Loose ends again

So I'll be leaving for the Fablab in Norway again this monday. Just one more night shift (after the one I'm in now) and the plane takes off.
In Norway I'll continue on building a multitouch table using the FTIR (Frustrated Total Internal Reflection) technique as described here, help as much as I can during the Kokompy camp that is currently being held (about adding functionality and usability to the cad.py program that Neal Gershenfield wrote to control all the machines in the labs from one interface) and I want to try to make a longbow like this one with the shopbot (for the handle) and some kind of lamination process for the limbs.

But today I also bought a new sleeping bag (which supposedly keeps me warm even at minus 20) and a new travel backpack to go on a long trip in the mountains. It's time for some reading about the

.

and some quiet and calm moments up in the mountains.
As Laozi said:

Gravity is the source of lightness,
calm the master of haste.

New life and a new trip

Prototyping for an upcomming workshop in the fablab in Amsterdam, I made a small bristlebot... I nicked the idea from Matt Ratto from the Humlab (also their blog) for making small robots using unbalanced motors (vibration motors, like the ones used in vibrators and gamecontrollers), arduinos and toothbrushes. If you place the motors on the toothbrushes and let them vibrite, the robot sort of brushes over your table (surface needs to be flat though). It's really quite easy to make!
check out the video:



Cool eh?
Now the thing is to give it some sensors (i'm thinking just IR for distance, mounted on some servos) so it keeps from vibrating of the table.
not as far yet as these guys though:



And if you like that, don't forget to watch this:



Incredible machine is it not?

On a different note, today I booked a flight back (yes back) to the lab in Norway... Finally! I'll be leaving the 23th of june, and stay there till the 25th of august. After that it's back to school for one more year...

Sqweak!

My good friend Jarg bought a Casio digital horn today, for only 2.50 euro. In some secondhand shop he ran into the thing, and being a true music lover immediately recognized it's coolness...
the thing is not really esthetically pleasing, but casio, it's like the Who said: "You are forgiven"
The thing is way cool, cause it can output Midi. So you can hook a digital drum kit (or a eclectic collection of bird sounds) to the thing, and blow your very own drum kit from hell (or forest, for that matter).

Thing was, these casio horns apparently have a common sqweak problem... when some weird hardware problem occurs, the thing only wants to produce this high pitched irritating sound, trough which you are still able to discern some correct sounds, but makes you want to trow the thing out of the window sooner than later.

But a! aren't we living in the Fablab age? don't we fix thing's ourselves? Hell yeah!
A couple of days ago I tore apart an old Imac, an lo and behold, there was the 47 micro farad capacitor we needed to replace the weaker original component... so after only 3 minutes of soldering, we have an incredibly cool digital saxophone!

Moral of the story? Fix stuff yourself before consulting some 'specialist' who, in this case, charges 45 dollars for the fix. And you miss out on all the fun...

check out the ugly but way cool (working) gadget:

How would you like your egg? Scrambled, cooked, flying?

And yes, it is that time of the year again, time for the Fablab annual Easter egg competition!.
My colleague Ales Schaub is working hard to get his entry finished before the deadline tomorrow night at six. At that time we will all log on to the Polycom conference (the MIT lab is running a continuous online conference) for the judging. And I guess I will be one of the judges... Probably going to be a though job! I heard that they are working on a flying egg in Norway...
So make sure to check back in here for the entries and of course the winner, who will be awarded with a free trip to the Norwegian lab... How I miss that place...

Mom, our display died. Again.

In Norway, I met a really nice guy working on an ambient light display, which consisted of little round transparent patches containing oil and water. If one applies a (probably quite high) voltage to the patches, the oil will move to the side, thus letting light shine trough. If you line up an array of these things, and apply a current to specific ones, it's possible to display information. Kind of like E-ink is supposed to work i guess, but surely way cooler... you can build it yourself.
Then, last wednesday, I met this guy at the lab at Pakhuis de Zwijger, who is also trying to build an display, only he is using bacteria! Apparently, if you lower (or raise, not sure which) the PH value of certain bacteria, you can get the suckers to glow. So using these fluorescent bacteria, one can in theory create a display... how cool is that? You will have actual dead pixels!
I don't think our houses will be equipped with this technique for some time, because the stuff dies rather quickly, and is not really easy to handle. Real cool project though.
Check out his site: biodisplay

Also:

Great! Marvelous!
Somebody is using psychedelica and Star Trek...

Keep yourself busy

E-mails tell us that by now most of the boot camp participants returned safely back home. And home is, among other things, where the work is. I started working on our project at the HKU, which deals with designing a 'concept room' for the dutch tax services. Nice challenge there, cause those guys really fucked up on software the last couple of years, and are now trying to make up for that, which asks for quite the attitude change on account of the workers.
I'm also starting conversations about fab related projects here in Holland, so more on that to come.

Still miss Norway though...

On a different note, anybody seen this weird article? I was thinking that this big earth changing event was going to happen around 2013 or so... when the last of the Mayan calendars ends. Could be those guys where not so precise in retrospect... just a couple of years of. In Norway iI was really enjoying the darkness (no, not the rock band), so could be the earth rotates in such a way that Holland will also have 2 hours of light a day... wouldn't that be marvelous?

speaking of Mayans, I've just seen the movie 'The Fountain' by Darren Aronofsky (director of 'Pi' and 'Requiem for a dream') and I must say, great movie. Perhaps not for those among us who don't like fairy tales or to much interwoven story lines (or indeed Mayans), but for them who like dreaming, love, life and death and the occasional meditative moment... do watch it.