Frankenjoyment

Brand Recognition

2011-09-22T04:49:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, my wife and I read an article about how many brand logos a typical 3 year old is able to recognize. A simple search for "Child Brand Recognition" will get you there. Suitably sickened, we decided that we'd at least casually try to avoid over-exposing our kids to marketer brainwashing.

I tend to think we've done pretty well generally, but once in a while it's easy to forget. At the end of a recent doctor appointment, the kids were able to pick out some knick-knacks to bring home (Spiderman and Dora stickers, etc.). They opted for some rubber band bracelets from a pharmaceutical company. It's a wide yellow bracelet with "Axert" featured in blue.

It had been over a week, and Colin was of course still wearing his "cool" bracelet. It wasn't until last night that we realized what had happened:

"Yeesh! Y'know, he's been a walking drug company ad for a week!"

"Terrible! Kids should not be used to advertise drugs!"

"We should at least be aware of what this Axert stuff is..."

"Google to the rescue!"

15 seconds later....

Axert: Migraine Treatment Medication

Well, that seems appropriate. Nevermind.

What's that smear in the window?

2011-09-07T15:12:00.000-07:00

I've posted before about how awesome I think the EyeClops microscope is. This is another opportunity to show it off.

Teri noticed something strange on the screen of our dining room window the other morning. Bird poop maybe? Something strange from the forest?

Much grosser. It looks like something (a moth?) came by in the night and squeezed it's ovipositor all over our screen.

I tried to take a picture of the screen with a regular camera, but I'm an auto-focus kind of guy, and the camera just wanted to shoot my backyard through the screen. Imagine a bird poop spread in a 2 inch diameter on your screen.

Anyhow, this was a job for the EyeClops!


100x - the metal weave is the window screen

The scientist in me really wanted to scrape a few off into a mason jar to see how they progressed That idea of course competed with "Eww, get them off the screen before they find a way to crawl into our house while the window's open."

Since all I have are pictures of the eggs, I do not know what kind of creature this may have become.

If anyone has stronger google-fu than me, or by some luck an entomologist reads this, I'd love to know what they are.

200x - shiny!


400x - I wonder what Stephen Wolfram would think of the pattern


400x - Mmm caviar

Emerald Ash Borer

2011-07-11T15:01:00.000-07:00

The carnage has begun. Last year I mentioned to friends that we noticed the canopy on our beautiful ash tree was a little sparser than usual.

This year, we took the plunge, and spent about $650 to get it injected with some sort of magic elixir that will inoculate it for 2 years. That's a lot of green (a pun!). Apparently prices in Canada are so high because many of the alternative pesticides have not yet been approved. By the time they are, it may be too late. In any event, here's what it looked like right after it was injected. The plugs have since been removed.

We love our treed neighbourhood, so we were trying to dull the sharp wallet pain by thinking about how we were doing our part to preserve the look of our street, our property value, etc. etc.

Then we witnessed the destruction in action. An ash tree a few houses down from us got attacked, and showed its rapid decline this weekend.

I suspect that one is beyond saving now. Considering the appeal of a mature tree, and that removing one of that size can cost a few thousand dollars, I feel a little better about the cost of saving ours now.

I wonder if in a few years all the borers will be gone after the last un-protected ash goes, and we can return to normal?

Generic vs Name Brand - the case for Zithromax

2011-07-10T11:05:00.000-07:00

Our little one year old dude has been sick with some kind of lung infection/pneumonia.

We took him to the doctor, who prescribed Azithromycin. Good enough. What's nice about that particular antibiotic is that it only has to be taken once a day, and then only for 5 days. Some of the other antibiotics can be 3 times a day for 10 days. Not too shabby right?

Well, the first dose is a biggie, then it tapers off for other four. We thought we'd be clever and go with two half-doses at the start, since we've learned with our gag-prone daughter not to push our luck, lest you get a big spit-up and run out of medicine.

So we tried the half-dose. Gag. Followed by barf. Darn it. We waited a little while, then tried again. Gag, then spit-up (at least no bits of food this time!)

OK. Time to start googling for "how to get azithromycin into your kid." I usually consider my google-fu pretty strong, but I came up with nothing. We tried another half-dose 12 hours later or so. Gag. Vomit.

