February 2012
2 posts
Users own the problem space, developers own the...
Also mentioned on the Macworld Less Than Perfect Apps panel was how to request features. Users should not say, “I want the software to do x”, but should instead say, “I have a problem x, which the software in its current state does not solve.” The latter form is infinitely more helpful to a developer than the former; most of our work is not programming, rather it is...
What not to say to a software developer
At the end of the Less Than Perfect Apps panel at this year’s Macworld the panel took to discussing how to communicate with developers about making their apps better. Two points that came up were well made and personal bugbears of mine.
Any sentence from a non-developer beginning with “It would be easy to…” immediately inspires vivid fantasies of LART-ing said non-developer into...
October 2011
1 post
September 2011
2 posts
Learning Man
So how was the Burn? Great, as always, and also an evolution of my experience. As always.
So what worked? We did! Packing the truck and trailers from the storage unit in Vegas, putting up a 32’ air conditioned dome, the kitchen dome (including fridge and freezer), showers, the dance floor shade sails, dance platforms, stripper poles, scaffolding et al was one hell of an effort. I worked (and...
August 2011
1 post
5 tags
July 2011
3 posts
WatchCheck out my snake!
Ahem.
So, as you can see, the hardware is fairly much done. All I need is an enclosure/belt pack for the battery and Arduino and to hook everything into the jacket, which my wonderfully generous and talented friend Lizzie is helping me out with.
The software bit is kicking arse too. This “snake” pattern only took me a couple of hours soup-to-nuts and I spent much...
WatchMore hardware today: cut up and soldered one and a half more reels of LEDs. Looks like I’ll have less horizontal resolution than I originally planned, it’s just too much work *and* I don’t want to have to buy another strip (not to mention wear another half a kilo of battery.)
One thing I did confirm was that tapping in power every six strips or so got around the voltage drop...
June 2011
2 posts
Everybody yurts, sometimes
I had the option of going to the gym or making something tonight, and creativity won. The latest Jack Rabbit Speaks newsletter had a link to a new wiki on Hexayurts for Burners. One of the suggestions was to make a model first so you can see how it all fits together. So I did.
I couldn’t find any foam-core board (not even at Mustafa Centre, fail!) so I made do with half-inch polystyrene. It...
May 2011
2 posts
April 2011
0 posts
March 2011
2 posts
WatchI bought some toys on the weekend :-)
February 2011
3 posts
Airlines are cabbagetards extrordinaire
To protect the reader’s delicate sensibilities, all profanity in this article has been replaced with vegetables.
So I just booked a weekend away to Cambodia and Thailand, going in and out on two different Asian budget carriers. The total price shown when I selected both flights adds up to SGD$249. So how can these carrotsuckers get away with charging me $315?
You can shove your $6...
Waku Ghin
Terrine of Duck and Foie Gras
Marinated Botan Ebi with Sea Urchin and Oscietre Caviar
Taiheisan Tenko Nama, Hunmai Daiginjyo, Aita Prefecture Japan
Slow Cooked Tasmanian Petuna Ocean Trout with Witlof and Yuzu
2008 Jean-Claude Catelain Pouilly-Fumé Sauvignon Blanc, Loire Valley, France
Alaskan King Crab with Lemon Scented Extra Virgin Olive Oil
2007 Marc Kreydenweiss Kritt Gewürztraminer,...
January 2011
2 posts
December 2010
1 post
I made an technology
Not strictly true, but I spent an evening porting this javascript code for converting between HSV, HSL and RGB to an Arduino library. I’m not sure if I should be embarassed or relieved about how much C++ syntax I’ve forgotten since second year.
Now that’s covered, the next part of the project is to get a 60Hz interrupt reading those RGB values out of some kind of buffer and...
November 2010
4 posts
Crimpin' ain't easy
Since I received my FCI “Clincher” parts from Element14 today, I headed down to the Singapore Hackerspace after work to commune with my fellow nerds and do some more work on the my Burning Man project prototype. After a bit of experimentation I found that the nose of some linesman’s pliers was the best thing to crimp down the Clinchers’ contacts with, and if I tried to...
October 2010
4 posts
Burning Man 2011 project #1 finished!
I still need to get the battery sorted but I’ll do that when I get over to the States (batteries look like Semtex to airport luggage scanners and I can do without that excitement.)
These are the bike underlights. Couple of LED strips and 700mA constant current drivers from Deal Extreme, encased in perspex pipe and sealed with E6000 (a recommendation of the fantastic Dr. Jon’s Guide...
June 2010
1 post
Sing-ding-apore!
Brief status update, to make the stuff going on there on the Twitter feed there on the right a bit more searchable: In the last 24 hours, it appears I’ve moved to Singapore. So far I’ve had time to grab a fried Kway Teow from the 24-hour noodle market next door, unpack, iron ineptly and pass out in bed for eight glorious hours.
I’m just about to grab some “toast” and...
May 2010
5 posts
Coney Island
The Friday of my week in NYC was a sunny day, so I thought I’d get some value out of my MetroCard and trek out to the end of the F train in Brooklyn to check out Coney Island.
What a shithole.
I’m sorry New Yorkers, and I know these things go in cycles and they are in the process of redeveloping it but man, what a dump. Like, I’m sure the aesthetic was awesome in the 50s or...
