The Gadgets Page

Die cutting has been a staple of crafting for centuries. Originally just cookie cutters sharpened to cut paper, a new generation of digital die cutters is available that use a razor knife and computerized control to cut any number of shapes with the same precision. This means you don’t have to have a library of dies and you aren’t limited by the size of the dies you have.

There are two types of digital die cutters vying for the craft market: Self-contained cartridge-based cutters that require no computer or computer expertise, and computer driven cutters that are less expensive and more flexible, but have a higher learning curve and require a computer.

THE PROVOCRAFT CRICUT

The Cricut machine by Provo Craft is easy to use. It doesn’t need to be hooked up to a computer so it is portable. The cartridge designs are cute, although to get them to look like the examples on the boxes you will need to cut the same shape a number of times in different colors and layer them together.

If you buy cartridges at regular price they are expensive ($69-$89). They go on sale often, however, and I’ve been able to get them as cheap as $25. You can scale the images from 1” to 5.5”, in specific increments of generally ½”.

The original Cricut will cut paper, cardstock, vinyl, and contact paper up to 6”x12”. The Cricut Expression gives you have more size options up to 12”x24” and can also cut chip board, but it is bigger making it not as portable (it doesn’t have a handle like the original Cricut). You need to put your paper on a tacky mat that holds the paper down while it’s being cut. The Cricut comes with two mats and they last quite a long time if you keep dust off of them. Additionally, you can revitalize your old cutting mats using the techniques in this Youtube video:

The Gypsy is an accessory cartridge that can load and store all of your other cartridges. It is due out October 4th. It also does custom layouts of images and can scale them in more ways.

Cricut is expensive however. By the time you’ve got a machine and a library of cartridges it’s easy to be over $1000 into it.

They have over 100 cartridges with fonts, shapes (garden, animals, travel, boxes, tags, seasons, holidays, etc.) licensed (Disney, Hello Kitty, SpongeBob, etc), “Classmate” (50 states, word builders, letters made of an item that starts with that letter)

You can only use shapes available as cartridges. With the Cricut Design Studio software you can blend and combine images from cartridges using your computer, and there is a third-party software program called Sure Cuts a Lot that takes your own images and fonts and cuts them on the Cricut machine. I have not tried it. It Costs $75-90, and it does not come with a design program. Frankly, if you want to use your computer, get the Silhouette SD, which is a lot more versatile.

The list prices for the various Cricut Machines (the machines also go on sale at local craft stores and on the web):

Cricut $163.47 – $299.99

Cricut Create $199.95 – $399.99 same size as the original Cricut with a 6”x12” mat, but cuts images from 1” to 11.5”

Cricut Expression $289.03 – $499.99

Gypsy $299.99

Cricut Jukebox $ 44.99 – $89.99 lets you combine 6 cartridges at a time

Cricut Design Studio software $49.99 – $89.99 lets you blend images from cartridges using your computer

Here is a step-by-step guide showing how to use the Cricut.

The fact that she used this elaborate machine to die cut the word “Simplify” for her wall is an irony that was obviously lost on her.

QUICKCUTZ SILHOUETTE SD/ GRAPHTEC CraftRobo

The biggest competitor to the Cricut is the CraftRobo Silhouette SD. The Silhouette SD is just like a computer printer—in fact the computer actually thinks it IS a type of printer called a plotter. Instead of a print head, it has a razor knife.

Like a printer, it comes with a USB cable to connect it to your computer and you have to install a driver. It comes with a design program that lets you draw your designs and lay in whatever text you want. You can draw cut lines and perforations using different line colors. The cutting area of the Silhouette is 9” x 39” for cutting vinyl or other backed material, but if you need to use the cutting mat it is limited to 8 ½” x 12”. You cannot cut chipboard, foam, or fabric with the Silhouette SD.

The Silhouette SD also has an SD camera card slot that you can use to store your designs on. This allows you to take the cutter with you and cut designs without your computer attached. CraftRobo provides a library of designs that you can access on the Web, and the cutter comes with 100 free downloads from the library. Cutting from the SD card is not as easy as using the Cricut, but it does work. It’s certainly easier than setting up your computer each time you want to cut.

Like the Cricut, you have to put paper on a tacky carrier mat, which lasts quite a while if you keep the included cover on it. The carrier has precision markings and placing paper is more accurate than the Cricut—so accurate that you use the “registration” feature to cut around full color printouts from your printer—a very handy feature for cutting out heart-shaped photos, for example, which the Cricut cannot do.

