Nawrimo 09 - c'est tout c'est fini

Once again, with scant seconds to go (well, all right - a day) the word count reaches 50,000 words... and so I get my 'winner' badge from the NanoWriMo website. Oh, the relief.



Sadly, unlike last time (can I link to it again? Please?) this one slightly ran out of control... so although I reached the 50k word limit and thus am considered a 'winner' of the NaNoWriMo thing, this victory is marred slightly by the fact that I am only about two-thirds of the way through the plot... so there will be more writing. So, no, you can't read it now. Which I know you're all just gutted about. Yes, you are.

So work must continue. Urgh. Really don't have much enthusiasm for the prospect right now... but who knows, hopefully sometime in the new year I will be able to post the complete manuscript for my latest oeuvre - 'Rain over Xanadu', a trashy bit of science fiction from the people who brought you (here's the link, here it is here it is! Yay!) 'Government Joe Must Die'. This one is rather darker, though, and for sci-fi buffs, it owes more to Alastair Reynolds and Kim Stanley Robinson than... whoever I said GJmD owed a lot to, I forget. Someone slightly more frivolous, probably.

So, that's it for another year... except it isn't. Because I will finish the damn thing. Argh. I leave you with these words from our sponsors:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

Spirograph business cards!

http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2009/05/25/adafruit-business-cards-laser-cut-spirograph-cards/
If you'd been to Maker Fair, which was... somewhere, recently, then you might have been lucky to get your hands on these adorable business cards: How cool are they?

From Adafruit, who also have on their website a multitidue of small wonderful electronics projects, including the Minty Boost, which I think I might have to have...

A Tale of Two Committees: an article wot I wrote

I've been toying with the idea of applying for a course in Science Communication (a one-year MA at Imperial, since you ask), and even went to the trouble of preparing some material for my application... but in the end, I got fed up of the whole thing, and decided I wasn't that attracted to any of the career possibilities (I'm enjoying doing stuff rather than writing about it at the moment).

Nonetheless, one of the application requirements was to write an article of 400 words on a subject of my choice, either science or science policy. Why I chose the deeply dull topic I did - well, future generations will be arguing over that for centuries to come. But since it seems a shame for all that effort to go to waste, I post it here. That's what a blog is for, isn't it?

Here goes:

A Tale of Two Committees: a Brief History of Presidential Science Advice

One of the exciting things about science policy under Barack Obama is that history has stopped repeating itself. Up until now, the history of the President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) was looking depressingly similar to its only predecessor, Eisenhower’s “President’s Science Advisory Committee” (PSAC).

Eisenhower convened PSAC in the gloomy days following the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik 1. Initially, the committee had serious influence – scientific prestige was a key battleground of the Cold War, and the post-war belief in scientific progress was untarnished. Eisenhower valued ‘his scientists’, and the free-for-all discussions that took place mark the Golden Age for scientists in the White House. Under Kennedy, though, PSAC began a long journey into eclipse. The Apollo programme shows how estranged the Committee was from policy – PSAC only agreed not to criticize it as long as Kennedy never claimed the programme was meant to advance science. Finally, Nixon disbanded the Committee in 1974, suspicious of the scientists’ peacenik attitudes towards Vietnam, and incensed by their criticism of a proposed anti-ballistic missile system.

For sixteen years PSAC had advised the President: it was to be another seventeen before it was reconvened, this time under George Bush senior. The relationship was never going to be as close as with Eisenhower, but it was still warm - Bush senior did invite the whole committee to spend a weekend with him at Camp David. But as with Kennedy, so with Clinton; and George W Bush showed himself at least the equal of Nixon in his distrust of scientists. Maybe it is fitting for a committee born of the Cold War that it was the anthrax scares during the War on Terror where history begins to diverge. When Tom Ridge, head of the Department for Homeland Security, picked up the phone and yelled, "I need scientists!" it was John H Marburger, head of PCAST and the President’s science advisor, at the other end of the line.

