timothyweber.org

The Ithaca Journal published an article about my SHIP site and the new maps I’ve been working on. Thanks, Krisy!

Here’s a direct link to the newest map, which is mainly cool because you can click on it to see details. I’ll be integrating that into the other maps soon.

“Manos found guilty
Jury convicts Ithaca woman of murder, abuse of niece, 2”

Life recovers.
But not completely.
Wounds heal into scars, sometimes beautiful scars.
But not always.

Philip Torrone posted a link to my Mancala game on Make Magazine’s blog. Thanks, Phil!

Since I made my first mod to the PICkit 2 applet source, Microchip completely rewrote the applet. They use .NET, which I consider to be pretty much a virus, but I was considering getting all the MS development tools installed and getting up to speed with C# to work with it.

But then I realized that it would be simple to just automate the existing applet with an external program, and that would mean I wouldn’t have any changes to integrate into the Microchip source (as well as not having the dreaded MS tools installed).

I’ve been working for a while on a simple handheld game machine. It made its official debut at The Farm this summer, so I thought I’d post it here and on the gallery.

My buddy Bob Stuart makes Noise in Montreal. I thought he should have a theremin. Took a weekend. Works.

Everyone must check out my friend Bob Stuart’s docu-music-video on Dragon Day 2006, commissioned by the Cornell Architecture School and finally showing on their site as “The Dragon Has Its Day.” Beautiful camera work and brilliant editing. I had a small part during post in creating the subtle time shift effect around 5:10 when the ballsy loud music kicks in. Bob rocks. Go Bob!

Clara has always enjoyed playing with electronic components and breadboards. But putting them together to make an actual circuit is still a bit tough for her at 3, even with lots of coaching - getting the leads into exactly the right hole takes a bit more fine motor coordination than she’s got. So, I was inspired by an article in MAKE magazine* to make her some chunky blocks with screw-eye terminals that she can wire together using alligator clip leads. We’ll see how it goes!

For the Summer Solstice this year, I refined last year’s PrayBot project by making it more efficient and robust, and again had it running in our city center at noon. The weather cooperated, and so did the gadget, and the people were great. Success!

My PrayBot project last year needed a “solar engine,” and the quickest thing I could come up with was based on a PIC instead of the more usual BEAM-style solutions. This year I wanted something more efficient. But it still ended up with a PIC, and it’s much more efficient than any of the BEAM designs I’ve tried.