The Silhouette SD costs $250 and comes with everything you need to get started except an SD card. Consumables include razor blades and tacky mats, both of which are an inexpensive $10 and last for dozens of cutting sessions. The Silhouette SD cannot reliably cut stock heavier than 100lb. paper, however you can “re-cut” the same cardstock over to make sure a cut goes all the way through.

Here is a video of a demonstration of the Quickcutz Silhouette:

THE VERDICT

If you are both computer savvy and creative enough to do your own designs, you’ll be happiest with the Silhouette SD. Other than cutting the thickest stock, it can technically do anything the Cricut can do. For example, my husband uses it to cut out playing cards after printing them, and he has designed some paper tuck boxes that can simply be folded up like origami. Neither of these functions would be possible with a Cricut. It borders on being a professional tool, and the company that actually makes it, Graphtec, has higher-end machines specifically designed for professionals. It does not come with a wide library of shapes, so if you’re looking to cut out Mickey Mouse, You’re going to have to do quite a bit of design work yourself.

If you prefer not to deal with computers, the Cricut is for you. Its wide library of cartridge designs and accessories ensures that you’ll find the stock shape you’re looking for. Be prepared to spend a bit of money, or start a cartridge lending pool with your friends.

When it comes to papercrafts and scrapbooking, die cutters are becoming as ubiquitous as scissors and paper. Make sure you take into account your financial limitations and technical abilities when you choose the die cutter that is right for you.

I am totally stoked to announce that I’ve been chosen to speak at the Utah Open Source Conference this year.

• UTOSC 2009 | (Afford|Scal|Reli)Ability – Home

These are my presentations:

• UTOSC 2009 | Open Source Basics: What are you a bunch of hippies?
• UTOSC 2009 | Intermediate GIMP: Face Swapping
• UTOSC 2009 | Advanced GIMP: The Digital Diet

This is the first time I’ve done a presentation like this since my student teaching so many years ago, so I’m feeling pretty nervous and excited all at the same time. If you are in the Utah area on October 10th, please drop by the Utah Open Source Conference and give me a boost of morale. I’ll probably need it!

I’ve been waiting for wireless stereo Bluetooth to become an “actual” reality for years now. The A2DP stereo wireless protocol was developed years ago, but has only recently become ubiquitous amongst players and computers. First attempts at stereo Bluetooth headsets resulted in ridiculously large and uncomfortable headsets with poor battery life that were expensive and poorly supported by devices without an external dongle.

This has all recently changed. With A2DP support now available in iPhone OS 3, Mac OS X, and Windows, I can finally actually use wireless headsets. So I headed down to the Apple store to look at what could be purchased retail, and after looking at the options, I came home with the Altech Lansing BackBeat 906 headphones. I paid $99.

These headphones double as a Bluetooth headset with their built in Microphones. Noise canceling is good—they’re the best Bluetooth headset I’ve used, although I may be biased by hearing the call in both ears, which I like. Annoyingly, the iPhone switches the audio source back to the internal mic and speaker when you take a call while listening to the iPhone, so you have to manually switch it back while you “hello? Hello?” the caller to keep them from hanging up.

Styled like two behind-the-ear BT headsets connected by a cable that runs behind the head, they’re actually the most comfortable wireless headphones or headset that I’ve ever used. They have a silicon waveguide that directs the sound into the ear canal from external earbud style speakers, which is more comfortable than in-the-ear foam inserts. The only usability problem I’ve encountered is that leaning your head back against a pillow will cause the earbuds to move, just as with any behind-the-head headset. Unfortunately they’re too large to fit inside a motorcycle helmet.

Buttons are provided on the headset for call hook (left side) and audio controls (right side). Play/Pause is the main audio control button, with a lever for audio up/down. Holding the up/down lever for two seconds provides next/previous track, and the controls work seamlessly in iTunes and on the iPhone. The headsets come with a Bluetooth adapter compatible with all iPods that have dock connectors (as shown in the photo). iPhones can drive the headsets directly from the built-in Bluetooth and don’t need the plug-in adapter. Bluetooth range is about the same as any BT headset, which is to say you can use it in the same room as the source, but as soon as you round a wall, the signal drops out completely.

Sound quality is quite good–the best I’ve heard via wireless Bluetooth. Interestingly, it’s dramatically better with my iPhone than with my Mac (Unitbody Powerbook 17”) running iTunes. On the Mac, there are audible distortion effects irrespective of the compression level of the music or volume. It’s hard to understand why a completely digital audio stream would be affected, especially considering that I would think the codebase and hardware between the Mac and the iPhone are quite similar. It’s clearly the Mac, however, because on the iPhone audio is clean and crisp at all volumes.

