00479 Day 16, the Caddy

- So how does this work?

- Well, you just talk about how you feel and we just take it from there.

- I feel pretty good.

-Do you?

- Well, I have moments, you know, like everyone does.

- Describe these moments to me.

- It's kind of hard to put into words.

- Try.

- Ok, well, I guess it's like I sometimes feel like I'm just being used.

- By who?

- I dunno. But it's like I'm only able to concentrate on one thing.

- You mean one thing at a time?

- No, I mean like just this one thing.

- And what do you think is giving you this impression.

- Well, it's all the cards I have here, I mean look at this one:

- Mmmm. I see.

- What do you think it means?

- Well, I've personally never seen this kind of thing before, but I've read about it.

- What is it?

- I don't know quite how to put this, but you're a card caddy.

- A what?

- A card caddy. You carry cards. Someone uses you for carrying cards.

- oh.

- It's perfectly alright. The only problem is that you've been made by someone who's had a busy day and who then subsequently had to host a dinner party.

- But why should this all be so strange?

- Ah, well that's simple. You see you've been made in hurry and whoever made you has become so obsessed with finishing you that he's stayed up until 2am finishing you and making up this whole scenario in which you and I are talking. I can see that you might have been constructed more elaborately had there been access to the proper tools, but on the up side, you are made entirely from high-grade maple.

- Are you sure?

- Oh, yes, very sure. Look here's some pictures of you:

- Oh, I see. Is this going to last for long?

- No, he's going to be now.

- Thank God for that.



ZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ...

00478 Day 15 Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrocket!

I think we all know the significance of the fact that 15 is the smallest natural number with seven letters in its spelled name.

Anyhoo, and with no other alternatives in sight, I opted to base today's thing on AWESOME!

Should you find yourself in disagreement with the awesomeness, there is a standard protocol to follow:

1. Note the date and time when the disagreement occurred.
2. Contact the local "I Don't Think It's Awesome" office (and BTW, good luck with that).
3. Request a meeting with their regional representative. You may find this difficult, as this whole thing is made up, but persevere. Remember: this is a matter of principle.
4. Fill out the requisite form - A55Ho73, if memory serves.
5. Have an eye test (you need one so badly you should also take anyone who has been near you today).
6. Dance the dance of fools - don't worry, you will find yourself to be an expert.
7. Seek counseling when your case has been adjudicated and returns the inevitable verdict that you are and have always been deeply wrong.
   
8. Strain to hear the distant sounds of my laughter.
   

There, I think that's pretty clear.

This was totally made by sticking a bolt into a piece of wood, shaving it down a little with a plane. cutting the end off the bolt, sticking the whole thing bolt-first into a drill, clamping the drill trigger and sticking the drill in a workbench, throwing away the health and safety book and shaping it all up with coarse grade sandpaper.



I accept no responsibility for your lack of ability to agree with me, or my subsequent bird-flipping. Your house may be at risk if you play with explosives.

00477 Day14, the Beach

Found myself in a strange place today.

Just a big expanse of sand.

And in the middle of that sand was a mark. A sign.

Turns out to be not just any sign.

No.

Turns out to be a pagan sign depicting a battle between a man and the amount of time he has on his hands.

The man loses and ends up with too much.

See for yourself:

There was this tiny plane there too

Just wait and see what you can do with a piece of wood, a drill, a bolt and a bit of sandpaper. It's so awesome I want to touch it all the time.

00476 Day13, Plane Paper Pencil

Not as you might think a bizarre and non-cyclical version of scissors, paper, stone. No, instead it is a new and exciting way to deal with waking up at four o'clock in the morning thinking about how to make a frame in which you can switch the images with ease so as to give the impression of a rather slow, but nonetheless more real screen saver (with the obvious flaw being that a real screen saver involves a screen). By the time I had reached posting time, I was thinking about nothing but gazing longingly into the back of my eyelids (which is very much a matter of perspective as so many sight-based concepts are).

I just managed to cling onto a semblance of an idea that formed in my head not 24 hours ago (no, really not 24 hours ago, it was around 85-90, but no-one really logs time like that when they're writing informally, do they? ... Sh*t, I just did it, didn't I?). I had written "Kick-ass paper plane", but all that brought to mind was felt-tips and depression. So instead I masterminded this:

They said it couldn't be done (although I paraphrased that a little, what they actually said was "you shouldn't bother doing it" - there's not much in it really). AND NOW I AM LORD OF ALL I SURVEY! (currently surveying keyboard and tea, but you have to start somewhere).


