All posts by Lenore Edman

About Lenore Edman

Co-founder of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories.

Lemon Ginger Marmalade

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It is lemon season here yet again! Given the quantity of fruit my Meyer lemon tree produces, I have many opportunities to remake my marmalade recipes with little adjustments and changes. This time, I added ginger. Quite a bit of ginger. This jam has a bright cheerful flavor with a bit of zing to it which is perfect for the rainy weather we’ve been having.

Ingredients:

  • 8 cups (Meyer) lemon pieces
  • 1 cup lemon juice
  • 1 cup water
  • 3 Tbsp grated ginger
  • 2/3 cup ginger matchsticks
  • 6 cups sugar

First cut up the lemons into small pieces and remove any obvious seeds. After juicing lemons, we’ve found that straining it through a julep strainer holds back the seeds but allows most of the pulp through.

Our favorite tool for grating ginger is a fine microplane. For making matchsticks, a mandoline slicer makes short work of it.

Put the lemon pieces, lemon juice, water, grated ginger, and ginger matchsticks in a pot and simmer until the lemons start to soften. Add the sugar. Stir regularly and cook to the desired consistency. To test consistency, put a spoonful on a plate in the fridge. If it’s too runny after cooling for a few minutes, keep simmering and test again after a few minutes.

Makes about four pints. If you want to can it for longer storage, Ball has a nice introduction to canning on their website.

Other fruit preserves from the Play with your food archives:

This entry was posted in EMSL Projects, Play with your food and tagged . Bookmark the Permalink.

Tap List with AxiDraw

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The folks at Sac City Brews use an AxiDraw to create their tap list. The AxiDraw plots out the beer name, info and logo onto a piece of acrylic which gets mounted in the tap list above the bar.

Best of all, they’ve mounted the AxiDraw in plain view, so patrons can see it getting ready for the next beer to go on tap. (You can see video of it in action in their Yelp pictures.)

If you’re in Sacramento and are looking to try out a new tap house, check them out. Thank you to Todd for sending us the pictures!

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Presidents Day @ The Tech

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On Monday, February 19, we’ll be celebrating Presidents Day at The Tech Museum in San Jose.

Spend your Presidents Day with us! We’re bringing you even more hands-on science fun than usual. You’ll build straw rockets and design colorful climbing robots. We’re also teaming up with Kickstarter to give you a sneak peek at some new tech.

The hours are 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. and we’ll be bringing the MOnSter 6502 and demonstrating how microprocessors work with our giant version of the classic MOS 6502.

This entry was posted in Education, Electronics, Field Trips, Vintage Technology and tagged . Bookmark the Permalink.

Spaceship Cockpit with a Larson Scanner

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Larson Scanner in panel with lights going back and forth

Lee at Sawdust and Solder is building a kids spaceship cockpit and used a Larson Scanner for one panel.

I wanted to spread out the LEDs over a large arc to simulate the sweep of a radar screen. The idea was to make it a scanner to look for other ships, class-M planets, or whatever is required. So I decided to mount the LEDs on the acrylic panel and wire them back to the board. I also decided to use my own switches mounted to the panel rather than the ones supplied with the kit. I used my Shapeoko CNC to cut out the acrylic panel.

Back of panel assembled with Kitt

After I painted and weathered the acrylic panel, I engraved the text (again, with the CNC and a v-carving bit) and then assembled everything.

CNC carved and weathered panel

There’s a ton of documentation and some good tips in the post. Check out the other parts of the cockpit project Lee has posted, too!

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MOnSter 6502 and Digi-Comp II at Vintage Computer Festival PNW

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We’re bringing the MOnSter 6502 and the Digi-Comp II to the Vintage Computer Festival Pacific Northwest February 10-11 at the Living Computers: Museum+Labs in Seattle, Washington.

Living Computers: Museum+Labs is an incredible museum! Bring your camera, bring your children, and enjoy all that LC:ML and VCF have to offer.

Check out the exhibitor list and the speaker lineup for more information.

This entry was posted in Field Trips, General News, Vintage Technology. Bookmark the Permalink.

AxiDraw, JavaScript, and Generative Art

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Matt DesLauriers published a two-part blog post, Pen Plotter Art & Algorithms exploring his JavaScript workflow with AxiDraw and generative art.

Unlike a typical printer, a plotter produces prints with a strangely human quality: occasional imperfections arise as the pen catches an edge or momentarily dries up, and the quality of the ink has the subtle texture and emboss that you normally only see in an original drawing.

He has also posted his source code on github for the articles.

Part 1 covers getting started and explores Delaunay triangulation. Part 2 delves deeper into developing algorithms.

This entry was posted in Art, CNC, Software and tagged . Bookmark the Permalink.

Plotter Portraits

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Plotter art portrait drawn by Jojo the robot

A couple of creative artists, Makio&Floz, are offering custom plotted portraits, drawn by their AxiDraw, playfully named Jojo the robot.

Makio&Floz is a duo working on digital based projects. Without limiting themselves to a virtual space or a physical one, their goal is to explore design and generative art using code as a pencil.

You can upload a photo, preview the “Plottrait”, and order your own custom generative art piece.

Plotter portrait in progress

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Callie’s Crown

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Callie's Crown

Last year while attending FIRST robotics competitions with the Firebots, I had the privilege of serving as a judge at both the Central Valley Regional and the Sacramento Regional. Judging gives an opportunity to get to know the folks involved in the competition, whether they’re students, mentors, or other volunteers like you. I’ve judged and volunteered at a few events now, and one of the great things to see is the way that the community builds and nurtures itself.

Neopixel Tiara by Callie

One of the students I met in past years, Callie, had graduated from her team, but keeps coming back as a volunteer. Callie was refereeing at both events, and shines brightly as a role model. Literally. She built an LED tiara and programmed it to light in the event colors of red, white, and blue.

Neopixel Tiara by Callie

She let me take a few pictures of it. It is made with Adafruit Flora Neopixels, a Gemma controller and a small LiPo battery.

Callie and her crown

She’s a student at UC Davis, and is a truly wonderful role model for the high school students at the events. While you don’t necessarily need an LED tiara to shine as a role model, Adafruit does have a tutorial so that you can make one, too.

This entry was posted in Electronics, Engineering, Microcontrollers, Robotics. Bookmark the Permalink.

Using the WaterColorBot to teach programming

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Water color painting titled Ocean Woman
JR has been volunteering in a high school programming class and wrote up a thoughtful post about his experiences using the WaterColorBot in the classroom. He wrote a Python library that allows users to directly control a WaterColorBot by writing Python code.

To be honest, this library is a pretty insane way to control the bot. It’s needlessly low-level: you’re manually controlling the brush’s position, you’ve got to remember to wash and re-ink the brush every so often, etc. If your main goal is to just get the bot to paint a pretty picture, there are lots of better ways to go about it.

As a teaching aid, though, it’s been a total success, because it lets students flex their burgeoning Python skills and actually make a real thing in the process! We’ve been blown away by the stuff our students have created.

He has also documented and shared his code on github.

This entry was posted in Art, CNC, Electronics, Software, WaterColorBot. Bookmark the Permalink.

AxiDraw on Stage

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In unusual uses for our drawing machines, AxiDraw is playing the role of the master of ceremony in Joël Maillard’s play “Last sheet (after the big lack)”, a production about the robotic future being put on by Theater Marie in Switzerland.

This entry was posted in Art, CNC, Robotics. Bookmark the Permalink.