I still have to come up with a good title..

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..experimenting new ways of passing the message through to the new fellows of the Kitchen of Wonders..

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Spring 2007, the young codewarrior Lucas gets ready to face his Electronics and Telecommunications highschool exam..

Well, good memories about that project! Practically we had this robotic arm (ARMDROID) in the laboratory, and as it often happens with laboratory goodies, nobody was using it. Few people knew of its existence, even less knew how to make it work. Great occasion to dive into that and make it work by brute force

Using Visual Basic I developed a graphic user interface which consisted in a buttons board, each one controlling a separate motor on the machine. Visual Basic was actually not taking care of the automation: When the logic of the program required a movement of the robot (or better said, a stepper motor to activate), VB would output a package of information via the RS232 data interface using a custom communication protocol. On the other side of the cable a microprocessor would be waiting to be fed info..! After having translated the information received according to the communication protocol, an Assembly program running on the micro would manage all the logic needed to set the state of the pins of a parallel socket, only way to connect to the robot (yeps, it was THAT vintage!).

Long story short, Visual Basic -> serial -> Assembly -> parallel -> something unknown going on in the robot itself.
And that’s how the magic happens.

With time the project began to grow in scope, including a virtual representation of the robot itself (always in VB).
This was actually the power horse of the whole thing: Having been too lazy to study the maths required to do matrix calculation (i wanted to drive a robot, not study maths.), I ended up having to do all the calculations required to show a pseudo-3D object in an orthogonal view using basic trigonometry.
Pretty funny stuff, here how the calculation of one coordinate of one extreme of one line would look like:

Line15.X1 = Line3.X2 + (Cos(mano * Kmano * pgreco / 360) * Cos(polsoA * KpolsoA * pgreco / 720) -- Sin(mano * Kmano * pgreco / 360) * Sin(polsoA * KpolsoA * pgreco / 720)) * (Cos(mano * Kmano * pgreco / 360) * Cos(base * Kbase * pgreco / 360) -- Sin(mano * Kmano * pgreco / 360) * Sin(base * Kbase * pgreco / 360)) * LungDito

But hey, it got the job done!

So, having had this virtual representation of the robot running, I implemented a new control mode: It was now possible to pilot ArmDroid using a multifunction joystick.
Last goodie? How about having a “Learn mode” that would allow an operator to record “waypoints”, and having the robot automatically follow them? Yes we can!

When time for the exam came, ArmDroid was capable of executing a prerecorded program, while also granting manual control via a buttons board or using a joystick.

Now I’m awaiting for Skynet to become self aware, to crosscode it with ArmDroid and finally have a cute little robotic arm pet.
Like a handicapped puppy, with only one arm. A big orange metallic one.

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The Kitchen of Wonders is back.. toilet humor version!

..What’s better than having a Big Brother picture staring at you in the shared bathroom?
..Having a CUSTOMIZABLE Big Brother picture staring at you in the shared bathroom!

Read more about the Kitchen of Wonders:

• Trying it the Guerrilla Way: 2v0
• Trying it the Guerrilla Way
• Beware! The microwave of Death

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..this job would be so much more cool if we had just a bit more creative freedom..

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Remember Reach, this is the name of the campaign that will market the release of the latest Bungie’s game, Halo Reach.

In the past I read about “I Love Bees“, an award winning viral marketing campaign and Alternate Reality Game that promoted the release of Halo 2.
I was expecting something big, some really cool idea. I am not disappointed.

I found the site of the campaign querying Google for “remember reach”. It was a bit of subconscious: That is the last sentence of one of the trailers previously posted, and I wasn’t expecting to come across anything particularly new.
First result, rememberreach.org. Not the original Halo Reach pages from the developers, pages that I visited days ago. It doesn’t even show up in the first page of result when trying to Google “Halo Reach”.
So yea, curious site. A funny robot arm, 5 Halo characters represented as dotted silhouettes, a couple of trailers.
And then this mysterious ”Add your point of light” button, unusable for those not having a Facebook account (like me! wohoo!).

