Song of the Month - November

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K68HFrZi-m0

I used my cellphone camera this time which seems to result in far superior sound quality to the laptop's microphone. Warning: Singing!

My First Successful (completed) Arduino Project

Since this Halloween we were putting on the Ghost Patrol: BANG and my house was being used as a bad treat dispensary, I wanted to make an exceptionally creepy Jack O'Lantern.  I got a white pumpkin, carved a ghastly grin in its skin with the look of it having been stitched shut, a la Saw or one of the newer ridiculous torture porn flicks. Then I actually stitched it shut with some twine and a big upholstery needle.  For the eyes, I carved cavities in the inside surface of the pumpkin large enough for LEDs.  I stole and modified an arduin sketch, dead bugged together a simple circuit without soldering anything (which led to the final product being a wee bit janky but...), found and modified a pulsing LED Arduino sketch and stuffed the whole works into my pumpkin.  One of those super janky flickering candle LEDs gave the mouth a traditional look while the eyes were red LEDs pulsing on and and off slowly beneath the skin.  It looked freaking awesome.  I wish one of the videos I took came out but the Droid's camera is mostly for show.

Rachel did the awesome Ghosti pumpkin and the melty face terror above. I did the terrified fellow who is rightfully terrified of the melty face terror.

I didn't save the Arduino sketch I used, apparently.  It was just the pulse sketch from the Arduino site library with an LED added and the parameters modified to make it pulse more slowly and creepily.  Cool.

Song of the Month - October

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpGbgx99-5Q

This is my first song of the month.  The song for October is Higher and Higher by Jackie Wilson.  You may remember it as the song that made the Statue of Liberty dance in Ghostbusters 2.  It sounds really buzzy because of the laptop mic but that's okay.  I didn't sing or play the whole song but you get the idea.  Enjoy (while you can, next month might have me singing hahaha!).

TV Show Idea - Tim Proffitt: Lady Stomper

All right, Fox, this one's a freebie.  You're welcome.

Tim Proffitt is political organizer with a bad back and an even badder attitude. Unwilling and unable to 'bend over and take it' from the man, lest he throw out his back, Tim Proffitt roams the political landscape looking for ladies to stomp and marginal candidates to support. No protester is too peaceful for this lady stomper. An A-Team of one fighting for anti-intellectualism in this mixed up modern world of facts, each episode Tim Proffitt will stomp ladies until some nebulous goal is achieved or not achieved. He doesn't want your government handouts but, well, since you're offering he'll go ahead and take 'em... with prejudice.  This isn't American History X, it's American History eXtreme lady stomping!  Coming soon to Thursdays on Fox!

Team Dynamic

Loxi (lowkey + Desert Taxi) have been working hard these last 4 or so months towards putting on Ghost Patrol: Bust A 'Nother Ghost (BANG 29).  It's mostly the same crew that worked on Ghost Patrol in 2007 and 2008 with some (accidental and highly regrettable) subtractions and some surprising new additions.  Due to being once again overrun with registrations, we opened the event up to people willing to simulcast.  We were very lucky that Alexandra Dixon offered up her wonderfully tenacious and optimistic services to the idea.  Along with Alexandra, Larry Hosken offered up a web app and also his ability to perform soul-deadening, laborious tasks for hours on end to our cause.  In addition, a rogue band of pirates are SNAPing it up in Seattle (Awesome, right?).

Working with new people means working with new personalities.  This usually makes me feel wary, not because I'm worried about their personalities but because I'm worried they will think us a band of raving madmen with little regard for political correctness or each other's feelings.

A little lowkey history - lowkey consists of Brian, David, Matt and Jenn (and, at times, various other friends and significant others).  I'm Matt.  David and Brian are brothers and I've known both of them for more than 20 years.  Brian and Jenn are married and dated for well over a decade prior to tying the knot.  To say we've all known each other for a while is an understatement.  We've all lived together in various combinations and all at once and we've shared extremely tight living conditions.  Our mutual friendships have endured some pretty major insults, hurt feelings, misunderstandings and totally correct understandings of hurtful things.  We've also shared a huge amount of truly excellent times and they are people I'd be happy to puzzle with through most of life.

Our history together allows us a certain loving roughness with each other's feelings.  We all tend to harbor strong opinions and visions and are not afraid to fight for them.  The folks from Desert Taxi seem to fit right into this dynamic and working with them has been awesome.  Greg, Jesse, Jen and Andrew are all awesome people to know and work with, puzzle along side of, and to curse with like especially filthy sailors.

A couple of recent incidents have showcased for me the odd dynamic we take as normal:
-The other night we were having a meeting and Alexandra was in attendance.  She noted at one point that the term "shit ton" was a new one to her.  As in, "We have a shit ton of production to do this weekend so it's all hands on deck."  She made a note of it and I watched throughout the meeting as she quietly made a star next to the note every time "shit ton" was used.  I think it was a shit ton of times.  Possibly a metric shit ton.  Profanity is our bread and butter.
-Another was hearing that one of our puzzle collaborators was offended by some criticism dished their way. What was offered as maybe a gruff suggestion was taken as insult.  This can relate back to my previous post on taking criticism and feedback in a GC setting but it still gives one pause to think they've been injurious to the feelings a friend, even if accidentally.

