Star Simpson's Blog

A big thanks go out to everyone who encouraged me to document the creation of the Etherwiki — our in-house combination of Etherpad-lite and Dokuwiki! I wrote up a quick how-to tonight. Please send comments if anything needs fixing: Link is here: https://canidu.com/etherwiki-howto.html

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This may be a low-brow metaphor, but the more I think about it, the more I feel that the way one uses one’s time is like getting a tattoo: The effects are completely indelible; also they tend to reflect who you’ve been spending your time with. Your choices about time spent also stick with you [...]

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While in Shenzhen, I’ve seen some cool human-powered manufacturing processes that I wouldn’t otherwise have stumbled across. These are short youtube videos of some interesting and noteworthy new insight on how stuff gets made: This is how rhinestone appliqués get made — if you’ve ever seen a bag, tshirt, or hoodie with shiny plastic gemstones on it, [...]

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One of my favorite things about Canidu is that we’re a highly nimble multinational team, and much of what we’ve been able to accomplish so far while working from, at one time, up to three different countries (that was Hong Kong, the US, and Taiwan) — would be totally impossible without the internet. We have [...]

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Some of you may remember the electronics learning play set I built at the Media Lab, in 2008 (then called Fuzzy Logic).  I’m excited to finally announce that we’re back. Presenting Canidu: [http://canidu.com]  Our mission is to build a play set for learning about electronics, with a radical new design to make electronics easier to [...]

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If you’ve talked about going to China, you’ve talked about the Great Firewall.  I talk and think about it so often — every day when I need to connect to the internet — that I can’t even remember how much of the cultural consciousness it occupies in the US. But I remember wondering what it [...]

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I’m sure Whitman meant a different East, but it seemed appropriate anyway while I read this today in Taipei. A PROMISE to California, Also to the great Pastoral Plains, and for Oregon: Sojourning east a while longer, soon I travel toward you, to remain, to teach robust American love; For I know very well that [...]

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Welcome to the world of Whitelabel goods.  What’s that, you ask?  Well, have you ever noticed how every hip California startup has a branded steel water bottle, without having had to go design a steel water bottle and figure out how to get someone to produce it, someone to supply the steel, someone to check [...]

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Continuing the series!  Today we examine sartorial and electronic China — China is a giant skunkworks for a variety of industries.  Basically every corner has several independent clothing makers, so there’s a lot of competition and a lot of innovation. This cape-coat is one of my favorites: Truly, good for alllllll occasions. This dress was [...]

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Just spent the last 3 months traveling in the People’s Republic of China, which was a fascinating break after the last more or less 4 years in the People’s Republik of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Some of my friends have asked me in person “What’s China like?” Those people, I just feed a few Szichuan peppercorns that [...]

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