IZation Labs

Here I sit in our car, waiting for my family to finally exit the house so that we can get going. I’m obviously ready, I left my bedroom with an unceremonious spring in my step, knowing that I would be back to visit some weekends.

That isn’t to say I’m not just a little nervous, college is a big step for someone, and in some cases people are thrown equally unceremoniously into the real world. But I think I’ll be fine.

Of course I had been waiting until practically the last minute to start packing. Instead of assembling all of my clothes and equipment in my room beforehand, some items were simply taken straight to the car.

I should be reading my book, “Autobiography of a Face”, but I would rather blog.

Ahh, here come the people. About time. Let’s get this show on the road.

Onward!

Don't worry. I'm only going to College. I'm not leaving the site. :]

Lace

Made a new short SFX clip today named “Jump Stunt”. It took about three and a half to four hours to make. The final cut turned out better than I expected. If you’ve seen the movie Jumper, then you can probably guess where my inspiration came from.

You can also tell that I’m not the best actor, but hey, it’s not easy when you have to be the camera man and the guy who jumps off the porch 10 times in a row to get the right shot! That kind of thing can leave you a little disoriented..

Ontario held it’s 50th anniversary celebration on August 23rd, and our crew was commissioned to launch the fireworks at the end of the festival.

Here’s a video of the last 8 minutes or so of the show, including the grass fires that we had to put out when some of the fireworks burned longer than they were designed to. Believe it or not, this is the first time in 18 years that that has happened. No more shows until July 2009 for us!

We spent the better part of five hours at the Propeller expo yesterday, and it was an enormous success. I am happy to hear that they are most certainly going to try to make this an annual event! It was every interesting, I met some amazing people and they made both myself and my significant other, Genny, feel extremely welcome.

We arrived a little late, as we had a previous engagement. The expo started early in the morning, around 8 or 9-ish, but we arrived closer to 12:30. The expo itself had upwards of 70 people there, some of them from as far away as California, and we even had Paul Baker, a Parallax Applications Engineer there to speak with us. It was only a forty minute drive for us, but it would have been well worth the trip no matter how far the drive.

There were all kinds of projects on display, created by people ranging in age from 11 to upper 50s at least. There were autonomous vehicles, lighting displays, product demos, a magic touchscreen Etch-a-sketch, and even a set of bells hacked to ring when their corresponding notes on a midi keyboard are pressed.

A special mention goes out to a young man named Thomas. He is eleven years old and is positively brilliant. He nearly has a savant-level of understanding of computers and technology. Let me illustrate.

While we were talking, I mentioned that it looked like his (yes, his) Macbook Pro had crashed. He said that it was actually just a screensaver he had located on the net that consisted of crash and error codes from unix and linux based operating systems, as well as various other programs. Wow. Okay.

He is running Parallels on his Macbook Pro, so that he can interface his microcontrollers with the computer, and showed me an example of writing a very simple “Hello World” program for his Propeller, which we got on the topic of after I asked about freedos, or something to that effect.

He also pulled up some files from his home ftp server that he had set up. He saved a Dell Optiplex from being trashed at a local mechanic shop and installed freenas on it, which is a Free Network Attached Storage system. He then routed it and set it up so he could call up files on his home computer from anywhere in the world via the internet.

Keep in mind that this young man is only eleven years old. I can’t impress upon you enough just how blown away I was. I think he could have out-coded my electronics professors from last years classes when it came to the Propeller. His father is very proud, and tells us that Thomas is almost entirely self-taught. He said that he listens to what Thomas tells him, nods politely, absorbs as much information as he can, and then gets out of the way. Thomas is an active member of the Parallax forums, and I’m sure that he has a very bright future ahead of him. I hope to see him again next year!

For a ten dollar per person entrance fee, everybody left with at least 130 dollars worth of components, including two Propeller Prototyping USB boards, two forty pin DIP propeller chips, and a ultrasonic sensor module. There was even a sensor product manual, a propeller sticker, and a fancy little spinning propeller that I enjoy flying outside. :] There were multiple vendors there, and its a good thing that they didn’t take debit or I would have spent a lot more than I did.

While there I picked up 15 one dollar solar cells, each one rated at 4V open, and 80 MAs.
I also purchased a 50 pack of USB connectors for 5 bucks, and a Micro datapad, which is a very popular little piece of equipment when your microcontroller projects require user input.
Altogether I spent 22 dollars on other items.

There were quite a few speakers, the most prominent one being Paul Baker from Parallax. There were also prizes given out throughout the day, ranging from sensor kits and professional development boards to Boe-bots and Hydra kits. We didn’t win any, which was okay, because I was already extremely satisfied with my ‘haul’.

The man who set up the entire event, Jeff Ledger, has posted a gallery of images from the event, so if you want more pictures, head on over here. Thanks Jeff! My full gallery can be found on the next page.

Well folks, there’s light on the horizon.

As an exchange in services (and because we are just cool like that), my oldest brother ‘Ryan’ has joined IZationLabs as an admin, and I have done the same on his site, the link to which is here.

Hopefully this way we’ll be able to fix those darn punctuation errors and spelling issues that arise from typing too fast and just not paying enough attention.

In other news, my significant other and I are headed to an Unofficial Propeller Expo tomorrow in Norwalk, Ohio, where we will get to see all sorts of electronics projects based on the Parallax Propeller microcontroller. There will also be some people speaking about computers and other kinds of technology there. The best part, however, is that a bunch of sensors and microcontrollers are being given away practically for free! Pictures and a breakdown of the event soon to come.

Cheers!

Lace

As the diy and hacking mindset continue to spread deeper into society, we all knew sooner or later that something like this would happen. Luckily, I think that the right people are going to be in charge, and it makes me wish all the more that we had more than 7 channels and a metal antenna. (Around here it’s called farmervision.)

The Discovery Channel is will soon be airing a new show called Prototype This! where, you guessed it, the 4 stars of the show think up crazy ideas and prototype robots, gadgets, hacks, and all those wonderful things that we love so much. Made by the same production company as Mythbusters, this show is hoping to grab the attention of the same people that flock to sites such as Make, Instructables, and Hackaday.

I was a little skeptical at first, but now I’m on board one-hundred percent. As long as they don’t try to turn it into a movie. A completely unrealistic horrible sequence of video clips that come nowhere close to representing the real thing.

CoughHackersCough

Here’s a link to the article about Prototype This! If anybody feels like sending me a Tivo with all of the recorded episodes on it, I would be much obliged. :]

Lace

Interesting little conversation we had at the office today. An invoice from Embark was sent to a customer. The customer subsequently sent a check for the proper amount to be paid through the county, along with “Embark” written in the receiver field. The check is returned days later, voided, along with a letter stating that the check could not be processed. The letter to the county said to make sure that the customers knew to make out checks to Sprint.

Sprint? What? The invoice said “Make checks payable to EMBARK.” The invoice itself was from Embark, not Sprint. You would think a telecommunications company could keep things like that straight. Interesting, is it not?

Has anyone else had anything like this happen to them? I haven’t had the best relationship with Embark in any case, so maybe I’m biased. Oh well. I guess it can happen to the best of us. Maybe I should to something like this: