Alex Girard

Parse URI from RSS feed content with Hpricot

2010-03-23T00:00:00+01:00

Yesterday, I wanted to parse rlslog movie feed for a small project, and I needed some time to figure out how to extract the right tag - named content:encoded - and found a magic ruby method to extract url from a string: URI:extract.

It's far simpler than any method I've used in recent years to do the same thing over and over again (see feevy.com), but I still havn't found yet how to only fetch the CDATA from the "content:encoded" Hpricot element... if you have an idea?

Weeklee - Easy weekly mailing list sender with Ruby and Pony

2010-03-22T00:00:00+01:00

Weeklee is a simple Ruby script that uses Pony to send a mail to the Tetalab mailing list.

Each week, I send the same mail with what's happening during the week, it doesn't have much change from one week to another. After a weekend working on php, it was nice to refresh my head on a simple ruby problem.

You can read/download/fork/modify/commit Weeklee on github: http://github.com/alx/weeklee

Install

    gem install pony
    crontab -e
    // * 23 * * 1   /usr/bin/ruby ~/weeklee/weeklee.rb

Setup

Add your gmail account in options
Add your mailing list email in options

Usage

Set header and footer for the mail
Add events for the week

Connecting my glasses to an AT3 ANT module

2010-03-15T00:00:00+01:00

2 weeks ago, I've put a 3mm green led on my glasses, reactions were what I was expecting: "why?", "how?", "when?" from everybody after they figured out that something was plugged on the glasses (and that is was'nt just a repair).

This weekend, after reading the material from ANT Support pages, I've finally emulated some of the devkit features: reproducing the standalone demo application from the kit, and use the buttons from the controller board to blink the remote led.

The design is pretty simple, and once the AT3 Transceiver Module documentation is read, it's simple enough to link the pins and connect the led to the right pin:

Now there're lot of bugs to resolve:

As you can see on the video, controller board has all its lights switched on. I suspect that the pins on the remote ANT are not well connected, and so ANT module is using all is I/O to permanently send-receive data.
Side-effect of previous bug: battery only last 2-3 hours, far from the multi-months initial specifications.
3mm led at 3V is way too bright: it's nice for Terminator FX during parties, but it's not something you'll want to be disturb with all the time.
3mm led at 3V is way too dim: it's impossible to see the led during daytime, under sunlight (visible in shadows)
Long and painful tape-work to add and remove the battery.

Let's hope I'll have time to solve some of these issues during next weekend, and get a working emittor soon. Perfect setup will be: receptor with ANT cms and no much more, RGB SMD Led from Sparkfun with the right resistors (and maybe a photoresistor to change the led capacity during the day), easy to put/remove the battery...

Make your own Animation Festival

2010-02-07T00:00:00+01:00

I've recently discovered the greatest animation festival, it's (currently) only available if you know how to use bittorrent, but other good stuff are watchable a few clicks away.

Betelsassar Festival

I've discovered it just before Christmas, that gave me the occasion to spend my holidays watching some parts of it, and to offer the links to download this compilation under a digital xmas tree.

Unfortunatly, to download it, you need to know how to use bittorrent. It doesn't seem much, but for many it is, so I hope to get some time soon to publish the compilation under a more internet-user-friendly website.

Compilation nº1 to nº13: torrent file on btjunkie
Compilation nº14: torrent file on The Pirate Bay
Compilation nº15: torrent file on The Pirate Bay

Some of its content are the best stuff I've seen so far in animation movie, here is a selection. But please download these animations from the torrent if you can, they really ought to be seen in HD resolution.

Viaje A Marte - Juan Pablo Zaramella

Superflat Monogram - Takashi Murakami

La Maison en Petits Cubes - Kunio Kato

Vimeo Staff Pick

After getting all this good stuff from a simple download, I've looked around and found the Vimeo Staff Pick to be an excellent selection to get even more great quality animation.

And good news for everybody, it's just a few clicks away, with new movies in HD quality everydays. Here is a small selection of the movies seen so far:

La réplication par impression 3D en 2009

2010-01-02T00:00:00+01:00

Vous avez probablement tous entendu parlé du projet RepRap, 2009 a été une année explosive pour ces techniques de replications 3D: beaucoup de nouvelles personnes sont venus participé au projet pour partager leurs idées dans la communauté open-source.

