Two new items made it into my geek resume lately:

My own page on freshpatents.com, due to a recently published patent application on the desalination device I've been working on for nearly two years.

Fellow student Brandon Moore and I have been announced as finalists in this year's Collegiate Inventor's Competition, one of the fine programs offered by the National Inventor's Hall of Fame, for the same invention. Many thanks to the NIHF!

Check this space to see how I do—I'll update in a week after the competition.

UPDATE—October 27: Unfortunately, we didn't win the CIC, although simply being one of the eleven was victory enough. Many congratulations and good luck to the winners and other finalists, especially to dedicated inventor and all-around nice guy Dr. Haugland for his grand prize winning nighttime temperature prediction model.

And thanks again to the NIHF and the USPTO for so generously hosting this event, and for treating all of us humble students in a manner we are definitely NOT accustomed to—I've never been met at the airport by my own limo before!

UPDATE—November 20: Thanks are due also to the Palm Beach Post, for running a story about this project in their Monday edition today.

UPDATE—November 23: Last update—I swear I'll start a new post if anything else happens. Another one of our local newspapers, The Boca Raton News, picked up the story: "FAU grad students team up to develop low-cost desalination process".

Finally I am resisting temptation no longer. I did what I always knew I would do and opened up a Cafepress store. My first product: the Defend Lighthouse Point t-shirt!

Why “Defend Lighthouse Point”? Why the carefully rendered silhouette of an AK-47? It's partly a homage to a shirt that Adam Savage wore on Mythbusters that read “Defend Brooklyn”. It's partly a reference to tongue-in-cheek orders I gave my roommate when I was in California during our last hurricane. And partly a ha-ha-only-serious nod to the idea that maybe our little corner of suburbia is worth defending, dammit. Anyway, if you have to ask, it ain't for you!

Check this space for more exciting products allowing you too to “Live the Eiki Martinson Lifestyle”!

I finally finished my doorbell color changer, a modification to a hardware store lighted doorbell using a single RGB LED and an AVR microcontroller. I'll have to write an article about this project later. For now, take a look at the pictures. The night shots really don't do it justice; maybe I'll take some better video as soon as I can track down a tripod.

The shifting hues promise further weirdness inside—ring the bell if you dare!