I am sitting on an airplane somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean.

Today [by which I mean Saturday the 12th of July, I may not be able to post this immediately] I left for the United States, I will not be returning for quite some time. The next time I am likely to be in London will be for Christmas and even then, it’s not going to be the same, I will not be living there full time.

Instead my days shall be spent in the US, originally on Long Island for the summer and then later (and for longer) at Haverford College just outside of Philadelphia. This will be my home for the next four years (assuming everything goes smoothly). I’ve had a great time in London but ow its time to move on. My one piece of advice for those staying in London is to check out the Pepper Tree, an excellent thai restaurant in Clapham.

So long London and Londoners, its been great.

By December of this year, we intend to double the amount of financial support we receive directly from individuals who are concerned about the erosion of civil liberties in the digital age.

Why? Because we want ORG sustainable with money from individuals’ donations. After all, we’re here to protect individual rights for all tech users. And we think the best way to do that is through the direct advice and support of smart, well-informed individuals.

Their blog post is available to read in full here.

I will be keeping their widget on my blog for a while to track their progress in gathering new supporters. You should be able to see it in the left had side of the site fairly soon.

I was due to attend Opentech, where it was announced, and would have loved to have gone but unfortunately I was ill (I still highly recommend the conference to others though, cheap and very interesting).

There is insufficient evidence available to allow independent observers to state reliably whether the results declared in the May 2008 elections for the Mayor of London and the London Assembly are an accurate representation of voters’ intentions

I wholeheartedly agree with this conclusion and encourage you all to read through the report yourself. It can be found here.

If you look carefully, you can see my name in it!

I had some very simple requirements for my trigger:

• The execution had to be simple
• It had to be expandable
• It had to be flexible
• It had to work, and work well

The end result was a trigger with a piezo sensor to set it off, an optoisolator to protect the arduino from any voltage spikes that might occur from the flash gun, a potentiometer (variable resistor) to add a delay after the sensing and before the triggering and a cut pc sync cable to connect to the flash.

Along with this was some simple code to be loaded on to the arduino:

int piezopin = 5; int flashpin = 2; int potdelaypin = 0; int threshold = 100;

void setup(){ pinMode(flashpin, OUTPUT); }

void loop(){ int piezoval = 0; piezoval = analogRead(piezopin);

int potdelay = 0; potdelay = analogRead(potdelaypin);

if(piezoval >= threshold){ delay(potdelay); digitalWrite(flashpin, HIGH); delay(10); digitalWrite(flashpin, LOW); } else { digitalWrite(flashpin, LOW); } }

In case it is not obvious, all the code does is read the piezo value, check it against a set tolerance and, if it is above the tolerance, trigger the flash after a delay set by the value of the potentiometer.

I decided to test the system by smashing an ice cube above the sensor, in the hopes that I might get a picture of the ice shattering and flying away from the hammer. The results of this were great, but to begin with the flash was firing too quickly, and the ice did not have a chance to be thrown away from the hammer the pictures ended up looking like the hammer was just resting on some broken ice. I cranked up the potentiometer and the results were fantastic, the delay worked perfectly and allowed the pieces to fly away from the hammer.

Another shot I wanted to try was dropping a cup of water and catching the spray of the water as it was cast off. Again, it didn’t work until I introduced a delay, but once I did, it looked amazing, the flash made the water sparkle in a really beautiful way.

Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments. - Taken from the Arduino website

The Arduino platform is based around the Atmel ATmega168 chip and is very versatile. The Arduino diecimilia chip was the version we were using, it has 6 analog inputs and 14 digital pins for input or output, 6 of which support pulse width modulation. The workshop was  arranged by tinker.it led by Nick Weldin and Brock Craft who were both very helpful with projects and explaining the intricacies of the platform and its programming environment. Also present was Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino (personal site at designswarm) who was also a big help.

We began with an introduction to interaction design, how the platform evolved and the basic concepts of the hardware (sensors and outputs). From there, we looked at making the chip do what we wanted through programming. Beginning with simply flashing an LED. We moved on to reading if a pushbutton was pressed or not and then on to analog inputs and outputs. We looked at loop structure and other programming basics.

As we worked into the more complex functions available to us, we also learned the basic circuits that we would need. We learned how to calculate what size resistors need to be where, and why. We learned that switches needed to be grounded so that the background EM would not screw with our on/off readings and we learned many other useful things. I was very impressed by the quality of the workshop and feel that I learned a lot of valuable things. Which I would soon put to use.

During the second day we were mostly left to our own devices to pursue any projects that we might have. Whilst the leaders came around class and helped us out whenever we needed it. I focused on trying to get the data out of a wii nunchuck. The wii nunchuck contains two buttons, a joystick, and a three-axis accelerometer, making it a versatile input device that only requires two analog sockets. The nunchuck uses the I²C protocol to achieve this. After a couple of hours fiddling, with an Arduino library and some help from Alex. I finally managed to pull the data out. I was out of time before I could do anything with it, but it’s fairly easy to see that there is real potential in the system.