I was going to type here that I'd like someday to work with another GC to see what their dynamic would be like but, truthfully, organizing one of these things, no matter what the scale, sows a "never again" kind of sentiment in me for at least a few months.  Also, I'm not sure I'd be able to work well in a dynamic where I couldn't feel comfortable making a really raunchy and asinine joke. Or, more likely, a shit ton of 'em.

Puzzle Authoring and Editing In A Game Control Setting

I've had a few conversations recently that have prompted me to get some thoughts down regarding what it's like to be part of a GC, specifically when it comes to authoring puzzles for an event.  My only GC experiences, other than volunteering as site volunteer for others' events, have been with the loxi team.  Loxi is the combination of lowkey and Desert Taxi team members working together.

This unholy union was formed during the run up to Pirate's BATH where lowkey split into two teams (Sloth In A Pirate Hat and Donkey In A Pirate Hat), each responsible for a puzzle.  This was my first time creating a puzzle for an event and was also my first time receiving feedback on a puzzle and in making repeated edits from the suggestions of a GC for puzzle refinement.  That first time was very tough for me.  My team had made something, guided considerably by my ideas, and I loved it.  For someone to tell me it was OK but could be better was hard.  Being told this multiple times for the same puzzle was, as much as I knew it to be an irrational reaction, a blow to my ego.  The end result was a fun, well-received puzzle (which was part of an extremely fun event) and a wonderful group of new friends.

My girlfriend, Rachel, is just getting to experience this for the first time as well.  Rachel is helping us GC for Ghost Patrol: Bust A 'Nother Ghost (aka BANG 29) and has written a puzzle for the event.  As it typical and not at all unusual, she is proud of what she's created and loves having authorship over a puzzle that will appear in an event.  The experience, however, has led her to create what I (perhaps with bias) think is a pretty great metaphor.  It goes something like this: Imagine you are an artist commissioned to create a work of art; in this case, a painting.  Maybe you've been commissioned to paint a bucolic, pastoral scene or perhaps it's a rainy cityscape or a languid nude.  You carefully craft your work of art and present it to your buyer.  Your buyer looks at it and is clearly pleased but shows just a hint of that "this is what you got me for Christmas?" look before saying "It's great.  Really great.  I love it.  But, you know, wouldn't it be a lot better if it had a kitty cat painted down in this corner?"  Ouch.  It's not that they're wrong, necessarily, and they are the customer/buyer so what's the big deal if they want a kitty?  The big deal is that your vision, the artist's vision, did not include a kitty.

Far from my first experience with this was my experience GCing for Ghost Patrol in 2007-2008.  Lowkey (lowkey) had never GC'ed and we all had our own ideas of what the ideal event would include.  Members of Desert Taxi all came with GC experience and were quite good at generally pulling things into orbit with reality.  As we became more comfortable with what our event would look like and how we would go about achieving that vision, we began creating content.  That event had more than 60 puzzles, overall, and at least a dozen more were discarded along the way for varied reasons, generally related to theme and whether or not a ghost would do something, you know, in real life.  Very quickly we all had to get over ourselves and the purity of our individual artistic vision for the benefit of the collaborative vision.  Few of the puzzles I wrote ended up looking anything like their first iteration and those that did were not well received.

Which brings me to a hard truth (for me, ymmv): Puzzles created through collaboration and/or which receive multiple drafts of refinement through editing suggestions from the GC as well as informed by playtests are generally superior puzzles.  Puzzles worked and reworked in a vacuum by an individual can end up over-thought and overwrought and, in my case at least once during Ghost Patrol, broken.

My attitudes toward puzzle authoring have changed greatly from that first Piratey puzzle.  I know I'm not great at authoring puzzles.  That's a limitation I can accept.  Now when I write a puzzle, I tend to write the roughest of idea drafts.  I want, first, to see if an idea will be well-received.  I want and need for my teammates to tear my ideas down to the foundation so that we can start to build something we'll all be proud to present.  This, I would venture to say, is not the attitude of all of my teammates.  Many of them are extremely skilled and creative puzzle creators, fully capable of fleshing out wonderful puzzles requiring minimal editing or tweaking.  That just isn't my forte.  I find that puzzle writing, as well as every other GC responsibility, benefits from the input of the group.

