The Abstraction Rises
In the time it takes to get an undergraduate degree, Large Language Models (LLMs) have evolved from delivering realistic chat responses, to autonomously coordinating and completing tasks at the scale...
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Building a Robotic Jeff Probst
This past year, I found myself helping to organize a Survivor weekend, with some pretty tricky advanced robotic needs. I was pretty sure it could all be done, but had...
Gaggia Classic Pro 2019 Leak Repair
I have a Gaggia Classic Pro 2019 Espresso machine. It's a great espresso machine, with a capable boiler and steam wand. It's also super modifiable, with a healthy Arduino community....
When is it Okay to use your Smartphone?
If you are a Millennial, I bet you had front row seats to a really interesting turning point in the world's relationship to technology. Take yourself back to an innocent...
Turning a Hot Air Popcorn Popper into a temperature controlled Coffee Roaster
I love coffee, and I love making things. So I'm surprised this project took me so long, but thankfully I've finally got around to building my own coffee roaster. All...
Why I Quit Facebook
Disclosure: I work as a Software Development Engineer for Amazon (Alexa). I also exist as a living human person outside of my job. The views and opinions in this post...
How To Hack Alexa (Echo Dot) into Big Mouth Billy Bass
Alexa is fun and all, but combining her with animatronics such as the Big Mouth Billy Bass creates a much larger and weirder personality! In this post I'll walk you...
Caesar's Cipher in Python (AVW ZLJYLA!)
Aol Ffily-Vtlsslaal Growing up I was always fascinated by hidden messages, secret codes, ancient languages, and all manner of disguised communication. As I started learning math and computer science, that...
Glass vs Reflective Film Smart Mirror Showdown
After upgrading my Smart Mirror from a reflective film mirror to a glass two way mirror, I thought it would be interesting to attempt a (semi) scientific comparison between the...
Laser Cut Cutlery Drawer
I recently joined Toronto's SteamLabs, and got access to a laser cutter for the first time. Laser cutters are incredible machines which use a freakin' laser to carve or etch...
Fire From Water
This is a project I've had on the backburner for almost exactly 1 calendar year. The seed was planted when I toured the Harry Potter Studios last year and saw...
Haunted Home Automation
Halloween is one of my favourite holidays of the year. One reason for this is that it's totally optional and low stress. People can get exactly as in to it...
Automated Plant Watering with a Raspberry Pi
This post starts with two facts: 1\. I have a penchant for killing plants. 2\. People in Holland grow things really well indoors. After reading about how well things can...
Am I Hearing this Right?
The Lyrics Repetition Analyzer I have just returned from a two week vacation, which contained a sizeable amount of road tripping. And with every great road trip comes great tunes!...
Detecting Reddit Vote Manipulation
I'll start this post with a disclaimer. This project has not produced conclusive results. But I'm optimistic! In fact, I've got a couple hurdles that maybe some of the people...
A Visit to eSight
After working on the All-Seeing Pi, a series of events unfolded such that Dan and I were put in contact with a company called eSight. The founder of eSight had...
The All-Seeing Pi
This post is a about vision enhancement platform called The All-Seeing Pi that I have been working on with my friend Dan, who is blind. People who are blind rarely...
Video Tutorial: Astrophotography Barn Door Tracker
This is simply a video overview of my previous post on astrophotography barn door trackers. After lots of questions about how to use it, I thought a video might come...
N-Body Orbit Simulation with Runge-Kutta
In a previous post I introduced a simple orbital simulation program written in python. In that post we simulated orbits by simply taking the location, and velocities of a set...
Launch a Script Using Alexa Voice Commands
In a previous post, I showed how you can build a smart mirror with an Alexa voice assistant on board. The MagicMirror software and Alexa voice assistant were both hosted...
DIY Selfie Stick
This is a fun and very easy project I came up with while trying to build a wireless shutter for an iPhone. I knew selfie sticks could trigger your camera...
Markov Chains: The Imitation Game
In this post we're going to build a Markov Chain to generate some realistic sounding sentences impersonating a source text. This is one of my favourite computer science examples because...
DIY Smart Mirror ft. Alexa
Materials 1. Computer Monitor. Buy used and look for cable inputs that point down or sideways instead of straight out. 22" recommended (I used Acer AL2216 ) 2. Video cable....
From the Vault: PICHEC Raspberry Pi Cluster
I want to document this project, as it is one of my favourite projects to date. This took place about 4 years ago while I was working at the Irish...
Raspberry Pi Bot Server
My trusty RPi3 twitter bot server "starkiller". So let's say you've got a twitter bot that you want running 24/7, but you don't want it running on your personal system....
DIY Alexa Raspberry Pi Voice Assistant
Amazon did something really cool. They made their Alexa voice assistant code open source and cross platform. That means instead of buying their Amazon Echo to get a home assistant,...
Intro to Python: Hello World! (Part 1 /2)
Many of the projects on this site use a programming language called python. Python is a great language for beginners, because it is designed to be very readable, but it's...
Intro to Python: Containers, Functions, and Loops (Part 2 /2)
This is the second post in a series. If you're just getting started, see Part 1. In the previous post, you got python installed, and ran a simple program. In...
Python N-body Orbit Simulation
Do you ever find yourself thinking "I wish I could do more recreational physics"? If so, today is your lucky day! We're going simulate our very own solar system. At...
From the Vault: Arduino Night Writer.
Night Writer About four years ago, I invited some friends over to try to turn a remote control car into something programmable. We had some trouble finding supplies though, so...
Reddit Data Mining with Python: Are Canadians Really Sorry?
Internationally, Canadians have a reputation for being a sorry lot. In fact, we've even passed a law called "The Apology Act" stating that saying "sorry" does not count as an...
Turbo Press - The Aeropress Pour Over
Most of the projects on this site are created with a cup of coffee immediately in reach, and my favourite way to make coffee is with an Aeropress. This device...
Simple Python Twitter Bot
Twitter Bots Twitter has some amazing bot personalities; from celebrity impersonators, to genuinely useful automated announcements. It is also probably the first place anyone was exposed to bots and interacted...
Astrophotography Manual Barn Door Tracker
Motivation After seeing some beautiful photos of the milky way, I wanted to step up my astrophotography game a little bit. In astrophotography, you are limited to shutter speed =...
Vice City: Python Automated Sports Betting
Automated Sports Betting Everyone knows gambling is a great way to make money (/s). I myself formed this conclusion after hearing bookies will sometimes pay out before an event even...
Wanderers
One of the coolest mix of special effects and real images I've ever seen. Simply stunning. Wanderers - a short film by Erik Wernquist from Erik Wernquist on Vimeo.
WRT54GL TomatoUSB Overlock Private Internet Access VPN
I got a VPN service through "Private Internet Access" and wanted to setup a router to connect to this. I did a lot of googling for similar problems, so I...
Stars and Links
This is an archived blog post from 2009, and was possibly my first attempt at astrophotography. On Nov. 17th there was a really cool meteor shower, so me and a...