Arcade Expressionism

Wow! I'm going to paint one of my own too!

Choices choices choices...

I can only choose 4-5 of the Spring courses below:

Computer Games and Simulations for Investigation and Education
Design and Marketing of New Products
Designing and Leading the Entrepreneurial Organization
Entrepreneurial Finance
Evolution Towards Web 3.0 and the Emergence of Management 3.0
Generating Business Value from IT
How to Develop Breakthrough Products and Services
Innovation Teams
Managing Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Media Lab Enterprises: Digital Innovations
New Enterprises
Organizational Leadership and Change
Product Design & Development
Sensor Technologies for Interactive Environments
Strategic Organizational Design
The Business of Software and Digital Platforms

Thanksgiving is here, in academica it reminds everyone we are coming to the end of another semester. Gulp!

I've got two final project presentations due on the Dec 14th and 15th. And to be incredibly honest, I'm shitting my pants over them. It indirectly means I will be working and trying to get a head start throughout this thanksgiving week.

How to make (almost) anything - Assignment 10

Last week's assignment was about experimentation with composites. Composites are the layering of fibers and resins. Fibers give the material longitudinal strength and resins (the matrix) give the material compressional strength.

I find the idea of composites very cool, but I am not a fan of the un-structured form most of them take.

For the most part, I played with a natural fiber, banana skins, this week.



The first image above is a banana filled with polyeurathane. The second image are strips of cotton soaked in a mixture of smoothcast 310 and gypsum cement.

Atari Punk Console

Made this thing today...

Celtics vs. Magic

Watch it again and notice Varejao

Some recent MBA quotes:

"My focus is in mobile, clean tech, consulting, and venture capital."

"I spent the summer designing the web page. It should be good to go." (the design is a MS Word doc of the web page layout -2hrs of work MAX!)

How to make (almost) anything - Assignment 9

This week was about output devices. I decided to make a speaker, color changing LED, LED array, and LCD screen.



The assignment, however, is not complete yet as I still need to add input devices to them.

If I have time some day, I really want to make a video output device to the television. I want to make my own 8-bit game + controller!!

Pre-Music Hack Day Boston

Did some quick mockups for my friend Wu-Hsi's Music Painter Android application.


Music Hack day is going to be awesome.

How to make (almost) anything - Assignment 8

This week we were taught how to do molding and casting. I decided to design my own chess set and failed miserably.



The idea is to feed height maps to the milling machine to mill 3D molds in wax. Then cast the polyurethane to make the actual mold for the pieces to be casted in gypsum cement. I decided to design my mold in illustrator and set myself up for failure from the great beginning.

If I have free time later in the year, I want to make shot-glass shaped freezer molds.

Business Management classes are boring. You could theoretically learn most of what they teach you in b-school from a textbook. It seems to me b-school can only be interesting if your professors are superb or classmates are sharp and/or diverse.

I've been considering concentrating on technical know-how for the remainder of school. That way I can own my business, no more dependencies on engineers. Aaron Patzer spent 8-9months locked in an apartment coding his prototype before he raised seed funding. I will do that too if I must.

Apple

It's been 6 months since I've got my first Macbook Pro.

Am I convert? Yes.
Do I love Apple? No.

I spend more time in front of the computer than in front of people. My verdict is simple: I pay a premium for an Apple product, and I get a premium experience. Its not a value gift from god, the Macbook is exactly what you pay for.

I will definitely buy a Mac again for my next laptop. I hope I can say I am "open-minded" now. I tried. (the HTC Magic is something I tried and will not go back to).

A word about my weekly Media Lab projects

I may have worked on cool projects for my 'How to make (almost) anything' class this semester, but I want to note that my assignments are only "okay".

In fact, my projects are probably below average because everybody in class is a rockstar. They somehow find the time/strength and genius to go above and beyond. Sometimes I don't even understand what they made (too technical for me).

Being smart is overrated, but a lot of the stuff at the lab can make you feel mute.

Julian Casablancas - Phrazes For The Young

I did say I was a fan of the Strokes.

Social Gaming

Think Equity LLC recently revised their estimate of the current market size for social gaming at about $60 million per month (run market of $720 million per year). They expect it to grow at approximately 45% CAGR over the next three years to reach $2 billion by 2012, driven by a combination of strong growth in usage and improving monetization.

A recent leader in this market, San Francisco-based Zynga, has increased employee count from 200 to 600 since April of this year. Mark Pincus, CEO of Zynga, confirmed that generating more than $100 million in revenues this year are “conservative.”

How to make (almost) anything - Assignment 7

The assignment this week was to play with input sensors. I made two chips: one has a microphone and the other is a step response sensor (proximity sensor).


I also programmed the microphone code to play a sound file, and blowing into the mic will turn the sound off.

Was looking through random band recordings on my computer and came across this hit from 2-3 years ago.

Drums - Gary Tong
Guitar - Adi Farooqi
Guitar - Erik Chan

Click to Listen

Celtics!!