I was really excited about George’s milestone. I wanted to capture the achievement and turn his drawing into a creature. I found a website called, Make My Plush. They take any drawings and make stuffies. First, you send the drawing to make sure that they can make a stuffed animal out of it. Once they confirm your order and then you wait. Wait. Wait. And, then you get an email showing you how they will make the plush. Wait a little longer. And, finally, you get a shipping notice and have the bespoke stuffie in your hands.

I really love how the creature turned out. They paid attention to all of the little details and brought the drawing to life. George was thrilled with the result. His only complaint was the smile. George’s creature had a frown and the plush had a smile. George noticed this right away and we now call this thing the happy creature. This was a neat experience. My only complaint was the length of time. I am getting so used to how fast things get here after ordering. This whole process took over six weeks.

I recommend Make My Plush for all of your custom plush needs. Check out their gallery on Instagram for inspiration. You can choose the size and color options that affect the price and the reproduction. Let me know if you try this out!

The Electro-Voice RE27N/D mic needs a control interface to make it work with your PC and recording software. After checking out two different interfaces, I selected the Elgato Wave XLR. The Wave XLR amplifies the small signal of the microphone, makes it easy to mix different audio signals, and has enough boast for monitoring with headphones.

The NotHans Podcast

If you are open to a little silliness, contagious giggles, and math lessons, check out the latest episodes of The NotHans Podcast. George has been the co-host and sounds great with the new microphone. Check out the last three episodes: Episode 33: Basketball Jones, Episode 32: Happy New Year, and Episode 31: The ABC Song.

Thanks, Dad! The torch has passed.

Butterflies have recently captured George’s attention.

It was fun exploring the lifecycle of a butterfly going from eggs to a caterpillar to a pupa to finally a beautiful butterfly. I am sure there are life lessons in this metamorphosis, but that is for another day.

George learned by observation. I learned by observation. Butterflies have a unique flight path. They have had a lot of time to learn how to fly and they treat the air like water. What can we learn from butterflies? Well, to go next level, you need some butterflies, a wind tunnel, and some high-speed cameras to slow down the butterfly’s motion and see what they are doing with their wings. Researchers at Lund University did just that.

In a complex experiment, the researchers used MATLAB to calculate aerodynamic forces and analyze the butterfly kinematics. They discovered that the butterflies’ flexible wings provide the impulse and increased efficiency that results in their distinct flight pattern.

It turns out that the butterfly wing is flexible. This allows the butterfly to form a cup to create a tremendous amount of thrust. Planes, jets, and drones all have rigid wings. Understanding how butterflies fly could lead to innovations with other flying machines.

Read more about the butterfly project on MathWorks.com. Science!

Dice Game

The little game that I invented for us to play has two rules:

1. Roll a D6 – a 6-sided die
2. Yell out the results

The new game that I just invented collapsed. On the very first die roll, I yelled out, “4!” and George yelled out, “5!”. This is why game design is so hard. You can create a game with two rules and it breaks down under the slightest pressure. Imagine trying to make any game work with pages of rules.

Conventions

When I ask myself what is the result of a die roll, I interpret that to mean what symbol is on the top face of the die. This is a convention that I learned and I assume it to be true. Board game rules don’t have to say it, this is just known by everyone. Or, is it? My son hasn’t learned this convention. To him, the result is one of the sides facing him… that he can see.

Perspective

No matter what we do, no matter what we read, we have to pass it through our own understanding of the world. Our understanding of the world is our set of conventions layered on top of experiences and opinions. I am starting to appreciate that things can be true to individuals. My perspective can produce something that I believe to be true, but it does not mean that it is truth. Even with the most basic of games, it’s impossible to have absolute shared understanding. Now, imagine this with billions of people, laws of physics, laws of physics we don’t know about, politics, human nature, climate, etc. What is truth? Is it what’s true from your perspective?

I should have discovered this before. Pinterest is filled with images that purport my assertion about life. And, speaking of Pinterest. Have you been following the stock price of NYSE: PINS? Looks like something happened in early 2020.