Medicine 3 : Parents 0

I managed to get a little on my fingers, so I gave it a taste. If you ever had that nail polish as a kid that was supposed to keep you from biting your fingernails, you know *exactly* what this stuff tastes like. Only with a hint of medicine-y alco-cherry.

We tried one or two more times with no luck. Masking it with yogurt/pudding didn't do the trick either.
My father-in-law is a doctor, so we asked him for some ideas. He suggested trying the name-brand stuff - Zythromax. I'm usually not one to buy into that whole name-brand thing, but it was all we had. So we called the doctor back with our story, and the suggestion.

She agreed it was worth a shot, and wrote a new specific prescription. Funny aside - Shoppers Drug Mart wouldn't/couldn't fill it because they are in some kind of spat over generics vs name-brands with the government. Just as well, we like to support our little shop local pharmacist anyhow.

Got home, and tried the zythromax. Full dose. Success! No gag, no vomit. Rest of the doses - no sweat.

So there you have it, the answer for how to get azithromycin into your kid: get the name-brand Zithromax kind.

Shower Pod!

2011-05-14T19:14:00.000-07:00

Another rainy-day, another project!

This week I was explaining to a colleague that these days most of my best thinking happens in the shower. It's fun to open a conversation with "So while I was in the shower this morning...."

The idea du jour was particularly "meta." Typically when I have an idea, I jot it down on the nearest gadget or piece of paper around for later. I wouldn't want to forget all that gold! Unfortunately, in the shower, none of my usual options are very practical.

What I needed was a water-resistant voice-recorder. Maybe someone already makes a water-resistant voice-recorder for the rain or something. Maybe there's a case doohickey to water-proof a voice recorder like they have for cameras. It would be a pain to have to take that in and out of the shower though, so how cool would it be if it were wifi-enabled!

Sadly, I didn't build a water-proof-wifi-enabled-voice-recorder. The train of thought did give me another idea though. Enter the iPod Touch.

I love my iPod Touch (is it supposed to be capitalized like that?). More specifically, I love podcasts on my ipod touch (that's better). I thought it might be cool to be able to listen to podcasts in the shower.

OK MacGyver, what have you got to work with?
1 ipod touch
1 water-resistant radio
1 iPod FM transmitter
1 universal AC adapter.

A little background info if you'll bear with me. The radio was a stocking stuffer my Mom got me one Christmas. Unfortunately, I get no reception in the shower, so I've never really used it. The transmitter is a Belkin model we got from my brother in law (also for Christmas) back in a time before ubiquitous ipod/aux jacks in car stereos. Unfortunately, it is a piece of crap. It's near-impossible to find an empty FM channel around here. Even if you do, if you're on a trip, the stations change enough that what was once empty, is no longer. Finally, just when you think you're good, the reception in the car was never that reliable anyhow. In this case, I thought "since there's no reception in the shower, I should have my pick of empty channels!"

Since the transmitter is for a car, it uses a cigarette-lighter plug for power. I figured I could just wire it directly up to as AC adapter. That was the only real "work" to do.

Long story short - I created this monster:

From left to right: AC Adapter wired to the lighter plug of the transmitter, plugged into the ipod, broadcasting to the radio above.

I plugged it in, tuned in a station, started up an Age of Persuasion, and... Success! I even got to hear the cringe-worthy Sarah Palin quote they use in the intro: "We are not afraid to get mavericky in there..."

Now to go try it in the shower. Epic Fail. It sorta worked, but the radio pretty much has to be right next to the transmitter to get a decent signal, and the whole point was to keep the water-phobic parts free and clear. No wonder the Belkin sucked in the car, it barely works at all.

As always, there is a silver-lining - podcasts are my excuse to go for evening walks, which I rather enjoy. More importantly, if podcasts were effective entertainment in the shower, where would I do my thinking?

Maple Syrup

2011-03-13T15:32:00.000-07:00

I'm fortunate enough to live next to a greenbelt of forest. We've got some nice big trees, and enough wildlife to keep things interesting.

We also have some friends nearby with all the necessary equipment for collecting sap. We thought it would be pretty cool to try making syrup from the maple trees "in the backyard."

