Robot, geeks and rolling up the sleeves: building cool stuff

Presumably, the fact that I am a massive geek isn’t a surprise to you.  If it is, I apologize (and exclaim “surprise!” while pulling a slightly awkward face and fanning my fingers out beside it); the fact is that I am a geek and am quite happy about it, thank you very much.

So: robots.  We geek-types have a long history with robots, largely because robots are awesome.  People who love technology of any kind (cars, computers, airplanes, etc.) and who are creative thinkers tend to like to build, paint, draw, modify, dream about, etc. the things that fascinate them for one reason or another.  In my life, I have built or repaired or heavily modified many things, but I have never built anything that I would consider to be a real robot.  Enter the 21st century, enter hexapodal robots.  It’s ok, you go watch some of those videos.  This post will still be here when you get back.

Cool, right?  I agree.  I’m fascinated by the motion and construction of these things.  The kinematics look interesting (but doable), and certainly embedded stuff doesn’t scare me.  I have a single-board computer (2GHz Celeron type of thing) in a closet that a friend gave me a little while back, waiting for a project.  I bet I could install Linux on a 4GB CompactFlash card on it and…

At this point, hopefully you have figured out that I ordered parts.  18 HiTec HS-422 servos (three per leg), a Robot Electronics SD84 multi-I/O board, some sensors &c.  I plan to build the chassis and legs myself, because I’ve discovered (shock!  awe!) that I really like to build things rather than just assemble them.  It will be a long project, but I’m excited about it; I’ve already built a C++ library that wraps the SD84’s interface into something much easier to use (I’ve open-sourced it as well; here, browse the SVN repo and have a look).

I’ll upload some photos and video as the project progresses, but after buying a bench power supply (yeah, it was an excuse) and writing that code, I’ve had all the servos moving.  Next step is to validate the ADC inputs (and therefore the sensors); once the I/O is proved good I will get the SBC booting and get some flavour of Linux running on it.  Whee!

Look what I did today!

We’ve wanted to do this in my music area since we moved into this place. I think they look great.

Left to right: 2007 Taylor 114, 2008 Takamine EAN-10C, 1984 Ibanez Artist AM-50, 1996 Fender American Standard Stratocaster.

This is why globalization is awesome

This is over a foot tall and cost $2.

A beautiful afternoon

It is about the nicest Saturday afternoon I can recall, today. Twenty- five degrees, clear blue skies, a warm and playful breeze – and no commitments or plans. I’ve taken a favourite book from the shelf, a great cigar from the humidor and a comfy chair to the deck. Overlooking the Fraser, just able to see the silouhette of Vancouver Island on the horizon, the busy world below and around, wrapped in the soft and luxurious blanket of this perfect late summer weather, I am reminded of how fortunate I am. Only a few things could improve on these moments; I feel that I should find a way to package them to share with loved ones and to steal glances at on days when life seems hard.

A long week in Atlanta

..since it was actually two weeks.  A very interesting two weeks, from a professional standpoint – I’ll elaborate on that later (calendar later, not this-post later).  Due to the amount of work that was required to get a handle on all of the projects we had on the go at work, I stayed a week longer than planned so that I could interact more effectively with stakeholders and other departments on our high-priority projects.  An effective and productive couple of weeks, at least, so that’s good.

Over the week-end I ended up at Frank Roper’s Wing Chun / Kung Fu school with our CFO and our Director of North American Sales.  It was very interesting – I enjoyed myself very much, and managed a most excellent groin-area strain that kept me limping for a few days.  It’s been a couple of years since I’ve regularly practiced any martial art, so pushing was a bad idea – but the brain and body remember what they were once capable of and try to keep pace with the ambition and the adjacent practitioners!  I’m going to have to find something local and pick it back up, though.  I miss it.

While in the US, I picked up a box of Carlos Toraño Exodus Silver Torpedo cigars – easily my favourite so far out of the many that I’ve sampled since mail-ordering a few dozen different cigars.  I’ve been trying to expand my appreciation outside of Cubans, since they’re uniformly expensive here, and into the realm of Central/South American stogies which can be had for very little money in the US (and legally imported, of course – personal exemptions after 5 days of travel outside of Canada are very useful).

At the Guitar Center in Marietta, I ran across a deal I simply couldn’t ignore on a Japanese Takamine EAN10C acoustic guitar (solid cedar top, solid mahogany back / sides), so I ended up picking it up.  The instrument truly lives up to their motto “The art and craft of guitars” – it is a simple cutaway Dreadnought design with no fancy inlays anywhere.  The fretboard isn’t cluttered with dots or birds or vines or dragons or crosses or any other nonsense – just rosewood and brass.  The binding is 5-ply plastic, dark wood and light wood (guessing natural and tinted maple, but it’s light-dark-light-dark-light, with plastic on the outsides and dark-light-dark wood in the middle), with the woods also being used to form a simple 5-ring rosette.  A compensated rosewood pinless bridge and gold tuning machines with orange pearloid pegs complete the picture.  It plays even better than it looks (hey, it’s a Tak – almost as easy to play as an electric) and sounds incredible – not quite the piano-like tone of a Taylor, but a bright and up-front sound that can easily go from light fingerstyle to heavy strumming and be right at home.  I have been unable to overdrive the soundboard, nor have I been able to detect an obvious loss of tone when played lightly.  Takamine has made a wonderful instrument no matter how it is measured.

