I heard that our friend Jim,  from Houston passed away yesterday. He and his family were neighbors  of ours from the 60’s through the 80’s . His son Bruce is a good friend of mine and brother Billy’s . I’ve been thinking of Bruce and his family all day.

When I left this morning, Diane was just finishing the masking of the windows…

1. What, if anything related to innovating occurred for you today? 

Cuz this is an external blog, I know I need to keep this discussion about stuff I do outside of work. I had thought about concentrating on the Project-X monster project, but Diane pointed out at dinner.. that I probably should restrict my answers to that one project.. So I guess I had 3 outside of work innovationg thingy’s today..

The first was on my drive in to work. As I passed the Checkered House resturant on Rt 2 I saw this big pile of stuf marked FREE ! One of the things was a boat !.. or at least the shell of a boat..

Anyway.. I  said to myself “Self..” I says …   “what could I do with a free broken shell of a boat… ”  ? I immediately saw a possibility for a  mutant car for next year’s Burning Man… just cut the bottom off this baby, cut the top off a car , slap them together and you have the Gilligansislandmobile… ready to cruse the playa in search of frozen rum drinks. I immediately called friend Ben .. the brains behind our Burning Man posse and suggested the idea.. He luckily talked me out of it.. I say luckily.. because I was in no position to grab the boat. Ben suggested that we figure out what we want to build then go scavenging .. rather than let fate chose our design… good thinking… no wonder he’s the brains..

Next came the one planned inventing I had for the day.. and this does pertain to the Project-X robot.. I’d planned a trip to radio shack to get parts to finish off the control electronics for the beast. I needed to find a 24VDC quarter amp supply, a 6V 4 Amp supply and a nine volt supply .. I also needed to find some cabling for the beasts voice box.. As is now usually the case, I was so disappointing in radio shacks dwindling supply of parts.. They are catering less and less to the mad scintists of the world.. and more and more trying to sell the same consumer crap you can get in the box stores.. strike one against inventors.. Anyway.. I didn’t find much of what I was looking for.. no supplies.. just some wire.. and I impulse bought a voice recorder chip that I’ll use as a looping scary message for the beast to say for testing.   I hadn’t planned to do that.. but the sight of the chip gave me the idea…   5 minutes after driving awaysI realized how I could have adapted something they had to give me my 24 v supply.. but I was too beat to turn back.. .. I guess the lessons form this exercise are.. invention rarely works as planned.. and sometimes I make the most interesting innovations on one thing (the voice thing) when I’m trying to make progress on another (the power thing)

My final invention story came from Gabe.. I got home just as he was getting ready to go to a middle school dance. He had to leave in 5 min.. but asked me if we could rig up some blinking lights for him.. We quickly pulled together some blinking leds, lithium batteries and NeFoB magnets.. taped them together into ‘throwies’ and magnet and tapped them to his pants and shoes.. Gabe has great ideas for stuff liek this.. Here he is in the light

in the semi-light

and the dark…

He said they worked great at the dance.. he lost a few in the mosh.. but hey.. what do you expect from seat of the pants … or knee of the pants.. inventing ?

2. Who else was involved (knowingly or not!) in what happened for you on that effort today? (Please don’t forget to include ST chats, email exchanges, etc.)

I got in touch with Becca and Sara from Triptych who are finishing the Project-x beasts animatronic head.. unfortunately the wet weather prevented the paint from drying.. so it looks like we won’t get the head back this weekend.. I understand the weather constraint.. It’s too bad though, we were hoping to do our final physical integration this weekend. Time is getting short.. We will manage though.. I asked becca to take some measurements of the new head dimensions.. we need to make sure that the beast’s knees don’t hit the head or jaw when it’s in a full crouch.

Anyway.. I guess this just illustrates both the pros and cons of innovating as a team.. the pros are .. you can figure out ways to work in parallel.. the cons are you have to figure out ways to interlock on technical details and schedules.. that can gate progress….. Even so.. its’ so much more fun working with folks on a project like this. Sara and Becca have such a cool artistic vision for the project !

3. In general, do you feel more optimistic or more concerned about the potential / likely success of this effort today than yesterday?  Why?

I’m getting very nervous that we won’t be able to do our integration testing for the project-x monster this weekend.. we’re running out of weekends !

4. Please take a picture of something (anything) that is suggestive of this effort in any way that is meaningful to you….  (or draw one).

hmmmm.. already did the pictures above.. I’ll re-include a video we took of the beasts skeleton a few weeks back.. it looks nothing like this now.. but.. you can get an idea of the jaw working.

5. Did anything hinder your innovativeness today ?

lack of time.. lack  of focus.. lack of lack of parts .. lack of sushi

-me