo.com: You can agree or disagree with the selection of films in this compilation of the most influential special effects since the 1980s, but your brain will be on a sensory overload from beginning to end.

Posted by David at 3/28/2014 02:08:00 PM

Time Travel Through Set Design

Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma: Long before the rehearsal process for a show begins, hours and hours of work have been put into the production already. Marketing materials are developed, designers have made renderings and plans, and the stage manager has drawn up breakdowns, run sheets, and complex schedules to make the show run like clockwork.

Posted by David at 3/29/2014 05:04:00 PM

Using Infants in ‘A Doll’s House’

NYTimes.com: Hattie Morahan, who stars as Nora in the acclaimed production of “A Doll’s House” now at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, has won the kind of rave reviews any actor would envy.
But for about two minutes during each show, she has found herself upstaged by a performer who doesn’t have any lines and, in fact, doesn’t seem to be acting at all.

Posted by David at 3/27/2014 06:07:00 PM

Grass Printer

DudeIWantThat.com: Designers Prof. Doh Han Young, Jeong Koo Hee, and Kim Min Hong recently won a Red Dot Award for their Grass Printer. As you might have guessed, the Grass Printer is a device that prints stuff in grass*. It literally mows graphics into your lawn based on images you sketch into its touchscreen.

Posted by David at 3/27/2014 05:59:00 PM

Pulling All-Nighters May Actually Give You Brain Damage, Sleeping in Isn’t Lazy, It’s for Your Health

Geekosystem: If you’re thinking about pushing everything until the last minute and then pulling an all-nighter to cram for that midterm and eating chocolate covered espresso beans all day to stay awake for the test (don’t question my delicious methods), you might want to come up with an alternate plan that doesn’t cause brain damage.

Posted by David at 3/26/2014 01:18:00 PM

Fluke, SparkFun, and a Crazy Case of Multimeter Trademark Infringement

ToolGuyd: SparkFun, an electronics and hobbyist kits and parts supplier, posted this week about how their shipment of 2,000 multimeters was confiscated by US Customs after entry inspection at a port in Denver.
The reason? Because SparkFun’s multimeters, yellow with dark grey fronts, too closely resembled Fluke’s trademarked color schemes.

Writing the Fight: What Playwrights and Dramaturgs Need to Know About Staging Violence—Part 2

HowlRound: Before I go into depth, I want to say upfront that I am dealing with what happens in the rehearsal room under what is usually limited time and with what is usually a limited budget. There are those who have seen this discussion as a threat to creativity and said that “playwrights should write what they want” and that “anything can be staged.” I agree on both counts. But theater happens in real space with real actors, and some things can be more easily staged than others.

Reality Check: Seton Hill senior competes on 'Henson' show

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Jake Corrick always loved monsters. Little did anyone suspect he would design them on television one day.
Mr. Corrick, now 22 and a senior at Seton Hill University, is one of the 10 contestants featured in Tuesday's debut of "Jim Henson's Creature Shop Challenge" on Syfy.
"I loved the old Frankenstein movies, but the Muppets and 'The Dark Crystal,' all those epic things the Henson Company did, they showed me that monsters don't always have to be scary, that monsters can have more personality and character."

Texture Contemporary Ballet dancing its way up in Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: tarting your own dance company can be a challenge. It’s hard to take that first step.
But Alan Obuzor, a veteran of the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School, decided he was up for it in 2011, when he founded Texture Contemporary Ballet.

10 Practical Tips for Your Long-Distance Job Hunt

www.lifehack.org: In the last year alone, I’ve applied for over 4000 jobs all over the world. I only got about 14 of them, but the other way to start this piece is by saying I have over a dozen jobs. Have you ever seen that episode of King of the Hill where Boomhauer shows Bobby the secret to picking up women? The more times you apply, the more hits you come up with.

Young singers identify with 'La Boheme' roles

TribLIVE: Giacomo Puccini was already a successful opera composer when he decided to write “La Boheme.”
He had many big hits ahead of him, including “Tosca,” “Madama Butterfly” and his last and unfinished opera “Turnadot,” but he never surpassed the sheer felicity of his opera about impoverished young lovers in Paris.