Trekking out to the woods with buckets and taps in hand, we found three nice-sized maple trees. This was not as easy as you might think. If you're a noob like me, it's pretty easy to convince yourself you've just tapped an oak. We drilled the holes, the kids helped tap in the spouts, and we hung the buckets up.

Here's a picture of the woods. You can see one of the three buckets near the center.

That was last week, and despite checking every day, there was no sap. I figured it must still be too cold (or they really were oaks!) ... Well, today it was nice and sunny, and when I went out early in the afternoon, we actually had quite a bit of sap in the buckets. I grabbed a bucket, and went to collect what I could - I got one pitcher's worth.

Thomas inspecting a pitcher of sap!

The next step was to take the sap, put it through a coffee filter, and boil it down into syrup

40:1 reduction. Boiled for just under an hour.

There's some sort of fancy "refractometer" that you can use to see how close you're getting. It looks like a little jeweler monocle thingy. Well, we didn't have one of those, so we were just eye-balling it. Of course, I messed it up, and let it go just a little too long.

Woops. Smells awesome though!

Instead of syrup, we got 3 little Maple-Toffee candies

The sap was running well today - just before dinner, we were able to collect a second pitcher. We boiled it with more care this time, and voila! - syrup. Awesome!

The candy and syrup taste amazing, but of course that was only one reward...

For the kiddies, we revealed yet another "it comes from a store" mystery. They participated in the whole process to see how syrup is made. Explaining why and how sap runs up a tree is a really neat lesson in biology to share, not to mention how excited for spring we are now.

It was a perfect excuse to get outside and spend some time in the woods each day. Like having a backyard vegetable garden, it feels really good to produce something yourself; getting syrup from something that is just "happening" out in the woods is even cooler.

Most of all though, (and at the risk of sounding hokey), experiencing the life of the forest and the feelings that come with being alongside nature was really powerful. Somehow between the act of ingestion and the knowledge that we were "eating a tree" was deeply satisfying and decidedly spiritual.

Finally, I can never eat enough pancakes.

Build your own DTV Antenna

2011-03-06T17:40:00.000-08:00

The weatherman said it was supposed to be a rainy weekend, so I figured we needed a project to work on. I recently saw a variety of blog posts about building an antenna to pick up HD signals over the air. I thought that would be nifty, since I don't subscribe to cable or satellite. I'm also a big fan of salvaging junk from around the house, and trying to build something with it. (My buddies and I once managed to build a brick-launching trebuchet with scrap from my friend's barn).

I don't remember where I originally saw the idea for building a Digital TV antenna out of coat hangers, but when I went to go searching for it, I found the Make TV video and accompanying PDF Instructions. That was neat, since I'm a Make magazine subscriber.

I scrounged around for a slab of wood, a bunch of hangers, screws and washers, some electrical tape, and the required tools (drill, sandpaper, screwdriver, wire snips). I had everything but the 75Ohm-300Ohm F-connector transformer. I swear I have one lying around who-knows-where, but my search was fruitless, and the local hardware store was able to bail me out for $5. Remember your old wood-paneled TV with the two screws on the back for an antenna, and you needed a fancy adapter to connect it to your "cable box" with coaxial cable? That's the one.

Anyhow, it all went pretty smoothly. Here it is in 3d glory! (a couple prongs needed some swivel-love)

I stuck it up on the roof (remember that rain forecast?), and tried running the auto-scan on my TV.

BOOURNS.

I only got 4-5 analog stations, and no digital stations.

As a control, I tried running the channel scan on the TV with nothing attached, and with just the coax cable that goes up to the roof. I managed to only get CTV and French CBC (Radio Canada) (I'm slightly annoyed that the highest quality station I can receive is French, which I would estimate is watched by about 4 people in this city).

So, it was an improvement... we can now additionally get TVO, a really fuzzy CBC, and Global. I'd probably have done as well with a pair of RadioShack (whatever they're called now) rabbit ears.

TVOKids was on, so we settled in to watch Dino Dan. That was good enough for the kids, and the reward was that they thought it was really cool that Dad's project meant they could see a new show. Success enough for me.

They then went on to watch another 2 hours of TV. Maybe it's a good thing it didn't work any better!

How Technology Changed My Driving Habits

2011-01-16T21:12:00.000-08:00

My wife and I recently purchased a brand spanking new Honda Odyssey minivan (we're searching for a "minivan" word substitute to avoid feeling suburban - "PeopleMover" just hasn't stuck).