Input, feedback, criticism, these things can be hard to hear and even harder to act on.  Ghost Patrol was year's worth of very hard work and re-work and re-re-work.  Part of what made the experience so exhausting and sometimes so slow was the contentiousness of fighting for ideas, themes, content.  It is hard work to find consensus and hard work to let go of one's ego towards that goal.  It was totally worth it.  It's funny that one of our first puzzles was one related to "Team Dynamics" as our dynamic was one that allowed for some seemingly full-tilt arguing where some ideas won, some ideas lost and we all moved forward as friends.  (This dynamic, I think, can seem strange to outsiders and is one that will merit its own blog post soon.)  In the end, though, we were all able to put out a product that we could all stand behind and be proud to call our own, even with it's mistakes and missteps.

Summation: Puzzles are generally made better through feedback and re-write.  I may not want a kitty next to my languid nude but everyone else does.

POSE/Barefoot/Minimalist Running Update

So I posted that I was trying out this style of running.  Why didn't I post anymore about it?  Because over the 4th of July I totally overdid it and severely sprained my left foot while running barefoot on Cannon Beach.  I'm getting back into running now after a long break and am still trying out the minimalist runstyle with a pair of Nike Free Runs.  They are the most comfortable shoes I have ever worn but I think I am going to use short, POSE-style runs for a kind of cross-training.  I am getting the benefit of feeling how and where my foot strikes but I think I prefer my regular shoes and regular style over long distances.  We'll see.  Still, those Nikes are the worlds most comfortable shoe, if not the most attractive.

I've let this blog languish too long...

I haven't worked on the box project in forever.  That's going to have to become, once again - for the second year, my winter project.  However, I don't want to let this blog die off.  It has lots of potential.  So let me tell you what content is to come:

There will be updates about what it was like to plan and perform the upcoming Ghost Patrol - Bust A 'Nother Ghost event.  The first of these I posted this morning.  I'll have to wait until the event has taken place to share details, however.

There will be videos of me playing the ukulele.  Okay, maybe that's not something you want to see or hear but I need to keep motivated so I'll keep practicing and I was thinking on my birthday that I should record myself doing a song a week.  That's a pretty heavy schedule so I will instead do a song a month.  The song for October will be a stylistic rendition of Jackie Wilson's "Higher and Higher".  Oh yes, this is going to be so rockin' the statue of liberty will shake her thing all over NYC.

There will be, finally, commercials and television reviews, complaints, criticisms, observations and angry howling rants.  :)

Stay tuned.

Game Control Lesson Learned / New Rule

If a copy or multiple copies of a puzzle is/are found to be defective during Production, they should be quarantined and discarded, not "fixed".


*Last night during our GP BANG - GC Meeting, I thought I should write down some lessons learned while GCing.  This first one may seem like overkill but if you have 90 copies of a Production heavy puzzle and one or two might be broken, well then it just seems sensible.

POSE(r)

 (This post was an email to my sister who has been POSE running as well as minimalist running - little in the way of shoes or none at all - and encouraged me to try it out.  I figured it made a pretty good blog post too so I copied most of it here.)

Rachel and I hit the fire trail this weekend.  We haven't been running and she's new to running anyway so usually when we run together I focus on form and strength rather than speed or distance.  I forgot to bring my Vffs out of force of habit.  I've been dying to try running in them but decided I could run the POSE way in my sneakers.  I did and it was awesome.  No kidding.  I have a tendency, in my daily life, to do things on the balls of my feet and by 'springing'.  I do it when I'm standing still, when I'm going up and down stairs.  I like walking around my house on my tiptoes or the balls of my feet.  I'm a weirdo.  But, I think that's given me a decent foundation for POSE because not only did I not get that tired, I seemed to be able to go faster for longer periods of time.  I mostly stuck with Rachel, but at the end she was burnt so I took off up the trail to the parking lot and then circled back for her.  It's funny, a woman had just gone by us and she was POSE running (it's easy to spot once you know what it looks like) and she was FAST.  Just zooming up the trail.  So I tried going fast and it was easy, not only was it easy but it kind of forced that instinct out of me to run like I was barefoot on grass.  I tried switching back to my regular run style but the muscles were engaged differently and it felt really crazy and clunky and slow and difficult, I'm sure because the proper muscles weren't warmed up.  Anyway, I think I'm hooked, if not on VFFs then on POSE style.  I think with some practice I can go faster with less pain than I can with a midfoot or heel strike.

Speaking of pain, I had very little after my run, if any.  My right knee was a little chuffed at having accidentally been over-extended at one point but other than that, nothing.  Totally cool.  However, the next day was excruciating.  It was as though I had never run before as every muscle in my lower leg seemed to scream out with every flex.  I'd been warned to not push it my first time out but I had not listened.  I used the stick for a while and was able to ride my bike around town but was still super sore.  Today is just as bad.  I decided to not even swim today just so I can sit here and not use my legs for anything.  I over did it.  I felt too good and didn't think how much I was tearing up the muscles in this new application.  I can't wait to get back out there and to do it some more.

Things that surprised me:

• How non-painful it is to land on the ball of the foot.  I thought this would be excruciating after a while and would bruise the ball of my foot.  Sure, I was wearing shoes but the shoes I favor are very... unfriendly in their padding. 
  
