Posts

Showing posts from June, 2014

The original Super Mario Bros Theme... for Bass Drum!

Image
Back in high school, marching band took up even more time than I spent on homework in any given week. Being a member of the drumline added yet another level of demands and responsibility -- but that's all part of what it takes to play on a line that, if memory serves me correctly, would have beaten the University of North Texas' drumline at PASIC's drumline competition in 2002 had we not been penalized for crossing the physical boundary lines of the competition at some point.  (Nevertheless, we still won among high schools.)  Even though it has been almost 10 years since I graduated high school, their drumline is still kicking butt and constantly taking top honors at every contest they enter. In middle school, I discovered I had the ability to play along with songs by ear as long as I heard them emough times and knew how they went.  In 9th grade, the realization that I had perfect (or really darn good relative) pitch always fascinated the other band members; I was often t

Teaching Arduino to the lil' ones

Image
Maybe you've figured out by now that I like to make blog posts on Thursdays.  I'll skip a week or two here & there if I don't have new content or anything prepared, but last Thursday, I simply forgot to post some of my "canned content" due to sheer exhaustion from a week culminating with teaching Arduino to a group of fourth-graders! Making a Difference You never know what opportunities will knock on your doorstep from demonstrating at various events around town, and of course, simply showing up to meet people could lead to that million-dollar introduction.  As such, we were invited to present LEDgoes at the Frisco Mini Maker Faire back in April, and were busy showing off this: The maximum-length LEDgoes marquee, 64 panels, 8 feet long! Area educators were on the prowl looking for fun things to engage their students, and one of them just happened to wander by our booth and inquire into the details of our project.  We mentioned the boards are base