High and low-tech effects bring Spiderman and his enemies to life

Recreation content from Machine Design: Jerome Chen had an arsenal of technologies and “tricks” available as effects supervisor on the new comic-book-driven movie, the Amazing Spiderman 2 from Marvel Comics and Columbia Pictures (opening next month). But he also had to balance the goals of realism and excitement against safety, cost, and time.

Estimating Start-Up Costs

Signshop:
Why would anyone want to start up their own business? Within the first eighteen months, over half of small businesses fail.
Still the people who have the guts (or are crazy enough) to start their own businesses find ways to prevail. Some just need the freedom. Others believe that they can do it better than the next guy. And most have supreme confidence in their abilities, believing that they can do anything that they set their minds to.

Cultural Diplomacy in Emerging Markets: China, UAE, Indonesia, and Russia

USC Center on Public Diplomacy | PD News – CPD Blog: China, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, and Russia are now known globally for their economic strength. But what about their cultures? These states are much more than just their GDPs, and increasingly, they are attempting to gain global recognition not only for their rapid growth, but also for their rich cultural traditions.

Britain is brilliant at exporting plays, but what does it mean to go global?

Culture professionals network | Guardian Professional: Do you remember Tribes, Nina Raine's play about deaf seclusion? It played a month's run at the Royal Court back in 2010 but, despite some speculation about a potential West End run, that was the last we saw of it.
Raine's play has, however, been a huge international success. It has been seen in 15 different countries – three times as many as War Horse – and in some cases had multiple productions. The US has already run 14 different professional productions, with another 10 lined up. By the end of 2014 it will have had more professional productions outside the UK than its British premiere had performances.

Time Travel Through Set Design

Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma: Long before the rehearsal process for a show begins, hours and hours of work have been put into the production already. Marketing materials are developed, designers have made renderings and plans, and the stage manager has drawn up breakdowns, run sheets, and complex schedules to make the show run like clockwork.

NAB Show: What To Watch For

c2meworld.com: With the NAB Show right around the corner, we decided to canvas our writers and columnists and get their thoughts about what to expect and not expect at the industry’s largest annual gathering.

San Diego Opera to call it quits at end of 2014 season

latimes.com: It will be curtains for the venerated San Diego Opera.
In a surprising move, the company announced Wednesday that it will cease operations at the end of the current season, citing financial reasons including a tough fundraising environment and weak ticket sales.
The company said its board made the decision Wednesday to avoid declaring bankruptcy and to be able to honor its remaining commitments.

Drama Matters: The Rise of the Abstract Set

Litro: When I interviewed designer Chloe Lamford a few months ago, she suggested that the dream for her when creating the world of a play is to find a “golden idea” which encapsulates the central premise of the text whilst creating a space which is theatrically interesting. Referencing her design for the Schaubühne’s production of Duncan Macmillan’s Lungs, which saw the actors peddling stationary bikes to create the show’s power in order to comment on the play’s themes of global warming, Lamford told me that once an idea like that is found, it’s a no-brainer. In two of its recent shows by American playwrights, the Gate Theatre has found a way of achieving this on a small scale, creating designs which act as a space within which the play can occur whilst simultaneously commenting on its ideas, demonstrating the importance of non-naturalistic design in theatre.

‘These Paper Bullets!,’ a Shakespeare-Beatles Pastiche

NYTimes.com: “Let me get this straight,” Billie Joe Armstrong said to the playwright and screenwriter Rolin Jones over drinks last year. “You’re going to rewrite Shakespeare, and I’m going to rewrite the Beatles?”
The improbable show Mr. Jones was pitching to Mr. Armstrong, the Green Day frontman, opens next week at Yale Repertory Theater with the title “These Paper Bullets!” and the helpful subtitle, “A Modish Rip-Off of William Shakespeare’s ‘Much Ado About Nothing.’ ”

Artist from Rostraver competes on character-building Syfy show

TribLIVE: If Jake Corrick, a Seton Hill University sculpting senior, were to compete on a longtime reality show like NBC's “America's Got Talent” or CBS' “Survivor,” he could watch past seasons and know what's coming as a contestant and get a good idea of how to play the game.
Corrick, however, will be competing in a new, original series on SyFy television called “Jim Henson's Creature Shop Challenge,” showing off his skills as a builder of monster action figures.

