DIY – Ignite Seattle

An Astronomical Viewing Shelter on the Cheap – Jeremy Bingham

Using your telescope in the city can be frustrating with all the stray light all over the place. You can’t do much about the skyglow, but you can shield yourself from stray light sources nearby.

Rather than buying a pre-made shelter for hundreds of dollars, you can build one for about a hundred dollars. Jeremy Bingham will demonstrate in his talk how he did just that with a lot of PVC, some found wood, and a bunch of felt.

About Jeremy Bingham

When he’s not hanging out in his astro-shelter, you can Jeremy Bingham at his day job as the CTO for DailyKos.com, on his blog or on Twitter, @captain_tenille.

Life’s Too Short To Eat Bad Food – Vanessa Fox

Between working long hours, working on geek side projects (and at least in my case, raising kids), putting together a dinner party seems like a lot of work.

Coming from someone who spends more time on the road than in her house, search engine optimization expert, Vanessa Fox gives us her tips on throwing a successful, yet simple dinner party for foodies.

About Vanessa Fox

When Vanessa isn’t talking about food, you can find her working on SEO projects at Nine By Blue. You can find Vanessa Fox on her blog, on Twitter @vanessafox or hosting Office Hours on Webmaster Radio.

Geeking out aero-style for a hundred bucks – Dan Shapiro

When Dan Shapiro was a kid, radio control flight meant spending thousands of dollars to put what was essentially a slightly aerodynamicized lawnmower in the air. You spent thousands on engines and electronics and balsa, months building your plane, crashed it your first flight out, and then repeated.

Over and over, and over again.

Enter lithium polymer batteries, rare earth magnets, miniaturized solid state inverters, 2.4 GHz spread spectrum frequency hopping transmitters and receivers. Then stir it up in a huge domestic Chinese market for RC gear that has pushed remote control aircraft off a Moore’s law cliff of price and performance.

Watch Dan explain how you can get off the ground for a single Benjamin.

About Dan Shapiro

When Dan isn’t geeking out about RC planes, you can find him at his day job as CEO of Ontela, on his personal Web site, danshapiro.com, or on Twitter @danshapiro.