Lean more go faster

Quit My Day Job

2009-04-01T15:55:48Z

Today's blog post is "Quit My Day Job"
http://www.kellbot.com/2009/04/quit-my-day-job/

Blag

2009-03-31T12:18:55Z

In case you weren't aware, I have a pubilc blog called kellbot! at www.kellbot.com
Starting last week I am trying to post something every day. Partially to get back into the habit or writing, and partially to keep me accountable for what I'm doing each day.

I promise not all the posts will be about Tinysaur. I've just been doing a lot of t-saur stuff lately.

Here are this weeks entries if you missed them:

http://www.kellbot.com/2009/03/packaging-evolution/
The evolution of Tinysaur's packaging over the last few months

http://www.kellbot.com/2009/03/php-templating-with-mod_rewrite/
A PHP templating system I set up

http://www.kellbot.com/2009/03/not-yo-mommas-craft-fair/
Recap of the craft show I did Saturday

http://www.kellbot.com/2009/03/free/
On promos and samples

http://www.kellbot.com/2009/03/spelling-fail/

http://www.kellbot.com/2009/03/todays-wooden-displays/
My newest wooden Tinysaur display show-off

The joys of entrepeneurship

2009-03-14T02:48:28Z

There's good news and bad news. The good news is that my Tinysaurs will be featured in WIRED UK, a print magazine which is launching April 2. And I'm doing a craft show at the end of this month which will be easy (its in Jersey!) and fun, and Sara and I have applied to two more in April and May.

The bad news is that Tinysaur sales are dead compared to last month, so things are running a little lean (don't worry mom and dad, Chris makes sure I eat well anyway). There's a lot on the horizon, but it's a little dry right now.

In any job, you have some days where you don't get much done, even though you have a lot to do. Those days can be particularly hard to swallow when you're self-employed and it's your own time you're wasting. Today was one of those days.

Days like today really get me down. I have this long list of to-dos but looking at it seems like a moibus strip of tasks which are blocked by other things, which are in turn blocked by other tasks. Its hard to get ahead. I end up reloading Twitter 8000 times as though it is going to magically organize me. Of course it only makes things worse. I fall into this cycle of non-motivation. Everything seems unattainable. And I start procrastinating the little tasks along with the bigger, blocked ones.

Days like today also make me realize that I wouldn't be able to do this without Chris. This being the whole self-employment thing. It's so easy to get discouraged, there seem to be so many barriers. Chris is really good at distracting me from my self-doubt so I can get excited about things and get work done. We're around each other all day most days, and I'd say he's a good influence on me.

Unfortunately for today, Chris is in ~~California~~ Seattle so it's just me and my self doubt, hanging out and hitting 'reload'. And so I'm sitting here whining about how I miss him and thinking "wow this is sort of pathetic, what would I do if he wasn't around?" And after thinking about it for a while, the answer is "something else."

But I really like what I'm doing now, so I hope he sticks around for a while. And I'm not sure if it's because he's done this before or what, but Chris always seems to have a much more optimistic view of the whole "start your own company and run with it" thing. So I'm going to try to work past today and get a fresh start on things tomorrow.

I made a lot of to-do lists.

Edit: Chris is in Seattle, not California. I forget that there is a part of the west coast that is not CA.

kellbot @ 2008-08-31T01:44:00

2008-08-31T05:52:22Z

I tried to make a tiny city on a ring. It came out OK but I'm still figuring out what scale works with what materials. Also, balsa is useless; never use it for anything.

I have been using a program called QCAD to draw out the designs, and its been kinda frustrating. The documentation for it is terrible. Bre found a guy who does tutorials which has helped a little, but its overall a slow process. In some ways its similar to Rhino, which I learned in college, but the UI is totally different and its annoying. I'm debating whether to reinstall XP on my laptop (it has Ubuntu right now) just so I can use Illustrator instead. Because apparently I have forgotten how much I hate Illustrator.

People have asked me to sell Tinysaurs on Etsy. I'm debating it... I sort of hate selling things on Etsy though. Not because of Etsy, but because its just a pain to ship stuff now that I don't work in a shipping warehouse.

I need to start using / posting this stuff on my public blog but I am too lazy.

Tinysaur army

2008-08-25T05:32:15Z

Its coming...

My life = made of win

2008-08-21T01:58:37Z

Things are generally awesome.

kellbot @ 2008-08-12T08:40:00

2008-08-12T12:45:11Z

Everyone,

I think it is important that all girls know... when your bra makes a little line on your boob and above it you have breast matter spilling out, bubbling over... that is not "sexy cleavage." That is DoubleBoob, and it means your bra is too small.

Bras are supposed to support your boobs, not mold them into new and exciting shapes. Also, DoubleBoob is not exciting. It is gross.

Day of 8

2008-08-09T18:43:30Z

Taken at 8:08 on 8/8/08

Oh yes, we are the biggest nerds in all of Brooklyn

Classes!

2008-06-24T23:51:00Z

Woo, my classes at the hackerspace are officially scheduled!

