Sweetgum Seed lamp (detail), steel, glass, and LEDs, Robert Kuster and John LeMasney, 2015
There’s a lot going on now at LeMasney Consulting!
Teaching
John LeMasney teaching
Teaching at area schools and libraries has started up again! I’m at Rider University, Princeton Adult School, Princeton Public Library and other great venues and old friends like Cherry Hill Public Library. I’m talking about visual literacy, graphic design, personal branding, Arduino & Raspberry Pi, the Internet of Things, and lots of other fun topics. You can see all of my public events on the calendar in the sidebar or menu.
I’m doing a lot of WordPress work now in helping some local entrepreneurs get off the ground, developing branding campaigns, and strategizing about new avenues. A lot of people are really excited about one-page designs, but I’m not totally sold on their longevity. Call me and tell me your take on it.
I’m still very excited about the Photo Essay about Jedediah Higgins House though I’d love more people to see it. Have you checked it out yet? <blink> I’ve also been thinking alot about the social networking problem of chaos versus order, and how hashtags are a really great, open solution that many people are still confused about. Hashtags are an idea, simply, that collect other ideas. When I precede a word with a hash (#) it indicates that I am using it as a collector, group, or thread that leads to other content about that topic, because others have used that hashtag as well. I love WordPress in part because of how well it uses tags and categories as well as other metadata to prompt you to create a taxonomy (or folksonomy) of your content.
Art
Princeton Parklet Maple Seeds cc-by lemasney
The Princeton Parklet is coming down (today, in fact) and my seeds are coming down with it. I’m sad to see them go from the public view, but happy that two of them so far have been sold for $500 apiece! If you’d like one of these beautiful pieces, please contact me about their availability. We can make more!
In the meantime, we’ve continued the work with seeds, and here is a preview of the next seed, a sweetgum seed, those prickly balls that are underfoot all autumn long.
Sweetgum Seed lamp (detail), steel, glass, and LEDs, Robert Kuster and John LeMasney, 2015
Take typed notes – You can use it as a simple note taking application, and many people do only that.
Take image based notes – you can also use it to take images and add them to your research or study notes.
Take voice based notes – You can be your own Don Draper and use it to do voice based dictation, with transcription!
Take webpage based notes – You can collect web pages for reference in Evernote
Annotate your notes – Once you have created your notes, there are lots of ways to add commentary.
Store and organize your notes online – You use Evernote’s cloud service to store your notes, and use notebooks and tags to group them.
Get to your notes from anywhere – Because it’s a cloud based service, you get the benefit of access from all of your devices. That includes most OSes on the desktop, phone, tablet, Raspberry Pi, etc.
Study – Evernote is a student’s friend, allowing you to collect all of your citations, tag them, add them to a notebook, and include lots of different media types.
Do research – Field researchers love the abilities of Evernote, from the multifaceted media input types to the organization and taxonomy tools.
Support your business – Some people use Evernote as a customer relationship Management tool, and so might you.
I have been traveling, and just came home, and walked in, and it’s joyous. I decided to make a record of how I feel and why I feel that way. It’s important to note that I enjoyed my trips away, and it’s also important to note that I was not especially homesick. Nonetheless, there are certain things that I really enjoy inside these four walls (and nearby) that I just can’t get in the places I’ve been recently, namely, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C..
High speed Internet connectivity.
When I am at home, I’m enveloped in bits, and it feels amazing to be back in that digital bath. In the ORD airport, you get 20 minutes free if you sit through an advertisement. Some airports do not have free Internet at all. In the hotels, when you get Internet access for free, which is less and less, it’s spotty at best.
I feel like Internet connectivity is to productivity as water is to the body. I feel like we need to seriously consider some level of high-speed Internet connectivity as a basic human right.
When you don’t have it, you crave it. When crave turns to need, you’re in trouble.
My media collection and services.
Even if I have no Internet at home, which is seldom the case, I have books, movies, TV shows, and lots of other media sources. In fact, with a good Internet connection, I can get to most of them remotely. Away from home, I have none of it. If I’m lucky I can get YouTube or Netflix over the lousy wi-fi. See also point one above.
