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simon

A partial eclipse of the city

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Once upon a time I was falling in love, but now I’m only falling apart.

I love space. And was incredibly excited for this years Solar Eclipse, even if San Antonio was only getting a partial Eclipse.

I was so excited I planned ahead and picked up a pair of solar glasses from the local library a month ago to make sure I would have them in time for the solar eclipse.

I planned everything out perfectly, I was going to take a late lunch, head to the roof of the parking garage at the building I work in and head on up to watch an amazing light show.

I office out of a co-working space downtown, so I wasn’t the only nerd their ready to watch the celestial ballet take place.

While talking to a fellow co-worker, I noted that several people where not prepared for the eclipse. So grabbing some paper plates and a paper clip, we quickly rigged up some pinhole cameras to take with us to the roof. The Pinholes were temperamental, and I have to say, the cardboard sheet multi pinhole pictured below is the way to do it.

Now to wait out for the next eclipse. Maybe I will still be in Texas for the one in 2024, which is supposed to be a total eclipse.

Hopefully by then I will have worked out a better solution for photographing the eclipse than holding the glasses over my iPhone camera.

Time Will Tell.

A big note I have for the future tho, is when making a pinhole camera, make certain to get as round a hole as possible. The paper pinholes produced a very faint projection, and I think that is because they were quickly assembled using a paperclip instead of something like a pushpin. It may be more efficient to punch the hole out larger than needed and then use the pinhole through aluminum, similar to how a pinhole camera for film photography is crafted.

The view through the paper plate pinhole. It was difficult to focus accurately on the sheet of paper. Not sure if the hole needed to be made rounder.

For a quick job, it got it done and allowed people to see the eclipse, if faintly.

Originally we came ill-prepared. I assumed the concrete of the parking garage would be bright enough for the pinhole to project on, we fortunately had someone eases failed pinhole camera to project upon to get a clearer picture.

Another co-worker made this amazing multi pinhole sheet. Was a ton of fun seeing the different phases of the eclipse. I saw on the news people with colanders, which could make for some interesting photographs.

His were especially bright against the concrete, he was using a larger hole to produce his image and held the cardboard further away from the street.

Eclipses are a ton of fun to watch, I  this is the third I have seen in my lifetime, and I can not wait for more.

Mystery Dog Rescue

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Back in April, I was asked to assist Mystery Dog Rescue with their web site and their push for the Big Give 2017. My boss has fostered puppies for them and we are now on the second litter of kittens for them, so we thought it might be a fun day to help out.

For the Big Give 2017, I designed a specialized microsite that we utilized to point people to on social media discussing the needs of Mystery Dog Rescue, and hourly prizes that were given out to the largest giver during the campaign.

It was a huge success. In past Mystery Dog Rescue Big Give campaigns they have struggled to hit their target goal and usually only make one-thousand dollars. This year, because of an aggressive social media and prize strategy, we were able to raise $3,495. Just narrowly missing their target of $3,500. Still a success.

Because of the success of this campaign, I was asked to join the Board of Directors for Mystery Dog Rescue. I am the Board Member At Large, and my main duties are to maintain the web site, and the social media presence and to assist at any adoption events that MDR may hold. This works out perfectly, because I have been looking for ways I can volunteer within the community and then this falls into my lap. I get to use my technical skills to help little puppies and kittens find their forever homes. A really great way to spend a Saturday.

I am working on a redesign of the MDR website to add some functionality that it desperately needs and a way to keep the site constantly updated, with either new pet photos or with news of events that are coming up. Additionally, there is currently not a way to get foster parents to sign up to take an animal into their home, or for volunteers to sign up to join us at any events. These I think will be the main challenges I will focus on.

How Old is your Cat, or My first iPhone App

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One of my big goals for 2017 was to make an app.

Tonight was a big night for me. I have been doing an iOS development course on Udemy. I just finished section 2 of the course.

And I made my first app.

It is a very simple app. All it does is take the input age of your cat, converts the string into an integer, multiplies it by the number of years that a cat has to people and then outputs that number down below.

With a cute picture of a kitten to boot.

first app

I guess technically this is the second app I have made, the first tho was much simpler and only did the most basic of input and output.

You can input a string, and the app outputs it into a label box.

Tomorrow we start Swift Playgrounds, which allows you to work with code without having to run the slow iOS simulator.

Should be fun.

the original app

I am enjoying the challenge this course offers so far, and am excited for it to get a bit more challenging. Especially when we start making clones of popular apps. It will be neat to see the mechanics behind instagram and snapchat.

