The other motivation to make some more room in the living room is the imminent addition of two cats to our apartment. This will be my first foray into pets in quite some time — I had an assortment of reptiles and amphibians growing up, but nothing in the past 20 years — and my first mammalian pets, to boot. Fortunately, these are cats I already know, and their arrival gives me a fun excuse to up my Arduino kung fu and make them an automated feeder. More to come on both how it goes adding them into the mix and how the feeder works out.

Okay, that’s not entirely accurate, but it’s not so far off from the truth — I looked for a couple months for a job that I could really get excited about (along with a few other criteria), but didn’t find the perfect thing, and happened to chat with a biology researcher who turned me on to a particular problem her lab (and many others) face on a daily basis. After letting it bounce around my brain for a few days and after speaking with a bunch of other biologists, I decided to start a company to design a product to solve this problem.

Needless to say, I was very interested to read this interview with Bunnie Huang, formerly of Chumby, in which he talks about hardware startup companies quite a bit. I’d come to very similar conclusions, that hardware startups are very different from software, and much of the startup advice out there doesn’t necessarily apply. Particularly when it comes to funding, hardware presents a challenge to the classic model — it costs a significant amount to make and distribute hard goods, whereas the per-unit costs of software or web services are nearly negligible — and it’s not always clear how to get around that. (Local Seattle entrepeneur Dan Shapiro has some thoughts on the matter of what kinds of companies would do best without VC funding.) Kickstarter can be a good way to get money, but it presumes a level of completion (such as a working prototype to show off) that takes some time to reach, and note that many of the most sucessful campaigns are from people who already have proven track records in their industry (see here and here). As Bunnie says, bootstrapping as best you can until you come up against a real funding obstacle is probably the best bet for a hardware company, and that’s my plan.

I’m not quite ready to go public with the details of my new business venture, but when I do, I’ll post here.

I think our driving eyes were perhaps a bit bigger than our driving stomachs, but we finished what was on our driving plates, and definitely had a good time overall.

The rest of the pictures are up here.

I’m looking forward to seeing some new sights, visiting friends, taking a bunch of photos, and relaxing in hopefully sunnier places.

I’ll definitely post some more pictures when it’s finished, and we’ll see about writing up a summary for the Projects page.

I’m starting to think about the final layout for the robot bartender now, and have some fun ideas about user interaction, as well as construction. It seems like a bit of a stretch to have things ready in time for BarBot 2012, but I may go down to San Francisco in early March anyway and check out the competition.

We did stay a bit off the beaten path, and had a lovely time relaxing, as well as taking a great kayak/snorkel trip and driving up to the summit of Haleakala (at 10,000 ft.) for sunrise.

On the Big Island, we really enjoyed our time in Hilo. It’s a chill little town that’s far from touristy, with great restaurants and some nice galleries & shops. Miyo’s — homestyle Japanese — and Suisan — a lovely little fish market with amazing (and inexpensive) poke — both stood out in the food department. We explored some waterfalls from here, and also went up to the visitor center at Mauna Kea (sadly, we were clouded out from seeing the stars, but it was fun nonetheless). On our last day there, we splurged (on Rif’s recommendation) and took a helicopter ride around the island, with spectacular views:

All in all, a fabulous trip!

The rest of the photos (we took quite a few!) are up here.

And then some obnoxious guy walks by with his dog and his friends, yelling out “It’s a tree!” No, idiot, it’s a hawk that would eat you for lunch, if your body were scaled proportionately to your brain, and I went upstairs to get my camera.

I hung around for a while, hoping to get a better look at the bird, and when it had finished its meal, the hawk (seemingly happily) obliged.

A few more photos are up here.

With that said, I think there are plenty of reasons for people to be outraged, perhaps even more so in Washington state, where our ballot initiative system coupled with no state income tax has left education (along with many other programs) woefully underfunded and left the door wide open for corporations and extremely wealthy individuals to change laws in their favor. The action yesterday in Olympia sent a much stronger and clearer message. This is what the protesters said as they interrupted the House Ways and Means Committee meeting:

“Many people are wondering why we’re disrupting this meeting when many people want to testify. The reason we’re disrupting this meeting is that many of us over the last three years have testified, and lobbied, and voted, and the governor and the legislature have given us no choice… This is what we have to do for them to listen to us.”