For casual listeners, the Bass is good but not booming. You’ll definitely hear the bass line in 50 Cent’s Candy Shop. The ominous sub-aurals in Batman Begins are vivid, although not as lush as with Sony’s top of the line ear buds. Brass and synthetics are bright, and beats are crunchy and pop. You’ll like these phones.

No Bluetooth wireless headset will satisfy an audiophile. Distortion, bandwidth, and compression effects are all audible, and distortion at higher volumes can be distracting. Bass response lacks depth, and there’s a general flatness and lack of vibrancy and dimension across the dynamic range, leaving horns sounding especially brassy. Noise levels during silence are pronounced, as they would be on worn vinyl. The headphones can get quite loud—maybe a little too loud, but I’ve already lost hearing so it works for me. At peak volume, the distortion can be annoying. You’ll hear noise spikes in the attack of beat transitions and compression artifacts in the tail of white noise envelopes. Distortion at mid level volumes is only mildly apparent. These effects are apparent irrespective of the compression level of the source audio files (I tested up to 320kbps on my iPhone. Even uncompressed audio had distortion on the Mac, but I’m putting that down to a problem in a processing on the Mac since those effects are not apparent on the iPhone).

Fortunately, I’m not an audiophile, so love these little gems. They’re the best Bluetooth headphones I’ve heard and they’re they ideal mate to my iPhone.

• Can I just brag about the gas mileage my Prius is getting lately?! http://tinyurl.com/r49c5u #

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Microsoft’s latest desktop operating system, Windows 7, has been released to manufacturing, which means that it will be available pre-loaded on PCs and in retail boxes in October. Being geeks, the gadgets page got early access to the release version and installed it on the Sony UX 390N to compare Windows 7 to its predecessor, Windows Vista.

In a word, Windows 7 is a sigh of relief. The Sony UX390 is an Ultra-mobile PC, and not very powerful: It has a 1.5GHz Core Solo processor, 1GB of ram, and a 32GB solid state hard disk. It’s basically minimum spec for a modern computer. Vista ran poorly on it, and only with considerable tuning and customization by an expert was it even remotely tolerable. Application “whiteouts” were common, search indexing had to be disabled, and apps ran out of RAM all the time. Beyond using it for Outlook, there was little that it was good for. Sony should never have moved from Windows XP for these UMPC machines.

Windows 7 changes all of that. I performed a clean installation from a boot CD in less than 30 minutes, which in itself is amazing. Secondly, by the time the installation was done (with literally no input from me beyond partitioning), it had nearly all the devices, including the fingerprint scanner, correctly identified and working. Of all of Sony’s original drivers and applications, I only need to install drivers for the memory stick slot, Sony’s firmware extensions device on the motherboard, the onboard camera, and the touch screen calibration application. Everything else was handled out of the box, and the Vista drivers for the missing devices worked in Windows 7. The new Printers and Devices app is a joy—it’s way easier and faster to deal with devices in Windows using this separate control panel. In less than an hour total, I had a new computer.

It’s hard to describe how much better the computer is now. Office 2007 runs just fine—it’s quite snappy. I’ve done literally no tuning—I haven’t had to turn off indexing, add ReadyBoost, or anything else to make the computer perform. It runs just fine by default. Everything is faster—hooking up to wireless networks, running multiple simultaneous applications—everything. The fan isn’t on all the time and the hard disk isn’t constantly accessing. Features that used to be add-on programs, such as Fingerprint logon and burning ISO images to CD or DVD, are now part of the operating system.

The new taskbar works just like the OS X dock. I wasn’t a fan of the dock in OS X when it came out, but I’m quite used to it now, and it’s definitely better than the Start menu ever was. The new taskbar is faster and easier to use than the start menu (which is also still there) and the screen looks a lot more coherent. I wish they’d gone all the way and put the Recycle Bin on it so there’s not just one lonely icon on my desktop, but they didn’t.

The organization of the user interface is a quite a bit better than Vista. Vista was clearly just a bunch of silly layers on top of the old user-interface that rarely made anything easier—they just made it take longer to get to the functionality you were looking for. In Windows 7, finding your way around makes more sense—probably more sense than it ever has in the past. You can generally just find the functionality you need by looking around and clicking in the obvious places.

