A. Aronsson’s WeBOLLog

At work we are supposed to have private mugs so the general ones can be used by guests. I used a blue Christmas mug at first, but now I have one which is truly mine… me! Surely nobody will mistake it for theirs!

The process to generate this mug includes an eight year old idea, sawing, video recording, LEGO and custom software.

Read on if you want the full story behind the creation of the mug(s)!

Background

In 2000 I found photos made by Andrew Davidhazy, a professor in imaging and photographic technology, but by then I didn’t know how they were made or who had made them. Six months ago or so I found the files on my computer and could via Google Image search find where they came from!

Andrew Davidhazy utilized a scrolling film with a slit that exposes a beam of light over time, creating weird photos which fascinated me; especially those of people. As I didn’t know about this technique at the time, I came up with my own way of how to create similar images.

As depicted in the crude 3D animation above (from 2000-02-25) my idea was to use a video camera to record imagery, and then I would extract a column of pixels from each frame in the video to create my images. At the time I only speculated in what kind of apparatus I would need to rotate a camera perfectly around objects (like my own head) to create unwrapping pictures, but I never got to constructing anything as I was not very resourceful back then.

The image to the left is from 2001, generated by sitting on a rotating office chair while recording with a webcam. The software used in this case was a VB application which saved columns of actual screen pixels, made by a school classmate. Not especially practical but it worked, the entire thing was experimental.

In 2003 I begun to use parts of my thought out method with a static camera which rotated to create standard panoramas in Halo, a videogame for the Xbox. To do this I had my cousin create a specialized software to process the videos after my specifications. This is the same application I used for this project, five years later.

Creation Process

Now, in 2008, the concept sparked to life in my mind again when I got the pressure on me to find a private mug to use at work, and I decided it was about time to realize the old idea of unwrapping my head. Many of the things I would need this time around were readily available, or could be acquired cheaply. Here is what I needed.

• Video-capable camera with lockable ISO/exposure setting.
• A construction that would rotate the camera around my head.
• Custom software to process the video with.

The Camera

The camera I used was my beloved Canon Ixus 75 bought in January prior to a skiing trip. It’s a cheap ultra compact camera but it’s the best video capture device I currently own, and it’s physically small enough to simplify the next step of the project. It captures a compressed video stream in 640×480 pixels at 30 frames per second, which had to make do. A feature I found after about 15 face scans was a way to lock the exposure/ISO setting during recording which generates a much better image. Too bad I didn’t find that earlier!

In accordance with my old idea of how to scan a head I decided I would create a device that carried the camera on around my head, looking inwards all the time. The easiest way to construct this was to use my old LEGO bricks.

The LEGO

First I created a vehicle with different speeds on the inner and outer wheels, which caused it to move in a circle. It ended up being way too hard to align it correctly for a perfect circle and it had to travel at a very slow speed to not vibrate or shake too noticeably.

My second concept was a whole frame that would rotate around my head. I experimented with different wheels and constructions. Wide tires would have too much sideways grip so they would only gradually follow the circular track, causing it all to wobble. I ended up using the thinnest tires I could find.

For propulsion I started using two motors facing each other on the construction, but as the motors got different speeds even though they were of the same model I used one large motor instead. I ordered the extra motor and extension cables to reach the battery pack from the LEGO store. In addition I bought additional tires off of eBay as I only had five of them from the beginning.

The final construction is supported by 16 wheels that is in contact with the surface, four of which are driven by the motor via gears, axles, screws and two differentials. The larger tires were added to counter some of the weight and to add grip. The camera hangs outside the outer supporting wheel which caused the inner to slip, causing the rig to travel outside the edge of the table.

The Table

First I got a second hand table which was one meter in diameter, sawing a hole in the center. This table was round and nice, but it could be extended; which meant the board was split in two. This caused the LEGO construction to jump as it crossed the seam to the other board. I went back to the second hand store again to find a table with a whole board. Finally I got a smaller table, square, and precisely the right size.

The Software

As I mentioned before I used the old application my cousin made for me when I created the Halo panoramas. One limitation it has is that it can only handle raw AVI files which cannot be larger than 1GB. To work around this I cropped the video to a small stripe and exported that without sound. A side benefit is that it saves disk space as well as making it lighter to work with.

The Scanning

I tried several different ways of positioning the table and myself before I got to the final scan session. This is how I ended up doing it.

• I put the table on four stools to increase the height; so I could fit a chair underneath.
• I bought a cheap lawn chair that fits under the table.
• I using my Wii Balance Board (which I don’t use very much anymore, sadly!) to gain height from the chair, as I didn’t get high enough up as it was.
• I hanged an Xbox Live Vision camera in the ceiling, hooked up to my Xbox 360 displaying a picture on the TV so I could align my head correctly.
• I used a universal remote to deactivate the screensaver on the 360 when it activated.

