One of the great things about going to an awesome school is the teachers, especially those who will let you borrow microprocessors.I've been wondering for several months now if I should buy an Arduino, the relatively low cost microcontroller that has hobby engineers going wild (seriously, wild. You would not believe how much someone can love a computer chip until you've seen the die hard Arduino fans). Fortunately, my school's ASR (Applied Science Research) teacher let me borrow an Arduino fo... Read Full Story
A little while ago, I was contacted by a book publisher who was interested in my work. He asked me to write a short essay on technology from the perspective of a 15 year old. The essay will be published in a book hopefully sometime this year.Here's what I wrote:"Technology is anything released after you are born." - I first heard something like this a few years ago. At the time the Apple computer was obese, PCs were in style, and kids spent their days playing dodge ball instead of Call of Dut... Read Full Story
I've been following Waterloo Labs for a while now (they even commented on the lecture I gave on passion and science last year), and now it seems they're doing pretty darn well for themselves. They were recently on BBC radio and a variety of blogs (now this one). Their most recent project is a car that's controlled by an iPhone, which is probably the coolest youtube video of the year (yes, even better than the llama song). Read Full Story
GlobalUnity 3D game companies are starting to pop up all over the internet radar. Once Unity made their Indie 2.6 game engine free, people started going Unity crazy, including me.MicroSpeaking of Unity, I've been working on my own little project, and here are a few photos of the in game artwork.The 3D city I have is pretty darn big and it's exciting to finally be working on a fully 3D project. This game is just a way for me to learn 3D programming by doing. I admit it really is just another ... Read Full Story
Masking mistakes can be terrifying, and Sir Ken Robinson says its destroying our young peoples' creativity. [or watch this video here]Robinson makes a lot of really good points, and it makes me wonder, is American education really extinguishing creativity?I love school, its a place to learn from people who are smarter than you. However, it seems that all young people do at school is have information shoved into their minds. Even now at the best schools, there is less creativity and more facts... Read Full Story
While searching for some sample Unity projects to look at, I came across Muse Games, a really small game company that uses Unity 3D, my new favorite tool, to create 3D games. While I'm hardly a gamer myself, I really enjoyed the unique gameplay though one of their Unity games, Guns of Icarus. This Unity project is really a refreshing piece, as there are absolutely no zombies. Seriously, a game with no zombies!Where have I seen this before? Oh yeah, everywhere.If you're interested in building ... Read Full Story
GlobalIn some earlier posts several months ago I discussed cyber warfare, something that just made big headlines. In tonight's 60 minutes, some interesting news has arisen. Apparently, Brazil has been attacked multiple times by cyber terrorists, and specialists say that America is a risk.I have a hard time going without power for 3 hours, imagine what would happen if the entire west or east coast lost power for lord knows how long at a time. Fortunately, Obama is allocating more funds for cyb... Read Full Story
A couple years ago I met a college student who was creating an autonomous Unmanned Ariel Vehicle. The little plane would fly over a field and scan the ground using color sensors. Black lines drawn in the field told the plane not to fly past them, grey lines were landing strips, and so on. He told me not to waste my time with software, and that hardware was the future of innovation. He explained that soon our computers would have "hardware updates" instead of software updates where the compute... Read Full Story
I finally managed to get the UV LED Flashlight kit up on the BW Science Labs Store website. I've already talked about this kit, so I won't overdo promotion. However, it really is nice to see more products being added to the Store. Read Full Story
Yesterday I was rushed to say the least, so I didn't manage to get out a Sunday Status, however today I do have a Monday Status.GlobalI order my electronics components from all over, but one place in particular that I could not be without is Sparkfun. Also, having met some of the Sparkfun employees at the Maker Fair '09 its nice ordering from a small, friendly company with a face. Unfortunately, starting early this week, Sparkfun is being sued by SPARC International, a large company owned by ... Read Full Story
