Star Wars AT-ST Costume Retrospective

Halloween is hands-down my favorite holiday, and this year, I wanted to do more than ever to celebrate: build the most impressive costume I could.

In recent years, I have gone big with my costumes by making use of my Poweriser spring-stilts. Characters such as a giant cyborg or a giant praying mantis were spawned merely for the fact that I am eighteen inches taller with the stilts on. Then just after last Halloween, I saw this video which flooded my mind with ideas.



A chicken-walker! I thought it would be great to take the concept of a chicken-walker costume, and combine it with the stilts. At first my plan was to simply create a generic mech, but a friend of mine suggested that it be the one from Star Wars (which she called the "Pew Pew thing"), and it was decided.

In July, started designing the costume. Using some pictures from the internet and screen grabs from "Return of the Jedi" for reference, I made an image of the re-proportioned walker, overlaid with an image of me in the stilts.



With a blueprint of sorts, I looked around the web for free CAD software to help me virtually measure the lengths and angles of the forms. I happily discovered Google SketchUp, a free 3D modeling application that gave me the tools I needed to turn this idea into something tangible.



I knew this costume would be pretty heavy investment of time and money, so before jumping in completely, I contructed a model. The proportions looked right. Apparently my roommate though the head looked like an elephant, so he drew an eye on the side.



As with my previous halloween costumes, I wanted materials which wouldn't bog me down, but were also sturdy enough to take an impact, if say I walked into a lamp post or something.



The whole thing was based on a pine frame. Once I cut all the wood to the proper length and put the major pieces together, I propped it up on my refrigerator just to see how massive this thing was going to be.



The frame of the cabin was anchored to a set of hockey pads inside. This allowed for all of the weight of the cabin to be evenly distributed across my shoulders. For the cabin siding, I made panels from masonite. The engine compartment was just a cardboard box, and the legs were filled out with polystyrene foam. When all of the pieces were made and assembled, I painted the entire thing with gesso, and used some plack painters' tape to black out the stilts.

You might also notice some wood pieces at the base of the stilts. Normally, the small footprint of the stilts requires you to constantly adjust your feet position in order to maintain balance. I added wooden "heels" to make it possible to come to rest without needing to shuffle my feet around.



After that, all that was left was paint. I used ordinary matte-finish latex house paint.



And just like that, it was all done. The day before Halloween, I brought it into work to show it off to my fellow nerd coworkers.



I made a few more modifications at work, such as cutting slots in the side panels to help me see what was going on around me. At the end of the day, I walked from West 38th St. to Union Square to see how much effort it took. The answer is a lot. I had to stop every couple of blocks to catch my breath, but I made it all the way there.





Somehow, I managed to fold it up into itself enough that I could fit the whole thing into the subway, and took it home for the night.



Finally, it was Halloween, and despite the lousy weather, I made it back out to the streets to tromp around as an AT-ST. People's reactions were wonderful, and made all of the time, energy, and money I put into the costume completely worth it. Now the question is: What am I going to be next year?

Helmet Cam + Frisbee = Hilarious

One toy I have had for a few months now is an Oregon Scientific ATC2K Helmet Cam. I have recorded many videos with it, mounting it to a bicycle and motorcycle, or just handholding it while boogie-boarding and snowboarding.

On my recent trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, my friends came up with the idea of mounting it to a frisbee. So we brainstormed, and with the help of the giant rubber-band mount that comes with the camera, we attached the camera to the top of my 175g disc.

The camera weighs a couple of pounds, so obviously we could not throw the frisbee as fast and far as when we didn't have a camera, but it worked. Here's the video.

A 3G in a 3GS World

I am certainly not the first one to blog about the iPhone 3GS or iPhone OS 3.0 Software Update. The web has been flooded with reviews and opinions of the new updates, such as my friend MarkB's. So what why not join the party and chime in with my two cents? How do I feel about the new updates? I am relieved.

Many electronics consumers dread the day that their shiny new toy becomes obsolete. It is a crappy feeling to know the gadget you paid top dollar for because of its ahead-of-the-pack features now is playing second chair to somebody else's newer gadget, purchased for probably the same price.

For Apple fanboys in particular, we usually know exactly when that is going to happen thanks to the hype surrounding events such as this year's Worldwide Developers Conference. Everyone knew based on Apple's release patterns that this year's conference would bring with it a new and improved iPhone.

And so it came: The iPhone 3GS, the newer, faster incarnation of the iPhone 3G equipped with a faster CPU, more RAM, higher network speeds, higher megapixel count and autofocus lens, better battery and a compass.

Boy, was I relieved. I thought for a minute that they were going to really update the phone. Few of you might have noticed my omission of Voice Control and Video Recording. I'll get to that in a second. It is a given that over time, it gets easier and easier to squeeze better technology into smaller packages, or in this case, an identical package, so I wasn't surprised at all that this phone is 50% faster than mine, or had more memory. The camera update would be nice for the very few macro pictures I take, but if I really need to take a nice picture, I'll use my Nikon D300. Other than that, I keep my LCD backlight at minimum to preserve battery, and carry a spare charger with me everywhere, so again, I can live without it.

Oh, and as for the compass...

Now, Video Recording and Voice Control, that is just a matter of software.

Video Recording is already available if you're willing to Jailbreak your phone, which is easier than ever to do. Apple's Iron-Fist Quality Control will prevent an any official video recording capabilities to come to the measly 400MHz-equipped iPhones, reserving it only for the robust 600-MHz phones. Look, we all know the older phones can't support 30fps 720p recording, but they can certainly support 15fps QVGA, so why not market the new one as iPhone HD, and officially endorse crappier video recording on the older phones?

Voice Control absence from the older phones is Apple being greedy, and I am sure Voice Control will find its way to the iPhone and iPhone 3G either through Apple loosening its grip, or more likely, a Jailbreak app.

And then there's iPhone OS 3.0, bringing with it some amazing new features that should have been standard since the original iPhone's release in 2007. As the software is identical across all iPhones, I am satisfied to stand behind my last-generation dinosaur of technology. After all, I was worried about a drastic update, like the rumored front-camera video call iPhone, which would take advantage of the LTE or WiMax network speeds, or one with and improved A/D audio processing chip, allowing me to record professional-quality sound right onto my phone. Thank goodness none of this happened.

Of course, it's obvious the 3Gs was made for Original iPhone owners whose contracts were due for renewal and Apple wanted to give them something more than the same phone everybody else has already had for a year. As a 3G owner, I am very happy to keep my phone for another year, at which point my AT&T contract will be due for renewal, and I can buy the top-of-the-line 2010 iPhone at the subsidized price of $300, a price I am more than willing to pay every two years to have the best phone out there.

Fake SMS Notification for iPhone

I really like toys. All kinds of toys, from Nerf guns, Rubik's Cubes, and juggling balls, to the more expensive kinds such as motorcycles, computers, sports cars, and game consoles. As a hobby, I like finding new ways to use some these things.

For example, I created this fake SMS notification for my iPhone. Having recently discovered the Screen Cap shortcut completely by accident (Sleep + Home, confirmed by the screen flashing and a shutter sound), I emailed myself a text, screen-capped the locked screen notification, and brought it into Photoshop to change the text.

And don't ask me why I picked Vanessa Hudgens. Based on those pictures that circulated a couple years ago of her in her birthday suit, she's the most likely celebrity to send me a text like that.

Anyway, this is just one example of what I do for fun, and the kind of thing you can expect to see on this blog. Looking forward to hearing your comments.