Woot! Woot! I Won the Digital Open Competition!

This is usually the time where I'd post a Theoretical Thursday on my thoughts and ideas, however today something awesome happened that merits overwriting theories.

I won Sun Microsystems's and IFTF's international youth competition, the Digital Open. I won a laptop, a video camera, and a bunch of other cool things. The Boing Boing Media team came to my house and interviewed me about the win, and made a pretty cool video.


[or watch this video on YouTube]

Here's what they quoted me on in their post on my win:

"The BW Science Labs Store is an idea I've had for a while now, but it has taken a lot of work to get it up and running. There is currently 1 kit available, the Vivus the Robot kit. I"ve seen a lot of those really low-quality $20 robots where you clap your hands and they twitch, and I've seen $400 robots with a great deal of functionality. I wanted to make something in between, and that's exactly what Vivus is. During prototyping I wanted to make a "real robot", one that was autonomous and could truly act on its own, while trying to keep the cost down as well. "

A very special thanks to the folks at Sun Microsystems, Institute for the Future, and Digital Open for making this possible.

In Honor of Nerd Day: Some Crazy Math Problems.

Today was Nerd day at my school. For many, this day promotes new possibilities in wild apparel, and for others it presents no change. However, to honor the spirit of Nerd day, I thought I'd post some problems from this year's National Mathematics competition. I originally had a packet of problems from my school's math club (a.k.a. the Neighborhood), but of course I lost that packet after about a day. For those of you who do these things for fun, happy nerding. The rest of us can at least imagine what it would be like to solve these. Hey, imagination is more important than knowledge... right?





If you are cackling at your monitor right now, let us know, I'm curious to see how a mathematical mind would solve these.


Nerd warfare: more casualties than you might imagine.



The credit for these problems and image goes to UNL: where nerds plot our destruction.

Flash Catalyst: Programming without coding?

As a registered Flash developer, I get emails from Adobe here and there begging me to take one of their 1,000 surveys, promising that the 200 multiple choice questions will only take 2 minutes of my time. However, today (or rather 20 minutes ago) I was alerted of a new Adobe product called Flash Catalyst. Something caught my eye in the email, the phrase, "Without writing code." I was terrified, as the whole reason I love software is because of the awesome code behind it.

I downloaded the Beta testing version for free to see what it's like, and I've assessed that there are 2 possibilities:

1) Catalyst may be popular for a little while and then will die out quickly without any real applications, much like Carnegie Mellon's Alice program.

2) Catalyst will eclipse Flash and ActionScript 3.0 and put nearly every Flash programmer in the world out of a job. Fast food restaurants will be populated with millions of would-be programming geniuses, and the world will stop spinning as a result.


Call me old fashioned, but I'm rooting for scenario #1, were's the fun in programming without writing code?

Of course, there's a middle ground to this, maybe Catalyst will be only a little popular, and only a few hundred thousand programmers will lose their jobs.

You can download Catalyst off of Adobe's website for free, here's my impression after 10 minutes of using it.

Catalyst looks a lot like Flash CS4, its pretty clean cut and elegant, as with most Adobe products. The user draws or imports an object, much like in Flash, and selects what the object is (i.e. button), then chooses what role it plays (i.e. onClick), and finally decides what action it takes (i.e. play video). No code. At all.



I'm a bit worried, and annoyed after buying Flash CS4 which may become obsolete (worst case scenario) as a result of Catalyst.

DIY Laser: (almost) out of Star Wars

I could not keep my engineering side at bay for long, even with a malfunctioning soldering station I had to do something. I wound up using my very-sub-par Radioshack (of course) soldering iron until I can get my real station replaced. It was worth the pain of using a Radioshack product, as my most awesome laser yet was created.

I know it as the Uber-Laser, the rest of the world knows it from one too many Star Wars episodes as a Blaster, and isolated tribes in East Africa and my brother know it as, "That shiny thing."


Say hello to my little friend!

I started off with a 3-5 mw green laser pointer I got from Amazon for about $20. I spent a great deal of time taking the assembly off with my diamond cutter (seriously, they really don't want people taking apart their laser pointers), and got it down to just the laser diode and circuit board. I spent another few hours fiddling around with the circuit board until I found something that works, and I managed to get the power output from about ~3 mw to approximately a little less than 100 mw.

I don't really feel comfortable explaining what I did with the circuit board to make this thing shine, for fear of some child blinding himself with the info he got off BW Science Labs. However, I should say that what I DID NOT do is fry the "03" chip with my soldering iron as some crazy Youtube video suggests. I also had to bypass the embedded ON/OFF switch in the circuit board, which took a bit of careful soldering. I then used a 3v power supply, a ridiculously awesome looking switch, and an enclosure to build the rest of the laser module.

I was able to kill 2 birds with one stone (so to speak of course), as I used this laser in my Physics presentation today, where I discussed the National Ignition Facility and how it uses lasers to create a self-sustaining nuclear reaction. I couldn't tell if my teacher was amazed or terrified by my laser, however it seemed that my peers thought it was pretty darn cool.

At one point a student asked if it could burn anything or start a fire. I was careful to mention that I made this laser to output as much light as possible without actually being destructive enough to pose a danger. And while the pyromaniacs in this world may be disappointed, I still am pretty happy with how this laser functions. At the same time, I feel a bit guilty with the title promising something out of Star Wars, but that's why I put the "(almost)" there.

This laser is incredible at night, and it produces a very solid-looking beam straight out of, dare I say, Star Wars!


Reminder:

While I used phrases like, "fiddling around with the circuit board", I did have a pretty good idea of what I was doing. I also took the proper safety precautions while soldering, and I wore laser safety goggles during testing because I wasn't in the mood to go blind today. If you're not responsible, have little respect for safety (or your eyes), or simply don't know anything about lasers, please find someone smarter who does know what to do, if you try to do this at home. Consider this my disclaimer.

Sunday Status: Steve Jobs's Fiesta and Building the Uber Laser

Global

I'm not completely sure if this really counts for global, but this week Apple announced that their 2 billionth iPhone app had been downloaded. Wow, 2 BILLION iphone app downloads, that's a lot of Fart Applications...

I can picture Steve Jobs right now with a little party hat on, toasting his victory.


Don't even try getting into my party without muffins.

Micro

I spent all day today building what I lovingly call the Uber Laser*. I managed to reconfigure 5 mw green laser diode to output nearly 100 milliwatts, while that's not enough to do anything really cool, its still an impressive feat. I'll be sure to give it the full post it deserves** later this week.




Footnotes:

*: I know, I know, I'm pretty bad at naming things. "BW Science Labs", not my most creative name. Seriously though, if you have a better name for it then let me know.
**: We all know what happens when a science project feels like it doesn't get what it deserves... It becomes aware.

Teaching yourself ActionScript: Books I recommend

I've been using Flash and ActionScript (never forgetting JAVA, PYTHON, and all my other favorite languages of course) since late this summer, and I've been surprised as to how quickly I've learned it. It's a great feeling, knowing that you can achieve something without having to have someone hold your hand all the way through. Fortunately, ActionScript is a lot like JAVA, so having some experience there made AS3 a lot less difficult to learn(I actually find AS3 more convenient than JAVA). There are three books that gave me the Flash know-how:

1) ActionScript 3.0 Game Programming University by Gary Rosenzweig:

Good reference book, though this would not be the book I recommend for a completely new programmer. Most of the book is just a collection of tutorials, making it a bit harder for the new guy to grasp all of the core concepts 1st. However, there is some great depth to this book and it touches on some fantastically deep topics like 3D racing, mapping, and so on.



2) Game design with Flash by Rex van der Spuy:

This is the 2nd Flash book I read, and I really wish it was the first. It is perfect for beginners, and the first 5 chapters laid out the basics of ActionScript really nicely. The rest of the book was still a good read, and touched on topics that other books missed like using trigonometry to find the angle of an object and use it to fire bullets, missiles, or glowing smiley faces.



3) Creating a Web Site with Flash CS4 by David Morris:

A good primer with Flash, this book is a fun, short, and easy read that a ferret could understand*. However, this book lacks the code power needed to run a truly good Flash site. For instance, Morris shows the reader how to make a form by dragging text boxes out from the side bar** and place them on the design. However, he ends the section abruptly saying, "To function properly and transfer data as intended, a form requires advanced ActionScript programming and connection to a database- complexity that is beyond the scope of this book." (122) Which is a really fancy way of saying, "I have no idea how to do this, but I can teach you how to draw a text box!"

Regardless, this book is sufficient for the beginning Flash designer, and I still got a lot out of it.






Footnotes:


*: Why hire people to build Flash sites anyway? Timone and Pumba will do it for half the cost.
**: Hey, don't laugh. Clicking and dragging is an art.

Theoretical Thursday: My Thoughts On Free Software

Imagine this:

Radio frequencies are scattered with the ever popular band Survivor, suspenders are still in style, and computer code is just waiting to be written. You explore the world of code and watch the debut of the internet as a way for scientists to share data and evolve from there. You consider a new way to communicate from computer to computer, like writing digital letters. What will you call it? Amail? Qmail? How about... Email? You figure your career is set, and millions will pay to use your low cost communication service. Then, 1996 rolls around and some guy from Stanford named Larry Page has an idea to create something called Google. You think "no big deal" and publish your Email program to the world.


It's no big deal.

However, soon Google creates their Email service, Gmail, and gives it away to everyone for free.

13 years later you're teaching hordes of rowdy high school gamers Java, reminiscing about the "good ol' days" as you tighten your suspenders and select "Eye of the Tiger" on your Walkman.


While this scenario is purely fictional, there is some truth to the idea behind it. Software is becoming completely free, namely thanks to Google. While the goals of the Free Software Foundation are noble, they tend to make life a bit harder for independent developers. As free software becomes more available, people expect everything to be free. Just look at the iTunes App store, reviewers seem angry and any developer who dares charge more than $0.99 for his months of coding. Worse yet, consumers become critical of free software. Look at the reviews on my first game ever with ActionScript 3.0. The user is getting the software for literally nothing, and yet yet they often are angry at the developer if it does not meet their standards.

While free software makes it nearly impossible for developers to take advantage of the consumer (no, only big companies are allowed to charge their users $999.99 for software. *cough* *cough* Adobe) it also makes it hard for the developer to earn enough to support himself.

I fear the day when everything is free, and the only money circulating through software is via advertising or worse, only goes to Microsoft, Apple, or Adobe.*


Footnotes:


*: Don't get me wrong, these are three great companies, they just make the indie developer's life a bit more interesting.