Here are many of the projects I’ve worked on over the years.
I like Advent calendars. It’s a gift every day! But I don’t really like the bulk manufactured ones that deliver milk chocolate in different wrappers. I did discover an Irish Whiskey one a few years ago but it was $161 and every bottle is just 1oz. I decided I’d make a liquor advent calendar of slightly lower brow booze. Continue reading
Photo by Pinguino Kolb
I think I had this idea of stuffing LEDs down the stripes of track jackets many years ago but the technology wasn’t there at the time. I was probably assembling my LED matrix hoodie and wanting a way to keep the LEDs captive and straight. With the package size of addressable LEDs shrinking we now have ones that are small enough to to fit inside factory sewn stripes. My friends and I have built a few of these now and I wanted to share some of the techniques we use to make a hopefully robust glowing jacket. (tl;dr at the end) Continue reading
This year we celebrated Ninjapenguin 13 by throwing a Hackers (1995) themed party. In the movie, they visit a club called Cyberdelia where in one scene the two main characters take turns fighting for a high score in Wipeout. One of my contributions to this year’s party was to recreate that experience. Continue reading
With the removal of Philly’s 30th street station Solari split-flap display putting mechanical signage back in the news I thought it was a good time to revisit my countdown project and share some resources. Continue reading
I work with Teensy dev boards and LED strips fairly often. Connecting the two to each other seems to be something I’m constantly reinventing. Here’s my most recent attempt at a board I could use for both quick prototyping and permanent installs. While I mill a lot of prototype PCBs, this is only the third board ever that I’ve had professionally manufactured. This time via Oshpark. Continue reading
I built this infinity mirror in the Spring of 2017. Like the Tardis before it, I wanted something different than a standard rectangular infinity mirror. I went with an isometric grid of glowing triangles. At the time I was wondering about LED displays that weren’t just giant matrixes. Luckily I had most of the materials required already on hand. Continue reading
One of the first times I met my friend Laura, she was wearing the Cookie Monster hoodie she had constructed. It was before she had her sewing machine so all the fur was attached with hot glue and very heavy. It had little googly-eyes constructed from clear plastic cocktail glasses with black pompom pupils bouncing around inside that didn’t last very long. When I heard she was hosting a monster tea party I upgraded the costume. Continue reading
Almost six years ago I decided I was going to start rewatching Adventure Time from the beginning. This time though, I decided I’d watch just one episode a day and then make a GIF of some part of it and post it to my Tumblr. I definitely appreciated the show more the second time around since I wasn’t watching it while distracted and story arcs/running jokes are easier to stick with when you see them every day instead of months apart. Continue reading
We celebrated our five hundred and fiftieth Hacker Drinkup yesterday so i’m overdue to write a second post about my weekly event on this blog. Continue reading
Updated: November 2022
Rarely does an idea take hold of me so strongly that I’m compelled to build it immediately, but that’s what happened when I saw this tweet about @kuwala’s awesome Hypnobucket. From my previous time playing with Brain Machines I knew that the effect would be interesting. The robot face doodle and the desire to make people put buckets on their heads really took it home for me. Continue reading
RobotSkirts 