Data Viz Show

I recently went to visit the IMM gallery's show and I was pleasantly surprised at what I found.  When I walked in, I saw a wide range of different art pieces ranging from typical drawings to clever forms of expression that are quite modern and unusual in a gallery.  The one that stuck out is the bot-controlled Counter-Strike game in which every time a player dies, a bit of red blood shoots out of a nozzle to simulate the killing in a much more real sense.  By the time I went to the gallery, the wall and floor had been soaked in red blood.  Next to the blood was a large pile of small pieces of paper that had various twitter feeds printed on it.  I was told that on the first day, the rate that the paper was going would envelop the whole room so the artist had to adjust the feed to make it write less.  These two are perfect examples of how even when you think a project it done, minor and sometimes even major tweaking is never out of the question and very possible after submission of a final product.  The gallery as a whole was fascinating and a very insightful experience in my opinion, and I would like to see more of these in the upcoming future.

Physical Computing's Greatest Hits

http://www.tigoe.net/blog/category/physicalcomputing/176/
This reading is based on Tom Igoe's blog post about Physical Computing's Greatest Hits. While reading this, I noticed a bunch of new cool gadgets and inventions that were very intriguing to me, specifically the gloves and the multi-touch interfaces.  For my stupid pet trick, I attempted to create a wearable project, and to my dismay, it was a bit out of my league in terms of creation, implementation, and actually making  it work was a pain in it self.  But I learned a good amount of stuff from trying new things and I was especially excited to read through this.  The multi-touch interfaces have also been something that I have always wanted to see and try out, but never had the chance to.  I know that Microsoft released a prototype sometime last year with an outrageous estimate, so I know that mass market production won't happen for some time, but it's still something to look forward to.  All in all, this was a good read with many very cool and neat ideas that I will definitely try to implement in my final project.

HotPot Rotary Potentiometer Presentation

For my sensor presentation, I chose the HotPot Rotary Potentiometer.  It is a sensor that had a force sensitive ring that detects position.  Although it looks very similar to the iPod scroll wheel, it is not the same type of sensor.  It is used is a few various well known objects like joysticks and electric guitars.

Bent Wire Crank Toy

For this project, we had to get wire, I picked up 14 AWG wire because it seems the most stable while also being able to bend easily, and by following the guide in Make magazine, we would be able to make a wire crank toy that had a bird dip its head.  Once I assembled the parts and started cutting the wire, I noticed first that the measurements on the guide were either way off, or meant for tiny hands.  Either way, I doubled what was said in the guide and it worked out a bit better.  However, once I got to the coil, I found a bit of difficulty.  It was not very simple to bend and it took quite a while to get a shape that vaguely resembled a coil structure.  After about 10 minutes of struggling, I finally accepted the coil-esque shape and moved on.  I delicately pieced out the other shapes needed to create the toy, and I had a better outcome than I originally thought.  It wasn't how it looked in the picture, but it was a passable recreation.  After doing this project, I feel that given the right tools, I would definitely be able to do another project like this, as I have learned some tricks and methods of what works and what does not.

Toy Paper Monster

I have seen and made my fair share of paper toy monsters/characters, and I can safely say that there are few things that compare to the simplicity and magic when it comes to paper-craft.  With the right instructions, after about and hour, you'll have a crazy, cartoonish, fun toy/model that started out as a piece of paper.  It is one of the simplest form of creation.  And the only tools are the paper, instructions, glue and imagination.  I wish we had these when I was growing up because these spark so much creativity within children that it's impossible to not love them.  The character that I made was called the doctor.  It's a green scientist with a big head and six arms.  After about 30-35 minutes of gluing and sticking I had a finished product.  It was a fun exercise and I hope we can more exercises like this one.

Chapter 0:What is electricity really?

The author starts this chapter by describing electricity in its most basic form, at the atomic level.  He then talks about how electricity works, what conducts electricity and what insulates it and why this all happens.  I imagine the author of this chapter as a fresh new teacher that is trying to be hip with his students and get them interested in science.  It is a very basic understanding of what goes on and it seems to be aimed at people that have absolutely no idea what electricity is, how it works, and what it's made of.  And because I have not take a science class in well over 2 years now, I found it refreshing to recall all of this information, but it seems to be a bit dumbed down for the actual target audience.

"August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains"

This short story is about a futuristic home that is in a world that has been ravaged by war and famine.  The particular home that is referenced has long since been abandoned by it's owners, but the robot servants continue on as if they were still there.  Unfortunately, a brush fire starts near the home, and the robots are unable to quell the fire in time. This short story felt very close to the worlds created in movies like I,Robot and Back to the Future part II.  It had a clear message that the overuse of technology will eventually kill us but I have to disagree with the story.  It is a very one-sided view of this controversial topic and it generalizes our dependence on technology.  While the increase in our dependence has exploded over just the past 10 years, this story seemed just a bit too extreme.  I felt that the sudden fire at the end was seemingly out of nowhere and also kind of rash.

Inside the Mind of a Synaesthete

Back in high school, I had a friend who was in a band named Synesthesia.  When I asked him what it meant, he  told me that it was the ability to see music in bright vibrant colors.  He said it was a magical thing that he hoped people would relate to after they heard his band.  Now years later, I'll never forget watching them play and imagining little fireworks going off while they were playing their original songs and always ending with a glorious Freebird cover.  Also, after seeing a personal description of how it isn't all fun and games to have this disease, my mind is a bit conflicted on how to feel about it.  While it is a cool thing to think about and wonder what it would be like to have it, I would not want to have it in the slightest. Whether its the sound to color, or color-word association, this would seem to me to be more of an annoyance than anything else.  The most interesting part that I learned about this disease was the story of a couple who both have synesthesia had a child and the colors that the child saw when looking at a certain letter were the mixtures of the colors the two parents saw.