Beyond E-waste: A Manifesto For Reprogrammability

I had occasion recently, to deconstruct an all-in-one printer/scanner/fax/copier. As the parts came off the machine, I carefully separated them into piles; screws and springs, gears and wheels, optical components, switches and sensors, and e-waste. I stacked up the impressively cost-engineered multi-layer circuit boards, pausing to wonder at the computational power of the custom surface-mount devices, and was struck by the irony that the sensors and switches were now going to be attached to an Arduino – a device with a tiny fraction of the compute power. What a waste…

If manufacturers design their devices for re-use and re-purposing, than we could create a special category for extended life recycling, with a lower recycling tax base. The first step is to define a minimal reprogramming USB protocol, which automatically burns out a read fuse to prevent access to the proprietary ROM data on first use – functionally turning your printer into an Arduino-like object the first time you plug your USB cable directly into the circuit board.

Is there an e-book reader sleeping inside your old printer? How long would these devices last in new incarnations? How many more students around the world could create innovative derivative products based on obsolete down-cycled hardware?

We demand universal access to the compute resources we purchase. If it lasts forever, let us make it work forever. Require reprogrammability.

Giraffstronaut

The response to this little doodle that I did with my nephew Mori has been amazing. Can a doodle spark a revolution? Is there a little Giraffstronaut in all of us trying to get out?

Get your t-shirt at the Pivotorium (kids, men’s and women’s sizes/shapes).

Can anyone recommend a better place to make one-off t-shirts than Cafepress? Just wondering…

How Flyable Was 2008 (at the Dump)?

Using data collected by the weather station known as KDALCTY1, I threw together a little bit of processing code to try to get an idea of just what portion of a year is flyable. In this visualization, every row represents one day, and every day is sampled every 20 minutes. If you look closely, way over on the left are the dates. Noon is the center-line of the image.

I used 270 (due west) as an optimal wind direction, and 14mph as the optimal wind speed. A big green ball represents the sweet spot of these two parameters. Everything else is worse to some degree or another. If no ball is drawn, then the conditions are not considered flyable (too light, too strong, wrong direction). No accounting for humidity is taken.

Click the closeup to see full size. Your browser may re-size the image since it’s 3660 pixels tall, so you may have to click on the image once it loads to actually see it full size.

The next step is to create a comparison with 2007…

Toys for Learning – a visit to the d.school at Stanford

Since co-producing the Plerkshop (a day-long workshop examining the meaning and value of play in the workplace) with Scott Klemmer, and Bill Verplank of the d.school at Stanford University, I’ve become fascinated by some of the work going on there and have had the privilege of being invited back on many occasions.

Recently Bill and Terry Winograd invited me to have a look at the results of a quarter-long student project to develop and explore toy design in a class they called “Toys for Learning” (the nested self-referential aspects of the title were not lost on me).

Rather than write a lengthy posting today, I offer these scans of the notes that I took during some of the presentations. Clicking on the thumbnail images will take you to Flickr where you can see much larger versions.

note: the top of this page is largely my exploration of the glass-bottom boat project for Tinkering School this year.

I was, in general, impressed with the projects. There seemed to be an overriding opinion that the hardware integrations were the source of most of the problems, and I find it surprising that this is still the case 30 years after I started fooling around with electronics and computers. Shouldn’t this be easier now? The littlebits project looks like a step in right direction.

Students at Stanford are forced to balance the demands of multiple simultaneous courses (as was evidenced by team members who could not be present at the presentation due to finals) and I left wondering what they could have accomplished if they had been given two solid weeks with no other interruptions.

In any case, I found things to like about every project and have talked about the Toonables marionette and the SeaMe virtual aquarium with multiple people since Monday night.

In particular, with Toonables, while watching a couple of kids make an animation, I was struck by how they had a tendency to focus on the animation of just one limb of the marionette. The end result almost always looked like a frozen person kicking at a soccer ball with one thawed led. I started wondering how the conception of the end result, despite the immediate feedback of the system, was not fully realized by the child operators – they were happy to see the animated leg, not disappointed to see the frozen, lifeless body it was attached to.

Canada Syndrome

While freeing up some space on my laptop, I found this amusing little experiment. My intention was to create a complete document of an entire vacation as a single comic book. To my current way of thinking, it’s far better to put these half-finished things out than to sit on them indefinitely.

This story unfolds during a 2006 paragliding trip to the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia.

Also available as hi-res PDF for your printer.

Cardboard and Christmas Present Camera

The Experiment that Started the Experiment Holding a piece of scrap-paper in one hand, the ball resting on a table, and snapping a picture I suddenly become interested in spherical lenses. I remember that some of the earliest microscopes (from the 1600’s, I think) were made with polished balls of glass. I decide not to look anything up on the internet until after I try building a camera using this ball as a lens.