Ok, it took me some time to realize it, but practically by pressing that button you log into Facebook and then you are given the possibility to add your “point of light” to the main picture.
I guess that initially that picture was blank, with only the five luminous sparks marking the navigation across the different characters biographies.
Click after click, facebook login after facebook login (I guess there must be some viral element in there), the points of light begin to mark a recognizable shape, a distinguishable silhouette, that of a monument to the Noble Team, the main characters of the game.

I love the idea that every user contribution helps creating this collective experience, developed in a way that can be witnessed live.
A simple but monumental idea, that will for sure be talked about by core gamers and not.

The “points of light” in fact are positioned by a robotic arm, which seems to be (for what I read on dedicated forums) displayed via a live feed of an actual robot, that is probably piloted by the coordinates chosen by each user when placing their points.
Quoting a post that I read afterwards, “the monument IS literally being constructed by us, the users“.

I find this campaign really thrilling (i was ecstatic when I found out about the “points of light” collective experience) and I encourage you to visit the site to discover the rest of the goodies, and see them in action..!
Here the link to the site of the Remember Reach campaign.

Read more:

• Halo Reach

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The dilemma of whether the glass of water is half full or half empty is everlasting and absolute.

Confused by this consideration, it is normal to expect people to loose control over their actions, get stunned and leave the kitchen forgetting another glass of water around.

It feels like living in the cave of Superman, surrounded by crystal glasses. You have to pay attention not to raise your voice too much or there is the risk of having them suddenly exploding, resulting in a deadly waterfall of shiny particles.

..we tried to take care of this matter in various ways.. it was time to try it the guerrilla way.

Read more about the Kitchen of Wonders:

• Trying it the Guerrilla way
• Beware! The microwave of Death

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I’ve been asked by a fellow coworker to give an eye to a site, and help optimizing it as to reach global search engine presence (or domination, if you allow me).

Tricky area, the website is about an hotel in a very turistic zone of italy, and even the name of the firm has to stand ground against competitors.
The main idea when I was contacted was to improve the ranking of the pages, increasing the chances of visitors clicking through, falling in love with the site, purchasing a long lasting idyllic holyday, and finally paying sweet dinero with which to feed the capitalistic inner greed of everybody involved with which to make everybody live a life freed by economic worries, contemplating the beauty of the Italian beaches while sipping a coconut flavored drink in the shadows of a palm tree (the famous palm trees that surround the zone of Venice).

I compiled a list of basic free techniques and good practices that could help these guys doing so. Nothing original, a nice crop and chop from different authors, with different experiences.
Even if I don’t expect it to be a sort of “magic checklist”, I find them useful info, and for sure there will be some webdeveloper out there that will make good use of it.

So, here we go!

Read the rest of this entry »

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If yesterday was Jek “Red Six” Porkins day, today we have something a bit more serious and scary to celebrate: Earth Overshoot Day.

The following comes from Global Footprint Network.

August 21st marks an unfortunate milestone: the day in which we exhaust our ecological budget for the year. Once we pass this day, humanity will have demanded all the ecological services – from filtering CO2 to producing the raw materials for food – that nature can provide this year. From that point until the end of the year, we meet our ecological demand by liquidating resource stocks and accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Read the rest of this entry »

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I just decided that today I’m going to celebrate the first international.. UNIVERSAL JEK PORKINS DAY.

All hail Porkins, may your soul rest in peace! Nobody can blame you for succumbing to the Empire.

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Another Lukasz/Lucas collaboration! Wooldees.com

This is gonna be the portfolio of a fellow compañero.
Designed by himself, and implemented by myself, in a 6-hours performance of speedcoding and caffeine-driven-drum’n'bass-flavoured day of work.

The site is thought as a fast and clear way to show what this is all about, his works. No literal mambo jambo, no history of his childhood. Read the rest of this entry »

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I just read an article on DigitalBuzzBlog.com about this advergame, and even if initially I was a bit skeptical about it, I’ll have to agree with the authors of that article: This is a real interesting game, for a number of reasons.