I'm so very tired

00475 Day 12, A little whittle

Welcome all scatological enthusiasts! This is for you:

It could be said of me that, much like a personal sewage treatment plant, which ever since it's opening has dealt solely with the waste products of a man who's diet has remained porridge for breakfast, lunch and tea throughout the entirety of his life, I am quite literally churning out the same old crap. However, a slightly more charitable view perhaps, would be that, much like a plasterer who has been told that he must complete the task of rendering a wall with nothing but his own waste products, but has just realised that this material does not have the requisite adhesive properties required for the job, I have spent the day trying to make a pooh stick.

I say a day, what I meant was ten minutes.

and in case you missed it, here it is in f2.8

And like some pointless running joke with no punchline and nothing to commend it as being remotely funny, and in the spirit of "never put off yesterday until today, what you can put off today until tomorrow", creative writing has been shelved for another 24 hours. Like a good wine, it must mature until ready to drink. In all probability it may mature until it forgets who it is and spends the rest of its days in a house full of cats and smelling of wee.

00474 Day 11, I love Lamp

Do you remember Les Dawson?

He used to do that thing with the piano where he played a tune, but purposely played the odd wrong note here and there. The vibe was that he was displaying a level of expertise beyond that of a competent player, because he was intending to play incorrectly.

Well then, behold my manifest genius





Yes, a lamp.

Yes, a lamp made out of copper pipe and joints.

Yes, a lamp constructed by brazing together these components.

And, yes, a lamp in which the craftsmanship has been intentionally corrupted to give the impression that it was made by a novice.

No, really, I properly meant to make the joints look shoddy. It is of course mere coincidence that today was the first time I had ever attempted such a thing.

Much like the Extractor it works really well and everything.

3 Watt LED, cord form a phone charger, copper pipe and joints form the DIY store.

It was going to be creative writing day, but the hardware got the best of me and I fell willingly into it's rough, unfinished arms (that really is a metaphor, just not a very good one).

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00473 Maked it again!

That's like a clever combination of Make and made. Did you see what I did there?

Anyhoo, Day 6's Behemoth made it to the Make Flickr pool weekly roundup. Man, I love that group of renegade mavericks.


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00472 Day 10, the Extractor

No, not a surgical instrument.

I need to kick the solder fume habit, so off cuts of scrap wood, a case fan, an old power brick, some active carbon filter material for a cooker hood and a voltage regulator are all I need to go cold turkey.

So this is going to suck away all that noxious smoke and deposit all the nasty gubbins on the filter at the back (which is replaceable)








Today has been a challenge from the making point of view. A lot of time was a spent "learning", which as we all know is the international code for "f***ing it up and no mistake".
All I'm saying is, don't talk to me about $€#$*!!?%#€¥! ELECTRONIC DICE!!
In fact, tomorrow's thing is going to be a creative writing exercise based on how much I've enjoyed making electronic dice. I was lost for a topic to begin writing about and with so much failure and frustration knocking about, I might as well vent it creatively.

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00471 Day 9, Frame!

Was it Bruno who sang "Frame! I'm gonna live forever"? well he obviously hadn't looked at the statistics for someone of his demograph and their associated life expectancy. Safe to say that his chances are slim to none.

Anyway, Day 9 looms and it was today that I chose to spend all the free time I could muster to create just one thing. And when those hours had been spent, I had accomplished x percent of my task, where x is a rational number between nothing and very little. So I ditched that idea for the present.

Instead I went for the path trod more often. Which was good because the path less trod is unsafe, difficult to find and doesn't go anywhere.

Salvaged wood, glass from a skip some pins and glue. And now my print has a home :)


Oh, and let me tell you something about electronic dice. They're $€#$*!!?%#€¥!

Yeah you heard, $€#$*!!?%#€¥!

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00470 Day 8, the Towers of Meh

What a massive, golden 24 hours Day 8 has been, if by "massive" you mean disappointingly grey and lifeless and by "golden" you mean something yellow with a faint smell. I woke up this morning like a man possessed, and as it turned out I was possessed by the spirit of a man tortured by his constant inability to impress himself.

