New Location for the I am Shadowlord Blog

This blog has moved to its own domain:

http://iamshadowlord.com/

The feed is the same:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/shadowlord

Best Invention Since Sliced Bread

My toaster is back in the news with a post on FoxNews.com regarding "Things that Tweet". I love things that can speak and soon the idea of a "web of things" will not be so odd.

The website "Global Toaster" reported that my internet toaster is a celebrity. Their site is chock full of toasters, toaster info, toaster love, and a toaster blog. Check it out.

I am LOST

All of this snow caused me to get trapped between two airports recently. And when I say, "trapped," I mean I had a cell phone, food supply, laptop, and stable wireless Internet connection. I had some time on my hands. Between runs to Panda Express and the restroom, I was able to watch the first season of LOST.

Over a period of 3 months, hints were dropped which lead me to want to start watching LOST - I finally "listened to the island." I saw a speech by J. J." Abrams, 3o Rock made a LOST reference, my friends were talking about the show, the answer is 42, and I heard a faint radio transmission on my XM. I finally broke down and watched the pilot episodes of LOST on Hulu. I was hooked.

Over the next 24 hours, I watched the entire first season - all 24 mind-bending, awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping, uber-frustrating episodes. I see why this show is popular, it has all of the elements that I love - great mystery, tied with philosophical nuances and solid characters who I love to learn about. I want to figure it all out, but I am being messed with. Numbers and non-linear flashbacks spliced in the real-time storyline all make for a fantastic mind trip.

The final season starts tomorrow. I am so glad to hear there is a final season. It will make my LOST time seem worth it, since I know it will have to have an ending and soon. I look forward to the rest of the seasons and catching up to the new episodes. I will be DVR'ing the new ones and maybe I will be able to finish this series with everyone else.

4-8-15-16-23-42

A New Set of Downs

A lot has changed for me in the past 10 years. I have watched the Internet go mobile. The web has come a long way since the 90's - my Geocities website is a faded memory. I have owned domains that are over 16 years old. If they were children, they would be graduating high school, voting, and starting their credit ratings. I can't start to imagine what will happen in the next decade. I hope to be a part of the story though. I wish you well as we venture together.

Stay thirsty, my friends.

Steam Pumpkin - My Steampunk Pumpkin

Halloween is one of my favorite times a year being ShadowLord and all. I was BatMan three times in my life and only once as a kid. Pumpkin carving is something I also get into. My first pumpkin at age 9 was an old farmer smoking a pipe. It even had a twinkling red LED in the corncob pipe. After burning up a handful of LEDs my dad taught me about current limiting resistors.

Fast forward 20 years and I am still shoving LEDs into pumpkins. This year my inspiration comes from steampunk, a growing subculture fascinated with steam-aged garb and future technology fusion. Steampunk was born of the H. G. Wells and Jules Verne visions of futuristic technology and style. Call it what you want, Steampunk is an inspiring movement of makers and re-users of technology and materials.

Here is my steampunk inspired pumpkin.

Where do you start?

I cobbled together whatever I could find that resonated steampunk. I found my Mom's old purse that had some faux leather, brass loops, and a gold chain. I also grabbed an old candle holder, a lamp shade, a door hinge, a metal coffee filter, and some brass brads. My Dremel was used to drill, cut metal, and and cause sparks (insert grunt).

Full of hot air

I knew that I was going to add some technology to the design and I settled on an automated fog machine that would blow smoke from the ears of the pumpkin. Okay, I know it's a little literal, but it is a steam pumpkin.

How do you do that?

Using the ioBridge IO-204, I rigged up the fog machine to trigger when someone walked in front of the pumpkin. I used a passive infrared sensor from Adafruit to detect motion. The IO-204 has an upcoming feature that allows for on board logic, meaning you can break off of the Internet and have local controls take over. To integrate it with the fog machine, I tapped into the wireless remote control that came with the fog machine. This made it easy to control using a single relay. To light the pumpkin, I bought a BlinkM RGB LED Blaster from Sparkfun. The LEDs are high intensity lights that you can mix colors together. It turned out to be a neat touch. When someone gets close, I set the color with the IO-204 to an evil red to accompany the smoke.

For more information and more "How-to" detail, check out Instructables.com.

Introducing The Steam Pumpkin

Here is a YouTube video of "Steamy Wonder" in action:

Will Windows 7 be better than Vista?

"Will Windows 7 be better than Vista?" is the wrong question to be asking. We should be asking, "Will Windows 7 be better than XP?"

Chris Hernandez of Microsoft posted on his blog, "One of the main goals with Windows 7 in general has been to be better than Vista." Chris' quote scares me. Being better than Vista is not what I am looking for. I want an OS that makes me want to upgrade from XP. XP has served me well and I want a clear upgrade path. What are the killer new features? What makes Win7 an "upgrade"?

I have been using Windows 7 on my laptop for a few months. I do like some UI improvements, but compared to XP it misses the mark. Compared to Vista, Win7 is better. Although, Win7 requires pretty good hardware to install where XP is able to install on my pieced together machines with parts 8-10 years old in some cases. I hope by the time Windows 7 is on the shelf, someone figures out that we are not looking for an upgrade from Vista, we are looking for a real upgrade to XP.

She Thinks My Toaster is Hot

One day you put your toaster on a social networking site. And then on another day you find out that your toaster has more friends than you.

This little story sounds made up. Well, it's not.

My toaster has had a Twitter page since December 2008, tweeting the status of my toast making habits for all of the world to follow. On occasion people even write to the toaster to ask what it's toasting. Oddly enough, it can tell you.

I get asked, "Why have your toaster on the Internet?" Well, it's a starting point for future projects and part sarcasm. I have been working on gizmos, web control, and power / resource management projects with my friend Jason Winters of ioBridge for over a decade. One day I had the idea to overlay appliance usage data onto a graph of my power consumption for my house. My theory is to use this appliance meta data to reduce the power I use everyday by pointing directly to the power hogs. It's a start to my internet of things at my house. If you want to get start your own Skynet, visit Wired's Wiki on making things talk. I use the IO-204 control and monitor module from ioBridge.com.

OK, mostly it's sarcasm.

My Toaster has been recently written about on Wired.com, ReadWriteWeb, PC World, Tiscali, De Morgen, XYCity China, etc. If you want to hear about it straight from the bread slot, you can get live updates from my toaster by following @MyToaster on Twitter.

I am now jealous of my toaster which has made for awkward moments when I want some crunchy Wonder Bread.