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BREADBOX64 is a twitter client for the C64/128 which allows you to tweet from a real C64 and show your friends timeline. It uses Contiki, a very nice embedded OS, and the MMC Replay cartridge with the RR-Net add on for the physical connection to the net.
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This winter I revamped my oldest indoor RC equipment, a few BitCar receivers and a hacked transmitter, to experience some lo-tech indoor fun. If you think about it, this equipment is not so different from the early equipment used at the dawn of the RC flying hobby. Most early RC planes flew rudder only, with a fixed amount of motor time, basically until the fuel ran out. I found some great vintage footage on the web that illustrates all the fun you can get from flying early day RC planes More »

Recently I bought a bicycle trailer (remork) to transport my kids to school. As school is only 2 kilometers away and there is always a long queue of cars waiting for the traffic lights, using a bike is actually faster then taking a car. This renewed my interest in biking and off course is a good thing for my health!
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Inspired by some local guys who fly paramotors on quiet evenings I decided to build myself an indoor paramotor. After some research I came up with a rather simple design for a motor powered paraglider which has a sail of 36cm span and a chord of 12cm.
For the carriage I went for a recycled robocopter guy - this is a helicopter toy that has a robot like body instead of a conventional helicopter fuselage. After some surgery like letting a stake protrude from its chest he seems happy after all beneath the small sail.
A light weight grocery bag is used for the sail, which is semi self supporting because of  depron ribs and a carbon rod spar.
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I made a blinkybug today together with my daughter of 5. It is the first time she handled a soldering iron, but everything went well. We’re both very happy with the result and the little creature can live in her bedroom.

Recently I created an extreme feedback device from a LED cube. An extreme feedback device provides a rapid feedback cycle after a commit to the repository. Having a visual clue on the state of the project is very valuable. If introduced correctly it can boost productivity and morale within a team considerably.

You can read more about this in my article “Converting a LED cube into an extreme feedback device“.

Here’s my new indoor plane. A 6″ infrared controlled F18 Hornet in the blue angels color scheme. Total weight is 5.5 grams. You can read more in my rcgroups post.

I’m finishing up reading the book ‘Ambient Findability‘ from Peter Morville which is mind bending for me. The subtitle is very catchy and true: “What we find changes who we become”. The book is a journey into the aspects of findability, ranging from search strategies on the web to how human kind built maps to know the world they live in. It is a great book for everyone who wants to get a deeper knowledge on what social software, tagging, folksonomies and other web 2.0 catch phrases actually mean and how they have the potential to change the way we think about how we categorize objects in our world.

I really liked Neil Gershenfeld’s book FAB, which talks about the personalization of fabrication. This book discusses a trend in which the power to fabricate things shifts from specialized factories to personal fabrication. Imagine having a small factory sitting on your desk that churns out real-life functional objects, combining construction material with electronics and other components to make a real functioning object. But most of all I was amazed by the altruistic approach Neil takes in setting up fablabs, small shops able to create almost anything, using technology that is available now like lasercutters, PCB etching machines, CNC routers, 3D plotters and more. These fablabs are in fact high technological learning and self-teaching centers that bring the power to make life-saving contraptions to poor areas in the world. As an example, in the book he discusses a small microcontroller project to test the fat level in milk, so mothers can check the milk they need to raise their children, because local farmers dilute the milk with water…

After hearing Bruce Sterling’s Emerging Technology keynote about ‘The Internet of Things’, I got interested into the concept of thinglinks, labels for everyday items bringing tagging, linking and searching to the real world. Ulla-Maaria Mutanen, who coined the term has now created an open database where people can create and share thinglinks, making the first step to bring the ‘Internet of Things’ a small step closer to reality.