They Cast Whom?! Actor Choices To Offend Every Racial Sensibility

Code Switch : NPR: No matter how you feel about ethnicity and casting — and how ethnicity or race should relate to casting — there's probably something in the news lately that's going to make you upset. Folks have strong opinions about how the race of actors should or shouldn't relate to the characters they play, but regardless of the position you take on this front, let us count the various ways that certain actors getting cast in certain roles might make you squirm

Why Kermit the Frog is a Bad Producer

HowlRound: I grew up entranced by Jim Henson’s Muppets. Performing with wry but gentle humor, they pulled back the curtain to snicker at backstage life and deftly expressed all the joy, camaraderie, and frustration of working as an ensemble. Though televised, it embraced the dynamic liveness integral to puppetry, variety, and vaudeville as art forms.

Review: Festool Sortainer Organizers

ToolGuyd: I am a huge fan of Festool’s Systainer organizers, but tend to favor Bosch L-Boxxes and Dewalt ToughSystem storage cases. L-Boxxes are more affordable, especially around Christmas and Father’s Day, and ToughSystem cases are larger and stronger.

A Day in the Life: On Site with Winter Jam

Dimmer Beach: It’s 7:45 a.m. and I’m sitting in an almost empty Bridgestone Arena. There are only five other people in the venue that holds 20,000, cleaning it from the thousands that were here at the hockey game the night before. In less than twelve hours this empty shell in downtown Nashville will be filled with a sold-out crowd reveling in their favorite Christian music acts on Winter Jam 2014.

The best and most influential special effects in recent film history

sploid.gizmodo.com: You can agree or disagree with the selection of films in this compilation of the most influential special effects since the 1980s, but your brain will be on a sensory overload from beginning to end.

Mural tells the story of Pittsburgh past and Pittsburgh present

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Doug Cooper draws panoramic murals that dramatize the history and landscape of a place, including works he has created in cities such as Rome, Frankfurt, Germany and Pittsburgh, the artistic mecca of Appalachia.
The largest mural ever created by the Carnegie Mellon University professor, who teaches drawing to architecture students, is at Community House in East Liberty. The $15 million building, opened last October by East End Cooperative Ministry, offers an array of programs to help homeless people, and at-risk youth learn the skills to rebuild their lives.

Tuned In: PBS turns spotlight on Patina Miller

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: It has been quite a year for actress Patina Miller: The 2006 Carnegie Mellon University musical theater grad won a Tony for her lead role in Broadway's "Pippin," booked roles in TV and film, and now she's in the spotlight on PBS's "Live From Lincoln Center" (9 tonight, WQED-TV).
For tonight's "Patina Miller in Concert," viewers can expect music from a variety of genres -- from classic R&B to Broadway tunes.

Women artists gather at Hazlett for SWAN Day

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: The sixth annual SWAN (Support Women Artists Now) Day presenting the works of dozens of local female artists is Saturday at the New Hazlett Theater, North Side.
The event -- featuring musicians, dancers, actors, filmmakers, poets, visual artists and fashion designers -- is inspired by the Maya Angelou quote, "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."

The Importance of Studying Theater History | Top Schools & Training Lessons for Actors, Singer, Dancers

Career Tips | Backstage | Backstage: David Lodge’s book “Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses,” he has academics playing a game called Humiliation, in which each must admit the classic piece of literature he or she has never read. One player wins the game by citing “Hamlet”—and promptly loses his job.
The classics are not going away, and their reach is long. There are numerous popular adaptations of canonical work, and chances are that you will have opportunities to work on classics and their adaptations. Knowing the work and its context beforehand will make you a better collaborator and a better artist, and will also make you more alert to the nature of opportunities as they arise.

Questions swirl around San Diego Opera closure

10News.com KGTV ABC10 San Diego: San Diego Opera employees have growing suspicions over what they say is a contractual severance payout of more than $1 million to Opera CEO Ian Campbell.
Sources, who asked to remain anonymous, told 10News Campbell’s severance package is “extensive,” and claim the severance would entitle him to “years of getting paid.”

Proof 'Hawaii Five-0' Has The Best Wrap Party In The Industry

www.huffingtonpost.com: It's not easy to put out a TV show every week, which is why crew wrap parties have become a much-needed outlet in the industry to blow off steam and celebrate. This is especially true in Hawaii, where the long hours mean time away from surfing, hiking, and other natural stress relief.

