Boston Brooks

 I've been researching how to make an isomorphic musical keyboard. This keyboard will be laid out like a computer keyboard where you form the chord shape with your fingers and move left and right on the keyboard to choose the key. The actual keys will be arranged so that if you go one key to the right, you go up one note on the musical scale, if you go up and to the left or up and to the right you go up three or four notes; the major and minor third harmonics. This is the whole reason I purchased a Raspberry Pi and an FPGA, and I'm thinking of buying a single board computer with built-in FPGA after I have a working prototype. I have tried to install a musical synthesizer library for C, but I haven't quite got it working, and its been a while.     Image: Isomorphic Keyboard. All for now, Boss It turns out that if you ignore the accidentals on a regular keyboard, the four standard chords all look the same. I wish I knew this when I owned a keyboard.  I guess I won't be...

I'm a thirsty boy and I can drink a whole one litre carton of juice in one go. I try to avoid it though because that's way too much sugar. Instead I drink a lot of artificially sweetened drinks. I like to mix water/milk, lemon juice, artificial flavour and artificial sweetener to make my own cordial / nesquik. I have about a dozen flavours. I drive for Menulog for a living and i like to chew lollies to keep me awake, and I used to chew nicotine gum to help with quitting smoking. I've now gone off nicotine and I'm worried about the associated weight gain. I have been chewing sugar-free gum and lollies but I'm not sure how I feel about store-bought sugar-free lollies. I tried making lollies by mixing lots of gelatin with water, sweetener and butterscotch flavour. According to my father is was "Too wibbly-wobbly and not chewy enough." I've now have some gelatin, agar agar, gum arabic and xantham gum but I don't know how to use them. All for now, Boss....

  Fraser Island Many years ago when the world was young, my father would take myself and some of his honours students on water sampling expeditions to Fraser Island. We would hike into the forest and find lakes, where we would test the water and go for a swim. We did lots of four wheel driving and we would stop at the beach, sample the ground water, and do some beach fishing. Leptospermums Leptospermum is the genus of flowering plants that bees collect nectar from to produce bioactive manuka honey. There is a bit of a legal contest over whether the honey has to specifically come from the manuka plant in New Zealand. Manuka honey contains an active compound called Methylglyoxal, that has good antibacterial properties. Manuka honey has seen great success in wound care and is a value-added brand of honey. Micropipeting A micropipetter is a tool for sucking up a small amount of liquid and depositing it in a separate container. With nectar sampling you use a micropipetter to inject a si...

 I've been a fan of catapults since I first played Age Of Empires 2. Here is a picture of a model trebuchet I purchased.  I made a few catapults and giant sling shots with my mate. The biggest catapult I made was a big rubber O ring meant for sealing storm drain pipes slung up along a set of monkey bars, with the in between bars working as a backfire arrester. I didn't record the amount of hangtime those golf balls got, but it was a good few seconds. It was a good thing no-one got their brain smashed in. One time we were using a rope made of elastic band, and he wasn't ready when I yanked him backwards so when he released the slingshot it came back at him. He got a black eye from being hit in the face with a passion fruit. Good times, Boston

Here is a painting of Rei Ayanami from Neon Genesis Evangelion, one of the few anime I can actually watch.   Rei is very smart but only speaks when absolutely necessary, a bit like me in high school. I'm thinking of painting or sculpting Rei Ayanami sitting back with half a bottle of scotch and a cigarette. Also thinking of making a Rei Ayanami costume, starting from a morphsuit.   Update 21/02/2022 I had to post this image with the caption: The face that Rei Ayanami makes, when her boss thinks that he is a drill-sergeant. Copyright: https://www.redbubble.com/i/poster/Rei-Ayanami-Smile-by-16TonPress/27999726.LVTDI

 A microcontroller is a little computer chip that can be found in devices such as tv remotes and washing machines, forming the brain of the device. My sister bought me a microcontroller development board called an Arduino. Arduinos are good because there are several modules you can plug in to the board and all the hard work is done for you because they have the application programming interface (api) tied down and you don't have to trawl through the documentation to write your own drivers.  The kit I was given came with a bunch of modules and a book of tutorial activities. I have been gradually working through these activities. I just build the electronic circuit indicated, plug it in to the Arduino, type up the code on my computer and upload it to the device and run the thing.

 Here is where I will post details of my various projects.