A collection of EAN10C images that *almost* do the guitar justce

My biggest problem now is going to be decided which (the Taylor 114 or the Takamine EAN10C) to pick up when I want to play!  I can’t wait to record a track with them layered – I suspect that their sounds will be very complimentary to each other.

This is how much fun I had

Shannon and I rode to the interior with a friend last weekend (thanks for the ride, Chris!). Weather was beautiful, it was great to see my folks, roads were clear. On the way home, we hit two of my favourite chunks of twisties – the back way from Silver Creek to Falkland, and the very East end of Hwy 7 by Harrison. I think my rear tire says it all – man, the Bandit is fun! Woo!

Fraserfest

Beer + patio + live music + warm summer evening + friends = heaven.

Green Day

Shannon’s youngest brother and his girlfriend are in town, and we’re at GM Place with them to see Green Day! I haven’t listened to them in years, but their live performance is legendary so I have high hopes. Woo!

Ninja edit: the stage is obviously set up for The Bravery, the opening act.

Running commentary: The Bravery put on a decent act with moderate energy, and apparently I knew a couple of their songs! Mostly enjoyable, but their vocalist had some major pitch issues. I suspect monitoring problems since he was sometimes bang on but often wandered sharp (IEMs too loud?). Will probably buy their new album anyway, good songs.

Green Day was wicked. Crowd participation and high, high energy for a nearly three hour set! They played a good mix of new songs and favorites, in the middle bringing us back to (literally) half our lives ago. What an experience – I may just be a Green Day fan again. To quote Keanu: ‘whoah’.

Any days with two wheels are better than those without

…but some days on two wheels are better than other days on two wheels.  After talking about it for most of the spring (and after having wanted to drive it for many, many years), Shannon and I decided to ride the Oregon coast on our little vacation this week.  We set out early on Sunday morning, crossed the border at Peace Arch with a very short wait and took I5 to 20 West.  We followed 20 to the Port Townsend ferry, which we’ve been on before:

From Port Townsend, we followed the 101 west through Olympic National Forest, which was stunning.  Stunning.  We were both glad for our heated vests, even though it was late June – winds made it chilly, but vests and grips made us cozy and happy to be out in the fresh air.  It was foggy until we made it to Olympic, actually, which made us a bit nervous about the rest of the trip.  As soon as the 101 started to trend south, however, the fog was gone and it was sunny and bright.  Winds from the Pacific were strong, though, and kept things relatively cool.  Here’s a view from a pull-out on 101 in Washington:

Tough to tell due to depth of field from the zoom, but this was taken from a pretty high cliff.  Incredible views abound, as do lovely twisties and generally courteous drivers (!!).

On day one we pushed south to Astoria, just in time to watch the sun set from our hotel:

Day two saw us riding the incredibly beautiful 101 in Oregon.  Traffic was light, the sun was out along with that ocean breeze (ok, wind – it was still very strong).  We took it easy as we headed south, enjoying the views along the way:

We didn’t make it all that far – in fact, we stopped just north of Florence, OR at C&M Stables.  Yes, we went horseback riding on the beach.  It was absolutely incredible – an experience that we will remember forever.  Riding side-by-side in the surf while holding hands was romantic and incredibly soul-stirring – I highly recommend this to anyone who has the opportunity.

(unfortunately there were other people with us, heh)

Because we wanted to hit Mount St. Helens on the way home, day three opened with a quick dart into the interior of Oregon via 126 (this is a great highway too – lots of nice twisties and good visibility) – we bombed through Eugene, Salem and Portland on I5 en route to Washington as quickly as we could get there.  Mount Saint Helens was another amazing experience which pretty much speaks for itself – again, great roads, but a place to visit if you have the chance:

From Mt. St. Helens, we took the Mountain Highway and a collection of other non-Interstates northwest to I5, then bombed home.  Just under 2,000km in three days, and over 1,000km of it was on Tuesday.

Sunday was spent thoroughly washing and then waxing the bikes – they deserved it. 

Surprise visit from dad!

We’d planned to come to Langley to see the Royal Lipizzaner Stallions this evening, so I left the office early. Surprise, though: Shannon’s father showed up for a visit! Apparently he’s back to work Monday, so he decided to get our of the house for the week-end. Now he’s standing in line with us waiting to get in to see the horses.

We’ve met a lovely 93-year-old and her daughter in line and the gates will open soon. Woo!