Author: filipecruz

Day 6 star­ted pretty late. At 10 o clock we had a mini maker­bot workshop to repla­ce a bro­ken extru­der pie­ce, but most folks were still asle­ep from staying up till late wor­king on the Pia­no Cock­tail, so only Cata­ri­na and Gui­lher­me mana­ged to attend and fix the bro­ken piece.

Late arri­vers João, Vitor and Mécia arri­ved shor­tly after whi­le i tri­ed to finish up some work on the hai­ku gene­ra­tor and Mau­ri­cio was wor­king on the key­bo­ard mis­chi­efs with Cata­ri­na. Gui­lher­me was alre­ady gone, he had to pre­pa­re his work for the Talk Show pie­ce down­town. A lit­tle whi­le later Móni­ca and Fran­ces­co deci­ded to join us in dis­co­ve­ring whe­re Black­box was actu­ally, we got abit lost but mana­ged to all arri­ve on time.

The pie­ce was pretty gre­at! Well pro­du­ced and per­for­med! So props to the ones invol­ved was in order and back we went to our resi­dency for some food and pro­ject pushing. Gui­lher­me and Cata­ri­na still mes­sing with the Maker­bot; Móni­ca blowing plants; Fili­pe, Ricar­do and Mau­ri­cio finishing up the Pia­no Cock­tail; Luis and João wor­king on the meal trac­king bal­let sys­tem; Pedro hel­ping out Jor­ge with his Ardui­no issu­es; and me trying out a cou­ple new remi­xes of the remix.

Befo­re din­ner we also had a short visit from a few per­for­man­ce rela­ted folks, see­min­gly guests from our host and fri­end here at Espa­ço do Tem­po, Rui Hor­ta. They see­med pretty inte­res­ted in our adven­tu­res with the new tech­no­lo­gi­es, espe­ci­ally in terms of networ­king and open sour­ce mentality.

The­re was no cate­ring on Satur­day apa­ren­tly, so things were abit more erra­tic but it all wor­ked out in the end. We mana­ged to orga­ni­ze a nice din­ner event with nearly everyo­ne pre­sent, and pro­ce­e­ded direc­tly to jud­ging the world famous Vitor Espa­di­nha “Recor­dar é Viver” remix com­po, par­ti­ci­pa­ting was me, Sér­gio and the pro­clai­med win­ner mis­ter Pedro Ângelo.

90’s elec­tro night pro­ce­eds as i type, everyo­ne seems to be hap­pily wor­king on their pro­jects and/or enjoying their refresh­ments. It sucks hard that tomor­row is the last day alre­ady. As a curi­o­sity note, it seems 95% of the folks here at the resi­dency use Mac’s, even if one of them does have Linux installed.

Yes­ter­day’s din­ner didn’t go so well. We went to pick up a few doses of “Mis­tos de Por­co Pre­to” (means something like Mix of Dark Pig in English) at this local res­tau­rant whi­ch we had scou­ted on Tues­day as ser­ving pretty well. But we had an unfor­tu­na­te sur­pri­se, they under-ser­ved us half our dosa­ge. So a new quest had been unloc­ked: to retri­e­ve our fair sha­re today or rai­se havoc!

At the lab i had no idea what hap­pe­ned during the mor­ning sin­ce i slept until very late, but right after lun­ch everyo­ne scat­te­red off to han­dle dif­fe­rent things:
— Sér­gio and Fran­ces­co still busy docu­men­ting their ants project.
— Tara with the plas­tic PCB experiments.
— Jor­ge put­ting the finishing tou­ches on his VJ mixer frame.
— Móni­ca pushing her wind/fan pro­ject into a first protoype.
— I pushed the genhai­ku abit clo­ser to ver­si­on 2.0
— Luis arri­ved to the resi­dency to work on his meal trac­king idea.
— Ricar­do and Fili­pe went on a magic jour­ney to the local “saw­mill” sto­re to get the last parts for their pia­no cocktail.
— Mau­ri­cio gave us a workshop about tiny solar robots with BEAM circuits.
— And Cata­ri­na hac­king some key­bo­ard interfaces

So for din­ner we went to reclaim our lost dosa­ge of Mis­tos de Por­co Pre­to and mana­ged to suc­ce­ed in our orde­al! Quest com­ple­te! We also took the won­der­ful oppor­tu­nity to shop some essen­ti­al refresh­ments for tomor­rows farewell party.

