Microposts

Since Twitter seems a little less than Twitterific these days (lots of downtime) I thought I'd give you a few micro-posts rolled into one:

• http://is.gd/nUr-
• We made it home safely
• We had a good Anniversary
• Got to go watch LOST

The Simple Things

The Simple Things, originally uploaded by wstranathan.

It's the simple things that amuse our children, like the baloon
zipping around the room (top) or the dishes exactly like L has at home
(bottom).

And the whole gang

And the whole gang, originally uploaded by wstranathan.

This is what they pay for

This is what they pay for, originally uploaded by wstranathan.

We have these so they can take pictures. Mine's the first on the
Internet.

Go Speed Racer

Go Speed Racer, originally uploaded by wstranathan.

All the adopted girls got gifts from one another today, so K was
feeling a bit left out. So she and I got some Speed Racer Legos and
spent this afternoon putting them together. She's played with Legos
all her life, but this was her first kit to put together per
directions (mine too!) Not bad for her first kit AND the fact that
she's 7 and this is for ages 7-12, huh? She's got my gift of spatial
recognition.

Slugger

Slugger, originally uploaded by wstranathan.

We're at the children's museum today, and K and I are special friends.
Here she is trying on some baseball gear.

Okay, they've taken over the hot tub

Okay, they've taken over the hot tub, originally uploaded by wstranathan.

Pool full of kids

Pool full of kids, originally uploaded by wstranathan.

The new "Coke"

When you get a cut and need to put something over it to keep it from getting infected, what do you use? In the UK you probably use a "plaster". If you live in the US, I really doubt the word that came to mind was "adhesive bandage strip". You probably immediately thought Band-Aid - which is certainly not the only brand of adhesive bandage strip.

When you want a cold carbonated beverage, what do you want? In much of the US, you would say either "pop" or "soda", but if you live in Texas, your answer is Coke - even though there are certainly other brands of cold carbonated beverages. And in fact, the discussion in Texas becomes somewhat funny:

"You want a Coke?"
"Sure!"
"What kind?"
"Pepsi"

But these cases of a product name taking over the market are rare. In fact, I had intended to use the "minivan" as another example, thinking that the original Dodge Caravan was indeed marketed as the "Dodge Minivan", but alas, I can't find any history saying that anybody had ever copyrighted the term.

These things are so rare to happen that you've got to wonder if they will again. There are so many choices in any kind of product that even the most ubiquitous of companies can't seem to make their brand name synonymous with the category of product itself. If people still say "coffee" and not "Starbucks", then this must be an exceedingly difficult thing to achieve. (Brand name meme-hood?)

So here are a few ideas I have for "the next Coke" (or "the next Band-Aid")

• iPod (will all MP3-players just become iPod's?)
• Google (referring to any search)

And some honorable mentions:

• Tivo - although they have almost as much market dominance with DVR/PVR's as Apple with iPods that even 50% of all DVR's being called a Tivo is a shortcoming
• Craig's List - can't be on the true list because there's really just no comparison
• Linux - I think it's just funny that products are released for "Linux/Unix" as if they're different things
• Ultimate Fighting - UFC is Ultimate Fighting Championship and is a specific set of rules for Mixed Martial Arts (MMA). Honorable mention on two counts: it's not like the whole world uses the term every day, and second, many within UFC use the term MMA

So which ones am I missing?

waayt!

When we drop L off in the nursery on Sunday mornings, she and I usually do our secret handshake, and I start to take off. This is a picture of what happens afterward. She never really wants to give hugs and kisses when I leave her under any other circumstances, but if I forget when dropping her off in the nursery (which she loves - it's not like she dreads it) she chases me down with arms outstretched.

Breadboard power supply hits both rails

Now this is a good idea.  It allows you to take a DC power supply (batteries, or plugged into the wall - a "wall wart") and it puts either 5V or 3.3V DC onto both the rails on a standard breadboard.  For those cases when you're throwing something together, but don't have a more elegant power source.