Little Wookiee

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I don’t really talk about work all that often, but at the tail end of 2016, I was able to be a part of something amazing. Kathlyn, a friend of ours at the office needed a lung transplant desperately.

My boss orchestrated that we build a web site at lifedayforkathlyn.com .

This awareness campaign culminated in getting Kathlyn moved to UCLA from San Antonio, and a successful lung transplant.

This is a project I can be really proud of, and you can watch some videos from the awareness campaign here:

This past Friday, we had storm troopers and Wookiee’s in the office to celebrate and appear on the news with us while Kathlyn Skype’d in.

Watch the news segment with Kens 5.

I really cant begin to describe how proud I am to have worked on this project. A young girl gets to live.

 

I am going to Make 2017

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I am not doing resolutions this year for the New Year.

Instead, I am thinking up projects I would like to accomplish in 2017. During SXSW I got to play with a project kit from Spark Fun. It wasn’t anything big. I made a programmable lanyard by soldering a few wires onto a micro-controller and then soldering on an LCD screen. I had a ton of fun doing such a simple project, but I wanted to do more than that.

Some of my Christmas money this year went to purchasing an Arduino starter kit. I have been wanting to pick up an Arduino for a few years now, and so I finally pulled the plug and purchased a basic kit to learn how the system works.

My long-term goal is to build a simple robot using the Arduino system.

Additionally, I have been working on some Udemy courses to up my programming skill. I am very familiar with HTML, but I struggle with CSS sometimes. I have been learning Ruby and Javascript.

In 2017, I will build an APP. The main focus of learning on Udemy is that I want to make a simple iPhone APP. As a life skill. I have a few simple ideas for apps to build, and I think I can knock them out fairly quickly.

To 2017, and all the ridiculous things I will make.

2016 is finally over

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This year has had some interesting challenges, but I am trying to focus on the positives of the year.

Journeys

This year, I was more active in my traveling. I started the year off by visiting Pensacola, Florida again for another wonderful Pensacon. The place I enjoyed visiting the most would be Detroit. We flew up for Motor City Comicon this year in the early part of May. This will mark the farthest North I have ever traveled. Detroit and the small suburb of Novi were a wonderful experience. The food was tasty, the people were friendly. It even snowed on us while we were up there, which was a treat. Snow, in May!

After this big trip, I stayed at home, up until I took a nice trip up to Denton, Texas to visit some friends and meet some old friends for the first time. This was a wonderful trip because I finally met one of the cohosts from our old podcast. It was really interesting to talk to him, and it revitalized my passion for photography hanging out with so many photographers that weekend. I also had the wonderful opportunity to visit with Carla, from Boston. Carla is a kind person who entertains my shenanigans on the internet. It was neat to hang out and chat all weekend.

Cons

Oh boy, I started the year planning a recap for every con I went to. But I forgot to do it and got sidetracked. So here is a list of every con I worked in 2016:

  1. Pensacon
  2. Richardson TX ComiCon (i forgot the name. Might have been Dallas Comic Show)
  3. Motor City Comicon
  4. Frightmare
  5. Alamo City Comicon
  6. Marvelous Nerd Years Eve

Only 6? I feel like there was more this year, I may have forgotten them.

Concerts

This year was light on the live music. I did attend the Warped Tour and saw some truly fantastic bands. The surprise band that I fell in love with at that show was The Interrupters. They have a killer sound that I really recommend. I’ve actually seen them twice now since they came through town on their own tour.

Awolnation was another surprising band, they came through twice this year as the opening act for Prophets of Rage and Fallout Boy, and both times had a sound that was really interesting and entertaining.

Volunteer work

This year, I had the opportunity to volunteer at some really great events. The first opportunity came when the local library was looking for volunteers for their Mini Maker Fair. I have wanted to attend a Maker Fair for a number of years now, and I thought it might be very enjoyable to volunteer at one. I had a blast and it was really great to see the tech side of San Antonio coming out in force for this event.

In addition to this, I worked two start-up weekends as a mentor/coordinator. We helped some entrepreneurs work on the business plan for their idea and turn them into full-fledged businesses.  One of the small companies we mentored actually just launched their product and I am excited to see where they go.

Fun Shenanigans

I was unfortunately very busy this year, and so my fun shenanigans were very limited. I did get to visit Enchanted Rock, which is a large dome of granite thrust up into the sky in the middle of the Texas Hill Country.

Additionally, I was able to visit SXSW and get a glimpse of what the future might hold some very large Tech companies and play with some neat gadgets. I hopefully will be able to attend again in 2017.