• How easy it is to control speed without upping my heart rate significantly.  I thought I'd be huffing and puffing a few hundred yards in but felt comfortable and speedy and light... until my calves started to tire and then I could feel my heel occasionally coming down and contacting the trail like I was extra heavy or something.
• How unnecessary it made my shoes.  Now, I'm not saying I'm about to go barefoot or even VFF for running.  I'm just saying that without a forefoot or heal strike, the extra technology in my shoe seemed superfluous.  I wasn't using any of it because I was catching and releasing my body weight just from the ball of my foot. 

I need to get better at falling forward and pulling my foot up from the ground rather than trying to catch with it.  I'm hooked, though, and convinced I can go fast like this.  It's renewing my interest in running and that's a good thing.  I think I want to get into and stick with trail running (exception made for H2C) and want to start trying the VFFs when I run.  The pounding of the pavement, I'm afraid, loses a lot of its allure as I grow older and don't recover as quickly as I once did.  It's amazing to be able to feel the differences in my physical abilities almost yearly since I've turned thirty.  But that's for another post.

Tar and Feather Gun

Going through my sketchbooks, I found plans for something truly dastardly (and potentially hilarious)!

Puzzle Ideas

I keep a couple of sketchbooks for my illustrations, poems, songs and puzzle ideas. This works well for everything except puzzle ideas. Puzzle ideas in my sketchbooks are rarely revisited. So I've decided to start archiving them here so I can easily access them later. Yes, I'm aware that this means others can access them. That's fine. If you see a puzzle idea here (or any idea here) and want to use it, feel free. This is an open source blog. :)

Okay, here's a good example. Apparently I had a puzzle idea last June that was so awesome I had to jot it down. Nearly a year later I have no idea what I was trying to communicate. If you can make any sense of this, please write this awesome puzzle!

At least with this one, despite having no supporting text to describe puzzle mechanics, I know what I was trying to get across. This would be an installation puzzle that would look like a campfire. It would use the popular illusion of fire created with strips of silk fabric, blown by a fan, lit be colored lamps. In this case, the campfire is haunted so the strips would have hobo symbols on them or something. I think the idea here is interaction. You could have sensors that trigger the lights and the fans. People would need to 'solve' how to activate the fire before 'solving' the fire itself. It's kind of a neat idea but I doubt I'll ever use it.

However, this idea for a puzzle mechanic is really cool and I really like it. I was watching a show on the Discovery Channel called "Weird or What?" and they were talking about the Voynich Manuscript and how easy it would be to create as a hoax by using a system that creates semi-random words and letter orderings. To achieve it you would draw your symbols/syllables out on a large grid and then move a "grill" with randomly cut holes in it to create words. Leaving blanks on the grid creates words of different lengths and adds spaces. The puzzle idea would be sort of the opposite. You'd first solve a puzzle on where to cut the holes in your grill. That initial puzzle could be built into the larger grid. Then you'd position your grill over the grid to pick out solve coding. Coding could be in letter or images or a mix. How about this: Teams get the grill and a large grid, the grill has letters and images on it that match a location on the grid, when placed on that location on the grid, the surrounding letters and images on the grid would tell the teams where to cut the holes in their grill, they'd then have to figure out how to navigate the grid with the grill for the rest of the solve. As I mentioned in the drawing, there is a lot of opportunity for solve layering with this mechanic.

So, yeah, I'm not good at writing the puzzle part of the puzzle but I think I have some pretty good ideas for puzzle mechanics that puzzlier people than myself could really run with.

My Triumphs, My Mistakes

Time to face facts. Well, really facts were faced days or weeks ago but for the sake of this blogpost, let's pretend like I'm facing facts today. Last weekend I finally broke down and told my friend, for whom I'm making the 5x5 box, that I was making it, failing at making it and that he wouldn't be getting it for his wedding. That took some weight off of me, especially because now I can share this blog and talk to other people about this no longer secret project.

Last weekend I made a big push. I went looking for supplies and I made do with what I could find. I salvaged some wire from old Ghost Patrol projects, which wasn't ideal to begin with, and I soldered that to the LCD I had to the pins I thought I'd need. I went down to The Shack and looked for header pins but they didn't even know what I was talking about. I also looked for some 5.7 ohm resistors so I could run the LCD backlight. I didn't know enough about resistors to find what I was looking for and neither did the sales people there. You know, it rarely occurs to me to use my phone to Google useful information in the moment. Anyway, the only thing I did find that I needed was a 10k potentiometer. Then I headed to the art supply store to look for an acceptable box or box substitute. I figured that I could at least find something acceptable to prototype on. I ended up buying a wooden box frame that people apparently use to paint. We used them to make the Ouija boards for Ghost Patrol and they worked great.

Here's what happened: I did some awful, awful soldering on the LCD. I used a super crappy Dremel rip off to try to drill and cut appropriate size holes in my wood box. It didn't work. I made one hole too close to the edge. I wrecked tons of bits on that awful machine and finally pretty much wrecked the machine itself. Wrong tool for the job. No doubt. I couldn't get the LCD to work at all. Not at all.

