Sustainable Communities Bill
Here is my submission to the sustainable communities bill call for suggestions. I hope that others feel motivated to publish their SCB suggestions. I think there's a huge lack of dialogue in the...
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2 weeks in - a google phone review
So I was at a funeral 2 weeks ago, and feeling pretty sad and in need of distraction. Also while at the funeral, my phone broke, so the next day I went down the road and spent a good hour telling all...
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A quick look at Second Life and Opensim
I just wrote this blog post as a generic look at the history and uses of virtual worlds, with focus mostly on SL, but I'm about to change it drastically to just be about SL and it's uses to most of the...
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A tree spirit for Opensim / Burning Life
I want to make a self replicating distributed bot + attachment system, which is coupled with a physical computing version of itself which my friend Mat Dalgliesh is making as a physical creation.Here...
View ArticleA list of future physical/virtual computing arts projects
I have to write up so much from recent events, but as usual at these times, my head is buzzing with ideas for other stuff to do next (all based on a long weekend of messing with arduinos, robotics,...
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Where's the Salad?
A while ago, I put on an event in which people from Bristol grew and made a salad, based on Alison Knowle's "Proposition No 2": It was very nice, and I made a preparatory video: as well as there being...
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Dorkbot's New Hackspace
Here below you see a miniature, or pocket version of what was recently displayed at a large event in Bath by the newly hacktivised dorkbot bunch, who were given the challenge of providing a musical...
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A weekend building an arduino based robot
[The bot itself, looking sombre]Last month, I went away to Stourbridge, a great centre of technology and robotics in the UK's scenic midlands. Here are some notes, pictures and film from that...
View ArticleBeyond the netbook: Making the simplest open source arduino based microcomputer
Today's arduino based microprocessors are no match for the computing power of an ARM chip. Most of these chips can easily run Linux, or proprietary systems like WinCE, and they power most of our phones...
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Electronic Ideas and Experiments
LED lights.This is a simple idea which has already led some local artists to make shiny balloons to light up a pier, and has inspired a teenager to start a business and win various entrepreneurial and...
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Green Noise Experiment
This post relates to my "Green Noise Experiment" at Uncraftivism, Arnolfini Bristol, 12-14 December 2009. An experiment will be carried out producing 3 devices capable of inducing hallucinations...
View Article3 possibilities: Hackspace Bristol, DMT and the Aquatrick
Today I had some important realisations and considerations about various projects I'm working on - Hackspace Bristol, the Green Noise Open Hardware Project, and the invention of the Aquatrick, a water...
View ArticleSecond Life / Open Simulator Arduino Project Plan
Here is my thinking on this:Devobot is an IronPython framework that allows you to trigger animations, movement and chatting to a Second Life or OpenSimulator based avatar using the open source...
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Plant Electrodes
I've been doing more late night research on electrodes. This is a good way to create an interface between machine and plant, or machine and animal, and it's basically a wire on a living surface, like a...
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Stokes Croft 2017
Most people symbolically see birth of the robotic race as 2015, when those famous wikicars escaped from the race course, rode into their trainers, and escaped into the desert. They do not realise that...
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OMOSP
An outdoors low consumption, self powering musical installation.This blog post is about the design and creative process around the concept of an art object I'm making, to be displayed at the UK Maker...
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Maker Faire Exhibit - Weeks 1 and 2
It's not very often you get a chance to work on such a varied project. The brief for the project in the previous post on this blog, but I thought it useful to put down some thoughts at this stage in...
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Maker Faire Exhibit - Weeks 3 and 4
Last week I made the raku clay bird ornament in which the device will be kept, unless I can make a better one before the faire. It was a really interesting process to follow, and Hilda, the potter who...
View ArticleEcologising Open Hardware
I've come to realise, through my experiments and readings, and through spending months in the world of instrument design, that I had until now marvelled in the idealistic beauty of Open Hardware...
View ArticleBristol's Budget Conversation and Town Hall BEPs
In case you are from Bristol and haven't noticed, there's currently a "big debate" being held over at http://askbristol.wordpress.com in the comments area.Basically, the city council are asking the...
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