I’m off for a week to go see family. I’ll land in New Jersey and then we’ll be wisked off to Vermont. I haven’t been there in… geez… years. But I’m confident that the place will be relatively unchanged and comforting.

At Yuri’s night 2008 at NASA Ames, they had a ride called ISS. They’d put you in this capsule and slingshot you up to the International Space Station. We were really lucky because since the Space Station is orbiting so fast, only a few riders each day can get to see it up-close. You can see the space station in the reflection of the glass. It was really pretty spectacular! Charlotte and I had a great time. If you ever get the chance, you should absolutely go!

The fine folks at the Space Coalition hung out in low earth orbit and took photos of us tourists all night.

Lucille Rathyen was one of the two teachers in the early years of the Gifted and Talented program (renamed “Learning Unlimited” a few years later) in West Milford New Jersey. I spent many hours with Lucille and Cassie Lewis in middle school. This very well-spent time made a long lasting impression on me.

A few years ago, most of the first group of G&T kids got together at Cassie’s house for a very enjoyable reunion. I just looked over the photos and saw photos of these childhood friends all grown up.

This email came to me yesterday from Cassie.

I am saddened to inform you that Lucille passed away from a long bout with cancer last night. Her husband, Ralph, called this morning and said she was at home with her family and hospice. I last saw her a few weeks ago, just before she was scheduled for a final MRI to see is anything else might be done.

Lucille remained spirited and optimistic throughout the ordeal. She told me whatever happens is out of her control; the source of her illness unexplainable…some things just happen in life. She was grateful for the life she led, her family, friends and those years in LU and was making the most of the time she had left.

She will be cremated; Ralph will schedule a memorial service in the next week or so. If you’d like to send a note, the address is:
[contact Lee for the address]

I hope this reaches some of you, at least. I don’t have all updated addresses or emails…apologies to those I missed. I contacted the Hazens and Jim
Paretti’s mom. So please pass the word to any others. Feel free to email me or telephone ([contact Lee for the phone number]) if you wish.

Hugs,
Cassie

In the coming weeks, I will republish articles I wrote under the title “Click Here”. You can find them all under the Click Here Articles category in this blog.

From 2002 to 2005, I worked with two publications, The Panther and Around The Greens. Actually, I helped quite a bit with them in addition to writing articles.

The Panther is the official publication of The Panther Valley Property Owners Association. I was a member of the Communications Committee, helping to get the newsletter out and helping with various initiatives in the Valley.

Around The Greens is the official publication of the Forsgate Community Association. My aunt Ernestine McCarren ran the publication from 2003 to 2004. I wore many hats, technical advisor, graphic design and writer. I was instrumental in helping to put together the proof. We used Microsoft Publisher 2003. I did most of the ads. I’d get a laugh every time an advertiser would give us an old crinkled newspaper ad with their logo on it and say, “Here you go. Use this logo but make it a half-page ad instead of side-bar. Oh and our hours and location have changed.” They had no idea that in order to make that work, I’d usually have to rebuild the entire ad from scratch. But with the crinkled sheet, the best I could do for them was… not as good as they should care about their business!

During this time I was promoting my business, “The Computer Guy”. My tagline was “I go to people’s homes and small businesses, fix their computers and show them how they work.” To promote myself as an expert in the field, I wrote a series of articles with the title of “Click Here”. Over the next few weeks, I will republish those articles here. Computers being what they are, some of the content is out of date but much of it is still useful. In any case, it’s interesting reading (at least I think so).

It was an enjoyable challenge to write for print. You are always watching your word-count; I would write the first draft of my 450 word article, do a word-count and find out that I was over by 600 words. Taking an axe to my own articles showed me that I could write very concisely when I had to and not lose the intention of the work.

What’s going on in my life? Let’s see…

I went back to New Jersey for a week for Christmas and got to see the most beautiful girl in the world. She’s got long strawberry blonde hair and is 4′ tall. That’s my 7 year old niece Julia. :-)

I’m still working on the SWARM art project with friends. See a SWARM video I produced and some blog updates. about it.

I’m starting a new job as a residential solar power sales consultant at Premier Power. My good friend Barry introduced me to the position and I’m terribly excited at the prospect making a good income at saving the world. I had worked at Valley Yellow Pages over the summer specifically so I could get my sales chops. We’ll see how it goes!

