Entries Tagged 'Projects' ↓

This picture shows the “eyes” for my Mysterio costume that I ended up using. Nothing fancy, Continue reading →

In the Parade, I was wearing the plastic “safety” globe. Visibility out of it was about 2%. I basically followed a succession of brightly colored costumes (Storm’s white hair, wonder woman’s bright red cape, Zoo Hercules’ gold reflective bandoleer, etc).

Photo by Kirk Damato.

Photo by Amber Croxall

The photos below show the glass sphere which I wore in more static settings indoors and for photo-shoots. Thanks to Chris, Becky and the photographers named in the captions for sending me photos from Saturday and Sunday! Continue reading →

After gaining root access on my Motorola Backflip phone, I was (eventually) able to get wifi tethering working using the Barnacle application (version 0.5.1).

In Barnacle, I have “skip wpa_supplicant” checked, the channel set to six (6), and DHCP set up to use the OpenDNS DNS server (208.67.222.222) although the DNS server option may not be needed. (I had to also manually specify the DNS server IP on my client anyways.)

I had to pull some tricks on the client side (Ubuntu Linux) to make everything work. Specifically, setting MTU size to 1250 and setting up my own DNS name server IP.
The script I use to make this all work with ad-hoc networking on Ubuntu is as follows: Continue reading →

I soldered together my Ramsy Electronics LEDS1 LED strobe light kit today. The plan is to make the “eye” motif brooches (on the cloak’s shoulders) flash blue light.

Continue reading →

I’m in the process of making a business card to hand out at Dragon Con for Mysterio. I found the images at DragonHero.com but am having trouble contacting the site owner. (If anybody has an updated email address for dragonhero1@cox.net please let me know, it’s bouncing undeliverable.)

I have been working on the cloth portions of my costume, as well as purchasing an alternate (plastic) globe from a reader comment. Above are two photos of the jumpsuit, boot covers, bracers, gloves, cape, and sphere (glass and plastic) being worn together. The first picture is the plastic globe (harder to see out of, safer, more gray than silver) and the second picture is the glass sphere (very reflective, easier to see out of, made of glass).

I have developed an application for Android Phones (OS version 1.5 or higher) that allows you to enter an ISBN from a book (or scan the barcode if your phone has a camera) and find out how many people are wishing for the book on PaperbackSwap.com. If a lot of people are wishing for a book, it’s a good indication that the book is popular, which may mean it is worth reading. (Or at least, if you decide you don’t like it, it will be easy to get a book credit for it on paperbackswap.com.)
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One of the best ways to allow other devices to use your phone’s data plan to get on the internet (a process called tethering) is to have your phone become a little wifi hotspot. Then, any wifi device can get internet access via your phone. To do this with the HTC Aria, follow these steps:
Continue reading →

The Philips 900NC webcam is Linux compatible (Tested with: Ubuntu 8.10, 9.04 & 10.04). Under V4L2 it supports 640×480 at 15fps out of the box. (The webcam’s box claims speeds of up to 90fps, but that is only for smaller resolutions, custom windows drivers, etc. You may be able to get better speed with an optimized Linux driver, but out of the box performance is satisfactory.) It supports ZoneMinder, but only if you set up the exact correct Device Format (NTSC M) and Capture Palette (YUV420).
It has good low-light performance, although it will not work in complete darkness without additional IR illumination.

The grand plan for my Mysterio costume is to have a backpack worn fog generator using dry ice. (I’m not sure I’ll have time to get the fog generator or the strobe lights working, as I don’t even have the jumpsuit or boot covers finished yet, but I had the PVC parts so I started work on it.)

The Plan: Have warm water in the pipe–possibly with a loop of plastic tubing wrapped around my torso fed by a pump, which would have the dual effects of keeping my special effects water near body temperature, and cooling me off, which is important in Atlanta in the summer. I’ll have a basket of dry ice inside the tube that can be lowered using string, and a fan blowing air down the top of the pipe. The Dry-Ice Fog will billow out the sides of the T pipes and look really cool emerging from under my cloak. (How I wear the fog generator is not yet part of the plan, but I’m imagining something like a backpack, or suspending it from my cowboy collar.) It will be mostly hidden under my cloak, but since I had the emerald green spray paint left over from my color matching paint buying discovery, I decided it should be color coordinated.

Cost saving measures: I bought $5 worth of PVC parts (a 4″ piece of low pressure tube, a “knock-out” cap to seal the bottom, and a 3″ to 1 1/2″ 4-way adapter. By using the $1 knock out instead of a full 4″ PVC cap I saved several dollars and made the bottom of my fog generator “flat” instead of rounded. As it will not be under any pressure other than the weight of the water and dry ice, it should hold fine. [And if it doesn't, I always have my "Uh oh, I think my water just broke" joke all lined up.]
I also saved money (and bulk) by using a 3″ 4-way adapter, instead of a 4″ one. A 3″ PVC pipe will fit perfectly inside of a 4″ PVC pipe if you rasp off the small protrusions. (The fact that I was informed of this by a “plumber” also shopping in the Home Depot plumbing aisle slightly scares me….but since I’m not actually running pressurized water through it, and it saved me another five dollars, I decided to follow his advice.)