Last night was the second laserfingers workshop. We made nine pairs and finished up before midnight. The design improvements I made after the last round definitely helped smooth the process along, but once again we had all of the sewing machines running constantly with plenty of work available for more. The goal in future workshops really should be to have one machine per person.

Wiring harness assembly flew together in an astonishing hurry. We had no dud lasers and all of the wiring setups worked fine.

Things went smoothly whenever we were able to set up little assembly lines. Unfortunately the finger and wrist loops have to be sized individually, which slowed things down a lot, and even with individual fitting the finger loops for many people’s gloves came out too tight. Perhaps the next round should use velcro instead of elastic for the wrist straps, so that fit is not so important.

The switch from N to AAA batteries posed no problems. I had been worried about the size of the battery pack, but there was plenty of space even on the smallest hands. These batteries will last longer and then will be easier to replace, so I think it’s worth the increased weight and bulk.

Here’s what engineers mean when they say things like “hard” or “trivial”.

I just discovered the weirdest thing: fifteen thousand hits in my server access logs from someplace called forum.bettingadvice.com. I snooped around and it turns out that one of the participants is using my old sidebar photo as his avatar picture. Huh. Some random guy in Denmark wants his buddies to think he looks like me? I don’t exactly know what to think about that, but I’m sort of flattered in a creepy, mildly uncomfortable way.

Life is good. I’ve been riding my motorcycle a lot and getting increasingly comfortable with it. I think I’ve taken my Rover out of the driveway all of one time in the last four days.

This weekend looks like it will be packed full of goodness. Tonight I’m headed to Dawn’s bacon-themed birthday party. There are about six different completely awesome things happening tomorrow night, and I have ambitious plans for the bathroom-renovation project, the laserfingers project, and the motorcycle project.

It really hasn’t been much of an outdoorsy summer for me. I’ve gone out paddling a couple of times and that’s pretty much it. I had wanted to tag along with Mez’ climb up to Camp Muir tomorrow, but I decided to stay in town and work on projects instead. I do have one climb coming up, though: I’m going to be flying down to California in another couple of weeks to climb Mt. Dana with my family.

My sister Joanna, who is 14 years old and first picked up fire poi about a month ago, put on this show last night:

Ohhhh yeahhhh. Why did I wait so long to try this?

It has been a full day. I didn’t have to work, since Real Software took a company-wide holiday today (and yesterday), so I ended up spending almost all day on projects of one sort or another.

After brewing up some coffee, I cracked open the tub of drywall paste and went to work in the upstairs bathroom. On Sunday I got fed up with the absence of outlets in there and replaced the rusty, broken wall-mounted heater/fan gadget with a nice simple GFCI outlet. Yesterday I patched up the gaping drywall hole thus created; today I sanded down yesterday’s drywall paste, slathered on another layer, and smeared it around until it looked reasonably smooth. I’m not very good at this and may have to repeat the process tomorrow.

Then it was time to go look at a motorcycle. I’ve been thinking about buying a bike for years, off and on; the rising cost of gas and the beautiful summer weather have recently pushed me back toward “on”. I was talking to Peter Z. about this situation last week and he volunteered to help me pick out and fix up a cheap craigslist bike, so this afternoon we drove out to Newcastle and checked out an ’82 Yamaha. Our impressions were favorable, so I bought it, and we spent the rest of the afternoon dealing with U-haul employees (hard) and wrangling the machine home (easy). Sometime soon we’ll fix up the carburetor so it’ll actually start, and then I’ll go riding.

Back home: time for some gardening. There’s a big bush next to the entry which has always annoyed me – it sort of leans over the walkway and makes the front door feel hidden and cramped. I pruned it back a few weeks ago, which helped, but today I decided it was time for more drastic measures and cut away all the low branches. This revealed a lot of dead dry ground covered in dead dry leaves, so I shredded up the leaves, churned up the earth, soaked in a lot of water, and mixed in the leaf pieces. Then I planted some woodruff, which has been growing very successfully in the raised planter bed on the other side of the front walk, and some native oxalis. I’m not sure this is the right long-term choice, but it’s at least something to get started with.

Now it’s midnight and I’m sitting at my desk with some coffee. For some reason I feel like writing code. I think I’m going to run with that impulse for an hour or two and then get some sleep.