Here's what I learned: First, I remembered that power tools can be rented from the Berkeley Public Library. I could be using the right tools for the job. I also realized that if I wanted to really make this work, I had to go about it properly from the very beginning.

I went on SparkFun and ordered two new LCDs (I plan to make more boxes so...) and some header pins. I soldered the header pins to the LCDs. I also ordered some small breadboards but they only have 17 pins and the LCDs have 16 so I'll have to use them for something else as I'd really like to have the LCD, the potentiometer and the Polulu all on the same breadboard. Today I had my first modicum of success. I mounted one of my pinned up LCDs to the breadboard, used the tutorial I posted previously and voila, text!

I'm totally stoked just to have this minor success. I've ordered a beautiful wood box from a seller on Etsy and it should be here on Tuesday. I've devised, in my mind, an awesome self-latching system that requires no electrical bits to operate and can be opened just by sliding a credit card between the lid and the box. If I can make that work, that'll be super cool.

So I'm definitely going to keep working on this project until it reaches fruition. I had just about given up but now I have confidence I can eventually accomplish this and move on to another cool puzzle/project box idea.

You're Gonna Need This...

http://sites.google.com/site/mechatronicsguy/arduinocheatsheet

Okay, it's been a long time since I've updated this blog. The reason? Almost nothing interesting has happened in the world of me making things. I recently took up the Ukulele and that has been filling all of my creative outlet hours. But the problem is that I've made very little progress on the 5x5 Box. I tried to get the LCD display going a few weekends ago, to no avail. I am buying a proper box this week and hope to cut/drill all the hole I'll need in it on Saturday. Sunday will be a day filled with curses. Sunday I will try to get the box in as near of working order as possible. In order to do this, I am having to open myself up to the idea of de-scoping and re-scoping some of my ideas.

For instance:

• If I can't get the LCD to display properly, I may need to consider finding a way to use turning LEDs on and off the provide feedback.
• If I can't get the Arduino sketch I've worked on to create random sets, I may need to just program a set.
• If I can't get the Polulu to work, I may need to just put in an On/Off switch.
• If I can't get the servo idea to work, I may need to just find a way to tell the user how to open a combination lock or something, to retrieve their prize.
• If I can't get my sketch to work the way I want it to, I may need to create a puzzle to overlay on or include with the box. (That, actually, is a really good idea for a future puzzle box. It could have an overlay with an input on it. The input would tell the Arduino what sketch to run. Different overlays could run different sketches? I'll have to think on this more.)

So there are lots of options I'm willing to explore to deliver something that at least looks cool. I know that I won't be so willing to let go, though. If this doesn't work out exactly as I'd like, I could easily see a Mark 2 model coming in the future.

Make = Awesome!

Serendipitously, Make just posted an article on how to make LCDs work! Kickass!

Wiring Up A Character LCD to an Arduino

5x5 Parts List

All of the parts I need to make this project happen have been delivered! I'll start posting pics of the build as soon as it begins but, for now, he's a list of the parts:

Arduino Duemilanove
This is the "brain" of the box and runs the software sketch I'm designing (more on that later) and is really what makes this project possible.

Basic 16x2 Character LCD - White on Black - 5V
LCD display for feedback messages.

Momentary Push Buttons (6)
Buttons for game initialization and input.

Push Button Power Switch
This ingenious little device allows for the Arduino to be powered on by a momentary push button and then to power itself off once it reaches that point in the sketch.

Small Servo
This will conrol the arm that will dispense the gift card.

Battery Pack
Power!

Breadboard
I'm pretty lazy so I'll probably prototype on the breadboard and then, once everything works, I'll just use a mountain of hot glue to make it 'permanent'.

So that's it. I feel like I'm leaving something out; like this list of parts is too simple to actually perform the task that will be asked of it. The component I am most worried about is the LCD. I'm not using the same LCD as the Frustromantic so I can't just copy his diagram. I'm actually going to have to make sense of the documentation. Although, it just occurred to me that I can look at the documentation for the LCD that the Frustromantic uses and then map that to the documentation for the LCD I purchased. Another note, I'm super happy that the metal buttons came from Hong Kong and weren't stolen off of my porch. They are gorgeous and perfect for this project. I also ordered these push buttons in a variety of colors and they are great too. They have a wonderful arcade feel to them. They'll be awesome for a future puzzle box project but the metal buttons are really the sophisticated and sleek vision I had for this box.

Tablet Computing and the Paperless Office

The new generation of tablet computers seem to be solely marketed towards individual consumers for personal computing tasks and this, to me, seems like a massive missed opportunity for where these sorts of devices could really hold some true value.

I work in Software Design for a company that uses a proprietary build of an off-the-shelf product where the UI is browser-based. All of our documentation is kept either on SharePoint style document sharing sites or are stored on personal network drives to make them accessible from home. Yet, the amount of paper we use in our office is overwhelming.

