That’s Pranav Mistry in 2009 explaining how his invention “sees” your gestures through a camera and uses a little LED projector to give you a “screen” to work on.

Because the talk is two years old, we can jump into the future — 2012 — and see what happened next. We’re all using this now, right? Er. Also, no jetpacks.

But give it time. In January 2012, TEDTalks reported Pranav Mistry and his crew had posted the SixthSense code to let anyone who wants to dig in and start building their own devices and apps. Pranav’s website says building a prototype SixthSense device would cost about $350, and links to instructions for building your own.

Companies have been talking about, demonstrating and buying gesture-recognition interfaces for a while now, and Qualcomm has said it expects to ship an ultrasound-based version in late 2012. (Basically, the onboard mike hears your gestures and lets you control your phone without touching your phone. Except, presumably, for the hand you’re holding the phone in… oh never mind.)

If you want to build your own, these are your new friends: This guy has very endearingly cobbled one together using a wood slat and tape, and here’s the status of homebrew 6SD as explained earlier TODAY (I love the Internet) by a member of the SixthSense Workshop group on Facebook:

Here‘s what those drawing, clock and other apps look like. And it looks like other people are thinking about it, but haven’t cooked up their own yet.

We’ve got robots cleaning our houses and the entire world’s information in our pockets and purses. I can wait a couple years to see crowds of tourists in front of the Eiffel Tower snapping photos with their fingers. But it’ll be cool.

The hall was built in 1878 and has a rich history. The original sign over the bar read “Den feinsten Schnaps, das beste Bier, bekommt man bei dem Heinrich hier” (“The best liquor, the best beer, you get at Henry’s here”).

Bill’s a web architect, journalist, friend to starfish and as you see a terrific artist.
This artwork is copyrighted with all rights reserved by whharrison4, republished here with Bill’s permission.

Sometimes I really can’t believe I was here. A couple thousand years ago, if you wanted to meet up with a friend in Ostia, you could say, “I’ll meet you at that bar, you know, the one on Diana Street just off Main.” They have bar food, too, and a beer garden out back — the arched doorway in the photo leads out there and you can see a little of it.

Ostia Antica was the main port of ancient Rome. Unlike Pompeii, it’s not frozen at a moment in history; there are all sorts of centuries jumbled up here. It was not small; this computer animation shows just how fully developed it was, with dozens of large buildings including a half-coliseum theater.

On Ostia’s eastern side, Decumanus Maximus was the main street — literally: the “big decumanus,” with decumanus being the term for the largest east-west road in a Roman city or military camp. Here’s a street sign. A 2,000-year-old street sign, I kid you not:

(in that the third picture, I highlighted the letters so they’re a little more readable)

So, if you were walking down Decumanus Maximus, and you turned on Via Diana and walked past some two-story apartment blocks, you’d be here at this bar. You could grab food to go from the street-facing counter or go inside — there’s the menu on the wall, a fresco above those three marble shelves, with pictures of the different foods available.

Click here to read more about this bar and the other rooms in this building. Definitely scroll down for the illustrations and photos that show what it looked like when people ate and drank here. They’ve got better pictures of the “beer garden” (OK, courtyard), and they translate more of the signs and inscriptions found there. (A lot of the inscriptions in ancient Roman cities are quite dirty, some of them relating to which prostitutes are the best at particular services, etc. You have been warned )

More links:

• Aerial view of Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber
• Interactive maps of the city and 3-D reconstructions
• All the inscriptions in Ostia — signs, political slogans, apartments for rent, graffiti, want ads

Pulling out of work one evening a year ago or so, I flipped on Chris Mosser’s “Roadhouse” show on KVET, and within a few notes, I swerved over and started writing down lyrics so I could look up the song later. Three minutes after I got home, I owned the Turnpike Troubadours’ second album, “Diamonds & Gasoline.” Here’s the song that about ran me off the road:

Last May, I dragged my old roommate to see them at a wine festival here in town, where a stupidly small crowd in a field in about 400-degree weather was nonetheless appreciative. Thank god the sun eventually went down.

“Ridiculously good” is the phrase that came to my mind. Of course, I have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about, but I do believe these guys should be really, really famous, if there is any justice in the music world. Which there is not. But since they won Best New Group at the Texas Regional Radio Awards last year, are all over the Texas radio charts and headlined the hell out of an off-SXSW show last Wednesday, things might be going to turn out all right.