Chromecast.
If there’s one flaw to a Chromecast, it’s that it will not work if you try to connect to WiFi that has an agreement screen. I really need to invest in a travel router or run OpenWRT on my Raspberry Pi so that I can start bringing my Chromecast with me and using it. But even if I did, I’m sure the media would stutter because of the low-bandwidth in the hotels. Also, as a cable cutter, I’m happy to not watch TV anymore, and this is the one amenity available in every hotel. I’m rather have the ability to just use my Chromecast. You can keep the 40 channels of nothing.
A ‘comfortable’ bed.
Don’t get me wrong, the hotels I have stayed at have had incredibly fluffy, well maintained, 1200 thread sheeted, super soft, and therefore incredibly uncomfortable (to me) beds. The main reason I have a very soft futon is because I sleep especially well on a very soft futon.
I like my 10-year-old pillow, my comforter that’s beyond repair, and the particular distance from the TV to the pillow.
I can’t wait to crash tonight.
Expectable weather.
Recent travel by John LeMasney in 2015 (Google Dashboard)
I never know exactly how to pack for a trip away. It’s hard at the moment because the country is entering Spring, and as a result, it can be 28 degrees in a Chicago morning, and 57 degrees by dinnertime. But I’m not packing a puffy coat for a chance of snow. On the other hand, I was pretty cold walking to work in my hoodie this week. In this part of the world, it’s easy enough to leave your jacket in the car. When I travel, I seldom have a car. I’m glad I don;t have to worry about it for a while.
Local restaurants.
I really enjoyed some of the restaurants I visited while I was traveling, but I’ll never be a regular there. I like having a ‘Cheers’ moment when I walk into a local restaurant like Michael’s in Lawrenceville. In a place where you are generally alone, like we tend to be when we travel, it makes those ‘Cheers’ moments seem far more distant.
Local groceries, a stove, and a full fridge.
Sunday is grocery day in my house. I go to my local farmer’s market, stock up on fruit, veg, and bread, and eat like a king for a week. In 3 out of the 4 recent trips, I walked to the places I was going, or I did not go, and more often than not, the nearest grocery was miles away. The walk there would have been okay, the walk back would have been much harder. In 2 out of the 4 hotels I was at, there was no fridge, and 3 out of the 4 had no stove. The one with the full kitchen was also the one with the grocery within walking distance, luckily. I love to shop for groceries, and I love to cook, but it’s often impossible to do either when you travel.
Local convenience stores.
We absolutely must talk about the difference between the United States’ Eastern coast convenience store, and the rest of the world as two separate categories.
Wawa only exists in 5 states.
7 Eleven is mostly everywhere, but please, don’t try to tell me that the experiences are similar. No QuickChek or Sheetz in most of these places, though San Francisco had some amazing green corner delis.
The rhythm of home.
If I’m away, these days, it’s for business. That usually means a 9-5 job for a few days or a week. I’m grateful for my employers’ generosity, that they would give me such amazing opportunities. But it’s a lot different when I get back to my normal schedule. Part of the reason I was so excited about making consulting my living is that most days I work until 3 am, wake up around 10 am, and work as I please in between. I always make my 8 am meetings, when they are scheduled, but they’re not scheduled everyday, and most people are just as happy to meet at 1 pm as at 7 am. I’m so happy I can get back to the rhythm of this place.
I’m really happy to be home.
I hope this article does not come off as kvetching. I really do not mean it to. I really enjoyed my recent travels, and as I said, I thank my employers for the opportunities and all that goes with them. I just wanted to sing the praises of home a bit. I hope you see some of what you love about home written here, and that it helps you to look around and notice all the nice stuff you have going on. I was taking it for granted, until some travel reminded me of what I love about this place.
