This is something I’ve been working on for the past couple of days and I thought I’d share.

Most West Coasters are familiar with the popular burger chain In-N-Out and most of that crowd is familiar with their secret menu. My favourite item on that menu are the absolutely delicious animal style fries. I’ve grown a habit of making my favourite fast food items at home as of late but I couldn’t find a recipe for these anywhere online. They didn’t seem that difficult to make so I decided to give it a shot.

Mmmmm….

Here’s how to do it:

Special Sauce

You’re going to want to make this first, probably the night before. It’s easily scalable so you can make as much or as little as you want. I made a bunch and reclaimed a ketchup bottle when I made mine. It’s almost analogous to McDonald’s secret sauce they use on Big Macs though a bit less sweet. I grabbed the Big Mac sauce recipe from here but I’ll be adjusting the amounts slightly for In-N-Out style.

• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 2 tbsp French dressing
• 3 tsp sweet pickle relish
• 1 tbsp finely minced white onion
• 1 tsp white vinegar
• 3/4 tsp sugar
• 1/8 salt
• small bowl

Mix them all together in a small bowl, stir well. Leave it refrigerated overnight. Stir a couple times as it chills.

Fries

Using my deep fryer is a bit of an ordeal and I’m out of oil as of the time of writing this so I decided to bake them instead.

• 1 large Russet potato
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 1-2 tsp ground black pepper (optional, to taste)
• 1-2 slices of American cheese
• 1 slice of white onion
• sealable sandwich bag
• baking sheet
• small pan
• a roll of parchment paper

Preheat your oven to 400º.
Get a small pot, fill it about halfway with water (enough for a sliced potato) and heat it up to a boil.
While you’re waiting for that, cut the potato lengthwise into 1/4″ slices (I’m a fry fiend so I bought a slicer for this very purpose).
Once the water reaches a rolling boil, put the fresh potato slices in, leaving them for 2 1/2 minutes.
After your timer goes off drain the water with a strainer and put the slices on some paper towels to soak up some of the water. This whole process is to get rid of excess starch.

After they’re cooled down, mix the olive oil, the salt and pepper (if you choose) in the plastic bag. Put the potato slices in the bag, seal it and give it a good shake.
Once they’re all coated get a baking pan out and cover it with parchment paper. Place the coated slices on the parchment paper and try your best to make sure they don’t quite touch. In the oven they go.

Your oven may vary but I’ve found they get all golden brown and crispylike after about 30-35 minutes. After about 15 you’re going to want to check them and give them a good flipping. If you do end up using parchment paper this is easy, just lift it up one side at a time, making your very neat presentation descend into chaos, and then make them all flat again.

Once your fries are just about to the level of doneness as you want them, its time for onions!
Get a nice white onion and cut a reasonable slice off of it, about as much as you think would cover the amount of fries you’re going to have.
Chop it into small pieces but not too small, not talking mincing here.
Heat up a pan coated with a bit of olive oil to about medium heat and put your chopped onions in.
Cook them until they’re dark brown but not quite blackened. Once they start to turn brown they’ll get brown pretty quickly so watch out, it will only take a few minutes.

If you time this right the fries will be done a bit before the onions will be.
After you’re satisfied with the crispyness of the fries, take them out and place them on whatever you choose, plate, bowl, basket, whatever.
Once you’ve done that put a slice or two of the American cheese on top (I like to almost completely cover them but not overlap) and put it in the microwave for roughly 30 seconds or until the cheese melts, whichever comes first.
Its onion time! Spread the onions you just finished cooking on top of the almost complete fries.
And now, the final moment. Take the special sauce you made yesterday out of the fridge and pour however much you want all over the fries.

Stand back for a second and take in the absurd amount of awesome you just created with your own two hands before you savour the few minutes that it will take you to devour this culinary masterpiece.

When I get more oil, I’d like to give frying these a shot. If you get to that before I do, let me know. I’d love to hear how they turned out.

Enjoy!

Please view it full screen and full quality if you are able to.