The showcase was put on by the KVET “Roadhouse” folks, and the firepower was impressive. I don’t know squat about the Red Dirt scene, and also I am personally older than dirt, but I’ve just barely managed to hear about this guy named Cody Canada; Gary P. Nunn was there, and I adore Bob Schneider though I don’t know what he was doing on that bill. Fans around me kept misidentifying the people on stage, which tripped me up too, but please give us a break: A good chunk of the ones we talked with were there specifically to see the Troubadours, and they showed up early and stayed till 1 am to do it. They were not disappointed.

Everybody always writes about the frontman or frontwoman, and sure, I will too, but that’s definitely not all there is to this band, so first here’s one favoring Ryan Engleman (lead guitar) and Kyle Nix (fiddle and backing vocals) — “Easton and Main”:

“Leaving and Lonely,” which probably is a two-step floor-filler, was written by RC Edwards (bass and backing vocals):

Drummers always take it on the chin, don’t they? I apologize for not finding a clip where Gabe Pearson (drums and backing vocals) was suitably featured. I’ll keep looking.

Those clips give a peek at some of the music styles they can switch through or wave at: bluegrass, honky-tonk, folk, bottle-slide blues, Cajun, rock. You can certainly dance your fanny off at the shows, and plenty do, but you can also just stop and appreciate what you’re listening to. It well repays the concentration.

“Long Hot Summer Day” has been a big radio hit for them; it isn’t so much a cover as it is a complete recarving and polishing of a (little-known?) 1989 folk song. The very funny and photographic lyrics did at first make me think it was one they wrote; who the hell sings about chicken consommé? It absolutely kills live, and they can rave it up, as they did for the opening number at the KVET showcase, or stretch out and feature the harmony singing, as they did at the much quieter wine festival show. Good to know your crowd (which they are certainly road-tempered enough to do, unfazed by bar fights and such).

Harmony features prominently in another great cover, “Fox on the Run,” which is now a bluegrass standard but, the Internet tells us, began life as a fairly putrid British rock attempt (sorry, Manfred. Loved “Do Wah Diddy” though) that was utterly redeemed by Bill Emerson and even wound up on a Tom T. Hall album, which is where I first heard it when I was rolling around on the floor playing with blocks and trains and ducks and stuff.

They sure will rip through the Old 97′s “Doreen,” too. Other people’s songs, though, are not the story here. And in this case, it turns out, the front guy does write most of the words; that’s Evan Felker. Best way to appreciate what’s going on here is just to quote some big old chunks of it, so here you go. A bit of “The Funeral,” which isn’t quite as downbeat as this sounds and has this great line in the chorus — “Nothing like a family to make you feel so damned alone”:

Well they pulled out into traffic and nosed in behind the hearse

And that awful empty feeling, well it went from bad to worse

The preacher read from Scripture and they put him in the ground

Everybody loaded up and headed back to town

But Jimmy got his whiskey out once everyone was gone

Felt he should say something staring down at the stone

…

The menfolk folded tables and the ladies cleaned the plates

The cousins asked about the car locked behind the gates

Jimmy knew his daddy’s .38 was in that trunk buried deep

And it’d find its rightful owner once his mama was asleep

Jimmy looked at Mama, and Mama just looked down

She said “Why’s it take a funeral, boy, to bring you back to town?”

OK that was heavy. Good, but heavy. Let’s bring the house lights back up. “Shreveport”:

On a Greyhound bound for Shreveport I’d been too long in my seat

I stopped off in a no-name town to grab a bite to eat

The ceiling fans they hummed above a screened-in patio

Crawfish hotter than a chimney fire, the beer was cheap and cold

And the barmaid smiled that kind of smile that knocked me off my stool

She said “Hang around, I’ll show you things they don’t teach in school”

Go listen — it’s all like that, just picture after picture and a growling jake brake. “Crayfish hotter than a chimney fire” — Did you know a chimney fire really is hotter than other house fires? I didn’t; I had to go look it up.

On “Whole Damn Town” (audio’s back up at the top where I ran off the road), at least for me, it’s not just the lyrics but the way the music and the whole attack of the song catch one very specific emotion. Still, there are a lot of pictures here in very few words. At “The neon signs light up the block / It’s a living, breathing honky-tonk,” I always picture Gruene, though that’s surely not the original antecedent. “The music pours out on the street / Just as clean and cool as a cotton sheet.”