One of the most interesting features is the Trip Display. When used as the main dashboard HUD, it provides a whole bunch of interesting information.


Honda Odyssey Trip Display

Home on the Range

In the bottom right is the Range feature. If you're like me, you tend to fill up when the fuel gauge warning light is on, anxiously hoping you have enough fumes to get the next gas station. This ever-present section of the Trip Display HUD shows the approximate distance you can travel before you run out of gas. This also dynamically updates. Clearly, the van has a pretty good guess about your gas mileage in order to present that, and it's nice to know I've got enough to get home and I'll just fill it up tomorrow instead honey....

Enter the Real Time Fuel Economy Display

The most prominent piece of information on the Trip Display is a large number line that looks a little like a Progress Bar. The axis is labeled " L / 100 kms " which if you didn't already know, is the typical way Canadians (and maybe others) publish fuel economy specifications. Ultimately you want to use least amount of gas to go as far as you can, so a lower number is better. What's super cool is that as you drive, the "progress bar" updates in real time to display what your current rate of fuel consumption is. Jumping off the line as a light changes Green pushes you right to the end of the bar at 25 L/100kms. Cruising down the highway sees the bar drop down to a nice, steady 6 to 9. Bonus points if you've already started thinking about whether it's reasonable to to show idling as 0.

Maybe it is Easy Being Green

Being environmentally conscientious may be de rigueur, but who wouldn't want to know if they're spending more than they have to? With gas at $1.14/l over the Christmas break, having this information stare me in the face is dramatically altering my driving habits.

I've read about similar technology in the Prius and Leaf. In particular, a little green leaf that "fills in" depending on how economically you drive. While the Odyssey doesn't have that, the interface is still "video game" like enough that the psychological reward for playing well is still there.

A really neat knock-on motivator comes from combining the fuel economy part with the Range display. Driving "friendly" gives you a little bonus reward when you see your range decrease more slowly than the distance you've traveled.

Perhaps since Range represents remaining fuel, or maybe simply because it decreases, it feels like a kind of currency. As it goes down, you know you're "spending" it on distance. For example, when you first start the van, you may have 240km to go before you run out of gas. As you drive, it will drop: 238, 235, etc. However, if you manage to drive "friendlier" than your average (typically highway vs city), you may in fact travel 10 kilometers while the Range display only shows 5 kilometers spent. That's like getting 5 free kilometers -Woohoo! (of course it's not, but it still feels like it, and motivates you to improve your average).

What I find even more exciting is that there's no prescription for driving economically. That's up to you. This is Dan Pink's Motivation 2.0 in action. It is social engineering I can subscribe to. No guilt-trips, punishments, or social/political manipulation by vested interests about our dying planet. I have a clear, dynamic, self-serving economic indicator that serves to induce a rational person to behave more responsibly.

I already find myself rolling off the line a little slower. I leave a little more room in front so I can find a cruise control speed that doesn't require braking as often. I'll go 110 instead of 120. I don't bother punching it to pass as often. I don't believe it will change my habits so much that we alter our trip plans, or reduce our amount of city driving, but I'm sure this is only the beginning - and every little bit helps!

A Cyber-Stroll Down Memory Lane.

2010-11-20T12:13:00.000-08:00

Google has been running a publicity campaign called Your Google stories collecting stories submitted by users about how Google has "changed their life" or whatever... My first thought when I saw the series was that the whole idea was at worst pretentious, and at best kind of lame.

Today my parents were over visiting, and my father and I were looking up some directions. Being Canadian, the trip we were evaluating was a measly 4.5 hours. We joked about how you could get across Ireland in less than that time.

As a lark, we typed in "ireland," and started scrolling around. We scanned over to Castletownbere where a colleague of mine just inherited a house. My dad was suitably impressed that they had Streetview there!

Then we decided to zip over to Tralee, where my father grew up. He scanned around, and settled on Lohercannan. He found his old street. We dragged the "little yellow man" onto it, and eventually found his old family home.

View Larger Map

We turned around to see the view of the mountains he looked out on (and climbed!). We walked around the bend and down the lane toward the beach he swam in. He told stories about old farmers that had no children to pass their farms onto.

