Busy hands | Disquiet mind

I don't like making predictions as to what I'm going to do for the entire year. For one, I'm too often swayed by whim, doing what I want instead of what I should. For two, I'm no good at it, failing to take into consideration many, many factors. So instead I'm going to share with you my to-do list for the first half of this year.

1. Finish the knit tunic. Kwik Sew 3496, view A.
Status: front and back joined together, but is way too large, need to make smaller. Done.

2. Complete the sew-along, run by Gertie. Colette Crepe 1013, view 2.
Status: cut out the underlining, still trying to find a suitable fashion fabric.

3. A light summery top, so-called BoHo Peasant top, 1043 by Hot Patterns.
Status: still locating materials.

4. Colette cami, slip, bralette, and knickers. Cinnamon 1012 and Nutmeg 1011. I'm going to do up the cami with the French knickers, the bralette with the tap pants, and the slip by itself.
Status: going to make them separately. First up, the knickers.

5. Bloomers, simply because the word amuses me. One pair, polka dot bloomers, from 'Sweet Nothings', and another pair, the Madeleine mini bloomers, from Colette.
Status: still locating materials.

6. Stretch lace projects from 'Sweet Nothings'. Including; venus tanga, narcissus, sugarberry, sassafras. All but the last are knickers.
Status: preparing materials, some dyeing required.

7. Panties, to continue the trend. Kwik Sew 2100.
Status: 1st pair made. And subsequent pairs need to be made smaller.

8. And for something completely different; Negroni Men's shirt, Colette 1014, view 2.
Status: still locating materials. This is more involved than the others, likely to be left to last.


Phew. Hmm... it will probably take longer than six months now that I look at it. Anyone got any sewing/crafting plans of their own?

I like listening to music. I find when navigating the city and its public transport that having portable music is a must. However, when you're subjected to very changeable weather there are often problems with trailing wires, bag straps, jumpers, coats, buttons, zips, and passing umbrellas. Not to mention having wires catch on the most awkward of things even in fine weather. (Which is particularly painful when wearing those wrap-ear headphones.) Every one of my portable CD-players smashed to the ground because of this, and smaller MP3-players have been known to go flying through the air. Wouldn't it be great, I thought to myself, if I could wear my headphones as easily as I wear a tshirt. *grin*

- Headphones break all the time, at one stage I was buying a new pair every two weeks. And sometimes you just want something different. So, I want to make my headphones replaceable, just something I plug into my tshirt. This requires a female stereo audio jack. Okay, but how am I going to attach it to my tshirt? Aha! Finally I've found a use for the Lilypad mini protoboards!
( Female audio jack construction... )

- Now, you have your jack to plug your headphones into. I'm going to put this on my shoulder, to keep the wires away from my body, where they have the habit of getting caught on things. But my music player will be somewhere around my hip/waist, in a pocket or bag. Okay, so I need to connect the two together, and I don't want wires... Ah, conductive thread! So, I came up with a design to suit having three trails of conductive thread (sleeve, ring, tip) across my tshirt.
( T-shirt design... )

- Okay, this last bit could have been done with conductive thread as well, but I reckon this part will be subjected to a lot of wear-and-tear, and wire comes pre-insulated, which makes our life easier (the small insides of the male audio jack is very likely to result in shorts). And, as long as it's removable the rest should still be washable. This bit, being the plug into our music player.
( Male audio jack construction... )

- Done. Now plug in music player, and headphones. And enjoy!
( Final product. )

You may want to add some extra things, like an inside pocket to hold your music player if it's small, or a loop of fabric to keep the wires from annoying you. But overall I'm loving this! It's comfortable, much less likely to catch on anything, and there's only a slight drop in volume level. Plus I think it's pretty cool to have audio waves carried through silver-plated thread across your body!

When my mp3-player started displaying a "hard-disk problem" message one day, nearly a year ago, I decided it'd be fun to fix it myself. I was wrong.

I have a Creative Zen Vision W. I love this player, the interface, the weight, simply everything. So I googled around and found this teardown. Great! So I went out and found a Toshiba MK1011GAH 120Gb, and fit it. Only. It didn't fit. The drive is 8mm in height, and as it turned out, I have the slim Zen that only fits 5mm drives.

New knowledge! Try again. Get the Toshiba MK8022GAA 80Gb. It certainly fits, but it doesn't work. Turns out the drive is proprietary to the Apple iPod Classic gen 6 video. It uses an extended/encrypted command set which makes it useless in any other device.

More new knowledge! Try again. Samsung HS081HA 80Gb. It fits! It turns on! I can format the drive! I ... can't reload the firmware. New error message: "firmware problem". GAAAAHHHHHHH! The firmware update tool fails. There's also an mp3 player recovery tool, sure I've nothing to lose. As it's downloading the latest firmware for me my player seems to unfreeze, flashing something about plugs, and restarts. I swiftly unplug the usb cable and sit in amazement as it starts up normally, returned to factory-fresh blue theme and everything. I press a few buttons, see that it's empty, turn it off. Then on again. Just to make sure. Apparently it's 02:27:15am, on Monday, 1st August 2005. *SQUEEEEEE* *ahem* Excuse me. To reload with my music!


Helpful information:
- At least two models of Creative Zen Vision Ws. One, that takes 8mm drives and probably came with Hitachi Travelstar C4K60 Slim 60Gb. Two, that takes only 5mm drives and probably came with Seagate ST760211DE 60Gb.
- To force the player into recovery mode, unplug from computer, take out battery. Pull the power switch to the on position and hold it there as you put the battery back in, and keep holding until the recovery menu appears.
- If you are pressing buttons and nothing on screen changes make sure you haven't the hold button locked. If you've opened the player it's real easy to knock it out and put it back wrong, so be careful.

It's not just blinky LEDs and microcontrollers that amuse me. Recently I've gotten into modifying tshirts. And since school I've had a thing for chemistry. Luckily for me the two go together quite nicely. I present to you 'smart' pigments:

( Ta-da! )

I reckon it's pretty snazzy, and at least now I have something to wear to the AGM. Oh, the possibilities for the future :)

The physical construction of my Arduino Lilypad glove is almost complete. Just have to tighten the fit, finish a few edges. I was going to line, decorate, and all that jazz, but feel it's a bit unnecessary for this project. I am getting usable information in, and just have to decide what way I want to use that information, as in, how I want the lights to behave in relation to movement. Here's the glove:

( Some text and pics )

Things I learned:

- Analog sensors give you a value between 0 and 1023, which represents the level of current flowing through it. Not anything useful like an absolute temperature, sound level, or angle. You have to work these things out yourself, with a thermometer or other measurement device in hand, and seeing what the values correspond to.

- Analog actuators take values between 0 and 255, which I assume represents a level of current?, but that doesn't really matter much. The easiest way to get from sensor data to usable actuator data is to simply divide by 4. This however, doesn't always give you the behaviour you desire.

- Accelerometers also require + and - lines. If you can't see the markings you need a magnifying glass. It will still seem to work without them hooked up, but you'll get somewhat random data that if plotted looks like a soft wave, sitting at 0 for a bit then increasing over a few values to 1023, where it will sit for a bit before descending over a few values to 0, and repeating.

- The language you use to program the Arduino is called Processing.

- Getting data from the Serial object is quite simple. For the regular Arduino if you specify the transfer rate Serial.begin(9600) it comes through on baud 9600. However, for some reason the Lilypad when set at 9600 comes in at 19200. If set at 4800 comes in at 9600. Don't know why. Yet.