Debbie arrived in Austin yesterday afternoon safe and sound, after about an 8 hour drive down from Arkansas. We went out to dinner, had some really good mom-and-pop Indian, and drove her around a bit.

Got up this morning, finished up the packing, and drove out to Houston, about a 3 hour drive from Austin. We lucked out and didn’t encounter horrible traffic, though it was very busy with holiday travelers.

We got to the airport at around 12:30 PM. I must say, the Houston airport is one of the best marked ones I’ve been in. Very easy to get into and out of. Of course, it helped that it was Thanksgiving DAY and not yesterday. The Continental International terminal looked pretty empty to me, so I hope they checked in without problems. (Ev left her phone @ home.)

After I dropped them off in Houston, I turned around and headed right back to Austin. Just got back now (3 PM) safe and sound. The traffic was much quieter on the way back (once I got out of Houston). The major corner near our house (North Loop and Burnet) is dead quiet. The fewest cars I’ve ever seen. Ha, but just wait until tomorrow!

Their flight out is Continental Airlines 653, scheduled to depart at 4:00 PM. Arrival time in Quito, Ecuador (UIO) is 10:20 PM tonight, a 5 1/2 hour flight.

We’ll be up in Chicago most of December, from Dec 15th through Jan 6th. Here’s are the details:

Southside: Dec 14th-20th
Northside: Dec 21st-24th
Southside: Dec 25th-30th
Northside: Dec 31st-4th
Southside: Jan 5th-6th

Just got back from Wizard World in Dallas, and we’re completely exhausted. Traffic was bad going up (I HATE driving through Dallas, one of my least favorite cities to drive in), though we found everything okay. Got to check out Tanner Electronics, which was a pretty cool shop, when we got in on Friday afternoon.

On Saturday we made our way to the convention center, which is about 2 miles from our hotel. It proceeded to take over an hour to go 2 miles–as soon as we got on (and too late to get off) the expressway, traffic came to a standstill. What a nightmare.

Anyhow, we got there finally and were there all day. Since I’m not a fan of comics, look to Evelyn’s blog for write-ups. Evelyn turned into an excellent used car salesman and helped Chasen get a lot of sales. As for me, I sat in a chair.

Today (Sunday) we went back around and hung out for a couple of hours. Then we began our drive back to Austin, which was pretty damn horrible. No accidents, but an ass-load of traffic. The most I’ve seen on that stretch, and a boat-load of out-of-state. Then I realized it: This is all Thanksgiving Week traffic. God help me. It was 3 1/2 hours of nearly bumper-to-bumper (but at least rolling). Very tiring.

So we’re home again, Chasen had a successful show, and now I get ready for another work week. At least it’s a short one, though I do get to enjoy a nice round-trip to Houston on Thursday.

Yeap, we’re off to Dallas this time. We’re going primarily to see Chasen which I wrote about in my journal Sybarite13 and also to check out Tanner Electronics.

Tanner Electronics is supposed to be similar to the American Science and Surplus in the Chicagoland area. I like the idea of being able to roam around and see what’s available. Ordering from catalogs are okay except that I prefer to see, touch, and get ideas kind a like the book stores. You just never know what you’ll find.

Just when you thought that we’d be raising a country full of wimps living in padded cages, along comes a re-issue of a good old-fashioned terror of a toy. The Green Machine.

It’s too bad they don’t make an adult sized version. It would be perfect for letting off a little steam.

Let’s just hope the Helicopter Parents don’t pressure the company to pull this toy. Where’s the helmet? Where’s the seatback? My Darling Precious Snowflake might get hurt! Damn right, I say. Skin a knee. Whack a head on the pavement. Gotta learn sometime.

Update: Here’s a print-ad of the original. Like the Big Wheel, it had a hard plastic front wheel. Since the pedals were connected directly to the wheel, you usually stopped it by skidding–and creating a nice flat spot on one part of the wheel. (You notmally “locked” the wheel in the same position, depending on where your legs felt the most natural.) The new version uses a rubber tire, which should be an improvement. We’ll see.

It is interesting that this new version seems to be using less plastic, though I like the handles on the old one a lot better. (Who needs a hand brake?) Also weird that the old one had a true bucket seat, but the new one doesn’t.

Update 2: I just checked out the Huffy site and the final production model looks better. They painted the metal black & green, removed the safely plastic around the wheel,  and gave it a bucket seat. (It’s interesting to see how a design changes through the development process.) Take a look at the site here: Green Machine Site

The Chumby arrived safe-and-sound today, after a long trip. From Hong Kong, to Korea, to Alaska, to Kentucky, and finally in Austin. It came in a small box, with some really nice packaging. Take a look:

 
Click Here For A Fullsize View

As you can see, it comes in it’s own little cloth sack, with the power pack in its own sack. Some little do-dads (to the right) come along, too. The actual Chumby is that black bean-bag looking thing in the middle. It’s about four inches across, has an LCD touch screen, and a leather “body”. It’s really quite an impressive presentation.

