What the world needs /  by brent

Guerilla Dining /  by brent

There are a few trends in the restaurant world that are really exciting me lately. As most people know opening and running a restaurant is expensive, time consuming, and often doesn't work long term. A few simpler approaches have gained traction that allow chefs and restauranteurs to test concepts and build an audience before committing to a costly physical location.

The Food Truck

The past few years in Los Angeles we've seen a total explosion in the quantity and variety of food trucks. The early success was the Kogi Taco Truck, Roy Choi's Korean inspired tacos. With the success of his truck, it was a natural step to open his own locations, Chego and Sunny Spot. There's more food trucks than can be easily listed here. A quick Google or this list on Yelp is a good start.

Pop-ups

Many pop-up locations pepper the LA landscape. These "underground restaurants" are usually invite only, or have such limited seating that you'll try for weeks to get in before actually attending. My favorite part about them is how social the experience is. Usually you're eating with 20 total strangers but the shift away from the standard restaurant environment makes it easier to socialize. Here's a list of the underground restaurants that have come across my inbox:

STEAM Carnival /  by brent

I'm thrilled to report that we've launched a high-tech carnival to inspire kids about science, technology, engineering, art, and math! It's called the STEAM Carnival and we're launching it using Kickstarter to raise initial funds and generate awareness. You can see our campaign here.

Please support our Kickstarter today and tell all your friends!

Thank you!

Update: The response has been tremendous and the press responded well too! The wonderful folks at GOOD were kind enough to publish an article here. We've also been covered in: VentureBeat, USA Today, All Things D, Time, NBC's Nightly Business Review (around minute 11:30), Techcrunch, Mashable, SingularityHub, SparkFun, Mtv, Read Write Web, SFGate, myFOXla, Huffington Post, The Next Web, IEEE Spectrum, LA Weekly, TechZulu, LA Business Journal, SoCal Tech, Geekmom, InsideHook, CNET, I Programmer, RISD News, Patch and The Real Stan Lee!

We were fortunate enough to present the carnival on stage at the 11th All Things D conference! You can see the video of our presentation here and the KatieCam post-show interview here

We just got back from Jason Calacanis' Launch Edu conference and I'm thrilled to report we won the Best Presentation award, the Audience Choice Award and (pending due diligence) Launch wants to invest! Woohoo! More details are here. EdSurge covered the event here.

Here's our intro video:

Making Furniture /  by brent

This year I wanted to learn how to weld. Just like learning to program, it helps to have a project to focus on so I found some interesting objects at scrap yards and decided to turn them into furniture.
I started with an rusted warehouse grate and some old steel bannister and made a side table. I then found an old library lamp and rewired it (complete with color-changing LED light). And when we moved into the Two Bit Circus Big Top, we found three old sections of metal fence so Dan Busby and I welded it together with angled steel legs to make a dining table. I'm picking up 300lbs in glass to cover it with tomorrow!
I'm now spending a little more time with wood and started with a simple coat rack. Now looking forward to making benches to match the dining table.
There are few things as rewarding as building with your hands! [nggallery id=29]

My Xmas List Gift ideas for kids /  by brent

Some friends asked for holiday gifts for kids, so I figured I'd post here in case others found it useful.
For the budding electronics hacker: Little Bits are a sure win. MakeyMakey is also a lot of fun allowing ordinary objects to easily be turned into inputs on your computer.
For tactile play and an open API to make your own games (in Python!), check out Sifteo
For crafty building with cardboard and other household materials use Makedo. If you need hardware with more permanence, check out the "Legos for adults" by Makeblock
For early experimenting with robots a Thymio is a good start.
For the aspiring drone operator, a Turnigy quadcopter is a solid low cost solution. But you can also print your own quadcopter chassis and then make your own quadcopter.
Other solid fun is available from the folks at Makie Lab where you can design your own doll. There's also My Robot Nation where you can design your very own toy robot, Mixee Me where you can make your own figure and Figure Prints where you can have your Minecraft designs printed.
And for more fun, go to Fat Brain Toys!

