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20080516 Friday May 16, 2008

Links for 16th May 2008 - Maker Faire Links - Part 2

See also the post from yesterday. Here's the remainder of them, again in no particular order.

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( May 16 2008, 08:37:45 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [0]

20080515 Thursday May 15, 2008

Links for 15th May 2008 - Maker Faire Links - Part 1

These are all Maker Faire ones. Part 1 of 2. They come from various handouts and cards I collected when I was there, and are of things I'd like to look at in more detail. They are in no particular order.

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( May 15 2008, 11:01:38 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [0]

20080513 Tuesday May 13, 2008

Making Things Talk - Hello Worlds

I've been reading Making Things Talk that I bought at the Maker Faire ten days ago. As well as the book, the kit I purchased included an Arduino and various other electronic components that would be useful with said microcontroller platform.

Chapter 1 of the book is a variety of Hello Worlds to make sure that everything is working okay. Thankfully all the source code examples used in the book are available for download.

The first thing to get working is Processing:

"Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions."

It's based on Java and was easy to setup and run the two sample programs. It looks like a fascinating language. I could see myself tinkering with it quite a bit.

I initially started trying to do all this on my Ubuntu Hardy system, but one of the other things that had to be setup is the Arduino Development environment and that's got a problem with Ubuntu Hardy by default:

"You need to uninstall braille support if you want to use /dev/ttyUSB0: just remove the package brltty in Adept, and the USB port will be available for communication with Arduino."

As I need Brltty for my day job, that was no good, so I just swapped over to using my Mac laptop and got the Arduino software (and Processing) working there. I plugged the Arduino into one of the USB ports, added a red led between pin 13 and ground, uploaded a small example program to flash it every second. That all worked fine.

The other main Hello World in this chapter was to setup a machine as an Apache server and enable PHP. That was about two minutes work (including downloading and installing the software) using Hack #96 in the Ubuntu Hacks book.

Before I go on to the first real project in the book, I'm going to build the Proto Shield that also came in the Maker Faire kit. Ladyada has some really nice instructions that should make this easy. Let's hope I haven't forgotten all my soldering skills.

More when I get into doing really interesting Arduino stuff.

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( May 13 2008, 07:44:23 PM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [2]

20080512 Monday May 12, 2008

Recently Read - 12th May 2008

Here's a list of the books I've recently read, with an Amazon-style star rating and a few comments.

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( May 12 2008, 11:22:13 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [1]

20080509 Friday May 09, 2008

Maker Faire 2008 - Part 5

The final batch from this years Faire, including some which are slightly out of focus. Hopefully the links will give you a better idea.

Four Lego related ones. There are 16 motors in that crane. Also the LEGO Train Town and Village from the Bay Area Lego Users Group.

We got the Forbidden Lego book out of the library a few months ago, with the idea that we could try to build some of the models, only to find out that it uses a lot of non-standard parts. Grr!

That's Robyn Beer preparing a piece for enameling, another hobby I'd like to try when I can find the time. Also glass bending, the CandyFab Project and grow your own mushrooms.

Various robots,robot-like scuptures and blinky things. That's the work of Mike Scioli. Also Voxhead from Michael Brady, and a couple of AntBot's.

Pong Watch. There was also another playing asteroids. Plus some kinetic metal sculptures including the Giant Squid.

What to do with your prototyping failures, The Incredible Marble machine and motorized armchair. That woman was having a great time.

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( May 09 2008, 09:33:15 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [0]

20080508 Thursday May 08, 2008

Maker Faire 2008 - Part 4

Two shots of a steampunk motorcycle scooter (thanks Corey) and two electric bikes.

There was a camera providing a stereoscopic 3D effect, so I took a couple pictures of myself. Grab your anaglyph glasses for best viewing.

Here's Artoo-Detoo (that the adventurous of you can make for yourself). It's even better than the real thing (according to Gizmodo).

Robbie was there too, but a little less animated.

Winner of the cutest robot at the show (by far) is the Pleo. What you can't tell from the photo is that it's gently moving around (like it's trying to get comfy) and making endearing little noises. Also a picture of one that had been flayed.

This is what I want for Christmas. Or I'll take it as a gift. I'm not proud. Some examples of what you can make with it. Similar CNC PC controlled router for foam.

And finally a miscellaneous set. A really nice home made, computer driven etch-a-sketch.

