Ben Farahmand

I've been learning strudel

2025-11-29T19:12:00.000-08:00

I've spent more time than I'd like to admit transcribing golden by huntr/x intro studel's syntax.

take a listen:

Raspberry Pi Car

2024-10-22T15:00:00.004-07:00

My son wanted a remote controlled car, so I made him one.

Built with Raspberry Pi 0, Powerboost 1000C from adafruit, 10000 mAh battery, 4 TT motors, H bridge motor controller, and an xbox controller connected via bluetooth.

Audio Visualizer

2024-10-09T19:36:00.000-07:00

Over the past few years my friends and I would get together and have music nights. As part of the experience, I created a real-time audio visualizer for us to watch as we listened to the music.

I brought my projector over and we'd gather in my friend's basement and take turns playing albums or songs we wanted to share with everyone. Here's a video from one of our nights highlighting one of the visualizations:

I continued developing it and kept adding more visualizers, like this one that works off my webcam and also listens to the microphone for any audio input:

And here's a demo of more of the visualizers:

I've reached a point with this project where I want to see if it can be turned into a product. I think the next step in this process will be to find people that want to have a visual experience alongside their music. I'm hoping people would like to try the audio visualizer in its current form and then share feedback.

Wrote and Designed an OSR Dungeon for Knave 2e

2024-10-04T19:10:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've posted, but I wanted to share a dungeon I designed and wrote. It's free to download: https://benfarahmand.itch.io/no-rest-for-the-undead

Here's a few mockups of the booklet:

Inducted into The Game Crafter's Hall of Fame

2018-01-05T15:02:00.000-08:00

Some really cool news I'd like to share with you all. I was inducted into The Game Crafter's Hall of Fame because a few months ago FAZA won the Big Box Challenge. While there's still a ton of work left to do for FAZA, I'm feeling excited to reach this milestone and also honored to have the game design work I've been doing be recognized by the game community.

The interview questions range from 'how long have you been designing games' to 'where the game idea come from' to 'any words of encouragement or advice to all the designers reading this' and everything in between. Almost every question in the interview could of been turned into a separate blog post, so check it out and let me know what you think.

FAZA Wins the Big Box Challenge from The Game Crafter

2017-10-16T20:00:00.000-07:00

Remember that board game I was working on for the past year? Well, it won the Big Box Challenge from The Game Crafter!

Alex Coulombe, the judge for the competition, played FAZA with his gaming group multiple times. Check out his detailed document outlining what they loved about FAZA, with some highlights below.

He described FAZA as "far and away the most polished and engaging, while also offering the most value on repeat playthroughs, especially across 2, 3, and 4 players." After playing the game multiple times, they "realized there was no 'sure-fire' strategy, and the game forced us to adapt and improvise to changing situations." He went on to say that "FAZA is the best co-op game we’ve ever played."

If you get further into the document, he continues listing out the many wonderful aspects of playing FAZA:

"Never have I played a game before that is so thoroughly engaging for all players the entire time. While some co-op games achieve this to a certain degree, the level of strategy and planning for an upcoming Faza round in our games had everyone feeling like brilliant tacticians working together."
"Great balance with the different roles and their abilities. Everyone felt like were able to pick a role that suited their play style, and they had something meaningful to contribute every turn."
"The game keeps the pressure on continuously-- from the word go we basically always felt like we were about to die (or run out of drones), then felt enormous exhilaration and relief when we managed to stave off our demise."
"Rules are laid out in such a way that made reading through them easy, which is impressive considering there are some fairly complex elements in this game. The rules are exceptionally well-written with clear graphics and worded with a level of precision that immediately answered nearly every question we had."
"Great synergy between theme and mechanics. I honestly couldn’t tell you which one the designer likely started with."
"Average playtime for a game became 1 hr 30 min, which felt like the perfect length. We ended every game on a high of wanting to play again and adjust our strategies and roles to see how it might affect our next playthrough."