I think I am going to put aside work on the “tree of light”. I still think it would be beautiful, but my heart just isn’t in it. Wearables have my attention right now: jackets, pants, lights, lasers, waterpacks, coats, fur, lycra, webbing, silk. I’m feeling pretty low-key about Burning Man this summer, actually, and the idea of showing up with no major art project in tow sounds more like a relief than a disappointment. Instead I think I’ll continue to put my energy into these workshops, in hopes of getting all my friends decked out in lasers and lights like a tribe of expat Martian ravers.

I went up to Seattle Fabrics this afternoon and bought a piece of neoprene for some experiments in laserfingers design. It’s fun stuff: flexible, stretchy, springy, and durable. It’s easy to cut, easy to sew, and cut edges don’t fray.

The store was exciting: this is where you go to get outdoor and sports fabrics. Cordura, lycra, spandex, primaloft, gore-tex, webbing in every color, more buckles and fasteners than I knew existed – next time I make some kind of backpack, this is where I am going first.

Somewhere along the line Infected Mushroom decided to become a rock band: they’re touring with a drummer and a guitarist, and Duvdev has swapped his keyboard for a microphone to play front man. It’s an interesting change. Live vocals on every track? Rock guitar, wailing away on the solos? This is not nineties psytrance. It’s still fun, it’s still chock full of freaked-out synthesizer goodness, and somehow it’s still Infected Mushroom, but it is definitely a change.

Erez can play all that unbelievably fast arpeggiated stuff live, while running filter sweeps and all that other knob-twirly goodness. He was so focused on the music that he didn’t seem to have any bandwidth left for his face, so it was up to Duvdev to provide the stage charisma – but if you happened to see what he was doing with his hands, it was some truly amazing keyboard mastery. I can only imagine the hours of Hanon exercises that must have gone into making that performance possible.

I still don’t like Club Heavens. It was packed, stiflingly hot, and so humid that we all walked out with dishpan hands from nothing more than the moisture in the air. (I’m beginning to think Chris W. has a point about the proper venue for psytrance being a clearing in the woods.) But I can live with that; it’s the standing-in-lines, the security frisk, and the generally pretentious attitude that turns me off. The staff are personally friendly, but the club as a whole projects an irritating feeling of superiority.

The three of us in last night’s posse all wore laserfingers, and as before, they attracted intense curiosity. The club was full of glowsticks, fingerlights, strobe wands, and all the usual toys, but there’s something about laser light that grabs attention – especially when the stage show is kind enough to provide a smoke machine.

I have been using pairs of N batteries for the laserfingers, but I think the next generation will switch to AAAs or 9Vs. Bigger and heavier, yes, but at least when your batteries are dying at 11 PM you can dash out to the nearest random convenience store and pick up replacements.

The solar garden lights aren’t working out too well. The batteries are old and weren’t very good to begin with, and they’re not holding much of a charge. Replacing them would cost somewhere in the $700-$800 range, which is more than I want to spend on this project, so I’m thinking over alternatives. One such might be to refit all the lights to use CR123s instead of AAs. These cost about $1 apiece in bulk, and I would only need one per unit since lithium batteries provide 3.2V. I’d have to do a fair bit of soldering, though.

If I just can’t make the garden lights work, I could always glue an LED to the end of each branch, run some cheap 20-gauge wire down each branch to the root, and power everything off a deep-cycle battery (like the one I used for the Rave-o-Matic). This would take just as much soldering as the battery-refit, and there’d be a lot of finicky gluing and fitting, and a lot of not-so-finicky wire-wrapping, and the physics of the branch movement would be all different, but it might look good.

What To Know Before Debating Type Systems: a longish but clearly written primer on language type systems.

My latest sewing project is a big fur coat, inspired by a fabulous robe Kerry H. brought to a party a couple of months ago. It was a snuggly early-morning sort of garment, with a brocade shell and a fur lining. I realized that I could make something similar by sewing fur into the silk kimono I’ve had kicking around since my first trip to Burning Man. I happened to have a just-big-enough piece of fluffy black fur left over from one of my leggings projects last fall, and next thing I knew I was manhandling pieces of obnoxiously thick fabric and there were tufts of black fuzz everywhere.

The project expanded, as these things often do, when I realized that a few simple design changes would make the whole thing reversible. At night, it could be a big, bold fur coat with a flashy silk lining, then a quick inside-out the next morning would give me a comfortable robe to lounge around in while waiting for coffee to brew.

I didn’t get any pictures last night, but it’s coming together well; the sleeves are finished and I have figured out how the collar and placket are going to work. Another evening or two should finish it.

