Trimming from the liner notes

My band released a demo tape last night of some songs we have been working on over the last year. We're pretty happy with how it ended up and it was a collective effort when we found that our schedules lined up. You can find it on bandcamp, soundcloud, youtube, etc. Some songs are explicit in nature and the lyrics were, in general, a group effort. Mostly an indie rock sound.
https://freddesk.bandcamp.com/

Radiation Worker Protections Training

 Every year, they radiation protection officers at the MIT Nuclear Reactor Lab go over the proper protection clothing necessary to deal with contamination concerns. So, we all have to put on a good face and don the proper PPE. It makes for a decent photo op.

Summer Gig over at CSAIL

Why was Hadrian biting into the roll, why was Hector holding a cord, why was I sweating so much, why was Jonathan just happy to be there. I am not sure what we did then, but we made some music at the Stata Amphitheater on MIT Campus. Our "demo tape" is coming out later this month, assuming Hector finishes some acoustic guitar stuff and Jonathan has time for bass parts on a few songs.

Pictures taken last Friday about 6pm.

Laser Projector Tests at tEp for Festival

Last evening, I presented my laser projector project at the tEp fraternity art festival. I found it fun talking to some folks about their interests in light show esc creations. I met a coworker of Fred Fennings, who created a company that sold the laser projectors for the Olympics in the 1980's. That was neato.

Hacked into Speed Controller for Utility Cart

 Over the last week, my workplace had 'Hackweek' where teams of the office banded together to work on whatever wild ideas they had in mind. I found out how the speed controller transmitted speed settings to the transmission, through an analog voltage off from a potentiometer. Then, we simulated this speed signal through a PWM signal from a Raspberry Pi.

It was a fun week and I look forward to participating in the HackMIT 2019 hackathon.

Some more night photography

Two nights back, I travelled northward to take some more photos. The photo on the left is not as well defined because the exposure was seeing a nearby campfire a bit. You can see the effect of this a bit more in the photo below were the edges of the sand are turned orange by a 30 second exposure of the beach facing eastward. 

Down with Microwaves, Up with Projectors

Recently, a friend of mine was interested in doing some power electronics and another friend wanted to learn more about switches/sensors. So, we broke open a microwave in order to understand a bit of both. We are looking to use a microwave oven transformer to power an induction heater coil (potentially) and looking at the switches to trigger (via N-channel fets) with sensor inputs. We'll see who gets shocked first... More to come... Also, mounted a projector on the ceiling.