Do I detect a slight aversion to choruses? (Screw rules anyway.) Here’s a good one, though, in “7 & 7″:

He’s not just strumming up there either. (And it looked like he burned through a couple sets of strings Wednesday!) Here’s Felker in Dylan mode On voice: If your heart doesn’t jump into your throat when he launches into “Good lord Lorrie, I love you / Could it go more wrong,” at the 2:54 mark, well, to quote our governor, I don’t think you have a heart. Or maybe it’s just me… Nah. But god do I know that feeling.

So when these guys take famous in the full-fledged national sense, you already know some things about them. Impress people with the knowledge that their name comes from the Indian Nation Turnpike. Also, try to say Tahlequah right. (You have to love folks who’re this proud of their hometowns.) Because I am an ethical newspaper person, I am not going to tell you to go buy their upcoming album, “Goodbye Normal Street,” but I am going to tell you it comes out May 8. Brush up on your dancing.

This method/kit just struck me as a really genius way to make a difficult task very easy. Three difficult tasks, in fact, because

– Stretching canvas evenly is hard — it puckers

– Wrapping canvas around corners is hard — you get those annoying thick wodgy triangles of fabric, and your nice neat corners suddenly look like hell

– And mitering corners — cutting a 45-degree angle at the ends of two pieces of wood so that when you join them together, they make a nice neat corner — is the devil himself.

So what did they do? They deconstructed the frame, created a clever reusable gadget, and simplified each step to the point that the hardest thing you have to do is cut a straight line.

The kit appears to be kind of expensive, but I’m not suggesting we all go buy ‘em — I’m just appreciating it for the beauty of the idea. It takes all the frustration out of the process while also yielding much better results. Clever.

Todd Sanders of Roadhouse Relics creates modern neon signs with the look of antiques, and he has kindly given permission for me to post this little clip of his piece called “Fireflies”:

The animated twinkling of the fireflies, the cool blue-green of the jar (just like an old Ball jar) — I loved this piece instantly when I drove past it the other day at dusk. The sign is five feet tall!  And dusk is the perfect time to see it, just like real fireflies.

And it turns out the piece has a pretty cool back-story, too: Sanders said he made this artwork and its twin for the wedding reception of country music stars Miranda Lambert and Blake Shelton, who got hitched May 14 at a ranch near Boerne. You can see one of the “Fireflies” signs glowing on the back left wall in this photo of the extremely funky-cool reception area, created by Junk Gypsy, designers based in Round Top. (And Aggies, whoop!)

The Junk Gypsy blog (which has many more gorgeous photos of the wedding setup) says the designers settled on a theme of “moonshine and mason jars, fireflies and pink guitars” to represent the couple. Sanders said the inspiration came from a Lambert song about treating love like fireflies in a jar — I think it must be her 2004 hit “Me and Charlie Talking”:

So you treat your love like a firefly,
like it only gets to shine for a little while
Catch it in a mason jar with holes in the top,
and run like hell to show it off

Junk Gypsy commissioned the neon works from him, then returned the pieces to him after the wedding, Sanders said. And thank goodness he put one up in his window for us to enjoy.

“I love them too,” Sanders said. “When I was a kid, we called them lightning bugs.”

Each of these two pieces is priced at $3,000, and even at that, I want to hang it in my living room where I could see it every day. Thank you, Mr. Sanders, for telling me about your artwork and letting me post the video, so others can see it twinkling too.

Yeah. So. Here is a WORKING crescent wrench. Printed in an hour and a half, on a machine that is supposed to cost about $1000. Moving parts. No assembly.

Judging by the YouTube comments, nobody else believes this either — so much so that Snopes, the urban legends folks, tracked it down. And verified it.

See, I have a dream. It’s not a really great dream as such things go. But here it is. For years I’ve wondered about the sheer numbers of duplicate items that must have to be manufactured in order that John Q. Cardriver can go into the auto parts store down the street and choose from six different cupholders. And the number of duplicate stores that have to be built in order for one to be just down the block from Johnny when he needs it.  Of course market forces control all this.  But how many extra cupholders do you have to manufacture so that one — not even one, but a choice of several ones — is waiting for you down the block?  What if nobody ever buys the other five?

OK, that was more of a question than a dream. So here’s the dream: Aside from the utterly incredible effect the Internet is having on the flow of information, surely at some point it must also change manufacturing, and retail buildings. Shopping on the Internet can be so incredibly efficient — you choose what you want, after researching its features, comparing prices and reading dozens of reviews, and then just the one single item you want is shipped to you. If you figure the trucks were going to be driving that route anyway… doesn’t this eventually mean that we will be able to shut down some of the ninety kabillion ugly* urban retail businesses?

