#Photo
90 postsGame Idea 28 - Bird Hunt (Theme: Lens or eye piece or sight)
A Duck Hunt style browser game about the frustration of photographing small songbirds through a telephoto lens.
Read postTools and equipment 2024
A 2024 snapshot of the software, hardware, camera gear, and shop tools I use day to day.
Read postIdea 100 - Lavender Farm
Plans for a Gulf Islands lavender farm with distillery, beehives, chickens, and a hillside field for retirement.
Read postIdea 098 - All that are lost
A resin-covered pendant with a round LCD and GPS that points toward a new geohash location each morning.
Read postIdea 089 - Wheres Wren?
A Where's Waldo style search book for each region where a wren in a striped bobble hat hides among local birds.
Read postIdea 085 - Carved wooden postcards
Baltic birch plywood postcards, one for every mammal in BC, mailed through Canada Post.
Read postIdea 083 - Dried flower art installation
A staircase tunnel of dried flowers sandwiched between acrylic plates and lit from within.
Read postIdea 070 - CNC Pointillism
A CNC machine with a paintbrush holder that paints a photo as 2mm dots, one dot at a time.
Read postIdea 069 - One Liners
A dump of 36 throwaway one-line ideas, posted on idea day 69 to clear the backlog.
Read postIdea 063 - RootedIn
A spoof social network for Vancouver's 100,000 public trees, each with a generated name, hobbies and a wall of ChatGPT conversations.
Read postIdea 062 - Music festival dancing painting robotic marionettes in a million parts
A robotic marionette that listens to a music festival and turns the sound into generative artworks, one per slice of time.
Read postIdea 053 - HTML and CSS photo book for Blurb
Build the yearly Blurb photo book from HTML and CSS, exported to PDF, instead of using Blurb's BookWright tool.
Read postIdea 047 - Weekly Scavenger Hunt
A fully automated global scavenger hunt that posts 15 random objects every Saturday at noon and ranks players by how fast they upload a photo.
Read postIdea 046 - Cherry Blossom Timelapse
Time lapse videos of the cherry blossoms blooming in the park, shot on a GoPro, a Raspberry Pi camera and a Sony a6400.
Read postIdea 023 - Light painting rod
Idea: a programmable strip of LEDs mounted on a rod for light painting photos.
Read postIdea 020 - Many styles of Vancouver
Idea: a photo of the Vancouver skyline with each building painted over in a different artistic style.
Read postIdea 018 - Just the tip skyscraper coffee table book
Idea: a coffee table photo book of only the tops of very tall buildings, the top few floors.
Read postIdea 005 - Scream Photo Booth
Idea: a photo booth that only takes the picture when you scream loud enough, so the photo captures a real emotion.
Read postIdea 001 - Cherry Blossom Profile Photo Booths
Idea: a free portrait photo booth in a park during cherry blossom season, as practice for portrait photography with consenting strangers.
Read postFlockingAI - Eastside Culture Crawl 2022 post mortem
Post mortem from showing the Flocking AI bird gallery at Maker Labs during Eastside Culture Crawl 2022: the wall layout, what people said, and what to fix.
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Samsung The Frame TV art
A gallery of MidJourney-generated 4K UHD artwork sized exactly for Samsung The Frame TV to avoid the mat border, free to download.
Read postTools and equipment 2022
Tools and equipment used in 2022: VS Code, KiCAD, Sony a6400, Sigma 150-600mm, Logitech MX Master 3S, and a Pixel 6 Pro.
Read postYear in review 2021
Year in review 2021: 31,893 bird photos, 363 species, moving from Vancouver to Burnaby, and a year of working from home stats.
Read postBirding in Vancouver
Beginner birding resources for Vancouver: intro videos, local birding sites, and notes from making the Birds of Play card deck.
Read postCurrent tools and equipment (2021)
The software, gadgets and gear Steven uses day to day in 2021, and what changed since 2018 after the move to working from home.
Read postFebruary 2021 brain dump
February 2021 brain dump on getting into birding with a Sigma 150-600mm, plotter twitter projects, and a 52-card bird playing deck plan.
Read postFebruary 2020 brain dump
February 2020 bookmark roundup: pocket operator pinouts, CNC squid kits, maze dice sculptures, photo ideas, and the Hub16 macro pad.
Read postPanels - Stained glass windows project
Walkthrough of every panel in the digital stained glass window series: beehive, mountains, stars, hexagon weave, heart, sun, and more.
Read postWebsite theme update
Why blog.abluestar.com moved to a fresh Jekyll theme, plus a 20-year history of CMS choices from plain HTML to static sites.
Read postTravel Tips
What worked and what didn't on a two-month trip through South Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and China.
