The contest was basically to take a gift bag full of Hallmark’s products (you know, those irritating song-cards, dancing snowman snow globes, glitter, and so forth) and add/subtract anything to make a cool new product that answered one of four core questions. I lost my list of questions, but they were all pretty vague and fit within the “making moments matter” sort of mindframe one would expect.

The middle idea was the winner, although I had way, way more fun making the bone-conduction headband and dancing around to my old Mousercise LP…

FAMILY DANCE TROUPE
A customizable set of characters that fit into the “Dancing Santas” snowglobes. Customization can be cartoon-like (think the Mii characters of Nintendo’s Wii game system) and configured by the consumer via a web or in-store interface; alternately, new 3-d technology like Microsoft’s Project Natal could be used to accurately scan a person’s face and be printed out as an accurate likeness.

CHRISTMAS CONSTELLATIONS
A system for extended families to share memories. Each star in the constellation is a special Christmas ornament that has both a camera and a display. When Grandma sends you a picture or message (through an easy web interface like blogger or flickr), your ornament will glow gently to indicate that Grandma has sent you a new photo. As you’re seeing it, you can turn the ornament around, snap a picture, and send it right back to her via a local wireless link.

SECRET DANCE PARTY
Silly cartoon “ears” that children can wear at a birthday party or other special event. It’s a great party favor because it gives the kids an activity: they all put the ears on and magically can all dance in unison, even though the parents don’t hear any music! The secret is the bone-conduction speaker in the headband, which plays music inside the child’s head that is inaudible to others. The headbands will be pre-loaded with 8-10 full-length songs (the kids’ songs can have instructions, a la Mousercise, that allow them to do dance moves in sync), and the headbands can easily keep sync by only transmitting/receiving cues (ie, “play track 1″) instead of streaming audio.

I was determined not to use Powerpoint and not to have too much text in my presentation, as I find both to be deadly boring and inelegant. As a result, showing you the images I prepared for my presentation will be of limited utility without my spiel going on over it. That is, I think, how it should be: images should reinforce my talk, and depend on it, rather than the other way around. I hope to refine this presentation style/approach more, as it is one of the few things I think I might actually be able to teach/help other Labbers with…as a whole, we’re not so good at presenting our work. This is sad, because so many awesome ideas come out of the Lab, and only a few result in equally awesome prototypes; of those few, it is sad to see visitor/sponsor enthusiasm lag in the face of a bad presentation of an awesome concept-and-demo…

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A Grand Purge of Anecdotes will also be coming soon, once my EE class is under control for the week…

This time around, I’m trying to cook basically every meal I eat, and I have found this to be far more economical—especially if you stay away from grandiose attempts at steaks or other premium cuts of meat. It turns out those actually are cheaper at a restaurant, lots of the time, especially if you now have a reputation for radically undercooking meats while simultaneously somehow burning the outsides.

Unless there are strident objections in the comments, I’ll be trying to share recipes (or rather, links to recipes) on this blog, along with my notes/changes as I make them. Some quick non-main-meal tips that are working for me:

Clementines
I started buying those awesome wooden boxes of clementines when I noticed that my ma always has them around when we visit. They’re a great sweet snack that also leaves your hands smelling delicious. Don’t let people see you sniffing your hands, though, as it is in some circles considered to be untoward. I also really enjoy peeling the clementines, especially during conversation, because I can use a hilarious hunting knife given to me by my good friend Jeffrey. Nothing livens up a dull meeting like fixing yourself a nice fruit treat with a knife that nobody knew you were carrying. I am also assuming that clementines are good for you.

Cooking a Sandwich
This one is also pretty obvious and ordinary, but I really like it—if I’m at home for lunch, I’ll make two open face sandwiches layered thusly: slice of bread, very sharp cheddar cheeses, fatfree turkey slices (store brand, quite a bargain), maybe a lil more cheese if I’m really hungry, and spicy mustard.
While you’re making the sandwiches, you’re also preheating the oven to 350. By the time you’re done with the prep, put the two loaded breadslices on a pan and cook for like 15 minutes. It’s key to cook until the turkey is suffering a little bit and browning/curling at the edges, as this changes the taste and ensures the whole sandwich will be hot. When the timer dings, take the breads out (you can just use your hands, they’re not super-hot) and assemble them into one closed-face sandwich. Cut it in half so it seems like you’re in a restaurant, and eat it, mentally noting that this sandwich costs less than a dollar to make.

