Motorcycles
Obeying a widely-known primordial need within the soul, I acquired a 1972 Honda motorcycle in the summer of 2013. It was (then) a 41 year-old machine and requires continuous attention. That is part of the fun. This is mostly a place for me to keep track of notes.
Squares
On my ongoing journey of self-improvement, I made a little thing. In a relative first for me, I did it without including all of the fancy libraries. It also uses Firebase, which is a pretty neat, simple thing. Check it out here.
The Nica Times
I wrote for The Tico Times or rather, it's Nicaraguan imprint, The Nica Times (now defunct), for six months or so while living in Nicaragua. On my fast-improving college Spanish, I covered a murder trial (the first which brought the FBI to Nicaragua—imperialism at work), anti-government protests, and reforestation projects.
Drawing the Electric
None
Sliders & Wheels
I headed over to Utrecht Art Supply earlier today to act on a hunch that I’ve had for awhile. They’ve got a nice selection of writing and drawing tools, and I picked up a variety of very, very soft graphite pencils. I didn’t even know they went up to 9B, but there it was—a gleaming rod of solid graphite. It had a nice heft to it, too. I got a range of hardnesses and headed back to the lab.
Experiments in Etching
I’ve been vaguely attending a printmaking class at Harvard. I can’t say I’ve commited myself, but I have learned the rudimentary basics of etching. Now, with a standard etching, you use a scraper or scribe or pointy nail, or whatever, really, to scratch away at a coating applied to smooth sheet of copper (or zinc, in this case). Those scratches expose the bare metal, which you “etch” (ah hah!) in an acid bath. You fill the resulting grooves with ink, wipe off the rest, mash some paper down, and there you go. That’s all well and good. After all, it’s how Dürer, Rembrandt, Picasso, and some other famous dudes made it happen. But since we’ve got a lot of toys to play with at the Media Lab, it seems a shame not to use them.
TapClip
TapClip is a specialized capactive sensor board that I'm using as a test-bed for exploring ad-hoc user-interface design, and more broadly, self-made technologies.
Infra-Red LED Throwies
I've been toying with with ideas for a quick, easy, scalable project for a large group of teenagers to do together for the Boston ICA's Teen Night.
I've always really liked the little LED Throwies from the fine people over at Graffiti Research Lab, so here's an updated version that allows for the little guys to be controlled by a regular old remote control. It's a little startling how simple the whole operation is.
Paper Sensors
The idea, here, was to recreate some basic MEMS sensors using paper & conductive ink.
English Monotype Game
In the fine printing community, there is a slight kerfuffle around the aesthetic difference between type designed for letterpress printing and type designed for digital or offset printing. With the rise of photopolymer printing, many designers are using digital-native typefaces to print on film, which inevitably results in bulky, inelegant letterforms, as a digital type design doesn't account for the cross-sectional distribution of ink-on-paper.
A Desk That I Made
One week at summer’s end, I decided I should have desk. No glue. No screws. One piece of 4 × 8′ birch-veneered plywood. It’s kept tense by the tight-fitting angled notches that hold the boards together—though the cables in the back don’t hurt.
