Plans for the weekend

I might not work this weekend, which would man I can work on my stuff this weekend. Going to Seattle Maker Faire tomorrow for inspiration and whatever, before that is finally time I try to get my Enhanced Driver’s License so we can rally up to Canada on a lark.
Sunday though. Sunday is the question. I think it’s time I try to bottle or not my beer. I’ll do a taster, see if it tastes palatable and either pitch or get bottling. If nothing else, it’s starting to look really seedy and needs to go away for aesthetics alone.

Ship of Fools

Right.
As obvious as the Enterprise is for this… enterprise, hahaha, I think I prefer starting off with the Red Dwarf. Since I’ll be sliding it into a Jack Daniels whiskey bottle, I have a very limited hole size for entry. With that being said, I also want to maximize the incongruity of the ship in the bottle. This is more traditionally achieved by sliding the hull into the bottle as a couple pieces, with all the masts and rigging lying flat with guide strings to pull them up. I do have the pokey wire frame on the one end to work with but it’s not much.
I’m kinda seeing how I’ll do this, but 5 minutes ago I had a totally different vision. I’ll have to think about this harder and do some drawings.

Ship in Bottle

In still wanting to make spaceships in bottles. Like old timey meets the future.
Challenges:
Hand jitters
Fitting electronics and power source to make it blinky
What ship first, Enterprise? Star Destroyer?
Using the Instructable I googled up, using those instructions including a mast and sails to ships with blasters and antenna arrays

Oohh… the Red Dwarf would be dope…

Still making progress, just a little less

Umph. Tired.
Signed the Wif and myself up for a Sewing Machine Introduction class in early October. Sharpened a knife for the first timein something like 25 years. Actually succeeded at it too. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get some stuff in the recycling out of the Den of Inequity. Start building a cat tree.
You know. Stuff.

…and that’s why I talk (or at least write) to myself)

I tripped on Reese (aforementioned kitteh) this morning and she quantum leapt like Bakula. This made me think to myself, “self. Cats are really fast.”
On that note I realized that hubs playing Marco Polo as a form of idiots multilateral positioning was bad. In half a second, a cat could be in a different room. I do like the “everyone holla” method to map the world, but the collar itself needs to be just another choice in the wild.
Research continues.

Current vision

So there’s a couple issues:
Stuff in house moves (people and/or furniture)
Multiple rooms
Three stories
Price
This makes me think:
Set of beacons within rx/tx range of each other
At whatever internal, or manually triggered, they play telephone
This gives updated metrics of the house as it is right now
Collar receives and measures strength, burst transmits this data
Kinetic charging?

Location location location

No, not business, but cats. Or really, a cat. Reese is a fast little ninja and being good cat parents includes not locking her into a room on accident.
I knew a few years ago there were articles about indoor positioning via wifi, and indoor diode flight plans and stuff, so I figured all this was old hat by now. Totally not as far as I can tell. Currently the only simple looking solution recently got funded on kickstartr and costs  more than I have.
Drawing board it is.

Solar

Just dropping some notes to self:
http://www.adafruit.com/products/700

Still tired as …

Really, been working like a dog. Six days a week, averaging twelve plus hours a day. Definitely takes a toll. English not so good.
The Wif and I wandered about then Saturday as we ate wont to do somedays, and stopped in at Ada. Amongst my other treasures, I got a bag of candle-flicker LEDs.
This morning, which I only wire about now because I’ve been driving to work, I realized I could make a wicked wall since with them.
Note I’m trying to decide if I go discrete components for an elegant solution or run them with a Photon, for extensibility. I think I should go discrete for elegance and Science! and then whip out one with something like a Photon for (practicality?).

—–

I’ve now had done sleep. Taking the bus today because the Wif needs the car to pick up our new kitteh.

Basically, for the discrete version:
Solar cell fills cap (probably nationalized from an old power supply), when light level goes low enough a photoresistor triggers a transistor and we start discharging through the LED. I have everything I need but the solar cell.