I'm teaching Beginning PHP & DIY circuit board etching. They're on the class list and everything.

ALSO

Adam brought me a large steel sphere. It's 12" in diamater. Not quite as big as the original plan but... it actually works!

This means that Katamari progress can continue.

Also I accidentally got 100 infrared LEDs instead of 50. Do you know how many wiimote projects I can do with that many LEDs?

KATAMARI!

2008-06-12T04:36:17Z

After being frustratingly stalled for a few days, there was Katamari controller progress!

The digital potentiometers weren't... potentiomiating. At all. They were just turning things on and off in an uncontrolled fashion. I checked the hardware and the code like 40 times and nothing change anything. Except for the time when I shorted out the chip and it got hot.

So finally Dave C offered to look at it, and we went through all the pins on the chip to make sure I wired them up correctly. It turns out I needed pull-up resistors on the unused data input pins, to keep them from reading things incorrectly. So 2 $0.01 resistors later it was working perfectly.

Now I have a circuit that fades LEDs in/out based on how fast I move a mouse. Next step is to do some math to get the values the PS2 is looking for, and then the hard part: building a giant trackball.

I'm actually most skeptical about the physical apparatus. The mouse needs to be pretty much touching the ball to track correctly, and I'm worried it won't spin freely enough. I also think maybe the yoga ball is too light. But I can't think of any other large, heavier spheres I could obtain cheaply.

I need to document this project, maybe I'll work on that some on my time off. I need to learn how to write electrical diagrams. I should scan/post the ones in my notebook. They're really hillariously ghetto.

Also 50 infrared LEDs just showed up. So I think my next project is going to involve wiimote hacking. Oh and learning C for real. T_T

kellbot @ 2008-05-31T22:54:00

2008-06-01T02:56:07Z

So made of win:

Bre is playing dance dance revolution, eating pizza, and singing "Video killed the radio star" all at the same time.

Knitting Machine

2008-04-17T12:04:14Z

I find it terrifying to be in front of a video camera, but Bre and his friends are all pretty serious video people, so I guess I need to just get used to it.

Here's a video about the knitting machine which they shanghaied me into doing.

Originally posted by Eric at NYC Resistor.

Edit: I am perpetually forgetting to close quotation marks. I wonder what that says about me.

Scootard

2008-03-16T16:11:10Z

So it looks like someone tried to steal (or at least fuck with) my scooter.

The ignition was on, the fuel was on (but not the choke), and the gas cap was off. The spark plug was totally fouled, although that's not really surprising since it's been sitting since November.

I put a new plug in and it sparks, and the engine acts like it wants to start up (compression, woo!), but it just won't. I kicked it until my leg was tired. Sometime this week I'm going to stop at a gas station on the way home from work and get a container of gas, and see if it starts any better with a full tank. I'm really worried that water got into the gas tank. It was under cover, and the seat protects it a little, but still. That would suck a lot.
And the fuel tap being left on means there's a good chance the carb float is screwed up, or the carb is just full of gunk in general. Which would suck because I don't even know how to get at it.

It's kinda cold and rainy today, so I don't really have a lot of incentive to fix my scooter anyway.

Vintage scooters FTL.

white people

2008-03-08T16:29:55Z

According to Stuff White People Like, white people like Mos Def.

I like Mos Def.

Therefore, I am white.

Knitting part 2

2008-02-18T07:54:06Z

Worked on the knitting thing some more today... made the maths a little less bad (but not much). I get the best results with the image converter if I first edit the image in photoshop and use a halftone filter on it.

Biggest accomplishment was adding links to save the whole image as a jpeg / save the chart as a text file.

Gonna put that on (yet another) DS case. But in red/black.

nerdtime

2008-02-16T05:50:29Z

One of the things I'm working on right now is a tool to make knitting charts, which is even more exciting because Bre has a friend who hacked her knitting machine to interface with a PC.

http://fishtop.com/code/knitting/index.php

Right now it reads from either ASCII notation that I made up for it (you can write the chart in a text file and then preview what the knit fabric will look like, or just type in stuff) or attempt to convert an image file into a knitting chart. It does OK on black and white line drawings and horribly at everything else.

Things I am particularly proud of:
* You can put in the gauge of the fabric and it will adjust the image / stitch size accordingly
* Images are rectangular. Knit stitches are not, they are V shaped. When generating the fabric preview, the script takes into account the color of the stitch before/after (meaning that there are really 8 images for the two different colors)

Things I still have to do:
* I want to be able to save the chart as a text file, but haven't figured out a handy way to do that yet
* There's no way to set a target size, meaning if you put in a high res image it will give you a giant chart
* The image conversion maths are really crappy. I should make the more smarter.
* Sometimes there's an extra row or column of stitches that doesn't belong there

DS case number II

2008-01-28T05:06:54Z

After my mildly successful first attempt at a case for my DS, I made a 2nd one. Except I didn't measure this one as well so it is a wee bit too big. The eyeballs act as a closing mechanism, as shown here:

I meant to include a place to hold games, but I forgot. 3rd time's the charm I guess.

mememe

2008-01-06T17:14:45Z

There is a particularly annoying meme going around about what a spoiled rich kid you were/weren't. It's written by some fancypants professors (supposedly) which apparently makes it more relevant. It takes up a lot of space and is boring.

