Child of a Metal God
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
GrendelFish's LiveJournal:
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| Friday, January 25th, 2013 | | 12:57 am |
Ten-hundred job description
Using the Up-Goer Five Test Editor: I help people tell computers how to see how big things are. The computers do this by touching the things many times with a little stick all over. I also make sure that they tell the computers how to do this in the right way. It is important that the computers get the right answer for how big things are, so the things can be used in making other things. | | Monday, October 1st, 2012 | | 11:00 pm |
| | Monday, September 24th, 2012 | | 9:12 pm |
2011-2012
I just can't let this tradition die, even if my LJ posting rate has otherwise dropped to 0. From September 4, 2011 to September 4, 2012 I... ...invented a new musical instrument. ...built a chainsword. ...visited Germany. ...finally developed a personal look beyond t-shirts and jeans (aka generic geek). ...received a Burning Man art grant. ...ran a successful Kickstarter project. ...got much, much better at welding. ...designed, built, installed and operated a large scale kinetic/fire art piece on the playa. Kind of a weird year, in that almost everything was concentrated in a single giant project, the Harmonic Fire Pendula. I'm still in the dazed post-project phase, starting to poke at a couple new things but mostly just trying to wrap my head around the last 6 months. It definitely goes up there with grad school, the Mackenzie trip and the space robot in terms of overwhelming, life-consuming experiences. I have plenty of other giant projects on my backlog, of course, but I'm just going to enjoy working on small, low-stress stuff for a while. | | Monday, June 25th, 2012 | | 10:44 pm |
Shameless self promotion: Kickstarter edition
I'm working on a rather large installation piece to take to Burning Man this year. (And Maker Faires next year.) It involves physics and fire and a whole lot of steel. Basically, I'm making the following thing but about 3 times as big: To help defray some (and only some!) of the costs, I'm running my first Kickstarter. It's slightly over 50% funded as I write this, which is good, but there is still quite a ways to go. If you like giant kinetic fire sculptures, please consider making a pledge. Or even just reposting a link to it -- something like this can't get funded without eyeballs. Kickstarter: Harmonic Fire Pendula(LJ isn't letting me embed the Kickstarter widget, weird.) Thanks! | | Wednesday, October 19th, 2011 | | 9:23 pm |
Hydrocrystallophone
The project I was working on -- and mostly finished -- for Steamcon last weekend. I'm really quite proud of it. :) So far the response has been very positive. I'm curious to see how far this one gets shared... This entry was originally posted at http://gfish.dreamwidth.org/355358.html where it has received  comments. | | Saturday, October 1st, 2011 | | 4:42 pm |
2010-2011
It's that time of the year again! From September 4, 2010 to September 4, 2011 I... ...completed several new Attoparsec projects (Lightsuit, etched brass fan, artificial window, Skinner Box) ...started working on the Hexapod, a project bigger than anything I've attempted before ...revisited and successfully completed the Kalamazoo ...started down the slippery slope towards management at work ...got a team together to compete in April Tools ...got paid for a customized Attoparsec project by a complete stranger for the first time ...designed a circuit board and sold it as a (somewhat) mass-produced product ...completed 10 years of (almost) daily entries to my personal journal It's funny, in many ways this has been my most satisfying year in a very long time. I'm feeling very... centered. (From people's changing reactions to me, I think it shows, too. Confidence is sexy!) But the list above is one of the most anemic I've posted in the 9 years I've been doing this. I guess I'm just not flailing randomly in all directions looking for self-identity anymore, so all the crazy stuff I'm doing is more or less the same type of thing. At least I'm still doing crazy stuff! While my track record for predictions here isn't great (life is what happens while you're making other plans...), I think the next year will be more of the same. I want to continue working to make Attoparsec a visible brand for my projects, laying down the groundwork for my very long term plan to eventually make a living at it. The hexapod continues to be my primary ongoing goal, even when I'm working on other things to clear my head. There is a lot else I could be working on, but in the end that more than anything else has the potential to really showcase what I want to be doing. This entry was originally posted at http://gfish.dreamwidth.org/355254.html where it has received  comments. | | Tuesday, September 27th, 2011 | | 7:17 pm |
Xmas plans
