Diverse news

I've nothing spectacular to report today, just lots of bits and pieces.

I received my LilyPad Arduido Deluxe Kit in the mail late last week. I was really excited when I unpacked it, especially given that it's got a fully programmable computer chip that you can sew into clothes, but the kit came without the USB link which is necessary to program the motherboard. Apparently the LilyPads are selling like hotcakes and they're having problems with keeping supply up. Then, just yesterday, the link arrived. Unfortunately, the uploading doesn't seem to work - it gives me an error message. So I still don't have the thing working yet.

Still, I've got a lot more ideas about what to do with it when I do get it working. Things like displaying "emoticons" that express feelings, or having a light go off when my phone, buried in its pocket rings. I'd really like a "soft phone" but I guess that's still a ways off (perhaps not so long, though), or having an indicator to tell me that I'm slouching.

Also, thinking about displaying lights on clothes got me interested in black outfits. On the weekend, I went down to the fabric stores on Queen St. West (Toronto) and found some really nice black cotton fabrics, one almost velour-like that I plan to turn into my first pair of pants, and another semi-transparent with black vertical stripes (black on black), that I could turn into a shirt. A totally black outfit seems like it would be really cool to make. So even though I started thinking this way as a background for lighting up the clothes, now I'm totally into thinking and making "black".