Escape From New York
As I mentioned in my last post, the second of the two reasons for my trip to New York was to go to the opening of the massive show my friend Olympia curated in Paterson, New Jersey, called Escape From New York. I’d heard all about it on ze twats and Facebook for a couple of months and knew it was a massive undertaking. As I was going to be in town so close to the opening I couldn’t...
Epic Whim
Anyone reading this who knows me and my circle of friends recognise the happy couple?
No?
Well, I hadn’t even met them when I took this photo. But they were the reason I was in the States a week ago.
The slightly longer version of the story was that I met a girl on the bus between Philly and DC back in February. It was a Chinatown bus and therefore liable to burst into flames in the...
The MIT Museum, Boston
Still raining, so I’ve done some more. The MIT Museum was, along with the ice cream from Toscanini’s next door, one of the highlights of my stay. I wrote about all this earlier but have been itching to get the Arthur Ganson stuff up especially.
Random Boston
Today’s rainy Saturday afternoon instalment is some random shots from Boston over Christmas.
Looks like I’ve got a firm(er) date for my arrival in Singapore! Flight hasn’t been rescheduled yet so it’s not 100% definite but it looks like I’ll be leaving London on or about the 31st of May. Time flies, etc. Lotsa work to do before then, which is slightly daunting but...
April 2010
1 post
The High Line and some random New York
This is the view from the F train going between Manhattan and where I was staying near Prospect Park in Brooklyn. The sign is somewhat famous and even has its own Facebook group. I saw it just about every day going back and forth.
Most of tonight’s gallery however comes from a photography expedition I did to the High Line, in Chelsea. It was a disused elevated railway saved from...
March 2010
5 posts
The National Mall
Second installment tonight: the National Mall, Washington D.C.
I started at one end and walked the length and breadth of it, which took a substantial amount of time. A minor triumph was not slipping over in the snow. A major embarrassment was getting half way down and realising I had confused two rather significant buildings of quite different size and purpose. But this is why we travel, to...
The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum
As promised, the next of a series of photo galleries from the States. This edition, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, Washington D.C.
Before I’d got to D.C. I hadn’t realised just how many Smithsonians there were and I didn’t get to see everything I wanted to see (snowpocalypse and all), but there was no way my inner nerd was going to miss out on the second-most visited...
The great photo project
Now I’ve finally landed in London and had time to scratch myself, I’m going to try and go through all the photos from the last six months I haven’t had time to post. I’m aiming for one or two albums a week, we’ll see how that goes. They’ll all be on Facebook, but I’ll set them to public access so you don’t have to sign up to see them.
We start with...
I have something nice to say about a phone...
You read that right—I can’t believe it either but I actually had a positive customer service experience with a phone company.
First, my UK number: +44 7563 399018. (But of course, please be mindful of timezones.)
So my first order of business on Saturday morning was to get a phone sorted out. I went to Carphone Warehouse and ended up deciding on the O2 Text and Web tariff. (As an...
Cab driver, fuck you!*
I’ve been stiffed a total of $3.90 by three different cab drivers in the last seven days.
A week ago I booked a cab from Erskineville to Central. When it eventually arrived it stopped half a block away from me, so I hobbled toward it with my three big big pieces of luggage. Then I realised it wasn’t the cab I ordered, it was another taxi stopping there by chance to drop someone off....
February 2010
2 posts
You're going where? To do what?
Right, now contracts are signed and the flights are booked I can tell the Internet what’s going on.
I’m just about to start a new job with Tullett Prebon in Singapore. This all happened via a London work colleague from ten years ago while I was still in the States. I fly out Monday, March first, stop in Singapore to meet the crew for a day, then go on to London where I’ll be...
New look!
Yes, you’re in the right place! Frabjous Dei has a new look. Please note Twitter in the sidebar—this is mainly so Mum & Dad can keep up to date with my day-to-day movements when I don’t have the time to write long-form pieces. Hi Mum!
And also, brief update: I’m in Sydney right at this moment, but not for long! More details when the dotted line has actually been signed upon....
January 2010
1 post
New York, New York
Only relatively recently did I realise “New York, New York” was a specific address and not merely a lyrical redundancy. I’ve been all over it lately and concur that it is indeed a helluva town.
The night I arrived in my Kensington, Brooklyn sublet, they were having a kind of a going away party for one of the other flatmates who was leaving for a longer stint. They were hoping I...
December 2009
9 posts
New York state of mind
After some frantic Craigslist-ing, I’ve found somewhere to stay in New York and I’ll be there by about 6:00pm today via the WiFi-equipped MegaBus. It’s just near Prospect Park in Brooklyn which is a little further out than I’d prefer, but it’s a small room in a big house so it’s about half what I’d be paying anywhere else. As an added bonus, another of the...
Snow!
Despite the cold, I’ve been having fun in Boston so far. Jo and Jono are being gracious and generous hosts and I’m eating really well. Pork Pad Prik Khing tonight, I think.
We all went to a party at a Burner friend’s place here on Friday. They have a pet flying squirrel called “Squee”, which is a perfectly onomatopoeic name for a flying squirrel. He was the cute as...
Adding insulation to injury, as it were, earlier today I caught the skin on my neck in my new jacket’s zipper. Ouch!
Boston
After a relatively uneventful flight on Virgin America (with free WiFi, which was pretty neat), Jono came to meet me at Boston Logan airport. We arrived back at their place to the smell of a boiling Christmas pud and I woke up this morning to freshly baked no-knead bread. I have a feeling it’s going to be a gastronomic stay :-).
Thanks again to the SF crew for showing me such an awesome...