Of course, if it's using a controller, you could also just use an Arduino Nano.

Girls Just Don't Understand

Mrs. At Home showed me a post one of her friends made. The blogger doesn't understand unboxing, so she thought she'd try it herself. By the end of the post, she still didn't understand it. Maybe if she did the unboxing proper, she'd "get it". Here many of the things she did wrong:

• No close-up of the UPC symbol
• No close up of the "Product sold by weight, not by volume" warning
• No pictures of the inner plastic bag while still inside the box.
• No close-ups of the product inside the packaging (only through the clear plastic)
• You're supposed to remove each item individually, and photograph each piece
• No photographs of all components spread neatly on the living room floor
• No description of where she got the product from - an unboxing is only valuable if the item is still hard to get. Okay - she says "at the grocery store yesterday". C'mon! We want details?! What's the address? How long did you have to wait in line for them?
  
• A "box" has six sides. There are only six total photographs here, two of which don't include the box - this is a very incomplete unboxing
• There seem to be two types of products in here - we should have close-ups of every angle of each type of product (in addition to the close-up of each item coming out of the packaging)
  

But Kudos to BooMama for trying it out. No better way to understand the beauty of a thing than to experience it first hand.

Why I Tweet

If you haven't noticed on the right side of the blog, I've been using Twitter quite a bit more. Here are a few reasons why:

• It's much easier to update quickly - I can update by: web, SMS (phone text messages), instant messenger, iPhone (mobile web interface), and a few desktop widgets
• It has an open API where I can post updates by tools I write.  Hopefully in the next few weeks, I'll make a tool that will tweet with the current temperature here every hour or so (I could just use a website to get this and annoy you with it, but it'll be more fun to make two Arduino's talk wirelessly and do the same).
• I seem to relate better to the "what you're doing in 140 characters" idea than I do to writing a full-fledged blog post.
• You can receive updates by lots of different ways:  the site, by instant messenger, RSS, and on your phone by SMS, or even by visiting here and looking at the right side of the page.
• It works much better for softball games and other quick updates (Hey! I saw the funniest thing!)

So if it's of any interest, pop over to Twitter and start following.

Arduino Simplicity II-c - Madness

I love my learning lab, but to be honest, when hooking it up to the Arduino, it gets noisy in a hurry. No instructions on this one - I'll just say - I told you so.

Arduino Simplicity Part II-b

Okay - now we're actually getting to wire something. Here's the circuit from the previous post on the protoshield. (When you see this on my learning lab, you'll see why I love my protoshield - even though I didn't do a very good job on it.)



Here's the breakdown of this:

1. If you follow the instructions for putting together the protoshield, this is just a solder pad. I soldered a wire in here - some people break up a real female header into a single port and solder that so they can remove the wire. I'll just be careful and not let the wire short out when I'm not using it. The LED is connected to a resistor and ground on the other side.
2. We connect the LED direct into PIN13 (outPin in the sketch). You should always put a resistor in front of an LED - this one already has one.
3. This is digital PIN7 (inPin in the sketch)
4. +5V - another neato thing about the protoshield is that it adds all these ground and +5V headers.
5. This is the mess in the schematic where the T is - 3. is PIN7, 4 is +5V and there's the 100 Ω (brown-black-brown) resistor, and 7. goes to the button.
6. The button - this is already hooked up to the resistor and ground
7. Just like the LED's, I soldered a wire into the solder pad here, rather than a single female header.
8. This is the 1k resistor connected to the LED and to ground.

So if you have a protoshield, wire it up, hook up the board to the USB, and upload the sketch. Good luck! In the next post, I'll show you how to wire the same thing up on a learning lab (yuck!)

Arduino Simplicity Part II-a

I thought this was going to be really simple, but just doing the schematic has required me to learn a bit of EAGLE CAD which allows me to draw schematics. I'm sorry this one isn't quite ideal.

