15
Mar 09
Just to start things off here is an orientation sensor that I soldered some 32AWG wire onto. It broke.. I accidentally pulled off on of the chip’s pads. So I bought another one. I put epoxy around it so It wouldn’t break again. Yeah… that worked. Until I broke it again. (trying to trim the epoxy) No more. Im waiting for a breakout board for this guy till I try again.
But what would I be using this for? Besides screwing around like I like to do. Well I have been working on (mainly drawing and order parts for) a set of new projects. They are all part of a family of single interaction blocks. They are blocks of wood that output information in some analog way in response to one thing.
For instance one of them has a nice old analog meter on it that just responds to sound. One has a circle of LEDs that all follow a magnet. One that shows your distance. One that glows based on how far your hand is over it. One that glows the color of anything put on top of it. I think there will be 7-10 of them in all. But they will be beautiful blocks of finished maple wood. So anyways, one of them was going to use this chip. I guess it will have to wait.
This past week I gave my first presentation on my thesis thus far. I was scared to give it at first because I didn’t feel like I had a conclusion. But on giving it I realized I shouldn’t have a conclusion this early on, and it went quite well.
I have been doing usability research this past week, and what I have been finding is quite useful. I have been watching while the users perform a series of tasks on various sites vary similar to what then also need to do on wikipedia. I am not able to help the users, and I ask that the users think aloud so I can understand what they are doing/ looking for, or expected to find during the tasks. So far, all the users have had no, or almost no, trouble doing the tasks on the other sites. However, except for one user who was a wiki admin, the users have been unable to do such tasks such as adding an image and a link to a wiki page.
Bilder now has a homepage, with a logo! It is hand done (marker on mylar), and it gave me a really cool idea. Im thinking that I will enable user submission of hand done logos that will cycle through on the front page. Also, my thesis has really given me a ton of ideas, that if I can pull it off, will make bildr the best wiki I have ever seen.
In the next 3 weeks I will hear back from grad school. I wont lie, im going crazy.
15
Feb 09
When the Ideas come, they don’t stop. I work up early on friday to get some work done before I went to my last day of my winter internship at Tellart when I came up with an idea.
One of my sites, TheGiant.org, is home to a community of over 2500 art collectors. It is just over 3 years old, but friday morning I felt compelled to make it possible to allow the members of the forum to keep track of their Shepard Fairey works. My last semester starts tomorrow, so I knew I had to finish it by tonight.
I got it done faster than I thought I would, and I think it came out better, and having more functionality than I thought it would when I started it. I managed to interface with the existing database to handle users, messaging etc. The add-on allows users to track their owned, selling, and wanted prints, and even allows for privacy settings for each list. Users can also take advantage of the friends feature the site has and set lists as friends only. Each user has a URL can link to, to allow them to see their collection. The site also allows users to search others wanted/selling/trading lists to help each other find the pieces they want.
The entire system was built in an AJAX fashion which actually made it much faster to code the php.
Mootools allowed me to make the interaction of the site much nicer, and give a lot more feedback to the user when things happen, and the MooTools AJAX allowed me to reduce the entire system down to only 3 pages. The layover system I normally use is called SmoothBox, but for what ever reason wouldn’t work inside of MediaWiki (Where the user adds prints to their collection). I figured I’d give it a shot and make one my self. Knowing some tricks in css (full bowser compatible transparency etc) , I was actually able to do it in 3 lines of JavaScript. It surprised me how well it worked, and SmoothBox never worked on the iPhone, but mine did. Maybe Ill write plugin of my own sometime.
12
Feb 09
I had a little brain storm yesterday about Bildr and the feel I wanted it to give off/ what it is I wanted to do. As per Allan Cooper <– And his great book, I tried to completely stay away from features, and think of what I want from it, and how I imagined people using it.
Then last night, I was trying to explain it to Mary when I stumbled. I explained how I didnt want it to be an other instructables. I want how-to articles that are step-by-step, but nothing that makes anything in the end. Then after a minute, I figured out what it is I want to make happen. Modular Ho-Tos.
The Idea is this. On other sites, you can see step-by-step directions on how to make… Say a bike powered head light. So it takes you along and shows you how to make the bike generator, and an LED array to go with it. On Bildr, you can learn this, but the articles will be separate. One on how to make a generator. An other on how to make an LED array. But someone could come along, and take the generator article and make it power a horn. Or use batteries and make the headlight. The modularity of the site means less articles to make more things. And with the site being open for free editing. You dont have 20 so so articles about making the same thing. You get one really well done one.
Because this is the new incarnation of RISDpedia, it will be supported by an incredible materials library. Only this time, it will focus much more physical computing, software, and other fun things. So your making an accelerator controlled car, and it says to use a ADXL202JE. You can click on this part. Find out all about it, interfacing with it, where to buy it, potential problems etc…
-Night-