Robots, Music, Snacks, Turtles (Patreon)

Hello Good Humans,

Today we'll discuss project adventures in 4 categories: robotics, music, cooking, and 3D printing.

I would've sworn it's been months since my last update, but it turns out time has been just going really slow for me! There've been some changes in my life that are making things hard and slow sometimes lately, but fun things have been happening too:

1. Robots

My hands were craving some physical embodied computation, so I got some LittleBits kits (for work research purposes of course) which turned out to be pretty cool! It has little magnetic modules you stick together that can control motors, light, and sound. 

In some ways the combinatorics don't feel all that open; there's a limited number of ways you can put the bits together and have it work. But the point seems to be to be creative in applying them to other objects and in the story, context, and conceptual design of what you're creating, which I've been having a lot of fun with. The process from idea to implementation is very fast.

The featured video above uses synthesized audio to control a robot drawing on my kitchen floor. It is a variation on this party bus robot I made first: https://youtu.be/Omxyu18IJDY 

There is also a purse that gets anxious when it doesn't have my phone safely tucked inside, but petting it calms it down too: https://youtu.be/EyZMN8s2FXs 

And I made it so the pieces of a welded sculpture I'm working on get in trouble when they kiss: https://youtu.be/Vv98uSSEY48 

2. Music

I got to host my good friend Marian Call for a few days, partly with the purpose of recording vocals for a project she is producing. I can't wait to share it with you, though that probably won't be for a while.

It was so much fun! I haven't recorded and shared much music lately so this was a great way to get back in the saddle and re-familiarize myself with the equipment. I also had to write out the parts, which I was worried about at first because I haven't written out music in a long time. But apparently my hands remember how, even if my brain doesn't.

I also got to learn lots of things from Marian about singing and recording vocals!

Here we are recording in the woods like two very classy singers:

I've decided to commit to sharing more music again. I've been doing music in the past few years, alone and with others, written and improvised, but I haven't done any "serious" composing, and almost no recording. Mostly because serious music is serious business and it is painful and emotional in ways that are too tiring to combine with the tiredness of recent years. Composing is my truest art and deepest self-expression, and my mind is a terrifying place to go too deep into. I'm gonna try to take it slow and find a process and scope that works for 2019-me. Béla's got my back.

3. SNACK BREAK

Hey, I mentioned that a new year's resolution for me was learning to cook more planty foods that have protein and calories and stuff. And cooking things with more than 2 ingredients.

I have made some progress!

There's so many ingredients! The lentil curry has like a billion spices, I learned to grind spices!!!! I learned you can put black rice and quinoa together in a rice cooker and they will be friends!!!!!

It took a bit to build up to VERY IMPRESSIVE COMPLICATED FOODS like lentils. First I realized that you can add more than just eggs to ramen. You can just put anything you want in there, like actual vegetables. I need to eat fresh vegetables almost every day or else everything feels wrong in life, so, hey, that was a start.

I already knew how to do stir fries. That's pretty much my go-to. But did you know you can stir fry kale? 

I bought and cooked kale, like a real Californian! I do like how it tastes, though I'm doubtful it counts as a food rather than some sort of vitamin fiber supplement. The mushrooms and tomatoes don't help out much either, calorie-wise, but at least if you stir fry anything in enough oil or bacon fat you can hope to be net positive.

But guess what? STEW!

A stew is just like a stir fry but really wet and for a long time. The long time is good because you can add spices and stuff without panicking and running out of flavor time.

Chickpeas, my friend, those are chickpeas. And tofu. And I know how to make fried rice with a million eggs in it. I am so good at things!!!!!! I mean, I usually do about 50/50 on my new year's resolutions but this is one I'm knocking out of the park. I can do sweet potatoes, lentils, tofu, chickpeas and grains and rice of many colors. I know how to cook these things with bacon fat, or chicken juice, or with just veggiebits. What else even is there????? Do I know all the foods now????? Let me know if you know about any other foods. I just learned what shallots were, so  that was probably the last one, but maybe there's more foods?

4. 3D Printing Turtle Programming

Hey! So a while back I was designing some 3d spatial programming language stuff in VR, including some programming blocks for LOGO that are shaped like turtles and program turtles.

Then I got a 3D printer (from one of you! But I don't know who because there was no note! But thank you!) and now I can make all my virtual things real things, including my programming blocks. This program tells you that when you touch a cake you get +1 health:

I'm working on a design that will combine the virtual and the real, designed/printed and found objects, using computer vision and machine learning and all that fancy stuff. For example, here's a program that draws a square, by repeating 4 times the action of going forward 1 and then making a quarter turn:

The arrow swivels so you can manually set the angle, though if you want something precise like a quarter turn then of course it's best to just specify with a quarter. Parentheses are hugs. Pennies are useless as currency but maybe re-useable as counters in physical programming interfaces. 

This is all based on prior work and it will take some time to articulate my latest vision, but I couldn't help but share at least a little.

Well, that's what's up over here, adventure-wise. At some point I'll update about other things in life, though mostly I have no idea what the future holds. More good snacks, I hope.

Bye good humans!

Vi