The Hydraulic Flight Simulator

Outside they had a huge "pond" setup for robotic model warships to shoot at each other and fight to the death (more info). There was a large battleship under several inches of water still shooting away (shells now becoming torpedoes). The top part had come off. I guess the boards inside must of been waterproof although they didn't look it.

In the Dark Room there were several POV machines.

Last batch of photos tomorrow.

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( May 08 2008, 08:02:26 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [2]

20080507 Wednesday May 07, 2008

Maker Faire 2008 - Part 3

My favorite glass bead maker Ralph McCaskey from Nightside Studios was back and giving more demonstrations. It looks like he's got Laser Vision in the second photo.

I got a nice surprise to discover that Catia Chen, one of the graphics artists who had a story in Flight - Volume 1, had a stand at the Faire showing off some of her works.

Purl Drums is an experiment intersecting two activities: drumming and knitting. For me, the experiment was a failure. From the looks he was getting from his fellow crafters, I don't think he was making too many friends.

The Bent Objects guy was back, with a piece of his work exhibited right outside the rest rooms.

Big Foot was also spotted.

It was impossible to get a clear picture of this from 20 feet away. Try to guess what the picture is made of before you get a closeup of the second image.

The Linux Astronomy project had a nice stand. Also see their website.

There were numerous examples of Steampunk at the show. This was one of the better ones. More Steampunk here.

Duncan got to try manipulating the camera (via radio control) attached to a kite that's normally used for aerial photography. There were numerous examples of pictures they'd taken on display. Check out their Flickr collective.

More tomorrow.

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( May 07 2008, 07:59:23 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [2]

20080506 Tuesday May 06, 2008

Maker Faire 2008 - Part 2

Continuing on with more photos taken outside of the various exhibition halls.

Radio controlled metal spheres. A home-made miniature golf course (with realistic par settings for most holes) and a passenger pedal-powered bus (with an annoying guy on the megaphone near the back).

In the Steampunk area, long lines built up for Neverwas Haul.

"This steam-powered car is made of a 100-year-old dog cart, a steam cleaner tubing coil, a machined "sliding-D" valve, and steam-rated plumbing left over from the previous century."

The cupcakes were back, but due to the huge crowds, were regulated to being outside this year. I also got to see inside the S&M cupcake.

A couple activities for young kids. Shoot your rockets straight up and see if you can bonk somebody on the way down. Last year it was glueing pens on an old Merc. This years it's Lego bricks on an old jeep.

I'm not sure what this was supposed to be. A framework for a new kind of tent? A very insecure storage area? A New-Age play pen? We also have a tribute to our Govenator.

And finally. What do you do if you have a large surplus of old computer parts? You build your own Death Star.

More tomorrow.

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( May 06 2008, 08:19:16 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [2]

20080505 Monday May 05, 2008

Maker Faire 2008 - Part 1

The first of a few posts, of pictures that were taken at the Maker Faire over the weekend. Somebody told me that the Chronicle called it "Burning Man Meets Martha Stewart". It was a lot more than that.

The crowds were huge. Ever bigger than last year. We'd prepaid for our tickets but the women behind the counter wasn't very efficient at checking off our names from a printed list. You'd think with all this advanced tech on show, that there could have been some sophisticated bar code scanning arrangement like Fandango uses. People who had tried to to the right thing, would have been through the gates in no time.

The first thing you see after entering the hall immediately behind the ticket gates is the Maker SHED. Lots of great things for sale. I ended up buying a "kit" which consisted of the Making Things Talk, an Arduino, a couple of sensors and various other electronic components for me to experiment with. Hopefully more on this as I get familiar with it. It's an unfortunate name and cover for the book. I'd seen it around for months but assumed it was about hacking toys and adding speech synthesis.

Duncan got a couple boxes of Uberstik. This was the first time I'd ever heard of them, but they've been engineered to interconnect with recycled materials such as straws, cocktail straws, icecream sticks, paper clips, water bottles,egg cartons, O-rings as well as other construction kits like Lego, KNeX and Erector. It'll be interesting to see what he comes up with.

We also bought a Blinkybug Kit.

I took lots of pictures. Lots of the exhibits from last year were here again. This year, I just tried to photograph different things. This first post is just some of the big things that were outside. Okay, and the little birdie that was so cute. I've got to wonder how they were delivered to the fairgrounds and how long it took for then to be erected.

