August 28, 2006
BarCamp Stanford Summary
I gave my current talk on ubicomp mashups and glue code. Slides from that talk are available as a pdf.
I also started a wiki of links and references to useful ubicomp mashup tools. Please contribute your favorite glueware.
On Sunday afternoon, Jesse Z. and I build flickr-video-makr, a web service that generates short mpeg movie snippets based on a fulltext search of the Flickr image database. Enter a search string (e.g., "SF skyline") and how many images you want (e.g, 50), and a minute later, download an mpeg video of matching images to drop into your PowerPoint /Keynote/.. presentation. Link to a live demo site will be up soon. Slides from our five minute demo.
August 27, 2006
First Prototype of the Color Field Camera
The color field camera blends a live video recording with flickr images that match the color of the object center of your view. This video shows a first test: the color fields on the left monitor are used as camera input; the right monitor shows the graphics displayed on the LCD screen inside the camera.
Busycle
I took a ride on the Busycle today at Stanford - too much fun, as long as you're not going uphill...
August 23, 2006
Computer Art
Jim Campbell's formula for computer art. How true.
Rings
Just finished a five week intro to jewelry making and metal smithing at the Crucible in Oakland. Here are the fruits of my labor:
There's also a Flickr set
August 2, 2006
Big Red Buttons & Keyboard Controllers
I found a suitable "big red button" for our whiteboard capture system in the Staples Easy Button (TM). Instructions how to gut one of these and use it as a general purpose momentary switch are documented in a Flickr set.
You can then connect the button to d.tools, Phidgets or some other interface kit. Another solution is to hack a keyboard controller and have your button send normal key presses to a PC. Following the directions at Instructables I took apart an old Dell PS/2 QuietKey keyboard and made a custom breakout board that exposes the numerals and some function keys:
I just finished designing a nicer breakout PCB (see below), when I discovered that folks from the Arcade game community sell keyboard controller boards like the I-Pac or the KeyWiz for $20 to 30. Oh well.
Experience Sketching Cont'd
The Experience Sketching project was renamed Ex-A-Sketch. We re-cut a more academic video explaining the whole shebang which will be shown at Ubicomp'06 in Irvine, CA as part of their video program. You can download the movie in Quicktime H.264 or MPEG2 format. There's also a 2-page extended abstract to go along with it.