One thing to note on the previous blog is that because of space on my protoshield, I'll be using pin 7 for input instead of pin 2.

Here's the schematic of the "sensor" side of the circuit we'll be building:

When the switch is open, current has only one path - between +5V and PIN7. This is when PIN7 will read HIGH in the code. When you press the button, current is able to go from +5V to ground (the button is connected to ground), and so PIN7 will now read LOW. If things were reversed, and the button were connected to +5V and we connected R1 to ground, it would work similarly, except PIN7 would always read LOW unless the button were pushed.

What's interesting, though, is that if we remove R1 and the ground there, PIN7 fluctuates between high and low. It's a very odd phenomenon, and I'm not quite sure I understand it (the current has to be coming from somewhere, right?) If you use a similar circuit and watch analog values when the switch is open, the values coming back vary wildly.

In the next segement, I'll show you how to wire this up on a protoshield. After that, I'll show you how to wire it up on a learning lab. I wanted to show it on a breadboard, complete with the ground resistors, but I couldn't find pushbuttons.

Arduino Simplicity

I thought since I spend all this time talking about the Arduino, I'd give a couple of examples of very simple sketches. A "sketch" is a program for the Arduino, and the name comes from the Processing programming language on which the Ardunio language is based.

I'll do a couple of posts on a really simple project, then a third post where we'll use the same circuit, but make it behave slightly differently. Of course, you can find these projects on lots and lots of other sites and tutorials, but I've always learned "see one, do one, teach one". I'm on the teach one phase of this really simple circuit.

You'll write the instructions on the computer using the Ardunio developer interface. Then, you compile the code you've written into instructions the board understands, and then upload the instructions from the computer to the board. The newer Ardunio's will receive the instructions and begin processing them immediately. Others require you to press a button on the board to receive the instructions, then the reset button to begin executing them.

The Processing language that the Arduino's language is based on is syntactically similar to C and Java, although not as complex as either. The basic layout of a sketch for the Ardunio looks like this:

void setup() {
  // ...
}

void loop() {
  // ...
}

The setup function gets called when the board is reset, and the loop function executes over and over and over, really, really fast like. Now let's change the sketch just a bit:

int inPin = 2;
int outPin = 13;

void setup() {
  // ...
}

void loop() {
  // ...
}

Here, we've defined two variables - inPin and outPin. These names have no special significance except that in reading them, it's evident to us what we'll use them for. The values on the other hand (2 for inPin and 13 for outPin) are significant. These are the numbers of the ports on the board that we'll use for input and output. Digital pins 0 through 13 can be used for digital input and output, which is all we'll be doing here.

Let's make another change here:

int inPin = 2;
int outPin = 13;

void setup() {
  // ...
}

void loop() {
  if (digitalRead(inPin) == HIGH) {
    // ...
  }
}

This looks just like an if statement in Java or C. We use the digitalRead function to read the value of the inPin - so we take a reading of pin 2. Then we compare (==) that value to the built-in constant HIGH to see if the pin is high - or there's current coming to it. If and only if the pin is high, will we execute the statements inside the block. So let's make that do something:

int inPin = 2;
int outPin = 13;

void setup() {
  // ...
}

void loop() {
  if (digitalRead(inPin) == HIGH) {
    digitalWrite(outPin, HIGH);
  }
}

So in this block, we'll set the digital pin 13 to high if pin 2 is high.

Now let's just flesh it out and make the converse come true:

int inPin = 2;
int outPin = 13;

void setup() {
  // ...
}

void loop() {
  if (digitalRead(inPin) == HIGH) {
    digitalWrite(outPin, HIGH);
  } else {
    digitalWrite(outPin, LOW);
  }
}

If you understood everything up to this point, this should be simple. If the if statement is not true, (pin 2 is not high), then we execute this block (turn pin 13 low);

Notice we didn't do anything with setup. You don't always need to, but it seems that you still must define it (I've been programming in Groovy for too long - everything is optional) even if it's empty.