FAZA on Board Game Geek

2017-09-28T14:58:00.000-07:00

Hey you! Yes, you! Do you have a Board Game Geek account?

Well, I've put together a BGG page for FAZA. Check it out and leave a comment to let others know you're interested in the game.

FAZA is a finalist in the Big Box Challenge from The Game Crafter

2017-07-14T21:00:00.000-07:00

The Big Box Challenge started out with 55 board game submissions, and then the list was whittled down to 20 via a community voting process. Now, the list of games has been further refined to 7, and FAZA is one of them! You can read more about the seven finalists here and also see the scoring sheet provided by the judge Alex Coulombe.

If you start diving into the scoring sheet, you'll notice that Alex gave FAZA a total score of 42 out of 45. This score is then broken down into three categories: Rules/Mechanics (18 out of 20), Art/Style (15 out of 15), Marketing/Hype (9 out of 10). He continued to describe the game as:

"Great cooperative premise and graphics. Like how the play area is laid out, though looks like there's room for improvement in hierarchy of information. Really glad there's considerations for 'if this is your first time playing.' Rules are super well documented and the examples are helpful. Thrilled to see info for both 'here's what to do on your first game' and 'here's how to make the game harder.' Also nice touch with the considerations made for color blindness."

Faza: A Cooperative Sci-Fi Board Game

2017-02-28T16:09:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone!

For the past year I've been working on a side project, which I've been calling Faza. It's a cooperative board game set in a science fiction future. I'm hoping to have it up and running soon, and I've already put together a website. Please check it out, and share this with your friends that are into sci-fi and board games!

Faza Cover Art

And here's a quick video of the game in action.

Binaural Beat Generation, Creating an Illusory Sound with Code

2016-05-19T05:30:00.000-07:00

A little while ago I came across a phenomenon known as binaural beats. It's an auditory illusion that's created when two tones are presented to each ear separately, meaning one ear can't hear what the other ear is hearing.

I was curious in exploring this and wrote a brief piece of code using processing, which you can try out below if you download the processing environment.

What I also thought was interesting is the ability of a binaural beat to generate synchronous neuronal activity corresponding to the following mental states:

Gamma, 30 to 50 Hz
Beta, 14 to 30 Hz
Alpha, 8 to 14 Hz
Theta, 4 to 8 Hz
Delta, 0.1 to 4 Hz

I tested this code on myself for about 10 minutes and was able to quickly enter a meditative state. Anyways, try it out for yourself and let me know what you think.

Balance Bike Reaches 250 Downloads!

2016-05-18T06:30:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've written anything about Balance Bike, the educational android app I released last year. Young kids engage through pictures, touch, and sound to learn words, colors, numbers, and letters.

This project was my way of teaching myself how to do android programming. I also haven't been marketing it, people have been discovering it organically and the app has finally reached a milestone, 250 downloads! It only took a year. :)

You can download it from the play store.

User Research Presentation by Michael Margolis

2016-03-23T06:00:00.000-07:00

I came across this really great presentation and explanation on how to quickly do user research in the context of the startup. The presenter, Michael Margolis, is a Google Ventures partner and has been doing this kind of work for more than twenty years. He works with the GV startups to help them understand their users and to figure out how they should build their products in order to meet the needs of their users.

One argument that sticks out from his lecture is the reason for observing users. He argues that the importance of observing users is to understand the 'why' of particular user actions. He compares observing users to looking at detailed website analytics. Analytics will reveal what people are doing, yet it won't reveal why they're doing what they're doing. Seeing the metrics of a certain website funnel, or being able to see the data of people dropping off at a certain page doesn't give insight into the problem that might be causing users to drop off. Discovering the 'why' behind a certain problem will then reveal the solution.

I Don't Always Farm, But When I Do, It's Vertical

2016-03-22T05:09:00.001-07:00

Two weekends ago I had the bright idea to grow some of my own vegetables in a cardboard box. After a quick trip to the hardware store to get some soil and seeds, I was on my way. I grabbed the easiest veggies to grow: radish, spinach, microgreens, and mixed greens. The results are below.