When you first plug it in and turn it on you get a welcome movie. It has to calibrate the touch screen and set up the network settings (it has WiFi built in). You then go to their site, register the Chumby, and start choosing your Widgets.

The Chumby displays Widgets, which are little Flash-based programs. You can select stuff like Weather, Word-Of-The-Day, Clocks, eBay listings, and so on. There’s a lot of stuff out there, and more being added. Think of it as an RSS feed without the PC.

It’s actually pretty handy, as it can display useful information without taking up screen space on your PC. And since it’s wireless, it can sit anywhere in your home. Right now I have it at my desk, as you can see below:

Click Here For Fullsize Version

Some initial impressions:

• The touch screen is nice, but it doesn’t work the greatest with the fingertips. I use a GameBoy stylus and it works perfectly. (You don’t need to access the screen much. Once you have your widgets set up, it’s set-and-forget.)
• The network setup was a little annoying, as most setups are. Though it was mostly due to “user error” on my part. Once I converted by passphase from ASCII to HEX it worked fine. (I’m running an older D-Link router.)
• It seems to respond a little sluggishly now and then, but I think a lot of that was due to it not reading the touches properly. The stylus fixed that. (They should include one, and have a little hole in the Chumby to store it.)
• There are lots of sensors in it, but I haven’t seen many used yet. For example, there’s a speaker in there, a mic, a tilt sensor of some sort, etc. It will be interesting to see what they do with that stuff. (I know some alarm clock Widgets use the speaker.)
• I’d like to see a widget transition, or a widget style sheet. Some of the Widgets have white backgrounds, some dark. When it transitions it’s a bit annoying. It either needs a smooth (fade-in-out) setup, or a way to get all widgets to use the same stylesheet / color combo.
• I think it would be too bright in the bedroom (the screen is quite bright); though you can change it to “night mode” which is much-much dimmer.

It is nice to see that the technology has caught up with the concept. (Remember the ill-fated 3COM Audrey?) With wireless everywhere, these sorts of always-on internet-enabled devices will really come of their own.

Update: While it does has a 9V battery snap hidden inside, it’s supposed to run plugged in. This makes sense, because it’s always on (and driving a big, bright, display). However, it’s size is perfect for moving around, and the cord makes that process a hassle. I wish Tesla were alive today, so he could give me the wireless power sources we need.

Oddly, some of the most interesting Widgets are the Animal Cams. (You get sick of looking at the same weather report over and over.) Right now I’ve got the Shamu Cam running (yes, the whale). And look there–there are actually two whales in the tank.

While microcontrollers, such as the Arduino, are good at making LEDs flash and speakers beep, they can do a lot of other stuff. One of the more interesting things you can do with them is get them to talk.

When I say “talk” I don’t mean speak, but communicate. For example, they can talk to a computer they are plugged into (via USB). They can talk to other devices on a network (wired or wireless ethernet). They can even talk to each other, using something as simple as a twisted pair copper connection to something more interesting like ZigBee or Bluetooth.

Some sample applications:

Perhaps you have a weather station which collects windspeed and direction. One of the challenges of having an Anemometer is that it must be placed away from buildings (ex. on the roof). So, you’d have to run a lot of wire up there. Instead, you could have a microcontroller connected to a ZigBee module, all of which is powered by a small solar panel. (Most microcontrollers are very low power and can easily run on a battery/solar combo.) The ZigBee has a 100 meter range (indoors) so you can place it quite a ways away from the house.

Or perhaps you want the ultimate child monitor. You place a microcontroller, ZigBee module, and RFID reader combo next to each deadly area in the house (stove, stairs, paint thinner, dirty magazines, etc). Then you embed a RFID in your childs arm. Every time they get near the RFID reader, the microcontroller picks it up, transmits information via the ZigBee, and alerts the parent. (Since ZigBees work as a mesh network, they hop messages to each other, so you don’t need direct contact between child and base. Every module is a base station of sorts.)

You could be an avid bird watcher, with several bird feeders set up around your land. You could put a ZigBee and microcontroller and a sensor (heat, accelerometer, whatever) on each feeder. Then, when a bird approaches, the info is passed over the mesh network alerting you that there are birds in the area. It could also trigger things like cameras, which would record only when birds are in the area. (Similar to the ones that hunters use for deer; except these cameras communicate back to the base station in real-time.) At the base station, a module could be connected to the internet, sending you an e-mail each time a feeder is used.