I get the week following Christmas as vacation.  vixyish will be out of town during that period. It strikes me that I should do something interesting instead of just sitting around the house. Vacation time is one of my most limited commodities, after all. I like the idea of doing something... nonstandard, but I'm having trouble coming up with ideas. A week isn't actually all that long, nor is the dead of winter timing helpful. (And, yes, the southern hemisphere sounds great, but I probably can't afford that.) Turns out polar bear season in Churchill ends in November. Ideas, folks? This entry was originally posted at http://gfish.dreamwidth.org/354913.html where it has received  comments. | | Sunday, September 25th, 2011 | | 12:10 pm |
Burning Man 2011
A bit late, maybe, but time for my yearly Burning Man writeup. This was my fourth year, and the first time I was really with a bunch of close friends. (I have camped with friends before, but they've always had kids or Ranger duties to attend to.) It was a very different experience this way. It was nice having a dense social network available, but I found myself interacting with strangers a lot less. That was a bit jarring, as usually the playa is the one place in the world I'm a complete extrovert. But being able to share the experience with keystricken and adularia was really special. I'm sure I can find a balance eventually. :) My big projects for this year were the Skinner Box and the Kalamazoo for its second year. (See below for pictures.) The Skinner Box worked great, but didn't get quite the attention I wanted it to. And I found that I didn't enjoy sitting around camp waiting for people to use my art. I'd much rather be wearing or driving my art, out interacting with people more actively. Still, a lot of people really enjoyed it, particularly those who understood the joke, and the el-wire sign was a great landmark for navigating at night. I won't quite say the Kalamazoo was a triumph, but it was as close as I got. I'm very, very glad I bothered to upgrade it and drag it down again this year, as its more or less complete failure last year had been wearing on me. It's now both beautiful *and* functional, thus righting a offense to my moral sensibilities. jadine and I drove it all the way around Esplanade on Wednesday -- a trip of about 3.6 miles if I'm doing my sums correctly. This took 7 hours and I pretty much wanted to amputate my arms by the time we were done. But I damned well did it! The Kalamazoo got a lot of favorable comments. Those who got it *really* got it. There were also a certain number of jackass comments, particularly when we went out to the Man burn Saturday night. (The energy of that night is a lot different.) But I eventually got into the right mood of unleashing a torrent of abuse right back at them, aided by my superior platform, and that ended up being kind of fun. The laser helmet was acting weird, I think maybe the laser modules are failing. The lightsuit was well received, just awkward to wear in that environment. I might save it for local cons in the future. I'm thinking I might take a break next year. It took me a long time to get into the event this year, and I don't want to burn out. On the other hand, I still have plans for some big projects. So we'll see. If nothing else, I really need to change my arrival plans. Spending 5 hours in line Monday afternoon is a real bummer, ruins the whole day. Early entrance, maybe, or just get there at night. Might as well not be baking while sitting in line. ( Lots of pics, of courseCollapse )This entry was originally posted at http://gfish.dreamwidth.org/354763.html where it has received  comments. | | Monday, September 12th, 2011 | | 10:25 pm |
Kalamazoo/Dragons music video
When we took the Kalamazoo out on the scientific expedition last month, I made sure to ask people to get lots of footage. Why? Because I wanted to do a music video. I had coincidentally become totally hooked on Caravan Palace not long before. It was a perfect combination, so I went for it. Of course, Burning Man got in the way, but better late than never. Here it is! This entry was originally posted at http://gfish.dreamwidth.org/354378.html where it has received  comments. | | Wednesday, August 24th, 2011 | | 10:17 pm |
| | Monday, August 22nd, 2011 | | 12:37 pm |
radial addressing yay
The time of the great migration is once again upon us! If you're going to Burning Man, and you wouldn't mind seeing me, what will your address / camp name be? I'll be with Camp Strowler, somewhere near 5:00 and F. Look for the Skinner Box, we'll be trying to get good frontage for it. I'll register at Playa Info eventually, but don't hold your breath Monday. This entry was originally posted at http://gfish.dreamwidth.org/354175.html where it has received  comments. | | Friday, August 19th, 2011 | | 11:06 pm |
almost goodbye/Skinner Box
So, yeah, I kind of switched to using Google Plus as my main blogging substitute. Look me up there, if you haven't already. I'm still not officially decommissioning my LJ, but it sure does seem inevitable at this point. Kind of sad, I was hoping to make an even 10 years. But I can't resist posting this, the demo video of the Skinner Box I've been working on for the last few weeks. It is a new level of ridiculous contraption for me! This entry was originally posted at http://gfish.dreamwidth.org/353855.html where it has received  comments. | | Monday, July 18th, 2011 | | 12:11 am |
| | Monday, July 11th, 2011 | | 12:31 am |
Flywheel roadtest
We took the Kalamazoo out for a roadtest yesterday, to see how the new flywheel handled. (I'm also wearing my new hat, which I'm terribly fond of.) | | Friday, June 17th, 2011 | | 8:03 am |
Kalamazoo: flywheel and steering
I just put up a new blog post with video of the new Kalamazoo upgrades. But all of the content is really in the video, so I'll embed that here as well. I'm also giving up on taking it to the Fremont Solstice Parade tomorrow. Some stuff broke at the last minute and even if I had time to fix them, I just couldn't be confident that all the bugs of that nature had been worked out. For those who were interested in walking along with it, sorry. There just wasn't enough time once my laziness was factored in. | | Monday, June 13th, 2011 | | 10:10 am |
3d printing
Being a big fan of near-future singularity fiction, I've been following 3D printers for some time now. Particularly the open source designs like the RepRap. Anything that brings something designed in a computer into the real life has an inherently fascinating touch of the occult to me. One that can brings parts of itself into the real world, von Neumann style, is even better. The problem is, as intellectually neat as they are, the final product they're capable of printing just isn't very good. I'd love to have one, and I've thought about it, but I'd really just be getting one for the experience, not for practical use. I can always go rent time on one at Metrix, if I do ever have a problem that can only be solved by an ugly little piece of plastic. Given my comfort working with nicer materials, that's just not a common occurrence -- it has yet to happen, in fact. Hot metal smells way better than hot plastic, after all. Without a real use for one, I might crank out a couple sets of brackets, just to claim self-replication status, but then it would end up sitting unused. I'd rather just follow the blogs and watch other, more motivated people work out the problems and slowly improve the system. Neat idea, but just not very practical. That was my mental status on the subject earlier this year, when I re-visited the Computer History Museum in Mountain View and finally got to see the full set of exhibits there. Not being a stranger to the subject, I was well versed in the early history of home computing. But seeing the artifacts in person, all laid out together, made something click in my mind. Home computing in the 70s was an absolute joke. A real company once had a "kitchen computer" for sale for $20k -- and the only output it had was a set of binary lights! (This was the earliest recorded incidence of "you can keep your recipes on it" marketing.) The hoemmade units weren't any better, of course, just much cheaper while being even harder to build and use. It was all very neat stuff, of course, and I very likely would have been keenly interested at the time. But completely useless and very easy to dismiss. Sounds familiar? Not a shocking revelation, I suppose. But it was odd to think about a modern set of technologies as possibly being in the same situation. It's not hard to invent scenarios in which home 3D printing is amazing, but it is certainly hard to see how a RepRap or MakerBot or even a high end commercial unit can get there. And maybe the analogy is false. Physical objects tend not to scale as omg well with time as electronics do. The inherent physical limits are already a lot closer. I'm still not going to get a 3d printer any time soon, for all the reasons listed above. I've got more than enough interesting hobbies at the moment, thank you very much. But I'm definitely left wanting to keep an even closer eye on what is happening there. This entry was originally posted at http://gfish.dreamwidth.org/353585.html where it has received  comments. | | Wednesday, June 8th, 2011 | | 9:43 pm |
EL Wire Interface Kit
(Post mirrored from here.) As I've vaguely mentioned in a couple of posts, I've been working on productizing the the EL wire interface cards I used in the Lightsuit. This involved getting a custom circuit board printed, which was a first for me. Designing some simple packaging and documentation was also fun. It isn't anything fancy, but it is entirely functional. The kit was finished just in time for the Kitsap Mini Maker Faire last week. That makes it's past time to make the official announcement online: the Attoparsec Eight Channel EL Wire Interface Kit is now available! What can this kit do for you? Control up to 8 strands of EL wire from a microcontroller. Why would you want to do that? Because it's awesome -- and can be lot more interesting than just having it blink. Setting up that little demo took a couple of hours. For an example of what can be done with a little bit more effort... The kit is selling for $20 in person, $22.50 online with shipping included. Plenty of time left before That Event In The Desert to do something really cool. Just saying. This entry was originally posted at http://gfish.dreamwidth.org/353501.html where it has received  comments. | | Tuesday, June 7th, 2011 | | 4:03 pm |
future morals
So, I've been seeing this thing about texting in theaters being forwarded all around, and I'm responding very negatively to it and the kind of attention it has received. I'm not exactly sure why, but it really raises my blood pressure. It feels very ugly to me. (Note, the specifics of this incident do not interest me much, as little of the commentary praising it have had any knowledge of it either. I'm addressing just the response here.) Partly, I just can't imagine why anyone would care that much about someone texting. Particularly in a theater that serves food! If you were so concerned about avoiding distractions, why would you be there in the first place? But even besides that fact, is texting really that much more distracting than the occasional whisper or giggle? It strikes me as a weird hissy fit, to want to watch a movie in public and then get all bent out of shape when the environment is slightly out of your control. Adults should be able to deal with that. I worry that we're developing a counterpart to "family friendly" in even explicitly adult areas that is equally stiffling and restrictive, like we can barely stand to be in public at all, but if we must then it had better be micromanaged down to the smallest detail. Partly, it reminds me of the tedious and lingering anti-cellphone populism of the turn of the century. Now it's part of a larger reaction against people being connected all the time. Which I guess annoys some people? Multitasking is a survival trait now, so get used to it. Being network connected makes me better. I'm smarter, faster at accomplishing goals, I have a better memory, I'm more social. So I take it poorly when someone wants in any way to shut that down because of vague politeness concerns. Can it be done rudely? Sure! That's no reason for a blanket ban. Maybe the lowest brightness settings on phones could stand to be even lower. Mine certainly could, and I'd welcome that change. (On my Nexus One, the Kindle app can actually take the screen darker than the system settings can. Weird.) But I'm getting really sick of seeing self-righteous complaints about "are things online really that much more interesting than real life". Well, yes, often they are, because online is THE ENTIRE REST OF THE WORLD. If the fact that ALL OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE is sometimes more interesting than making smalltalk with you, I don't think the problem here is with me. Partly, so much of the commentary is focusing on the caller's word choice. The undertones of classism are really unpleasant. And, of course, lots of misogyny coming out of the woodwork as well. I dunno. My reaction is obviously emotional, but so is everyone else's. I'm pretty comfortable not being on the side of the "yeah, fuck that bitch!" internet patrol. This entry was originally posted at http://gfish.dreamwidth.org/353255.html where it has received  comments. | | Friday, June 3rd, 2011 | | 9:35 am |
My wish
I want to build an underground lair. Comfortable, though without too many distractions. I want it to be able to host about half a dozen people indefinitely. I want it to lock from the outside. I want there to be a big screen in the center which has a live feed of what I'm seeing and hearing, where ever I am. Around the conference table in front of the screen would be a series of microphones. Each one, when triggered, transmits into an earpiece I'd always be wearing. I want to kidnap Aaron Sorkin, Joss Whedon, James Goldman (The Lion in Winter), Donald Stewart (The Philadelphia Story) and Charles Lederer (His Girl Friday). Maybe a couple others, too. As I go about my daily life, their job will be to follow what I am doing, and feed me witty dialog, Cyrano-style. I could listen to all their suggestions and choose the best. There should probably be some kind of dispenser of writer treats, to reward whoever came up with the best line. I realize this would be a violation not only of human rights but also the laws of physics, as I'd need a time machine to make it happen. I don't care. And, of course, I want all the children of the world to join hands and sing in the spirit of peace and harmony. This entry was originally posted at http://gfish.dreamwidth.org/352997.html where it has received  comments. | | Wednesday, June 1st, 2011 | | 11:02 pm |
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