:: gia’s blog ::

I’m starting to explore the world of soft circuits – the fusion of electronics and fabrics. The other day I got a Lilypad Protosnap development board. The Lilypad Arduino is a microcontroller designed to be sewn into clothing. I’d seen quite a few things done with the Lilypad Arduino before, but as I don’t have any real background in electronics, the Protosnap board is, apparently, a good place to start. It comes pre-’wired’ so that you don’t have to worry about the hardware whilst you are able to experiment with coding it. So far I’ve got it to blink an LED light, ‘pulse’ an LED, flash all of the LEDs in sequence and, most excitingly, play ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’. I’m having fun.

Along with the Protosnap, I also got a few Lilypad components- a coin cell battery holder, some LED ‘petals’ (I also got some “normal” LEDs), a button board to turn things on and some conductive thread.

Orignally, I discovered all of this because I was interested in the idea of making a finger on my winter gloves conductive so I don’t have to take them off when using my iPhone this winter. I started looking into where I could get conductive thread and stumbled upon this amazing world of geeky crafts.

About a month ago, I got very excited about Becky Stern’s LED shoe clips. I knew then than my sights were set far too low with the iPhone gloves. I wanted clothing that lights up…

So I found all the stuff, ordered it… and here I am…

I’ve done my very first soft circuit project. It does not involve the Lilypad Arduino. I’m still experimenting with that.

I was in M&S the other day and passed by this jumper. I was very excited because of the metal zippers. I thought I could use them as a switch. (Click to embiggen)

I’ve got a necklace I bought in Tokyo that I’ve never worn. I thought I might be able to use it somehow.

I sewed on a string of the small pearls and the small chain.

On one side, I sewed two little pads on either side of the zipper at the very top. When the zipper is fully closed, the circuit will be closed when the zip mechanism itself touches them.

I sewed the battery pack on the front. If you look at the big picture, you can see that I’ve sewn one of the positive connections down with conductive thread and run it to one of the pads next to the zipper. I’ve taken some conductive thread from one of the negative connections all the way round the back of the neck of the jumper to the other side to join up with the negative connections on the LEDs. I sewed the remaining two connectors down with normal thread.

I sewed on 5 white LED ‘petals’ in between the pearls and the chain. You can see the conductive thread- the top line is the negative connection, the bottom is the positive. I needed to keep it on top of the fabric because my skin is conductive (I am sewing on small bits of fabric over the zipper pads and anywhere else the conductive thread goes all the way through the jumper).

Notice the lights are off when the zipper is undone.

And on when it is zipped up.

I might be addicted to this already.

NOTE: If you are in North America, Lilypad stuff can be bought directly from Sparkfun and conductive thread is at Lamé Lifesaver.

It’s been ages since I’ve written anything, but, as you can imagine, George is keeping my hands full. I am on Twitter if you want to keep up with the minutiae of my life. If not, here’s George.

Electric Dreams starts on the 29th of September, 9pm on BBC4.

Here are a few photos I took during filming…

My desk (click for larger pics) with Star Wars, Mr T, Scully, Beetlejuice, Pee-Wee Herman figures, a PacMan table top game, a Little Professor and a guy made out of Lego by my son:

One of my shelves with various annuals and retro tech books:

Another shelf with a PacMan boardgame and Microserfs by Douglas Coupland:

My favourite bit of filming so far was at CERN where I interviewed Robert Cailliau about the development of the World Wide Web.

Tim Berners-Lee’s original proposal for what would become the World Wide Web:

The computer the World Wide Web was developed on:

Brian’s in the middle of filming a big new series for the BBC. I decided to do this post now to gather up the info, images and video that are trickling out on the web.

First, Brian is Twittering from everywhere he films.

He’s also taking loads of photographs. Here are just a few.

In India…

…to view the eclipse.

The Grand Canyon (or as Brian called this picture, ‘Brokeback Grand Canyon’)

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George- after my grandfather
Albert- after Brian’s grandfather
Eagle- after the first lunar lander.

