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Watching Ice Melt

This is a video about ice melting.

Yes, I’m totally serious, because as you probably know, I only make serious videos.

Actually, this video came about when we had the big snowstorm back on February 2nd, 2011. Everything was shut down, so the Doctor and I stayed home and did a whole lot of shoveling. We also played in the snow a bit, and she brought in these huge icicles I knocked off the house. We put them in the sink to melt, and as usual, I figured I should put Time Lapse Bot to use and record things. Little did I know it would take so long…

It took 27 hours for the ice to melt. It probably helps that our house is usually between 55 and 60 degrees. If you see any water splashing onto the icicles, it’s just due to the fact that I had to wash dishes at some point. Other than that, we were able to pretty much leave them undisturbed, though next time I’ll probably set things up in a tub in the basement.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this video of ice melting… even though it took 27 hours to film it, you should be able to watch it all in about 20 seconds.

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Bike Drawing (from memory!)

Bike

Here’s my bike. It’s not my bike, but it’s the bike I drew.

I read the Drawing a bike from memory post on Boing Boing and filed it (without looking at any drawings) until I got a chance to pull out the drawing tablet.

After I drew it, I then went back to the post, looked at the attached drawings, and then went over to bikedrawings.tumblr.com and man, mine totally sucks! Well, no, I actually do like mine… but there are some amazing bike drawings over there…

I really enjoy this type of creative challenge, and as always, I need to make more art… or at least, make robots that make art.

Update: Yay! It’s now over at bikedrawings.tumblr.com

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Fitbit… getting closer!

Fitbit API

I originally thought the Fitbit looked awesome, but in digging into things, I found a few issues I didn’t like. (See Fitbit Improvements.) While it looks like they’ll never go the route of sending your own data to your own computer without first sending your data to the cloud, their official API is out (in beta) and should at least offer an improvement over the “unofficial” APIs people had been working on.

Over at dev.fitbit.com you can read up on the details, and get some example code (none in Perl yet though!) It’s good for the Fitbit ecosystem, as more applications may come out that make use of the data. If anything, I’d like to see something like what I created for Last.fm in Heard, an application that syncs your data back to your own server from the cloud.

I also noticed that Fitbit got a mention on the Arduino blog, which amuses me for a few reasons. First, if the Fitbit had been more open I probably would have looked more seriously into getting one last year. (Open source hardware would have been awesome, but I can live with closed, though it is interesting that they use the open source Arduino for rapid prototyping.) Second, I actually got into working with the Arduino partly to try to do some of the sleep monitoring functions that the Fitbit does. (Yes, that’s another project I got sidetracked on.)

Depending on how our research funds shake out this year, the Fitbit may still be on our list. As I’ve said before, I’m the type of person who needs to collect data, and analyze it, and chart it out, in order to find more value in it. Meanwhile, I’ll be in the lab working on my Arduino-based sleep monitor…

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Tracking Cat Food Consumption

This was 100% my wife’s idea. You see, we have two cats, and because her cat seemed to be losing weight (and because my cat eats like a pig) we were concerned that her cat was not getting any of the food we left out all day long. So when I was told to “Get your time lapse thingy!” I sprung into action and set it up to capture a day’s worth of footage of the cats eating food.

We learned that my cat certainly eats a lot (but doesn’t eat all the food) and my wife’s cat is getting a chance to eat throughout the day, so I’ll call this experiment successful.

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Do Your Job

Bricks #2259

We’ve been hearing a lot of people say to other people, “Do your job!”

But what is your job?

Is your job to manufacture widgets, or to sell things, or to serve food, or remove trash, teach others, create laws, clean windows, manage computers?

Or is your job, first and foremost, to be a human being, to help others, to fight injustice, to protect those who can’t fend for themselves?

Sometimes events occur which are of a higher calling than manufacturing widgets or selling things…

When the 9/11 terrorist attacks happened, and people left their work to help others, to aid in rescuing their fellow man, to try to survive, was anyone there yelling at them to get back to work and do their job?

When a school shooting occurs, and lives are in danger, are teachers expected to keep teaching, and act as if nothing is happening?

When a natural disaster strikes (or even, you know, a really bad snowstorm) I find some comfort in knowing people will take time to help out others.

When the shit goes down, I expect my fellow humans to be there for me, just as I would be there for them.

That “every man for himself” crap? That’s not what’s made great things happen. Working together is what makes accomplishing amazing things possible.