Josh On Design

I'm working on a few submissions for OSCON, due in two days. I've got lots of ideas, but I don't know which ones to submit. Take a look at these and tweet me with your favorite. If you can't make it to OSCON I'll post the presentations and notes here for all to read.

Thx, Josh

Augmenting Human Cognition

In a hundred years we will have new bigger problems. We will need new, more productive brains to solve these problems. We need to raise the collective world IQ by at least 40 points. This can only be done by improving the human computer interface, as well as improving physical health and concentration. This session will examine what factors affect the quality and speed of human cognition and productivity; then suggest tools, both historic and futuristic, to improve our brains. The tools are jointly health related: disease, sleep, nutrition, and light; digital: creative tools, AI agents, high speed communication; and also physical augmentation: Google Glass, smart drugs, and additional cybernetic senses.

Awesome 3D Printing Tricks

The dream of 3D printing is for the user to download a design, hit print, and 30 minutes later a model pops out. What’s the fun in that? 3D printers are great because each print can be different. Let’s hack them. This session will show a few ‘unorthodox’ 3D printing techniques including mixing colors, doping with magnets and wires, freakish hybrid designs, and mason jars. Lots of mason jars.

The techniques will be demonstrated using the open source Printrbot Simple, though they are applicable to any filament based printer. No coding skills or previous experience with 3D printers is required, though some familiarity with the topic will help.

Cheap Data Dashboards with Node, Amino and the Raspberry PI

Thanks to the Raspberry Pi and cheap HDMI TV sets, you can build a nice data dashboard for your office or workplace for just a few hundred dollars. Though cheap, the Raspberry PI has a surprisingly powerful GPU. The key is Amino, an open source NodeJS library for hardware accelerated graphics. This session will show you how to build simple graphics with Amino, then build a few realtime data dashboards of Twitter feeds, continuous build servers, and RSS feeds; complete with gratuitous particle effects.

HTML Canvas Deep Dive 2014

Behind plain images, HTML Canvas is the number one technology for building graphics in web content. In previous years we have focused on 3D or games. This year we will tackle a more useful topic: data visualization. Raw data is almost useless. Data only becomes meaningful when visualized in ways that humans can understand. In this three hour workshop we will cover everything needed to draw and animate data in interesting ways. The workshop will be divided into sections cover both the basics and techniques specific to finding, parsing, and visualizing public data sets.

The first half of the workshop will cover the basics of HTML canvas, where it fits in with other graphics technologies, and how to draw basic graphics on screen. The second half will cover how to find, parse, and visualize a variety of public data sets. If time permits we will examine a few open source libraries designed specifically for data visualization. All topics we don’t have time to cover will be available in a free ebook to read.

Bluetooth Low Energy: State of the Union

In 2013 Bluetooth Low Energy, BLE, was difficult to work with. APIs were rare and buggy. Hackable shields were hard to find. Smartphones didn’t support it if they weren’t made by Apple, and even then it was limited. What a difference a year makes. Now in 2014 you can easily add BLE support to any Arduino, Raspberry PI, or other embedded system. Every major smartphone OS supports BLE and the APIs are finally stable. There are even special versions of Arduino built entirely around wiring sensors together with BLE. This session will introduce Bluetooth Low Energy, explain where it fits in the spectrum of wireless technologies, then dive into the many options today’s hackers have to add BLE to their own projects. Finally, we will assemble a simple smart watch on stage with open source components.