Now PCAST approaches its 19^th birthday. John P Holdren – a man whose CV seems tailor-made for the post – will succeed Marburger. The position’s official access to the President has been restored. And for its co-chairs, PCAST has swapped one venture capitalist for two respected scientists in Eric Lander and Harold Varmus. It only remains now to see whether this ‘dream team’ will truly have the ear of the new President.

Length: 395 words

I've been climbing the walls

I've been doing a bit of DIY, gradually (oh so gradually) doing up the flat so that it no longer looks like a rather tired 1970s DIY magazine centrefold. (What it looks like now, I don't want to speculate on). Just finished this set of shelves last weekend, and I'm pretty pleased with them. I wanted a set of shelves I could climb up - I was bored with having top shelves which I never used because I couldn't be bothered to fetch a ladder - so I designed and built these. On the left, you can see my original computer mockup; and to get the picture on the right, I had some fun with my camera and some very long exposure times.


As long as you never get close enough to see the quality of the build, they look pretty good. Happy with that.

Sears sells CNC machine for the home

http://www.sears.com/sr/javasr/product.do?pid=00921754000
Someday every home will have one... but that day isn't yet, judging from the mixed reviews for the CompuCarve. But as the guys on core77 point out, the very fact that this is being offered at all - and marketed as a tool for the layman - is quite cool. And at the bargain price of $1900, too. Hopefully, they'll release a better one at about the same time that I can afford a workshop.

Open Architecture Network

http://www.openarchitecturenetwork.org/
Still only a baby network really, mostly stuff that is already covered in the book Design like you give a Damn', but has the potential to be really, really interesting, I think.


via core77 which also has some interesting ideas on ways of using lulu.com for printing portfolio books, supposedly very cheaply...

Boris

C'est tout c'est fini: Boris the floor-sweeping robot

Okay - this is Boris...um... Boris VI, I guess. He picks up about 80% of the muck on the floor, and can negotiate pretty much anything on my floor, including the sheepskin rug (the lizards still give him a bit of trouble, though).

Boris VI is a mini-Boris - I've stripped out all the gear trains, directly connected the motor units to the wheels and the floorbrushes, and used smaller wheels so he now has a much smaller footprint.

I'm declaring him finished - considering what a difficult problem this is - the different obstacles, then different types of stuff to pick up - I reckon he'll do. As long as he doesn't come into contact with his nemesis (the phone cable) then he's fine. So I'm declaring him done, his field testing finished, and now he can get on with cleaning the fliippin' floor. Get to it, robot! (Bless his little metal heart).

Home Automation update

I've been looking for a home automation system that will (a) be very
low power so I can justify it for just one light and turning the
wirless network on and off, and (b) can be controlled from my mobile
phone.



There are several very basic systems that satisfy (a); only just found
a system which satisfies (b), which is the Pluto home system.


Bad news: it requires an always-on Linux server, so is almost certainly more power hungry than the network;

Good news: if you don't want their hardware, you can get the software
for free, as an open source project! Hmmm... pretty sure I can scare up
a Linux server from somewhere...

For dentworth

Apologies for the execrable video - it was an old camera, it was dark (heavy gamma correction going on here)... but I thought it time to post something! Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce my little floor-sweeping robot, prototype 1.


At the moment it's rather better at rearranging dust than picking it up - I'd say it's about 50% efficient. It works like those street cleaners - basically a dustpan-and-brush on wheels. It's sensor array is a little crude at the moment, consisting of two bigass bump sensors at the front connected to a bigass 'sensing plate'. It has serious problems with obstacles that taper inwards at the bottom, and since I fitted the dustpan to the bottom it seems to be having a few traction issues, so I guess I need to raise it up a little.

If you look very very carefully on the last part of this clip, you can see a grey smudge on the floor which disappears when the robot goes over it. That's a big pile of dust that I carefully swept up and put in harm's way, so the robot could eat it. Or just throw it around. Whatever.