Vimeo

YouTube

If you’re involved with Stop the War on Fun, the Warehouse Coalition and/or Call the Mayor Day this concerns you. The latter is why this message is being sent. For a highly recommended primer on what this is all about, see the SF Appeal article about it here. This article also has the numbers you need and the rest of the relevant info.

On Tuesday, February 9th at noon, a group of us are getting together outside of City Hall with a phone booth that is being built. Others will have signs and hand out flyers to people passing by that are wondering what this is all about. The rest of us will be forming a line to call the mayor using the phone booth. The idea is that we get enough people to appear like they’re waiting in line to call the mayor to make a visual impact. Bring a camera, tweet about it, blog about it, tell your friends anything to get the message out. We need to let people know that there are real people affected by the War on Fun.

Here’s what we need help with to make this happen:

Assembly of the phone booth: On Saturday the booth will be built out of likely scrap wood (that didn’t get rained on as of a few minutes ago) that we have around. If you have more wood, plexi or real glass, fasteners, hinges, etc bring them! The location will be in the lot of the SPACE project in SOMA. Please email me for the exact address and if you’re bringing supplies so we can coordinate what we need and what we don’t need.

Telephony: While we’re trying to create more of a visual impact for this, we do want the phone booth to work as a phone booth. I imagine this won’t be the last use of this booth. I’ve got someone that wants to help out with the technical aspect of this, if you want to help email me and I’ll get you in touch.

Signs/flyers: We need people to create and distribute both of these things. Doesn’t need to be fancy or too expensive, for flyers a quarter sheet of paper will do fine and signs are easy to make. A short paragraph about why we’re doing this should do nicely, like a blurb about the crackdowns and the War on Fun. I’m sure there’s something out there already like this and if there is, email me.

Show up!: In the area but on your lunch break? Just come by City Hall, stand in line for 15 minutes and/or take pics/video/tweet whatever. And most importantly CALL THE FUCKING MAYOR. Call him on your mobile if you don’t want to use the phone booth. call from work, or home if you can’t make it. Tell your friends! Link them to the relevant articles and other websites about this. If you can’t come you can still help to make an impact.

See you all on the 9th…

Email: v (at) thiswebsite.com

I’m sure you’re all familiar with Stop the War on Fun (http://www.stopthewaronfun.org/) where nightclubs are getting harassed by the ABC and other parties are having laptops and other equipment confiscated. A lot of us that live in warehouse spaces are also concerned since we have the SFPD (or rather certain officers in the SFPD) cracking down on us too.

We’re not taking this lying down and us warehousers have already started a coalition to represent us but we need your help. Not just for our sake but more importantly the continued existence of nightlife in the city we live/work in. Here’s what you can do:

First, read this article on SF Appeal that gives a bit of history: http://sfappeal.com/culture/2010/01/whats-shaking-down-sf-venues-call-the-mayor-day-thats-what.php

Second, RSVP on this Facebook invite (http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=270204687372) or Plancast (http://plancast.com/a/ctf) and make your voice known.

Third, call the Mayor on February 9th and let him know that you won’t stand for this.

An addendum to this event, is there a payphone near City Hall? Preferably a booth. If not, does anyone want to help build one? The idea is to have a long line of people outside the booth just waiting to call the mayor. Something visual like that would certainly catch people’s attention. At the Warehouse Coalition meeting earlier today some were talking about building a sort of “Activism Booth” that would be transported from event to event and take short videos of the attendee’s reactions to the crackdowns and how it affects them. Perhaps the efforts could be combined for both purposes. I’d be open to meeting sometime after Tuesday to help build such a booth.

Good luck and happy calling.

I’ve been meaning to write a project page for this for like ever and since I’m presenting this device at Arse Electronika this year I figure there’s no better time than now.

Without further ado….

The Why

The How

The WTF

Press

Why…

…create a device such as this? Its impractical! It’ll burn you! It weighs too much to be truly useful! Its not really steampunk!

*massive facepalm*

Here’s the thing about art. It is often not practical and not made for general consumption. When I asked my friend Alex about his target demographic for his Tactical Corsets he replied with “My target demographic is me.” Despite this conversation happening months after creating the SteamVibe it applied to my whole thought process behind it. My target demographic was indeed me, I created this device for myself first and then it resonated with the rest of the population.