Here's the burning woman at the show. Plus one of the Martians they didn't use in War of the Worlds.

More tomorrow.

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( May 05 2008, 09:32:25 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [1]

20080503 Saturday May 03, 2008

Maker Faire Tips

We are just back from another great Maker Faire (photos to be posted next week, I'm too tired now). If you are planning to go tomorrow (and if you live in the Bay Area and you enjoy making things, then you really should), then as a three year veteran, let me give you some tips.

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( May 03 2008, 05:45:44 PM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink

20080502 Friday May 02, 2008

Children's Book Suggestions

In the evening my wife and I take turns reading to Duncan for 30 minutes each night just before he goes to bed. He's almost ten now. His preferred choice of reading material for us would be Calvin and Hobbes and Garfield if we let him choose, but instead we try to stick with chapter books.

We've had mixed success with this, so we are now going to try working off the list of Newbury Award winners and honor books (the honor books are the "o" indented ones for each year).

What I'm looking for are recommendations of books you think he might like. Either from this list or other junior page-turners. Not only for us to read to him, but for him to then continue reading on his own, because the story is exciting. To give you some idea of his reaction to three of the recently read books, he liked The Tale of Despereaux, really liked The Phantom Toll Booth and initially liked The Wrinkle in Time but didn't want us to finish it (it started to get "to scary").

Growing up in England about forty years ago, I had the Famous Five and Biggles books inflicted on me. It wasn't until I discovered the juvenille Clarke, Heinlein and Asimov books, that I really started wanting to read for myself. We are trying to find the modern day books that will make Duncan do the same thing.

Recommendations greatly appreciated.

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( May 02 2008, 02:25:19 PM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [18]

20080501 Thursday May 01, 2008

My First Post On The design @ Sun Blog

A couple of weeks ago, Maya, one of the xDesign folks at Sun, asked me if I'd like to be one of the contributors to the design @ Sun blog. In particular, blogging about accessibility related design.

I accepted. Today was my first post. As this is a serious topic oriented blog, they have a different setup than I do with my own blog. The potential posts are vetted and then scheduled to appear. It felt weird waiting about ten days for the post to see the light of day, but I guess I'll get used to it.

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( May 01 2008, 07:24:53 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [2]

20080430 Wednesday April 30, 2008

BeautifulSoup - Get A 10 Day Weather Forecast For Your Zip Code

After Matt Harrison mentioned BeautifulSoup in a comment to an old Python script post of mine, I've been looking for somewhere where I could use it.

BeautifulSoup is a Python HTML/XML parser designed for quick turnaround projects like screen-scraping.

I initially played around with it, seeing if I could use it to get listings of when new episodes of my favorite TV programs were appearing, now that Zap2It Labs are no longer making their listing available for free. The problem there (I think) is that, because of the dynamically generated content on their TV listings website, I can't find a URL that BeautifulSoup can parse.

So I picked something different to cut my teeth on.

I often go to Weather.com and get a 10 day forecast for the city where I live. Easy to do, but I used this as an example of something to extract from a web page and then also email it to me so I have it handy.

This script does this. You will also need to get a copy of BeautifulSoup.py for it to work properly. I've simply put them both in the same directory and run it with: 

  $ python ./get_weather.py

If others are interested in running this, then there are two variables that you will need to change in the script to meet your needs: 

# Zip code to get 10 day forecast for.
#
zipCode = "94024"

# Email address to sent results to.
#
emailAddr = "someone@somewhere.com"

Just like my early attempts with using XPath in some of my JavaScript scripts, I suspect that I'm not doing it the best way.I predict that there are much nicer ways of writing the extractForecast() routine.

Still it works and that's the first step in programming.

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( Apr 30 2008, 08:58:05 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [5]

Airplane Flights Patterns Over The USA

A cool movie today from the APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) folks.

The movie depicts flight patterns that occurred over a few days in 2005 March. The count on the lower left shows the number of USA-related flights at the time listed on the lower right.

The major cities are beacons of light and the eastern seaboard just blazes at certain times of the day.

An excellent way of presenting the data.

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( Apr 30 2008, 08:01:21 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [1]

20080429 Tuesday April 29, 2008

Links for 29th April 2008

A couple Sun related ones.

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( Apr 29 2008, 08:16:00 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink