Category: Personal Projects
Back to my first love
Seeing the work that I mostly do now, you would never guess that the only degree I hold is for Visual Communication (Graphic Design). For many years I worked as a print and publications Art Director, not even sure if that title exists any more. I was good at it and I loved it so much. The stress, deadlines, intense negotiations, last minute Canadian press checks, and the countless best practices you had to follow. It all made up some of the most exhilarating and eventful years of my life and just in time for me to turn 21 and learn how to drink.
Every now and then I get to jump back into that world and work with a print house. Sometimes I feel like a blind man when it comes to the higher level hardware and programming stuff that find myself working on more and more. I am learning quickly, but I do get stuck from time to time. Talking to a printer about a print job though… that is more like watching a tennis match at Wimbledon. Though I am not up on the latest print tech, I can speak the language well. There is no need to dumb things down.
“I need single sided full color prints on 7mil vinyl stock and can you run that on digital because we only need 4 of each out of 20 prints. What is the turnaround?”
I know that this makes me a total geek, but I totally get off on these types of exchanges. In some ways I am sad that the pace of tech will inevitably make printed media obsolete. However, if I live long enough to see it, I will enjoy telling stories of how we once put ink on paper.
Why care about MIT App Inventor?
The other day I made a post about using App Inventor to create a simple UI for the Particle Photon. I have also been working on a project that involves an internet connected Weather Cloud. To make it easy for the owner to control this cloud, I have put together and Android app.
This works much faster that using something like IFTTT and requires no additional libraries like Blynk.
This brings up an interesting observation when it comes to IOT. If you want to interact with your devices, there are not a lot of good ways to go about it.
You can throw some Ajax onto your web server. If you have a web server that is.
Connect your devices API to another companies API and send your data on an epic journey when you are often in the same room as the device you are sending data to.
Make your own API and take pride that you have joined a legacy of frustrated developers world wide. Then scrap it all to use IFTTT just so much easier.
You could add a few new libraries to your firmware so that it can talk to a custom UI app like Blynk. This is actually not a bad option except that I should not have to add a new library to exploit the basic HTTP interaction protocol that comes standard with the Particle API.
Going back to the web server thing, you can just use a simple HTML page and form data for interaction. This just leaves your device credentials open for the world to see.
This is the problem with IOT right now. There are lots of ways to interact with devices, but no really good way to just go from user to device for the average person. App Inventor gives us a quick fix by letting us create an app that just uses HTTP GET and POST requests while keeping the credentials private. However, we need something better. An app that uses basic the preexisting protocol with an intuitive UI.
This is what I am working on at the moment with Vince at SoDo MakerSpace. An app like Blynk with no additional libraries, IFTTT without the additional API hooks, and Ajax without all of the coding.
I feel like this will help to open the door to the dream of IOT for the masses.
The Techno Cyber Monk rides again.
I am on my way to the MakerSpace to finish up a few last minute things, then it is off to #ECCC. I installed a few dreads and have my Adafruit powered War Hammer.
A friend once said that I looked like some sort of Techno Cyber Monk walking down the street.
Such a nice day
This is the first day when it has been nice weather and I don’t have loads of work to do. So I thought it would be nice to take a trip to get some plants for the garden.
Along the way I stopped to take some photos of some blown out windows from the coffee house that exploded a few weeks ago.
While all of the shops still have plywood in the windows…
most have gotten artists to paint them with colorful murals. Here are a few from around the neighborhood.
Later I got a bag full of plants.
Then I got the garden all set up.
Lettuce is on the Left, herbs, root veggies, then spinach and other cook-able greens.
What do you think of the Ghostbusters Trailer Disaster?
I totally agree with this and got a bit of flack from people for not liking the idea of it since the first poster photo. Let’s face it, Hollywood is predictable and even if it were an all man cast it would be the same rehashed jokes mixed with some modern pop culture references and CGI. While I am not entirely against remakes, I am against a studio taking a ground breaking movie and redoing it “the right way”.
You can not compare movies like Star Wars, Terminator, Indiana Jones, Aliens, and Evil Dead with the modern day remakes. They created a new thing that changed the game. They may not look as slick as the movies we make today, but they are a perfect blend of storytelling and creative effects. It’s like saying; “Jim Henson was good, but we have way better puppets now”. Yes, we have some amazing people making amazing puppets, but I bet you that every last one of them will tribute their success to Jim Henson.
If Hollywood wants to do more remakes, try doing them with franchises that did not do well because they were ahead of the times.
The Last Star fighter… why is this not a thing yet!!!
The Black Cauldron live action movie… From the books, not Disney.
Anyway, that is all I have to say about it.
Some times I feel like…
A wizard or soothsayer when I decide to go out on an adventure.
Last night a few of us went to the art walk to see the public opening of a sculpture that I helped with by adding motion and lighting to. This was at the Method gallery and it was rather busy all night.
As we viewed some of the other artists, we visited the studio of Suzanne Tidwell. She is responsible for some of that Yarn Bombing that goes on in the city from time to time. In her collection there were some of these brightly colored poles that she was selling. They were from a large commission to make a field of Cat tails in the wetlands around a university. Now one of them is in our garden.
However, since I purchased this piece near the beginning of our art walk, I had to carry it triumphantly for the rest of the night. Me, with my LED scarf and a yarn covered staff… Wizard.
Www.Suzannetidwell.com