There is any interesting dichotomy at play in the technology world. As someone is who is cold-stone engineer by day, but a struggling product design artist by night, I am keenly aware that people both embrace (at the notion of) innovation yet fear change. We like to dream of a better tomorrow, rather than live it….
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I have what you might call obsessive compulsive tinkering (that’s a self-diagnosis). I love tinkering. The feeling one gets from taking an idea existing solely in the mind’s eye and creating a physical, working prototype is like none other. Tinkering also forces me to learn. That is also why I think I did relatively poor…
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Vaccines. Evolution. Global climate change. The World is round. Things that should not be in question in the 21st century, A certain U.S. governor and 2016 presidential hopeful responded to whether or not he accepted biological evolution as scientific fact. To which he promptly responded “I’m going to punt on that one, as well, that’s a…
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In product design, striking a balance between form and function is constant struggle. I ascribe to the philosophy that when faced with a design decision, it is better to given precedence to function over the form. I say that not just because it’s better for something to work well vice looking good, but rather…
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I am admittedly a better electronics hacker than I am a seamstress. But I firmly believe that wearables is going to be more than a fad, eventually. So I figure I better at least get enough skills to be able to design prototypes, as I have done with straight up electronics for the last 17…
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I have a new article over at Mouser Electronics Bench Talk for Design Engineers blog! Click here to go right to the article. See what magic you can make happen with some TI MSP430s and a TI LaunchPad! Hint: Snail Mail Gets a High Tech prototype! You don’t have to be an engineer to enjoy…
Read MoreI have been playing with Phidgets more and more lately. Mainly because it is forcing me to go relearn good OOP programming skills, it’s also serving to push me to learn Python. As a hardware guy, it’s always a challenge to get motivated to learn yet another new programming language. But so far, so good….
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I did a post a while back for Mouser Electronics about controlling an Arduino-based LED strip via a Bluetooth-enabled Android app. The app had three sliders, each controlling one of the three colors used in an RGB LED strip. The code necessary to drive the LED light strip on the Arduino side was especially complicated,…
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S.T.E.A.M. Power Podcast #53 9 November 2014 http://greenshoegarage.com/podcast/2014/STEAM_0053_9NOV14.mp3 Audio only this week! In this week’s episode we interview my brother-in-law and his friend who are both current undergrads at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, GO RETRIEVERS! We chat about STEM majors, relationship between math and music, and women in STEM! [Download] For more tech…
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Inspired by Benjamin Franklin‘s dedication to productivity I sat out to detail what an ideal productive day is for me. I rarely achieve the ideal day, but it does give me a target to try for rather than wandering aimlessly. It also gave me a chance to review the tools I actually use in a…
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