Saturday, February 26, 2011
Awesome Toronto Winner: Connect the T Dots
The Toronto Awesome Foundation announced our first winner at a big launch party on Thursday night at The Drake Hotel. It's Connect the T Dots, the brainchild of Stephanie Avery. She will be painting large dots and numbers on the roofs of buildings here in Toronto, with the goal of making a super huge game of connect the dots that will be playable from aerial photos of Toronto and ultimately on Google Maps. There are like a dozen awesome reasons that she won, but my personal favorite was her words about how she would actually get permission to paint on so many people's roofs: "you'd be amazed at what you can get if you simply ask nicely for it." Canadians rule :-)
I had a real blast at the party, and at the various events leading up to it (the Trustee's making our decision, the reading of all 250+ submissions...) We have each chosen our own titles as well, I am the "Dude of Awesome", but actually I envy some of the other titles, including "Major Awesome" and "Sir Awesome"... I guess if I wanted to be consistent with this blog I should change my title to "Awesome Crusader", eh? A friend insists that we need a "Captain Awesomepants". That sounds like a fun replacement for our Gorilla next time, we'll all have to dig out our awesome-est pants and have a contest to determine the winner!
There are so many things about this whole thing that are Awesome, but now that our first month is over, I have to say: the idea that we get to do this all over again every month sure is Awesome! March submission deadline is March 15th, so polish up your ideas and Submit More Awesome!
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Rube Goldberg!
I built and filmed a Rube Goldberg machine! Of course I didn't do it alone, I had a lot of great help - and it was such an awesome time working with my friends on this. Thanks to Alan, Ewan and Jonathan, as well as all the people who contributed ideas.
What's a rube goldberg machine you ask? It's a machine that accomplishes the least amount possible with the most steps, the most crazy devices. We used all kinds of stuff, like a boat, a trebuchet, a marble machine, hot wheels, a wrecking ball, etc. It was epic amounts of fun, and we even pulled it off in minimal time - two days building and filming! Funnest two days of my life since I was a kid!
What's a rube goldberg machine you ask? It's a machine that accomplishes the least amount possible with the most steps, the most crazy devices. We used all kinds of stuff, like a boat, a trebuchet, a marble machine, hot wheels, a wrecking ball, etc. It was epic amounts of fun, and we even pulled it off in minimal time - two days building and filming! Funnest two days of my life since I was a kid!
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Wearables/Cyborg Show & Tell
I hosted a Wearables/Cyborg Show & Tell workshop at hacklab, which was super amounts of fun. I showed off all the various toys that I have been accumulating over the last couple of years, including:
- Heart Spark pendant (flashes lights in time with your heart beat)
- North Paw compass anklet (vibrates to tell you what way is north)
- Truth Kit wrist band (measures galvanic skin response to tell you when you lying)
- Bliplace pendant (sound reactive lights)
- Fabrick.it wearable electronics modules collection
- Lilypad components, including conductive thread
- Secret Sounds ultrasonic listening device
We had a super lively discussion for about two hours, and several people talked about their projects, though no-one else brought anything to show. I hope to do something similar again sometime, perhaps with actually workshop elements - i.e. something for people to actually work on and learn with. See flickr set for some photos of the stuff and the people :-). Also, you gotta check out these super cute tiny planters that can be worn on a necklace, pure genius!
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