Adventures of an Urban Jungleboy

Saturday I preesented "The Accidental Roboticist" at the Livermore Public Library as the final talk in the Livermore Reads Together program for 2016.

Between 80 and 100 people attended, at least 1/3 of them children. My talk was short, 15 slides in about 35 minutes (or so, I took questions as we went along) and then time for people to come up and play with ThinBot, Arthur-9 and some of my neoPixel projects. (ThinBot was filled with water only, before you ask).

Thanks to bovil who shepherded people through the ThinBot navigation while I bounced between the youngsters driving Arthur-9 with my phone and people who had questions about Arduino, wearable electronics, and various and sundry other topics. Thanks, too, to Diane O. who helped encourage the shyer kids (or parents) to have a go with A-9.

We arrived at about 12:20, the talk started at 2pm, and we were done and loaded to head home at 5pm. Andy's Photos are up on our robotics team page, Drinks Advanced Research Project Agency.
It was a long but rewarding afternoon, and I urge folks to support Friends of the Livermore Libary, who sponsor the Livermore Reads Together program.

Also, if you live in Livermore or have friends who do, they have assorted robots you can check out for a month at a time to learn to program!

I'm featured on the IBM Research blog today.

http://ibmresearchnews.blogspot.com/2015/04/profile-of-ibm-scientist-kevin-roche.html?m=1

And, because someone asked, the no-stripes hair in one photo is from just before Costume College 2007 so I'd bleached it preparatory to doing Vanamonde from Girl Genius.

Just got word that my Power Suit won the award in Full Ensemble for Most Innovative Design in the PIQF Wearable Art Competition.

(PIQF a is the Pacific International Quilt Festival. This was a juried and judged competition -- juried to have a piece accepted, then judged on site)

Remember that silly project for Punk Rock Bowling? I liked the basic effect, but not the implementation.
The chasing LED strips were too fragile to last long, and the lighting effects were limited.

I set out to build a replacement set of light panels that were fully programmable.


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I've been invited to exhibit Tiki Dalek at the London Worldcon in August.

If I can get him there.

Andy and I can cover our own expenses, but it may cost as much as one of our tickets to ship him there and back.

So I started a crowdfunding campaign for him via gofundme.com

http://www.gofundme.com/SendTikiDalek2Loncon3