Arduino Five Ten Egg Timer circuit – John LeMasney
Arduino simple circuit by lemasney
Arduino Duemilanove
Introduction to Arduino
Last night I gave a talk on Introduction to Arduino at Princeton Public Library as part of their technology class offerings. I thought I might recap the talk here and invite you to come and visit the next time we offer it. For more information about their free and public classes, please click here:
Getting started with Arduino is the presentation I gave, complete with links, videos, photos, and other information.
What is Arduino?
Arduino microcontroller / Arduino Uno microcontroller ATmega328 / Arduino Mega 2560 / Arduino Nano ATmega328 / Arduino Pro Mini ver.3.3V ATmega328 / Photo by Arkadiusz Sikorski https://www.arq.pl/ (Photo credit: Arkadiusz Sikorski vel ArakuS)
Arduino is an open source hardware platform for learning and prototyping electronics projects. It’s open source in that the design of the board itself is shared so that you can build your own if you are so inclined. The software and scripts used to program it are also open source. It benefits from a strong worldwide community of developers, programs, and resources, including books, videos, and classes. It is an Italian project, co-founded by Massimo Banzi and others, and is designed to help people learn easily, even from a very young age. http://www.arduino.cc is the homepage for the project. You can get an Arduino Uno, one version of many good for getting started, for around $30.
Where can you get an Arduino and Learn more?
You can buy Arduino products in many places, including online on Amazon.com, element14.com, and in brick and mortar stores like Radio Shack.
http://makezine.com is a champion of projects using Arduinos and other open platforms.
What are inputs and Outputs?
Inputs are ways for the Arduino to get information. These include sensors like motion detectors, cameras, compasses, GPS, touchscreens, buttons, and many of the same kinds of sensors typically found on a contemporary phone. You use pins on the Arduino to connect them, and use scripts, called sketches, to tell the Arduino what to do with the signals.
Outputs are ways for the Arduino to send back information or do actions. Examples include Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs), speakers, motors, and fans.
You can use inputs, outputs and sketches to scratch your own itches, often for a very low price. If you want a station that feeds your cat once every twelve hours but only if it hears a meow or when the cat comes near, you might use an arduino, an RFID (proximity) sensor, and a motor or latch to make it so that if the cat’s collar with an RFID chip in it comes close enough to the station, once in 12 hours time, the container of food has a door that opens for 3 seconds and closes again.
How do I get started with Arduino?
Cover via Amazon
There are many fantastic books, websites, videos, and communities of practice that focus on Arduino. Here’s one video that tells you how to get started with an Arduino. If you search for ‘Arduino tutorial’ on Google, YouTube, Element 14, or Adafruit.net, you’ll find many more.
How do I work with an Arduino?
The key to working with Arduino is writing sketches. You can use the Arduino program (an IDE or integrated development environment) based on an open source application called Processing to write sketches. Get it from http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Software
The most common starting example, with very simple capabilities is the Blink example. You can open the Blink example from file/examples/basics in the application.
“/* Blink
Turns on an LED on for one second, then off for one second, repeatedly.
This example code is in the public domain. */
// Pin 13 has an LED connected on most Arduino boards.
// give it a name:
int led = 13;
// the setup routine runs once when you press reset:
void setup() {
// initialize the digital pin as an output.
pinMode(led, OUTPUT);
}
// the loop routine runs over and over again forever:
void loop() {
digitalWrite(led, HIGH);
// turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)
delay(1000);
// wait for a second
digitalWrite(led, LOW);
// turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW
delay(1000);
// wait for a second
}”
~ Arduino – Blink –
What kinds of things can you do with an Arduino?
Here is a fun example that shows what you can do with the Arduino, with others in the presentation linked above:
Is Arduino related to Raspberry Pi?
Arduino and the Raspberry Pi are often talked about together, but they are very different devices. The Raspberry Pi and Arduino are both open source hardware, but aside from that they have very little to do with one another. While the Raspberry Pi has pins that you can use to manage electronics, the main purpose of the Pi is to have a $35 computer that you can use to connect to a TV or monitor via HDMI or composite jack and to a keyboard and mouse with USB. The Arduino would need to be very heavily modded to allow for anything like that. The Arduino is primarily an electronics prototyping platform.
