LED Cube at the Melbourne Mini Maker Faire! 14th Jan 2012.

My LED Cube will be an exhibit at the first Melbourne Mini Maker Faire on 14th Jan 2012!

If you want to come along you do have to book a free ticket because space is limited. If you are a "maker", they still have spaces left for exhibits, talks, workshops, performances, whatever.

Christopher Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011)

There's a little Christopher Hitchens shaped hole in my life now that will be very hard to fill.

"Faith is the surrender of the mind; it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals. It's our need to believe, and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. Of all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated." - Christopher Hitchens.

Tastes of the Caribbean: Chicken and rice.

I really enjoy cooking. I like experimenting a bit in the kitchen but recently I started to realize that I'm mostly returning to my several "tried and true" recipes. I cook mostly European and Asian, and among those mostly Italian, French and Chinese.

I thought it might be a great idea to expand a little, make some new recipes that I've never tried before, from cuisines that I'm not so familiar with. Expand the spice cupboard a bit and in the process try some new things.

My philosophy with this has been to look for recipes that don't go over the top. I have a full time job and these meals have to feed me and my partner, it's not a Saturday dinner party, it's dinner. So I'm looking for relatively quick and simple meals, the kind of stuff that gets eaten on a daily basis. That's the approach I want to take to learn about these cuisines.

I've done two so far and this is my third, it's only now occurred to me that this might be fun to blog. Don't worry, I'll post the 1st two when I make them again sooner or later.

So tonight I present, Caribbean: Chicken and rice.

I usually just search for "simple *pick a cuisine* recipes" and go from there. I found a few rice and bean recipes and a few chicken recipes and I took what I liked from each and made a bit of a mash up. 

This made about 3 portions. There are three elements to this dish: 

The Rice:

2 cups of rice. The recipe said basmati, but I buy big bags of jasmin, so that's what I used. 

1 tin of beans (black or red kidney beans)

1 clove or garlic crushed

some thyme

2/3 of a cup of coconut milk

The Chicken

600g skinless chicken thigs, it was about 6.

curry powder

allspice

The Dressing

1 Green chili, no seeds.

1 clove of garlic crushed

a lime - I couldn't get a lime so I used a lemon.

6 spring onions

The recipe called for some shallots but I didn't have any.

Trim and chop the thighs in half, rub them down with the curry powder and allspice. I was quite generous with both. Let them sit. 

Finely slice the spring onions and chili, (we like spicy but the big green chilies are actually very mild) mix it with the garlic and lime juice. Mix and let it sit too. 

Cook the rice in a rice cooker, and BBQ or grill the chicken.

I BBQ'd by moonlight tonight.

Fry up the garlic in a pan with a little bit of oil. Then add the beans and thyme and soon after the coconut milk.

Once it's reduced a bit, mix through the cooked rice and cook it just for a couple more minutes. 

Then put the chicken on the rice and spoon a good serve of the dressing on top. The recipe said to garnish with some lime zest right at the end but since I was using lemon I decided to leave it off. 

I'm very happy with the way it turned out. If I was going to change anything, I'd think about putting one more element into the rice, it has a sweetness to it which is nice but I thought it was just a bit bland. I can't quite work out what would go in there that wouldn't ruin the balance. Some obvious things I'd add to rice are onion or capsicum but I don't think that would work in this case. Actually having a bit more of a think about it, I bet corn kernels would do the trick! I'll definitely try that next time. 

Angry Birds Episode 3 - Score Addict "real scores"

I had not got episode 3 score addict yet, but someone was very kind to take the time and post it for me. With this chart, I played for about 15 extra minutes on about 5 levels and got the achievement. That was the last score addict I needed. Thanks very much anonymous, who ever you are. :)

6-1 68480
6-2 79360
6-3 74580
6-4 94420
6-5 71540
6-6 80680
6-7 127860
6-8 97320
6-9 106350
6-10 102560
6-11 105700
6-12 109750
6-13 88630
6-14 98170
6-15 129340

7-1 126340
7-2 141930
7-3 70770
7-4 95760
7-5 94950
7-6 76430
7-7 106380
7-8 111910
7-9 141510
7-10 104920
7-11 116300
7-12 102660
7-13 65330
7-14 70530
7-15 163020