Octobre 2008: Thingiverse

Hello World

Ce site a fait un bon buzz grâce à la conférence de Bre Pettis au 25C3 le mois suivant, et il a bien évolué durant l'année 2009. Je l'ai redécouvert en regardant la nouvelle conférence de Bre Pettis au 26C3, et c'est un site fantastique: un concept similaire à instructables.com (un site de bricoleur qui expliquent leurs montages), vous y trouverez aussi un système d'inventaire pratique, qui vous permettra de répliquer certains projets suivant les outils qui se trouvent dans votre inventaire.

C'est un excellent endroit où partager vos créations d'objets, une sorte de librairie d'objets.

Decembre 2008: 25C3 - Prototypage Rapide de votre Vie

Le point de départ pour beaucoup de hackers, pour se rencontrer et partager le savoir-faire du montage d'une RepRap. Je ne suis pas certain de bien me souvenir de cette conférence, mais elle a sûrement aider à considérer les différents projets en cours au début de l'année.

Mars 2009: MakerBot Industries

Zach Smith travaille depuis quelques années sur le projet RepRap. Il a fondé la RepRap Research Fundation en avril 2007, à l'époque le seul endroit où il était possible de se procurer les parties électroniques pour contruire en RepRap. En 2009 avec Bre Pettis, ils ont commencé à vendre un kit complet pour fabriquer sa propre imprimante: en utilisant la découpeuse laser qu'ils ont au NYC Resistor, et l'expertise de Zach sur la partie électronique, ils furent capable de monter une imprimante petite et très bon marché, la CupCake.

Mars 2009: RepRap Source

Ouverture du premier magasin RepRap pour les pièces électronique en Europe, on peut remercier son créateur d'avoir rejoint l'effort initié par bitsfrombytes pour répliquer encore plus d'imprimantes 3D open-source:

Juin 2009: Metalab Makerbot Zoo

Le Metalab est probablement la zone la plus créative dans la communauté de la réplication, vous pouvez suivre leurs expériences sur reprap.soup.io, avec des astuces pour améliorer vos impressions, et sur les utilisations potentielles de la machine. Ils ont acheté 2 CupCake en juin dernier:

Juin 2009: HSF au /tmp/lab

Un atelier a eu lieu au dernier HackerSpace Festival au /tmp/lab à Paris, où Alexandre Korber a proposé de monter un event /tmp/usine, durant lequel nous avons répliquer la machine qu'il avait fini de construire la semaine d'avant.

A la fin de ce weekend, 2 nouveaux hackerspaces français, le Tetalab et La Suite Logique, avaient le matériel pour commencer leurs premières impressions.

Août 2009: Hacking At Random - (Un)limited Design Contest

Durant le HAR, un batiment hébergé un fablab complet: une découpe laser, des imprimantes 3D professionnelles, un scanner laser 3D, plusieurs RepRap, et tout le matériel nécessaire poru construire un objet depuis une feuille de brouillon.

De plus, quelques tentes hébergés leur propre laboratoire de réplication, dans un style plus proche du camping:

Adrian Bowyer, Neil Gershenfeld and Ronen Kadushin ont donné une conférence pour présenter un concours qui a duré le temps du festival, permettant à tout les participants d'utiliser ces technologies pour créer leur objet.

Novembre 2009: NASA Electron beam freeform fabrication (EBF³)

De toutes les machine d'impression 3D, celle-ci est la plus luxieuse: "produit des structures unifiés à partir de métaux à usage aéronautique, comme l'aluminum ou le titanium". Même si cela se destine à l'industrie aéronautique, le procédé semble faire penser à de la science-fiction:

Malheureusement, vu la taille de cette machine, il reste encore quelque temps avant de pouvoir en trouver une dans son garage.

Décembre 2009: "Kinko's for Kidneys" - Imprimez vos propres morceaux de corps

Une autre histoire de science-fiction, imaginée par le corps médical.