The trickiest criteria (apart from getting a sensor array which was doable with available components and fairly reliable) was making the whole thing low enough to fit under the sofa. Which it does, just.

Later additions: I wanna put some sort of edge following sensors on the side - got some limit switches and drinking straws for making little 'antenna' feelers. Also really need to smooth out the ride - as you can tell from the clip, it makes a horrendous noise at the moment. Can't be good. I need to somehow improve the ground clearance without losing any cleaning (or dirt-collecting) ability.

But it kinda works. Enough that, once you add in the entertainment value, it's worth running it.

Enormous thanks go to Debbie, who went back and forth to Radio Shack, bought it for me on spec, and packed and posted it! Got the book yet, Debs?

Obviously it needs a better name than 'protoype 1'. Suggestions, anyone?

My wish list for home automation

Being an eco-aware gadget freak is a bit of a trial at times. When it
comes to electricity and power consumption, I have an eco-angel on one
shoulder telling me to cut down, and a gadget devil on the other which
just wants more more more! My bete noire at the moment is my wireless
network. This sits happily under the sofa in an always-on arrangement,
which is wonderfully handy for two reasons: first, it's always on, and
second, it uses up a couple of inaccessible power points (and the
position of the cable modem limits it a bit anyway). Unfortunately,
such profligacy gets my eco-angel wagging reproachful fingers.



The obvious answer (to a gadget freak) is a remote control power point.
These are relatively cheap and come with a remote, so I could turn the
whole caboodle off at the mains without having to crawl around under
the sofa. But it's another remote, which is, well,
just dull.



The thing is, if it were just the network then I could probably live
with it. But I have another little domestic bete noire which I'd like
to be able to fix. The stairwell outside my door is very dark, and
although I have an external light, the switch for it is inside the
flat, which isn't very handy when you're fumbling with your keys in the
pitch black corridor. So, I'd like to be able to turn this light on
from outside. Again, a remote would be handy, but I'm not about to take
a remote with me when I have a bluetooth enabled
mobile phone and a PDA which does bluetooth and wifi!



So. First off, the whole point is to save electricity, so an always-on
PC home automation system is ludicrous. What I want is this:

1. Turn on my outside light at a command from my phone (or PDA);


2. Turn on my wireless network (which can be done just by turning it on at the mains) via a similar signal.


3. To have the ability to turn off mains AC sockets. My life seems
   to run on batteries, which is great except for the chargers that I
   absentmindedly leave plugged in when they're not charging anything!
   Turning these off without bending down would be a boon.

That's it. Doesn't seem like an outrageous list to me. But can I find
anything which will do it? No. Home automation systems seem to assume
that it's okay to lug another remote around with you, which just
irritates me when I have two devices perfectly capable of performing
this function.

League of Gentlemen/2001 crossover?

Where am I going to get a wav file of Papa Lazarou saying "I can't let you do that Dave" ...

(I fear X have dunked the audio on this in their conversion process. Note to self: must learn how to create Flash videos to avoid nasty automated conversion).

My flat, again. Just can't not tinker...

The table is now a much more realistic glass; the speed is slower. Other than that, much the same as the last one really. Still not happy with the focal length on the camera - objects may appear larger than they really are!

My flat. Virtually

As I may have mentioned (really?) I've just become a homeowner for the first time. This virtual model is a little project I started off before I'd moved in, to check out how the sofa would fit, work out whether I really wanted to change the lighting in the hall, etc. Now I've moved in, I guess it may still come in useful. Maybe.

It's not exactly TV quality video, and it'll flash by awful quick - sorry about that. But if I fiddle with it any more I'll never post it, and I have more important things to do (like clean the damn place), so consider this a first draft which I'll fix up eventually. Of course, the real view out the window is nowhere near as nice... but hey, in this version, I can make the view exactly what I damn well please. So I made it nice.

The actual model is very basic - I scanned in the floor plan and extruded it. Dead easy. The thing that takes the time is getting the lighting right.