If you’ve not been following me on Twitter, then you may not have seen that Brian and I had our baby at 1.20am, Tuesday the 26th. His name is George. Other names tbc.
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I’m getting very tired, finding it more difficult to move and am looking forward to the day when I once again have abominal muscles I can actually use. :) This morning I was trapped on the sofa as I was leaning back a bit and our cat, Rocky, decided to sit on my chest. I was stuck until my son rescued me by removing the cat. Can’t wait to be able to sit up properly again.

We’re all getting very excited to meet the new little guy.

I’ve not been blogging much lately as my life has gone crazy. Along with being pregnant, I’ve sold my house, am looking for a new place to rent (I have to move out by middle of Feb. gulp) and I’ve been filming a new tv programme for BBC4. Along with all of that, I’m still helping Jonathan Ross out with his website.

The tv programme I’ve been doing has been pretty fun to do. It’s by the same people who did 1900 House and 1940s House, but this time it’s effectively 1970s/80s/90s House. The working title of the programme is Electric Dreams and will be on BBC4 this spring sometime, perhaps April.
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Last year I did a run-down of my year and thought I’d do the same again this year.
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Finally, I can make this properly public now: Brian and I are having a baby.
w00t!

You know, it’s rather difficult to blog when my days are filled either with work stuff that no one else is really very interested in or private stuff that I’m not about to share with the world. I do use Twitter a lot because most of the public stuff going on in my mind/life is basically a sentence worth of information at a time… but I just wanted to say here: I’m still alive. :)

My doctor gave me an inhaler today. I’ve had a few random asthma attacks this year and though I’ve been able to get through them by remaining calm and relaxed, I was worried that if I had an asthma attack that was just slightly worse, I’d might not be able to handle it. I had one the other night at Brian’s that really wiped me out.

I met up with a friend of mine this evening who used to live in London, but moved back to Canada about 6 years ago. She said when she lived here she had asthma attacks, but hasn’t had one since she moved away. She said she thought it was the pollution. I thought it was pollution combined with growing up in another country and not having immunity to the pollens here.

It’s all a bit rubbish to be honest. Maybe I’ll have to move out of London.
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What I love about coming to conferences is that I sometimes get to meet people who have done things I love. Now, I’ve never been one to admire people from afar. I always tell them. Life’s too short not to. I have no embarrassment whatsoever in gushing to someone about their work. Sometimes I think people are a bit weirded out by it.

Last night, I was sooooo happy to be able to tell Chris Riley that I LOVED (lovedlovedloved) his film. I saw him across the room, left Brian and basically interrupted a conversation he was having (sorry) to dork out. Brian then came over and we talked The Apollo Moon Missions for ages.
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Here’s a bit of what I was up to last night.

This really is an excellent video by Lyle that truly shows the brilliance of The X-Files. This is what every week watching the X-Files felt like to me…

But, man, after all that… I wonder what Mulder and Scully are up to now…? ;)

This morning on Twitter, I started out with a conversation about a great blog post about how PR agencies don’t seem to get ‘online’, then segued into a short discussion about the differences between blogging and journalism (very basically, I think that bloggers haven’t done themselves any favours by continuing to operate without a ‘code of ethics’. Suw pointed out that the problem may simply be with *people* rather than journos or bloggers. Tom and I agreed with her. Hurrah! People are crap!). It ended with a discussion based on one sentence I wrote:

“Everyone thinks they have a right to be listened to…”

I was asked, “Doesn’t everyone have a right to be listened to?”

My answer, “Nope. Everyone has the right to SAY what they want. They don’t have the right to be listened to….There is a very, very big difference and some people don’t get it.” And then we went on for another 20 minutes trying to have a nuanced conversation two sentences at a time.

Maybe it’s an unfashionable thing to say. Maybe it doesn’t fit within a certain mindset. Maybe it’s wrong. I don’t know, but I’m going to expand my thoughts about this much more than 140 characters per post on Twitter allowed me to.

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