vikram ’s blog

Subway Cleaning

vikramwrites — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:52:45 +0000

MTA Board MeetingChairman: Well, thank you Stebbins for that update on tunnel safety. Now, moving on to the next part of the agenda, sanitation. Bob, take it away.

Bob: Thanks, Edgar. As you all know we’ve hired some consultants to look at the methodology behind our cleaning regemin. I’m happy to report that we’ve figured out a way to save millions. We’re getting rid of mops.

(murmurs in the crowd “rid of mops…scallywag…grumble”)

Chairman: Bob, isn’t it going to be hard to clean, without mops.

Bob: No, sir, we’ve got a new cleaning regimen that uses no mops. Also because we now need not buy any mops, we also don’t need to buy mop handles, buckets, rolling wheel bases for the buckets, and wringers.

Chairman: But Bob, how are we going to clean the floors.

Bob: Oh simple, we’re going to pour bleach onto them and wait till it dries.

Committee member: Straight from the bottle?

Bob: That’s right Harold, straight…from the bottle!

Committee member: The extra chlorine smelly kind?

Bob: The very same!

Chairman and crowd: Aaahhh!

Chairman: Bob, it’s that kind of forward thinking that this place needs. Good work!

James Nachtwey’s TED Wish

vikramwrites — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:09:09 +0000

Flickr images and $500 D-SLR’s, everyone can be a photojournalist. Newspapers and magazines run less journalism and more portraiture, relegating a lot of great photojournalism to the sidelines. Also I wonder how many people care anymore of how many more war pictures they see. James Nachtwey has a way of dealing with this problem. After winning the TED prize last October ( http://www.tedprize.org/nachtwey/), James is going to try a new way of breaking a story. He’s not fighting digital distribution, rather he’s relying on it to draw attention to something that he thinks needs attention. On October 3, he’ll release his story online. Take a look.

5 in 5 Day Five: I Scream, You Scream

vikramwrites — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 00:30:13 +0000

Today was the last day of 5 in 5. I decided to take the time today and make an EL based wall lamp. However, my best intentions were thwarted by lack of time and the right material. I would normally have persevered on, but I think that EL material is way to expensive to get into without a lot of planning. So on to the backup plan. We had originally tried to get some liquid nitrogen to do shattering photographs and to try some food hacking. As there are a lot of safety issues with liquid nitrogen we were not allowed to bring it on the floor. I decided to go ahead and make ice cream anyway. I made Honey, lavender, habanero ice cream. The ice cream was totally made from scratch, and I took a quick trip to Whole Foods for the ingredients. I found most of them there, except the honey which I bought from Tremblay Apiaries in the Union Square Greenmarket.When i got back to school I chopped the habanero and the lavender and separated the egg yolks. After that I added the rest of the ingredients about 2 cups heavy cream, 1 cup milk, and about a cup of honey to the pot with the lavender and habenero. Be careful when you’re working with the habanero as it’s very hot and the oils can stay on your skin for a long time. I cut a cross shape into the tip and put it in. Bring the mixture to a low boil and shut off. It’ll look weird, and then it’ll look good again. Then pour your mixture into an ice cream maker and follow its instructions. We used a Play’n Freeze Ice. The instructions say not to throw, but we didn’t have the instructions and played a 6 person game of hot potato. It was pretty good, but the 15 minute freeze time is a lie. For the love of milk, if you make ice cream get a cheap electric ice cream maker and go to town.All in all it was a sweet ending to 5 in 5.

Robot Chef cooking!

vikramwrites — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 05:11:40 +0000

Today Anderson Miller and I took on the task of creating a cooking show based on recipes created by Robot Chef. Robot Chef is a program that Andy wrote in our Programming A to Z class which read all the recipes from three recipe web sites. The program then computes the probablity of ingedients to appear together in recipes. For example it will look at all the recipes and then see how many times for avocados and limes appear together, and then calculate a percentage based on the total number of times that avocados appear that limes appear with them. Robot Chef uses this data to generate recipes. Sometimes the recipes are absolutley disgusting sounding…venison and sugar anyone? Sometimes the results are suprisingly good. On the final day of A to Z Andy brought in some Tequila cake and it was actually pretty great.For today’s project we made a cooking show with one of the Robot Chef recipes which we called Cashew Suprise Cake. Enjoy.Robot Chef Cooking Show from Anderson Miller on Vimeo.

5 in 5 Day Three: DIY Audiobook

vikramwrites — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 04:00:39 +0000

For today’s project i recorded an audio book. I love listening to children’s stories on audio book, and thought it would be fun to make one on my own. I recorded Beverly Cleary’s Otis Spofford. It was actually one fo the more difficult projects I’ve done. I realized that spending 7 hours in a 2 by 3 foot padded room reading into a microphone is hard work. I did enjoy it though and the final file is below as well as a link to the Google books page. Please take a look at the 5 in 5 site at: 5 in 5 Official Site Otis Spofford at Google Books My Reading

5 in 5 Day 2: Laser Activated

vikramwrites — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 03:12:14 +0000

Today for my 5 in 5 project I assembled a trigger for camera flashes that is activated by a laser and used it to take some photos of a piece of ice landing in water. I have wanted a device like this for a very long time. A laser trigger allows you to fire a camera or a flash when a object breaks the laser beam. It is essential for high speed photography, and it makes other photo tasks such as position based photography possible. I am mainly interested in it for taking still life photos. I also needed to have my unit interface with the Pocketwizard triggering system that I currently use. (more…)

5 in 5 Day One: Mating Drawings

vikramwrites — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:11:51 +0000

My project for 5-in-5 today was a system of software organisms that create drawings through behaviors. In the early spring I went to go see Casey Reas speak about his work He referenced Sol LeWitt’s instruction based art works as a source for his work. LeWitt would send parameters and instructions to galleries to create the art work themselves. (more…)

5 in 5

vikramwrites — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 17:00:13 +0000

I organized a 5 in 5 at ITP this week. The idea comes from a project that the ITP residents did earlier this year where they worked on making 7 projects in 7 days. We have about 15 people participating and the project ideas seem pretty awesome. Please keep an eye on this blog for updates and check out 5 in 5.

Autonomous Circles:Step 1

vikramwrites — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 03:03:05 +0000

I’ve finished a first step in my code for autonomous moving circles. My idea for this exploration is inspired by Casey Reas’ work (http://reas.com/) . Earlier this year I saw Casey speak, and describe his method for creating art as similar to that of Sol le Witt. I think what struck me most was his very simple approach to creating systems within which his objects work. He sets out rules and then allows his objects to play in their world. I think what fascinated me more than his original idea is the persistence that these programs can have. If you left one running for 10 years and came back it theoretically could still be running. The processing sketch below is the first step in an exploration of this method of working.www.vikramtank.com/programs/movingcircles/

Free body diagram of light stand with light

vikramwrites — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 21:06:52 +0000