Not all aliens are docile. This guy put up a heck of a fight. Some of you will be able to tell where he’s from:

He was starting to get out of hand, so we had to put him behind bars. Unfortunately, the bars weren’t quite strong enough to hold him. Pretty soon he’ll be free:

Here is a wider shot. You can see that he’s mounted on the front of the house.

We have aliens in our bushes, signs in our windows, and a road closed. The big Devils Tower mural will be mounted in front of the garage door, behind the “Road Closed” signs.

At night, the four green aliens are spotlighted by some flickering 10mm white LEDs.

We based this off the rumors of alien autopsies occurring at Area 51. For the younger kids, this is a sick alien that the doctor is helping.

Here are some props “in progress” — they are actually done now, we need to take some more photos.

It takes a lot of microcontrollers — and a lot of wire — to make a UFO.

Four Atmel ATMEGA328 controllers mounted on Evil Mad Science dev boards handle the LED programs. One for landing lights, one for dome / ring, one for tractor beam, and a master controller. Sound is handled by an Arduino with an Adafruit Wave Shield and a homemade amp. The Atmel mcus control Allegro A6276 LED driver chips, which can control 16 LEDs each. We use three of the A6276 drivers.

One of our window props. Sits about 12 inches high and flashes weird patterns on the front white display. The “rads” meter is back-lit with a blue LED.

Our theme this year is Area 51, so aliens are on the agenda. Here are some photos of the 4 foot wide UFO:

Here are a couple of the image ads we’re now using. These get served by Google AdWords for folks in the Austin area.

Been spending the past couple of days setting up our new web store. This will allow people to order our products on-line. It’s coming along pretty nicely and will really come into play once we have more products (I’ve a couple ideas for outdoor furniture). Take a look and let me know what you think.

To those of you who think that “Green Eggs and Ham” is just a story, I present you with green eggs:

The two eggs, fourth from the left, are most definitely green. (More green  ”in person” than in the photo.) These eggs were given to us by our Chicken Coop Beta Tester. The brood is growing quite nicely, enjoying their coop and the run.