I began with setting the camera to video mode, macro and fixed ISO value. Then I focused it on my hand which I put where my head would be, turned on the recording and inserted it into the LEGO construction and turned on the LEGO motor. Next I climbed into the setup, which almost always resulted in a sour shoulder or other muscle pain, and tried to align my head while the LEGO traveled around the table.

For a successful capture I need to sit still for about two minutes with the same face. Your face can relax when the camera has traveled past it, but the risk is that you change your posture if you relax too much. Some of the faces were hard to keep for two minutes, as well as not blinking when the camera passed!

Other considerations where lighting, angles and distance. I noticed that I got blue strikes through some images, and that was due to my wall mounted lamps getting into the video image. As for positioning, whatever you have closer to the camera will take up less horizontal room in the generated image, so to get a result that is as proportional as possible I needed to center my head. As you can see in the collection of scans keeping your head straight is also important. When you angle the head a whole lot of distortions enter the picture. If you lean your head to the side the whole image will be heavily distorted, but that was easy to control. It was harder to remember to look straight forward, if you do not your ears will be rotated and moved, getting different proportions compared to when you keep your head level.

The Mug

After several face scanning sessions across several months I finally decided I had images I was happy with. I cut them up in Photoshop and adjusted scales so my ears would be in the right places on the mug. After that I ordered three panorama mugs from Emmagjort.se, I found their price was very acceptable and even had phone contact to arrange the details, very nice!

This concludes the eight year old idea… fantasticly relieving! Of course I have ideas of how to make a much better construction from engineered metal parts, but that is 20 years off.

My first and only MP3 player is a Creative Muvo 128MB, which has survived lots of things since about 2002. Airplane travels, rounds in the washing machine, too many bus trips… it has been very reliable, though without a display or even a shuffle feature it leaves you wishing for more.

This Tuesday I got a new MP3 (etc) player, finally. Yet again a Creative, but their Zen X-Fi 8GB. When looking for a new player I wasn’t so much browsing for MP3 players, but something that could do a little more. The Zen X-Fi can play back video and it has a very nice speaker built in, those were the feature who made me pick it. Now I have various videos I’ve made on the device as well as a bunch of Anime episodes. I’ve successfully watched two episodes so far, and it works very nicely at 2.5″ and 320×240 pixels. I love it :) But enough about the player.

I remember seeing a whole lot of the transparent monitor pictures online, very well made too, and when I discovered I can easily change the wallpaper on the player I just had to try this.

So, here it is… the translucent media player!

If I ever buy myself a laptop, I will do this for each and ever place I put it in! Well, maybe not.

Last week I was at the optician to try out one-day-contact-lenses. There, with the guidance of the professional optician, it took me an hour to insert and remove a contact lense for one of my eyes. As I am going there tomorrow again for a followup where I am supposed to wear the contact lenses when I arrive, I decided it was about time I practiced today. I’ve been postponing it as I have had a cold since the middle of last week, and it’s not advisable to use contact lenses when sick, but now I’m mostly fine.

I wasted the two first lenses I tried to insert, as it took too long, so it dried up… but on my third try, after 40 odd minutes, I got it in there! Dang, I really don’t like putting things in my eyes! Then, after finishing the right eye, I got the left lense in at the first try… I ended up mounting a mirror on top of my kitchen shelve so I could see what I did, even if I looked up. Then when putting the lens in I looked as far up as I could, and it kind of solved itself. After trying lenses I have a deep respect for those who can just slap them on and remove them in an instant… or are they just insensitive?

Then, thirty minutes later, I decided it was time to remove the contact lenses. This time around it was the complete opposite. The right eye gave me its lens almost at once, while the left eye almost had me panic. I see better on my left eye, so that lens is much thinner than the one I wore on the right eye. Which my explain why it went on easier. Now, when removing it, I had a really hard time to see where it went! At one point, I thought it had rolled up, but when I tried to grab it, it vanished! I rolled my eye about like a madman trying to find the little roll, and I thought I could feel it on top of my eyeball.

Eventually I took out my small Fenix L0D flashlight, which I carry on my keyring, to see if I could locate the thing. Then I could see a very thing outline around the eye, the lense was still on!! Whew… a few moments later and I had it out, and breathed heavily as my life was saved. I have a hard time seeing myself getting used to the horror of inserting foreign objects in my eye sockets.

Lately I’ve been really busy with a few projects which are still not public. One of them is almost good enough to post soon, planned it last Tuesday… but then I got more ideas to implement… you will see, soon! (promise!) There’s so much going on, phew.

Today I got a package I had no idea what it contained, as I have ordered quite a few things lately. To my joy it was a gym bag which I had spontanously ordered after seeing a bag in the same range on Prylfeber.se! I love it, a bit small, but I don’t things will fit… I’ll just bring a smaller towel! Oh, and if it isn’t obvious enough, I’m still fond of LEGO, even though the new Technic parts freak me out.

I ordered it directly from the LEGO shop!