8-1 104180
8-2 64110
8-3 136400
8-4 104700
8-5 101070
8-6 116640
8-7 160080
8-8 123030
8-9 147880
8-10 126430
8-11 102270
8-12 110390
8-13 153940
8-14 85340
8-15 144450

Tawny Frogmouth skull

I found a tawny frogmouth carcass, so, well, to cut a long story short, after a few months and a few experiments, here's the result:

They are an absolutely incredible and beautiful bird. I'm particularly stunned by how much space in the skull is taken up by the eyes, I figured they'd be big, but they literally take up more volume then the rest of the head! I'm very pleased with the result. It doesn't look extremely clean, but the final step was to soak it in peroxide, so I'm confident it's fairly sterile. 

Even though their beak does have a bit of a point to it, they are not raptorial. Which means they don't hunt on the wing, or catch prey with their talons, rather they eat things like slugs, moths and small lizards more by foraging then hunting. 

Here is a photo I managed to take of one near my house a little while ago, it was an opportunity snap with my phone so it's not the best quality.

If it needs to be said, the bird I found was already expired and I would never intentionally harm wildlife, unless it was about to eat a person, and then only if I didn't think they were a dick.

Angry Birds Episode 2 - Score Addict "real scores"

Earlier I posted my scores for angry birds episode 1.

As promised here are my scores for episode 2.

Episode 2 - Score Addict - 3 300 000

                                                                                                                             

World 4	World 5
1 - 80790	1 - 57130
2 - 57440	2 - 51840
3 - 57290	3 - 82510
4 - 60920	4 - 70880
5 - 96420	5 - 79550
6 - 57230	6 - 88620
7 - 83350	7 - 87770
8 - 51870	8 - 86260
9 - 43550	9 - 76510
10 - 54900	10 - 50020
11 - 80790	11 - 69860
12 - 95970	12 - 79340
13 - 77440	13 - 67300
14 - 95860	14 - 60570
15 - 91740	15 - 65530
16 - 82040	16 - 118150
17 - 31510	17 - 103320
18 - 83860	18 - 118430
19 - 51680	19 - 125290
20 - 116190	20 - 97390
21 - 87460	21 - 179730

Total - 3 341 210

May your birds fly true and your pigs be well smashed.

Should the west ban the burka?

France just recently enacted a law which bans wearing full face covering in public. With the specific intent of preventing practising Muslim women from wearing full face religious veils such as the burka.

This is a very hot topic at the moment and I have to say that leading up to this point I was quite undecided on which side I stood. Both sides have some valid and strong points and I'm really not sure there is a clearly right or wrong answer. In the end, while I agree it completely sets off all my “anti-xenophobic" alarms, I have to say I support the ban of face covering in public, especially as a display of religious affiliation. 

Here is why. 

The bottom line is the burka and similar outfits are a backwards custom which symbolises oppression and inequality, subjugates women and promotes an unwillingness to assimilate or partake in free society.

 The main issue seems to be that even if it is all those things, shouldn't Muslims be free to do this in our so called free society? Banning anything just because we don't like it is undemocratic; it reduces freedom not increases it. It is argued that some, maybe many, Muslim women wear a veil completely of their own free will. They don't think it is oppressive or discriminatory, they believe it is part of their religious duty which they undertake, even with pleasure. 

Especially in America there really seems to be a culture of aversion regarding ANY laws which can be interpreted to intrude on freedoms in any way, indeed it seems that there is quite a lot of opposition to this law coming from the States. But I think it is too easily forgotten that the freedoms we enjoy today were often hard fought and won by people in the face of opposition, not just the result of "people being free to do whatever they want". The fact is, like it or not, our society already legislates things to conserve a certain level of fundamental cultural norms. Our free and equal culture is not some sort of default that would be reached if everyone did whatever they pleased. People left to their own devices would most certainly not result in a free and equal society for everyone.