Même si la présentation semble Hollywoodiene, le projet derrière semble assez serieux pour commencer à se poser des questions: imprimez de nouveau organes? étendre le corps humain avec des pièces manufacturées?

Impressionant! Si cela permet d'avoir une machine pour fabriquer des objets de quelques centimètres, alors la communauté de body-hackers (piercings, tatoo, ...) y trouvera une nouvelle discipline.

Décembre 2009: 26C3 - Beurre de Cacahuète et Plastique: Une Révolution Industrielle

Une nouvelle année, et encore une superbe conf sur les utilités des processus de réplication, et sur ce qui pourrait être les prochaines étapes à suivre pour la communauté open-source.

26C3 wiki
MP4 Download - Torrent

2009 Replicating Style

2010-01-02T00:00:00+01:00

You've probably all heard about RepRap project, 2009 was an explosive year for replication technologies: a lot mre people participated to share their idea in open-source projects, and the knowledge

October 2008: Thingiverse

Hello World

It probably had a lot of publicity with Bre talk at the 25C3 the next month, and it has matured a lot during 2009. I've rediscored it this morning, watch another Bre talk at the 26C3, and it's a fantatic place, similar to instructables.com, where you've got an inventory system, and depending of the tools you've got in this inventory, you can replicate various types of projects.

It's a great place where to share your objects, a kind of libary of things.

December 2008: 25C3 - Rapid Prototype Your Life

A starting point for a lot of hackers to meetup and share information about how to build a RepRap. I'm not sure I remember well the conference, but it surely help to consider the various projects that were available at the time.

March 2009: MakerBot Industries

Zach has been working for years on the RepRap project. He created the RepRap Research Fundation in April 2007, it was for a moment the only place where to buy the parts to build your RepRap. This year, they began to sell the complete kit to build your own printer: using the laser cutter they've got at the NYC Resistor, and using Zach extreme-knowledge on the electronic part, they were able to build up a small and inexpensive printer, the CupCake.

March 2009: RepRap Source

First RepRap shop for electronic parts to open in Europe, we can thanks its creator to join bitsfrombytes effort to help to replicate even more RepRap printing machines:

June 2009: Metalab Makerbot Zoo

Metalab might be the biggest content inventors in replication community, and it's a great place to follow on reprap.soup.io with the last details about how to improve your own printer, and what can be done with it. They bought 2 Cupcake CNC last June:

June 2009: HSF at /tmp/lab

A workshop occured during last HackerSpace Festival at the /tmp/lab in Paris, and Alexandre Korber proposed a /tmp/usine workshop, to replicate the first repstrap he had built just a week before.

After this weekend, 2 new hackerspaces in France, Tetalab and La Suite Logique, had the basic harware to complete a first print.

August 2009: Hacking At Random - (Un)limited Design Contest

A small building was used during the HAR to host a full size fablab: laser cutters, professional printing machines, a 3D laser scanner, a few RepRaps, and all you need to build an object from scratch.

Plus others tents with camping-style replication laboratories:

A conference took place with Adrian Bowyer, Neil Gershenfeld and Ronen Kadushin to present a contest that took place during the festival, allowing people to use all these tools to create something for this contest.

November 2009: NASA Electron beam freeform fabrication (EBF³)

This is the deluxe-version of any prototyping version ever seen: "produce unitized structures from high reflectance aerospace alloys such as aluminium and titanium". It stays for aerospace industry, but the process seems so well advanced that it could be from a science-fiction story.

Unfortunatly, by the size of the hardware, there'll be few years before it becomes an everyone-dream.

December 2009: Kinko's for Kidneys: 3D Printing Your Own Body Parts

Another science-fiction story, dream by the medical engineers.

Even if the is ready-made for Hollywood, the project behind seems serious enough to ask ourselves a lot of questions: printing organs? extending human body with manufactured material?

Here it goes, I hope it'll be a successful experiment for few centimeters objects, then we'll have another interesting body-hack community.

December 2009: 26C3 - Peanut Butter and Plastic: Industrial Revolution

Another year, another great talk of what could be done in the replication process, and what could be the next step by following the open-source community that helped build all that.

