RobotSkirts » Los Angeles

Mushroom walk

eliot — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 02:29:16 +0000

This last week, Machine Project has been hosting several different events as part of their FungiFest 2010. Chris and I decided to check out their mushroom walk this morning at Franklin Canyon Park. I was a bit skeptical when we showed up and they turned us loose into the woods to gather whatever we found with only a few words, but the whole experience was quite interesting.

I guess most of my enjoyment was from bringing in one of the largest specimens. After everyone returned from hunting, Dr. Bob Cummings identified the many different kinds of fungus we had found. While Chris and I only come across four, the group effort came up with at least fifty different kinds.

The one pictured above is Suillus luteus or Slippery Jack, named for its slimy top. It’s found on pine roots and is edible if the brown slimy skin is removed. There was an equally large cap from the deadly Amanita ocreata destroying angel. The majority of edible mushrooms we found were Boletus edulis, porcini, which you can buy immature in some grocery stores. Two of the more interesting edibles we found: Coprinus comatus, shaggy mane, must be processed within 4-6 hours of picking because the cap will quickly digest itself into a black spore filled ink. Clitocybe nuda, wood blewit, is also edible and has a lovely purple-pink color.

It was a great day and you can see a video of Dr. Cummings showing many of the same mushrooms we saw today embedded below.

Oh exploitable!

eliot — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 22:57:30 +0000

This weekend was BarCampLA 6. BarCamp is a self organizing conference. It has sponsors, is free to attend, and speakers are all voluntary. It was hosted at Mahalo so I decided to give a talk titled “Intro to Hardware Hacking: @sweetums pulls random crap out of his office”. I tried to cover a broad spectrum of what you can hack in hopes that people would see something they personally identified with and would use as a starting point. I started with consumer devices that were hackable. Then went to kits that you can purchase. Finally I covered tools and resources. Managed to fill the whole 50 minutes.

I happened to be presenting in the Mahalo Daily studio with the green screen in the background. I made sure to pose appropriately in case someone wanted to photoshop it. Thank you vissago for the photos.

First earthquake: Chino Hills Earthquake

eliot — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 20:16:04 +0000

I had just stepped out of the shower and the whole wall I share with my neighbor appeared to move. I didn’t know what was going on. I heard rumbling and wall was moving, “Does my neighbors closet shake my apartment?” I placed my hands on the wall and tried pushing. Nothing happened. The moment was gone and I left for the office. When I arrived I was asked “Were you riding during the earthquake?” That was my only indication as to what had happened.