I Laser Etched Daleks and Patapons into a Moleskine notebook for my daughter last night. Epilog 45 W Laser (raster, p25, s50) at TechShop.
Here’s a photo!
Friends
My Stuff
Netflix, GameFly
Saturday, March 29, 2008
I finally canceled both. We don’t order enough movies or games to make either of these services pay off, financially. The result would have been different if the Netflix Video On Demand service supported OS X.
TechShop - Laser Cutter
Saturday, March 29, 2008
TechShop was fun. Learned how to operate the Laser Cutter for cutting, etching and scoring.
Classes:
Basic covered safety, equipment and basic technique. We learned how to use Corel Draw and the “printer” driver that sends instructions to the cutter. We learned how to start and stop jobs and signs to look for that might indicate a bad cut or a fire hazard. We also learned how to set the focus (AUTO FOCUS IS BAD). The class was 2 hours long and the instructor, Laura, answered tons of questions. Of particular interest was learning which materials work best with this laser.
Advanced was about an hour long. We covered a lot of Q&A as well as tips and tricks to make it easier to find the right settings (speed, power) for a given material.
The classes were great and the instructor was top notch.
Facilities:
The machine is an Epilog Helix Laser Cutter. It’s 45 watts. (Actually, there are two of them.)
The software is CorelDraw X3.
My Take
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Patapon: I normally can’t stand rhythm games, but this one is a ton of fun.
iPhone SDK: Finally! Looks great to me, but I am not happy about the ‘no background apps’ policy. I’d like 3rd party chat apps and feed readers to be able to alert me from the background. Hopefully, background capabilities are coming.
OS X Leopard’s “Alex” voice: Text to speech is normally pretty crappy. I’m glad Apple invested in a voice that speaks clearly, even if it does require 700MB of disk space!! I’m working on a simple OS X app that connects to Google Reader and reads articles aloud.
Jericho: Canceled AGAIN? Really? At least there’s still Torchwood, Doctor Who, Lost, BSG and Smallville (major spoilers in this week’s promo - be careful).
Arduino: I’m having a lot of fun with mine. An Arduino plus a series of BlinkMs is a great combination.
MacBook Air: I’ve had mine for 2 months and I love it. The combination of mobility, screen size and performance it provides makes it much more useful than the notebooks, umpcs, pdas and internet tablets I’ve used in the past. Meanwhile, the flexibility, usability and safety provided by OS X gives this machine a huge advantage over similar Windows-based laptops. It’s my main computer, now.
WaterField’s Racer-X Laptop Case: The Racer-X is perfect for me. Not too big, not too small. It stays upright do to a solid rectangular bottom, which is really nice - it makes it a little heavier but it’s worth knowing it’s not going to tip over. The Air is in a zippered into a lightly padded, secure pocket. The other zippered pocket is big enough to hold the charger, my cradlepoint PHS, a usb hub, a medium sized ora book or my Kindle, a tiny usb HD (for backups and extra storage) and some other misc stuff. It’s small enough that I have to think about what I want to keep in it, but not so small that I have to leave anything important behind. I bought the black version with leather handles. The build quality is terrific and I can see it lasting for a LONG time.
TechShop
Thursday, March 27, 2008
I’m heading back to TechShop tomorrow. It’ll be my first visit since the Grand Opening and I’m looking forward to it.
I’ll be there at 6pm for the Basic Laser Cutting class and I’m staying for the 8pm Advanced class.
Now, if I can find some Patapon vector art…
BlinkMs
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Knight Rider Light Bar
Saturday, February 16, 2008
UPDATE (2/17/08): Added more videos to the bottom of this post.
UPDATE (2/17/08): Code is available here.
I’m making a Knight Rider (KITT) Light Bar to celebrate the premier of the new Knight Rider Made-For-TV Movie (tomorrow night on NBC). I’m using an Arduino Diecimila board and 18 LEDs.
Here’s a picture from a few hours ago. The LEDs are now much more aligned and some of the wiring has since been cleaned up, but the photo will give you the general idea.
Materials (so far): FedEx box (temporary; looking for a suitable plastic container) with black construction paper for the housing. Arduino, 18 LEDs (wired to 9 output pins on the arduino - two LEDs in parallel per pin), 9 75 ohm resistors (note, 75 is not the right value, but they were the closest I had). The faceplate is made of cardboard, tissue paper (light diffusion) and some cheap car-window-sun-shade-material I found at Target.
Here’s what it looks like in action (this vid is from the afternoon, before the housing and faceplate were ready): kitt2.mov.