Here’s a great rant by Steve Yegge explaining why everyone who takes programming seriously should learn how compilers work.

It contains the remark “you can hardly attempt one without trying to change the world in the process”, which perhaps explains part of my original attraction to compiler work. I’m not sure I would be so inclined to start a new compiler project these days.

It is a beautiful summer evening. I brought my wing chair out on the porch and am sitting here with a mug of tea and a clear blue sunset watching cars and bicyclists cruise by. Life is good.

I tried making a white & blue shirt to match the Shpongle-pants last night. It didn’t turn out so well. I have something to learn about sewing shoulder and neck hems on sleeveless shirts. That’s alright; I’ll get there.

Overseeing the process of making nine pairs of laserfingers last week gave me a new idea about the design. The next batch should be more durable and easier to make. I will build at least one of them before next week’s Infected Mushroom show; I need to schedule the next workshop soon so I can start acquiring parts and letting people make room on their calendars.

Seattle Fabrics sells neoprene in a variety of colors and weights. Wonder if this would be worth a try for the next generation laserfingers design? It would look appropriately high-tech, it comes in different colors, and it has a good balance of strength and stretchiness. I also have the impression that cut edges don’t ravel. This generation’s elastic frame is a great way to increase manufacturing tolerances, but makes wiring strain relief difficult.

The laserfingers workshop went well. We started setting up at about 7 PM, and I turned off the lights just after 2 AM. I’m tired but definitely plan to do this again. The manufacturing process went reasonably well. We could have used more than four sewing machines, and I’d like to simplify the next generation’s design so there are fewer stitches involved, but production went smoothly and all of the electronic components worked without a hitch.

Oh, how nice it was to watch as someone would finish stuffing the wires into the fabric piece, pull the elastic onto their fingers, and turn their new gadget on. Nothing like an expression combining “wow, there are lasers shooting out of my fingers” with “hey, I made that”.

The shop needs a coffee maker. Perhaps a Saturday afternoon would work better next time than a Friday evening.

It’s 1 AM and the Shpongle-pants are (finally) done. Whew. They look good, and I don’t think any of the (many) mistakes are large enough for anyone but me to notice. That counts as success. Now I’m tired and it’s time for some sleep. …

Oh yeah. Laserfingers workshop tomorrow. Excited. Never done anything like this before.

I took an hour off to sell La Bête this evening. Nice to have that off my list of things to do.

This Introduction to Abject-Oriented Programming is a nice, clear overview of a design style that has played a key role in many major software projects. One often finds this set of practices in conjunction with the popular (and successful!) “Big Ball of Mud” design pattern (thanks Eric L.).

I’ve just finished my first project with the new sewing machine: a jeans pattern made in a stretchy, slinky red knit. I had to spend a lot of time puzzling out the directions, and made a fair number of mistakes, but the point was to learn some new sewing techniques, and the pants really aren’t bad. I can definitely see wearing these out dancing sometime.

My next project will be a pair of pants, based on the same pattern, made of silver lycra with quilted-on brocade panels in electric blue.

La Bête is for sale.

I’ve been easing up on the luddism lately, and decided to take another look at RSS. My last go-round left me distinctly unsatisfied with the quality of the available readers. This time around things are much better: there’s a new RSS reader called Vienna which is free, open-source, Mac native, and really doesn’t suck.

Saturday night was the third annual Heden High party. Oh, my, what a weekend. Once again the party was still rolling noisily along at 7 AM, with ten or fifteen people sprawled out in my bedroom shouting, cavorting, joking, and having what appeared, to my at that point rather foggy head, to be a very good time.

Sunday afternoon cleanup went surprisingly well. Lesley made a point of inviting post-party help in the invitation emails, and a good half dozen people showed up to put the place back together. It all went so quickly that I almost felt bad for not having more work to offer the willing helpers.

Take-out sushi dinner on the living room floor. Lars and Amy stopped by to help clean up, but the work was done, so they just hung out.

I rigged up a very basic prototype of the new laserfingers design, and I think it’ll work without much more elaboration. The assembly process is much simpler, the design is very error-tolerant, and it’s easier to put on and take off than the first-generation gloves were. I haven’t completely settled on the attachment scheme for the battery pack, but that shouldn’t be too hard.

I also got started on the fancy new dancing pants I want for the Shpongle show. I cut out a mockup of the pattern in a cheap cotton knit and tried sewing it together, but had all kinds of trouble with the sewing machine. I think it is time to call this experiment to an end and just buy a newer machine.