That said, it wasn’t entirely unintentional that it received the attention that it did though the scope of it was completely unexpected, especially as I had not submitted it to any of the sites listed in Press (or any of them I didn’t list in that section). It was completely and totally viral.

One day I made a tweet and it got re-tweeted. And re-tweeted. It got picked up on Laughing Squid and then exploded. I woke up one day to have many new random followers and more hits on my Flickr than I’ve ever received before. As I mentioned, it wasn’t completely unintentional that it received some attention, one of the purposes behind this was a bit of publicity as I was unemployed and looking to get into an internship at least. Figured making something as radical as this on my first try in a machine shop would prove I have innate skills and creativity to be employable. I did fulfil that goal though not in the way I had anticipated.

Speaking of publicity, I totally own the search for steampunk vibrator now and my full name is forever tied to this device. I’ll never escape this infamy, not that I would ever want to.

This isn’t the first steam powered vibrator to ever exist, the earliest I’ve seen was called the Manipulator. Those who think that my device was impractical have never seen or heard of a vibrator that was so big it took an entire room to house it. I’ve never seen a steam powered handheld one before though.

In my machine shop class at CCSF, the official class project was to create a tiny twin cylinder steam engine, known as the RV-1. I had an epiphany one day that I had to make that run a vibrator somehow which naturally got me way more excited about the project. I mean, what else am I possibly going to use a tiny steam engine for?

And that’s where I ran into my first problem. How on earth am I going to make a vibrator run off of that thing? Its not powerful enough to run anything except itself, even then barely so. I really wanted to put the engine inside the vibe itself if only to see if it could be done. Making something that small and powerful enough would also seriously test my skills, especially as I’ve never actually worked in a machine shop before.

Salvation came when one of my classmates was working on an engine I’ve never heard of before, a Tesla Turbine which looked like the perfect engine for my project. High RPM, compact and not hugely difficult to build. Not to mention is has fucking Tesla in the title. BTW, some random dude from Australia messaged me on Facebook one day to tell me that he added the SteamVibe in the “Applications” subheader in the Wikipedia article and it remains there as of this writing. Score!)

I’ll go into more of the creation and the decisions I made during so in the How? section below. Once I decided what I really wanted to build, that’s when excitement begins.

In summary, the Why? can be described in one short paragraph. I wanted to create a handheld vibrator that I could potentially run off of steam. It is an art piece, a proof of concept, a test of my machining and design skills and a somewhat unintentional publicity stunt. It is not however a practical vibrator. I knew this would be the case if I were to design it the way I wanted to. Steam will burn you and an air compressor is not sexy. It works absolutely fantastically as a rather heavy metal dildo however.

How…

…did this device come into the physical world? Unlike most vibrators that spontaneously appear out of factories in China, this one was hand made in a machine shop at a community college in San Francisco. On big machines that are meant for big things, not small things like this.

When I got the basic concepts in place it was time to cut some metal. I had decided on metal since I wanted it to be “steampunk”. No plastics, no silicone, no fancy polymers for this vibe. Alternate universe interpretations of Victorian era Western culture had none of these but they were big on metal. Not all types are safe to use in the sex toy sense however, non-anodised aluminium doesn’t always react well to wet environments, regular steel will rust and some people are allergic to brass. I then thought of what metal toys already exist and they were all anodised aluminium or stainless steel. I didn’t have the equipment to anodise stuff there at CCSF but I could certainly machine stainless steel on these lathes.

I started off with an approximately 14″ long 2″ thick piece of stainless steel, cut it in half and machined one of those halves down to what it ended up becoming. I ended up with lots of stainless steel wool.

If you look closely at the base where the engine is housed, you see multiple layers of steel. This had three purposes, it gave tactile feedback, it enabled me to trim off layers at a time once I got closer to the size I wanted and I liked the way it looked. I wanted the external design to be without too much complexity but still look nice.