If you haven’t already, consider reading this article about the guys who built the real thing!
New Video: In the box, during daylight.
New Video: Out of the box.
New Video: Arduino and wiring.
A New Way to Help Kids Learn to Read
Sunday, February 3, 2008
LeapPads and the like have been around for a while. Put a specially configured booklet into an electronic pad. Tap a button or two with a special pen. Then let your child page through the booklet tapping on pictures and sentences to hear the story and learn the words.
Tag is different.
With Tag, the books themselves are printed on Anoto paper. The Tag pen reads tiny dots on the paper to know which book, which page and which word or picture is being tapped on. No need for a special electronic pad, just a pen and specially printed books. No need for special instructions, just tap.
How is Tag better than current solutions? Well, nothing is better than a parent sitting with the kid, but this is better than the other electronic solutions out there because it’s easier to use and less bulky. I think this will be an effective tool for teaching kids to read who are much younger than the kids who are helped by the options available previously.
Tag has another innovation. Plug the pen into your computer and the parent gets an interactive look at what their kid has been doing with the pen and how much he is learning. Nice!
Watch the video!!!
Links: LeapFrog Tag at Demo (with video), LeapFrog Tag official site, my 2004 review of the Logitech IO (also based on Anoto tech).
New Google Reader Feature - See Friends’ Shared Items
Friday, December 14, 2007
On logging into Google Reader just now, I noticed that it now shows me a group of feeds that correspond to my friends’ shared items. This is terrific! Note: Friends are defined as your Google Talk buddies.
There is a Facebook app that works similarly, but I’m glad this functionality is now built in and is opt out, not opt in.
Note: I don’t consider this a privacy violation. You are ALREADY sharing these items with the public - Google is just making it easier to find your friends’ feeds.
I’ll look into adding this functionality to ReaderMini.
It looks like they announced a couple of days ago, but I don’t remember seeing it before today.
Congrats to Bunnie and the Chumby Team!
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Chumby has been shipping for a while now and people seem to love it! I love that hacked Chumbies are already starting to roll in!!
Congrats, Bunnie!
More Photos At Flickr
Geometry Wars: Galaxies (DS)
Thursday, November 29, 2007
The Nintendo DS version of Geometry Wars: Galaxies shipped yesterday. I picked up mine at GameStop along with Petz Wild Animals: Dolphinz (for Samantha). I don’t know if the dolphins game is any good, but Galaxies is incredible.
Some quick thoughts:
- It uses the same control scheme that my homebrew game, Extreme Onslaught uses, but they’ve made it much more intuitive by using aiming graphics in the top screen.
- The full Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved game (the XBox 360 Live Arcade version) is included. That was a nice surprise and a wonderful fallback if you decide you don’t like the Galaxies game.
- Galaxies is fun, with a lot of variations on the normal Geometry Wars rules.
- The drones (independent ships that fly next to you and have their own weapons and powers) really add to the variety and are a blast, especially for an RType/Gradius fan like myself.
- To unlock new drones, planets and solar systems, you need to collect geoms (enemy wreckage) during normal gameplay. I don’t like that aspect of Everyday Shooter, so I was surprised that I actually enjoy doing so in Galaxies.
- I’m looking forward to trying the multi-player game types.
Intuit and Homestead
Monday, November 26, 2007
At Homestead, we’ve been working with Intuit for years in various capacities. We share a lot of the same values and there is a lot of overlap between our customers. Both of us count small businesses as critical to our success and we’d like to think that those businesses can find success using our products.
Today, we announced that Intuit is buying Homestead. This relationship is really something special. To understand how special, read Justin’s (Homestead’s CEO) post on the subject, specifically these lines:
A suitable acquiring company for Homestead has to be a place that we all can feel as strongly about as we do about Homestead. It has to have a set of core values that matches the Homestead Creed. It has to have a hiring policy similar to our “no jerks, no idiots” rule. It has to believe in giving back to the community. It really helps if we can keep our brand, our offices, our wacky traditions, our identity. And we absolutely have to keep all of our people, and be able to maintain the sense of ownership and pride that we all feel today.
I’m happy to report that Intuit passed all of these tests with flying colors.
We will continue to be Homestead (great products, customer focused, quick release cycles, killer talent, quirky culture) while having the support of a large company that shares our values and motivations and has resources we’ve only been able to dream of.
On a personal note: I’ve been working with several Intuit team members on and off over the past several months and they are great people, passionate about their customers! Here’s to a healthy future together!
More commentary: Thai (my boss), Gordon, Andrew, and others.