Tag Archives: arduino

Nasty things, adventures

Posted on March 18, 2015 by

When my freshman-year college roommate was in medical school, he told me that surgeons were trained to say “There!” instead of “Oops” when they made a mistake like cutting the wrong organ, so as not to panic everyone around them. … Continue reading →

Posted in possibly useful, probably boring | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

And this is why you make really sure which USB port you’re writing to

Posted on March 16, 2015 by

(Update: Mostly fixed. If reflashing a Printrboard from the bootloader on up interests you, see the next post.) I was getting ready to print a nice big dragon on my Printrbot, but I knew it was going to take several … Continue reading →

Posted in things that don't work | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Arduinos need more power pins

Posted on March 12, 2015 by

And ground too. This morning I was fresh out of available breadboards. So I made my own power distribution strip out of an IC socket that was lying around on the workbench.  Took a couple of the zillion clipped-off component … Continue reading →

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My office is too small for a mobile robot

Posted on February 24, 2015 by

Why four-wheel drive is a bad idea for ostensibly simple bots Continue reading →

Posted in things that don't work, toys | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Like kids in a candy store

Posted on December 18, 2014 by

This morning I had a short meeting with the Cardboard Teck Instantute (aka Ben Matchstick and Pete Talbot), who have a residency at Generator next month.  These guys are so good at building toys, games, vehicles, whatever entirely out of … Continue reading →

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The encrustation of the analog on the digital

Posted on December 8, 2014 by

If Henri Bergson had been writing around the turn of the millennium, he would have talked about abstraction violations. In his time, it was about living beings acting like mechanisms. For me this weekend, it was about digital devices acting … Continue reading →

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My hallowe’en costume

Posted on October 31, 2014 by

Yes, I’m going as a bar graph. I’m an ex-physicist, a tech writer and a geek, so it’s perfect. I have to admit that after 30 years of working on technical illustrations that ended up on magazine covers and people’s … Continue reading →

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