Sound Detector with Microview

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Image of Sound Detector from top and side

I built this because our new home has a number of pinging ducts and I wanted to get to the bottom of it. So I decided to build something that could ‘hear’ through walls and display the number on a screen. In theory, this should allow me to pinpoint exactly where sounds might be located. I had a few components at my fingertips, one of them being the Sparkfun Microview which I might have even obtained way back when they had their Kickstarter campaign. I had built a pretty sweet…

Monkey Tank

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Assembled tank with Monkey and Rabbit

The best projects are ones where you manage to find everything on-hand and no waiting for deliveries or going out to get extra material. Thus is the case with Monkey Tank. My nine-year old has a small stuffed monkey (named, you guessed it: “Monkey”) and wanted to build a little remote control car for it. Kids being kids, she does not have a lot of patience and also aren’t giant perfectionists, so I wanted something quick but fun. At home, I had a Rover S Robot Chassis that I thought…

3D Printing a Fan Case

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Completed solder fan in workshop

After a recent move to north Etobicoke, I thought I would check out the local Toronto Public Library near my home. To my delight they have a digital innovation hub, meaning green screen studios, computers with animation and design software and 3D printers. At the same time I was setting up my electronics workshop (we are trying to call it my “lab” but the name isn’t sticking) and needed a better way of dealing with solder fumes. Maker 101 exercises in popular how-to books show you how to build a…

Animating simpleheat.js

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static heatmap image

As a POC (proof-of-concept) for a presentation, I wanted to generate a heat map, similar to the kind you see for Toronto Raptors players and for other examples, such as for airline flights or overlays on physical world maps. Because I was presenting this in front of a fairly mixed audience, I did not want to make assumptions about how well they could make the mental ‘leap’ while I explain the narrative I had built for them. In other words, for each part of the story I was telling them,…

Placeholder heatmap data

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static heatmap image

I recently needed to create an interactive wireframe concept using a heatmap. This was for a presentation and I needed to walk the client through a particular story. As a result I needed just enough data to populate the heatmap but had to somehow create the data myself. Getting the right data wouldn’t be straightforward: The heatmap, using json, requires both an x-and-y coordinates, and then a third value to denote intensity of colour on it (I’m calling it z or z-value). Since this was a POC (proof-of-concept) I needed…

Testing Agile PM in Data Science

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Line graph that shows that data exploration is less of a fit to agile project management

For a number of years, I have been managing a small team of data analysts and engineers with a mandate to inform on innovation economy activity in Canada. Data that we work with involves surveys, data vendors and publicly available data sources, all within a ‘data partnership’ model. While our team was generally doing good work and providing critical analysis, a few years ago we ran into some issues. Challenges that would come up regularly: Missed deadlines due to difficulty estimating how long tasks would take. After publication, occasionally going…

Exploring Etobicoke and Mississauga High Schools

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Since one of my children is getting close to middle school, that puts high school on the radar. As a result, we decided to narrow our search to high schools because it would probably get too complicated to also include elementary schools (in addition to all the other factors, such as proximity to transit, ambiance and so on). In an attempt to narrow down the number of neighbourhoods that we are considering we thought it best to look at schools. I know that there is the idea of fit, finding…

CBC is adopting Neo4j

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Probably one of the more popular meetups in the Toronto area is the Toronto Data Science Group which regularly boasts a few hundred members at its meetings. I usually don’t sign up quickly enough and have missed out because they are at capacity. Last week, they hosted a meetup at MaRS Discovery District and I managed to get a spot, which was doubly good because it was at my place of work and I could pop down to the auditorium without trekking outside in the cold. I’m really glad I…

Faking a Graph Structure with Google Sheets

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I was asked recently to help our Social Committee with a problem: They arrange coffee meetups between employees at MaRS Discovery District, which is manageable with a short list where they know pretty much everyone. They are looking at expanding these meetups to (possibly) include an order of magnitude more participants. But this becomes a list management problem, as they need to figure out a way for these participants to be paired in a way that the list manager doesn’t tear her hair out every month going crazy with a…

Charlinarium 20 years later

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Charlinarium draft

I had a screen printing kit in our studio that was begging to be used, and coincidentally, I also needed to find some activity that competed with the kids tablets. Screenprinting was a good call because the kids had a great time at the Mini Maker Faire this year doing some seriography courtesy of Peach Beserk. So we spent the weekend learning about how to make prints, or in my case re-learning because it had been 20 years since I had done this. The kids made a Minecraft creeper shirt…