thoughts to blog

So I have a snazzy Apple Keyboard...

I love it... it feels like a laptop and allows me to type at blazing speeds (~100 with 85% - 90% accuracy)... it's not for everyone, but it has short throws / fast actions on the keys...

The other day I was just returning home from a *$ (read: Starbucks) run and had a nice grande Skinny Cinnamon Dolce Latte (my current fav)... and I proceeded to immediately dump the entire contents onto my desk... Keyboard, mouse, Arduino, wallet, keys, pencils, paper, and headphones... Yeah, that's like all of my important things...

All came out fine with no damages, except my lovely keyboard...

And what do you know... one key does not work... Now, I could easily get along without one key for certain things, like the numbers row... or the functions row... but guess which key is broken...

The ? / key

Why am I raving and writing this overly verbose blog post about this key (well shit, I just typed out a question and have to copy and paste a question mark)...??? Is because you don't often realize how much a certain key is used until it's gone.

Consider my profession... software development... If you do a google search for Ruby Code or C# Code or Software Development and look at code, you'll notice how many of those ? and / there really are... Not to mention that those two characters are in the rare, filtered set of characters that are allowed in website URLs...

So far I've gone 4 or 5 days without those keys... next week when I get back from my mini-vaca, I'll tear this bitch apart and see if it's just a shorted circuit or a piece of dried coffee is messing things up...

One ring to rule them all... one ring to bind them....

If you couldn't immediately tell... Becca and I got engaged on Saturday...

I took her to the Botanic Gardens here in Fort Worth... found a nice, cozy spot and got down on one knee and asked her... then hit up Del Frisco's Double Eagle Steakhouse for a nice celebratory dinner!

I'm so incredibly excited and am absolutely thrilled to bring Becca to my family...

Let the games begin!!

Quick little post to shout out about something I figured out with Spore that I thought was unique...

When you save your little creatures... check out the character directory, it's filled with PNGs!

And if you notice on their website, when you download a creature, you are downloading a PNG... and they even suggest right clicking on the gallery pictures and doing a "Save As" and it just works... which is cool!

Basically what it means is that they are embedding meta data about the creature (enough to recreate it) right inside of the PNG preview image. Clever! It's really efficient as well, each preview image and character data is just under 30kb... perfect for web galleries and the like...

Really clever actually...

^^ That little bugger is something I created with the demo... when I get the full version... something will end up showing up down below in my creature widget!

The Spore Creature Creator is pretty unique... we've been waiting for Spore for how long?

Neat video on how we can look at nature and evolution on how to solve problems... like using genetic algorithms

Pretty freaking sweet!

The Great Office War - Watch more free videos

Getting a few calls, IMs, and emails today... good ol' Burlington, IA was on The Weather Channel, The Today Show, CNN, etc because of all of the flooding in Iowa...

CNNs Coverage

The Weather Channel Coverage

Lots of things on my mind... thankfully most of residential Burlington is on high lands... including all of my family...

So I tried to do a little circuit bending this weekend... here's the video:

Wikipedia has some good information on circuit bending if you want to know more...

Under the advice of MIke Vincent, I journeyed over to Carrollton, TX... a good 45-50 miles from where I live... to visit what is known as the electronics Mecca of the DFW area...

Tanner Electronics

I was not disappointed... $90 later... I came home with bundles of parts (LEDs, trim pots, caps, resistors, switches, connectors, etc)... the prices? Some things were really cheap (in bulk) compared to online (maybe not Mouser or DigiKey)... and some things were on par with online retailers (shipping might equal gas cost to get there to be honest)...

Now that I think about it... 90 miles... at 30 mpg... 3 gallons x $4.15 a gallon = $12.45 in gas to get there. I'm not quite sure that with my savings AND shipping costs it really was cheaper... but I did get to hand pick everything and I did get to have them that day...

At any rate, what did I pick up?

4 x (5x7) LED Matrix Displays 32 x RGB LEDs 32 x Green LEDs 5 x Micro SPST Switches 5 x Resistor Blocks (22k ohm) 5 x 10k trimpots Random male / female single row connectors

Advice; When you go to this store, have an idea of what you want to buy and a list... it has almost every part you could possibly imagine (except the MAX7219 LED drivers that I wanted)...

So I said I wanted to do a monome clone... where here's what a monome is and what it can do:

failure of the year from edison on Vimeo.

* Note: The case is just a random toy case... the meat are the interactive push button LEDs *

Apparently I'm having troubles enunciating... but a "Skinnamon Dolce Latte"...

Wow... I couldn't help but laugh at these two monkeys...

One of the things that you have to do when you're learning new material (in my case, electronics) is that you have to setup attainable goals and projects that give you some sort of pride and accomplishment, but doesn't go too far so that you fail easily and get frustrated...

You've seen some of my first projects come across the blog... but now I have to figure out another one.

Do I go for a monome 40h clone?

Or what about some sort of digital Arduino piano?

An LED cube?

Robots?

Hmmm any other ideas out there? I want something simple but functional... we're going for a physical computing theme here...

• Take an Arduino

• Take a Wii Nunchuck

• Take a WiiChuck Adapter

• Put it all together with some code

Tastey goodness...

So I found an old toy from my college years, the dm2 MixMaster... that my parents bought me because I couldn't afford real turntables... and I wanted to play with mixing music.

Well... after many years and a purchase of real turntables... I've decided to rip apart the dm2 and see what's inside. I have a feeling it'll just be a lot of neat buttons and LEDs (as the thing cost $99)... but we'll see what goes on.

Here's a short video:

Here's what I found:

• Several caps, resistors, and diodes...
• 16 Green LEDs
• 33 Soft Rubber push buttons (simple circuit switches) - Probably not reusable...
• Two IR Reciever / Sender packages with rotating wheel that interrupts the signal
• 2 TRI-STATEE Octal D-Type Transparent Latches and Edge-Triggered Flip-Flops
• Usb cable with female and male header for breakouts... nice!
• Low-Speed High I/O, 1.5-Mbps USB Controller
• A nice potentiometer driven joystick... No part number but it's a score for sure!