But, it wasn’t Pinterest that gave me this revelation, it was this moment while hiking over the weekend. George and I masked up and headed to the trails. It was a balmy 15F. During the hike, I was fixated on the end of the hike. This train of thought was interrupted periodically by George’s hijinks. He grabbed handfuls of snow and tossed it around, he bounced between the edges of the trail, and he kept asking me questions about what he was seeing. He was having a blast while I was lost in thought. I was nowhere near being in the moment. When we got back to our propane heat table, George pealed off his wet gloves and held his hands close to the flame.

This is the small moment that cracked my callused mind. The look on George’s face as his hands warmed up made me think of all of the Pinterest images (which I loving refer to as adult memes). Life is made of small moments just like this. To George, this moment was all that mattered. I picked him to take him inside and he screamed like hell. He still doesn’t like to switch context. Although he may have taught me a life lesson, he’s still three after all.

I am impressed that Pinterest is not just still around, it’s thriving. We have been at home for a year and we are turning online for our comfort. I have been waiting for the pandemic to end, but I am going to try not to think of it that way anymore. I am going to dwell in the next small moment for as long as I can.

Along with the rest of the world, I have been working at home for the past couple of weeks. All of my meetings are now online/virtual ones and we use Microsoft Teams and Zoom. We also use video to better facilitate a connection and help us focus on the meeting. The camera that I have doesn’t have a light indicator showing whether it is in use. So, I put two and two together and come up with a remote controllable ‘On Air’ light for online meetings. It was the perfect project to entertain my three-year-old for a few hours. He was delighted every time the light turned on.

George and I ripped apart a Sunbeam Touch Light that I got for $1 in a surplus sale (you can use a Wi-Fi LED Strip). This light had a strip of LEDs, a controller, and a power supply. I just added an ESP8266 module and connected it to ThingSpeak using my tutorial that I published a few years ago. I wrote a little Visual Basic.NET script based on a project that I found on CodeGuru to detect whether or not the webcam was in use or not. If it’s in use, the script sends a signal to ThingSpeak to turn on the light.

Update – February 2021 – Python Script for Webcam State Detection

I have been getting requests for the code to detect my webcam usage. I did have a cobbled-together Visual Basic script that detected if my camera is in use or not and set the state of my On Air light accordingly. This approach was not very accessible, so I rewrote this in Python using OpenCV. Just run this code on a periodic basis to track the state of your webcam.

The code to track my webcam state and upload the state to ThingSpeak is now available on GitHub.

Most of the magic is here:

def returnWebcamStatus(webcamIndex):

    webcam = cv2.VideoCapture(webcamIndex, cv2.CAP_DSHOW)

    if webcam.isOpened():
        webcam.release()
        return True #Webcam not in use
    else:
        return False #Webcam in use

Update – August 2021 – No Code On-Air Light

I have been getting requests for a no-code version of my On Air light. Well, I have created a new tutorial that only requires some configuration instead of programming. This option uses a Wi-Fi LED Strip and a Stream Deck controller.

Check out the tutorial: No Code: On Air Light Controller For Live Streaming and Online Meetings.

Update – January 2023 – Easier DIY On Air Light

I got lots of comments on questions about my On Air light project. I realize that it was a little too DIY. I used parts that I had and it was not easy for others to reproduce. I just updated the project to be based on parts that you can get from Amazon or somewhere else pretty easily. I also took away the need for soldering by using a screw terminal board. I think more people will be able to build their own On Air Status Light for Teams or Zoom.

On my latest episode, I invite George to co-host with me. He was drawn to my glowing new microphone in my office. I recently bought the HyperX QuadCast to refresh my old set up. George loved the red LEDs illuminating the pop filter.

After a few minutes of making sounds and talking gibberish, I decided to record a new episode of The NotHans Podcast. George was an excellent co-host. He was rolling with the conversation and even told a joke. You have to check it out.

Subscribe to The NotHans Podcast: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS

Kanban is a method for managing knowledge work which balances demands for work with the available capacity for new work. Work items are visualized to give participants a view of progress and process, from task definition to customer delivery. Team members “pull” work as capacity permits, rather than work being “pushed” into the process when requested.

In software development, for example, Kanban provides a visual process-management system which aids decision-making about what, when and how much to produce. Although the method (inspired by the Toyota Production System and lean manufacturing) originated in software development and IT, it may be applied to any professional service whose work outcome is intangible rather than physical.

–Wikipedia

For fun, I added my baby as a task. And, tracked the sticky all the way to completion… He’s our best feature yet!