Pumpkins!

I greatly enjoy Halloween. I miss the massive box of decoration supplies we had at my parent's house and the time spent by my sisters and I going through it every year. To embrace the season, several friends packed into our tiny kitchen and participated in ritualistic seasonal gourd mutilation.

Turns out there's a really cute pumpkin patch spot in the city over on the other side of Twin Peaks that Adam found. A bit pricey, but they have a lovely selection and seeing all the kids running around was fun. Clancy's if anyone's interested. Next year I'm getting a novelty pumpkin (the sort of corpse blue/pink splotched ones)

My pumpkins is the Aperture Science logo one. Adam did the traditional pumpkin face, Katie did the creepy eye, Vince did the triforce, and Suko carved a bird & tree on the surface of a little one (though sadly it's not quite thin enough to see at night). (not pictured is the fantastic Owl Gripping Mouse one done by the Adam & Clair team, which was taken home)

Turns out good prep work makes things a lot easier. I should put sheets of paper down more often! I am saddened by the fact that the little dinky pumpkin knives you get in the kits actually cut better then my collection of steak knives.

p.s.- apparently there are such things as grease ants

Keyboard Hoodie Project part 1

So, I'm kinda' excited. I have a new project in the works and I'm already making good progress. Next month is NaNoWriMo, which every year I aspire to participate in and every year but one I've fallen flat on my face. What happened that one year? Well, I had a lovely commute every day on the light rail which was an enforced 30 min of writing (by hand). I find my thinking is clearest when I'm not just sitting on my computer at home-- when I'm not sitting at all in fact. That's why I've been inspired to do a keyboard hoodie. I've tried voice dictation stuff, and typing on a phone, but in the end my fingers on keys are like magic. Speed of thought, yo!

The basic idea is there's a hoodie I can shrug on (zipper down the middle), plug my phone into a sort of pocket on the right forearm, tuck my hands into the hoodie pockets, and BAM! I'm typing.

Years ago I picked up a cheap USB keyboard with the cute idea of removing the key covers and replacing them with some embroidered buttons... HORRIBLE idea in retrospect- high-use keyboards get super dirty around me. I can just imagine now how gross the smudged and worn embroidered D and J buttons would look. Ugh. BUT! The important thing is that I kept the keyboard. This Sunday I settled down with it and popped out each and every key. I tore it apart until I had access to the traces sheet, which I scanned and backwards engineered. Photoshop Flood Bucket FTW. (I had to set the tolerance to 20px to prevent leaking between the traces)

I'm only trying to grab the bare minumum of keys so numbers and functions and whatnot are out. Shift, enter, delete, space, and some punctuation [,.?"] are what I'm aiming for. Mapping it out on a sheet of paper I then plugged the bare board into the computer (about half the size of a cell phone at the end of a long usb cable) and then proceeded to short pairs of pins to ground. Thanks to this keyboard tester site, I found that my sample set of mappings proved to be correct! Go me! It's exhilarating to short some exposed pins with bits of wire and see "z" and "n" show up on screen as expected.

My initial joy was temporarily dampened by the prospect of breaking out the lines for the 27 pin connector.... Turns out that really thin connector style isn't called a "ribbon cable" but instead a "flat flex" connector, and hacking on the cable itself was a no go- too delecit and tiny. However! I found that soldering little lines to where the connector met the board turned out to be super easy. Yay for not having to lay down new solder myself.

I spent a lot of today thinking about how to make the buttons... Wikipedia helped me name my problem-- I wanted a switch that would let me ground 2 lines at the same time and it turns out what I wanted was a DPST (double pole, single throw) switch. But not just any switch, a really tiny push button switch... for which initial Googling did not yield any results. So I eventually abandoned the idea of buying something and turned my thoughts to constructing one myself.

I'm very excited with my initial solution. I'm going to be making ~40 buttons so something simple and cheap is nice, which this is. The idea comes from the original keyboard which has 2 sheets of plastic separated by a 3rd sheet. The button you press forces them to contact each other and a grounded metal plate in the back. My version is a segment of foam with a hole-punched circle taken out of the middle. I then run 3 lines of conductive thread through the foam at different levels such that they all cross. When I press with my finger, the lines touch and everything lights up.