Vacationing without your favorite game /  by brent

A few months ago my good friend Ien Cheng introduced me to the card game Anomia. It quickly rocketed to one of my favorite games and became staple entertainment at our Bushnell family dinners. We recently went on a family vacation and realized at the airport that we'd forgotten to bring a copy! With no access to a replacement, we spent a few dinners creating our own second edition. We happened by a Parisian game store and found a few decks of BLANK Bicycle playing cards and a stationary store with colored permanent markers and voila! Our game was complete. 104 phrase cards and 8 wildcards. Photos below and a Google Doc of our terms. We added a new mechanic we're not certain exists in the current edition; since card phrases have varying difficulties we ensured that symbols and their wildcards matched difficulty.
If you haven't already, purchase a game of Anomia today! You won't regret it.
A huge thanks to Andrew Innes & Jody Burr for creating such a ridiculously awesome game. We love it!! [nggallery id=28]

Getting kids interested in STEM /  by brent

For the past few months I've been mentoring kids and presenting to classrooms on how fun it can be to work as an engineer. Earlier this year I took on an apprentice via the Spark program. For 10 weeks, Alex, a 13 year old from East LA, came to our shop and we programmed games together. In no time we had Pong and Breakout clones. We learned the limitations of Scratch (e.g. no programmatic creation of sprites) but it didn't matter, Scratch is an amazing tool for teaching kids how to program. Its all-in-one nature makes it easy for anyone to pickup. Next we started on PacMan. This proved much more difficult given the boundary detection and the logic of the ghosts. Alex did a great job and the whole experience taught me a lot about how to teach programming. I highly recommend this experience to any professional. Spark will hook you up with a kid who wants to go into your field and there is almost no substitute for direct mentorship.
NFTE is another great program that pairs professionals with kids wanting to start their own businesses. They provide opportunities to coach kids on business plans, present to them on steps to launch their project and many more! The time commitment is less than Spark and really great.
Tools to learn how to program MIT's Scratch: Cross platform tool that makes programming easy Codecademy: Easy to follow, online lessons PeepCode: Programming tutorial screencasts Drawbot: Mac OSX tool to to teach Python
Tools to learn electronics Modkit: A Scratch-like interface that makes it easy to program microcontrollers (specifically Arduino) LittleBits: A LEGO-like construction set to make simple electronics interactions
Resources for Robots FIRST: Middle and high school robot competitions Thymio: Small robot for teaching
Other interesting resources Institute of Play: A group dedicated to helping kids learn GameDesk: An organization using game play and game mechanics to rethink education Gamestar Mechanic: A tool that simplifies building your own games

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition /  by brent

After a decade in Los Angeles, "the industry" seems to have finally got its hooks in. Eric Gradman, Dan Busby and I were cast this year representing Syyn Labs as the new on-camera technology designers! We worked with Ty, Paige, Jillian, Ed, Johnny, Michael and the rest of the EMHE team to create custom inventions for each family. Our episodes start airing on ABC Sunday, October 16th!
Episodes to date:

Update: We got a mention in Variety! [nggallery id=27]

Google Science Fair /  by brent

Google has just launched a global science fair initiative to help encourage young kids to get involved with science and engineering. Syyn Labs spent the last few months helping to create some of the promotional materials for the campaign including a Rube Goldberg Machine made out of science projects (embedded below) and an RGM that was executed live today at the launch! It completed without a hitch so we can all rest easy now.
Tell a kid you know about the science fair! google.com/sciencefair
My contributions were the laser table, the Lego hands typing on the computer and the low voltage electronics and programming for the live machine. Thanks to Adam Sadowsky for Lego hand programming, Jeanette Weinstein for Lego finger making and Adam Croston for Lego hand enhancements.
The live event video is here.

Notes on visiting China /  by brent

I've taken a few trips to China these past few years and have some favorites and tricks to share. This post is a work in progress.
Always get the business card of your hotel. The language is difficult and worst case you can just give your taxi driver the card to get you home.
China is a place where their food is so much better than it is in the states. Almost all Chinese food in the states is Cantonese, but there are so many other styles, some of my favorites include Hunan, Szechuan, Shanxi, and Yunnan. See a more complete list on Wikipedia
The great Chinese internet firewall blocks YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and randomly other things. The firefox plugin Cocoon is a nice way around it. So is Tor but it's a little slow. Be sure to download the list of bridges ahead of time.
Bring an unlocked GSM phone. A China Mobile card will run you $15 to have a number for a year.
Find places to go on MobileNative. You can browse in English and have your destination SMS'd to your phone in Chinese.
Beijing: Best dumplings ever: Bao Yuan in Chaoyang
Fubar: speakeasy behind Stadium Dog
Middle 8th: amazing Yunnan food