So this is the complete sketch. Stay tuned for the next tutorial where I show you at least two ways to wire up the Arduino to make this turn into a blinky light.

For the Greater Good

I wish I had a really profound reason for the title, but I don't....

For those of you who have not seen Hot Fuzz, go buy it now or add it to your Netflix queue. Then watch it. I can wait...oh! while you're at it, pick up Shaun of the Dead, too.

You're welcome.

Now, since everybody reading at this point has seen Hot Fuzz, a local larger employer's slogan is "Financial Services for the Greater Good". Again, you're welcome.

Requirements for Presidency

There are two things to take note of here. Obama has been to 57 of the states. He has one that he has not visited: Alaska and Hawaii.

If you're going to exaggerate how many states it feels like you've visited, say "it feels like we've visited 98 states" or "a million states". This isn't misspeaking - it's a complete missing of basic geography and arithmetic. Suppose he thought he visited 47 states, not 57. I can see this as a genuine slip. But, he: 1) did nothing to correct himself, and 2) said he missed 1 state - putting the total states of the US as either 48 or 49 if you count Alaska and Hawaii as two states, which clearly he did not.

Unfortunately, it's a requirement of the Presidency that you be born in the US. Actually, I like the rule, but in this case it's a bad thing - because to become a naturalized citizen of the US:

An applicant for naturalization must demonstrate a knowledge and understanding of the fundamentals of the history and of the principles and form of government of the United States. Applicants exempt from this requirement are those who, on the date of filing, have a medically determinable physical or mental impairment, where the impairment affects the applicant’s ability to learn U.S. History and Government.

I would assume "demonstrating an ability to correctly guess the approximate number of states in the US by observing a flag" somehow fits in the requirements there.

Fun with Metronomes

Funny, when I was in college, we played a steel drum orchestra gig on a trailer. It didn't help. Wonder what the problem with this scaling is. I mean, if you look after the video, you can see this same experiment with two metronomes, three metronomes, and here, 5 metronomes. Why didn't it work with 14 percussionists?

A Recipe Worth Not Sharing

For Mothers' Day for Mrs. At Home, we're making an extra-special treat. Lasagna. But this is no ordinary lasagna.

When I was younger, my oldest sister (yeah - one of the three, the cool one - the others are cool, too, but for this story, she's the cool one) used to make this uber yummy and filling lasagna. And at some point, when she deemed me worthy, she taught me everything I know (but certainly not everything she knows) about making this very special occasion lasagna.

Most people I talk to, when I mention that I'm making lasagna, and that it takes awhile, they say something like, "yeah - mine too. It takes like two hours to put together". No - this lasagna takes all day. You have to plan long in advance to make it. It can't be done slowly. It's very expensive to make. Today, I didn't have to buy any spices, and the groceries were about half a weekly grocery bill - for one meal. And it takes care. You have to plan things - and it never works out, even with the most careful of planning. The number of layers you want rarely come out, or you have something left over.

Since we've downsized, I've found that we downsized too much for this lasagna. I prepared everything knowing I would run out of something, but I didn't run out of anything, except pans to put it in. I had some cheese left over, some sauce (which is a good thing), and lots of pasta. Like I said, it never works out, but I think this is the first time I ran out of pans and not food.

I can't begin to tell you what an experience this lasagna is. It's life-changing. Nobody else's lasagna is even close - I had the lasagna at Harry Carey's, and it was not even in the same league as mine. And as I said, big sis taught me all I know, but not all she knows - so mine is only a shadow of hers.

I know the recipe well. As with most of my recipes, it's not recorded on the computer or in a big box of recipes. You can't find it in the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook that absolutely everybody owns. You won't find it on some ancient piece of parchment in a stash of family heirlooms. Learning this recipe is like learning tabla - it can't be learned be reading or seeing. It must be experienced to be learned.