When you can’t, typing the name of an application in the search box in the start menu will pull up whatever you need quickly. Searching in Windows 7 is dramatically improved, although not yet on par with OS X in terms of speed and low background processing impact. It is finally good enough to use, however.

Finally, every one of the buggy glitches I’d been dealing with in Vista is resolved. File copies are fast. Drag and drop operations actually work the first time. UAC pop-ups are considerably reduced. Applications that aren’t compatible with Vista can be run in a built-in XP virtual mode in the Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate versions of Windows 7. But mostly, it’s just much, much faster.

I strongly recommend upgrading all of your modern PCs to Windows 7. If it runs Windows XP well, it will run Windows 7 even better. And if it runs Vista, Windows 7 will run like the operating system you were promised but didn’t get. Is it better than OS X 10.5 on a Mac? Not quite, but it is a heck of a lot closer, and it runs all your apps.

• RT @BWJones: Bionic implants in the morning: http://tinyurl.com/ntdjo7 #

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• Mac Mini Home Theater: Keyboard/mouse recommendations. Logitech diNovo Edge looks the best. http://tinyurl.com/lrkmwp #
• DIY iPhone dock using the box the phone came in and ALOT of hot glue. http://tinyurl.com/mkwlfl #
• I’m diggin’ on these iPhone cases. I like Carve, Mural and Shining. http://bit.ly/DeOvl #

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• Les Paul, inventor of tons of guitars and the multi-track recorder died yesterday. My heart is broken. 🙁 http://tinyurl.com/nmovr4 #

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I have a Sony DSC-F828 digital camera that I’ve been quite happy with. It’s a full-frame camera with a large, attached lens that was Sony’s premier camera before they acquired Konica-Minolta’s camera business. It’s not an SLR, but it’s fine for my needs, and with its 8MP imager it’s still quite a good camera. It takes Memory Stick (MS) and CardFlash (CF) mediate types.

But I know that modern cameras have useful features like Wi-Fi connectivity that allows you to automatically upload photos to your computer and to online sharing sites such as Facebook or Flickr. I’ve also gotten quite enamored of the Geo-tagging feature that my iPhone supports for photos. So I’ve been very tempted to update to a new camera for quite some time, even though I’ve been happy with my old Sony and I’ve got quite a few accessories for it. It would be expensive to replace, to say the least.

As I was browsing the isles at Fry’s Electronics, I saw an SD to CF adapter and a plan instantly gelled in my mind: If I could fit an SD card into my Sony, then I could use the Eye-Fi WiFi SD camera card to automatically upload and Geo-tag my photos. So I bought both the CF to SDHC card adapter ($20) and the Eye-Fi Explore 4GB ($100).

The Eye-Fi is a standard SD flash memory card made specifically for cameras that includes integrated WiFi and GPS. Basically, you set the card up using your computer to associate with your Wireless router, and then put the card in your camera. When you take pictures with the camera, the photos are uploaded automatically either to your computer or to Eye-Fi’s servers on the Internet. Eye-Fi’s servers, the photos can be transmitted back to your PC whenever it’s on, and also to online photo sharing websites.

The setup was a piece of cake—you just plug the Eye-Fi card into a USB slot, run the software contained on the card that shows up, answer a few questions and create an account, and then plug the card into your camera and take a picture. The software opens a website that walks you through the process completely, all the way through to receiving your first photo. It was really amazingly easy to setup.

The Eye-Fi also worked perfectly fine in the generic $20 SD to CF adapter I’d bought. My Sony camera recognized it with no issues even though it doesn’t normally take SD cards.

I’m really quite pleased with the Eye-Fi. For about $120, I saved the $1000 it would cost to replace a camera that I’m otherwise completely happy with. With a CF Adapter, the range of cameras that can utilize this amazing little card is dramatically increased. Before you spend the money on upgrading, consider this alternative and save yourself a bundle.

There are a hundred kinds of awesome in this photograph.

This is the description from BW Jones:

An image of a bionic brain implant chip taken through the microscope with my iPhone.

BW Jones is a scientist at the University of Utah:

Retinal neurophysiology scientist. My work involves disorders of retinal degeneration and how those diseases affect the intrinsic retinal circuitry including the implications for rescue of vision via gene therapy, and retinal bionic or biological implants.

Since he works with brain implants all the time, it’s probably not a big deal to see one in person, but for the rest of us, just seeing what they look like is awesome. The fact that he took the photo by sticking his iPhone up to a microscope, is ten kinds of awesome.