Some things, of course not. Fresh groceries. Emergency items (like, say, spark plugs, instead of that frivolous cupholder). Convenience items like aspirin… and we’re always going to want to try on shoes. But already clothing companies are offering free shipping “both ways,” so you can order five items, try ‘em on and return three. I know I’m way oversimplifying here… But aren’t we going to be able to do without a “bed and bath” store every two miles?  (And why do we have branch banks at all, much less the four banks per block that are popping up at a furious rate?)

* Most buildings are ugly because functional is cheap, and attractive design is expensive. So you don’t get good-looking buildings until the point at which it becomes profitable to have your building look good. The term for “architecture” that just kind of happens is vernacular architecture, although it appears to me they’d rather use that term for pretty things like Saltillo tile and mashrabiya screens, as opposed to the gravel-on-tar-paper roof of your local Stop-N-Rob.

But as far as my own Mamma is concerned, she had plenty of reason to stitch it in the 1940s or 1950s, too, because her husband — my Pappa — was among the millions of Americans who fought in World War II, and she was among the millions more who waited nervously at home for news. My Pappa came home, to a long life, love and family, so he is not numbered among those for whom today is specifically set aside.

So I post this in memory of his friends who did not come home, and their fellow service members, men and women, who did not come home in all our wars and actions, in peacetime, in training for combat, from jungles and beaches and motor pools and hospitals and dirt roads and blown-out towns, in ships and planes and helicopters and trucks, in the air, on land and sea.

thank you all.

Sometimes I was even able to tweet an event at the time of day it actually happened, which drew some shivers from readers (they were kind enough to tell me) as, for example, when a norther blew in after dark on Feb. 25, dropping the mild weather to nearly freezing.

My good friend and very funny coworker Ponch Garcia provided color commentary, which I’m also recording below. He tweets as @bourbonitis, a name derived from an Alejandro Escovedo song.

Stick around to see if I actually get up at 5 tomorrow morning to tweet the final assault! (Sources and Twitter-jargon help are at the bottom.)

Feb. 23

• 175 years ago today: Santa Anna’s army reaches #Alamo, sends in a demand that Texians surrender. Travis answers with a single cannon shot.
• RT @bourbonitis Santa Anna replies, “¡Ay caramba!”
• At 3 p.m., Travis dispatches letter asking town of Gonzales to send provisions & troops. He & Bowie know #Alamo can’t hold out with 150 men.

Feb. 24

• 175 years ago today: 24 hrs into #Alamo siege. Bowie falls ill; Travis takes full command. Weather: warm/cloudy, 100% chance of cannonballs.
• Travis writes second call for backup, the famous letter stating #Alamo has not lost a man and he’ll fight to the death: http://bit.ly/hwDC4C
• RT @bourbonitis: Little-known fact: In his famous letter, Travis dotted his “i’s” with smiley faces.

Feb. 25

• 175 yrs ago today: Fannin leaves Goliad with 300 troops to aid #Alamo- a mission he never completes. Inside walls, water, firewood run low
• Fannin barely gets on way to #Alamo before turning back, thus seriously reducing number of Texas high schools that will be named for him.
• Although, put yourself in Fannin’s shoes with this summary of his predicament: Scroll down to “Fannin’s value” http://bit.ly/igIt0T #Alamo
• 175 yrs ago today: Night falls at the #Alamo on 3rd day of siege. A norther blows in, and the “summer heat” drops to just above freezing.

Feb. 26

• 175 yrs ago today: Day 4 of siege. Some #Alamo defenders slip outside walls for water/firewood, engaging in small battles w/surrounding army

Feb. 27

• 175 yrs ago today: 5th day of siege. Sentries sleeping at their posts. Small group of fighters sets off from Gonzales to aid #Alamo troops.
• The Gonzales Ranging Company has 32 men. They will have to get through a thousand Mexican soldiers just to reach the #Alamo.

Feb. 28

• 175 years ago today: #Alamo still under continual bombardment, but morale inside is high: Not a single defender has been killed.
• Davy Crockett part of why morale is high; prob. didn’t play fiddle, but “was seen at all points, animating the men to do their duty.”-Travis
• Travis has written to Col. Fannin and Gen. Houston, confidently expecting they will send troops. None have come. He knows #Alamo will fall.
• RT @bourbonitis: Davy Crockett was known to craft his hat into a motivational puppet named “Scrappy Cappy.”
• From sickbed, Bowie looks at calendar, realizes 1836 is leap yr so thank God Sue will only tweet 12, but men still must fight all 13 days.

