MyPortlandLife.com

I need to get started on my solar powered LED kit I want to make for burning man.

Hooked up my RGB LED light set tonight, I purchased some n-mosfet transistors to make it work. I originally connected a 9v power supply to the unit. I decided to hook up a 12v system to the strand because it is rated for 12v system. Wow what a difference the LED’s are super bright now!

When I was 8 my dad purchased a breadboard and some LED’s for me, back then for a kid trying to get into electronics was hard. I would connect LED’s to the board and that was really about it. Could you imagine trying to find a RISC based processor online (we’re talking about 1986 here). I gave up and decided this is too hard. I have a short attention span!

Fast forward 25 years later, you have the internet, modern plumbing, and Arduino with a vast open source foundation…

What is Arduino? Well, Arduino is a site where you can get all types of circuit boards assembled or you can solder everything together yourself. I opted in for getting the Arduino UNO kit it came with everything I needed to get started. The first night I was just excited to plug it into my USB port and see lights flashing on the UNO board. Sometimes it’s the simple things in life…

I also purchased a 1 meter RGB LED light strand that I’m planning to incorporate into my burning light project.

Occupy Portland is now approaching day two. Yesterday over 7,000 people took to Portland’s streets to protest.

“The NEEDS of the 99% are being Silenced by the WANTS of the 1%”

Today was the first day of the OCCUPY PORTLAND protest, showing support and solidarity for the continuous protest on wall street. It’s estimated that about 5,500 people showed up to support the protest.

Video I shot of the protest:

School starts in 10 days! I’m so ready to actually have something to do again. Today I’m at PCC finishing up some last minute stuff.

On Saturday I went to OMSI for a new exhibit called Game On 2.0. The exhibit allows you to play your way through over 40 years of gaming. Majority of the game consoles were represented at this exhibit.

Here is a few of the gaming systems they had on display:

Nintendo Love Tester (1969, model 1800)
With this “game” while holding hands, each partner would hold one end of the tester. The love meter would pick up the heart rate and tell how much passion was between them.
The love tester was also marketed as a lie/love detector.

A few random machines including a Macintosh SE

Space War by Vectorbeam (1977)
Perhaps one of my favorite games to play when I was younger.

Nintendo TV-Game 15 (1978)
This gaming system came with two controllers and had 15 slightly different versions of Light Tennis.

Atari 400 (1979)

CBS Colecovision (1982)
Manufacturer: Coleco Industries
In 2009, IGN named it the 12th best video game console out of 25.

Commodore 64 (1982 – discontinued in 1994)
The Commodore was the best-selling single personal computer model of all time, selling between 12.5 and 17 million units.

Atari Lynx (1989)
The Atari Lynx is a 16bit gaming system, the Lynx is the worlds first portable gaming system with a color LCD. Released the same year as the monochrome Nintendo Game Boy the Lynx failed to achieve the sales numbers to attract game developers.
The Lynx was my favorite gaming system, in my opinion it was far superior to the original Game Boy.

Olympic C (Russian Sinclair Spectrum clone, 1991)
Manufactured by: Master (Ivanovo, Russia)

I saw the google street view car today in my neighborhood!

I’ve finally got my wordpress site up and running! The plan here is to post to my wordpress site instead of Facebook. I’ll still post my entries to my Facebook page via the share button.