I bought some Lego

I'm a bad person. I did a bad, bad thing.



I bought me some Lego.



(heeheehee)



I marched into ToysRUs, wandered up and down the place for a bit,
pretending to be interested in the Batman action figures (pah) before
returning to the shelves, grabbing a couple of the (bigger) boxes, and
marching out. (there was a paying bit, but that's boring so I'm not
mentioning it).



There is method in my madness, however. I have as a little pet project
the intention of making a solar-powered sweeping robot to clean the
(wooden) floors in my new flat (which I move into in two weeks). And I
shall make it out of Lego. But the lego robot unit I want to use
doesn't come out until mid-September (I'm waiting for the new one), so
I figured a radio control version would be a good halfway-house - I can
do the prototyping work on it, then build in the robot bit later.
Granted, a radio-controlled floor-sweeper won't make the job any less
time-consuming, but I figure it'll be kinda fun to zoom it round the
house from the comfort of my sofa (which I don't yet own).



Lego sure has come a long way in the last..er... fifteen years. I'm not
sure I approve wholeheartedly... but I was once again struck by just
how sublimely flexible the whole system is. And I was doubly struck by
the extreme cleverness of the people who put together these kits. All
of a sudden, some apparently-random components (which elsewhere in the
design are used for mechanical transmission, or bridging a gap)
suddenly coalesce into a pretty good-looking engine grille!



But I am feeling a leettle bit thwarted. The radio controlled car comes from a series called
'Racers', which is clearly designed to be rather meatier than the
normal stuff, and is only just barely compatible
with the regular bits. In fact, the regular Lego Technic dumper truck I
also bought looks rather tiny and pathetic next to this brute. And then
there's the tiny problem that the radio-controlled car goes about
twenty times as fast as I want my floor-sweeper to go... and
all the gearing and steering bits for the RC car are inside a
sealed unit! This is Lego built for brutality, and not for
flexibility. I disapprove. I'll just have to take it into work and open
up the sealed unit, that's all. Irritating, though.



Nonetheless - Lego! Mine! Fun! And total guilt, of course. I mean, a thirty-year-old man, playing with Lego...



On unrelated topics, the TV in my flat has died. This is very annoying,
as it's not mine, and the owner is in India and comes back in two
weeks. I'm mildly annoyed at the idea of living without TV for that
time, but what am I supposed to do? I could try and get it fixed, I
suppose - but she might want to buy a new one, and anyway, I'm
reluctant to spend my money on something which was clearly on its way
out (it's been playing up for a while).



No, you're right, I should try and get it fixed. Damn. How annoying.



And... I'm still ill. Damn these useless freakin'
drugs, they're hopeless. Look - on Sunday I got up late, I went to
ToysRUs on the aforementioned mission, I went for a bit of a drive
around for an hour or so, then I came home. I felt tired and went to
bed - at SEVEN. And I stayed there 'til NINE this morning. That is
all it took to completely exhaust me. That's not
good at all. This is one reason why I went out and bought this stupid
stuff - to make me feel a bit better about feeling tired all the time.
This really sucks.

Mugs - scientifically, like.

There clearly isn't
an optimum shape for a mug. Otherwise we'd have found it by now.
But...

...there must be a
shape which makes sure that the tea (or other hot beverage, take your pick - for
the purposes of this discussion let's assume it's tea) (Earl Grey - in fact,
let's assume it's Green Earl Grey because I haven't had any in a while and I
miss it). (Mmmm).

Where was I? Oh
yeah.

There must be a mug
shape which first cools the tea quickly, then keeps it drinkable for the longest
period of time. Let's make some assumptions (yay! I like this
bit):

1. There is a range
of 'drinkable' temperature - say, 45-30 degrees celsius. Below this, tea is
tepid and nobody wants to drink it. Above it, the tea is too
hot.