March 1

• 175 yrs ago today: At 3 a.m. the Gonzales reinforcements (32 men) slip through the Mexican army; #Alamo gates swing open and they dash in
• The #Alamo’s 12-pound cannon fires twice, and one shot strikes the house Santa Anna is using as headquarters (Photo – http://bit.ly/dUKY1R)
• Rumors fly inside the #Alamo that Fannin is coming to their aid with 400 troops.

March 2

• 175 yrs ago today: Delegates at Washington-on-the-Brazos issue Texas’ declaration of independence. (Broadside: http://bit.ly/gMcoP9 )
• Day 9 of #Alamo siege: Troops unaware of declaration, but Travis is eager for it so “world will understand… what we are fighting for.”
• 175 yrs ago today: Texas newspapers begin printing Travis’ plea for #Alamo reinforcements; printed “broadsides” of the letter also circulate
• RT @bourbonitis Also in that day’s newspapers was the last “Garfield” strip that was actually funny.
• Present day — The original Texas declaration of independence is on display right now in Austin at Lorenzo de Zavala State Archives

March 3

• 175 yrs ago today: At 11 a.m. Bonham returns to #Alamo with news that aid is coming (it isn’t). Santa Anna, however, gets 1,000 more troops.
• In 10 days of siege, no #Alamo defenders have been killed. Legend says this or March 5 is the day Travis draws his line in the sand.
• One of Travis’ last letters, a brief note to a friend named David Ayers, begins, “Take care of my little boy.” #Alamo
• Sunset: Frenchman named Rose either flees #Alamo & lives to be 65 http://bit.ly/f1d6GQ Or never existed http://bit.ly/enaNZH . Take yer pick

March 4

• 175 yrs ago today: Santa Anna calls afternoon meeting with his officers to tell them he plans to overrun the #Alamo.
• Some officers want to simply wait for the big artillery to arrive and blast the walls, rather than lose troops scaling the walls.

March 5

• Day [12] of #Alamo siege: I am developing dorky crush on Lt Col Travis
• Srsly though. OK, he’s overdramatic, a bit of a dandy, but while he was not eager to die for cause, he was ready to. End result: Texas.
• 175 yrs ago today: At noon, Santa Anna tells his staff the assault on the #Alamo will be tomorrow morning.
• RT @bourbonitis Officers suggest trying to drive them out of the #Alamo with conjunto versions of Guns N’ Roses songs.
• Last courier leaves #Alamo: James Allen, a college kid with a fast horse, carrying yet another plea for help to Fannin. Guess how that goes.
• 175 yrs ago today: At midnight, about 1,800 of Santa Anna’s troops begin moving quietly into place for the final assault on the #Alamo.

—

Photos at Alamo, March 4, 2011

As I happened to be in San Antonio on Friday on another matter, I was unable to stop myself from driving down to the Alamo in the afternoon!

• L-R: Lt Col Wm Barret Travis, me, former Congressman David Crockett http://twitpic.com/467vut
• Near sundown they cleared crowd for a photo shoot – Alamo all gussied up for her birthday pic with yellow roses http://twitpic.com/4680b6
• Earlier in afternoon: Some unusual sights on #Alamo Plaza. Opposing troops chat in friendly manner http://twitpic.com/4681k0
• Some of Santa Anna’s soldados drill in #Alamo Plaza. http://twitpic.com/4682xm
• Toward sunset (my fave time to be there). I believe that’s a @mysa photog up in the cherrypicker taking #Alamo ‘s birthday pic http://twitpic.com/4685ha
• City of San Antonio handed yellow roses to female #Alamo visitors. My Rose of San Antone (now in vase on my desk): http://twitpic.com/4687ma

Twitter jargon

For non-Twitter initiates: An @ usually precedes Twitter usernames; putting # before a word allows people to search for all tweets with that label in them; and RT means retweet, as when I’m forwarding Ponch’s comments to my readers. A link that begins with bit.ly is just a shortened version of a long web address.

Sources

I leaned most heavily on Randy Roberts and James S. Olson’s 2001 book, “A Line in the Sand: The Alamo in Blood and Memory.” Also, Stephen L. Hardin’s “Texian Iliad”; the Handbook of Texas; the official Alamo web site; this transcription of Travis’ letters; and this chronology.

Fightin’ Texas Aggie Class of 1994!