unwiredben

I've been wanting to make something with the Fennec logo for a while, so after getting some experience with the NYC Resistor laser cutter for another project, I decided to try my hand at making a laser-cut Fennec. This one took about four minutes of Epilog laser time, most of it spent in the etching of the details. I imported the logo from a PDF file into Corel Draw, edited the internal vectors so there were no vectors that would cause cutting, then made a new outline around everything that I marked as a cut line. The material is opaque blue acrylic, but for a final run of these, I'll use a very nice transparent blue that we've got in our stockroom.

The latest Picasa now has an easy-to-use text tool that seems perfect for LOLing a picture. Here's my test of it's effectiveness.

I got my first PC board back from Seeed Studios on Saturday; they arrived mid-week, but since they shipped from China, I had to go to the Post Office to retrieve them and sign the customs form. The box had a variety of parts including a big bag of tiny switches, and it had the five PC boards. I put my own board together that afternoon and tested it, but the real fun was earlier tonight when we got three more of the boards populated and flashing lights. Eric Moore got his waves test pattern running in a spiral configuration, and it looks really nice, especially bounced off a dark ceiling or wall.

There's more pictures at Flickr, and I should soon have the website at http://combee.net/rgbshield populated with part lists and assembly instructions. I've got a few tweaks to make for a version 1.2 of the shield based on our experiences putting these together, but nothing that should be too difficult to setup.

These are two little figures I made from spare parts I'd scavenged from a broken Atari 2600 video game console and a probably-working-but-useless Atari XM301 300-baud modem. They're held together with hot glue, and each one has a small magnet on its back so they can watch the kitchen from the freezer section of the refrigerator.

My first one is sitting at Annelies' desk; it stands upright with resistor legs embedded in a small piece of antistatic foam. I don't have a picture of that one yet.

I was inspired by the Maker Shed Store's Capacitor Robot Charms, but they're my own take on the idea.

We got our two kitties spayed on Monday, and Annelies and I have been watching them closely at home. This morning, they got away from me and I couldn't find them. Ends up, like R. Kelly, they were trapped in the closet. Well, not quite trapped; they seem content.

I just uploaded a new set. This is from the last day and a half of the safari in Africa while we were visiting the Ngorongoro Crater. One more set to go with a few pictures taken while we were in Zanzibar.

I saw this last weekend while out on a walk. This is one of four water fountains in a little park in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn.

While organizing a drawer this morning, I decided to take a picture of most of my collection. If you click through to Flickr, you can read notes on each device.

I've just finished uploading pictures to the Africa - Serengeti set, although I've got a few more videos that are being processed right now. There's still one day of safari pictures left to sort through from our visit to the Ngorongoro Crater, plus pictures of Zanzibar. It's a good thing I've got some downtime on this trip to Palm HQ. I really like this video that I captures of two zebras fighting while we were driving through the big migration. The creatures were really beautiful, but they can be brutal.

I've just updated the first set on Flickr with a few videos that didn't originally upload. We've got a secretary bird stomping around, some guinea hens moving through the trees, a herd of zebra grazing, and a herd of wildebeest running in front of our vehicle. Enjoy!

We're back in the US and recovering from the trip. Annelies is still having a little bit of lag, and I got a weird allergic reaction blister on my neck from an unknown cause, but with some prescribed steroid cream, it's healing nicely.

I've started going through all 1500+ pictures from the trip, and I've put the first set on Flickr. This covers my arrival in Tanzania and the first 24 hours of our safari. This is the travel from Arusha to the Ndutu Lodge in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. We had a great driver for the safari named Jojo, and on this first day, we passed by a number of Masai villages before heading off the main road. We saw many, many zebra, wildebeest, and gazelles that day, but the real fun was at dinner when we got to watch the lodge's resident genets hang out on rafters above the lounge area. The next morning, we went on a drive around the lake near there, watching a few sleeping lions, a hard-to-track cheetah, a snake-kicking secretary bird, and some more herd animals. We returned to the lodge for lunch, then headed out to the Serengeti (more on that in the next picture dump).

Annelies's roommate, Kirk, has two lovely kittens named Zelda (the brown one) and Daphne (the orange one). They just got spayed, so they have to wear collars for a few days so they won't pick at their stitches. So, I took the opportunity to take some pictures of their cuteness.

I've just put up a set of the best photos from Colorado on Flickr. I'll try to get them labeled and tagged later today, but most of the shots are either from the day trip to Estes Park and the surrounding mountains or from the snow that fell in Longmont on Sunday morning.

One final picture for today. As soon as I saw this sculpture, I knew I had to take a picture for kazanya. It was just sitting in front of an apartment building near the Chicago Diner, so I stopped the car I was in, got out, snapped the picture, then drove off.

The artist, John Kearney, seems to be fairly well known, with a lot of works in the Chicago area.

You don't want to be stuck behind the SEGFAULT-mobile... it's hard to recover from those crashes. I guess if it was a Windows-powered car, it would have a blue windscreen of death.

Which employee? Which hand? There are so many questions when you're in the bathroom.

(I saw this back in the summer at Spice in NYC)

I've getting videos from the Costa Rica trip uploaded to YouTube now and also playing with the post feature on the YouTube site. Here's the first one, a quick view of the waterfall that we walked to in the nature preserve.

I took a few pictures with my Treo at the "When the Magic's Gone" shoot yesterday.

Annelies and I spent some time yesterday picking our favorite pictures from the trip, and we narrowed it down to a set of almost 50 shots. They're all online at Flickr in a big Costa Rica set. The picture with this entry is one of the Arenal Volcano from the bed & breakfast we stayed at in El Castillo. We've also got pictures of animals, flowers, and random tourist stuff. Enjoy!

Always wanted to see me with a big white beard? Visit one of my Flickr portraits and see one of their holiday easter eggs in action. Boing Boing has more details.