Nuclear Reactor Wall Charts

See them all here. I think I might print a few of these out for the workshop wall. Found over on Make.

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A Rather Good Idea Involving Twitter

I know I write about some odd ideas but this one is a good one believe me, so stick with me. Although what I’m trying to do may seem simple, once you start thinking about the whole concept behind it, the possibilities are incredible.

My idea involves the current craze of real time searching, inparticular Twitter. One can search the site and get instant results of whats being said at that very moment in time. What if you could extract that information and process it in such away that it could be represented in an analogie form like a meter or dial. Then just imagine having a series of dials all searching real time data for key words, their needles quivering away – you will have a real time snapshot of what the world’s thinking. Hell, you could even plot world trends the very second they occur from the very comfort of your workshop.

Now thats absolutely amazing.

Still with me? Great. So what have I managed so far?

1. I have managed to successfully query the Twitter api to bring back search results. You can see an example by clicking here. You will see three searches running looking for random keywords, in this case ‘TV’, ‘Craft’ and ‘Cat’ which will refresh every ten seconds. At the minute the search terms are hardcoded into each instance but I’m working on a keyword entry field.

2. I am able to extract these results and import them into Google Docs and from there generate graphical representations of the data submitted. Unfortunately as Docs doesn’t support FTP this is a manual proces but am looking at alternatives.

3. I have been asking some very clever people about setting up the analogue dials but it looks to be a little tricky. However I am always open to new ideas so if you know of a possible solution to this problem please drop me a line.

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Field Camera – Make Your Own

Heres a rather nice site talking you through making the perfect field camera.

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