"Almost Anything"

Thursday

Today I went with Mary over to her friend Sparky's place for game night.  We played a game that involved, ... wait for it ... counting beans!  It's called Bohnanza (the name is German) apparently a play on the german words for 'bean' and 'bonanza'.  It was a close match, with a final score of 21 to 22 to 23 to 24.  I placed third, Sparky was second, and Mary was the night's big winner.  It seems fitting that she should win though, seeing as she won't get too many chances to win game night for the next five weeks.  She is headed out to Washington to take a class and visit with family.

Sparky really seemed like an interesting character.  After a computer science undergrad at Carnegie Mellon and graduate work at MIT, he is now employed in a small freelance company by night, and by Harmonics (the makers of the wildly popular Rock Band series) by day.  He showed me some photos and videos from one of his projects, which was to design the intermission antics for a huge fountain display at a brand new mall.  Every hour the fountain puts on a ten minute show.  The show pulls out all the stops, using an 8x8 grid of 20 foot jets that can be lit with any color, several 50 foot jets, a few arching fountains, a rain curtain, fog machines, colored spotlights, and background music.  His company's job was to design the fountain's behavior between shows.  They decided to make it interactive.  They installed motion sensing hardware, and at certain times, the fountain will play different interactive games with the audience.  If only a few people are around, the jets nearest you might shoot up as you walk around.  If a few more people are around, the colored spotlights may turn on, and the fountain will make multi-colored displays corresponding in hue and size with the crowds.  If many people are around, the outer rim will light up like a roulette wheel, and after settling on someone, the fountain will give a reward, the elaborateness of which depends on the vigor of the dancing.  It really seemed like a fun project to be involved in.  While at MIT, he took a class called 'How To Make (Almost) Anything', which included machining, circuitry design and construction, microprocessor programming, and use of a 3-D printer.  He had a beautiful rainbow cube made up of 4x4x4 smaller cubes that were attached together by rods.  It seems that MIT's definition of '(almost) anything' must have a clause about computers.  Not too surprising for MIT.

The Fountain:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPsZ1bFRwMM