Read postJanuary 2018 brain dump
Notes on dropping Evernote for are.na, TeamViewer alternatives, blockchain art, the Ice Cold Beer game, and a pile of bookmarks.
Read postRenting to the vancouver hackspace
Notes for any landlord considering renting to Vancouver Hackspace: unpermitted electrical, absentee board, garbage, fumes, missed rent.
Read postNotes from March 2017
March 2017 links: a laser kaleidoscope, Lixie nixie alternatives, Vancouver crime maps, Eruv wires above Manhattan, and PBF comics.
Read postNotes from February 2017
February 2017 links: laser-cut art from 1000 Errors, paper beetle kits, Mongoose OS, the USB Killer V3, and the CIA cartography map drops.
Read postMushroom growing kit and automation
Growing an oyster mushroom kit and over-engineering it with an ESP8266, DS18B20 sensors, MQTT, and Twilio alerts.
Read postCNC Zen Garden - Vancouver Maker Faire 2016 Post Mortem
Post mortem of the CNC zen garden at Vancouver Mini Maker Faire 2016: a RAMPS short, skipped steps, and the fixes that worked.
Read postDay 78 - Samuria Jack paper craft
A failed Samurai Jack layered paper cut with mixed-up layers and a too-small Aku, queued for another attempt.
Read postDay 74 - Iron giant layered paper craft
Two-layer and three-layer paper craft Iron Giant, with the two-layer version reading better.
Read postDay 72 - fairy door workshop
Group photo from the fairy door workshop at VHS, with a longer write-up coming on the hackspace blog.
Read postDay 69 - Installing fairy door two
A photo set of bad spots where fairy doors do not work, the counterpoint to the good locations post.
Read postDay 68 - Installing fairy door
A photo set of good spots around Vancouver to install tiny magic fairy doors.
Read postDay 53 - Testing LED strips
Testing WS2812b LED strips driven by Arduino Pro Minis in prep for BITF.
Read postDay 52 - Set up at maker faire
Photos from setting up the LED panel booth at Vancouver Mini Maker Faire 2015.
Read postDay 43 - Installing leds in the Hexagon star panel
LED strips installed behind the hexagon star panel from day 27, with animations to follow.
Read postDay 41 - Pocket universe title card
The title panel for the Pocket Universe dome so people know what the project is called when they walk up.
Read postDay 40 - Hyperbolic triangle
A hyperbolic triangle panel cut as another piece for the Pocket Universe dome project.
Read postDay 38 - Cthulhu panel
A Cthulhu panel for the Pocket Universe dome, planned to get a green-to-purple glow behind it.
Read postDay 37 - Flower of life panel
The Flower of Life panel for the Pocket Universe dome, the most requested design when suggestions were asked for.
Read postDay 36 - Arcade button panel
An arcade button panel for the Pocket Universe dome, wired to lights and sounds and dismantled after Maker Faire.
Read postDay 35 - Spades panel variant 2
A second variant of the spades panel test cut for the Pocket Universe dome, based on a design from Adam Barlev.
Read postDay 32 - Music thank you card
A laser-cut music thank-you card for a friend's wedding, 8 minutes to design and 45 seconds to cut.
Read postDay 33 - Painted fairy door
A painted fairy door test piece for an upcoming workshop, built from the template made on day 24.
Read postDay 34 - Spades Panel
A test CNC cut of a spades panel for the Pocket Universe dome, designed by Adam Barlev and possibly too thin for the router.
Read postDay 31 - Laser branch panel
A 70cm laser-cut panel of tangled branches, made to fill the center of one of the CNC frame panels on the dome.
Read postDay 30 - Large picture frame CNC Panel
A larger picture-frame style CNC panel for the Pocket Universe dome, less liked than the smaller one from day 29.
Read postDay 29 - Picture frame CNC Panel
A CNC-cut picture-frame panel for the Pocket Universe dome, with a hole in the middle for a laser-cut insert.
Read postDay 28 - Spiral panel CNC
The second CNC-cut panel for the Pocket Universe dome, a spiral design.
Read postRescueTime March - May 2014
RescueTime charts for March, April, and May 2014, including a stretch on vacation in Shenzhen, China.
Read postThe Giant Claw Game! - Post Mortem
Post mortem on the Giant Claw Game: the claw broke on kid one, so I swapped it for a magnet on a string.
Read postThe Giant Claw Game! - Pictures
Build photos and notes on the Giant Claw Game cart, its drill-motor spindle, and cable tensioning.
Read postThe Giant Claw Game! - The Gantry System
Switching the Giant Claw from a four-motor skycam to a two-motor CoreXY gantry with eight pulleys on top of the cube.
Read postUsing a Raspberry PI with a webcam to make time lapse videos.
Bash script for a Raspberry Pi and a cheap USB webcam that grabs a timestamped JPEG every ten seconds for time lapse.