Charlotte and I are doing well together. We’re still in our tiny 24th st apartment… with the new job looming, I’ve thought and said aloud many times, “I can’t wait until I have some money”. I haven’t often thought of how money could improve my life but now I am. Again, we’ll see how it goes.

I helped produce and sell $4,000 of Flaming Lotus Girls calendars for the Christmas season. That makes me pretty happy and proud.

I took a forklift certification class in December (anyone need a forklift driver?)

Went to a couple baby-shower like events recently… Pouneh from FLG and Michelle H. It looks like everybody is getting bulbous bellies these days.

I’ve been helping Tad create the ultimate workbench. I’ve gone over to his house a couple times to cut wood and move things etc… he’s got a LOT of electronics gear in his house and he uses it! Maybe it’ll give you some glimpse to know that he has a $400 electric bill each month, and he lives on his own! Helping him has been fun. I’ll try to post pictures when it’s done. It looks like it’ll be 3 shelves, each capable of holding 600 lbs of gear (and yes, he’ll use it), the main table level is about 4′ x 8′, with the back being occupied by 2′ deep gear like oscilloscopes and the like.

For Christmas, my folks got me a Tom Tom (which will be good for my new job!) and are getting me tickets to Burning Man. I like very much that they have enough acceptance of “those crazy hippies in the desert” that they’d do that for me.

I suppose that’s the most of it. You can find out more about what I’m thinking by reading the rest of my blog. I see that this blog thing is getting quite extensive. I’ve made over 1,200 posts to it since I started it 5 years ago in 2002. I make a point of only posting things that are important to me.

I welcome you to see the New Year card I sent to many people this year. It’s really quite pleasant.

If the card isn’t available anymore, here’s a local version. Originally, the interactive card ended with “Happy New Year” and “May this be a year of peace, love, growth and good news”.

I created and submitted a video for the VIDA 10.0 international competition with help from my friends.

VIDA 10.0 is an international competition created to reward excellence in artistic creativity in the fields of Artificial Life and related disciplines, such as robotics and Artiftcial Intelligence.We are looking for artistic projects that address the interaction between “synthetic” and “organic” life”.

In previous years prizes have been awarded to artistic projects using autonomous robots, avatars, recursive chaotic algorithms, knowbots, cellular automata, computer viruses, virtual ecologies that evolve with user participation, and works that highlight the social side of Artificial Life.

You can make the video below play full-screen by clicking one of the buttons on the toolbar.

local version:

The video is available on Youtube as well. https://youtube.com/watch?v=pZpcGwWfRBE

A high quality version can be downloaded here (mpeg4, 1kbps, 74megabytes)

A (0.5 gb) DVD quality version of this video is also available for the asking.

This Yellow Pages salesman walks into a bar and says, “Hi, I’m Lee Sonko from Valley Yellow Pages.” It’s still kinda weird but it seems that I’ve changed careers again, from

• Software QA engineer at Politzer and Haney, Course Technology, Softkey Intl, Shiva, Picturetel, MCI/Newscorp Internet Ventures, American Internet, Riverton Software Corp, BGS, Firefly, ADP and Wavexpress to
• Owner of “The Computer Guy”, computer repair and training company to
• Substitute teacher to
• Customer Support Manager and QA engineer at Wavexpress   to
• Co-owner of Safe and Secure SF,   disaster preparedness consultancy to
• Yellow Pages account executive.

Heavy Ink is going to be a better place to buy and trade comics than any currently exist online OR IN PERSON. Doors open in October.

Trav’s “Progress Report #1” gives you a good primer:

Continue reading ‘Heavy Ink’ »

We’ve had a few TV mentions of late :-)

Most notably, there’s a piece on Current.TV and this piece on the local news :-)

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=drive_to_discover&id=5584601

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

Richard Hart and his camera man came by a few weeks ago to do a story on us. Alan Wang of ABC7News.com introduced

Here’s a transcript of the video:

Richard Hart narrating:

This is a robot. Well, actually a roll-bot. It doesn’t even have wheels. It just sort of rolls along. But then it’s not supposed to do much. This robot was born to dance.

Michael Prados – “I think a lot of it came from brainstorming about kinetic art. And a lot of the discussion is centered around dance as an inspiration. And so by thinking about dancers and the way they move, we started to think about how we could have machines that had some of those same aspects.”

