Avatar / Mini Me App

Background

During my Master's studies in Electrical Engineering I took some programming courses. One course that I enjoyed was called, "Visual Interfaces to Computers." It was about the many ways that computers can obtain and use visual data from the real world. Since that time I have had several ideas on novel ways to use visual data.

In a completely unrelated line of thought I often think about pictures that people use to represent themselves in chat windows, gaming icons, Facebook, forums, and the many other virtual worlds. These little self-representations are called avatars. I always have a hard time figuring out what picture to use. I don't like pictures of myself, but I can never think of any one thing I like SO MUCH that I would use that as my avatar.

The Idea

Create a cell phone app (I guess there could be PC / MAC and online options as well) that will take a front and side image of you and create a virtual likeness of yourself. To be clear, this is not a 3D scanning app. This would be something much more rudimentary. The app would identify the location and shape of head, body, arms and legs. It would create a cartoonish figure by matching the shapes from the picture against a database of common shapes. Then it would analyze the head in more detail to get shape and color information on the hair, ears, eyes, nose, mouth, etc. and match those features against the database of features to find matches. The output would be a cartoon, 3D likeness of yourself that could be dressed up, altered, colored, etc. You could rotate and zoom the model and save pictures that could be used as avatars.

The part that makes this idea novel from existing versions is that it creates the avatar based off real-life images.

Progress

12/02/2014 - Some similar ideas already exist, but not in exactly the way I envision.

• Yahoo used to have an avatar generator that was very limited but is no longer supported.
• Nintendo Mii Characters were introduced on the Wii.
• Second Life has the most detailed avatars.
• Awesome 2.5D face from photo at Site Pal.
• Other sites

But I haven't found anything that makes a full 3D avatar from from pictures.

Water Jouncers

Background

I really have no idea why I thought of this. The kids woke me up early and I couldn't fall back to sleep. While laying in bed this morning I got a bunch of ideas. My brain is a single-thread processor. It's like a railroad track but there are a million switches. I think along one thread, sometimes detouring on tangents, evaluating ideas more deeply or completely switching directions on a new but related thought. I often backtrack and take different switches that I marked as interesting along the way. Conversations are like this. Jenn and I sometimes find it fun to trace conversations backwards and see all the different switch points.

Anyways, I'm sure there was some half-logical track that got me onto running across the water.

The Idea

A stilt contraption that displaces water allowing you to run across a water surface. First solve the mechanics of water displacement and find workable human input scenarios. One possible answer is to displace lager surface area like a lizard. Problem is with retraction speed. Evaluate an artificial webbed foot that expands on contract, putting force into springs. Then upon contraction the springs pull the webbing in and propel the foot out of the hole of displaced water. Or maybe the actual foot never enters the hole. Maybe it's only the mechanical device goes into the pocket, and the springs pull it out again, reset by the force of every step.

Progress

11/27/2014

Lizard that can run on water

Robot that can run on water

Just for Fun:

Fake but Fun

Jeff's Miracle Boots

No-Boat Water Skis

Background

The Aquaskipper has proven that human power can propel a person above the water using hydro foils. People have attempted self-propelled water skis in the past, but the designs were all horrible. The Mythbusters' Adam Savage tried a typical approach of floating pontoons with flaps for propulsion. They turned out to be unstable and not mobile. What we need a good, functional design.

The Idea

I need to sit down and determine the physics required to keep a person on top of the water using a combination of buoyancy and propulsion. Then I need to explore the design space around these two factors and design water skis that operate similar to the principals used in the Aquaskipper. In my mind I envision something like cross-country skis for water. Cross-water skis?

Progress

11/27/2014:

A Purely Buoyant Solution - Archimedes' Principle

Put simply, the buoyant force on a submerged object is equal to the weight of displaced water. For a purely buoyant design this means displacing enough water to hold up a person. Assuming a weight of 80 kg (roughly the average American male) at standard temperature and pressure, this means displacing approximately 80 liters of water. Sounds like a large volume, but that equates to two skis that are 25 cm wide, 10 cm deep and 160 cm long. So I guess Adam Savage had it about right with his big dorky skis (for the record I was rooting FOR him).

In my opinion this is the worst way to design these skis. This is the maximum footprint of a workable design, so we should be able to stay well below that size by requiring the person to move to stay afloat. More like the Auqaskipper which uses little buoyant force.

A Purely Dynamic Solution - Barefoot Skiing

A rule of thumb for barefoot skiing speeds says take your weight in pounds, divide by two and add 20 miles per hour. This gives around 37.5 mph or 60 kph. That's really fast. The Aquaskipper obviously goes much slower than that. I found a paper on water skiing biomechanics that showed a chart of rope load that was half the skier's weight while going 15 kph.

Arduino Decibel Alarm for Noisy Kids

Background

My wife and I are night-owls but our children are early risers. We used to get up with them every morning, but have slowly trained them to do their morning routine by themselves. The only problem with this arrangement is when the kids decide to reenact "Lord of the Flies." They can get very noisy, interrupting my precious sleep. I get really cranky when I haven't had enough sleep. The kids are very responsive when I tell them to be quiet, but they quickly return to their activities and resume their loud volumes before I can drift back to happy land.

If my wife or me sits down with the kids and constantly reminds them to be quiet, then they do pretty well. But then only one of us gets to sleep (usually me). I just wish there was some kind of electronic babysitter that could tend the to the kids' volume during that hour between six and seven in the morning.

The Idea

Use an electret microphone on an Arduino to listen to the kids as they play. When their noise level goes too high then it will trigger a recorded message that will encourage the kids to be quiet.

This could be used in multiple ways. If noise a single, short noise spike is detected (like a shriek) then it could play a nice recording of Dad saying, "Remember to be quiet kiddies." If the volume is steadily rising it could say, "Hey, your getting out of control, time to do something more quiet like reading a book." Finally, if the volume stays steadily loud it could play something truly frightening.