Now for some recent main courses and links to the real recipes:

Chili Including Bacon
This is a great one that I’ve made three or four times, once even tripling the recipe for a bunch of people. It’s really flavorful, so you can let people add their own spice if you have Sensitive guests, or you can really spice it up and then add even more spice as a garnish if you’re alone.
I’ve never used the meat they want, as it’s quite expensive. At Harlo’s recommendation, I used ground beef the first time and ground turkey the other times, and it’s always fantastic. I also left out the thyme and coriander because those are unreasonably priced where I live. To make up for this, I add a fair piece more cayenne, red pepper flakes, and chili powder and it still comes out great.
This takes a hell of a long time to make, so don’t start it when you’re already hungry. It simmers for like two hours, and the smell during those two hours is more than enough to build an appetite. It keeps forever but leftovers disappear quickly, a perfect paradox.

Southern Corn Bread With More Cheese Than Corn
Goes well with the chili mentioned above. I could not believe how easy this was to make. You can put in more whole corn (just use the whole can), and I should have put in little jalapeno bits, as it is a little bland otherwise. This isn’t the cornbread to make if you’re hoping to garnish with honey or syrup. It’s more of a savory juice-mop than a breakfast thing.

Collard Greens Any Old Way
This recipe is by no means a firm one. You can ditch up to half the ingredients. I like the apple vinegar, though, for its nice mix of sweet and sour. You can even omit the bacon if you have a little grease to get the aromatics going in the beginning. You can lose the broth, because that’s usually not around anyways. You really can’t mess this up. Use kale instead. Mix kale and greens (I find the greens are easier to trim and prep). You can have huge rough chunks of garlic if you already cut your hand once that night and don’t want to risk it again. You better leave the hotpepper flakes in there, though. They’re rad, especially with garlic (sauteed or even nearly raw) backing it up.

Carbonnade On Top Of Ordinary Pasta
You should get egg noodles for this, but don’t break the bank. This could also go well with a baguette. You can’t use angel hair or the other delicate pastas, though, because the sauce is a little watery. I bet my ma would know how to thicken it up (holler in the comments, ma), but I don’t.
I am suspicious that you need two kinds of broth here. Aren’t you already sort of making beef broth? By cooking the beef? Next time I will find out, as I resent an unnecessary plurality of ingredients. This recipe doesn’t make an incredible amount of food, so I think it’s okay to add some more meat or other stuff. I added a hell of a lot of parsnips to this and it was fantastic. Also, I used Smuttynose Winter Warmer as the beer. I would do that again. Something tangier than Guinness seems to be called for.

I dream that I am working on a problem involving actual objects I interact with and sometimes, more excitingly, I dream a couple steps ahead and later find myself in a sort of functional deja vu.

I will be working with an object and, when I look back at it, its geometric properties will have changed. For example, last night I was working with a bicycle wheel and when I looked at it again, the spokes were not radially symmetric—some spokes were connected to other places on the circumference, and some were missing altogether. I have been reading about Voronoi diagrams and this might be related.

In a really good dream, there is almost always a dog. Most recently, I was playing with a dog in a museum of wearable furniture. The dog took the form of a dog I know here in Somerville (hi, Drummer!) but its colors were the colors of my new shoes.

I am especially interested in the shapes that result from the aforementioned geometric inconsistencies. A shape revealed in a dream, like the gunner’s sight.

I used to have a recurring dream about floating through the schematics of a mechanism that produced a truly random audio signal. I would float through tree-like hierarchies and as I neared each one, I could listen in on what was playing (much like Max/MSP, although I hadn’t known about that yet). Each night that I dreamed further into the structure, it became clearer and clearer that the machine simply skittered between one hundred symbolic/significant sounds at random times and durations. I know it was one hundred sounds because the structure revealed itself to be ten trees of ten inputs each, with a randomized switch at each ten-in-one-out node. I drove myself crazy trying to figure out how the switching between signals was randomized.

I stopped dreaming about this mechanism when I finally floated near enough to a node to peek inside. It was a crystalline petri-dish, and the insides of each dish were a mess of gold foil electrical contacts and the cloudy honey you see on the sides of trees. There was a flap of gold, free to move, inside each dish whose motions were connecting the various outputs and inputs. Inside each node, a fluorescent bee was pushing the gold leaf around, this way and that, making and breaking the circuits. A real natural type of output.

Nowdays I’m working on the following: