The only way to know if an idea was good, is after you've already done it. Future prediction is always a crapshoot. People who claim to be good at it were typically just lucky, and are deluding themselves into thinking it was all skill.

This is why it's so important in biology to know people, or to have a PI who does. Friends tell friends their negative results, and that's how word gets around.

Depends how much larger, and how many of them you want. Milling machines are more expensive in setup cost, but *possibly* cheaper in the long run. As long as you don't break too many cutters, and you buy cheap wood. The author of the "guerilla guide" notes that he's spent tens of thousands of dollars on his milling setup over the years.

Another consideration when it comes to filament is that you don't need the total volume of the object to be filled in. All you need is a solid outside, and the inside of the object can be perhaps 10% full and still be pretty solid. So it doesn't take as much filament as you might think, although you're right -- cheap wood or MDF is still cheaper.

If you're making a large enough quantity that the cost of the machine isn't a factor, actually you don't want 3D printing OR milling. You want molding and casting. Plastic's cheaper than both. Send your model into Shapeways, get back one of the thing you want to make, make a mold of it, and cast a million. Or pay a Chinese guy to do it even cheaper.

Yeah, that doc is pretty damn awesome overall. There's a ton of great information in there.

However, it does push milling over 3D printing. For the author's application, making teeny tiny gears, he's right: milling machines are the right way to go. But 3D printing is awesome for making larger things, and it's a MUCH faster and simpler process than milling is. Not to mention cheaper. So bear that in mind as you read it.

I tried Wings3d first, and it's easy to get into and make some compositions of cubes and spheres and whatnot. There's a good starting tutorial here where you make a simple table.

However, as a programmer, I find it much faster and more intuitive to use OpenSCAD. Instead of clicking on things and moving them around on the screen, you edit code that generates the objects. There are thousands of examples to get you started at thingiverse. Here's one of mine.

At the other extreme, Google Sketchup is excellent for the "click and drag objects around" approach. Its UI is way more powerful than Wings3D, and it may even be an easier starting point for non-programmers.

People hate feeling stupid, and if you pass information to them in a way that makes them feel smart, it will stick better. Your average undergraduate doesn't care about what you're trying to teach them, but they DO care about looking better than their peers, and looking good to employers. Knowledge isn't an end, it's a means to an end. Before you try to teach something, make sure it's something they want to know (even if it's for a stupid reason).

A personal trainer helped me a TON. Wife and I went together for a year. It cost a bunch, but it established a habit. And the habit has stuck since. Now the game is, if one of us skips a gym session, that person must pay $20 the other's favorite charity. The EFF only made $60 from her last year :)

So Aaron Swartz did not get fairly treated by the justice system. THIS DOES NOT IMPLY THAT EVERYONE ELSE SHOULD GET THE SAME TREATMENT. The justice system is what needs to change.

Been playing since the 3AM release. It's worked *nearly* perfect. The achievement server has been up and down, but that does not impact any aspect of gameplay.

If Facebook has taught us anything at all, it's that trust becomes a non-issue for people, as long as the "vanity" and "convenience" payoffs are high enough.

The job of police and prosecutors is to establish guilt. They are not there to help you. They are there to harm you in any way they can. Do not talk to them at all if you can avoid it.

Don't Talk To Cops is a video detailing exactly how someone who is PURELY INNOCENT can have their words twisted to prove their "guilt". If you have not watched this, watch it. Make your kids watch it too.

I think that's the right button.

Since when can corporations act like governments?

Yep, it totally ignores cases where multiple threads can be chewing on the same piece of RAM without conflict. My domain is image processing, and as long as each thread can access its own sub-chunk of the image, parallelizing my code takes near-zero overhead. I don't have to split the data into chunks at all.

See subject line, FTFY.