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.

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:

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’)


In a helicopter over Mauna Kea in Hawaii

Iguazu Falls, Brazil

Meteor Crater in Arizona

ESO in Chile (yes, it was in Quantum of Solace)

Check out his Twitpic for more.

One of his directors, Paul Olding, is putting up some ‘behind-the-scenes’ videos from location. Have a look at Paul’s YouTube channel for more videos and his ’7 Wonders…’ webpage for more images.

Falling down in India

Health and Safety madness in Hawaii

Scuba diving

I’ll try to keep this post updated with new images and video as they come in.

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

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.

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.

The family is living from 1970 to 1999, with each day a new year. I am one of the on-camera ‘experts’ – aka the Tech Team- whose job it is to introduce bits of technology into the household at the appropriate time (ie when 50% of the country has that bit of tech). The family start out with a virtually technology-free home and every day new things are added. The 1970s is pretty sparse and the rate of new technology introduced into the home is pretty slow. They start off without central heating, have power cuts, a black-and-white telly and a Mark 2 Ford Cortina. By the 1990s, they will be getting deluged with technology – perhaps even getting one mobile phone in the morning and another by lunchtime!

I’ve enjoyed decorating my area of the Tech Team set with things from my house.

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:

Anyway, when I know when it’s coming out, you can be sure I’ll be telling everyone. In the meantime, I’m on Twitter all the time, so if you want to keep up w what I’m doing (Mom ;), then follow me there.

January

After rather unbelievably reading a Tweet from someone within my social media sphere who stated that he believed in the Mayan Prophecy (you know, the whole 2012-the-world’s-going-to-end-nonsense). I felt compelled to write a post about my take on the whole end of the world scenario.

It’s now the most popular post on my blog with an average of around 2000 visits to that page alone per week. At times it’s been as high as 15,000 per week. It’s also been the reason for some disturbed individuals sending me nasty messages because I don’t believe in their crazy fantasy world. Hey ho.

Some outtakes from Brian’s Horizon on Gravity were put up on YouTube.

I also found out that I was going to be working on the new X-Files movie. Some of my Tweets from that time (1, 2, 3, 4) are pretty obvious about that fact, but only really in retrospect…

February

February was really all about our trip to San Francisco and the TED conference where Brian spoke.

I was also working on the very fabulous film Water Lilies.

March

Brian was made Professor while we were still in San Francisco, just after his 40th birthday at the beginning of March. That was pretty cool!

My mum came to visit for a bit and during that time we went beachcombing on the Thames and found some cool stuff.

April

This was the coolest month! Right after visiting CERN with both Phil Plait and Chris Morris, I was delivered the super top secret X-Files script. I had a terrible cold and, I learned later in the year, had asthma which was making me very ill. That is my excuse for looking so utterly terrible in this video. :)

May

OK, wait, THIS was the coolest month. Apart from Brian going off to film his Horizon on Time, it included getting my hair cut and dyed like Dana Scully, then flying off to Cannes to ‘interview’ Harrison Ford and having a chat with X-Files’ producer Frank Spotnitz.

June

June was X-Files-tastic!

Excitement was definitely building for the X-Files film and I was caught up in it all. Towards the end of the month, I went to LA for the LA Film Festival to attend a special screening of a couple clips from the film, along with a Q&A with David Duchovny, Frank Spotnitz and Chris Carter.

July

X-Files! X-Files! X-Files!

The film premiered at the end of the month and Chris, Frank, David and Gillian attended the London premiere. The day after the premiere Chris and Frank did a signing at Forbidden Planet.

August

Brian and I went to SciFoo in Silicon Valley and had a fabulous holiday in LA being touristy.

September

This is where things start getting a bit weird for me as I found out I was pregnant so had a bit of a awful time over the rest of the autumn dealing with morning sickness and anxiety over scans and blood tests and the like, all the while being unable to talk about it with anyone.

September was also when CERN swtiched on. Along with all the excitement of the whole build up to it came all the nasty emails from the idiots who thought it was going to destroy the Universe and who thought that Brian was somehow the Sith Lord in charge of the destruction of the human race. All that wasn’t too entertaining. Honestly, it’s just not fun at all to be newly pregnant and then receiving emails calling the father of your unborn child the ‘Black Hand of Death’.

Brian on Newsnight the night of CERN’s switch on reminded me exactly why I love him so much.

October

The main things I was thinking of in October were morning sickness. Obama and Jonathan Ross.

I started keeping a pregnancy diary in October as I wasn’t blogging about it, but after a few entries it was pretty much just, “Nauseated. Constipated. Tired. Fat.’ so I decided to give it up. I realised that even in retrospect it would be boring.

My obsession with Obama, of course, was not unique to me. I mainly kept out of the whole election thing on my blog this time around as the Rightwing Christian Republican Dumbshit Bush-lovers (yes, for long-time readers, I mean Amy Proctor, Bull-headed Donna and the other one) caused me such grief before, during and after the last election (did you know that one of them tried to get me fired from my job on Sunshine?!), I wasn’t up for a second round. I was just hoping that they’d get their reward in November when Obama won. And they did. The twunts.

Now, Jonathan Ross.

The whole Daily Mail-fuelled madness just confirmed to me that most people are absolute illogical fucktards and that includes MANY people in positions of ‘power’ in the media. This whole episode has given me LESS hope for the human race than ever before… Thank Christ Obama changed that in November.

November

OBAMAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!

This month I was up for a new job on telly. I’ve not done any telly for a few years now, mainly because all the web producing I’ve been doing has been keeping me busy. Also because I was enjoying using my brain, being creative, being able to make decisions *myself* which is pretty much unheard of for most TV presenters.

This job, however, seemed different. Not only was it a ‘tech’ programme, but it was a retro tech programme AND it wasn’t a presenter’s role, but an on-camera expert role. So I did the meetings and the screentest and crossed my fingers that I’d get it cos it sounded like it’d be a lot of fun. I had to wait until December for a decision.

This month was also the most stressful pregnancy-wise. Along with waiting for scans and blood tests looking for chromosomal abnormalities in the baby, I also had to have blood tests for various diseases. Having an HIV test- no matter how sure you are- has this funny way of making one become highly illogical. ‘I wonder what the chances are of it turning up a decade later? Two decades later?!! Maybe it DOES and they’ve just not figured that out yet!!! Oh. God. What will I do when they tell me I’ve got HIV?! Oh. God. I’m feeling a bit ill. It’s HIV, I know it.’

Not fun.

Everyone I’ve told about my HIV test worries who has had an HIV test themselves said they went through EXACTLY the same thing. Every. Single. One. So glad to know I’m not the only lunatic… (For the record, I don’t have HIV, nor do I have Hep C or Syphilis. w00t!)

Also, this month Jonathan Ross surprised me by asking me to be his Neu Meeja advisor (or whatever). First thing I did? Got him on Twitter. He’s been Tweeting up a storm!

December

I found out I got the TV job. It’s called Electric Dreams and will be on in April on BBC4. Right before the Christmas break I did the first bit of filming and it’s been good fun.

Brian and I also found out that we’d got a book deal to write a kids’ book on Physics. So that’s going to keep us busy…

This month, generally, has been good mainly because I was finally able to announce my pregnancy. It was getting increasingly difficult for me to hide it as I was getting pretty big fairly early on. This is me a couple days ago.

The other day Brian and I went off to Llandudno in Wales to visit our friend. I got a lovely snap of Brian and Peter talking politics whilst walking along the beach…

And today, the last day of December and 2008, I’m looking forward to an exciting year ahead. I hope you all have a good year!!