Interestingly if I place a popped key atop it and press, the lines do no cross-- much like a real keyboard button the slightly convex shape of my finger is required to actually force contact (the keyboard has a nubben) . A flat surface bearing down on them is not enough (assuming the correct amount of tension remains on the conductive thread)

My next step is to acquire a hoodie and begin placing pieces. I've got new finer soldering irons tips in the mail, as well as a USB OTG adapter which will let the "keyboard" talk to the phone- a horribly vital piece that I pray just... works. I've also got to construct a set of buttons and ensure I can actually wire them up next to each other at close enough proximity... Praise be to my random purchasing habits! Having a hardly used spool of conductive thread on hand is super helpful!

Here's hoping I can get it done before Nov 1st...

Season of Dreams...

Not sure why, but every night this week I've had vivid, odd dreams. This, after several months of nothing particularly striking.... I blame the changing temperature.

The second dream:

My co-workers and I were super heroes, themed after different sandwiches. Someone was a ham sandwich hero, I think I was egg salad or peanut butter & jelly. I wake up. I tell one of my coworkers about this dream. I wake up.

After telling the same worker about the dream and the dream within the dream, I did not (sadly?) find out I was still dreaming. I'm happy that this dream did not leave me sad/scared/worried.

The first dream:

I'm somewhere near a river, in which I find a goat being slowly washed down stream. I retrieve the goat and decide to keep it as a pet. Time passes and I go somewhere else. I realize I forgot my goat and call my aunt Laurie to see if I left it at her place. Sadly, she doesn't know where it is. I am sad to have lost my pet goat, but on the other hand kind of relieved... Apparently adopting a goat would cost $250 and it occured to me that the backyard at our house doesn't really have any grass and I start to imagine the damage the goat would cause in the basement if we kept it indoors. None the less, I spend the rest of the dream frantically searching for my goat. I do not find it.

Despite the above sketch, the goat in my dream was very clearly a Anglo-Nubian goat. This dream left me very sad/worried.

I have not yet sketched the third dream.

In totally unrelated news I went to the San Francisco Superhero Street Fair and had a great time. It's not an epic event, but one I would casually recommend. Fun dancing time. I wore a sparkly mask, glow sticks, and a skimpy outfit. Someone asked if wearing a mask made dancing easier. It didn't make dancing easier (that went just fine) but it made going out in public in one's underwear a lot easier.

Have been playing with the NVD3 graph library at work (which sits atop D3) and been having a good time of that. I can't really chew on numbers with any sort of statistical skill, but I can make a mean graph. Sadly our hackday that was planned for tomorrow has been moved.... to some time in the future. Alas.

Related to work, I've really been enjoying this song for some reason:

Adam has been playing GTA V and I've really enjoyed watching him do so. I <3 Trevor (just like everyone else, I'm sure)

New Idea! New Idea!

I'm thrilled that I've been struck with a new idea for a themed dinner party. I've been scratching my head for ages trying to come up with something to top the Alien's theme party... and now I've got it! Table top gaming! The title? "Only the GM Knows What's For Dinner"! I'm giddy with glee.

The above image was made this weekend with a lazy susan, mirror, camera, remote shutter clicker, and a sweet 3D printed shape made by my friend Kyle. It's a castoff (there's a defect you can barely see) that he gave me and I hope to mod in the future into... something...

Dinner party idea is the product of a weekend spent making a new D&D character for a friend's campaign. I'm going to be playing a Warforged Fighter. Basically I'm a robot that will hit things. Am excited for that too.

Somehow September is half over...?

The August 27th Dr Sketchy's featured the most excellent model Danni Doll. She was really profession and held some amazingly ambitious poses perfectly. For one of the 20s she was twisted up like a pretzel with a leg over her shoulder and everything. It was crazy. Her costume/makeup was also spectacular. Also there was a turtle on stage with her. Good times.

