Cross Dominant

#“Bandon Flood Data (FEWS) now available on Cosm/Pachube” When I announced the availablity of Open Data on Google Fusion Tables for the Bandon Flood Early Warning System (FEWS) last year, one suggestion that was made to me by Imogen Bertin was to put it up on Pachube (now renamed to the slightly less obscure Cosm). I gave it a go but couldn’t figure it out. Despite providing it with the CSV link to the Fusion Table, it never did anything with the data. »

#“Finally I’m a real boy” Conor’s First Dremel. Turns out that applying a carbide disk, rotating at 10k RPM, to a plastic case doesn’t so much cut as melt. Ah well, I’m happy. »

#“Yep, there’s method in my Dadness, I think. Thanks @sugru!” A lovely film for Father’s Day from Jane and the Sugru team. It was a real pleasure having Julian, John and Ben visit us in Bandon. Sibal will be delighted to see her Raspberry Pi Lego case getting a great look in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0g3_NLeEVs Tomorrow we’re doing more digging into Arduino with her, Oscar and maybe Oisn. First, the treadmill :-) »

#“I think I’ve found the ultimate alarm clock project” As part of the kids and I playing around with Arduino, Sibal thought that we should try and find an alarm clock project for her to build. I’ve found some amazing ones with features like Vacuum Flourescent Tubes but they are a very pricey and the mechanical learning ones on Amazon don’t really keep time Then today I found this, The Acoustic Alarm. »

#“5th Avenue Frogger - Some day all games will be made this way” Fan-bloody-tastic idea. My only disappointment is that you are not controlling real robotic squishy frogs but I guess that would be illegal. And a bit too close to Ender’s Game. 5th Ave Frogger from Tyler DeAngelo on Vimeo. »

#“Two tutorials later and the kids are liking the Arduino a lot” I sat down with 8 y/o daughter and 10 y/o son this afternoon to try out our ARDX starter kit for Arduino. The first tutorial is a simple single LED which you flash on/off in software. But I was horrified to find myself stumped! Yes, I may have a Masters in Electronic Engineering from UCD but, as anyone who did Electronics there prior to the mid-90s knows, a certain lecturer ensured that we all left completely clueless in basic circuit cop-on. »

#“The Sweet Sound of #EURO2012 Silence” This simple Tweetdeck filter is doing a pretty decent job so far. No need for dilithium crystals. I’ll tweak it as the volume increases over the next few days. But at this stage I don’t even know if the thing has started yet or not. If I had any interest I’d probably look up what coybig means. Is it pornographic? coybig, poznan, poland, ukraine, euro12, euro2012, euro 2012, football, footie, referee, score, goal, footy, ireland, irish team, sport, sports, kick off, final whistle, sea of green, shay given, robbie keane, brian kerr, trapattoni, damien duff, game, match, ref »

#“Learn electronics with an Arduino and @Raspberry_Pi on an old Philips TV” Been slammed with work for two weeks (will never complain about that!) which means blogging has been a bit light. But the big excitement yesterday was my ARDX Arduino Starter Kit arriving from Seeedstudio. If you are not familair with Arduino, it is an OpenSource hardware platform forelectronicsprojects, tinkering, robotics, home automation etc etc etc. The blue board above is the heart of it. »

#“Sorry Google, Plus Local without a Platform won’t save Google Plus” 6 days ago, I posted this on Google+ The response from a Googler was that “I don’t have anything new to share right now”. The following day, Scoble stated that he had heard they will announce a Write-API at Google IO. Instead, they make the blindingly obvious step of merging Places with Google+ Pages to make Plus Local. A totally sensible move. »

#“My 70 year-old Mother has out-hacked me with Sugru” My mother isn’t obviously technical but she is incredibly practical. This is a woman, who at the age of 12, was sent to live with her widowed Grandfather, to take care of him! Nothing fazes her. As she lives in Kilkenny, she always found the Sugru story interesting (Jane, the inventor, is from Kilk) and bought a packet to see what it was about. »