Progress

11/27/2014 - I've got an Arduino, and an SD card kit that can be used to play MP3 files. I just need to find a suitable speaker and microphone. Instead of a speaker I've got an FM transmitter that can be connected to the Arduino and I could turn on the radio to a blank channel. I think a speaker would be easier, and more portable.

Hardware Device to Make a DVD Player Act Like a Hard Drive

Background

I'm always in the pursuit to maximize the utility and convenience of my Home Theater PC (HTPC). For me this means finding a balance between cost, performance, footprint and versatility. I want to be able to play DVDs, watch Netflix, YouTube and possibly even some light gaming. This is all available on a Windows platform, but that comes with the cost of a Windows license and the hardware to keep up with Windows bloat. I've tried Linux, but it just doesn't support Netflix reliably. Android has everything except DVD support. There are some new Android mini PCs that would work great if I could just find a compatible DVD player.

While searching for DVD drives I found other people who want to access DVDs on other devices. It seems that hard drives will work on EVERYTHING...TVs, phones, tablets, computers, etc. Why can't DVDs have the same support?!

The Idea

We could solve everyone's DVD problems by creating a hardware device sits between the DVD player and the computer / TV / android device. The device would read the DVD player but make it look like a hard drive to the computer.

I know that this device is 100% possible. In the worst case scenario the device is a mini computer that plays the DVD and transcodes it into an MPEG file. I guess basically a hardware transcoder. That's not cost effective. To be cost effective it would have to operate on a very low level, reading the DVD to see what options are available, then present them as a limited set of files on a hard drive, each file name representing a different set of movie options.

I think the biggest hurdle is solving the problem at the file transfer level. You have to present files that are readable by the computer, which for really stupid devices means video and audio files. Dumb devices only know how to read different file formats, so how do you convert the request for a byte stream into a DVD read? It may not be possible to get that low. Maybe transcoding is the closest you can get.

Progress

 11/27/14 -I really don't have the background to research this device right now, and I'm not interested in learning that low level programming, so this idea is gonna sit on the shelf, probably forever.

A Study of Adhesion Strength in 3D Printing

Background

I'm having terrible adhesion problems on my new 3D Printer. It's keeping me from making progress on other projects that rely on 3D printed parts. While researching a fix I discovered that this is a universal problem among hobbyists, and everyone has their own solution including glue mixtures, taping schemes, heated beds of varied temperatures, cleaning solutions, various print bed materials, calibration routines, etc. I understand that everyone has a slightly different build, and those builds will add variation. But I think that excuse is over-used because of the lack of usable data. The common theme seems to be people trying one thing after another until they find something that works. Very unscientific.

I really don't want to take a "shotgun" approach to this problem, but I don't really want to use my free time systematically designing and running experiments to collect the necessary scientific data. It would require a force gauge which costs around $100 for a decent unit, and I would rather burn that extra money on something more fun.

As an engineer I get this type of data from companies who are dedicated to performing experiments to collect data on heat capacities, enthalpies, transfer coefficients, etc. etc. etc. We just pay someone else to collect the data. I haven't found an entity in the 3D Printing world that has undertaken the science of all these little problems that hobbyists face.

The Idea

Since I'm losing my job in June 2015 I'll have some free time. I could probably dedicate myself to a systematic study of 3D Printing problems. I'd design and perform experiments on print adhesion using different substrates, temperatures, filaments, surface treatments, etc. Then I could publish and hopefully sell the information to pay for my time and the capitol required to perform the studies.

My big concern is how to distribute the content in a manner that will help pay for the time and capitol invested into the project. I'm a big believer in publishing this stuff for free, but there's so much work to be done I don't think I could afford to go unpaid for that long. Maybe I could get funding up front via KickStarter so I can reduce the risk of recovering a personal investment. That would also help reduce the risk of people just copying and redistributing the content. If it was paid for up front then I could just post the results for free. Otherwise I'd have to look into a distribution method to protect the copyright, like a website or cell phone app.

Progress

 11/10/14 - Just an idea so far. How do I gauge the potential interest from the community?

Sopwith for Android

The Idea

I was going to download a soundboard app to use with my Halloween costume when I saw an ad for a pixelated toy airplane game. The "8-Bit" genre is a fad right now, one that I like. The game looked like fun (can you tell that from a single icon?) and it reminded me of an old DOS game that I used to play called Sopwith. You fly a Sopwith Camel biplane, drop bombs on the enemy base and try to shoot down enemy airplanes and tanks. I loved that game (I had to be younger than 8 years of age).

So my nostalgic adult self wished to play again, but on my phone. Of course nobody else is going to make an Android clone, so I will have to take it upon myself. I've been wanting another project to improve my programming skills, and this is something simple enough I think I could deliver an app in under a year (at the rate I usually complete my projects).

Progress

It turns out I was wrong, someone already made a clone called Sopwith Barons. Despite being an upgrade, the graphics look very "paintshop"-ish. It is done with basic 3D geometries on a 2D game stage. Personally I would have gone for 8-Bit genre keeping it a 2D sprite game to give it more tie back to the original with the modern feel that I've grown to enjoy.

Automated Home Library

The Idea

Tonight Jenn and I were talking about what we should do with the spare bedroom. We just moved our two-year-old out of the crib and into a twin, sharing a room with her older sister. We could buy another bed and turn it back into a guest bedroom. We could turn it into extra storage space, or expand our office and scrap-booking space. I've always liked the idea of a library or reading room where the kids could sit and read. But it's only the idea that's nice. In practice the kids pull all the books off the shelves and onto the floor. So talked about different ways to store the books or limit access to keep things somewhat controlled so we can avoid the hassle of getting them to clean-up everyday. I mean, if there's something we DON'T need it's another room to clean.

I'm a process engineer with training in lean manufacturing. I spend a great deal of time at work cleaning up messes, self-induced or otherwise. To avoid future methods we use a method called poka-yoke, which is Japanese for mistake-proofing (literally yokeru=avoid poka="inadvertent error").