Still it's not about the destination, it's about the journey. A journey where the kids have both been sick in the car, you've spilt your tea over the dashboard, your hands are covered in something sticky and it's two hours until you see soap and water.

I can see an obsession with tower blocks looming, and with "flatpack stuff" on my list I headed for PowerPoint, a scalpel, some double-sided tape, a metal spigot, a hammer and my fumbling butter fingers. The challenge was to build a city block in miniature. The reason (although reason exists only very tenuously in my world) was that I want to create a diorama of a city skyline which I can light from within to create the impression of lit rooms. So, the buildings have to be hollow and covered with windows. This turned out to be just a proof of concept and there will be more to come from this or at least the flatpack genre.








Wish I'd been more careful about where I stamped out the windows, as it was, I just stuck them in. With hindsight, I'd have put a little less tape on the joins and with more time I'd have lined it up more carefully, painted it black and stuck a light in it. But the design is easily replicated and adapted.

Tomorrow I'll so be trying to make electronic dice.

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00469 Day 7, the Spaghetizer

We're going to be millionaires!

No more slumming it - it's going be meals comprised entirely from saffron and pools filled with the tears of the poor as they gaze on my magnificent house made freshly everyday from perfectly ripe nectarines.

That's right, and it's all because of the money we'll save by not putting too much spaghetti in the pot.

"How?" you ask, "how is this possible? What could enable you to make these seemingly unsubstantiable claims? Are you even human? If not, where do you come from? Is it nice? Why have you come here? Do you like what I've done with the place? Should I put this plant by the window, or over by the bookshelf? What's the difference between a President and a Prime Minister? Why do some countries have one, some the other, some both and some none? Which is better for you, olive or sesame oil? What's that brown stain? Is 'unsubstantiable' a real word?" (man, you ask a lot of questions).

The answer (to some, but not to all the questions) is ...

THE SPAGHETIZER!!!!!!



It's a spaghetti measurer.

Yeah, that's right. Who's the daddy now?

Oak, red acrylic paint, a holesaw, a drill and a steady hand. Oh, and too much time on my hands.

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00468 Day 6, the Behemoth

Exactly how Behemothy he really is depends very much how small and nervous you are.

I only know that I love him.

No, not like that.


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00467 Day 5 Stamp!

Well, stone me and leave me by the side of the road to be nursed back to health by a passing Samaritan! Who'd have thought that carving up a rubber with a scalpel, inking it up with an indelible pen and pressing it hard onto pure, white paper could be so awesome? The answer to that is probably a figure rather than just the name of one person and at a guess I'd say that its in the region of around 1,500 to 2,000.

So as you might be able to tell, this began as a seemingly overambitious attempt to make a business card that I could create at the time of handing over. That's still on the cards (Booooooom! I'm here all week!), but the major revelation was the ink pen. I went looking for a mini ink pad, but got nowhere and decided to make my own. Found some old foam, cut open a washable ink cartridge from my son's pencil case and combined the two. I think it's fair to say that as far as failures go, this one was pretty much on the verge of turning pro. So as a last ditch effort, I just used the big old black marker. Full awesomeness achieved, cup of tea, feet up, bask in my own reflected glow.

And, yes, I did carve an entire URL back to front, forgetting the text should be mirrored. If you want to discuss it further and maximize my humiliation, I might suggest a defenestration session. Gratis. It's on me. Don't mention it.

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00466 Upcoming

Like a small child gazing longingly at a sweet jar in the full and loathsome knowledge that it's contents will incrementally reduce, dwindle and disappear, I'm posting this knowing that, brimming though this offering may appear, it will surely prove wanting before the week is out.

Never mind. I remain confident that the tangential mental infection that this project has engendered, will spread and thrive, yielding rich pickings in the not too distant future.

Here are the contenders yea far:

The Behemoth
An eggsecution
Business card stamp and cards
Range of greetings cards
Flatpack stuff
Puppets
Soundtrack for a short film
A short film
Strobe for high speed captures
Framed poster
Glass sculpture
Copper pipe sculpture
Lamp with a 3W LED
Blah blah book
Sketchup models
Make something based on someone else's suggestion
Transcript of a philosophical discussion on the subject of perception
The fly hunter - a sparebot
Other printed goods, postcards
Wind powered stone polisher
Rockets from a mould
The ruthless and violent invasion of a benign sovereign nation, followed by the subjugation of its peoples by the crushing boot of an oppressive occupation and subsequent pillaging of its natural resources
A nice (and I mean really nice) cup of tea

That should cover it for a while

00465 Map, the movie

I've dived into the matter of making the rules for this game with a zeal that can only be described as administrative. So, time being precious as it is (but not as I perceive it when I'm slouched in front of the TV), I'm going to satisfy myself with a) the work I've done so far and b) these two vids showing the game play. The original post with basic rules is here

If I were to draw a Venn Diagram of the relationship between a video long enough to adequately illustrate the graceful nuances of the gameplay and one which was short enough to fit the attention span of a patient adult, the union of these two groups would be an empty set.

So, I've opted for two short vids just to give the gist:





It was 1-1 in the end

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00464 Day 4 Got a light?

So this time I decided that I wanted a portable and temporary light source that involved opening a match box to turn on a light. Just for the hell of it.

Finally I arrived at a silver-foil-and-wire method. Basically, one of the wires coming out of the LED is cut, both ends are stripped and fed out of the underside of the tray and when the box is slid open the two wires come into contact with some aluminum foil, closing the circuit and lighting the LED.
It's only coin cell powered, so it won't last for too long, but it properly works and everything.






I filled the tray with a clear epoxy but added a little colloidal silica to the mix to give it just a little diffusion. The effect is great, but with hindsight, I should have sealed the inside of the box tray, so that the epoxy didn't stain to outside of the box. It's only a small thing, but it kind of gives away that the box has been hacked before you open it.

It's portable, a gadget, home-made and unexpected. What's not to like?



-------++++++++-------

There were two prototypes undertaken.
The first was an arrangement where I filled the box with long thin sticks. I coated the sticks with a combustable paste which then dried. The idea was that when you rubbed the sticks against a roughened surface, they caught fire. The Missus pointed out that this was what people called "having a dog and barking yourself". So I binned that one.
The second was where I put a one watt LED in the box with a PICAXE chip and a photoresistor. Here, when the box was opened, the PICAXE sensed there was an increased level of light and tuned on the LED. This time the Missus pointed out that you would want the light when it was dark and to cut a long story short, I binned that one too.

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00463 Day 3 Map, the game

So then, Map.

I'll be posting about this again, mainly because we've played a few games and it was pretty awesome. All that's really concerning me now is that I've re-invented the wheel and it's indistinguishable from any of the old wheels. In other words, someone else must have thought of this (and in fact, did I see it somewhere before, forget about it and then drag it back through my subconscious as what I perceive to be an original idea?).

Anyhow, this was all the result of wanting a game which used only basic stuff, like paper, pens, coins or dice, or any combination of all four.

I'm figuring that a time-lapse of the game play would be just dandy, from an info-mercial perspective. In the meantime, here's what one of the games ended up looking like:


So, a 2 player game, then.

In a nutshell:
Both players collaborate to make a map with 21 counties. Once the map is made, players move around the board, capturing countries as they do so. Once all the countries have been claimed, the player with the most countries is declared the winner.

You will need:
Two pencils (one in a pinch)
Two small different coins
Paper

WARNING - THIS NEXT BIT IS A RECORD OF THE RULES OF A GAME AND SO IT'S A BIT DULL.
WAIT FOR THE TIME LAPSE 'COS A VIDEO PAINTS A THOUSAND WORDS SQUARE.

How it works:
Draw a circle in the middle of the paper. This is he first country.
Toss the coin to decide who goes first.
The first player appends an arc to the circle, making sure that both ends of the arc touch the circle, so that it makes a shape in which a coin will fit. This is the second country.
The second player draws an arc who's ends touch either, both or none of the two existing countries (man, I'm going to have to unconfuse that thing). Again, the new shape should be large enough to contain a a coin and predictably enough, the is the third country.
The players continue to add countries in this manner until each has made ten countries each, making 21 in all.
The only requirement is that, at the time of drawing, a country may share a border with a maximum of four countries.
On drawing their last country, the first player places a 'O' in that country with a pencil and places their coin on top of the 'O'.
Player two then completes their last country, places an 'X' inside it and puts their coin on top of the 'X'.
Players then take turns to move their coin to an adjacent country, marking the new country as their own.
You can move onto a previously marked/claimed country, you just don't get anything out of it and it's kind of a waste of a move.
If you can move on to a country occupied by your opponent's coin, you take their coin and send them off to any country on the board that takes your fancy. You then claim that country as your own by scrubbing out their mark and placing your own.

The basic strategies seem to be, minimise the time you spend on previously claimed countries and try to avoid getting taken. But there's way more to it than that, of course.

00462 Day 2 Radio Amp Hack

Day 2 dawns and I leap from my bed, mind aflame with a blazing motivation to create.

And now, if I do nothing else in this world, I'll die a happy man knowing that I've brought the RAH to mankind:


Many moons ago I added a 3.5mm (headphone plug sized) socket to my radio and hooked it up to the speaker so that I could listen to my iPod. Heavy was my heart when I realized that the signal from the iPod just wasn't up to driving the radio speaker.

I DWELL BENEATH THIS CLOUD NO LONGER!!!!

At approx. 11:00 GMT I hooked up an LM386 N-1 power amplifier chip and some other gubbins and soldered it into the radio's DC power socket. Here's the chip and bits:


The amp chip feeds off the power supply that charges the radio's battery, so I might look into a battery upgrade to run the radio as a hand-cranked rechargeable amp and speaker unit. Then I'll probably stick a 1W LED on it and maybe a death ray.

I can now rock out with impunity while preparing noodle soup. Needless to say the inaugural track was "Tribute" by the mighty D.

"Are you angels?"
"Nay! We are but men! ROCK!"

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00461 Day 1 small beginnings

I can already see some disturbing themes emerging. The first is that the first things that emerge from this mess will be small and quick. The second is that I'm going to spend more time thinking up a title for each post. Hey, didn't I hear there were people suffering somewhere? Perspective.

So here's the beginning:



I know, it's just a cartoon.

The Behemoth and the RAH will reveal themselves in the fullness of time. During the meanwhile, they look like this:





Now, if that's all, I'd like to go to bed now.

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00460 Taking in the slack

Is this thing on?






I'm running a test to see exactly how slack I can be.

As you can see we're running at around 3 right now.

Reckon I can get it down to 2 within the week.

1 is the obvious long term goal, but I think we are all aware of the law of diminishing returns in relation to laze.


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00459 iPad test blog

There's been a nadir in blog posting as a result of temporal interruptions in the time-waste continuum.

There's also been a slowly increasing feeling that some sort of creative framework is needed in order to build an imaginative structure from the mind-jam in the jar that is my brain. I'm talking art-toast here.

So now that's all clear, I'll be making something ever day and posting it up.

Categories of stuff includes (but is not limited to) the following:

Painting
Writing
Drawing
Soldering
Sketchup
Photographing
Finding
Putting together
Knitting
Serial killing (still in the approvals phase)
A re-creation of Genesis (1:125,000 scale)

And because of the slackness pervading my life, I'll be attempting to blog by iPad.

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00458 Xmas boxes

I sent a load of boxes to a gallery called Cry of the Gulls in Cornwall and forgot to take any pictures of the guys before they went in. Still, they came out alright. The spotlight attachments are awesome, if you're into spotlight attachments.

They'll be on sale and everything!

00457 Family

If you want to see the future, really see the future, then you need to look up a dogs bum.

This only works if you grow up to be a vet.

00456 Airstrips!

Although it might seem unnecessary to provide a runway for seaplanes, I'm nothing if not an innovator. Early testing of the airstrip concept is really working out well, although early reports are suggesting that many of the land-based infrastructure elements that we're developing are bing stone-walled because the aircraft haven't got any engines and are really small.

Needless to say, finding aircrew is also proving problematic.

In other news, the TP 7b finally made it off the line:

It's certainly helped to answer a few questions (though sadly not the most frequent: "how much time do you have on your hands?"

00455 I dream of boxes

And when I wake up in the morning I SEE THEM TOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For me there is no escape, even if I shut my eyes, I'm struck by the irony that I'm closing the lids.

So it seems that even if it's the little people who go in the boxes, I'M THE ONE WHO'S REALLY TRAPPED!

00454 Sparebots 2010

Although there haven't been quite so many sightings as there were last year, a demand for books has meant that there's an updated version of last year's publication.

In fact, it's all here - all of it!