The “head” of the device was curved with a ball turner though in hindsight I would have positioned it to create more of a proper curve than a somewhat flat end that’s rounded off.

The engine side is hollowed out for the engine (obviously) with a threaded entrance for the engine cap. There’s also a threaded hole drilled into the side to make way for the hose adapter.

Speaking of the engine, here comes the really fun part.

In true steampunk fashion, there had to be brass in this somewhere. Since it was not safe to put it in a place where it would come into contact with skin, I decided to make it internal.

This is actually version 1 of the engine housing, I discovered Tesla turbines do not work like impellers and prefer to create a spiralling effect to move fluid from the inlet to the exhaust. The current version has only one of these slots. The slots were the only part of this that was created on a mill instead of a lathe.

As with most practical vibrators, this uses an eccentric weight on the shaft to create vibration. This took a few versions to get quite right as I discovered just how low in torque the Tesla actually is. A little weight like this slows it down significantly and I had to make it small enough but heavy enough to be optimal for this purpose. This pictured here is actually quite a bit larger than the one it currently uses.

An old version of the engine but what’s notable about this pic is it shows the actual rotors for the turbine from the side, tiny diamond coated cutoff wheels with pre-drilled ventilation holes around the centre designed for a Dremel. Yes this vibrator is indirectly Dremel powered. You can see a closer up rear view of the internals a couple photos above.

These were suggested by my shop instructor since they were designed for high RPM applications and they were already small. I did some searching and found some that had the exhaust holes I needed for the Tesla already drilled in. And cheap! Perfect!

You can’t see the smaller pieces of the engine with these pics unfortunately but I can certainly describe them. Tiny washers were used to separate the rotors from each other and according to a bit of internet research I did on this kind of turbine, it was recommended that they be 0.014″ thick. I was lucky enough to find some but given the uneven nature of the rotors, I had to use two or more sometimes to get any kind of separation. If I were to do this again I would probably make my own rotors instead of using the Dremel ones so I would have more control over how I wanted them to be formed. Since it is such a high RPM engine I needed bearings. Again, in hindsight small Teflon coated ones would have done nicely but I used ball bearings for this. Teflon will be used for the next project however. ; ) A couple of shaft collars are used to keep the rotors of the engine together so they don’t all become misaligned inside the housing.

The engine cap screws directly into the stainless steel housing and press fits against the engine enclosure. It has a little lip that a classmate of mine made when I was frantically trying to get this done before it’s unveiling at Femina Potens. Pic of that here.

Most of the pics were taken before it was properly bent, a-la G-Spot style. I had originally wanted to make that curve before the unveiling but I didn’t have time. I did however take it out of the gallery after, bent it using a hydraulic press and it was done.

Wanna see it go? Bent and all?

The above video is compressed air from the machine shop at CCSF. I had brought a pressure cooker to test out true steam but it didn’t get quite powerful enough to make it go very much at all. It did however get very very very hot, so hot that I had to use welding gloves to hold it and even those were starting to get toasty. The engine is quite quirky, the bare rotors seemed to run fine with steam on their own but not inside of the housing I made for them. Compressed air seemed to do the trick so I put no further development into getting it to run more optimally on steam when it became too dangerous to handle.

In any case, it can run off of steam if I optimised it too, as I mentioned above, the rotors do turn on steam (boy do they) as evidenced by this video.

WTF!? I mean seriously, WTF?

Exactly.

This entire project was one WTF after another. From concept to execution I ran into that question all the time. Some say it couldn’t be done but I persevered. It needed to get done. If you’ve ever had the pull, the desire to create something, you realise that you can’t rest until it is complete.

Is it a practical vibrator? Seriously? Something that if ran off of steam would require not only a boiler powerful enough to run it but it would burn you, even with gloves. Gizmodo was right, it may actually scorch your privates. When using compressed air it runs out of compression real fast if you have a small tank. Not to mention the thing weighs 2.5lbs so the sheer mass absorbs much of the useful vibration.

I never ever once thought this would be a practical device and made no claims as to it’s usability as such. See the Why? section above for more details. Among many things this is an art piece.