All through this, my son watched on and got a real tour of his family history. He couldn't wait to hear more about Ireland, and where Grampa grew up. He wants to go swimming in the channel.

So there you have it Google. I'm happy to say that I was wrong - you really do create memorable "search experiences" that change lives.

Animanatee

2010-11-01T08:25:00.000-07:00

I claim personal responsibility for the sale of several Nintendo DS handhelds and games. I've really enjoyed mine, and was recently selling a co-worker on Super Scribblenauts (great game. buy it now).

My co-worker did in fact buy a shiny new DSi XL.

Of course, being a programmer at heart, and having created a few GBA homebrew games in the past, I got on the flashcart bandwagon with the DS as well. One of my favourites is Animanatee, a flipbook style animation application. I was a big Animator fan as a kid, so I had a blast with this thing as well.

Here is a sample of my wonderful art.

Caterpillar

2010-10-01T18:41:00.000-07:00

I love my EyeClops BioniCam. Our house is surrounded by, and full of neat-, weird-, nature-stuff. Whenever you get an urge to explore, you can break out the "microscope" (as the kids and I call it), and see something up close!

Today in the backyard, there were lots of caterpillars. The kind that hang from invisible threads, and are only about 1cm long.

We caught one with a stick, and took out the ol' EyeClops.

Enjoy!

We were surprised to see it had little hairs.

No eyes? Gross hairs!

Tribute to GLOC

2010-09-17T19:09:00.000-07:00

A few of us were talking about GarageBand at the pub after work tonight. I was digging around in the basement, and found a Sega GameGear. Awesome.

I played GLOC for at least 20 minutes. Once you get the hang of it, it's honestly pretty fun.

Here's my chiptune tribute. Composed by yours truly in GarageBand, using the magical8bitplug plugin.

Mixed down to m4a. Enjoy!

Tribute to GLOC by Horganic

Waterwheel

2010-07-24T06:07:00.000-07:00

Here's a video I took with my FujiFilm W1 back in December at Disney World. It's the waterwheel at the Swiss Family Robinson Tree house attraction.

It also shows how the YouTube 3d tags work - you can select among a variety of viewing methods (anaglyph, parallel, cross-eye, etc.)

Edit: (looks like you have to click through to watch it at youtube proper in order to get the 3D options.)

Totally Awesome Price Increase Dude!

2010-07-19T17:21:00.000-07:00

Ah Virgin. I was almost placated by the "we're your BFF" marketing prose and the increased chocolate ration.
Wait - what's awesome about this again?

It's a boy!!

2010-05-10T18:04:00.000-07:00

Meet Thomas David Horgan. Born Saturday May 8th at 6:25pm. 10lb 1oz.

Teri, you are a force of nature, and I'm blessed to share the miracle with you.

Lego Segway!

2010-04-14T17:56:00.000-07:00

Alright, whatever. I haven't gotten around to taking pictures since it requires a tiny bit of setup.

So I'm just posting a video from the NXTPrograms.com website of the robot Colin and I built. It was awesome to build, at just the right difficulty level. The kids had a blast making it with me - picking out parts, trying to read the instructions, pressing pieces together - it was a great family nerd-out. And it worked the first time - easy as 1-2-3.

Robot on a Segway

2010-04-04T06:51:00.000-07:00

Let's start off by setting the right mood.

Now let's combine that with some other awesome things.

Robots and Lego

I recently attended Ignite Waterloo, and the icebreaker/mingling Lego contest was enough to remind me that I really needed to get out the Mindstorms NXT kit again. Thankfully, Dave Parker at nxtprograms.com has cooked up tons of great projects that only use the items that come with the kit. No crazy Technics hydraulics or whatever.

I've built the sample models that come in the kit. I've also attempted the Tilted Twister - which I actually completed, but could never get woking quite right (sticky cube I guess).

The last thin I built was the Ball Roller Coaster, from nxtprograms, and the kids loved it. They interacted with it, and watched it hypnotically until the batteries died.

That's what I like best about Mindstorm builds. You get the satisfaction of building and programming something cool, you flex your imagination a little bit, and you get a cool trophy to display for your efforts up on a shelf like any other hobby or Lego model. The killer is that you also have a piece of art. A kinetic sculpture.