We are always hearing about the cost of that paper, too. And the cost of the ink for the printers. And the cost for the recycling and destruction of confidential printed docs. And the space needed to store printed documentation for the required 7 years by SOX rules. So why do we do it? We have to. Some times and with some things we just need to have printed documents. Until we began storing test bills on PDF, it was necessary to construct and store huge binders of printed bills for every round of testing. That sucks.

Okay, cool. So now everyone from Apple to Acer are marketing touchscreen web tablets. They desperately want to convince people of their need for these things (partly because people demanded them but...) but can't seem to come up with a good argument besides "you can surf the internets". Okay, so they can do more than that and the marketing is better than that but, come on, e-reader? Emailer? Web surfer? Sounds like a laptop that isn't as useful.

I guess what I'm getting at is that, for most of us, a laptop or desktop at home is too powerful but a tablet is too weak. But in the workplace, our computers don't need to be powerful, our networks do. Picture this, your desktop machine at work is a tablet on a dock. It powers on almost instantly (compared to the 20+ not exaggerating minutes it takes for my bottom-of-the-line Dell desktop to power up), is plenty powerful enough to run browser-based apps, can run an office suite (as has been proven by the iPad coming with iWork but oddly not iHome), and maybe most importantly, is portable. Once your tablet is powered on you could grab it right off the dock and take it to a meeting. In the meeting and need to share a doc? Email it right to their tablets or plug your tablet into the projector or just tell everyone where it is on the SharePoint. Make live updates to the doc based on the meeting discussion. Take your tablet to a colleagues desk for a discussion and use it to take notes. Take it outside and spend time coding in the park on a sunny day.

Could a large corporation, like the one I work for, really implement this kind of system? Probably not. I doubt the idea would make it past IT security and even though it would surely be less expensive than replacing 20,000+ Dell desktops and laptops, I doubt the company would go for that either. But a small start-up could really run with the idea and, if implemented from the beginning, could set a new standard in not only the paperless workplace but in work/life flexibility.

Life Has A Funny Way Of Making Me Look Like A Chump

So, following my little parts rant yesterday regarding how long it takes for parts to be delivered from Hong Kong, I went to the SparkFun website to order another USB cable so I could at least program my Arduino. While I was there I decided to order a Polulu switch (a device the will allow my box to power itself down between uses) and the servo needed to dispense the gift card through the front of the box.

While there I decided that I might as well accept the fact that the parts I'd ordered from SeeedStudio Depot might never arrive and it might behoove me to go ahead and order more buttons as well. Sure, they wouldn't be the shiny silver buttons I'd originally wanted but they'd be buttons. SparkFun had an assortment of colored plastic buttons of the same size and shape I'd wanted. They had six colors and I ordered one of each color, thinking that the red button would turn the box on and the other buttons would be multi-colored and fun looking. Unfortunately, they'd also make Jenn and Brian think a color puzzle of some kind was involved. Hmmm... not ideal but whatever.

Anyway, I ordered all of these parts which did assuage some of the panic of a project missing its deadline, even though I hadn't set any benchmarks or deadlines. This morning, upon returning from brunch with Rachel and her cousin, Elena, I found a little box on my porch... from Hong Kong! Yay! On one hand, I feel like a chump for ordering those extra buttons yesterday. On the other hand, I'm super stoked to have the shiny buttons I'd imagined for the project. It's also great that I've now ordered all of the main components of the project and can begin prototyping on a breadboard. I'll also be able to use the colored buttons for another project (maybe some kind of Mastermind box!) and can even use the red botton as the power button for this project, if I choose. I don't think I will, though. I want this box to look super sophisticated and a plastic red button doesn't speak to that ideal.

I'm totally stoked and can't wait to get started on the hard work of this project!

Hong Kong = Far Away

I've been really wanting to post a parts list and a build beginning on this blog. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that some of the parts I ordered were coming from Hong Kong. They aren't here yet. There is also the distinct possibility that they were delivered and promptly stolen off of my porch. This has happened a couple of times recently and is kind of maddening. I mean, I don't know if the parts were not shipped or lost in transit or if they're just down at the Ashby Flea Market on some crackhead's table. Still, I don't want to order new parts if I can have the parts I ordered. The worst part is, one of the parts was the cable I need to program the Arduino. Stupid. It costs $2.50 but I think I ordered it from HK to save a couple of nickels. I have buttons in my parts bin but not fancy shiny silvery buttons of wonder. I guess as long as I had that cable I could start to prototype. Off to the internets to order another cable!

Soft Hardware - LilyPad Arduino

When I was initially becoming interested in creating with Arduino, one of the main obstacles for my mind to get motivated was being able to convince myself that I could overcome a complete lack of technical knowledge in regards to circuits and electronics. I was fairly sure I could write some cool code but wasn't sure I'd know what wire to solder to which contact and how to run power through the whole shebang. It turned out that Arduino makes that part as easy as possible too, and isn't nearly as daunting as it seems at first glance.