There are such things as laws that protect our freedoms, as well as protect certain norms that we consider decent and valuable in society. There's a spectrum of laws which try to obtain a balance, It's not always (or even often) clear cut or black and white, but we do our best, slowly improving on the norms of the past. I'm not claiming every step is in the right direction, but over all progress is undeniably being made. Western cultures have fought for freedoms and rights that we now enjoy and mostly take for granted, some of those freedoms which Muslim cultures have not yet achieved. I'm thinking specifically of movements such the sexual revolution and the woman's rights and more recently gay rights movements. Each of these have had massive impacts on our culture and what we consider to be normal, equal and fair. These are some of the reasons why why we wouldn't imagine creating a culture where one gender is expected to never show so much as a wrist in public, let alone their nose or hair. These are movements which do not have analogues in any Muslim society and I think most of us these days take that for granted. 

Do people now assume that anyone growing up in a different culture is just going to come to a democratic western society and automatically "get it"? They'll see our way of life and it'll be like a veil falling from their eyes? Pardon the pun, but that's some of the sentiment that seems to be coming from the people who oppose this ban. As if we got to this point without any effort and as if our society is so obviously “better” that resistance to assimilation is futile. All we have to do is let them see and they'll be converted, but I don't think that is at all necessarily the case. I think it's predominately a numbers game and I think the burka is the very embodiment of opposition to the free democratic western way of life. 

There would be some cultures which would like to import customs like genital mutilation or stoning but we already have "umbrella" laws about causing direct physical harm to others, so those customs have to be left behind, no matter how pious they are to the adherents. We also have other laws about direct sexual discrimination which don't cause immediate physical harm, but we still legislate them because they contribute to our free society. However we've never had "umbrella" laws about burkas purely because our society never had that kind of issue to deal with before. This I think is a very important point. Just because we never had a law regarding what we can and can't wear, doesn't mean that such a law would be automatically undemocratic or unfair. But of course we DO already have some laws regarding what people can and can't wear in public.

 
I think part of the difficulty is that people in free western societies are prone to judge other cultures through their own “filter”, as if all cultures are equally progressive and we should display equal tolerance to all of them. If I think I should have the right to wear a burka if I want, then why should that right be denied anyone else? This seems like the politically correct thing to do. In my opinion however the problem with this argument is the difference in “intention”.

I offer a quote: 

http://twocircles.net/2011apr12/french_burqa_ban_infringement_women%E2%80%99s_right_bazmekhwateen.html

"President, Bazm-E-Khwateen, Begum Shahnaz Sidrat stated that burqa or veil in any form cannot be termed as a sign of backwardness. "It is a means for women to remain modest while they are venturing out for work or other purposes. The females of western countries do not use veil and are thus promoting indecency rather than development," 

For many Muslims the burka is not just a symbol, but indeed a physical shield to prevent inadvertent “westernisation”.

If we tolerate or harbour these backwards customs, we are in effect giving a "free pass" for some to ignore the freedoms our society has fought to establish. Give out too many free passes and we might find our societies literally divided between those who want freedom and democracy and those who want everyone to obey ancient barbaric customs from centuries ago. If it's not politically incorrect to demand that backwards customs like FGM and stoning be checked in at the border, I really don't see why some people are finding it so outrageous that we could expect the same of a custom so oppressive and overtly sexist as the burka.

However like I said, I do think it's a numbers game. I don't believe every western society all of a sudden needs to ban the burka. In most countries, isolation and alienation play a strong enough part in seeing these kinds of customs disappear, even if it takes a generation. However in countries like France that have large potentially self sustaining communities of Muslims, a law like the one they've introduced might give it that extra needed push. 

New Project: Steam punk clock.

So I've started a new project. Not nearly as ambitious as the LED cube, but I'm quite excited by it nonetheless.

I bought an awesome vacuum tube display clock from the uk:

http://www.pvelectronics.co.uk/index.php

Currently it's the clock on their front page, if that changes in the future, I got the IN-8 & IN-8-2 Clock Kit.

This thing is really amazing, I've been eying off tube clocks for a while and for the price point (about $100) this clock was my favorite by far. I'm not planning to use the bottom illuminating blue LEDs, I might trial amber LEDs, or UV, or I'll probably just leave them off, it looks great without them.
The question obviously is what to do with it. I spent a few weeks around trash and treasure markets trying to find the perfect "something" to stick it in. I think at week 3 I found a guy who has some old telephone parts, I mean "OLD". This is what I picked up for a measly $15!

