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!

00453 Pinholarino

Pinholerooney:

For when sharp images just won't quite cut it.

You will need:

One DSLR
One body cap for above
One drill
One can Guinness
One roll black adhesive tape
One needle
One black sharpie

Method:
Drill hole in body cap
Cut piece of aluminium out of Guinness can - smaller than body cap
Pierce Guinness can with needle (use it as a tiny drill to make a very, very small hole)
Blacken camera side of Guinness can insert with sharpie
Tape to inside of body cap
Stick cap on camera body
Take pictures

(Serves 4)

00452 Ladder jig

Did you ever need to make tiny ladders but they just turned out too damn fiddly and time consuming? Then the Ladderman Pro (TM) is for you!

Ladderman Pro includes all the unique features that we've all come to expect from the Ladderman brand:

• Easy to use
• Nails stuck in a piece of wood
• Quick and easy
• Easy and quick
• Did I say easy?
• Easy

See the results for yourself:

No more crying and banging your fists on the table because you can't make enough tiny ladders and the nasty people are coming to get the ladders that you promised them, but you haven't got them finished yet.

"I used to get so worked up when it took me days to make tiny ladders. Not any more! Now I make them all day" - name withheld by family.

"Probably the best tiny ladder making tool not on the market today" - tiny ladders decenniall.

Don't wait, the Ladderman Pro is a limited edition and this offer (of which there is none) can't last for ever (so much so that it doesn't exist).

Biscuits and tea not included. Terms and conditions apply. Your house may be at risk if you make tiny ladders, lose your mind and get carted away by well intentioned medical practitioners called in by your concerned family who have finally realised that you now pose a danger to them, yourself and society at large.

00451 Eeeking out the last

I've now been to this beach so many times, that I'm finding the same sticks on it and am consequently begging for a huge storm to sweep away the old and bring in the new.

Still, gets me out of the house.

Gets me in the water too.

And the camera.

How long can it survive?

00450 The end of the Summer

The hols anyway.

And with that, there always comes a slightly reduced volume of this:

Probably means there'll be more of this:

My inner geek embraces the coming winter.

00449 And then there was one

An excerpt from "Sailing with midgets":

"It is imperative in the extreme, that the natural balance of things be preserved. To wit: for a camera to be maintained as a working entity one must keep it from the ravages of the elements and for a small boat or group of boats to survive the fury of the sea they should be positioned in such a way so as to avoid the inclemencies that may be set upon them, were they to be put in harms way."

I find myself in need of advice such a this when presented with situations such as this:

... followed closely by inclemencies in the surrounding environment such as this:

... which in turn leave me with a damp camera and one, solitary floating figure, such as this:

I must try that "standing on the shoulders of giants" shit one day. At least then I wouldn't get so wet.

00448 Signature

Although this needs a little work, the idea is sound. A tiny glazed window, with which you can frame any text or image.

I'm thinking of selling the idea to T&C, who asked for a board to be made for them with their initials on it.

It's so awesome when it's sanded back level with the wood that it's inset into.

00447 !

WIP - for the "sparebots banger/landmine sound activated flash" arrangement that I've been working on for five seconds.

It's a well beaten path, but you've got to start somewhere.

00446 The X4

As part of the "beige ops" program begun by the former administration, the X4 begun life as just a single, unique cylinder of raw material, found only in one place on earth. Within five months that material had been extensively processed and she had become the figurehead project behind a general move towards miniaturisation. The design team poured everything they had into her, until one day in September of 2010, when the news broke that the plug had been pulled. Someone high up had gotten wind of the operation and demanded to see the detailed specs. It wasn’t long before they figured out that the X4, with all its groundbreaking developments, was smaller than a mini Leatherman.

The funding for the development was cut off immediately and marked “Bollocks”.

Notes:

This information has been taken directly from a corrupted report gleaned from the archives.

It is possible that “months” may have been written as “minutes”.

“One place on earth” may have been recorded as ”behind a rock”.

“Raw material” may have originally appeared as “a stick”.

00445 Sometimes it all just comes together

And then we leave it on the beach to be taken apart again.