The Biggest Trackball /  by brent

After unending frustration calibrating an FTIR multitouch device Eric and I decided to take a different tack for a navigation game we were building. We took his giant circus ball and mounted it on casters, then pushed an optical mouse up against the bottom of it and voila! a giant trackball. So simple, but the increased size makes navigating gigapixel images much more fun than sitting at your computer. We paired the device with a few jumbo Happ Control buttons and a large projection to let players navigate around huge images. Thanks to the folks at Gigapan for use of some of their super high quality images!YouTube video [nggallery id=26]

DieHard commercials /  by brent

The Syyn Labs team had a good time helping DieHard batteries, Young & Rubicam, James Frost & Zoo Films with their latest commercials. In one video we obliterated a battery with an elephant gun and it still started a car! In the second, we turned 24 white and black cars into a huge piano controlled by a MIDI keyboard. Gary Numan played his song Cars on it, and the whole thing was powered by a single battery! The piano is embedded below and visit YouTube for the Elephant Gun.
Update: the video was covered by NY Times, Wired, BoingBoing, Make and Gizmodo!

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ArtWalk Spring '10 /  by brent

The Spring 2010 Brewery Artwalk will be taking place in downtown Los Angeles the weekend of 4/17/10-4/18/10. Artists will have their lofts open from 11am-6pm both days. If you haven't been, the event is a blast and a fun way to see much of the eclectic offerings of the Brewery residents.
Virsix will be open to the public too, but with a much more serious purpose. Finally revealing ourselves as the Virsix Institute of Counter Espionage (V.I.C.E.) we are dedicated to neutralizing current global threats without the restrictions of government intervention. We'll be evaluating the weekend's attendees, looking for the most promising new recruits. Do you have what it takes to join our ranks? The world needs you. Visit our location to learn more.

Company Naming Resources /  by brent

Naming companies is so difficult. The number of constraints a name must satisfy only seems to grow each year. Between the dearth of available domain names, acceptability in other languages and international markets you might go into, it's surprising we don't have more names like Zzyzx.
Here are some resources to help with the process:

OK Go Rube Goldberg Music Video /  by brent

The minds (and bodies) of Syyn Labs spent the past three months building a huge, two-story Rube Goldberg machine during which a piano gets dropped and a TV is smashed with a sledge hammer. Why? It's the centerpiece for the latest music video from the band OK Go (remember... the guys who did the treadmill video). It features the song "This Too Shall Pass" and even after listening to it hundreds of times, it still sounds good!

Huge thanks to the band for this opportunity and to all the Syyn Labs and Mindshare folks that helped pull this together. Special recognition to Adam Sadowsky for orchestrating the whole thing like a pro conductor. Thanks to all the people that helped make my vision for the Legos a reality! Namely: Dylan Bushnell, Heather Knight, Liya Brook, Paul Grasshoff, Peter Svidler, Izumi Hamagaki, Wyatt Bushnell, Sam Leventer, and Mahdroo McCaleb. Hats off to the steady camera man, a major hero for his ability to capture this on film! Thanks to the magical eye of Josh Reiss for capturing photos of the whole thing too!
Updates:

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Steps to profit by /  by brent

Step 1: Pick something you like.Step 2: Think of as many ways as possible to make it better, more efficient, more durable, cheaper, longer lasting, more entertaining et cetera. Step 3: Which solution from step 2 are your skills or connections the best fit for? Step 4: Find inexpensive way to put prototype in front of potential customers. Step 5: Note feedback from step 4 and iterate. Step 6: Profit. (Step 7: Contribute.)

UCLA Hammer Museum /  by brent

Tyler Bushnell and I spent Saturday at a party at the UCLA Hammer Museum in Westwood. We were slated to bring our Laser Maze but the fire marshall thought the particulates in the fog machine would anger the smoke detectors. We fell back to bringing the party table and 3D game. Despite the setback, I must say the attendees had a ball! There were some great other pieces onsite including a not-so-subtle twist on Rodin's Thinker. [nggallery id=20]