You get the idea. There are tons of uses for these low power, mostly inexpensive, devices. The problem is finding a place to learn about them, and for that I would suggest a book called “Making Things Talk”.

You can pick up a copy at Amazon for about $20. It focuses on the Arduino, so if you are interested in learning how to do more complicated stuff with that board, this is a book for you. It starts up easy, and then gets into connecting stuff to ethernet, Bluetooth, and Zigbee. It also does a good job in covering a number of different sensors (probably the most expensive part of many of these projects).

I’m not a big fan of how the book is laid out (trying to be too cool, and thereby making some sections hard to follow), but the information–and ideas–are gold. It also starts you out with little assumed knowledge of electronics, which is nice for beginners; though the book is not dumbed down, especially in the later chapters.

What really impresses me in general about this stuff is how easy it is to get a microcontroller talking with another one over a wired/wireless connection. The connections are pretty straightforward, and all the radio negotiations are handled by the ZigBee/Bluetooth boards. Just give them power, and connect the transmit/receive pins. That’s about it. This is wonderful, because it allows people to take ideas and make something very complicated without needing a degree in electrical engineering and a million bucks.

or, “I’m starting to feel bad for the Chinese.”

Now we have the Deadly Aqua Dots. An interesting looking toy that has an even more interesting side effect when ingested: It turns into GHB, a popular drug. Where were these toys when I was a kid? I missed out on so much.

Now, as usual, here are the parts that annoy me:

The CPSC said a boy nearly 2 years old “swallowed several dozen beads. He became dizzy and vomited several times before slipping into a comatose state for a period of time.”

Now take a look at this toy:

Honestly, is that the kind of toy you would even consider giving to a 2 year old? Let’s give little Jimmie a sack of beads that look like candy! What a great idea, honey!

Okay, maybe I’m being unfair. Maybe the family had older kids, and it was their toy. That happens. But then you have this:

“I was so frightened because I thought she wasn’t going to make it,” Heather Lehane told CNN affiliate Network 7 of her 10-year-old daughter, Charlotte, who was hospitalized in Australia after ingesting some of the beads.

Let me repeat that one part: “her 10 year-old daughter”

Heather, here’s a word of advice for you: If your TEN YEAR OLD daughter goes around eating a bunch of beads, maybe she has bigger problems than a little ingestion of GHB. Whaddya do, feed her out of pewter bowls with lead forks? Or are forks too dangerous for your household?

Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that there should be anything in toys that breaks down to GHB, but come on. You are letting a two year old get at beads and have a ten year old who eats them. Genius!

(How did the compound get in there? Because an industrial solvent was used in place of a plasticizer; they both look like oily liquids. The solvent breaks down to gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid in the body. Face it folks, plastics aren’t easy to make, and require loads of deadly chemicals. Sleep well.)

I saw this recently and thought it would be a perfect (and utterly cool) R-Prize vessel:

Update: Here’s the article about the goose in this photo. Pretty interesting stuff.

Several remote-controlled robotic geese let loose in various urban areas. The robotic goose interacts with the local goose population. The interface allows people to follow the birds closely and interact in ways that would not otherwise be possible. The goose drivers (or “gooser”) can ‘talk to’ the geese through the interface, delivering prerecorded goose ‘words,’ their own vocal impersonations, or other sounds (such as goose flute hunting calls). Each utterance via the robotic goose triggers the camera in the robot’s head to capture 2-4 seconds of video recording the responses of the animal. These video samples upload to the goosespeak database that the participants can annotate.

Left to their own devices, the robotic geese repeat what another (real) goose has done a few moments before. It’s like a big gameboy, except that the platform is your local park.

Natalie freed her robotic gooose in the ECO Park of Los Angeles. Kids came running, they wanted to play with the robotic goose too and realized in the process that they had never noticed the existence of the geese before. By tiptoeing around to see the habitat of the geese, the children saw broken shells. They did their research and discovered that if the shell was broken it was because the pesticides and fertilizers used in the park were bad for the eggs. By playing they had discovered the complexity of ecological connections. That’s another difference with Gameboy, here the game is open-ended not crypted.

Who would have known that a package’s progress would amuse me so:

11/08/2007 : Shenzhen, China
11/08/2007 : Chek Lap Kok, Hong Kong
11/09/2007 : Incheon, Korea
11/09/2007 : Anchorage, Alaska

…en route to Louisville, KY. Go, Chumby, go!

Maybe I’m so amused because this package, coming from China, is getting here faster than another heading from Minneapolis, Minnesota!