First Sketch Ball, box, viewscreen, and a hole to put the camera lens through.

Second Sketch Putting the parts in relation to each other helps me think through the construction and builds a more detailed model in my head.

Precision Layout I mark and cut crude holes on both ends of the box. Later I will put more precisely cut pieces of cardboard over these holes.

Making the Imaging Screen After trying various materials readily at hand, I settle on tissue-paper (which keeps the Christmas theme going). The cardboard frame is cut slightly wider than the box so that it will make a gentle arc when it presses against the sides – this will (hopefully) more closely match the focal arc of the ball and keep the screen in place.

Assemblage Putting all the parts together (using mostly gravity), the camera starts to take shape. The ball is so much heavier than the box, I had to hot-glue a piece of plywood to the box to create a sturdy support.

First Image I neglected to account for the minimum focal distance of the camera, as a result the camera must be outside the box in order to actually focus. But, as we can see from the upside-down image of my yard, the ball is working as a lens. Notes for next iteration: longer box, put the ball inside the box to reduce intrusion of light from the sides, different viewscreen material (possibly sanded plastic from discarded packaging).

Algorithmic Brushing

Using only information in the image, is it possible to algorithmically choose angles for brush strokes? I started fooling around with this idea back in 1988, and have been resurrecting it off and on over the years – this version runs in Processing.

Get the source here.

Strange Things Around the Eyes This has always been the problem with this approach – no attention to the anatomical details. I wonder if facial-recognition data could be used to scale the strokes around and on the eyes to preserve some detail?

More Facial Distortion I like the treatment of the ceiling in this one, but the distortion of the facial features is disturbing again.

Sleeping Dog, Window Swung the laptop towards the window and caught Kai sleeping. Stroke direction on Kai just happens to coincide with fur.

Un-natural Directional Choices Vertical strokes on the hand? Feels like those should follow the vectors of the fingers…. Might try reducing image to a few colors, creating a polygonal representation, and then use a vector field (seeded with the lines from the polygons) to determine brush angles.

Self Portrait – Eyes Closed Looking for good angular distinctions between areas of similar brightness but different hues.

Monochrome Brushing Ignoring the color information to see the angular details more clearly.

(added 3.jan.09)
Interesting to note what kind of traffic you get from posting to the Exhibition section on processing.org:

I posted to processing.org on Christmas day (25.dec.08) and then get an almost perfect decay curve in blog traffic.

Holiday Card – Work in Progress

I am making a card (yes, it’s late), using the laser-cutter of course, and stepped away from the computer for a moment. When I sat back down I had a sudden appreciation for the composition of this random moment in Illustrator.

Solar-powered Graffiti

It’s a very simple idea: render your graffiti element in wire or cardboard, then use the sun to “tag” a building or wall and a camera to record it.

On Leaving Adobe

When you leave a big company, you have a unique opportunity to send one more message before they shut down your email account. Some folks had some kind words to say about my final email and asked if I would post it.

---

Dear Friends,
It has been an utter pleasure to work with you since I got here. The opportunities afforded me here at a Adobe have been the source of some of the most interesting and exciting projects I’ve worked on.

As I pack up my desk and get ready to start writing the first of the Tinkering School books, fleeting panics ebb and flow as I come to grips with all the nascent projects that I have discussed with people – all those good ideas that I won’t get to participate in building… I look forward to seeing where things at Adobe go from here.

So, I leave you with four good ideas:

#1 – Play!
The more we take ourselves seriously, the less good our work becomes. There is no better place to try a risky idea, than here, nestled in the arms of a really good, solid company. If your next proposal doesn’t shock 15% of the people you present it to, then it’s not crazy enough.

#2 – Defer Judgment!
I first saw this on the wall at IDEO, but it’s the best advice anyone ever committed to signage in a corporate setting. It’s too easy to take pot-shots at newborn ideas. If someone is describing something to you that you just aren’t getting, say “Keep working on that” instead of saying nothing and going back to your desk to tell your friends how dumb it was. Really good ideas are sometimes buried in crap and may need help getting cleaned up.

#3 – Instead of Having a Career Path, Always Do the Most Interesting Thing You Can.
A career-path will only get you to retirement. Follow your interests obsessively, sacrifice everything, and keep doing it. Eventually it will turn into something both amazing and surprising. Along the way you will do things that you never thought you would, find yourself in places that you never imagined you would go, and in the end you will look back and say “Wow! What a fun ride that was! Can I go again?”

I guess #4 should be “don’t put advice in your goodbye mail, it will get too long and no one will read it“.

Now some contact information:
You can keep an eye on me here: http://www.twitter.com/gever
Or check out the school blog: http://www.tinkeringschool.com/blog/
Or my infrequently updated personal blog: http://gevertulley.wordpress.com/
Or get them all in one place: http://www.friendfeed.com/gever

As ever,
-gever