Back at the resi­dency we had visi­tors from a local juve­ni­le the­a­ter group, we gave them a quick tour round up of all the stuff we have lying around and the pro­jects peo­ple have been wor­king in. Whi­ch went pretty well, they were all pretty mar­ve­led and exci­ted with all we had going on, asking how they could do their own and spend the rest of their lives doing what we do. Whi­ch made us happy.

The rest of the night was spent atten­ding Mau­ri­ci­o’s workshop and wor­king on some entry for our fast music remix com­po of Vitor Espa­di­nha’s “Relem­brar é Viver”. Results should be avai­la­ble tomorrow.

Today we haven’t done anything at all. Nah, just kid­ding. We seem to have grown well adjus­ted to our new home, the days are almost rou­ti­ne and the nights grown more soci­al, everyo­ne seems to be so tired that work on pro­jects after din­ner doesn’t qui­te work out as imagined.

New ide­as for pro­jects still pop up every other second but we’­re now slo­wly star­ting to focus more on spe­ci­fics. Pedro seems to be nearly done with the OSC­Bus link to Pachu­be. And Fran­ces­co seems to be polishing up his ants pro­ject some more, atle­ast it was rumou­red that we can alre­ady get some inputs from both the fish and the ants for our pro­mi­sed audio mis­chi­ef ses­si­ons. We haven’t qui­te mana­ged to have some of tho­se yet, but we defi­ni­tely will. We should also pro­ba­bly con­nect it to Assault­Cu­be, just to reu­se late night gaming pwna­ge from our gamer residents.

Sér­gio mana­ged to get the hall lights also syn­ced up to OSC so it’s now cle­ar that com­ple­te and total world domi­na­ti­on is eminent.

Fili­pe has been busy with his secret new pro­jects and also pet-sit­ting his fishi­es, who seem not to be doing so gre­at, pro­ba­bly new water tank rela­ted, so they’­re get­ting a new one tomorrow!

Jor­ge been busy all day buil­ding a fra­me for his VJ mixer, it’s loo­king good by now, just wish my brain could alre­ady be able to fil­ter the dre­mel sound by now!

Cata­ri­na and Tia­go tri­ed to assem­ble a new bre­ed of TV-B-Gone’s, but seem to have fai­led mise­ra­bly so far. Hope­fully tomor­row they’ll suc­ce­ed in a lit­tle more than just fin­ding all the pos­si­ble ways that it won’t work and we’ll have something more to show and tell to the world.

The bio­plas­tic sam­ple tests have been somewhat neglec­ted but we pro­mi­se we’ll report something back about them. Gui­lher­me has retur­ned to the resi­dency and seems to be wor­king on some evil plans for world domi­na­ti­on for his robots, we hope to have some fol­low up info on that in the next few days aswell.

Meanwhi­le Tara has been pushing forward her plas­tic bag fabric PCB ide­as with a few spe­a­ker cir­cuit tests.

All in all it seems that the daily pro­ject mee­tings have set­tled down to lun­ch hour. Whi­ch fluc­tu­a­tes. And excur­si­ons to the ran­dom local shops are now com­mon atle­ast twi­ce a day. This care­fully devi­sed and hea­vily pon­de­red time mana­ge­ment sche­me is easily ena­bling us with the latest cut­ting edge tech­no­logy, whi­ch allows us to put together something as exqui­si­te, bril­li­ant, inno­va­ti­ve, revo­lu­ti­o­nary and so righ­te­ously dedicated.

The bre­ak­fast table side pro­jects mee­ting seems to have jetlag­ged sligh­tly to lun­ch hour. Cold water mor­ning shower is truly revi­ta­li­zing but i wouldn’t want an enco­re tomo­row! Des­pi­te the early shock some folks cle­arly fue­led with their sle­ep depri­va­ti­on mana­ged to come up with a few other pro­ject ide­as to add to our pool. Among whi­ch we seem to have a top secret face­bo­ok jun­ki­es clothing line and a not that top secret Boris Vian pia­no cock­tail idea revamp, for the drun­kards in us all to rejoy­ce aplenty about (rela­ted elec­tro val­ve expe­ri­ment docu­men­tary pic­tu­re below).