First of all, here what we are talking about..

56 Sage Street is an advergame developed for Barclays Bank.

It’s main goal is to improve teenagers’ understanding of banking and educate them about direct debits, loans, statements, fraud avoidance and general money management.

The game itself is a mixture between the money management aspects of Sim City, and a rich storytelling layer that reminds of a Grand Theft Auto kinda thing. Read the rest of this entry »

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It’s a great television.

We shared together lots of interminable nights killing zombies and making a massacre out of Combines.

..But things change, PEOPLE change.

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WASHINGTON — US President Barack Obama is confident in the quality of Gulf of Mexico seafood despite the BP oil spill and will serve some at a party Sunday to mark his 49th birthday, a top aide said.
“Later today at the president’s birthday party, he’s going to be serving his guests seafood from the Gulf of Mexico,” White House energy advisor Carol Browner told NBC. [...]

Earlier this month, BP’s chief operating officer Doug Suttles also said he would eat Gulf of Mexico seafood after the massive oil spill poured 4.9 million barrels of crude into the water and devastated the region following an explosion on a BP-leased rig in April. “I absolutely would,” he said in response to a question about whether he would eat Gulf seafood. “And I would feed it to my family,” he said.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gvLmUfy_bO0k3C_ejlCWLzIYfjjw

Now, quick change of setting, act 2:

Bishop Love reached inside his suitcoat and pulled a small chunk of carnotite — a friable, yellowish, higly radioactive uranium ore — from an inside pocket. He held it up where all could see it.

“That’s carnotite, folks. That’s what we got south of here in those big canyons off the Grand Canyon. Now you know and I know the uranium industry is in a slump these days, the American nucular business is shot to hell, the doggone environmentalists are shutting down the nuke plants, but this ore is so rich, my friends, such high-grade ore, that even with yellowcake down to seventeen dollars a pound this stuff is worth mining. Let the price go down to ten a pound this carnotite will still pay. Europe wants it if we don’t. And Japan, Brazil, them places. This is pay dirt, men. Radioactive gold.”

Murmurs of approval. Love pointed to one of his crew in the front row. The fellow handed him a portable Geiger counter, battery powered, with probe and cord. Love set back the black box-like device on the table, in full view of the audience, switched it on, held up the attached chrome-plated probe in one hand and the lump of sulfur-colored rock in the other. A loud clicking noise began immediately.

“All right, folks, now listen to this music. This high grade or ain’t it?” He touched the probe to the ore. At once all present heard the radiation count rise in crescendo to the frantic buzzing of an infuriated rattlesnake. “Hear that? You people out there in TV land hear that? That’s high intensity radiation. That’s one mad buzzworm in there. Pure U-238. Yessiree bob, this little yeller rock is hot as a pistol, folks, hot as my Aunt Minnie’s old-timey radium wristwatch…”

Murmurs of admiring approval from the audience.

“Yessir,” Love went on, “this here is one hot little piece of power. And am I afraid of it? Am I one little teeny-weeny itsy-bitsy scared of it? Watch this.”

Love lowered the probe. Holding the rock high in one hand, he turned to face the TV cameras and the glaring lights, the important men behind the table, the crowd in the folding chairs. “Watch me now.” Head up, in profile to the cameras, he opened his mouth and placed the carnotite in his teeth, bit off a piece. Chewing vigorously, grinning at everybody and everything, he masticated his tidbit thoroughly, then — swallowed it. Mrs Smith covered her eyes.

Laughter. Cheers. The assembly began to stand again.

“Yes!” Love bellowed, “radiation is good for you! [growing applause.] Uranium is good for you! Uranium is good for Utah and Arizona! The nucular industry is good for America!”

from Hayduke Lives (Edward Abbey)

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I just stumbled upon a website that we made a while ago with a compañero:

Designed by Lukasz Wolniak, implemented by Lucas Gabriel.. a Lukasz-Lucas collaboration!

Visit Bieguni.com

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