First Robot Instructions

Here are some instructions for an easier robot project.

Remarkable Crayon Game

Download the game at this site. It is very amazing! The kids will love this one.

New Ballistics Project

We took the potato cannon out again this weekend with great results. However, I found a new and easier project, a ping pong blaster.

Whoa! Definitely, going to require adult supervision with this one.

Denise's First Valentines Rose

Denise'sValentinesRoseA
Originally uploaded by mhughen.

This is the first rose from the plant that Isaac and I picked out for Denise for Valentine's Day. She always remindes us that girls are flowers, and we're so glad she's our flower.

Remember Tron?

Tron
by freres-hueon

Explosion Engine

I'm pretty sure we're not completely ready for this advanced project. However, the video is a great demonstration to how a car engine functions. Plus I finally see the advantage to wearing saftey glasses!

NASA's Lunar Chariot

First protype of NASA's lunar space rover. We need to find out where in Houston they are practicing so we can go have a look.

Vietnam Veterans Memorial Application

This application lets you search for names on the Vietnam memorial. The searches seem to link data from the national archives as well as personal stories and photographs.

Professionally, the application is interesting because it uses a similar linking/tagging technology I'm attempting to implement with my Harris County Historical Document project at work. The theory is if you let users tag documents themselves, the application will get better as people use it more.

Privately, it would be interesting to see the application at work with someone who has a vested interest.

Isaac's PE Program

IsaacPEProgramB
Originally uploaded by mhughen.

These are pictures from a PE program that Isaac had the week before his spring break.

He even had a speaking part in the presentation, asking the parents to come do the "chicken dance." I happily obliged, however the music sounded a lot like the macarena.

We showed Isaac that dance afterwards while celebrating in a sushi restraunt with Tia Marie.

Are Video Games Evil, and Are We There Yet?

What we found with Isaac once, is let him design his own video game.

More Projects

I bought a solder gun this weekend, better get practicing.

A sun tracker, would be interesting to build a sun powered motor, and think this is a fairly simple one. Two musical projects, Altoids tin guitar and a home-made amplifier in a can.

Isaac's Robot Party Plans: Decorations

Mom's ideas for decorations to show to Isaac and Denise. I also found a new online electronics store for modification parts on our toothbrush robot.

Isaac LOVES You!

Isaac LOVES You!
Originally uploaded by mhughen.

Isaac's flag football team celebrates their second place finish in the league. And he loves you all.

NCAA Basketball Test link

Click Here

Weekend Project: Paper Circuitry

Interesting project, should teach a little about electric circuits, combining origami and electronics.

DIY Project Mom Would Approve Of

This site says, "if its worth doing, its worth doing with power tools." A scrub brush made to fit the drill.

Arthur C. Clark Quote of the Day

In memory of science fiction writer Arthur C. Clark, here's the quote of the day.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

On a good day at work, I find myself striving for this magic. After an epiphany yesterday, I realized again that the magic often hides in simplicity. However, simplicity does not come without a price, and is often the most difficult concept to grasp (sounds like Zen, doesn't it).

Barack Obama's Speech on Race

Here is a link to Obama's speech addressing racial issues in America.

While it is inevitably political, it is amazing to hear a presidential candidate address these issues directly. During the speech, he both reprimands Reverend Wright's inflammatory comments, and embraces the man whom he obviously respects.

It will be interesting to see the commentary.

Scaled Down Ballistics Set Up

Given our recent experiments with ballistics, combined with a love of retrieving dogs, this little implementation caught my eye.

We're still considering a tennis ball cannon, because Leo loved to chase the potatos. However, need to go back to Home Depot to refine the design.

Possible Weekend Projects: Racing and Robots

Her's an interesting project, Thunderboat racing behind your bike. At first it looked like most of the fun was in painting the boat, until I read to the part about adding a nail in the tail for a stream of sparks as you go around. Sparks and a demolition racing course, who could ask for more?

The second is another robot experiement, this time Linux style. We would need to install Unbutu on our machine first. However, this device does have a wireless input from the computer.

Doing Our Part to Save the Economy

Yea! A new dining room table, chairs, and bench, along with a new painting. Now we're ready for some serious domino/Pokemon tournaments.

Have a Happy Weekend!

Google the Moon

Here's a cool google map of the moon. It shows the various landing spots of the Apollo missions.

Guess some would say this too is part of the conspiracy. However, looks like we'll have more landing places soon!

National Pi Day

I thought I would write this one, so Gammy would have fun explaining it to the campers.

3/14 is National Pi Day, in fact to celebrate correctly, you must begin at 1:59 (that is 3.14159).

Pi is a mathmatical constant which describes the ratio of a circle's circumference and its diameter or Pi = circumference/diameter.

Pi is also a special mathmatical expression because it's decimal representation is irrational, that is, it never repeats or ends.

The NY Times article suggests celebrating with a Pi-ku (3-1-4 instead of 5-7-5).

Why is pi
Square
As pie is round?

Speed Racer Trailer

Even Chim Chim and Trixie

Microcontroller For the Folk

Open source microcontroller. Guess we might have to learn how to do this, in order to build even better robots.

How Old is the Universe?

Here's a scientific answer to the question. A NASA Explorer mission called WMAP, has contructed data which estimates the age of the universe at 13.73 billion years old (plus or minus .12 billion years).

Pneumatic Potato Cannon Project

Great Fun! And we didn't break any windows (but we came close).

Our pneumatic potato cannon was a 10 foot PVC pipe cut in half. We put a bicycle valve in one end to add the air from a bike pump, and a valve half way to launch the potatos.

As you can see in the picture set, we broke the fence on our first test in the backyard, so we moved our next testing to the field around the corner from our house. Our longest shot with the wind, and 80 psi was 120 yards.

Conclusions:

• next iteration will have a shorter air collection tank (way too much work to fill a 5 foot, 2 inch PVC pipe, with a hand bicycle pump)
• about 80 psi shoots the potato about 100 yards, without blowing out the cannon.
• Its difficult to hand pump 80 psi.
• The electric pump works better, but there's too many things to break in our cul-de-sac.
• the potato flys better when packed in pretty tight, and pushed down with a plunger
• Finally, kids (and dogs) love to see potatos flying through the air at high velocities.

Many thanks to our lovely camera person, who doesn't appear in the pictures.

Oh My, Let's Build a Potato Cannon

There are many aerosol cannons out there, but this one seems a little safer using a pneumatic firing device. Sounds like another good weekend project.

Zen Quote of the Day

Here's an interesting quote of the day for our aspiring students.

There are grammatical errors even in his silence. Stanislaw J. Lec

Toothbrush Robot

Here's Isaac and my first experiment with building robots. We used the motor from an old PS2 controler, and a 3V watch battery. You will notice that, in the final iteration, we constructed a little errector set box to the setup. Also our first experiment with You Tube.