As a mini-project in the course Making Things Interactive, I created a prototype of a pop-up piano with six keys. When a key is pressed, the corresponding musical note plays through a speaker. A pull-tab can be also be pulled or pushed to dim or brighten an LED by means of a paper variable resistor. [...]

Behold my latest masterpiece for Making Things Interactive, a dazzling demonstration of mechanical movements. circuit driving the DC motor 4-bar linkage pivot point made of pipe cleaner twisted and duct-taped to my rapid-prototyping rig (aka my desk) string harness holding wooden dowel Unrelated to the final device, this is an earlier attempt at creating a [...]

A table-mounted, latch-equipped winch that raises a wooden stuntman in a pipe cleaner cage! Yes, my class Making Things Interactive rocks.

A simple board soldered with 32-gauge wire as a connector between solder blobs

For the course Making Things Interactive I am taking this fall, I had an assignment to make a switch. I decided to make a footswitch, which you can see in action here: Download now or watch on posterous Footswitch.m4v (4329 KB) To make the footswitch, I used two cutting boards that were laying around the house. [...]

I’ve been putting off getting a replacement for my Canon Powershot S500 for a long time. This photo, taken today, has convinced me I’ve waited long enough. Now if I can just find the broken camera adjustment layer tutorial for Photoshop…

What do e-mail, calendars, and to-do lists have in common? They all help keep my busy life running smoothly and efficiently. Or they would, if I could only figure out how to combine them in a simple, streamlined interface. So here is my latest attempt to unite my email, calendar, and to-do list in one [...]

There is an interesting article in The Atlantic about how the Internet may be shaping our thought patterns. The author makes the generalization (based on anecdotal evidence) that people tend to skim rather than read online, and that our ability to read with deep, sustained engagement becomes impaired as a result. He claims he cannot even [...]

I got an iPhone this weekend, and now I find myself swimming in a sea of Web 2.0 – you know, that lowercase, twitterific, round-cornered, how-is-this-making-any-money, privacy-what’s-privacy thing currently popping up like mushrooms all over the Internet? Yeah, that. There are so many shiny little logos to choose from in the iTunes App store. On [...]