Has it fulfilled it’s purpose as a sex toy however? You betcha. ; )

And there you have it. The Steampunk Vibrator. The how, the why and the WTF. Any questions etc, feel free to make a comment or find me via the contact page. If you link to this please use the incredibly awesome domain name I registered specifically to redirect to this page. http://steamfuck.me

Press

Laughing Squid – Steampunk Vibrator by Ani Niow

Gizmodo – Fully Functional Steampunk Vibrator might Scald Your Privates

Hack a Day – Steampunk vibrator

Boing Boing – SteamVibe: “Stainless steel, brass and awesome.”

Tiny Nibbles – Wednesday Nibbles – OMFG A STEAM POWERED VIBRATOR

io9 – Steam Fetishists Rejoice! This Vibrator is for you.

Good Vibrations Magazine – Steampunk Vibrator & A Touch of Pleasure

SF Bay Guardian – Steampunk Vibrator, a Blast From the Past

I’m taking a radically different approach to designing this than the infamous Steampunk Vibrator (which I swear I’ll make a project page for eventually). While the steamvibe is a highly impractical one-off proof of concept art piece, the next one will be far more practical while still being an art piece. I’m also planning on creating quite a few duplicates once I have a fully functional prototype if there is enough demand for them.

Details will be intentionally thin for now until it gets closer to completion. I will say that the internals will be the most eye catching part of this next piece, especially as you’ll be able to very clearly see them.

That’s all I’m going to say for now. The linked scan above of concepts and ideas give some more clues though I doubt they’d make much sense to most. : )

Naturally I said yes to this since I had the idea that I would like to display the steamvibe somewhere where people besides the creator could see it but I was not sure where I would do so. Perfect opportunity I thought even though its not for sale. The idea sounded interesting enough that I was also happy to lend some of the publicity the steamvibe has gained to a new business that was just starting up, especially something that sounded as cool as Wicked Grounds did.

Wicked Grounds had put out calls to volunteers regularly since before I moved to just a few blocks away but my schedule did not permit me to come despite living so close until earlier this Sunday. I didn’t waste much time when I arrived and being the tech minded person that I am, I went to work getting the wireless just how it needed to be and started setting up a touchscreen point of sale system that would be used for behind the counter. The tech stuff to do is limited given its well, a coffee shop, though I will start helping out with other setup things once those systems are complete.

I got a chance to (re)meet the owner whom I have seen before but was just about one social circle away from mine so I did not get a chance to interact much before. She is an absolutely lovely woman to talk to and work with and I think she has a solid vision for this place that will help it succeed. The building itself used to be a gay (leather?) bar called “Hole In the Wall” before it got closed down some time ago. The building is a few times longer than it is wide which would normally be an odd setup for a café though since it is going to be split into sections for the boutique that will be a part of it the layout makes a lot more sense.

Many volunteers were hard to work today helping with general setup, doing everything from installing doors to making the barista area more people friendly to creating a room for the hot water heater. Given the support that is already pouring into it I am confident that it will open very soon and will start becoming one of the places to go when you find yourself in the leather district, especially since they plan on being open late on the weekend. Need a snack after an exhausting night dancing at the Cat Club or absolutely need a specialised piece of kinky equipment that you can’t find anywhere else in any other brick and mortar store? There will be somewhere to go for all of that and more very very soon.

As one can probably tell, I am very exited about its opening, partially because it is really close to my house, partially that an invention I am very proud to have made will be displayed there and also partially that I think it has the opportunity to create a really unique niche that no other place can match around here. For one there’s no kinky themed cafés in the Bay Area and none that have as many unique equipment made by true artisans all under one roof.

Check the Wicked Grounds website for more information about what their plan is as well as some of the nourishments they will be providing there once they open. Their Twitter stream is fairly active and is what to watch if you feel the desire to volunteer (and you should if you have the chance). Expect an announcement very soon about the opening date and please stop by once the doors are open to the public!

Why?