Read postDrawbot results
Prints from the Marginally Clever drawbot, made as a birthday gift for a nephew.
Read postThe 9th Annual Hot One Inch Action - Teeth
Accepted into the 9th Annual Hot One Inch Action in Vancouver with a button design called Teeth, shown at Hot Art Wet City.
Read postI visited Hacklab hackerspace
A tour of Hacklab.to in Toronto with an automated model train, a crane, and several Raspberry Pi projects on the go.
Read postI visited HACK Manhattan Hackerspace
A visit to HACK Manhattan on an OLLO robot workshop night, with a brass lock being made on the lathe.
Read postI visited NYC Resistor hackspace
A quiet evening visit to NYC Resistor after World Maker Faire, with stickers dropped off and photos of the space.
Read postMaking a Gear Heart
An eight-hour MakerBot print of a multi-gear heart for a friend's birthday, made at Vancouver Hackspace.
Read postDriving from Vancouver to Burningman 2011
A Canon S90 timelapse of the drive from Vancouver to Burning Man 2011, one frame every 60 seconds.
Read postVancouver Mini Make Faire 2011 - Timelaps
A one-frame-per-minute timelapse of Vancouver Mini Maker Faire 2011 shot on a Canon S90.
Read postVPSN Stick it to the Streets, Vancouver Car free day 2010
Notes on VPSN's Stick It to the Streets, the East Van Chili Cook Off, and a timelapse from Vancouver Car Free Day 2010.
Read postCanon S90 CHDK How do you get to the record mode?
On a Canon S90 running CHDK, switch from playback to record mode with the shutter button, not the playback button.
Read postOrigami Masters Exhibition
Origami Masters Exhibition at the Pendulum Gallery in Vancouver, with work by 25 paperfolders from nine countries.
Read postCrokinole - Table top curling
Crokinole, the tabletop flicking game from Ontario in 1876, with its history and the 2007 world championship in Tavistock.
Read postDel.icio.us bookmarks 2007-05-16 - 2007-05-22
Weekly del.icio.us dump: oscilloscope art, a homebrew lava lamp, an ice-bulb instructable, and a pile of dice game writeups.
Read postDel.icio.us bookmarks 2007-05-04 - 2007-05-15
Weekly del.icio.us dump: inflatable missile balloons, 1301 fluorescent bulbs lit by power lines, Seen in Vancouver, and a content-theft guide.
Read postThis Weeks Del.icio.us bookmarks 2007-04-24
Weekly del.icio.us bookmark roundup covering Paint.NET, freebase pancake photos, a DIY Digg button, and Vancouver oddities.
Read postVIVO Media arts - upcoming workshops
Picks from VIVO Media Arts' upcoming workshop list: circuit bending, reverse animation, and digital photography.
Read postInteresting cactus building
Urban Cactus, a 19-floor Rotterdam housing block by UCX Architects with staggered terraces that give every unit sunlight.
Read postThis Weeks Del.icio.us bookmarks 2007-04-17
Weekly del.icio.us bookmark roundup: a CSS optimiser, GVTV, Canada Post address rules, SIW, and the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Read postStephos Greek Taverna - The artificial line
A rant on why Stepho's and The Naam have permanent lineups, and the artificial-line effect that keeps them packed.
Read postThis Weeks Del.icio.us bookmarks 2007-04-09
Weekly del.icio.us bookmark roundup covering art, DIY electronics, Mobius chess, photo forgery detection, and a CSS list gallery.
Read postCamilla dErrico - One of my favorite Vancouver artists
Notes on Vancouver artist Camilla d'Errico, her helmet-head paintings, and where to find her prints and gallery shows.
Read postImageManager 2.0
ImageManager 2.0 is a Wordpress plugin that lets bloggers resize, crop, rotate, flip, or scale uploaded images in place.
Read postExtracting the IPTC data from an image in PHP
How to pull Picasa captions and other IPTC metadata out of an image in PHP using iptcparse and iptcembed.
Read postPhoto Gallery that does not require a MySql database
An IPTC mod for Enhanced Simple PHP Gallery so it reads Picasa titles, no database needed, just upload and go.
Read postFlickrs camera trend data
Flickr mines Exif data from uploaded photos to track which camera makes and models are rising or falling in popularity.
Read postHow messy is your network
A bookmark to a photo collection of absurdly tangled server room cabling.
Read postVancouver Zombie Walk
The Vancouver Zombie Walk on August 19 starts at the VAG, rides SkyTrain to Main Street, and ends at Mountainview Cemetery and QE Park.
Read postParks - Scavenger Hunt
A BC parks scavenger hunt running July 1 to August 15 with a checklist and a $250 MEC gift certificate for the prize draw.
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