Month: March 2014

I hate it when I’m walking home and someone starts following me around with a weak gamma emitter.
I hate it when I’m sitting in a lecture and someone just decides to force me to consume an entire bottle of vodka.
I hate it when I’m cooking and someone decides to replace my food with a large serving of red meat because they just know that it’ll bring my daily average above the recommended 70g and increase my risk of bowel cancer.

Yeah. None of those things have ever happened to me. Why? Because they’re all really stupid things which no one would ever do. But you know what does happen?

Not so long ago, I was walking to a lecture and walked past a rather slimy looking gentleman. As I passed him he exhaled – filling the air with smoke. I hate smoke.
‘Enjoy that’ his sub-70-IQ-face said to me, as I tried to hold my breath and hurry away from him.

That’s not a one-off thing; that happens several times a day in Bristol. Personally I find being in the presence of a smoker quite uncomfortable. That makes me wonder quite how anyone is able to force themself to smoke for long enough to actually develop an addiction to breathing in smoke – an activity which would usually indicate that you were about to burn to death and should probably run away. To me, it doesn’t seem dissimilar to repeatedly burning your hand for such a long time that you eventually can’t go 15 minutes without causing yourself third degree burns. Only at least that wouldn’t harm passers-by who didn’t want to fill their lungs with pollutant.

If you’re a smoker, please stop exhaling near me. You know who you are.

Upon arriving at my house for this year I found myself faced with a serious issue: the sofa covers were slightly dirty. After a lengthy adventure in IKEA (a place I’d never before visited and never plan to visit again) I returned home with pristine new sofa covers in hand. But there was a problem. You see, the new sofa covers matched the walls in colour… exactly. Now, some people might have given up, packed up and left, but not me. No.

10 meters of RGB LED strips, a few drops of solder and a number of burns to the kitchen table later and the sofas were transformed. With the sofa down-lighting allowing any of more colours than I could possibly imagine, the room was transformed from a dull white to something… Something completely different.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “But Jack, why would I ever want remote controllable RGB sofa lighting?”
Well, have you ever sat down and thought to yourself “You know, I wish my feet were just a bit more illuminated, maybe alternating between seven different colours”?
I know I have! And now that’s possible.

With the addition of a Raspberry Pi and some RF control (which I can’t take credit for) our sofas could be controlled over the internet, using bookmarklets. This opened up a whole world of new possibilities such as lighting up the stairs with a warm glow, or communicating with people outside our windows at night using Morse code.