At the bottom of the sphere you will see something swinging back and forth. That’s a very heavy battery. By shifting it backward or forward like a pendulum you can force the cage to roll backward or forward, even change direction. On top is a black radome connected to an inexpensive wireless network called Zigbee, connected to a laptop which is connected to a common video game controller. But wait, there’s more. Michael Prados, Lee Sonko and a small team developed this for the art festival in the desert, Burning Man 2007. They are busy fashioning aluminum ribs and electronics for five more robots which will all become dance partners; because the black dome atop the robot contains a GPS unit in addition to wifi. So a half dozen robots will be able to talk to each other and synchronize their dance without needing the remote control. At least that’s the plan.

Michael Prados – “We hope that we can impart at least some small bit of it and suprise and delight people with a new kind of machine behavior.”

With the next roll in bots, Richard Hart, ABC Seven News.

Here’s the text of the article

Bay Area Group Building Dancing Robot

Will Be Used At Burning Man

By Richard Hart

Aug. 19, 2007 – The Burning Man festival is only one week away, and, in warehouses throughout the Bay Area, artists are rushing to finish performance projects in time for the annual desert event. One of those groups is building a GPS ballet.

This is a robot. Well, actually, a roll bot. It doesn’t even have wheels. It just sort of rolls along. But, then, it’s not supposed to do much. This robot was born to dance. Michael Prados of the Swarmbot Project: “I think a lot of it came from brainstorming about kinetic art. And a lot of the discussion has centered around dance as an inspiration. And, so, by thinking about dancers and the way they move, we started to think about how we could have machines that had some of those same aspects.”

Look closely at the bottom of the sphere, and you will see something swinging back and forth. That’s a very heavy battery. By shifting it backward or forward like a pendulum, you can force the cage to roll backward or forward, even change direction. On top is a black radome connected to an inexpensive wireless network called Zigbee, connected to a laptop, which is connected to a common videogame controller. But wait. There’s more.

Michael Prados, Lee Sonko, and a small team developed this for the art festival in the desert, Burning Man 2007. They are busy fashioning aluminum ribs and electronics for 5 more robots, which will all become dance partners. The black dome atop the robot contains a GPS unit in addition to wi-fi.

So, a half-dozen robots will be able to synchronize their own dance without needing the remote control. At least, that’s the plan.

Michael Prados: “We hope we can impart at least some small bit of it, and surprise and delight people with a new kind of machine behavior.”

Burning Man officially kicks off on August 27, 2007.

——- Links ——-

The Swarmbots project is funded by
The Black Rock Arts Foundation, a part of Burning Man.
www.blackrockarts.org

Home of the SWARM Robots www.orbswarm.com

SWARM Blog blog.orbswarm.com

SWARM Wiki http://wiki.orbswarm.com

Last night we had an FLG fundraising party. (invites at various spots: 1, 2 , 3). It was a great success! I was out til 4am helping and partying :-)

SWARM is coming along. There’s a LOT of work to be done yet. I’ve got to weld orbs together (I’m getting to be a good aluminum TIG welder!), put battery systems together, buy some stuff (shopping for electronics can take an unhappily long amount of time), and help do choreography for the art. So far, we’ve been focusing on the HOW it works, not the WHAT it does; the orbs have sound, lights and motion. We’ve got to get some choreography action going!

On Saturday Richard Hart interviewed Michael, Jon and myself at the BoxShop, presumably for a new version of the Discovery Channel’s TV show “The Next Step”. He said that the episode might be out in a month or so. It’s kind of funny… I’m sure I’ll appear as the “brawn” in the piece. They got video of me grinding and welding. Jon is the geek and Michael the fearless leader and visionary. We’ll see. :-)

Charlotte made it on an internet television show before I made it to TV… There’s an internet television show (yes, real “internet television”… groovy) that did a piece about the Fire Arts Festival. Among other things, they talk about all the art at the show. And at the end of the show, they do an interview with Charlotte about the Serpent Mother and show her off!

Penny & Page’s Perpetual Party: Fiery Fun with Your Favorite Freaks (July 16th, 2007)

I have a Flash video of the event at http://lee.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/583_8066.flv. I’ve had trouble viewing it :-(