I feel rather short of words for blogging these days. I've several projects recently started and now on hold for no good reason. Arduino project, quilt, stuffed monster. There are of course also the never-ending number of things that I think would be a good idea to start soon-- bottle cap monsters, more bullet bugs.

Fits of nostalgia for creative accomplishments in the past have been tormenting me, perhaps a symptom, perhaps a cause for my stalled progress. My sketches used to be so much more creative! And numerous! Also reminisced upon was my old writings, particularly those of my tabloid writer MUD character... which I frantically searched for an thankfully found a couple nights ago.

I collected all my glorious scribblings on this Blogger page, beautifully formatted to highlight their ASCII font-art glory. Too much game knowledge & context is probably required to enjoy or make sense of them... but it makes me extremely happy to read. I appreciate the alliteration and cadence my writing takes on when I fully embrace the low brow gossip columnist style-- which apparently is the only thing I'm fit for.

Work at work continues... fitfully, with my mood being directly tied to the degree of forward project progress made every day. No one to blame for failure of progress except myself. This being somehow related to above mentioned creative block is not entirely impossible.

Rolling along...

Just got back from visiting family in the Midwest. Both sides of the family, actually. I took a pile of photos and will at some point soon be sifting through them... In the mean time, here's today's Dr. Sketchy's doodles.

Have been very busy lately, sadly. Was in Seattle not too long ago and now this trip. Played my first outdoor soccer game on the Rdio team (8v8 coed) and look forward to future games. I didn't do that great, but I had fun.

I pulled out my Arduino stuff recently and poked at it some more but had to give up-- the weather is just turning nice again and San Francisco Second Summer is starting... who can stay inside and code on weekends like these?!? I look forward to the rainy season so that I can code contently in my home or at a coffee shop... but till then! Outside time!

Adam and I enjoyed the ever-wonderful pancake breakfast on Mt Tam this month in the company of a co-worker. Yay for socializing and exercise. Remember, the last pancake breakfast of the year is Sunday, October 13th. Other fun outdoor things- this Saturday is both the Tour de Fat event in Golden Gate Park but also the Greek Food Festival.

Things thing things... I've been flying my kite a lot lately. Actually, I drag my kite around and then Adam flies it marvelously. Makes me want to try designing some novel kites... My knees hurt a lot these days, which is sad.

An looking forward to upcoming new D&D game with friends. Reminiscing lately about old MUD playing days. Not looking forward to turning 30 soon. Time goes on. I'll write a better blog post next time...

Kaua'i 2013

Adam and I went to Kaua'i at the end of June/beginning of July this year. It was good. We've been to Maui together before and look forward to visiting other islands in the future.

Where as our time in Maui was spent mostly in the water, we spent a lot of time hiking on this trip. I was delighted to see these huge bamboo groves at one of our trails. The cliffs were amazing, be they overlooking other cliffs or the ocean. Our room (acquired here through VRBO) was lovely and spacious with a view looking directly out onto the ocean. It was a little stuffy at night, having no A/C unit, but I didn't mind. The unit was super cheap- yet not gheto- and centrally located. I highly recommend staying there if you visit the island.

Normally I say "if you want to know more, ask us in person!" but for some reason I seem to continuously fail to talk about it in depth, even when folks ask. It was a nice get away, it was green, I recommend it. I think I liked Maui a bit more but I enjoy snorkling & safe swimming over any degree of surf. Adam however loves boogie boarding (or whatever it's called) and was much happier with Kaua'i's water offerings. There were some low points- seeing a young girl's knee get fucked up by the surf, the death march of death, and getting beat up once pretty bad by some surf- but overall it was great and I maintain I prefer my Hawaii vacations over any international ones we've done so far.

There was a Natural History Museum. I loves me some Natural History Museums! It was super old and crusty, but I liked it and found it informative. It's also in a super great location, in Kokee National Park.

In closing, we took well over 300 photos on the trip. Of those, we uploaded over 80 into a general Flickr gallery. Not many people want to actually dig through that so we then whittled it down to our top 18 picks. Also, the NHM has warranted it's only tiny gallery/view on Flickr.