A highlight of the workshop was Brock’s brockenspiel. A fascinating look at what’s possible with the system with some imagination and a few extra bits and bobs.

The workshop was so good that when I got home I immediately looked at the upcoming events that were arranged by tinker.it. I plan to attend the interactive lighting workshop and wireless interactions workshop, which are both in association with not only tinker.it but also ARUP, as well as a one evening event on RFID using the arduino.

I expect to be posting details of my first project (a flash trigger) within the week.

EDIT: The flash trigger

• The Congestion charge
• Freezing bus fares for four years…
• …and then more than doubling the standard single fare
• Introducing Oystercards
• Removing the much loved routemaster bus from service.

There is significant controversy over some of these changes, most of it being centered around the congestion charge; seen by many as simply a hidden tax that has had little effect on congestion and has only served to hurt the livelihoods of small business owners within the zone. The controversy not only follows the changes that Ken has implemented but also his very character. Mr. Livingstone is on record comparing Jewish reporter Oliver Finegold to a [Nazi] “concentration camp guard”, only one of several instances in which his remarks have been less than polite. The polarised view of Livingstone means that the upcoming mayoral elections are going to be hotly contested. The main rival that Mr. Livingstone will have to contend with is Boris Johnson, a conservative party MP for Henley and one of the most recognisable people in British politics today. Mr. Johnson is seen by many as more of a likable character. Appearing publicly on television several times, mostly on the topical comedy panel show “Have I Got News For You”, often the subject of satire, even by his own supporters who recognise that he is sometimes bumbling. The third contender is the Liberal Democrats candidate, former police chief Brian Paddick, who happens to be backed by Sir Elton John.

The election is likely to be one of the largest London elections in quite some time, and the issue is made all the more complex by the fact that votes are being counted by machine (counted, not cast) in a process called e-counting (electronic-counting). The last time that e-voting or e-counting was used in the UK it failed miserably, this was on the 3rd of May 2007 when elections were held across most of the UK’s mainland. Wales held National Assembly elections, Scotland local government and Scottish Parliamentary elections whilst, in England, local government elections were held in most authorities outside of London. Some of these elections involved e-counting and e-voting, which were observed by the Open Rights Group with the goal of investigating whether or not the process was reliable. It was not. The Open Rights Group submitted a very damning report (pdf) on the topic. So problematic were the findings that they were discussed in the House of Commons.

The Open Rights Group will also be observing the london mayoral elections of 2008, and I will be joining them. I first came across the open rights group when FOWA (Future of web apps (a tech conference)) came to london. ORG had a stall there to which I was enticed with the promise of delicious maltesers. Here I heard about the e-voting and e-counting that had gone on during the May 2007 elections and was asked to help out or donate some money. I didn’t, but the Open Rights Group stayed at the back of my mind and I bookmarked their site. When a few weeks later David Smith, an IT teacher at my school mentioned them in a presentation pertaining to internet privacy I revisited their site and subscribed to their rss feed. I have been following the feed since and when a post appeared asking for help to observe the London elections I agreed to help out.

I had originally meant for this post to be a discussion of the ORG observers meetup that I went to the other night (Thursday the 10th of April) at the three kings pub in Clerkenwell. However, I found it impossible to discuss without some background on the subject. The meetup was definitely enjoyable though, starting around 6pm and continuing till around 1030. Discussion was wide ranging although generally within the region of politics and technology, touching on currently unfolding topics such as Phorm and others. Some of the discussion was a little over my head, not being the most experienced programmer and not following all of the politics was discussed.

I look forward to seeing the other ORG observers again on the 29th of April when a demonstration of the e-counting process will be given for those observing the London elections.

The world is full of interesting things happening, and this blog will hopefully give me the opportunity to comment on what interests and is relevant to me. having been told before by friends that I am loud and opinionated this seems like a good idea. It should also serve as another channel to display some of my photography. Don’t get me wrong, pixelpost is an excellent way to show one image at a time and I’m unlikely to dump the photoblog anytime soon, but if I were to go on a trip specifically for photography and come back with several images that I would like to talk about than I’m somewhat limited by pixelpost’s functionality.

So there are the reasons why I am starting up this blog, but for those of you who don’t know me personally; I should probably Introduce myself. I already have an about page on my website but I rarely update it and at the time of writing it says that I am still skinning the blog, something which is obviously incorrect. So, who am I? I am an 18 year old american living in london and attending St. Paul’s School although I was recently accepted at early decision to Haverford College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. I will be attending there from August 27th onwards. I am interested in photography, web design, politics, rock climbing and most things to do with the tech community.

Now you know who I am and why I am writing this, I hope you subscribe to my feed for the future, have a poke around and if you notice any problems with the site do leave a comment or contact me.