Earlier I posted that I had acquired a trampoline to put in my parents garden, as I myself live in an apartment. Shortly afterward I got curious of how well it would work in water, if at all. It was quite a strange idea, but it got stuck in my head, so I had to try it out.

To make it possible to launch off of the trampoline into the water I wanted to increase the height by extending the legs. I checked if it was possible to order more leg parts, as they were stackable, but that was only possible if you actually had a broken part to replace. Then I checked the price for manufacturing extensions, which was more than half the price of a completely new trampoline! So I ended up buying a second one and used those legs for the extension.

For the trampoline not to sink in the sand on the lake bottom I prepared boards to have as feet on the legs. These were then attached with a rope to stabilize the structure somewhat.

To test the rig out I brought together a number of friends and headed out to a beach belonging to the second largest lake in the country. It was in my first week of vacation so it was cold in the water, a friend guesstimated 14°C, but it was the only weekend this summer that this amount of my friends were available!

To see the process and the end result, watch the video below! Enjoy!

The USB-FAN!

I can’t open the windows in my office and the ventilation is not adjustable.

I use the fan to cool myself down after having rode the bike to work or after I’ve been running around in the factory trying to get things to work properly. It’s priceless to be able and cool down to stop the immense sweating!… yeah!

For 69SEK (~$10) at Teknikmagasinet it’s a dirt cheap way to make my working day more comfortable!

It’s very nice now when the air here is hot and damp, very high humidity makes it heavy to breathe. The first few days after the vacation ended it poured down outside, timing!

This Thursday I finally got my NeoCube! I ordered it after seeing it online, somewhere, at April 30th. So I had waited just about 10 weeks! I’ve been plenty busy with other things in the mean time, but I was still happily excited when it arrived!

The mail arrived directly in my mailbox, all the way from the US, which was nice. I ordered the Cube-Tastic Value Pack, which at that time was $10 cheaper! The popularity and availability is reason enough to increase the price, I think, so the new price is justified.

Building with these magnetic balls sure is a new experience for me, very interesting. It took me a while to re-realize how the relationships between magnets makes them behave when arranged in a structure, but after that a whole lot of possibilities opened up in my mind.

Below is a video I compiled yesterday. I’ve been trying out a camera I borrowed at work, a Sanyo Xacti VPC HD1A. As my floor is all wooden boards the camera sways a bit when I move around, even with it mounted on a tripod. It’s extra noticable as the camera is zoomed in. I also had problems with the weird MP4 format it uses for its media, rendering errors when fading between clips and choppy playback. I ended up re-encoding the lot of them! What a hassle! Luckily, I found a neat application for doing just that!

I’ve dreamt about having a large trampoline since forever. When I was a kid my family had a tiny one, and we bounced quite a lot on it, but again, it was really tiny. I’ve seen these fairly large trampolines on several lawns for many months now, and in my head I subconsciously decided that I would someday get one of my own.

Today I was out shopping with my family, I was helping them pick up a freezer they bought online, and was going to shop around for various other things as well. As I goggled the list of offers at a cheap all around store I saw it. A 2.4m diameter trampoline for 995 SEK. That’s currently $166.5 or £85. (the US dollar is crazy cheap compared to the Swedish Crown right now, and has been for a while…)

Instant buy! I even picked up a bright red dolly to cart around the box with. Actually, I had pre-decided to get a dolly as well, ever since I carried my bike home from the post office, that really hurt my arms! This just ended up being the perfect timing!

Ah, I want to go bounce a bit more right now, thought it’s late! :3 My back will probably be a few decimeters shorter after summer.

Update: The foldable IKEA bike I mention here is not the one IKEA now sells in their stores. As I say below it was a gift to the UK IKEA employees. The bike available for purchase is most likely of higher quality, at least that was my impression when I saw it myself.

As my really old bike was, well, really old, I got a new one off of eBay about a year ago. A folding bike IKEA gave its employees in the UK for free, as a Christmas gift. It has been quite fun to ride, but the gears are so close to the ground that they collect dirt really easy. This has caused the arm that stretches the chain so it wont skip over the sprockets to stop working, making it hard to switch gears or use any power to battle uphills, as the chain will just skip around on the gears. Really annoying.

This got me, yet again, to consider a new bike. When the back tire produced large bulbous bubbles ripping through its side… there was no question about it. I got the folding bike so cheap it would be fairly pointless to repair, I’ll give it to someone who likes fixing things instead.

At the beginning of this week it finally arrived, my Electra Stream Ride Rat Rod Cruiser! Thank you so much Ridelow.co.uk! In contrast to the folding bike it has a back pedaling breaking system, internal hub gears and a wicked design! \( ^___^ )/

I had to piece it together, but it wasn’t too hard, and the gears were already calibrated, so it went fairly smoothly.

I’ve been riding it to work for a couple of days now, and after a few adjustments to the handlebar and saddle it rides like a dream. It sure is different to ride a bike that differs so much in weight, size and handling compared to my old one, but it’s a very welcome change. <3