My current number is laid out as follows;
(area code) (two identical even digits, odd number that’s greater than that digit <- numbers only exist in this block) (area code, half of the first digit of area code)

Confused? Here's some examples: (674) 229-6743 or (891) 667-8914

I was lucky enough to snag one in my current area code of residence. Don't like it as much as my existing Santa Cruz area code but whatevs.

My mind spends way too much time deconstructing stuff like this, clearly it needs to be put to better use.

Yes, its yet another July birthday! They just never seem to stop.

It has been a long journey these past few months but like all good(?) things it has come to an end. With the end of this journey (that have coincidentally happens the same month as my birthday) must be a celebration and you’re all invited. Yes, you.

One of the most important points I must make is while this is a birthday party and a warehousewarming this is as much a celebration of you, my awesome friends as it is the two previous items. For all those that gave given me a couch to crash on, has helped me move or has offered any other kind of support this is for you as much as it is a birthday/warehousewarming.

I was planning on having this be more like a dinner party on a lazy Sunday, nothing too loud or late going. I have a pretty epic stove in my new place and I would absolutely love it if it was used to its fullest potential by all of you. My lovely girlfriend is going to make a couple batches of (vegan!) cupcakes for everyone earlier in the day so they’ll be all fresh and moist by the time everyone arrives. For a main course I was thinking of making these wonderful (also can be vegan) burgers though I am encouraging people to make their own dishes as well since I’m not sure if I can provide for all. Adds more variety and I am always a fan of pot luck style dinner parties, especially if they’re made at the party itself!

As is tradition for my birthday for as far back as I can remember, cheesecake (strawberry and chocolate) will be provided from the amazing Schubert’s Bakery. I may need some vehicular assistance in getting these so please let me know if you can spare about an hour before everything starts to help me get these back to my place without smashing them.

Alright, here’s the logistics;

When:
Sunday July 19th
~4:00 PM until whenever
If you’re not able to show up for the whole thing show up whenever you’re able! I’ll certainly be there all day and would love to see as many people as I can.

Where:
My new home! (email me if you don’t know the address)

That’s all for now, looking forward to seeing you all there. : )

BTW, if you’re on Facebook, rsvp here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=102676399042

Cheers,

-Ani
(v @ thiswebsite.com)

I was approached by my friend who runs the talks to create a short intro video to the talks which would then be posted on YouTube for all the world to see. We decided on something short, but wanted to make it clear this was Noisebridge. Here’s how I got to it.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHk47KYH064

The five second intro took the bulk of the work. The rest of the filming was done by Eddie Codel. All I needed to do was create something that was recognisably Noisebridge. I started with deciding what content needed to go on it, our logo (for sure), name of the event, where it was at, who was speaking and the name of the talk seemed like just enough. No more, no less.

The theme of the event is “5″, 5 minute talks within the hour. Abbreviated the event is “5MoF” which is almost becoming a logo within itself. We decided to go with the “5″ theme for the intro and wanted to do a countdown. We started with the Noisebridge logo and cut out everything else but the centre bit. I determined what font that was used and made separate images with a countdown from 5 to 1 in the middle, combined them together and imported them into Quicktime at one frame per second. I made it a point to use the same font for all of the text throughout the clip.

The idea of having an audio countdown came up during the discussion of the intro and someone suggested a numbers station. Simple, yet delightfully creepy. I scoured the internet and found a clip of one that contained all the numbers I needed, albeit in the wrong order. Reordering them wasn’t difficult at all given I was good enough at using the basic features of Audacity. Reordering them made the sequence sound different and a bit more disjointed, a nice side effect.

Since we were using something that sounded old, it made sense to make it look old as well. I used the “aged film” filter in iMovie, decreased the exposure and the brightness while upping the contrast. Result: looking and sounding like something that’s been sitting in a warehouse for around 50 years.

REJECTED

This montage was a lot of fun to make. In every 5MoF so far there’s been a handful of bloopers but this is the only one that has been filmed so far. There were enough moments of fail to create a two minute clip out of it.

The clip was inspired by Don Hertzfeldt’s Rejected and uses the same music, although the one in ours goes on for longer than his.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVPHk0vZwkU