26C3 wiki
MP4 Download - Torrent

Remote Santa with MongoDB

2009-12-30T00:00:00+01:00

Some Christmas are far from home, and today, that's not excuse to not offer something for all lovedd one: major cultural content are now available only on internet, and it would be impossible to find them in a real-world shop even if you'd like to buy them.

Disclaimer: yes, I make promotion for downloading copyrighted content, not because it's unlawful, but because some of this content is so good that has to be shared.

Santa website: http://noel.alexgirard.com
Santa source

System

I'm far from you, but you're not far from internet, so I'll make you an internet page where you'll be able to check your gift.

For it to be more exciting, I've choose a new DB technology I wanted to work with: MongoDB.

And because I just had 24h to complete the task, I've choosed the simplest web framwork I know: Sinatra.

Concepts

One of the most interesting stuff going from this idea is the potential it gets, on the idea side as on the technical side:

MongoDB: use dynamic attribute to make a form to add gifts, gift will be published only when all needed attributes are inside the document
MongoDB: use GridFS to store the images for the avatar, the wrapping paper or the gift image. It could even be used to send a non-processed image and process it on the server side
jQuery: use autosave plugin to avoid clicking on any button on the gift page
Facebook: deploy the same app with a Facebook gateway, people could create gift page for their friends
Gift content: add more content types for the gifts, I'll sure want to be able to send video-gift somedy :)
Gift content: already downloaded gift, and use html5 localStorage to directly send the gift to the receiver so he'll be able to receive it on the go if the page is loaded at the beginning of the day (on the 24th)

How to customize this template

2009-10-27T00:00:00+01:00

Nothing here yet.

How to use this template

2009-10-26T00:00:00+01:00

Nothing here yet.

Interface for a new Electricity Panel

2009-04-13T00:00:00+02:00

Continuing my research to build a real-time powermeter, from the idea, to the hardware part, let’s move and look what could be done on the interface site.

Some people have already begun to build these interface, some others have dreamt about it, here is a small survey about some of them:

Telefonica in Madrid

Telefonica has got a kind of Apple Store on Madrid biggest avenue (Gran Via).
Apart from the whitish look, and the static electricity problem, it’s got a domotic showroom with various technologies, from the tactil mirror that speak to you about the weather forecast, to the eye-toy TV to play with.

A small corner is dedicated to this energy screen, you can set the light, open/close a windows blind, and follow the electricity cunsomption on this screen.

The graph, that shows the KwH consumme each second, is not really clear at first look What it shows is 2 lines: bottom one is your consumption with “Hogar Solucion” merchandsing, showing you the difference with the top one that puts you in the red zone of “you consumme too much!”.

The rest of the interface is pretty clean, with big number you just need to follow by curiosity. The bad part is you need to read a manual to understand any of these numbers.

CurrentCost CC128

That’s the interface a harware piece you plug on your circuit to follow your consumption.

Same here, it requires a manual, ad it’s pretty messy. The designer probably got a clue by copying these popular weather stations.

But there’s something realy innovative in this design compare to the others: it’s really cost effective, you don’t need to have your computer or a Plasma screen switch on all the time, so you might feel like you reduce your energy consumption by this mean.

Microsoft Sustainability by Oh, Hello

I really invite you to watch the whole video, there’re a lot of ideas and details on this futuristic interface research.

This panel is interesting too, really clean, big numbers, comprehensive colors, and a lot of informations in one read.

I’ll need your help to understand the color gradients in the graph, and the model might not be appliable to my research: this example show a hybrid use of electricity, like in hybrid cars, switching from the solar panels to the national electricity grid.

The house map is quite interesting to have an idea of which part of the house is consumming.

HomeLinux interface

The hacker view of energy consumption, sometimes that’s all you need, and it can be done really quickly.

Tweet-a-Watt

An experiement from Adafruit that connect LCD appliance, that count watts on a plug, to twitter, throwing a hook for anybody wh’s got some idea about how to expand it with a social mean.

On a sidenote, that’s probably the hardware solution I’ll use to have a remote access to the electricity counter in our flat.