DougRoyal's Feed

Building a Clever Home (awesome-ated by popcorn.js)

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 20:49:00 -0500

Smart homes are for people who got A's in Calculus . . . but only after they remedial math in College. I'm not building a smart home, I'm building a clever home.

Bringing Video Games to Life . . . Robotic Life

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 18:49:00 -0500

When my son was three, his grandparents gave him a Lego cargo plane. It took us about two hours to put it together. I'd hand him the piece, show him the instructions, and point to the place where the brick should go. I didn't want to put any pressure on him to finish the plane, so I would have been happy to quit whenever he wanted. But, he didn't quit. That was the first time I saw in him the same obsessive-compulsive drive that pushes me to keep working on all my random projects.

Next Challenge, a Positronic Brain

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 23:23:00 -0500

Meet Eight of Nine (EON). She takes high-definition 3D video and runs the Voyage operating system (for the record, I wanted to use the DS9 OS, but I couldn't find any Linux distros with that name). The project began when I read a Linux Journal article about Cambridge and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's autonomous submarine competition. For the sake of brevity, I'll refer to Cambridge and DARPA as "The Collective."

Can You Still Do Road Trips When You're A Parent?

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 07:53:00 -0500

I try to anticipate my children's needs and plan ahead. Meals are easy because there's a routine to them. Going on road trips with kids who aren't used to traveling is more challenging, and requires a few tricks from my super-parent handbook.

Is It Worth It? Buying Bulk at Walmart

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 13:07:21 -0500

A couple weeks ago we ran out of laundry detergent, so I made an emergency trip to Walmart -- the emergency was caused by a poopy diaper that exploded all over my kid's clothes