In the 2010 state election, voters in Washington nixed an initiative to tax those earning more than $200K per year, only an estimated 0.5% of the population but with a projected $2.9 billion annual revenue. This is exactly the kind of revenue Washington desperately needed to fund schools, health care and other programs that serve basic public needs, programs that are now on the chopping block. But Steve Ballmer, Paul Allen, Jeff Bezos and a horde of other people and corporations poured millions of dollars into advertising against that initiative so they wouldn’t have to pay these taxes themselves, and it worked. From their point of view, those millions were a drop in the bucket compared to what they would have lost paying the taxes, so it was a no-brainer. Can you blame them?

Instead of pointing fingers at these people and corporations — such as CostCo, who recently spent $18+M to successfully push through an initiative in favor of privatizing liquor sales in Washington — I fault the system. What should by design be a self-correcting government is instead a system where it’s possible for those with large amounts of money to effectively change regulations to ensure they keep making money, stay rich, and stay in control.

A couple weeks back, a coworker sent me this video, which is intended to be funny (I think) and supposedly demonstrates the hypocrisy in a day in the life of an Occupy protester. But it made me so mad because they got it all wrong — the Occupy movement isn’t anti-Capitalism, it’s a protest against a system where people and corporations who are already extremely rich are guaranteed to continue making absurd amounts of money, at the expense of everyone else. Financial transgressions going unpunished (and sometimes effectively rewarded), oil companies being coddled and subsidized, and the successful lobbying in Congress that pizza should remain a vegetable are all further examples of how this system is a feedback loop out of control.

So what happens next, then? Sadly, I think the answer is that it gets worse before it gets better. The kind of changes that ought to be made don’t come easily or quickly, and it’s not pretty in the meantime. Hunker down, friends, it’s gonna be a tough few years at least.

As you might imagine, I have no shortage of projects keeping me busy. I’m making good headway on the robot arm, with a manipulator/end effector in development. And I’ve made plenty of progress in the workshop as well.

The workbench is done (for now, at least), and I’m happy with how it came out. Here’s a little virtual tour of the shop:

You can see the bench, table saw, and drill press. Router table is built-in to the table saw extension. You can also see the canvas curtains I hung to partition off the shop area and keep the rest of the basement clean — these are actually working pretty well. I hadn’t quite figured out what I was going to do about tool storage (all the hand tools are splayed out on the metal table to the left of the bench in the tour above) until I visited UW Surplus last week and came across a rolling cabinet in reasonable shape (for all of $10). Yesterday, I installed some drawer slides & drawers, some saw storage on the inside of the door, and voila:

The only remaining obstacle, before starting in on the dining room table for Faye & Nick, was figuring out what to do about dust collection. Though I do enjoy working largely with hand-tools, there are times when burning electrons is a requirement, and that’s often accompanied by dust production. Yesterday, I picked up a Dust Deputy — a device that sits between your shop vac and your power tool that’s supposed to improve performance and prevent the vacuum filter from getting clogged. I was a little dubious, but read other reviews on the web and gave it a shot. Gotta say, this thing works like a charm! Even on my table saw (a contractor saw that isn’t yet sealed up particularly well), it keeps airborne dust to a manageable level, and the vacuum power didn’t drop at all through quite a few cuts. I get a cleaner shop and less dust in my lungs? Win/win.

I have a stack of 6/4 walnut in the basement acclimating to the house’s humidity, and now that the shop’s in such good shape, I’m planning on getting started on the table this week!

Only about nine years after I acquired it, I finally got the robot arm up and running! Boom!

Whit’s making what promises to be a great documentary about high school kids’ prankstering in LA, and you should consider supporting his efforts. About halfway through his campaign, he’s a little over halfway to his goal of raising $30,000 — help him out here!

Look for the rest of the pics soon!

Many thanks to the fine folks at Stunner of the Month for their sponsorship, to Drew for another amazing jersey design, and also to Whit and Claire for helping put together an amazing team.

The drearier-than-expected weather in June and July did present an excellent opportunity to spend some quality time in the workshop constructing my workbench.

