Marc's Public Blog

2019/05/11 Silicon Valley Open Studios

π 2019-05-11 01:01 in Public

Jennifer reminded us of the yearly silicon valley open studio weekend, which is a nice way to see all kinds of art around the area, so we did point to point biking to check them out, which was nice both for going around the neighborhood, and checking places out.

Some of the locations were schools with art teachers, others were art studios, and others still were private residences:

those were school student projects (not for sale)

interesting art that uses google maps approximate 3D projections as source for paintings

studio in los gatos

cool animated jewelry art

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2019/05/10 Anjunabeats, Midway SF

π 2019-05-10 01:01 in Clubbing

A mere week from EDC, Anjunabeats came to San Francisco for the end of their tour.

Another day at Midway SF, this time with two rooms:

I only had enough energy for one day, and the first day was the best, with the following DJs in the main room:

Tinlicker

Grum

ALPHA 9 b2b Jason Ross

Andrew Bayer b2b Ilan Bluestone

Side room:

Qrion

Spencer Brown

Reasonable crowd:

I definitely liked the sets from Grum, and ALPHA 9 b2b Jason Ross:

Video Summary:

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2019/05/07 BBR Private Track Day at Thunderhill

π 2019-05-07 01:01 in Cars

A mere 6 days after Droid and Friends at Thunderhill, I was back for more with BBR and a small group.

The other folks had already chartered a flight from Moffett, and given that I was tired and the weather was marginal VFR, I happily joined them:

We had a handful of cars, which meant mostly clear track and little passing for me, leaving me to focus on improving my skills. Despite the day not being very warm, the track felt sticky and I didn't get that fast (I think I got as low as 1:51 (with bypass) after installing fresh tires). Still, I got to work on my technique, so it wasn't all for naught :)

On the flight back, the pilot did a quick pass by TH, which I hadn't done myself in a while:

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2019/05/05 Mountain View à la Carte Festival

π 2019-05-05 01:01 in Public

Another festival. They're not that different anymore, but still fun enough for a rew hours out:

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2019/05/03 Allen Watts at Midway SF

π 2019-05-03 01:01 in Clubbing

I'll admit that I didn't know Allen Watts, which was on me. I should have known him, and now I do :)

Eugene Luu opened for the first 2 hours with a good set. We enjoyed it:

Allen Watts took over at 23:00 for a 3H set, which was really good. It was 3 hours of goodness, and I'm very happy I got to learn about a DJ I didn't know yet and plays Trance I quite enjoy. Thank you to the folks who organized the event and got him over:

I really enjoyed what he played, here's a quick summary:

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2019/05/01 Droid and Friends, Thunderhill 5 miles

π 2019-05-01 01:01 in Cars

Another year, another set of trackdays, starting with Droid and Friends. I wasn't in the best condition that day sadly, so I tried but overall I was tired and distracted. That said, Chris, my guest for the day, didn't seem to mind, and had a good time anyway when we went for a ride:

I only got down to a meager 3:16 with fresh tires, which was 3sec slower than my previous best time, but I guess that's all I was capable of that day, so I didn't try to push too hard and just enjoyed the day the best I could. Despite those challenges, it was still fun to be back to thunderhill and see my friends there.

A few pictures:

Chris was happy with the flight

Oooops, someone misbehaved at some previous track day ;)

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2019/04/29 Palo Alto's Small Museum of American Heritage

π 2019-04-29 01:01 in Museums

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While at the Repair Café next door, I popped in this small museum, which had interesting artifacts:

agreeable to use, certain in their effects, and harmless in their action, they may be safely smoked by ladies and children

cocaine probably helps for toothaches, sure

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2019/04/29 Repair Café in Palo Alto

π 2019-04-29 01:01 in Public

After trying to fix her expresso machine (which she ended up managing in the end, and it was no small feat), Jennifer found out about repair cafés, and after going to one in Mountain View, we went to the one it was based after and that is in Palo Alto: Repair Cafe Palo Alto

They had lots of volunteers helping to try and fix a bunch of things. Some were harder than others. They were surprisingly well equipped and went from fixing weed wackers to clothes:

we tried the CD player we had and that skips sometimes. Sadly it was nothing obvious, so we didn't succeed

fans are more of my league

multiple typewriters

other volunteers helped with clothes

and of course bikes

It was nice to see all those volunteers being able to help people out.

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2019/04/29 Water Lantern Festival

π 2019-04-29 01:01 in Public

Jennifer found the water lantern festival, which is a floating version of the chinese lantern festival where flying lanterns can cause a problem in airspace with planes everywhere.
It wasn't a bad idea per se, but sadly the organizers didn't seem to have a clue about wind and picked a place with the launch area south of the lake. Unsurprisingly, everyone put their lanterns and they didn't go anyhwere. It was quite underwhelming...

Given the wind, people went to a dicy slope to try and launch from the side of the lake. It made things a little bit better, but it was still mostly against the wind:

Most lanterns were stuck at the launching point, how silly:

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2019/04/27 Comparing FastLED::NeoMatrix and SmartMatrix::GFX with PixelMatrix Aurora and Table ME Demos

π 2019-04-27 01:01 in Arduino

Comparing is a misnomer, both libraries pretty much offer the same exact APi (which is the point).

https://github.com/marcmerlin/FastLED_NeoMatrix

https://github.com/marcmerlin/SmartMatrix_GFX

pretty much work exactly the same except for how you init them, but if you use https://github.com/marcmerlin/FastLED_NeoMatrix_SmartMatrix_LEDMatrix_GFX_Demos/blob/master/neomatrix_config.h , you can just include that and your same code will work on both FastLED backed matrices and SmartMatrix backed matrices, even though they are totally different technologies.

RGBPanels do use less power even when corrected for amount of brightness generated (my estimate is at least 3 times less), they can be a lot more dense, they're cheaper, but they're a pain in the ass to drive since they require constant refreshes at high speed. That being said, as long as you don't exceed 128x64, which is more or less the practical limit on teensy 3.6 and ESP32 due to memory limits due to how SmartMatrix works (a different implementation could push things to at least 128x128 by sacrificing quality for memory use).

The demos I used for the pictures below are

Aurora: https://github.com/marcmerlin/FastLED_NeoMatrix_SmartMatrix_LEDMatrix_GFX_Demos/tree/master/GFX/Aurora

Table from Mark Estes: https://github.com/marcmerlin/FastLED_NeoMatrix_SmartMatrix_LEDMatrix_GFX_Demos/tree/master/LEDMatrix/Table_Mark_Estes

Here are some shots of Aurora in 32x32 and 32x24 with FastLED::NeoMatrix vs 64x96 with SmartMatrix: