Lee.org

• @rrmutt don’t read youtube comments. Just don’t. Ever. in reply to rrmutt #

I’ve been doing all manner of odd jobs recently.

• Due to the idiotic Swine Flu idiotic panic, Malcolm X Elementary School in Berkeley was closed for a few days. I babysat for Erin for a couple days.
• I’m still working on the T. Pen idea. After a week, the first beta customer is very happy with it. :-)
• I submitted a proposal to the San Francisco Unified School District with Noisebridge to teach an after school program. That might manifest in the fall.
• I’ve been making a little money on my Mozy referrals and Google adwords.
• I’ll be teaching a mechanical sculpture class at the Crucible in June.
• I’ve been working part-time for  Charlotte’s company, fixing computers and such. I logged many hours saving her computer this week
• I’m going to be working a trade show on commission with Charlotte soon.

I need a real job….

In other news…

• A problem and solution I had with  Sporatic bad LCD initilization in 4-bit mode of an Arduino and LCD is going to be turned into a code change in the main Arduino library.
• SWARM performed at the Google IO Developer Conference and we’ll be at Maker Faire, SubZER01 and Robogames. :-)

Do you want to know the secret to search engine optimization (SEO)?

Create useful, unique content.

That’s it.

There is no more to it.

Now stop reading.

And start clicking my ads!

Muhahah!

You are still reading!

I have teh google juice and I control your mind!

Now click! Click for all time!

Update 6-18-15: After several years of running Google Ads, they have pretty much stopped generating revenue so I removed them. Say “La vee”!

Doing:

* Sunday & Monday: repairing SWARM orbs for Google IO, finishing sound design, shelling etc.

* Tuesday: Charlotte’s office hard drive failed. Spent the afternoon and evening recovering

* Wednesday: More hard drive recovery, finished sound design for Orbs. Performed at Google IO with SWARM! (you couldn’t hear the music over the DJ :-(((((((((((((((((   )

* Thursday: Attended Google IO, priced out computer for Charlotte’s office, attended Professional VFX Compositing With Adobe After Effects class at Crucible, sat in on German class at Noisebridge with Charlotte for a few minutes

* Friday: more computer help for Charlotte, working on lesson plan for a Crucible class I’m teaching, tidying hundreds of loose-ends emails

The class I’m teaching at the Crucible:

Youth Extreme Gizmos

Learn kinetic techniques to design, engineer, and construct a mechanical sculpture, contraption, or gadget with lights and moving parts. Using new and salvaged components, you will learn how motors, lights, and switches work, how to create mechanical structures, how to create different types of motion, and how to incorporate switches to operate your very own fantastical contraption!  

8-12 year olds, June 15-19 2009

Cost: $235.00 (Tuition: $180.00, Materials: $55.00), Members: $217.00

Youth Radical Robots

[KIN15-Y]

Build a simple remote-controlled robot . From the wheels up, you’ll create your robot’s shape and personality from salvaged components, mechanisms, and electrical components. You’ll also learn soldering, mechanical construction techniques, and how to remove and repurpose these items. Each student will receive a kit of motors, wheels, and a remote control toy.  

June 15-19 2009

Cost: $295.00 (Tuition: $220.00, Materials: $75.00), Members: $273.00

As part of a dumb class action lawsuit, I received a 1 month 3-DVD-at-a-time subscription to Netflix at no cost to me. I’m sure the lawyers were richly compensated. See section 1.2 of “Amended Settlement Agreement” below for the specifics of the lawsuit.

(Frank Chavez v. Netflix, Inc. Class Action, San Francisco Superior Court, Case No. CGC-04-434884, local copy of  Amended Long Form Notice of Class Action and Proposed Settlement, local copy of Amended Settlement Agreement.)

These are still on my list… didn’t have time to have them mailed to me:
The King of Kong
Robot Monster
Superbad
S. Darko: A Donnie Darko Tale
Waking Life
 

So here’s what I rented in 30 days… (reviews to come eventually!)

The Omega Man
Failure to Launch
Sideways
The Bucket List
Strange Culture
The Departed
Crash
Psychos in Love
Children of Men
X-Men 3: The Last Stand
A Scanner Darkly
The Illusionist
X2: X-Men United
National Treasure
Solaris
Stranger than Fiction
Sin City

Hello and welcome to a new feature of this blog… I’m calling it “Poor Design Workshop“. In each segment, I’ll show you some… well… something that I think is a poor design. We’ll talk about it and then see if we can’t make it Good Design.

Our first item up for bid is a sign I’ve seen quite a bit in airports lately. It’s an ad for… well, I’ll let you guess.

That’s right, it’s an ad for a new foofy perfume called Pre’tentious. This scent conjours images of being famous, being photographed by top photographers and being in framed photos of… what’s that? Oh, it’s a phone. Yes, my eye is drawn to the head and eyes of the model with the feathers, down to her breasts, over to the bottle, left to the photographer, left to the other face in the frame and… that’s it.

Congratulations, Samsung just sold me a scent that doesn’t exist.

That’s right, the ad isn’t trying to sell perfume, it’s actually, after reading the fine print, marketing a cell phone with a camera.

Who is going to buy this cell phone? Professional perfume photographers? No, I don’t think so. Fashionista? Maybe

Micro-er than twitter, it’s…. it’s nano-blogging from Flutter!

local version:

Batman: The Dark Knight on 2-27-09. Intense. Quite a ride

V For Vendetta 3-28-09. I came out of the movie thinking it was completely excellent. After a few minutes of mulling I can think of many plot holes and unexplained bits. So I’ll just say that the theme and visual elements of the movie were excellent. A little something was missing… maybe it got lost on the editing room floor? Still a worthwhile movie!

I use Dragon Naturally Speaking version 8.0. It’s useful when writing long items… a few paragraphs or more. Here is a list of phrases you can tell DNS to do good things:

select that/ correct that – correct the last thing you said
correct [word] through [word] – correct a string of words
(hit – on the keypad) – pulls up correction window

Show-dictation-box – pops up a text window that will paste when it’s closed. Good for Firefox.
Edit-selection – You should select something, say “Edit-Selection” and it’ll be pulled into a dictation box.

Cap … – next letter is capitalized
caps-on – Capitalize the First Letter of Every Important Word until “caps-off”
caps-off
All-caps – next word is in ALL CAPS
All-caps-on – EVERY LETTER IS CAPITALIZED UNTIL “All-caps-off”
All-caps-off
No-caps – next word is in all lower case.
No-caps-on – no caps until “no-caps-off”
Cap-that – capitalize the first letter of each word in the last phrase, or the selected text

open-quote – “
close-quote – “
open-parenthesis – (
close-parenthesis – )
open-bracket – [
close-bracket – ]
at-sign – @

scratch-that-[X]-times – multiple undo

————————————————–
Moving the cursor and mouse

mouse-grid – brings up the mouse grid. Then…
mouse-click
mouse-double-click

move-up-[n]-lines
move-left-[n]-characters / words
go-to-top / bottom
go-to-beginning-of-line / end-of-line

insert-before-[word] / after

select-[words I want]
select-again – tries other choices

select-[starting word]-through-[ending word]
select-all
copy-all-to-clipboard
paste-that

backspace-[n]

scratch-that
undo-that

————————————————–
Actions

To kill a voice-recognition action that has gone awry, click the little red X inside the Result box. That will also turn off the microphone.

To spell out individual letters or numbers, pause, say “spell-that”. Wait for the spelling menu.

This post was originally named “Phoey on Atmel” because I had emailed and submitted sample parts requests from Atmel and got no response for over a week. And Digikey was unable to help (see below) but I just (2pm 5-26-09) got a call back from Mac Wilson at Centaur Corporation. He is representing for Atmel. He’s going to get me some samples and help me move forward with the T. Pen.

Chat start time May 24, 2009 5:41:26 AM EST
Edith ext 1601: Welcome to Digi-Key Live-Help. How may I assist you?
Lee Sonko: I’m trying to get a hold of a few of this IC ATTINY43U-SU-ND to test. It looks like I can only get it in quantities of 1,000 or so. Can you help me get just a few units?
Edith ext 1601: I’ll check on this, one moment please.
Lee Sonko: Thanks very much. :-)
Edith ext 1601: This is a part that we don’t stock; we can order it from the mfg but we have to go by their mins
Edith ext 1601:  which is 1,036 pcs
Edith ext 1601: We could ask a technician if there’s a sub
Lee Sonko: hurumph. This is a new part, released in March or so from Atmel. You’re the only folks I see it even listed with so far. I’ve tried contacting Atmel but no response in a week. :-(
Lee Sonko: I doubt there’s a sub. It’s a new class of part… a microcontroller with a built-in voltage converter.
Edith ext 1601: I’m sorry; I don’t understand why new parts are advertised if they aren’t available.
Lee Sonko: Me neither! Thanks for looking.
Lee Sonko: Have a great night.
Edith ext 1601: Thanks.  You too.
Lee Sonko: G’night.
Edith ext 1601: bye.

Of course I wonder how it was he came to contact me. Was it one of my emails, my sample parts request, or the “squeaky wheel” post you are looking at now? I’ve heard it can be hard to get samples from Atmel.