So an excur­si­on to the local city sto­re was in order, visi­ting ran­dom local Chi­ne­se sto­res, hard­ware sto­res, tex­ti­les sto­re, pet sto­res, elec­tro­nic mate­ri­als stores.
BTW, you should know that using a mul­ti­me­ter to pick a zip­per at a tex­ti­les sto­re might get you kic­ked out!

Also, musi­cal christ­mas cards + che­ap ear­plugs + sili­co­ne + skills = con­tact mics + hydro mics + led + cute paper lef­to­vers for our col­la­ge club! Be afraid!

Meanwhi­le, in a land far far away, Tara has been very busy iro­ning a few ran­dom plas­tic bags to cre­a­te a DIY PCB pro­toty­pe and suc­ces­s­fully unra­vel­ling many dis­tinct ways on how it will def­ni­tely not pos­si­bly work! Plus dis­co­ve­ring an advan­ced paper prin­ting tech­ni­que. Fol­low up should come within the next few days. We hope.

Tia­go Ser­ra and Jor­ge Ribei­ro from xDA have also arri­ved tonight, so our din­ner plans also invol­ved a lit­tle brains­tor­ming on all of the­se ide­as and more top secret ones TBA. Meanwhi­le here is another ran­dom silly photo:

Day star­ted with a small queue to access the showers and a bre­ak­fast table side pro­jects meeting.

Today’s plan for world domi­na­ti­on involved:
— Con­nec­ting OSCu­lat­tor with Pachube
— Trac­king fish in the fish tank
— Coo­king bio­plas­tic sam­ple experiments
— Twit­ter bot with pro­ces­sing and/or javascript
— Taking apart old keyboards
— Plan­ning a real­ti­me vide­owall for AZ Labs

Most of the goals were rea­ched des­pi­te the usu­al setbacks.

Bio­plas­tic is sick. It’s basi­cally star­ch, water, gly­ce­ri­ne and vine­gar sti­red together and hea­ted slo­wly to a pasty bub­bly form that takes a day to strengthen up. Today we coo­ked a few vari­a­ti­ons of the stan­dard reci­pe to make a few sam­ple expe­ri­ments with dif­fe­rent ingre­di­ent ratio, coo­king time and thick­ness, to com­pa­re the pro­per­ti­es and pos­si­bly may­be pro­ba­bly figu­re out some inte­res­ting use for them in futu­re pro­jects. They take about a day to cure, so we have no con­clu­si­ons just yet, but we’­re all pretty sick of the smell of vine­gar by now! Stay tuned for the fol­low up, coming to an hac­kers­pa­ce blog near you soon.

Fish are nice. We like fish. Fili­pe brought some with him and seems to be plan­ning some cute trac­king sys­tem ins­tal­la­ti­on. A crack in the main expe­ri­ments tank hold him back a few hours whi­le the sili­co­ne pat­ch dri­ed up, so it isn’t qui­te ope­ra­ti­o­nal just yet, but we’­re alre­ady wor­king hard on the next evil step for world domi­na­ti­on: devi­sing a cle­ver way to cen­tra­li­ze and reu­se his lit­tle fishi­es trac­king valu­es. And sha­re them with the world whi­le we’­re at it. Who knows who might need a bowl fish trac­king stre­am of valu­es out there.

We took a lit­tle walk wan­de­ring about Mon­te­mor-o-Novo, qui­te a pea­ce­ful town as it turns out, we mana­ged to find an open res­tau­rant with some excel­lent tra­di­ti­o­nal Por­tu­gue­se food, whi­ch was nice. Meanwhi­le, back in the new tech world, our plans for tonight’s gene­ric audio mis­chi­ef jam got held back by the lack of a mix table, some lag with nin­jam wire­less and an all­nigh­ter live bro­ad­cast stre­am pum­ping out of Aute­ch­re’s web­si­te.