Remember my giant countdown clock? Well, as soon as I got back from Germany, I immediately went back to work at Two Bit Circus to prepare for the STEAM Carnival. The Carnival has a large variety of home built games, carnival inspired activities, and educational fun. Many of the games were built by our summer interns; it’s what I built the spirograph for. The week was full of events starting with our Gala on Wednesday night with a cocktail party, dinner, and a show. Thursday was a hackathon. Friday was our education day with almost 3000 school children coming through to do a workshop and play our games. Saturday and Sunday was the main event with even more people coming through each day. I was demoing Intel’s ConnectAnything one-on-one to kids of all ages. It let’s you change the connections between inputs and outputs on a microcontroller dynamically. The days’ big finale was the Dunk Tank Flambé which you can see embedded below. We’re taking the show on the row next year. Continue reading
Category Archives: Portfolio
Here are many of the projects I’ve worked on over the years.
LED matrix hoodie
For Christmas 2010, Old Navy stocked a bunch of hoodies with headphones built in for $10. I intentionally purchased a white one because I wanted to use it as a diffuser for an LED project. I finally got around to it in the run up to Fuzzyland. Continue reading
Sidewalk Chalk Spirograph
This summer the folks behind Haha Bird posted about the giant sidewalk chalk Spirograph they had made. It has a large ring gear made from interlocking segments. The smaller internal gears ride on 3 casters each and carry the chalk. I thought the design was great and that we should have our own for The STEAM Carnival. Haha Bird had used a plotter and a jigsaw to cut their gears; I luckily had access to a CNC mill. Continue reading
Killer Karaoke
My work on Capture led to another TV gig. The show Killer Karaoke features people singing while performing stunts in hopes of winning a cash prize. They had a gag from season 1 where they would shock the contestant with an animal collar while they were singing. This season they wanted a better way for the audience to know what was happening. Continue reading
STEAM Carnival Countdown Clock
The STEAM Carnival is coming up October 25 & 26th at the Port of Los Angeles. Two Bit Circus wanted a sign for the outside of the venue that would both tell how many days were left and grab people’s attention. Since it had to be daylight visible I suggested we use electromechanical flip displays. Continue reading
Marvel’s Avengers S.T.A.T.I.O.N.
This summer I got swept up in a massive LED lighting project. While standing in the right place at the right time a friend’s lighting designer recruited me to run an LED install. He showed me page after page of blueprints that described everything that needed to be done. I just shrugged and said ‘I guess I can do it’. The Avengers S.T.A.T.I.O.N. is an interactive exhibit installed in The Discovery Center Times Square. It combines science education with the world of Avengers. The entire exhibit is designed to look like a S.H.I.E.L.D. recruitment center filled with interactive displays and movie props. Continue reading
Capture
One of the companies I regularly do project work for is Angel Valley Media. Spring 2013 we were asked to develop the technology behind the CW reality show Capture and support it during filming. The show had 12 teams of 2 people each who competed in the woods of the Sierras. They slept outdoors and every day one team was selected as the Hunt team which would attempt to capture the Prey teams. Each player had a Nexus 4 phone strapped to their wrist which showed them a live map of the playfield. If a team stopped moving for too long, their location would appear on the Hunt team’s phones. The Hunt team had a giant magnetic “Talon” that they had to stick to the back of the prey team to capture them. The player’s vests would light up when captured. Continue reading
FUZZYLAND
A friend of ours owns a piece of property in the high desert north of Los Angeles next to the Angeles National Forest. He named it Fuzzyland and built a platform treehouse to use as a DJ booth and hosts parties there once or twice a year. We camp overnight and the attendance varies from 40 to 100 people. I’ve never missed an event out there and after the first few I started bringing art to contribute to the atmosphere. Continue reading
Bigger on the Inside
A couple months ago Pinguino let me know that she was going to be in a Doctor Who themed art show and really really wanted to build a Tardis (The main character’s time/space traveling phone booth) of her own. The Tardis is known for being larger on the inside so we thought about how to make that happen. I’ve wanted to do an infinity mirror project for a while and we decided that would be the best approach. Continue reading
Cross stitch shennanigans
My mom always says she doesn’t know what to get me for christmas, so last year I told her I wanted a counted cross stitch kit. She sent me this one specifically. I had done cross stitch before and had the idea that it would be fun to stitch pixel art like game sprites. But before I embarked on that I wanted to stitch an actual kit for practice. It took a lot of time to complete and I would listen to books on tape while I stitched. I finished the project off by changing the original text to a well known rap lyric. Thanks, Mom. Continue reading