Flashy Guy at Dragon*Con

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Update: His name is Marc DeVidts and more info about his costume can be found at his site.
The coolest technical “costume” I saw at Dragon*Con was a guy with a hundred or so individually addressable RGB LEDs under a white outfit. He had them under wifi control from his cell phone. He could select colors, speed, intensity and many different patterns of flashing. The video shows a “random” effect, but I also saw things such as a “line” moving up and down that made it obvious that each cluster was individually addressable. Unless he was supposed to be the guy from Quantum Leap, I think it was just a cool technical effect and not a specific costume. Download Video

DragonCon 2010 Mysterio Pictures

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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).
Mysterio in DragonCon2010 parade

mysterio in DragonCon 2010 parade

Photo by Kirk Damato.

Mysterio in DragonCon 2010 parade - photo by Amber Croxall

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 →

Backflip wifi tether with Ubuntu Linux

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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 →

Mysterio Costume Update

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Front view of costume with plastic sphere
Front view of the costume with glass globe
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).

PBS Wishing – Android App to find out if a book is popular!

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Main application screen, showing the book "Postmistress" having 610 people wishing for it. 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.)
Continue reading →