At this point, the base is solid, the work surface is glued up and mostly flat, and I’ve installed one of two vises. The second (the tail vise) is nearly ready, and after that, it’s just some more planing and finishing left.

It feels really good to have a regular outlet for making stuff (with my own two hands) again, and I’m excited for the first furniture project that uses the bench — a dining room table for my gracious workshop hosts, Faye and Nick.

While there were some definite highlights from this trip (traveling to Yangshuo with Abe, in particular), I’m happy to report that I won’t be going back to China for quite a while. I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to get to know some new places, learn a ton about manufacturing, reconnect with old friends, and learn a new language, but traveling as much as I do — I count 16 China/Taiwan trips in the past 3 years — is also challenging and stressful. I’ve given my notice at Microsoft, and my last day is coming right up. I’m excited to explore and define the next chapter in my work life as well as have a little more time in Seattle for friends, projects and fun.

It turns out that (almost) four weeks is an awful long time! Surprisingly, two packs of gum and two travel-sized tubes of toothpaste were enough to last the whole trip. I was worried I’d run out. Unsurprisingly, four chocolate bars weren’t nearly enough. I was pretty sure I’d run out, but didn’t have room for any more.

Also not surprising: traveling to gorgeous places with my amazing friend Abe was much better than being alone (or with coworkers) and working in industrial cities. With that said, Suzhou is a big improvement (in my mind) over Dongguan. The gardens and temples are a little touristy and pretty busy on the weekend, but with good reason — they’re lovely.

It’s easy to take a ton of pictures, and I have a couple hundred from the past few weeks. Look for more soon. In the meantime, I’m excited to be heading home tomorrow!

Somewhat amazingly, some of the database programs I wrote are still available! I remember just how excited I was to use a really early version of The GIMP to make this logo:

Even that was “later” in my tenure there. When I first arrived, we struggled to format scientific papers for the web as HTML didn’t (yet) have provisions for super- and subscripts. One of my first tasks was to modify a LaTeX-to-HTML translation program to automatically create images for superscripts, subscripts and equations that would then be included, in-line, with text to make it look like it was originally intended. Not a bad hack, and pretty cool that a government organization was on the leading edge of using technology (publishing physical reference data for free on the web) as well as developing it.

Abe and I met up in Guilin on Sunday, and have been having a fantastic time in Yangshuo this week. The landscape here is truly unbelievable — everywhere you turn is another spectacular vista. And after a solid day of solid rain, the weather’s been cooperating marvelously; we’ve enjoyed some magnificent sunrises, sunsets and views of the moon, all with the Li River Valley karst hills as a backdrop. It’s magical.

Lots more photos to come!

Pictures from the party are up here and photos from Taipei are here. So far, really liking the D90!

Leading up to the trip, I was happy to just be home for a six week stretch. I took full advantage of time in Seattle, digging in a bit more in the woodworking shop, having Matt out to visit (and provide some much-needed help with the robot arm), celebrating my birthday and pi day, and seeing some great local theatre. Having a bit of advanced notice of this trip and a solid chunk of time at home in advance has made travel much more bearable than say, the same time last year.

So for the past 8 days, I’ve been having fun wandering around Taipei in search of tools and components to build up a sous vide cooker for my friends here, and also playing with my new camera. The steak came out great, and so far, the photographs have, too (just posted the above street scene for now, more to come soon). It does make me a little nostalgic to retire the D70, but in the end it’s a tool more than anything else, and the D90 is a big step up in a few key ways.

Drew and I just go word that our backcountry application for the Enchantments went through — lots more people apply than the wilderness area can support, so they hold a lottery each year to grant permits — and I’m really looking forward to bringing the new camera up there. Last time we were in that neck of the woods, the scenery and weather graciously obliged and we got some great shots. Here’s hoping for the same this summer.

Whether it makes sense or not, it’s true. I’m back in Taiwan and happy to have a little downtime after the work-week (which was also pleasantly full of good food and friends), which in turn followed a lovely long weekend in Los Angeles.

Without much more comment, some photos from the past couple months’ travels:

Sunset at the Lo Hu border crossing.

New Year’s Eve Dinner, chez Rif & Anna.

At the Huntington Library in Pasadena.

Plenty more up at PicasaWeb…