So we thought, maybe we keep the books in boxes, but label the boxes so we can easily find the books. Then we can control access and avoid the mess. But the problem becomes awareness. We forget which books we have, and if the kids can't see them, then the kids won't ask to read them. We could catalog the books and have a list. Even better if there were pictures too. Maybe in a computer so it could be easily searched or sorted. Yeah, now we're literally building a library.

So I thought, how cool would it literally build a library. I don't want to staff it...maybe I could have a robot do all the work. Let's take the room and turn it into a Redbox-style machine with a computer interface. The books would all be stored in custom shelving - horizontal slots with barcodes. The kids could pick a book from the catalog and the robot would go get the book and send it through a slot in the door. The robot would run on a track and get instructions from the computer on where to get and store each book. Then I could limit access to two books per child. They gotta return a book before they can get any more. Redbox style...just put it in the slot and the computer / robot puts it away.

Progress

I really like this idea, but I don't want to totally dedicate that room. It would be a cool "look what I can do" project, but I don't know that I'll ever pull the trigger. Sometimes it's just fun to know that I could actually do that.

3D Texture Generator

The Idea

When I took a computer graphics course as part of my master's degree I learned about using textures and skins to make objects more life-like. In one lecture we touched briefly on the idea of 3D textures which can be applied to voxels in a volume or in slices to surfaces. From there I realized there could be value in creating realistic 3D textures to be used in a variety of contexts.

The world is naturally perceived in three dimension. Instead of trying to draw a realistic looking 2D picture you could instead create a realistic 3D volume and slice out whatever surface you need to display. The main advantage of this method is the ability to parametrically generate 3D volumes using actual material properties. The visual properties are essential - color, reflectivity, scattering - but even mechanical, electrical and chemical properties could be used to generate aggregate materials. For example, you could create a realistic 3D concrete texture using the properties of cement, gravel, sand, etc. A program could accept inputs for material types and mix ratios, calculate the resulting structure, and apply the resulting visuals to the structure.

By compiling a large number of such calculators you could create a software package (web-based?) that can create 3D textures for many different materials. It could be a handy tools in the belt of computer graphics programmers. It might save them alot of work, and give them a way to easily add variety to their projects. Textures could be randomly generated each time and cut down on the amount of repetition in games, movies, etc.

Progress

I'm not actively pursuing this idea right now. I'm not a full-fledged programmer, and one of my pet-peeves is bad software written by someone totally disconnected from the end-user. If my career ever moves towards the gaming industry then I will come back to revisit this.

Whiteboard Alternative

The Idea

I work in the semiconductor industry, and nearly everyone has a whiteboard in their cubicle to assist the many discussion we have about equipment, processes, statistics, etc. Whiteboards are a cheap, effective, and relatively clean alternative to projectors, blackboards, etc. But they still require consumables, and they're not totally clean.

For a while I've been wanting to see if I could develop a better alternative. It would be nice if I could improve cost and invent something manufacturable and marketable, but at the very least it would be fun to have something unique for me to use.

Progress

Giant "Magna Doodle"

This would be a 3'x4' Magna Doodle board. Magna Doodles use an opaque ferrofluid trapped inside small cells. When a magnet is touched to the surface, the iron particles in the fluid come to the surface creating dark spots / pixels.

Pros:

• No mess
• No consumables
• Variety of cheap magnets

Cons:

• Poor resolution
• Monochrome
• Wears out with use
• Expensive to piece together or custom build one large sheet
• Hard to erase just one small section

Magnetic Viewing Film

 Viewing film operates on a similar principle as the magnadoodle, but the fluid cells are much smaller, and typically green. I've never played with it in person, I should buy a sample to see how well it would work.

Pros:

• No mess
• No consumables
• High Resolution
• Variety of cheap magnets

Cons:

• Monochrome
• Slow response?
• Have to piece multiple sheets
• Hard to erase just one small section?
• Fragile 

8/9/2014 - I got my viewing film last week, just a small sample. It's really fun to play with, but the difficulties in using it for drawing became quite clear. The film is plenty responsive; it's too responsive. It can produce decent contrast, but when you pull a permanent magnet away the contrast changes as the fields move through the film. Wherever you start and stop a line will look blurry. You'd have to use an electromagnet that activates when you touch the surface. That's doable, but more hassle. The last drawback is with erasing. You have to hit the entire board with a uniform field from the backside. That's just a little too much bulk and complexity for me to mess with right now. 

E-Ink

 E-Ink is a new technology used in some e-readers. Instead of using a ferrofluid, electronic ink puts a dark ink/oil inside the microcavities along with charged, white particles. The microcavities are coated top and bottom with a conductive film. Applying a charge to the film can move the white balls to the top or the bottom to provide pixels and contrast.

Pros:

• High resolution
• Long life
• Robust housing
• Multiple colors possible.

Cons:

• Requires electricity (could use manual generation)
• Micro-fabrication is expensive and difficult

This is my favorite method. I would like to learn how they manufacture these displays so I could make one of my own. I emailed the company to see if they would sell me a batch of ink that I could put on my own surface. Of course I got no response.

Giant BoogieBoard

The BoogieBoard is an LCD display that does not require power to retain an image. It uses chiral liquid crystals to form a cholesteric, bi-stable display. The crystals are oriented in parallel planes which align in a cork-screw fashion. Within each plane the crystals lie flat, aligned uni-directionally. This crystal medium will selectively reflect light depending on crystal orientation. I found the actual manufacturing process in a whitepaper written by Kent Displays. I have enough information on this idea to actually try building a device.

Micro Magnet Array

Giant grid of magnets with poles all in the same orientation. Pull forward or push back. Same principle as magna doodle only with magnets instead of iron. Magnest would have to be small enough and far enough apart to reduce their influence on each other, and that will limit resolution.

Dirt Drawing / Sand Writing

Writing in dirt may be the oldest form of written communication. For this project I'd use sand. I'm sure there are several ways this concept could be realized. You could have a tray of sand and use it like they do in the high contrast, flat sand art. Or you could have a packed surface using etched lines. I would need to think of a good way to make a vertical unit. It would be heavy.

Generalizing the Principles

Okay, now that I've gone through a few different ideas I think I can start distilling the underlying principles by which these devices operate. Basically you are creating contrast between a background medium by adding or moving another material. The forces being applied are electric, electrostatic, magnetic, and direct physical contact. If the background medium is liquid, and the secondary material can diffuse in the medium then the secondary material must be physically isolated to keep it evenly dispersed. If the secondary material can freely move, then you must deal with a mess or have a recycling method.

Types of Forces:

• Applied
• Direct
• Pneumatic
• Hydrolic
• Friction
• Spring
• Gravity
• Electromagnetic
• Electrostatic
• Magnetism
• Nuclear

Job from Hell, Reversed

Homer in Hell. Fair Use. The Simpsons is Copyright Fox.

Why This Post?

Sometimes our choices don't always turn out the way we predict. Even things we enjoy on the surface might not yield the same satisfaction when taken to more extremes. I've discovered this to be the case with my career choice of Chemical Engineering. I like the school work initially, but as things progressed deeper I enjoyed the coursework less. Work pays well, but I find that a paycheck alone isn't enough. I'm not like Homer Simpson in Treehouse of Horror IV. He was sent to hell and force-fed thousands of donuts as a punishment, but he still enjoyed it. 

This post is an exercise to help me identify a career for which I can be passionate. This is yet another exercise from, "I Could Do Anything: If Only I Knew What It Was," by Barbara Sher. The exercise is to write down the job from heaven, or if you have a hard time with that, the job from hell. I have a very difficult time thinking about the job from heaven and still have the job be a job. I find it much easier to do the job from hell. Does that mean I'm pessimistic?

The Job From Hell

At the job from hell I have to wake up and be to work early every morning. It's in the middle of downtown and I have to fight an hour of heavy traffic every morning just to get there. There is a mandatory morning meeting with the sole purpose of making everyone feel that they are doing a horrible job, but the actual business is ignored. Every day feels exactly the same as the one before because I do the same thing every day, day after day. My managers ask me to do loads of extra work that have no impact on the business' bottom line. I'm never allowed to be creative, or inventive or think outside the box. I have to write reports all day that no one ever reads or uses. All the technology I use is antiquated, the software doesn't work, and support from other departments is non-existent.

There are several meetings a day, but most of the time is spent arguing. People don't listen to each other and never work out solutions that will help everyone accomplish their work. As a result there's always too much to get done. Because daily work is so inefficient, my boss stays late every night and expects everyone else to do the same thing. Even when you leave you're always on-call. Vacation, sick days and anything outside of work is treated with contempt.

Because the company is trying so hard to save money, I don't even have a dedicated computer. Instead they are rotating pods, so you can never setup your workspace individually or efficiently. Everyone in the entire company sits in the same huge room, and everyone can see everyone. It's terribly distracting.

I'm sure I could add in more details, but I've written enough that I have a fairly good understanding of what really bugs me in a job. I hate when people waste time and energy on each other instead of on the problem at hand. I also hate limitations, especially the ones that are arbitrary. I hate monotony.

Double-Negative

This would be the Job Not from Hell:

I get to live wherever I want, because I get to fly a helicopter or airplane to work. And sometimes I can work from home, or just check-in while traveling with the family. The software systems at work are brilliant. All of the metrics necessary to track success as an individual, group and company are effortlessly generated and communicated by computers, so there's no need for mandatory morning meetings. When metrics predict any course deviations then people just get together to make early corrections. They do this because they are intrinsically motivated. They like making things run smoothly and minimizing problems.

There's basically no need for bosses. Conflict isn't eliminated, but my co-workers are able to resolve conflict without it becoming personal. They address problems objectively, then execute when a compromise has been reached.

I get to do a variety of things. And when I get bored of one thing or feel I have mastered my work, I get to learn something else. My work is technically challenging, but I'm surrounded by talented and experienced people and we help each-other improve our abilities. My work provides products or services that make people happy in a way that I get to see and sometimes experience with them. The company has a vision that is intrinsically understood by it's employees. Because we work on the same level with our customers we don't have to worry much about money, it naturally comes a result of our desire to create value.

Because we are innovative, creative, and do things before anyone else, I can afford to take time off, be sick, go to my kids' activities, and go home at a decent hour. But work is so engaging, that sometimes I like to stay a few extra hours when I'm making a breakthrough on something new.

It's funny, while I was coming up with this flipped version of a job, I thought to myself, "I want to be Kevin Flynn at the end of Tron (1982)."

Meaningful Work

Why This Post?

When I discovered Barbara Sher, and that I am a scanner, I bought two of her books: "Refuse to Choose" and "I Could Do Anything: If Only I knew What It Was." Even though she wrote "I Could Do Anything" first I finished reading and doing the exercises in "Refuse to Choose" because I had to learn about and activate the true scanner inside of me.
But now I started on "I Could Do Anything" and I'm working through the activities she suggests in that book. The first one I'm doing here is to define what "Meaningful Work" means to me. The premise of the book so far is that inside we really know what we want to do but have built a wall of reasons that keep us from actually doing anything. The purpose of the book is to identify and address the bricks in the wall, or the hurdles in the race or whatever mind blocks and barriers we have devised for ourselves.

My Nebulous Concept of Meaningful Work

So what is meaningful work? Right now I work in manufacturing making low power computer chips that mostly get used in consumer electronics like cell phones and laptops. My job is to help improve the yield from our manufacturing line. I frequently feel like my work is not meaningful, that it doesn't improve anyone's like for the better. I mean, whoop-dee-doo I helped make your battery last 5 minutes longer (indirectly). So I apparently think that meaningful work improves the quality of people's lives.
You could argue that making cheaper and faster cell phones and laptops makes them more accessible, and that technology and information improve people's lives. But somehow I feel like it's not making an impact in an area that really matters or to people who really need it. So nested in those feelings are two more concepts. First, meaningful work involves improvements that are considered more than just convenient. Second, meaningful work serves people who have greater than average need for improved life.
Somewhere in my brain is the idea that meaningful work is also something that could be universally recognized as "Good." Somehow, if others can't recognize the immediate value of a labor then to me it doesn't seem to merit the label of Truly Meaningful Work. This would be opposed to the concept of immoral or amoral endeavors, so I think there is an implied morality in my concept of meaningful work. There should be some underlying principle, motivation or cause that underpins and gives a foundation upon which the work is based.
That's really nebulous, I know, but that is what's in my brain. Sorry for being simple-minded?

Examples of What I Would Call Worthy Work

The following list is not perfect, not complete, and not necessarily things I want to do as a career. But it is a list of things that I tend to think of as being meaningful.

• Researching Cures for Physical Ailments and Disease
• e.g. Cancer, Malaria, Ebola, Infant Mortality, HIV/AIDS, Polio, etc.
• Work involving disabilities
• Education
• Counseling, Social Work, Community Improvement
• Energy Research, Improvement, Innovation
• Community Services, Fire Department, Police, Military, etc.

The Gist of this Exercise

The interesting thing is that practically none of the occupations that interest me fall under this classification. I'm more interested in technology, making things, video games. But when I think about those jobs I get a nag in my mind that says, "Those are just fanciful pastimes. They don't actually make people's lives better, and they have plenty of negatives associated with them."
In her book, Barbara basically says that this self-made picture of worthy work may be working as another impediment to doing the work that really makes us happy. Should be interesting to see if such an important seeming concept can really be altered.

Life Tracker

Background

I've always liked the idea of keeping a journal, but I wish it could be easier. Putting my thoughts and feelings on paper not only makes them more real to me, but also gives me a chance to reflect on what happened and make decisions for the day to follow. My problem, as I've mentioned before, is that I hate writing. I have a difficult time coming up with the adjectives that accurately describe what I'm feeling and thinking. The time it takes to actually write the words down feels like wasted time, and I don't really enjoy the physical process of writing, I rather abhor it. Finally, even when I get started on a journal, I have a really hard time remembering to stick with it night after night. I think most of my ideas come from my laziness.

 

 The Idea

What if there were a way that I could have a journal without having to sit down and write everything out, and without having to remember to do it every single night? Maybe I could set an alarm that goes off every night to remind me to write? And as long as I'm going to use technology, why don't I type my journal instead? In fact, why don't I just have the computer send me an email that asks me stuff every night, and all I have to do is answer the questions? And what if I could customize the questions? I could track personal goals, feelings, health, wellness, physical fitness, relationships, pretty much anything important that I might want to track on a regular basis. A web form could be used to simplify the entries as much as possible, then spit out an entry using "normal language" (computer-generated).

Now I've got all this data that could easily live in a database. I might as well do something useful with it and apply some statistics to try and find correlations. Does my mood shift seasonally? Is my blood-sugar or well-being affected by my diet? Do I really struggle with meeting my physical fitness goals based on the temperature outside? By drawing correlations the computer can flag me of associations that I should look into. Knowing yourself is one step to improving yourself.

It should all be part of a website with associated mobile apps. You get to choose everything. Notification method (email or app), times, types of questions to fill out. There would have to be a big list of options, and efficient way to present them (maybe a dichotomy). It would be subscription based, and there would be a separate section for analytics.

And of course there must be a script that recommends other adjectives based on the ones you type.

 

Progress

 12/12/2014 - Sometime last year I actually sat down and created a USB drive with a mobile server and WordPress installed. I spent a week trying to figure out the backside of WordPress and decided I hated the whole thing. If I'm going to build a site myself then I'll probably need to write it from scratch. My questions is whether I should invest the time to learn PHP or just stick with ColdFusion. There is probably better front-end support for PHP, but that's a time investment.

I wiped the USB drive and will start fresh with PHP and MySQL. Maybe I should pay someone to help me get started?

Sound Test Website

Background

Back when I was reviewing computer hardware for BenchmarkReviews.com I had the opportunity to learn about audio equipment, performance and files. I only wrote one article that dealt with surround sound, but I quickly learned that it's a format for which there is not a wealth of resources on the internet. At the time I really wanted an objective way to compare the quality of different surround sound formats. I happened across audiocheck.net, a website run by Stephane Pigeon that provides exactly what I wanted, only for stereo sound. I talked to Stephane about adding support for surround sound, but he had a different vision for his site.

The Idea

 What I would like to do is create a website much like his that includes audio files that can be used to test surround sound systems to make sure they are working correctly. I also want a blind test section that plays different audio clips that transitions sounds from one channel to the next (like footsteps, or a driving car or something) and have the user take a test to see if they can correctly identify the motion of the sound. This would provide one objective method to rate different pieces of hardware and different suround sound technologies.

Progress

07/07/2014 - Part of the problem when I first envision such a site was poor audio support by the browsers. Everything had to be performed via download and client-side software. With HTML5 and updated browsers I think this is now a real possibility.

09/13/2015 - It took me a year, but I finally decided on a language to learn. I'm taking the Full Stack Web Developer Nanodegree from Udacity. When I'm done I'll make this page in Python as part of my beginning portfolio...eventually.

Fashion Consultant App

Okay, so I am fashion impaired. I have a terrible time picking out what to wear just from the limited wardrobe I already own, and an even worse time trying to select new clothes. I don't really want to do all the reading required to teach myself how to dress so as to not be an eyesore. Socks and sandals? Who CARES?

Tonight Jenn is asking about what clothes I need. She showed me some shorts and asked which ones looked nice. "I don't even know where to start."

Then it hit me. I need an app to help me dress, and to help me pick out new clothes. At the very basic level I need to be able to input my wardrobe and have the app tell me good combinations for outfits, tell me what I'm missing to make some good combos, and give me advice on what to buy. It needs to integrate with the camera so I can take pictures of the articles of clothing (of course there needs to be a simple camera color calibration). Clothing recognition would be nice, but I've done some coding work on that and it's pretty tough.

Then next time Jenn asks me what I think about a pair of shorts I can just take a picture and have my expert consultant tell me how it fits into my wardrobe.

Maybe you could take it to the next level and take a picture of yourself and have it recommend styles of clothing for you.

Could you really distill a fashion consultant into an app? Maybe not high fashion, but to get an engineer dressed appropriately I think some fashion basics knowledge would be quite feasible.

Build a Scooter

The Idea

For quite some time I've been wanting a kick-scooter that I can use as an adult. I live in suburbia with friends, neighbors and family all within walking distance (I consider a mile to be within walking distance). Some trips require the car (dropping the kids off at school), and others and definitely walking trips (dropping the kids off next door). But some trips fall into that gray area where you're not sure whether to walk or drive or ride a bike. It could be that you're in a hurry, or lazy, or the bike is hung up in the garage, or whatever. For these trips it would be super-awesome to have an adult kick scooter to just grab and go.

I've been planning to buy one, but today while cruising Instructables I remembered an old pair of broken rollerblades sitting in my closet. My problem is that I don't know how to weld (yet), so I'll have to use wood. It was the pallet projects that sparked the idea. So I'll be stripping off the wheels and seeing if I can come up with a sturdy but functional scooter frame.

Progress

11/2/2014 - Just found an awesome, inspiring design. It's a scooter worn like a belt. I'm definitely going to go with something like this, I just need to find some cheap parts...like a curved scrap of metal or high-grade plywood...

5/30/2015 - I'm going to start working downtown. The drive is miserable, so I'm planning to ride the train. But I still have to get to the train station on both ends. Through some more research I found what are called "Last Mile Solutions."

Bolt: ~$600 Skateboard
Solowheel: ~$1,400 Unicycle
EcoReco: ~$1,000 Scooter

05/30/2016 - Over a year later, and I'm still working on this one. I decided to build my own electric long-board using RC parts. I have purchased the following parts:

• Bigfoot 160 5335-245KV Electric Motor
• Zippy 2650 20C Li-PO batteries (x2)
• FVT 120A ESC, 2-6S
• Wii Wireless Nunchuck
• Wiiceiver (from austindavid.com)

The batteries will be wired in parallel through a switch to the ESC. The speed controller communicates through the wiiceiver to the wireless Wii nunchuck which will act as throttle control.

With a friend I built a fiberglass longboard deck to hold the electronics. The piece that has taken me a year to finish is the bracket to mount the motor to the skateboard. Since I have read from others that torque is an issue, I chose to use Caliber trucks which has a distinct truck shape. The difficult part is cutting a mount to match that shape without CNC. Sure, I can spend $100 to get the part, but I'm a cheapskate. So instead I did the far more reasonable thing and bought my own milling machine for $250. Hope to have the bracket milled out within the next couple of weeks!

05/20/2017 - Yet another year gone by, but my board is finally finished! And BOY is it fun to ride!!! It's powerful up a hill, and goes scary fast. I finished the board last year, but I haven't gotten around to posting until now.

03/31/2019 - Well, I rode my board so much that it bit the dust. One of the magnets dislodged from the rotor of my motor. These are cheap motors, so it's difficult to find replacement magnets. I'm now trying to decide what I will do for Mark 2.

One of the most difficult and scary parts of riding an E-Board is stopping or dodging in an emergency. I have electronic brakes that are VERY effective. I can make the board stop almost instantly, but if I'm not balanced right then I go flying off the front. over the last few years it's happened at least twice at high speeds. Luckily I managed to stay on my feet and not get hurt.

The second most difficult part is managing rough and uneven terrain. Even with my 70 mm wheels, I often have to watch where I roll. It's impossible to cross train tracks, and you'd be shocked by how many sidewalks have at least one bump in them over a couple inches high.

The new thing downtown is the Lime and Bird electric scooters. They are just sitting around on the sidewalks and you can rent any one through your cell phone. My original idea was to make an electric scooter, so I think I'm going back to that for MK2. Or does that just make it another MK1?

I'll probably use an adult razor scooter as my platform. I'll see about finding one on the cheep.

TV Screen Protector

I did this project years ago. It's a cheap way to protect your big-screen TV from flying objects (toys specifically). I just recently got the motivation to start sharing past projects, so I wrote an Instructable.
TV-Screen-Protector via Instructables

Update 7/9/14: Yay! I guess they liked my project enough to feature it on the homepage! It's kind of addicting to get positive feedback. Now I'm wondering what else I can make and publish.

Build a 3D Printer

Intro

3D Printing is a manufacturing method in which a "printer" type machine is used to create objects.  Printers can get really fancy and expensive printing things like ceramics, metals and plastics. As a hobbyist I'll be focusing on Fused Deposition Modeling or FDM. This method pushes melted plastic out of a small nozzle and creates plastic objects layer by layer.

This page is just for me to store stuff about 3D printing. Honestly, most of my useful pages are stored in bookmarks on my browser, but the exceptional stuff I'll post here for others to reference.

Printers I Evaluated

• Prusa i3
• Rostock Mini Pro
• RichRap 3DR
• Kossel Mini
• DeltaPrintr
• PrintrBot Simple

What I Bought

I ended up buying a Rostock Mini Pro kit from 3DPrinterCzar. Happy Early Birthday!!! I could have sourced all the parts myself, but I want to spend time building and tinkering, not sourcing and purchasing. I also didn't document the build process, because many others have already done that (e.g. deltarap.org).

Things I Want to Print

• Cell phone grip for playing games
• Cell phone mount for game controller
• Toy gears for the kids (and me)
• Legos
• Construx
• Action Figures drawn by Lewis
• Hobby Boxes
• RPG Figures
• Modular Storage (jewelry, tackle, hardware, electronics, etc.)
• Headphone Stand
• Custom Sun Glasses
• Disposable Tweezers
• Car Rack Mounts (to carry wood for example)
• Parts for rubber-band guns.

Heated Bed

 The Rostock that I ordered does not come with a heated bed that would be required to print using ABS or nylon and other various materials. I perused various options for buying or building a heated bed. I'm going to either buy or make a round kapton tape heater. In the theme of DIY, reprap, etc I liked this post on using resistive wire. I think it might be cheaper to use an aluminum clad heater, but this one is easier for me to do. If I do it this way then I'll use thinner gauge resistance wire, but print a template for laying the wire. I'll put kapton tape over the template and lay the wire into the template grooves so it sticks to the tape. Then peel the template off and press the tape onto the bottom of the print table. It's all theoretical, of course, but I think I'll give it a try.

 Useful Links

• Jérémie FRANCOIS's 3D Printing Blog - He's got some good articles on printer settings, materials, improvements, etc.
•  RepRap.org
• 
  

Non-Insulating Weight Blanket

The Idea

When I sleep I like to have a medium to heavy weight blanket on me. I'm also a little quirky because I also need to cover as much skin as possible, so I typically sleep with socks, long pants and long sleeves. On warm nights I obviously get too hot with all that insulation, so I have to toss the blanket and/or the clothes. This makes it more difficult for me to get a good night's sleep. I'm sure I could learn to live without all my securities, but I like to increase my quality of life when it's convenient. Some people grew up in more difficult circumstances where such securities are practically a necessity. These types of dependencies are commonly tied to autism and Down's syndrome. I identify with people on the spectrum and often suspect and joke that I, myself, am on the spectrum. I've remember one parent's story about how their high needs child would come home at the end of the school day and burrow into a pile of blankets to recover from the unpredictable social jungle that is called Junior High. So I've thought to myself, "Wouldn't it be nice to have the security without the added discomfort?" That's how I came up with my idea of the non-insulating weight blanket. It's a blanket of equivalent weight without the insulating properties. I want one of these blankets, but I can't find one sold anywhere, so I'm going to have to develop it myself.

 Progress

 My favorite blanket right now is a denim blanket made by my wife. It's about the perfect density and provides a secure level of pressure, but it probably falls on the lighter side of a good security blanket. It's 56 inches wide, 70 inches tall, and weighs 4.8 pounds. That's a pressure of 0.0012 psi (or 2.5 feet of air, 0.9 kg/m^3, 84 microbar, 8 pascal, etc.). I found some blankets made for people with sensory processing disorder. A blanket of similar size can be up to 25 pounds, but I think those are designed for temporary therapeutic relief and not meant to be used for an entire night. In any case it seems the acceptable range of pressure is fairly large.

Critical Ratio

My first inclination in such a design is to modify the thickness to possibly exploit the critical insulation ratio. When you insulate a round object the added insulation slows down conduction but speeds up convection. There is a critical insulation thickness such that when your insulation is below the thickness you speed up heat transfer by adding insulation. And when your insulation thickness is above critical adding insulation slows down heat transfer. So my first thought is to estimate the critical ratio for a blanket around a person.

Without going through a bunch of explanation (here's a good link for that) the critical ratio basically comes down to the rate of conduction vs the rate of convection, or k/h. I estimate the thermal conductivity (k) of a denim blanket to be around 0.04 W/m*K. Estimating the convection coefficient (h) is a little harder, but to just get in the very rough ball park let's think about a human body. The internal temp is 37 degrees C, and the room temp is 20C giving a delta of 17C (or Kelvins if you wanna be technical). Using a guess of 2 square meters of surface area, 80 Watts heat generation that gives around 2 W/m^2*K.

So that gives a critical radius of (0.04 W/m*K)/(2 W/m^2*K) = 2cm. So, um, you might be able to cool down a finger...but your whole body ain't gonna fit inside 2 centimeters.

Mesh and Material

If I can't win by changing the thickness of the blanket then I will have to remove some of the insulating material and turn the blanket into more of a mesh. That will cause a hit in density, so I'll have to modify the material composition to increase density. The ideal material would be thermally conductive, easy to wash, easy to sew or press, flexible and cheap.

Material	rho (gm/cm^3)	k (W/m*K)	Washable	Sew/Press	Flexible	Cost ($/lb)
Dirt / Earth
Polypropylene

Micro 3D Printer

While researching different 3D printers I found they all use stepper motors for positional control. It got me thinking what other technologies exist that could be used as replacements to improve cost, accuracy, etc. In my industry we use interferometers for nanometer-scale positioning. I wonder how this could be applied to 3D printing. I doubt it will be as cost effective as stepper motors, but it certainly will improve accuracy. Then I got wondering how small you could make a 3D printer. I haven't seen anyone compete for printing the smallest object yet. Well, if you count a FIB as a 3D printer then this doesn't really matter, but I'm still thinking objects observable with the human eye. It might be a fun way to show what the technology is capable of doing and possibly open up some new markets or applications. So for positioning control you could use simple, amateur interferometers. Maybe modify the kind used for amateur astronomy. There are other positioning technologies that might be better suited. This may also require a change in the actuators for improved accuracy.

Accomplishments and Rewards

This is yet another homework assignment from Barbara Sher to help discover more about what internally motivates me to pick up and drop activities, jobs, projects, and everything else. It's also another way to take time to appreciate the way my personal brain works and celebrate past accomplishments that I previously might have considered failures.

Here is a list of things I've done or accomplished and my personal reward gained from the activity:

Accomplishments
Learned Violin
Learned Cello
Learned Piano
Learned Guitar
Math Olympiad
MATHCOUNTS Best in High School
Chase Youth Award Nominee
High Jump Top Ten in School History
Long Jump Top Ten in School History
Air Force ROTC Scholar
JSHS Poster Presenter
Learned DOS
Learned Windows
Learned Linux
Built Countless Computers
Learned to Fix Computers
Discovered Why I'm on the Earth
Remote Access Apprentice
Math Minor
Chemistry Minor
Bachelors in Chemical Engineering
Masters in Electrical Engineering
Lean Six Sigma Green Belt
Learned to Program
Wrote Lego Tank Video Game
Wrote Skylander Video Game
Learned to Build Electronics
Hiked Lone Peak
Hiked Mt. Olympus
Built a Website for Work
Designed a Model for Auto Auction Prices,
Used Model to Get a Good Deal on a New Car
Became a Manager at Work
Built a 3D Printer

