Brian A. Paul

Bunnie over at Bunnie: Studios posted the answer to the name that ware November riddle, which I wrote about previously. I suggest you click through for a full explanation and photos but let’s just say that my “That must be some kind of MP3 player with Secure Digital expansion slot” was not only too simplistic but way off the mark besides. At least I know when I’m in over my head, which is why I didn’t hazard a guess in the comments.

Bunnie’s stated reason for these contests is to foster an interest in reverse engineering and hardware in general. I think that’s pretty cool. A lot of people, myself included, began the road to their technical skill set by looking at what those who came before us had done. I can’t help but imagine there’s some person out there just starting down that path and that fun, interesting challenges such as this will help them gain the passion and enthusiasm they’ll need to make truly great contributions. To me this is exactly the kind of thing that helps build expertise in an industry.

Recently I wrote about the small religious icon I purchased for 50 cents from a vending machine at my local Fry’s Electronics. It turns out that my 2 inch tall, made in China, pope isn’t Benedict XVI at all, he’s ‘Pope Jean Paolo’ which is to say Pope John Paul. I’m not entirely sure whether he represents John Paul I or John Paul II but based on his appearance I would guess John Paul II is who this thing is meant to represent.

All this is very awkward. Not only am I here printing my first correction/retraction but also I’ve been calling him ‘Ben’ in our conversations as he stands around on my desk watching me work. “Ben, do you think we need a unsigned int 10 for this table or an unsigned int 11?” or “Ben, I really just don’t like the way ‘do{’ looks in my editor when implementing a do-while loop so I tend to avoid them, what are your thoughts?” To be fair he never corrected my mistake, but how do you handle the conversation immediately after you’ve been enlightened about your error over someone’s name? Do you confess and apologize? Just switch names like nothing was ever amiss? Tell an inappropriate joke?

I’m sure John Paul and I will work it out, I doubt our friendship is on the rocks. Also, this probably explains why my dog has been giving me funny ‘what the hell are you doing?’ looks whenever I talk to John Paul.

All seriousness aside, candymachines.com clued me in to my faux pas with the following image:

Which is exactly the display that caught my eye initially at Fry’s.

Oh and as one last aside, a 250 count of Santos Figurines Vending Capsules goes for $48.00 plus shipping and handling of $12.75 which works out to $60.75. That comes to $0.24 per figurine. Before whatever other costs (fuel, person to keep the machine stocked) come into play, they made 26 cents. I imagine the big earner in this whole scenario is the person who owns the factory in China that makes these things.

There are these ubiquitous machines that accept some change, make you work just a little bit, and then return a prize. Herein I will call them bauble machines. When I was a child these machines were of great interest to me. At that time the prices were typically 5 cents, 10 cents, or 25 cents. The 5 cent machines never had anything I was interested in. The only 10 cent item worth the trouble of hitting my Dad up for change was a Super Bounce Ball. The real action was at the 25 cent machines. Here you could find all kinds of things that would make your life worth living, or at least that’s what it felt like at the time.

I may have never really outgrown that bauble machine addiction because I have always glanced these machines over in passing out of idle curiosity. I have noticed that inflation has taken a heavy toll on this market, rarely do I see a machine that costs less that 50 cents anymore.

On my way out of the neihborhood Fry’s Electronics today I glanced at the impressive array of bauble machines pleading for one last minor impulse buy and took immediate notice of one proclaiming ‘Santos.’ Upon closer inspection this machine, at 50 cents, contained a variety of Catholic saints. Additionally I think I saw a Jesus and what might have been other Biblical figures. I’m not well versed enough of Catholic saints to know which biblical figures are and aren’t covered by that term.

This was just surreal enough that my resolve weakened, curiosity won over (it does that a lot to my inevitable chagrin) and I dropped 50 cents and turned the crank.

Behold, (Update: Woops) Pope Benedict XVI John Paul, and quite a bargain at $0.50. He was made in China:

Please forgive the image quality. My poor camera may never have been cut out for macro photography. It probably doesn’t help that I can only be called a photographer because I know which end of the camera to point away from my head. To be completely fair this camera has been nothing but satisfying to use until today, the problem here is most likely pilot error.

The Church of the Customer blog has an interesting piece about a religious order of silent monks and how they sell their beer. I’m not as interested in the ‘niche marketing’ aspect as I am the ‘niche culture’ aspect of the requirements these people place on themselves and others for acquiring this beverage. An interesting aspect of this is that these monks prohibit the resale of their beer. If you think you’ve found a source for this beer other than directly from this abbay then you are either looking at a counterfeit or at someone who has agreed not to re-sell the beer and then done so anyway. I certainly would love to try this this stuff but I think my wife would have some reservations about me hoping a plane to Belgium to buy a beer.

Articles like this open up a whole world of possibilities in my mind. How many other monastic orders, artistic enclaves, or other small groups of people organized around some principal or goal are producing unique things for consumption? Also, is it entirely possible that these monks have always sold their beer this way and that it has just become anachronistic to my sensibilities because of cultural or temporal divide? I wonder if at one time beer sold this way was just the way things were done and it only looks strange and cool to me because of my perspective.

Bunnie Huang is giving away a Chumby, all you have to do is accomplish the next to impossible (for me anyway) task of identifying his piece of mystery hardware.. and be the first one to do so.

Bunnie is a cool entrepreneurial hardware guy. He came to my attention from all the fanfare around his company’s device the Chumby. I subscribed to his blog when he started running a very informative and enlightening series about sourcing manufacturing in China and all the requisite steps it has taken to bring the Chumby to market.

I’ve always been fascinated with the hardware side of computing and electronics but have next to no experience with it. I imagine that the complete lack of depth about hardware development I feel reading Bunnie’s blog or the Flylogic Blog must be what non-technical people feel when I babble on about writing software, tuning and optimizing MySQL, or scaling web delivery architectures.