Month: April 2011

I decided to meet a friend tonight at Bull and Buddha in Poughkeepsie, NY.

Look at these gorgeous lamps!




YUMMY Menu!!



And I love the Big Buddha behind the bar.

Hell yeah!

I just found out that I am exhibiting at the Bay Area Maker Faire!
I applied after the deadline and was accepted as a last-minute entry. So I will make something new to show and also bring a couple of 2010 pieces.
The new thing that I am conceptualizing has something to do with software-less lighting controls and also something to do with ears. So the first thing is to go into my attic and see what EAR related supplies there are already.
My attic has some pretty cool stuff stored in it. There are a few animatronic puppets, ice sculpture supplies, random motors and quite a few lifecasts of various body parts.

But I am only looking for ear molds. Luckily I find a silicone mold and cast an ear!
The first casting comes out filthy and full of bubbles.

Later on….

Hine Mizushima does some great original work…and this one cracked me up.

I just saw this video of Keepon, a robot designed to help autistic children engage socially.
It looks like an old style push button toy, but has 2 cameras (!!) in its head and a microphone in its nose. Awesome bonus: this video (@ 1:25) briefly shows off the mechanics that make Keepon interact.
The second video shows Keepon dancing. It blows me away.

My new friend Stephanie Alarcon coined the word Make-cation earlier today. Check out her blog, it rocks!
The Make-cation is the vacation that you take from your regular life in order to make stuff!
Making stuff can take a long time…. from thinking it up, to researching it, to screwing it up, to redoing it, to finishing it. My Make Desire can make me crazy if I don’t set aside time to take Make-cations.

Today, I built an oscillator with the 74HC14 hex inverter Schmitt trigger.
Here’s the datasheet.
I thought this was interesting, the inventor of the Schmitt trigger, Otto Herbert Schmitt (1913 – 1998), was a scientist who worked both in physics and biology. He figured out the trigger while studying neural impulse propagation in squid nerves.

I built this circuit with a capacitor 0.01uF and resistor 14.8k, which were just lying on the bench. I calculate a frequency of about 6.75kHz. Freq (Hz) = 1/ (R*F)

Which is pretty close to what shows on the oscilloscope … I’m looking at the output signal on pin 12.
Time (seconds) = 1/Frequency (Hz)

I then used all the gates available and made three oscillators. By using different values for R (Mohm range) and C (uF range) on each oscillator, and therefore creating three out of phase oscillators, I was able to get a nice color cycling effect on an RGB LED.

Yesterday, the open source hardware logo designed by Macklin Chaffee was selected. Over 9000 people voted!
From the OSHW definition, the principle is “Open source hardware is hardware whose design is made publicly available so that anyone can study, modify, distribute, make, and sell the design or hardware based on that design.”
Yessssssss! Collaboration rocks my world.

Stephen Shaheen designed this bench made from Metrocards on a steel frame.
Mr. Shaheen, I salute your imagination!

I ran across this super cool design today while looking at power strips.
The folding plug from the UK based Made in M!nd folds to be 0.393″ thin!

It will be released sometime this year with a product line designed around it … maybe some folding phone chargers?