Reading up on Arduino, I repeatedly came across references to LilyPad Arduino and soft circuitry. I'd tried a soft circuitry project before but I gave up pretty quickly, more due to a lack of continued interest than anything else.

This was my first project:
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=34063023

I'd made LED throwies for a number of purposes from lighting up my bicycle to lighting up jack-o-lanterns. Making a simple bracelet seemed like a nice next step and it was, sort of. And it would have worked, in theory, if I'd finished it, which I didn't.

What appeals to me about LilyPad, other than the wear-ability of the projects was the modular design of the components. Sure, you could wire all kinds of sensors and outputs to the adorable LilyPad but you could also just stick to the sensors and outputs designed to go with the board (It's not really a board, per se. It's a felt pad.).

My mind thrills at the potential for projects using these items. Just check out all of the LilyPad stuff available from SparkFun:
LilyPad Arduino on SparkFun

Also check out these links:
LilyPad specs (pretty much the same as Duemilanove or other Arduinos)

Leah Buechley is the creator of LilyPad and just watching a video of one of her projects totally lit a fire under my brain:
Turn Signal Bike Jacket

As someone who really loves riding his bike but is definitely concerned that a human operating a large machine might accidentally (or intentionally!) harm me, this project appealed to me. But one thought led to another and in no time I was envisioning everything from Iron Man Halloween costumes to totally creepily interactive plush dolls. How cool would it be to gut a teddy bear from the store and turn it into a vocalizing, flashing red-eyed, buzzing and shaking, twitter-activated monstrosity? Answer: Very Cool.

Troubleshooting, Problem Solving, Thinking Out Loud

I've been a little disappointed in myself. I'd intended this blog to be a lot more active than it has been so far. I was thinking to myself, "I just haven't had any ideas or thoughts or updates worth posting," which isn't entirely true.

I've been devoting as much brainpower as I can muster to working on the Arduino coding for the 5x5 box. I think I've worked out ways around most of my problems, which are numerous:

• One problem I've been trying to work out is how to get the system to assign a random number value from 1-5 to each of the buttons as an indicator of a correct press. That is to say, how do I tell the system that I want it to track the order the buttons are pressed and that I want it to determine if that order is correct and that I want that order to be different each time the game is played. I think I've worked my way around this problem. I can't decide if posting a block of Arduino code here is at all interesting to anyone, especially pulled from the larger block of code, thereby losing some context. Basically, what I decided to do was to have the code generate a random number from 1-5 for each variable that I am referring to as "random1-5". Then I've told the code to check that each "random" variable was unique to itself, not having a matching number assigned to another "random". If at least two of the "random"s match, I've told the system to try again. This could work really well or it could have the little microprocessor generating random numbers until it becomes self-aware and really pissed off at my messy coding. I think that what I really need to do is to have it generate a random value for the first "random", generate a random value for the second "random", compare the two and, if they match, have the system try again before moving on. That way it is not asked to generate a whole set of random values that don't match each other by sheer dumb luck.
• Another problem I'm having is being completely unable to test any of my code on my actual Arduino or any kind of a breadboard rigged prototype. I hate waiting for parts in the mail. Honestly, I have just about all of the parts I need to rig this all up (not the parts I'd want to use in the final product but they'll work) except the USB cable I need to upload the Arduino code to the Arduino board. Frustrating. Note to future self: Seeedstudio is in China. Ordering parts from China takes a long time. I'm itching to post a parts list but I haven't even ordered all of the parts! I'd better get moving on that.

Really, not having the USB cable is my main problem because it keeps me from identifying defects in the system, be they soft or hardware related. I won't know until I tinker and I can't tinker effectively until I get that cable. With my luck lately, it will be delivered and left on my porch and immediately stolen by neighborhood kids (or adults or a kleptomaniac squirrel or a tiny black hole or something). I bet it's something I can by from the Radio Shack down the street and all my waiting for a $2.50 cable is probably not worth my time.

An Homage to the Frustromantic - The 5x5 Box

I got into doing some very minor electronic tinkering, mostly involving bristlebots and LED throwies, right around the time team lowkey and Desert Taxi were working together to put on the Ghost Patrol game. I wished I had started a lot earlier since a lot of great ideas for GP went either unrealized or were less than fully fulfilled simply because I didn't have the skills to make them happen. Like many tinkerers, I became fascinated with projects based on the Arduino kits and IDE (integrated development environment). Basically, it's a simple microprocessor on an easy to use circuit board with an IDE based on c/c++ but way easier to write. I'd purchased an Arduino with the idea that the purchase would motivate me to learn to use it and to start a project. It didn't. I'm starting to see a pattern in myself. An object at rest...

I was nudged past my project inertia by a few really cool and creative projects that came across my news feed. The first, the Most Useless Machine, got me thinking about boxes whose purpose is initially unknown but which tempt the user into an interaction.