But you can't have the recipe. I won't teach it to you. There is power in this recipe. And when the time is right, I will pass the recipe on to my daughters for the express purpose of finding a husband. Yes - this is mate-securing lasagna. This is love-at-first-sight lasagna. This is Fitzwilliam Darcy fetching lasagna. While my sister was less selfish and taught it to me for my own enjoyment, and probably to share in entertaining guests (which I have done with this recipe many times), I'm withholding it from anybody else until I give it as a dowry (because there won't be much else for a dowry).

Happy Mother's Day Mrs. At Home!

From Mr. At Home:
I love you, Dear! You're the super-dee-duperest mom! I hope you get to have a relaxing, quiet day (unless of course, you really want to have a hectic, noisy day).

From L:
Uuuuuh...I love you! Mmmm....you're the best! Iiiihh...thank you! I think that's all.

From K:
I'm happy to have made your acquaintance. I love you!

Great Cake

I love this cake. Remember my awesome sister got me an Arduino for Christmas (see some pics here and here), and I love the thing. Given that it's open source and there are so many different versions of it, I don't see why I couldn't make one of these functional by my next birthday. Of course, if I don't get it done by then, maybe I'll just have to delay my birthday (and delay getting older).

What a View!

A friend sent this my way. The guy with the camera is quite skilled - the camera doesn't bounce much at all. And the views are just astounding. We've found here in NC that the best views are the ones you have to hike to - although I don't think I'll be up for this one for awhile.

WANT

MAKE: Blog: Craftsman 1470 piece tool set - only $8,600

Ah to be a Kid Again

Now, I never had slot cars of my own, I had to go down to my friend's house to play slot cars, but this video brings back memories. Of course, these work a lot better than my friend's did because they actually drive with some degree of finesse. We, on the other hand, didn't have the philosophy that "you can't win if you don't finish"

MAKE: Blog: Slot car cam

New Google Features

If you weren't aware already, Google owns my life. Here's a short list of stuff they've done over the past few days to make things more exciting:

• Share anything from anywhere - If you haven't noticed, over on the right side of my blog there's a box that says "What I'm Reading", but that only contains stuff I found interesting in my Google Reader.  Well, now I can share anything and put a note with it and it will show up in my shared items.  Of course, there's a feed for that, so you can subscribe to it, too.  And I can put notes on those things and things I share from my reader so that you know why I shared it.
• Future Posts in Blogger - Now I can finally schedule something to be posted later without giving up my private email posting address to another site to do it for me.  Not that I have so much to say that it would be better to do on  a schedule.

And just a bonus item, if you look on the right side, I've added my Tweets, but I don't know how on board I am with Twitter just yet.

Green Screen Magic

Funny how Dad always tries to make things scientific. We were talking about the Wiggles, and K asked why they chose purple instead of green for one of the colors. Mrs. At Home had her ideas about it, but of course I said it was because of technology.

See, the Wiggles have lots of scenes where they're "traveling" or "on the beach" or "in a crowded city" or something. Now, they really do shoot some of those sequences, but often, they're done with a blue screen - or green screen. So I explained what a green screen or blue screen was and how they use it. I decided I'd try to show K how it's done, and I don't have just a bazillion dollars for Final Cut Pro, and didn't even know Final Cut Express existed until making this post. So I decided I would explain in theory how green/blue screen worked and then just do a couple of still images to prove the point.

So here are two of the girls' stuffed animals, in their "natural" habitats. I realized later that I should have used a flash because our background is bleeding back onto the animals (can you tell what color "screen" we used?), but at least K got the point. It was really frustrating at the beginning trying to get it to work, so K had to wait until I had one under my belt before I'd let her watch me work on another. But once I learned one, it was really easy to do the second (note: add to selection and remove from selection in the GIMP are your friend).

Follow K's Game on Twitter

I'm gonna try twitterering thing again. If you go to that page, you can see updates to K's game as they happen. And if you sign in to twitter, set up your devices (your mobile device or your chat), you can get messages sent to your phone or in your messenger.