Rewards
Self-Mastery, Music
Self-Mastery, Music
Self-Mastery, Music
Self-Mastery, Music
Self-Mastery, Success
Self-Mastery, Success
Self-Mastery, Science
Self-Mastery, Success
Self-Mastery, Success
Self-Mastery, Flying, Career
Science
Self-Mastery, Computers, Video Games
Self-Mastery, Computers
Self-Mastery, Computers
Self-Mastery, Computers, Building
Self-Mastery, Computers, Helping Others
Ethics
Self-Mastery,  Career
Self-Mastery
Self-Mastery
Self-Mastery, Science, Career
Self-Mastery, Science, Computers, Career
Self-Mastery, Career
Self-Mastery, Improve Utility, Career
Computers, Video Games, Family
Computers, Video Games, Family
Computers, Building
Self-Mastery, Fun
Self-Mastery, Fun
Improve Utility, Career
Improve Utility, Discover
Save Money
Improve Utility, Career
Discovery, Fun, Save Money, Building

This is a work in progress, but I've already learned a few things about myself. My long-term passions are computers, gaming, science, and flying. I'm definitely driven by my desire to be great at what I do, and I want others to recognize my accomplishments. When I'm satisfied with my level of recognition or mastery I tend to move on to something else unless, like video games, I find continual entertainment. I like to take on projects that provide utility and help others, and I also tend to make decisions to save money and based on what I think is right or ethical. While I enjoy music, it doesn't provide the same propulsion that I get from science and computing.

Finally, I realize that I like to gain knowledge for the purpose of creating things.

A Place for Utility and Fun

Embracing my true Scanner self I followed the homework suggested by Barbara and created my "Living Quarters Map." It's a hand-drawn floor-plan of my house in which I've circled projects that I've either completed, started or conceived. Completed projects are circled in green, unfinished projects in magenta, and projects living only in concept are circled in red.

This is not ALL of my projects. There was a whole list of brainstorms that I must have deleted from my phone because I thought I would never get to them. There are also many completed projects that I didn't think worth adding to the list, because I want to spend the time on another project.

I hope soon to add some pictures of completed projects as well as some concept drawings.

What Kind of Tree Are You?

While looking for a new career one of the things I've been researching is different places to live. What kind of climate would I enjoy the most? I love long falls and springs so I started looking for climate data for U.S. cities to give me an idea of where to look for job ideas. As I read the descriptions for various cities, as pitched by the city websites, I noted that they frequently mentioned the types of flora in an attempt to promote their scenery.

I have a neighbor-friend who loves trees and everything about trees. He recites their genus, species, characteristics, climates, you name it. Trees have climates. They typically only grow where conditions are most suitable for that type of tree.

For fun my wife and I sometimes enjoy taking internet quizzes, even the stupid ones on Facebook. We often take them just to make fun of their absurdity. Recently we took a quiz on "What City Should You Actually Live In" which attempts to correlate food, drink and other random categories with ideal living conditions.

Wouldn't it be cool to redo the survey using a correlation that might have some actual chance of being based in reality?

What Kind of Tree Are You? First, take my neighbor's knowledge about trees and record it into a database. Particularly the bits about climate and characteristics, the kind of characteristics that could be related to human traits in a tongue-in-cheek fashion. The quiz will ask you about your personality traits and your climate preferences, and use them to correlate you to a type of tree. At the end of the quiz you get a report containing the tree's name, characteristics, and other pertinent details including the geographic areas where those types of trees thrive. Maybe you'd thrive there too, along with your kindred tree. I think the hardest part of the job would be collecting enough data regarding climate and tree types to give high geographic resolution. If the quiz only considered 15 of the top US cities then I would find it amusing at best, not a useful tool. But if it the database included details down to the county level, well that's a tool I'd actually consider using to make my next career move!

I'm a Scanner

This has been an exciting week for me. I read an online review of Barbara Sher's book, "Refuse to Choose!" Ever since I graduated with my Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering, over a year now, I've been soul-searching and brainstorming on what I'm going to do next in my career. It's been one of the more frustrating experiences in my life. Not the short-term type of frustration that you know will come and go. It's the long-term type of frustration like a chronic illness where you wonder if you will ever be okay again.

The mental framework for my self-discovery went something like this:

1. Statistics have shown that people are happier when they work in professions that are aligned with their personal passion, ethics and morals.
2. I'm unhappy at work, so my current position or career is not in line with my life-long passion.
3. If I can discover the one thing that I'm truly passionate about then I can align my career and be work-happy again.

So I've spent the last year trying to find that one thing. That ... one ... thing.  
If only I could figure out my ONE true passion!

One year later, having considered hundreds of options, I came up empty handed. "There must be something wrong with me." I've had many discussions like this with trusted friends, most recently my wife, Jennyfer. "Nothing excites me so much that I want to do it forever. Am I depressed? I'm starting to feel depressed..." Funny as this may sound, I have often dismayed about the difficulty in choosing an avatar or picture to use in my online profiles, forums, blogs, email, etc. What one thing describes or defines me so much that it will be me representative picture to the world?! Well, I can't think of anything.

Luckily I'm not the only one who feels this way. Barbara Sher identified a class of individuals who can't happily confine themselves to a small range of interests, passions, hobbies or otherwise, and she coined the term "Scanners" to set them apart from the "Divers". For me this is a brand new discovery which has already lifted a great burden and catapulted me along my self-discovery process. The basic premise is that I don't have a single passion. I'm interested in many different things, and those things frequently change. And that's okay! 

The first thing Barabara recommends in her book is to create a "Scanner Daybook" to record "explorations."  She recommends a very formal physical book, something nice, to record the many varied ideas and interests that constantly come to mind. For me that's a problem because I hate to write. So instead I'm going to do this online, in the medium that I feel gives me a greater freedom of expression. This blog is going to be my Scanner Daybook. It's for me, but you're welcome to read.