CBS Television Distribution Taps Syndication Veteran as EVP Development

The Hollywood Reporter: Former Style Network executive and syndication veteran Elaine Bauer Brooks has been named executive vp development at CBS Television Distribution, where she will oversee development of new programming.
Bauer Brooks joins the syndication division from Style Network, where she most recently served as executive producer on the network's Fashion Week programming as well as the series Style Pop. Before that, she was senior vp development at Style Network, where she worked on series such as Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane, Ruby and Style Her Famous.

Using Infants in ‘A Doll’s House’

NYTimes.com: Hattie Morahan, who stars as Nora in the acclaimed production of “A Doll’s House” now at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, has won the kind of rave reviews any actor would envy.
But for about two minutes during each show, she has found herself upstaged by a performer who doesn’t have any lines and, in fact, doesn’t seem to be acting at all.

CMU student, film crew targeted by mob in Ukraine

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Filipp Velgach was 4 years old when he fled the war-ravaged Russian region of North Ossetia in 1994 with his parents, immigrating to the United States as refugees.
When the 24-year-old Carnegie Mellon University graduate student told his parents he planned to go to the Ukrainian city of Mariupol to serve as a translator for a Pittsburgh-based documentary film crew, they advised him against it. Though Mariupol is far from Crimea, its large Russian-speaking population has been outspoken in its support for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"You don't know what you're getting into," he recalled his father telling him. "They don't like Americans there."

Teller Wins Lawsuit Over Copied Magic Trick Performance

Hollywood Reporter: Technically speaking, magic tricks aren't copyrightable. In a ruling by a Nevada federal court on Thursday, U.S. District Judge James Mahan states that explicitly.
What is protectable under copyright law is pantomimes, the art of conveying emotions, actions and feelings by gestures. The theatrical medium where magicians work has some of the flavor of pantomimes, and Teller has used it to his advantage.

Why Meetings Are The Worst Possible Way To Get Things Done

io9.com: At least one study has demonstrated the fact that talking can take away a group's ability to make a good decision — not to mention a swift decision. It involved pairs of people having to reach a decision, sometimes through brief written messages, and sometimes through verbal and written communication.

Slight Delay Can Make for Better Decisions

Psych Central News: New research has found that decision-making accuracy can be improved by postponing a decision by a mere fraction of a second.
“Decision making isn’t always easy, and sometimes we make errors on seemingly trivial tasks, especially if multiple sources of information compete for our attention,” said first author Tobias Teichert, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. “We have identified a novel mechanism that is surprisingly effective at improving response accuracy.”
That mechanism requires that a decision-maker do nothing — just briefly.

Jury Selection Continues In Comedian’s Vegas Suit

Pollstar: Wallace, 61, who removes his trademark beret as he enters the courtroom, blames the Bellagio Las Vegas for an Achilles tendon rupture his lawsuit said he suffered while performing for an HSBC Card Services Inc. corporate audience.
He declined outside the courtroom Thursday to talk about the case.

Grass Printer

DudeIWantThat.com: Designers Prof. Doh Han Young, Jeong Koo Hee, and Kim Min Hong recently won a Red Dot Award for their Grass Printer. As you might have guessed, the Grass Printer is a device that prints stuff in grass*. It literally mows graphics into your lawn based on images you sketch into its touchscreen.

Ticket Pricing Puts ‘Lion King’ Atop Broadway’s Circle of Life

NYTimes.com: How did “The Lion King” turn around its once-shaky fortunes and become the top-grossing show on Broadway in 2013, an unprecedented feat for long-running musicals, which usually cool after a few hot seasons? Hint: It’s not because it added performances after 16 years.

Is Passive Passé?

Occupational Health & Safety: Every day, on average, two people in the United States who work in construction do not return home to their families because they were killed on the job. And every day, construction workers rely on personal protective equipment to help keep them safe by making them more visible to others. But why are we relying on products and systems that are inherently passive and do not leverage the technology available today? Why do we continue to use passive rather than active safety tools to ensure workers get home safely?

Who Had Richer Parents, Doctors Or Artists?

Planet Money : NPR: A few weeks ago, we were sitting around the office arguing over this simple question: Who had richer parents, journalists or people working in finance? Doctors or artists? More generally: What's the link between household income during childhood and job choice during adulthood?
After some poking around, we figured out how to settle the argument. It allowed us to look at the same group of people in 1979 and 2010 — from a time when most were teenagers to the time when they were middle-aged and, for the most part, gainfully employed.