To save you from the boredom, I'll just go ahead and tell you that I was an overprivileged white kid.

Dear everyone: the privileges you had as a kid have nothing to do with what kind of person you are. What's more important is whether or not you let your over/under/just rightly privileged youth turn you it a total douchebag, which I think transcends class. Its the true American dream: Anyone can grow up to be a douchebag.

SCIENCE!

2007-12-27T05:35:39Z

So after reading this on Engadget, I decided to try to make a functioning speaker out of craft foam.

Picked up some magnet wire from Radio Shack and after a little trial and error with the coil, managed to get two working speakers, pictured here:

One is blue and one is purple. The blue one has much better frequency range, I'm not sure if it's because the blue craft foam is thinner or because I used about twice as much wire on the coil. I was not very scientific about it.

Tomorrow I will make one that has a cone-shaped cone, and see if that changes anything.

Side view (click on it to see notes about what everything is):

Upside down:

Its pretty quiet, so tomorrow we're going to try it with an amp. I blew them out a couple times by hooking them up to a battery. The cone (shutup I know its not conical) jumped off the magnet. It was neat.

STAR WARS

2007-12-07T08:53:47Z

OH MY GOD

HOW HAVE I NEVER KNOWN ABOUT THE STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL?

HOW COULD SOMETHING THIS BAD AND RELATED TO STAR WARS EXIST WITHOUT ANYONE TELLING ME?

FLAMING ALCOHOL

2007-12-05T04:43:09Z

So, hillarity.

After work (which, uh, started at 3pm) we went to a tiki bar that had a big bowl of alcohol everyone drinks from with very long straws. In the middle is fire.

So, Michelle convinced us that the fire is delicious alcohol we should drink.

Funny, it tasted kind of like lamp oil.

So then we got another big bowl of alcohol, and this time Emily watched them make it.

Yeah, the firey bit in the middle is definitely lamp oil.

Thanks, Michelle!

Genesis FTW

2007-11-26T02:15:37Z

sammka introduced me to the wonderful world of lolbible:

And now a reading from lolbible, Genesis 1:11
"An Ceiling Cat sayed, DO WANT grass! so tehr wuz seedz An stufs, An fruitzors An vegbatels. It happen.12 An Ceiling Cat sawed that weedz ish good, so, letz there be weed. (and catnipz 2, so wen i makes kittehs they can getz hai.)13 An so teh threeth day jazzhands."

In other news, the church I went to this morning had WAY TOO MUCH frankincense going on. Like, I sit towards the back of the church and I was like DUDES PUT DOWN THE SWINGY THING FOR REALS.

I prayed that I might find a service with a more conservative use of frankincense.

...

2007-11-16T01:15:12Z

A middle-to-late 30sish out of work actor / screenwriter just tried to pick me up in a bodega.

I feel as though I am now officially a resident of new york.

Math

2007-11-04T18:01:10Z

So everyone pretty much knows that the education system in this country (and many others) blows ass. Its under-funded AND inefficient, meaning we're throwing 50 cents at a 20 dollar problem, and even then we're only getting 10 cents worth of return.

Math in particular is something we really suck at teaching. I thought math was completely retarded until I got to physics, and realized there actually *were* some real-world applications for this shit. Unfortunately, most high school students will not make it to physics. Doubly so for the girls.

Students fear word problems. I distinctly remember shudders of fear when a teacher mentioned that there would be *word problems* on a test.
Which is really unfortunate because word problems are actually the only important part of math class. I have never wished I could still remember the quadratic formula in my adult life - that's what wikipedia is for. The ability to understand the math behind real-world problems lets you do all sorts of exciting things. Like calculate how many jello packets it would take to fill a kiddie-pool with lovely gelatinous jello.

But we present math to people in this really boring, sterile way that only the meticulous, OCD kids really appreciate, and they grow up to be nerds. Everyone else just kind of scrapes through algebra class and gives up. I wish teachers would teach math because it is *interesting* and not just because they need to program the kids to pass the SOLs.

Old ways of teaching have a lot of memorization. This is because that used to make sense. When information was stored in books, it took a lot longer to look up, so it made sense to memorize some things. We don't have that problem anymore. I have a calculator that can graph trigonometric functions in the time it takes me to get pen and paper, and can search hundreds of thousands of volumes of information in less than a second.

There's been this constant evaluation of what calculators you can and cannot bring into the SAT. Frankly I think they should just change the whole SAT into word problems and let you bring whatever you want into the test.
Memorizing how to find the answer is so much less important than understanding the question that is being asked.

kellbot @ 2007-10-31T21:31:00

2007-11-01T01:32:10Z

Also, things that should not be funny, but are:

I am going to hell.