I designed this logo for the South Florida Nom Squad, a dining and culinary-adventure club led by Samantha Calabro. Cute cartoon animals aren't really my specialty but I'm reasonably pleased with how well this manatee turned out.

I made this blinking-creature-eyes lamp as a small gift for my father, who loves to scare neigborhood children during Halloween with a heavily decorated entryway. It's suitable for hiding in foliage, under a chair or couch, in a darkened window, etc. You can make one easily if you have a laser cutter and some way of making printed circuit boards, although a cardboard box with cutout eyes and some LED strip would work just fine as a quick way to get started.

PCB design in Eagle

This design was heavily determined by parts I happened to have on hand. The LEDs are high-brightness red 5mm devices; I bought a whole sack of these once from Electronics Goldmine (they made an appeance in the Goldfinger laser among other projects). Although I could have controlled the blinking with a 555 timer or similar circuit, I had some surplus Arduino Trinkets from Adafruit, and programmability is nice to have in a project like this one.

An indoor demonstration version of the musical swings will be up for a month at Fort Lauderdale's FAT Village Projects, a gallery and event space in the FAT Village arts district. I previously gave a talk about this project at the same venue as part of their Art + Tech Incubator Lecture and Workshop Series and they were kind enough to host what I'm calling version 2 of the installation as an exhibit.

The complete installation.

Here are some old marker and pen sketches from the summer of 2011, when I was practicing at Deerfield Beach in Florida.

Saturday night's talk at The Projects of FATVillage went well. I was glad to have the opportunity to do a live demonstration of the musical swings technology. Getting it to work again, presenting it, and having stimulating interactions with people suggested many ideas for improvements to this and similar interactive musical exhibits.

Many thanks to a great audience for attending and speaking to us after the show; it's obvious that many guests were simmering with interesting ideas, of which I hope to hear more in the future. Also, my special thanks go to the following people and institutions:

• The Projects of FATVillage
• Irene Revelas, Hacklab North Boynton
• Leo Wolfe, Makerbright
• Melissa Norelli Hassan, Unity School
• Gemma Ward, Unity School
• Edutec Research Group, Citilab
• Daily Tout Les Jours