ALL ART BURNS

One of the things the docs warned me about in rehab was that post bonking my head I might perceive reality a bit differently than before. I’ve noticed a few minor kinetic bits here and there, but they’re mostly related to two weeks of being in bed and losing some of my muscles. (I can play catch and walk backwards already, not sure I could do that before the fall…)

However, after bonking my head in the basement I also found the latest Jameco catalog, and something about it just isn’t right.

I had an unexpected health issue pop up that put me in the hospital for a couple of weeks. I took a lot of paper notes and am trying to get them all into email/blog posts.

sigh.

I’ve started working on a taxonomy of feedback for physical computing. I know, “aren’t there enough taxonomies already”? Well, yes, so what’s one more… It’s not so much that there’s something wrong with the ones I’ve found so far, they just tend to be either narrowly focused — task focused VR or haptics — or are behind a paywall and not easy to share with others.

The goal here is to chart out all the possibilities in an attempt to get people thinking about tactile/haptic feedback from some new angles. Honestly, if I see one more tactor-anything I’m going to hit with a hammer. Enough with the pager motors already! We have 5 senses (arguably 20-something), let’s use more of them.

Starting out, I’m using a simple tree: person -> body part -> sense

person->finger->pressure (sensitive)
person->finger->temperature (sensitive)
person->arm->elbow->temperature (normal)
person->leg->foot->sole->pressure (weight)

So, two questions:

1) Has someone already done a good job of this and I simply haven’t found it yet?

2) Is there a preferred format for this sort of thing that’s easy to mail around and text edit?

(p.s. Yes it’s arguably a folk taxonomy but I’m in no mood for pedantry.)

Awhile back I made a simple stand for the NookColor (that I posted to thingiverse) and sometime in the past few months I apparently lost it, as I can’t find it now.

I discovered this while getting ready to assemble my Mk.7 Stepstruder and realized I could print another pair out faster than I could dig through the entire house looking for the first set I printed.

Which makes me wonder — why can’t I do this when I can’t find the cap for my pen or some random generic plastic part for a battery pack? If it’s easier to print one out than find it, what happens when I find the one that I lost? Toss the one I printed in the Imaginary ABS Recycling Bin?

Slowly catching up on all the blogging stuff I ignored while building a lasersaur and doing Stuff That Pays the Bills.

In 15 words or less, complete this sentence: “I want to be a designer because…”

“they solve problems, and I want to teach other people how to solve their problems.”