When I noticed a new build posted at nxtprograms.com with the "Segway" in the title, I knew it was going to be a winner.

I guess that'll be part two.

Next Gen 3D Photography

2010-03-21T16:23:00.000-07:00

I receved a Fujifilm W1 camera for my birthday back in December. So cool! I've always been a fan of stereoscopic 3D. I think the recent adoption of 3D in theatres is fantastic. I'm excited to see it become mainstream enough that I'll be able to get a 3D TV soon.

Back to the camera. I own a Lorex 3d 35mm camera before the digital revelotion. I got it back before the digital revolution, and I barely used it. The quality of the camera wasn't that great, and I could never be bothered to develope film, even thought it was simply the standard 35mm print processing. I probably shot 3 rolls on it. The stereo viewer you used with the split-image prints was pretty cool though.

The W1 is so much better. Not only does it have all the benefits of a digital point and shoot camera, the built-in viewer displays in 3D! People are always amused by the 3D effect on the camera's viewscreen when I show them pictures I've taken of family or scenery. The fact that it doesn't require glasses also raises people's interest.

A great as the viewscreen is, there isn't any other way to share 3D pictures with people. Anaglyph has always sucked. No one you else you know has even heard of cross-eye or parallel viewing (and even if they did, they probably still have trouble with Magic Eye posters).

Fujifilm started shipping lenticular 3d photo processing printers, but the recommended site (SeeHere.com) doesn't ship to Canada. Fuji also sells a digital 3d photoframe - but it's way too expensive to buy for each of the people I'd like to share pictures with.

Enter Start3D.com! This is a pretty typical web2.0 photo storing/sharing community site, with twist. Founded by Colin Davidson, a computer vision expert (Academy Award wining in fact), it features a nifty embedded viewer called Piku-Piku. This viewer ( the name apparently means 'twitch' in Japanese) uses a flip-book style display that gives a great impression of the 3d effec.

In addition to sharing via Twitter, Facebook, etc., etc., Start3D also lets you manage your albums with uploaded photos. It lets you upload left/right pairs of 2d images, and supports the ".mpo" format of the W1!

You can also embed your photos in a page like this:

(Katherine and Colin in their fortress!)

I hope to see a lot more from Start3D. It solves a big problem for 3d enthusiasts in a novel way, and once you're in there for photosharing, it's naturally poised to become a one-stop shop for things like lenticular prints (sadly still unavailable as of this post).

Maybe they can keep me in mind when they start up those services ; )

How to have a better Monday

2010-03-16T00:00:00.000-07:00

Monday is garbage day here. If it's not out at the curb for 7am, you might miss the boat. That's ok in the in your refrigerated garage. In the summer, it means another week of week-older rotten garbage in your hot garage.

On the few occasions I tried putting the garbage out the night before, the raccoons got into it the can, and made a big mess. Not fun.

So, I started hauling my butt out of bed a little earlier Monday mornings, to put the garbage out. It took a few weeks to form the habit, and I missed the truck a few times not getting out till 7:15.

At some point I recalled seeing a garbage can at Canadian Tire that had some sort of strap to hold the lid on. I decided I needed to at least give it a try.

This is what I got:

It wasn't until I got it home that I realized it doesn't have wheels. Bummer.

But wait! I currently own this garbage can:

The lid of the animal proof fits on the wheeled base. Tada!

Anyhow to the point. Sunday night I put the garbage out, using my new cadillac.

I woke up this morning (Monday, and our clocks just "sprung" forward) particularly groggy. Instead of the usual Monday dread - my first thought was "Woohoo! I don't have to put the garbage out!"

Success!

Replacing guitar strings

2010-03-13T18:07:00.000-08:00

So I broke a guitar string. It could happen to anyone. Took Colin to the music store to buy new strings.

That was last weekend.

This weekend, we had a nice rainy afternoon to work on restringing the guitar. Oh noes! The guitar is set up for light strings, and I bought medium. Darned whammy bar - I don't even use the thing except in Rock Band.

Tightened the springs so I could use the strings, Colin helped me tune it, and now we're back in action. Time to play Alec Eiffel, which has been this week's earworm.

We inspected the broken string, and I showed Colin how the thicker strings are actually two wires, one straight, and one coiled. Here's the picture of the broken one to prove it: