Last weekend we had a party to celebrate Awesome August. I am sure some folks missed it. That really sucks for them, because it was probably the best party we’ve ever thrown. A great deal of awesome was experienced by all. Awesome beer, awesome projects, and awesome events… all with awesome people. I’ve tossed up a time lapse of the event. Sorry about the flag getting in the way near the end, that’s just bad planning on my part. I promise to do better next time, in fact next time pretty much everything will be better. So look forward to the the next event, it’s going to be epic.

Justin had a really fun project setup using the Spooky Box from last Halloween. Check out the twitter feed from the party here. Source code for this project is coming!

The Lite Bright also built by Justin, ( and a team of dedicated individuals ) was there and enjoyed by all. Here is a shot of it early in the evening before people went crazy with it.

Charles had a station set up with approximately one kilogram of Crayola Model Magic. Guests were encouraged to grab a hunk and make something of their own.

Charles also brought a Wimshurst machine he picked up at a school physics lab and repaired. In this shot we study the effects of electricity on George Washington’s head.

Also making an appearance was Ranjit’s automated piano working together with Eric Skiff’s Monome to produce a really awesome interactive piece.

Jared posted his Photos : Here

We also had a live DJ, and a few other projects I failed to mention. I know I missed a lot. Send me a note and I’ll add it.

Apparently at least more then any other american political group, it’s Opera.

Earlier this month I decided to use Amazon Mechanical Turk to test a hypothesis in which I posited that IE as a browser would bias to the political right, and other browsers (specifically firefox) would bias to the political left.  A lot of other interesting data surfaced including blockbuster performance of Firefox amongst Libertarians. Check out the whole analysis and grab the data!

When it comes to hacking, I tend to enjoy practical projects the most.  The Arduino is like physical computing “duct tape” that gives one the ability to “duct tape” things that need constant attention or action. If you need a plant watered, or your fish tank pump monitored, or your bikini-clad friends to set off a musical instrument with just their bodies then the Arduino is just the tool you need. So what about fire?

Close-up of the UV TRON Sensor Tube

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A few months back, I acquired the Monome that Bre had put together. It’s a neat little device and I was able to hook it up using SerialPyIO to get it to light up, play some games, and communicate over OSC, but I was having trouble making any good sounding music with it, and it was sitting on my shelf, unloved. It also needed an enclosure upgrade – I wanted to slim it down, make it a bit more sturdy, and let the circuits and the glow of the LEDs show through some sexy new clear acrylic.

AwesomeAugust spurred me into action, and I grabbed a template for a enclosure top, cleaned it up a bit, added screw holes, designed slices for the hollow body, and started cutting it on the NYCR Laser. I just managed to make it all fit on one sheet of 12″ x 24″ acrylic. I’ve put the template online and it’s and free for anyone to use/republish, however you like. Once it was sliced, I used acrylic cement to bond it all, snipped out the USB port, and it was good to go!

Making music for free…

While the laser was cutting away and the glue was drying on my new enclosure, I spent some time figuring out what tools to use to make music on the cheap. There’s lots of incredible, expensive software out there, but I’m really just playing around for now, and don’t have $500 to blow on a toy. While the full creative suites are often expensive, several companies make “runtime” versions that you can only use for playing instruments and patches other people have made. I decided on the free MaxMSP runtime, and fired up Edward Loveall‘s “ArpShift” script I found on the Monome forum to start programming sequences and changing their pitch and timing on the fly. It’s a great little script, but I wanted something a little more satisfying to listen to than the standard midi piano and other midi instruments it was playing, so I grabbed Native Instruments free Kontakt player samper and their free instrument sets. There are a lot more great scripts for MaxMSP and .nki instruments for Kontakt available on the web, so even without breaking the bank to roll your own instruments, you can make great sounding music on the fly. You can hear the simple tune I managed in just a few minutes with ArpShift and Kontakt in the video above.

I’m still looking for a good program to record the loops I’m creating with these instruments and assemble them into a song and I may break down and get myself a copy of Ableton Live LE for that. (Anyone know of other options for live loop creation and on the fly multitracking?)

In the meantime, I’ll be playing with my new music creation toy, and Ranjit and I will be teaming up to hook the Monome up to his Player Toy Piano for the NYCR Interactive Party this Saturday. If you want to play with the Monome/Player Toy Piano (or any of a bunch of other neat interactive projects in the works) RSVP, and we’ll see you there!

While on vacation on Cape Cod, I got a chance to see Fritz of Fritz Glass, working his craft. Glass Blowing is a very technical art and he was a master craftsman, and was happy to share the process, answer questions, and talk while he worked. His open workshop felt a lot like Resistor, full of the tools of his trade and evidence of current hacking (he also builds his own furnaces!), and it was fascinating to watch the process, so I figured I’d share the video here.

High-Res quicktime file

Music: Learn to Fly by Josh Woodward