Bargain. So I've build the clock:

And I've started taking the phone "thing" apart to clean it up and reassemble it in a more aesthetic manner.

This is a very rough mock up of what it's going to look like when it's done, I think i'll somehow try to incorporate the above terminal strip into the design of the front because it just looks so cool.

One thing I'm really happy with is the switches actually still work! So I will wire them to the switches on the clock so they'll actually control the clock! That will be awesome.

Anyway, there's lots of fiddly work that will need to go into this. I'm planning to sand and re-varnish the wood. There will be some cutting of the heavy chassis that will need to be done, that's maybe the most daunting part because the clock PCB is actually about 1cm wider then the chassis, so i'll need to work out how to fit and mount it. Also the terminal strip will need some shaping and i'm not sure how i'll do that yet because it looks like it's actually made out of black perspex or something, i think it must be not an original part. Anyway, just thought I'd throw this up here as a starting point. Will post some more when I make more progress.

My cube project on hack-a-day!

One thing I've been procrastinating about for a while is submitting my project to hack-a-day. I've been following that site for years now, so exposing my project on it to scrutiny from a hack crowd was a little bit nerve wracking. That plus it really still feels like I need to work on it some more, but I'll probably be saying that the rest of my life! Well I'm very pleased to say that I finally straightened things up a little and bit the bullet and the kind folks at HaD featured me today!

http://hackaday.com/2011/03/20/third-times-a-charm-512-led-cube-kicks-it-up-a-notch-with-rgb-leds/

Thanks to everyone for the kind comments that have been left already, It's really made my day.

Higher quality youtube clip of 8x8x8 RGB LED Cube/

I've had this clip up on youtube for a while but I think i forgot to link it here.

So here it is:

Leaf bug

Found this cute little leaf bug, was only about 10mm long.

 

EDIT 08/07/2011 I've worked it out, it is in fact a planthopper, specifically Acanalonia conica. It is in a separate order then Katydids. Leafhoppers are Hemiptera which are known as "True Bugs", where as katydids are Orthoptera which includes grasshoppers, locusts and crickets.

Angry Birds Episode 1 - Score Addict "real scores"

I'm a big fan of Angry Birds. I've got 3 stars on all the levels, but I decided to go back and try to get the score addict achievements for at least a few of the episodes. I have now got episode 1, 2 and 4 but i think i've given up on episode 3 for now. The levels in episode 3 seem the hardest to me, I've played through several times and am still 100 000 short, which is quite a lot. 

The slightly annoying thing about the score addict achievement is there is no track of how many times you've attempted a level or what your score progression has been. So after a while, a few weeks or months, you completely lose track how many times you've tried a particular level and how likely it is that you'll get a higher score on it. 

Which is where a post like this would have come in handy, I looked and never found one, so I thought I'd make my own. 

I'm just going to list all the level scores it took me to get
"The Angry Birds Episode 1 - Score Addict Achievement. "

With this you can compare your own score against mine and if you have a much lower score then me on any level, you know that's a level you can try to get a better score on.. Of course i'm not claiming my way is the only way or even a good way to get score addict, it's just ONE way. 

I still wish there was a list like this for Episode 3.. If YOU have the Episode 3 - Score Addict achievement, I'd love to see your scores, I know it's a pain to write all the scores out since there isn't one screen that shows them all, you have to actually start each level to read the top score off, but it took me less then 10 minutes.  Hope it helps.

I'll post episode 2 and 4 later. 

Episode 1 - Score Addict - 4 000 000

                                                                                                                             

World 1	World 2	World 3
1 - 33040	1 - 69250	1 - 65990
2 - 61100	2 - 68080	2 - 53180
3 - 42870	3 - 118890	3 - 62300
4 - 29370	4 - 54430	4 - 40280
5 - 65440	5 - 80150	5 - 91600
6 - 35880	6 - 69100	6 - 60870
7 - 45880	7 - 52560	7 - 57080
8 - 56750	8 - 56990	8 - 86060
9 - 50710	9 - 28930	9 - 68660
10 - 71070	10 - 42140	10 - 50990
11 - 58210	11 - 83610	11 - 55380
12 - 51480	12 - 64410	12 - 56190
13 - 50630	13 - 90160	13 - 47920
14 - 70250	14 - 52290	14 - 54690
15 - 45190	15 - 77580	15 - 55740
16 - 67620	16 - 74000	16 - 74340
17 - 55940	17 - 49220	17 - 74880
18 - 49890	18 - 69730	18 - 89330
19 - 40610	19 - 52950	19 - 67730
20 - 54700	20 - 57350	20 - 145650
21 - 88890	21 - 79810	21 - 125140

Total - 4 001 150

May your birds fly true and your pigs be well smashed.