Well, there it is. The vertical farm by my window. I will follow-up with another post showing progress.

Well, There It Is

2016-03-22T05:07:00.003-07:00

Exploring Tuva's Embed Feature

2016-02-01T10:47:00.009-08:00

Testing the updated Tuva Tools embed iframe. CLick more to view it.

Subdomain dataset embed:

Plot state embed:

My datasets embed:

Board Games: Competitive vs Cooperative

2015-12-23T06:17:00.000-08:00

I'm feeling a general sense of frustration with competitive board games, like Settlers of Catan, Monopoly, Risk, and the like. When I play these games I end up in last place, or near to last place, and I'm left with nothing to do during the game. The rest of the players continue the fun as I then sit by myself, sip a drink and ruminate over the rule book to see if there was something I could of done differently. Was it my luck? My inability to strategize? Maybe a bit of both.

Enter cooperative board games: a few years ago I played a cooperative board game called Defenders of the Realm. At first I was drawn in by this game's attention to detail, visually stunning renderings and beautifully crafted backstory setting the stage for the players. Then, I was blown away by being able to get feedback on my strategy as a newbie from other players and also coordinate my moves with other players. I was hooked, and inspired.

Ever since I learned about cooperative games as a genre, I've been itching to design my own cooperative game. About four months ago I began designing and testing it out with friends.

Stay tuned for updates as I continue development! And in the mean time, let me know what you think of competitive and cooperative games in the comments section below. What do you like about them? What do you hate about them? How well does it hold your attention throughout the course of the game?

A prototype of the game I'm working on.

What are animals thinking and feeling?

2015-11-24T13:39:00.002-08:00

Of all the TED talks I've seen, and I've seen pretty much every single one, I found this one especially moving. Carl Safina passionately holds up a mirror to who we are and the effect we have on the animals we live with. If you have 20 minutes to watch something today, watch this.

Balance Bike: A Learning Game

2015-04-22T05:25:00.004-07:00

Over the past several months I've been hard at work learning to develop android apps. I just published my first app on to the Google Play Store. The app is called Balance Bike: A Learning Game.

Balance Bike is an educational game for young children to learn words, letters, and numbers through touch, sound, and speaking. The app currently contains six categories: farm animals, wild animals, birds, alphabet, numbers, and colors.

Balance Bike starts up with a home screen that allows kids to pick from different categories.

Once a kid picks a category, they're presented with a wheel of pictures. Here, they can spin the wheel.

The wheel eventually stops spinning and an animal is selected. On this screen, the first sound we hear is the name of the animal. The second sound we hear is the animal's sound. Clicking on the left and right musical notes repeats the animal name and animal sound, respectively.

Underneath the picture of the animal is a third button. Pressing the microphone, the app focuses on the word, asking the child to speak what they see. At this point, speech recognition is used to see if the word is said correctly.

Tuva Embed Feature Test

2015-03-04T13:49:00.000-08:00

Testing Tuva's Dataset Embed Feature: User Dataset Embed: Partner Demo Subdomain

TuvaLabs at the TechStars+Kaplan EdTech Accelerator

2014-08-06T16:15:00.001-07:00

It's been a while since I've had time to write an update. The past month has been hectic. One piece of amazing news I'd like to share with friends and family is our acceptance into the TechStars+Kaplan EdTech Accelerator. You can read about the press release here.

We're working in their office space in New York City with eleven other amazing educational companies. The program started about a week and a half ago, and we've been learning a lot through their workshops and meetings they've planned out for us. As a team, we know our best has gotten us here, and with the feedback and criticism from the experts in this program we'll be able to take our process and skills to the next level.

I feel very fortunate to be working on new educational technologies at such a pivotal time in the history of education. Hopefully TuvaLabs will be able to create a positive and lasting impact in the analytical and critical thinking of students around the world. And in the long run, encourage more students to become data literate by engaging them with data that's from the real world.

And finally, a view from my seat:

Making Open Data Useful for Teaching and Learning

2014-07-11T07:49:00.000-07:00

TuvaLabs makes open data useful by curating it into easy to use data sets and then developing rich activities around each data set. This enables teachers to bring data-based inquiry into their classrooms. These classrooms can range from civics, health, and history to science, statistics, and economics.

The way we enable inquiry into real world data is by focusing on three areas. First, we make sure students are able to ask their own questions. Then, we provide opportunities for students to explore, visualize, and analyze real data. And finally, we empower students to communicate their own findings. This means Tuvalabs is a space where students learn from local and global data, affording them to become aware and active members of their local and global communities.

In collaboration with Teachers, we’ve discovered that third graders are learning the basics of the statistical language from data about movies. Then, there are fifth grade students creating visual and verbal arguments from data around the income inequalities between men and women. Eighth graders from New Jersey are becoming aware of their community through local data on population and energy consumption data. And one more brilliant example is of ninth grade students in the Bronx learning data literacy from their local Bronx population.

Some of these students have gotten back to us about their learning experiences. One student said, "It is challenging. But we get to learn about Gender inequality and how it is affecting us." Another commented that "this was a very interesting topic to explore because I love to go to theme parks."

Occasionally, students and teachers want to explore a topic that's not yet covered on TuvaLabs. When this happens, they request data. For example, learners requested data about the demographics of the current US Congress and about the impact of Barbie's proportions on society.

The impact we've observed both inside and outside the classroom continues to motivate us. Every teacher that's part of the this community has contributed to making TuvaLabs the way it is today.

TuvaLabs Places First at the LinkedUp Vidi Competition

2014-06-26T12:26:00.000-07:00

We went to Crete this past month to show our work at the LinkedUp Vidi Competition, which was held at the ESWC conference. We presented how TuvaLabs is making open data useful for teaching and learning. The competitors' presentations were very impressive and polished, and included Rhizi, Konnektid, DBLPXplorer, LODStories, eDL mobile app, Solvonauts, and agINFRA.

Making Open Data Useful for Teaching and Learning

Curated Data Sets around a Variety of Topics

After presenting to conference attendees, we received some great feedback and had the opportunity to connect to and build relationships with the open data community and several other startups. Several meetings included people from the Open Knowledge Foundation, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Mozilla Science Lab, software carpentry, and many more.

The Winners from the Vidi Competition

We feel very fortunate to have placed first, and are very pleased with the 3000 Euros we’ve been awarded. After the competition, the various LinkedUp successes were interviewed about their experiences while being part of the competition. Below, you can see a compiled video of these interviews. Enjoy!

Giving Human Form to Audio Visualizers, Version 1

2014-04-26T18:01:00.000-07:00

I'll upload a video of this audio visualization when I have some time. In the meantime, try the code out yourself. I'm still tweaking it to figure out what might look best.

Some requirements to run this code:
1. Download OpenCV for Processing from here: https://github.com/atduskgreg/opencv-processing/releases
2. And download and install from here: http://opencv.org/
2.b. Probably need v2.4.5 of opencv from opencv.org, but I was able to get it to work with v2.4.9

I'm also using processing 2.1.2.

And finally, copy this gist into processing:

Design and its Critics - Deyan Sudjic

2014-04-21T12:45:00.000-07:00

If you're interested in design history compressed into twenty minutes, listen to this talk. Deyan Sudjic presents the last century of design, how it's been changing, and how it's been used to attain a plethora goals from commercial, social, and technical. Deyan is the director of the Design Museum and the author of a new book, 'B is for Bauhaus.'

A Psychoanalysis Perspective on Life and Everything

2014-02-11T10:32:00.000-08:00

A great discussion between Adam Phillips, a psychoanalyst and literary figure, and Matthew Taylor, the Chief Executive of the RSA.