Press Release: Carnegie Mellon School of Art's MFA Thesis Exhibition, "Lossless," Opens March 28

Carnegie Mellon News - Carnegie Mellon University: Carnegie Mellon University Master of Fine Arts (MFA) candidates present their final work in "Lossless," the School of Art's 2014 MFA Thesis Exhibition, opening from 6 - 8 p.m., Friday, March 28, in Carnegie Mellon's Miller Gallery. The exhibition, which runs through April 20, features large-scale installations, video and generative sound art by artists Carl Bajandas, Oreen Cohen and Yunmi Her.

Understanding the Roles of Behavior in Safety

ProAct Safety: Dating back to prehistoric times, behaviors have always had a role in safety, and they always will. Behaviors were the primary, and sometimes only, tools for survival, remaining today as the last tool when all else fails. When in an environment you do not control, or when you lack the right tools or systems fail, it is up to the individual to behave in a manner for self-preservation. This is popularized with the common statement, "You are the one responsible for your safety." This is not ideal; it is, however, reality.

Long Reach Long Riders Announce Ride Sponsors for 11th Annual Charity Motorcycle Ride

Lighting&Sound America Online - News: The Long Reach Long Riders have announced sponsors for their 11th annual charity motorcycle ride. Reprising their roles in the 2013 ride, Dana Taylor and the Short Reach Short Riders are sponsoring the LRLR T-shirts, and Limelight Productions and Sapsis Rigging, Inc. are each sponsoring a chase car.

It's All About Connections - CITT Rendez-Vous 2014

Lighting&Sound America Online - News: CITT 24th Rendez-vous Annual Conference and trade show will take place August 14 - 16, 2014 in Ottawa Ontario. The conference offers three days of sessions, workshops, backstage tours, an industry trade show, social events, and networking opportunities. Registration to exhibit at the CITT trade show is now open.

RoomScan pings real space with iPhone

SlashGear: If you've ever been in a situation where you needed to draw up a floor plan or recreate a room's dimensions, then you'll appreciate what RoomScan can do for you. This deceptively simple iOS app can do all that for you and all you need to do is tap on the walls.

Japanese rockstar Yoshiki engages in piano battle with hologram of himself

www.gizmag.com: Following in the virtual footsteps of Tupac Shakur, at the SXSW festival last weekend Japanese musical icon Yoshiki used a hologram not just in an attempt to add a little flair to his performance, but to indulge those fans who can't quite get enough of him.

Star Wars and the Explosion of Dolby Stereo

Tested: When Star Wars came out on May 25, 1977, the cinema experience was changed forever. While some critics feel that Star Wars changed movies for worse by contributing to the modern blockbuster syndrome, there’s no doubt that for technology and special effects Star Wars was a huge leap forward. In particular, the way Star Wars cemented Dolby Stereo’s dominance in sound transformed the way we would listen to movies in theaters and at home.

Pulling All-Nighters May Actually Give You Brain Damage, Sleeping in Isn’t Lazy, It’s for Your Health

Geekosystem: If you’re thinking about pushing everything until the last minute and then pulling an all-nighter to cram for that midterm and eating chocolate covered espresso beans all day to stay awake for the test (don’t question my delicious methods), you might want to come up with an alternate plan that doesn’t cause brain damage.

Fluke Issues Statement Regarding Sparkfun’s Impounded Multimeters

hackaday.com: Fluke just issued a response to the impounding of multimeters headed for market in the United States. Yesterday SparkFun posted their story about US Customs officials seizing a shipment of 2000 multimeters because of trademark issues. The gist of the response is that this situation sucks and they want to do what they can to lessen the pain for those involved. Fluke is providing SparkFun with a shipment of genuine Fluke DMMs which they can sell to recoup their losses, or to donate. Of course SparkFun is planning to donate the meters to the maker community.

Beastie Boys Settle With GoldieBlox

Pollstar: In a statement to Rolling Stone, a spokesperson for GoldieBlox, which makes a line of engineering toys for girls, noted the company will make a payment “based on a percentage of its revenues, to one or more charities selected by Beastie Boys that support science, technology, engineering and mathematics education for girls.”