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/01/leave_me_alone_box.html

The second points of inspiration were two projects, one I'd heard about some months back and another recently, that recreated that project. These were locked boxes that would only open at a specific set of GPS coordinates. Both of these projects used Arduino and a few fairly easy to find parts to create a truly compelling interaction with the user.

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/10/gps-enabled_puzzle_box_opens_only_a.html
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/01/the_frustromantic_box_a_reverse_geo.html

Using these devices would force the user to triangulate a location on a map. Even if the user doesn't have experience with this kind of activity, the logic involved is not complicated and the user is compelled to work on the problem for the purpose of getting the box to do or give them something. What's in the box is almost secondary to the box itself which serves as a kind of interactive, fancy gift wrap but also as a gift itself. The experience of opening the gift is a gift.

I'd intended to simply copy the Frustromatic Box using the Arduino I already owned. Sitting on the couch one night, thinking about creating a cool wedding gift for my friends, Brian and Jenn (who I hope aren't reading this blog)(I'd wanted to recreate The Most Useless Machine for my friend, David's birthday but just didn't have the time and technical skills), an idea occurred to me. What if I could create a box that required the user to solve a deceptively simple puzzle to open the box and get the gift out? I'm pretty bad at coming up with puzzles, as anyone who worked with me on GP will attest, but this one occurred to me in a real ah-ha moment; the box would have six buttons and an LCD screen on top of it. One button would be separate from the rest and would serve as the on/initialize button. Five buttons in a row would serve as the puzzle input. All the user would have to do would be to turn the box on and then press the five buttons in a pre-determined order within a small number of attempts and with the puzzle resetting the order if the attempts failed. The interface would be easily deduced by the user and would be frustrating as well as frustratingly simple.

I drew this "technical" diagram to begin:

I surprised myself a little with how excited I was (and am!) about this project and I dove right in, trying to teach myself to program in the Arduino IDE by reading online documentation at the Arduino website and reading others' sketches from their projects. This taught me one important thing, I was in over my head. I had never programmed in any language before, not really (I'd goofed around with html and had done some stuff in basic on my C64 as a kid), and didn't understand a lot of the basics. So I ordered the Getting Started With Arduino book from the Maker Shed and most of the parts I imagined I would need.

I already had the Arduino but had failed to order the USB cable to actually upload sketches to it. I ordered the cable, the buttons and the LCD. I figured I could pick up a servo at any hobby shop when I needed it. I didn't get the LED lit buttons because they were considerably more expensive and I thought that the unlit buttons, providing less feedback, might be more mysterious.

So far, the only thing that's come in the mail is the book and yesterday I read it pretty much cover to cover twice and started to really work on my Arduino sketch.

I also know next to nothing about woodworking but I want this box to look really polished and beautiful, something you'd keep on your coffee table as a fun game even after it had been opened, something that would be a cool conversation piece. My younger brother, Dan, is a natural born, as well as highly educated and trained, engineer and I kind of just assumed he'd have these tools and this know how. Normally I'd got to Brian and Jenn for this kind of help but since this was to be their wedding gift, that wouldn't work. I'd mentioned some of my ideas to Dan a week earlier and when I emailed him for help he practically jumped at the opportunity to delve into the project with me, offering up his tools, his expertise, his time, and a copy of AutoCAD. Engineers love AutoCAD. Dan works for AutoDesk and has offered me AutoCAD to play around with before but I'd never had any need. Even now it seems silly to model a box in such a powerful program but I figure this is an opportunity to teach myself AutoCAD as well. Sure, this project may not be that complex but if its successful I could easily see myself wanting to tackle much more complex future projects.

As I work on this project, I will post more descriptions of what I'm doing, how I'm succeeding and failing and my open-source plans, schematics and Arduino sketches. I'm calling this project the 5x5 Box for a couple of reasons. One, the user will have 5 attempts to press the 5 buttons in the correct order before the device resets. Two, "five by five" in radio communications lingo means "I understand you perfectly" and that seems kind of fitting for an interactive little box that is easy to understand but (hopefully) hard to open.

Inaugural Blogural

I stubbed out this blog a while ago and then never used it. I'd intended it to be a sort of television commercial as well as television show review blog. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), after a long day of work I just didn't have the motivation to sit down and actually type out my rants. Rants on how some commercials not only fail to entice me to buy the advertised product but sometimes make me want to stop watching the show the the commercial is attached to, just to get away from the idiocy-induced nausea (I'm looking at you, Old Spice commercial where the dude forces a piece of paper into a woman's mouth with his tongue) went unwritten.

Recently, though, as I've wanted to better document projects I'm working on and have wanted a webspace to serve as a bit of a thought repository, the idea of having a blog has again become appealing. Rather than start a new blog, which would require thinking up a new blog title which could take untold amounts of time, thought, effort; I've decided to just use this blog for whatever I feel like, possibly even commercial commentary.

Let's do this!