May 24, 2008
The Dublin Freeze
Posted in: Art, Dublin, EventsAs seen in London, New York... Prepare your pose.
Sunday 25th May 2008
18.33 - 18.39
Halfway along Grafton Street, near the clock outside Barratts: map
The Grand Central Freeze:
March 9, 2008
High power darlington array
Posted in: TechWhat's an easy way of driving a ton of LEDs? Unfortunately the the Arduino boards can only sink or source about 40mA on each pin, which is enough to drive a few LEDs at most.
Here's how to drive up to eight LED clusters or other high current device off a single, cheap 18-pin IC with no extra components.
March 8, 2008
Arduino showing multiplexed LED matrix
Posted in: Art, Gadgets, Software, TechTo control any more than 12 LEDs on an Arduino board requires a bit of trickery. The Diecimila with its Atmega168 chip has 14 digital output pins, but you somewhat lose two from the TX/RX serial pins on 0 and 1 leaving just 12 pins. Today I built an LED matrix with 20 lights using nine pins,
The technique is to light row by row, and rely on our persistence of vision effect. Playing around with the delay it seemed like 3ms for a total of 15ms (five rows) was about the point where flicker just started being noticeable.
Geeky detail after the fold...
Continue reading "Arduino showing multiplexed LED matrix"March 2, 2008
My first Arduino project
Posted in: Gadgets, Software, Tech, What am I up toI've spent a very pleasant Sunday afternoon playing with an Arduino microcontroller board. After a trip to Maplin I plugged together a little array of assorted LEDs from their "lucky bags" and got hacking.
Continue reading "My first Arduino project"November 25, 2007
Extended Durex Play (Vibrating Ring)
Posted in: GadgetsI got one of these little vibrating ring doodads and can concur with these reviews that's it's bloody great. There are two problems though. First of all it's €10+ in the Rip-off of Ireland. Compare that with $22 for 6 in the US! And the second is that it's intended to be disposable (20mins of use). The second problem wouldn't be a problem if they were on sale for an American style €2.40 each.
So being the gadgety skinflint that I am, what follows is how to disassemble it and replace the batteries with more powerful ones...
Continue reading "Extended Durex Play (Vibrating Ring)"July 1, 2007
Kiting
Posted in: Dublin, SportA little while back I impulse bought a landboard and little beginner (1.4m2) kite. Took it out to Sandymount beach with almost no wind and kind of flew it; had a hard time. Then last week there were more winds and up it went, woohoo! it wasn't enough to drag my ass around the beach (that came later) but enough to get the hang of which line to pull and figure-of-eight it through the power zone.
As Fortune would have it, also out kiting was Ben who very kindly let me have a crack at Samurai 5m2 monster. Here's a few pics, including it dragging me around,
(Yes, Jez, I should've looked into this when you first mentioned it a decade or so ago :-))
May 7, 2007
I'm a lightweight (rower)
Posted in: SportThis time last year I was the heaviest I've ever been and now, thirteen months later, the lightest I've been as an adult. In a year I've lost at least 10kg (22lbs, 1st8lbs). The significance of today however is that I weigh pretty much exactly 75.0kg which is the qualifying weight for Lightweight Rowing AND I did a benchmark 2,000m row. It wasn't very fast, 7:06, but then I am recovering from a sore throat and have a lung full of phlegm, not to mention still being on a calorie restricted diet (ergh).
According to my fancy Tanita scales I'm currently at 8.3% body fat. Which is pretty damn low; not quite "walking anatomy lesson" but certainly on the way. For comparison, male athletes vary between 6% and 12%; more here.
So, how did I lose 10kg? After hours of reading and assimilating scholarly nutritional texts, womens' magazines, physiologists' deepest secrets, and all the while studiously avoiding the fridge's whispered promises, I put together the following plan. My Magic Formula For Losing Weight is...