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Hi! I have been so busy this summer, I barely have any time to write blogs, but here I am writing this one because my dad kept telling me I better do it! I had my birthday party as some of you know from my other post, it was AWESOME!

I had a fairy party that my mom planned for me and all my friends had a lot of fun. We went swimming for a long time and then when we started our crafts, I couldn't believe it, but it started raining! It's never rained on my birthday before. The best part though, was seeing the rainbow on my birthday! It was like the rainbow fairies sent it just for me!

Once again, the Fourth of July has come to town, and I've come packing my Canon Powershot in search of... something. Pictures of fireworks are always tricky and you're never gauranteed to get anything useful, or even something nice. This year turned out pretty well, and think I owe some of my good luck to the CHDK, the swiss army knife of powershot hacks...

Hi everyone! You'll all be amazed to hear, I finally made a robot! (With my dad...).

I've always wanted to make a little buggy bot that goes around the house doing stuff.. so.. here he is!! Sorta...

He's got a long way to go. My dad says we have to start simple, or it'll never get done... I still think it needs lasers first. How else will it fight the evil dust bunny empire???

As we all know, old hard drives (and to a lesser extent, aluminum cans) are chock full of nearly pure aluminum. Also, as we all know, I don't have much money for projects, but after some research into lost foam casting, I have a new hobby. Burn baby burn....

...or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Drupal...

I recently had to make a smaller website project for a client, and I figured I'd try and make everything by hand. I mean, why not? A full blown CMS seemed far too bloated for the relatively small feature-set expected. All I’d really need is a little php here, some javascript to server AJAX stuff there... What fun! Though, let me take a second to get metaphorical here:

About 2 years back I happened upon an older pocket PC. Left for dead, unable to boot, collecting dust, it was going to be chopped to bits as IT fodder. i said "No! Be not crule to old tech! It knows not of it's own obsolescence!!!".. or something to that effect. Long story short, I became the proud owner of a 2001 model Cassiopeia E-115! Having one wasn't enough, and before long for less than $50, I owned three outmoded winCE PDAs...

If you can rate a singular location in terms of how many times you say "Wow", "Oh my god", "Holy Crap", "That's insane" and "Freakin' hell that's robotic and on fire!!"... Then Maker Faire 2009 rates at least in the 200-300 range.

See you all there! and check out the flickr random maker faire widget I made on the right.. see you in there too!

A few photos from my trip to Maker Faire 2006 (the first one!). I hope to get over there this year though it may not be in the cards. An amazing experience that i recommend to anyone who considers themselves in the least bit interested in how things work, or gadgets, or re-purposing.. it's the ultimate in recycling!

These are some documentation shots of a project I've been working on for the past few years.. Using a MAX6955 LED controller communicating through a parallel port bit-banging the i2c protocol from a custom piece of software I wrote to feed a midi file through one note a a time to light that specific key, and wait for the key on the piano to be pressed.