Adam and Eve: The failed project.

So I was reading Genesis again, as you do, and even though I have read many critiques and parodies of the Biblical creation narrative, one criticism occurred to me which I don't believe I have heard before. 

It's not hard to find criticism in Genesis, in fact you don't have to look past the first two books and many people have concentrated on just those (they're called "books", but they really just take up the first two pages); they point out that there is a different order of creation in the two accounts given in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. They say there are contradiction which proves the stories are "made up". Although Christians, being Christians, have no problem reconciling the two stories, even literal creationists don't have a problem with this... 

However it's Genesis 3 where the REAL action begins..

Ok, let me set the stage for you:

Genesis 1: 

God creates the world and everything in it, he creates man and woman. Genesis 1 ends on the sixth day of creation. Interestingly, the mandate to not eat from the tree of knowledge is NOT given in Genesis 1, God in fact says  “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. " But that's a bit beside the point. 

Genesis 2:

Basically recounts the same story as Genesis 1, I'll ignore the discrepancies. There is an important addition:

¹⁷But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

And the very LAST thing that happens in Genesis 2 is the creation of Eve to be Adam's "wife" and the final line is that they were naked and felt no shame.  

Genesis 3:

Now this is important, so i'm going to quote directly again:

 ¹ Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

² The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, ³ but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

⁴And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

Well, I think you should get the idea.

So let's get this straight: God's plan was to create a paradise for Adam and Eve. They were immortal, innocent and unashamed, so I think it's safe to assume God's plan was for Adam and Eve to live forever in this paradise. 

However, the VERY FIRST THING that happens in this garden after Adam and Eve are created is a snake comes along and talks Eve into doing the one thing she and Adam are NOT supposed to do. 

NOTHING ELSE HAPPENS BEFORE THIS!

Forget even that technically, Adam and Eve didn't actually KNOW the difference between right and wrong because God hadn't taught them that. Just ignore that little inconvenient nugget. Also forget that actually God lied and the snake spoke the truth since Adam and Eve didn't in fact die that day.

Now I'm no project manager, but if you were planning something like the Garden of Eden project and the very first thing that happened was a snake came along and spoiled your entire plan, would you really be justified in punishing Adam and Eve for your ruined plan? 

In case the answer to that question is still a little ambiguous and you might be inclined to say "maybe", let's put it this way:

If you are an OMNIPOTENT, OMNISCIENT and OMNIPOTENT God and you're working on the Garden of Eden project and you "finish", and the very first thing that happens is a SNAKE comes along and spoils your plan, who's fault is it really?

Hardware complete.

So after a few more hours of cutting and fitting, the cube is now hardware complete! ..

Pretty much anyway:) There might be a few more minor and cosmetic adjustments, like maybe i'll paint the ribbon cables black, or I might make a cover for that side of the box, but I kinda like the exposed look of the whole thing, nothing to hide.

I have to admit I think I botched the cable routing a little bit, the ribbon cables are much more of a mess then they have to be. The routing from the driver boards to the cube inputs is far from optimal. This is due to me changing my driver interface part way through the build. It's something that could definitely be solved in software, but I really can't be stuffed hacking the firmware anymore.

I also have to fix the power jack and maybe think about rubber feet, those ball end nuts might be a bit tough for resting on wooden surfaces. Apart from that, i'm planning to get back into the programming and work out some more patterns and maybe even some controls, like buttons, but that feels a little less likely at the moment. Will have to wait and see how I go.

Also, i need to get a can of air duster, it needs a bit of a clean.

Base progress

So I've painted the panels and got the electronics roughly in place. I've cut a notch along the edge with the cables, i think I'll either paint them black, or install a side panel to cover them, haven't decided yet. Next i'll actually fasten the electronics to the base and cut the main bolts to length to secure everything down.