2. People's rate of
drinking is related to temperature. Let's assume they drink it fastest at about
40 degrees.

3. Let's assume that
the profile is not allowed to 'bottleneck' - for the purposes of cleaning, the
mug isn't allowed to narrow at the top. Actually, that's a bit harsh - I have
several mugs at home which do just that. But it makes the maths trickier - is
there reflected heat from the insides? - but I guess we'll have to allow it.
Okay. But only a little bit. Great. Now we're going to need a computer to work
this out. Sheesh.

4. Also for the
purposes of practicality, the mug isn't allowed to narrow down to less than an
inch in diameter.

5. But it can be as
tall as you like (you can take practicality too far, you
know).

So the aim of the
game is to keep the temperature of the tea within the drinkable range until it's
all drunk. Now, I reckon it should go something like this: the top should be
flared, like a trumpet. That way, you start off with a big surface area and the
tea will cool quickly. Then, assuming that the drinker starts to sip it while
it's still technically too hot, the mug should narrow down fairly quickly to the
point where the tea is now at the top edge of the drinkable range. Then, the
belly of the mug can maybe open out (just a bit)... although that will increase
the surface area so it might increase the cooling rate (damn), so maybe better
to just go vertically down... until we reach the bottom, when the tea could be
nearing the bottom range of 'drinkable', when the surface should start blending
in to a nice, curvy bottom.

It's possible that
the best shape might involve having a mug that as narrow as possible, so we'll
end up with something like a trumpet balanced on a straw... but hey. It'd be a
fun investigation, anyway. Anyone know any students looking for a project?
There's plenty to do. Yo'd have to find out about the drinkable range. Then
measure people's rates of consumption at different temperatures. Then there's
some juicy simulation work to determine the reflected heat (if you're going to
include narrowing at the top - otherwise you could probably get away without
it). Choice of materials, colours, etc. Finally a bit of design work to pretty
it up a bit.

What fun... for
someone else!



(PS Denby make my favourite mugs - see below!)

A list of projects

Not a particularly engaging title, I admit... ;)

1. 3D laser scanner. I
   do a bit of this stuff at work, but I came across a couple of websites
   with some fascinating homebrew laser scanners, for making 3D models of Things around the Home. I would love to make
   one. No practical reason, other than the learning experience, I guess! As examples we have crazily homebrew, or slightly more sensible homebrew.


2. Political cartoonery. I
   had this great idea for a cartoon of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. (This
   will be completely meaningless to anyone outside the UK, but what the
   hey). Entitled 'the Carrot and the Stick', Tony will be this Ken
   Dodd-like figure, grinning maniacally and brandishing a tickling stick
   (note for those lucky enough to live outside the UK: tickling stick = a
   feather duster). Gordon will stand just behind, wearing a bulky rabbit
   costume and a face like thunder, and generally looking extremely
   threatening. Cradled in his hands, where a nightclub bouncer might
   cradle his baseball bat, will be an enormous carrot.


3. Design Dream House. My
   parents built their own house. I seriously want to do that. I know I
   could, and it would be brilliant. I wish I'd done architecture instead
   of design.


4. Write book.
   Actually I've
   already done this once; it was science fiction, and I wrote it for the
   Games Workshop people. They didn't publish it; the plot got a little
   complicated. I found it way too difficult to write a straight-up
   blood-and-guts gothic heroism story - hey, I'm a complicated guy. My
   characters were complicated, okay? My hero went mad. That just doesn't
   do it for your basic nine-year-old Space Marine fanatic. Someday I'll
   come back to it and rewrite; more likely
   I'll try and start from scratch again.


5. Lego robot for sweeping floors. Preferably
   solar powered. Got all excited about the new Lego robot sets which are
   coming out in August (ish). Need to justify it somehow. Since I have no
   carpets, a simple sweeping robot that I could fire-and-forget (like,
   forever) should be adequate. Can't afford to go out and blow the
   necessary cash right now, though... but you can now download design software for
   designing stuff in Lego . How crazy is that? (Mind you, the software doesn't get a stunningly good press).