Engineer Zero

Lots of little details added. Sang is there because he will be the tour guide when the park opens. Which is still about a week away.

As I look at this thing, I wonder. That 103 chip can’t have all of its pins soldered together, that doesn’t make sense. But I’m tired of squinting at the board for today. I’m thinking it will only take a few more days to add in the details and then I can go back and tweak stuff. Then: writing the tour script.

Yes, the board has gone from green to teal. My nephew says that even teal isn’t bluish enough, while I’m thinking that teal is too bluish. A rose by any other name . . . probably wouldn’t be green or blue.

This completes the uploading of the DNA nucleobase models to Warehouse. To see it, all you have to do is go to Google 3D Warehouse and enter Thymine. I realize that Google primarily intends the Sketchup/Warehouse paradigm for architectural modeling, but it’s still pretty amazing to me that I’m the only person to model basic molecules there.

Based on the Arduino Duemilanova models I found in Google 3D Warehouse. It seems that one Arduino model is based upon another in the Warehouse in an evolutionary growth, so it’s hard to give credit for the original design. Suffice to say, I’ve had to revise and add stuff, but I didn’t start from scratch.

Anyhow, my goal is to show every single jot and tittle on the Arduino board without recourse to phototexturing. Then sometime this month I plan to scale it a thousand fold, set it on a foundation and erect observation platforms and conduct a guided tour . . . it’ll work. Trust me.

Kind of overwhelms the images in Warehouse. Have to work on that. But at least I toned it down from this:

That’s what I uploaded. This time I think it will stay. You can visit it in the 3D warehouse by clicking here.

Here is my stupid logo:

Originally, I used the Martian tripod as my logo, then I had second thoughts. What am I trying to represent with that? It didn’t seem to have anything to do with molecules, for sure.

Anyhow, this logo is just a placeholder. I’ll come up with something nicer. I’ve got ideas. I’ve always got ideas.

And my master plan to monopolize the Google 3D Warehouse ball and stick molecular model market will pick up speed now that I’m pretty sure most of the bugs of my molecular maker have been ironed out.

(Now there’s a mixed metaphor that it doesn’t pay to think about!)

A problem with putting the letters on the sides of the icosahedra (yes, that is plural for ‘icosahedron’ according to the WordPress spell checker — which by the way treats ‘WordPress’ as a typo). Where was I? Oh, yes, a problem with putting letters on the sides of the icosahedra. The 3D letters are outlined in black, and from a distance all you can see of the letters are the black outlines, and from an even greater distance all you can see of the faces are the outlines of the black letters, the color of the faces being completely crowded out.

I tried to remedy this by changing the letter color to transparent:

Then I made the letters flat and tried a different font (Calligraph421BT — did you know there was such a thing anywhere, let alone in Sketchup?). And that did look nicer:

It looks nicer still in close-up:

Oooh, this looks so pretty I could see hanging a ‘DNA Mobile’ made of atoms like this! Calligraph421BT, your existence is justified!