Point and Share

UIST 2012 Paper & Demo

Point and Share is a system that enhances participation in collocated meetings by allowing users to employ traditional media (pen and paper) to author content on a shared interactive whiteboard.    

To share their scribbles on paper with everyone in the meeting room, users point at a spot (Pic 2) on the whiteboard with their pen which then causes their scribbles (Pic 1 Fig. A) to display at their selected spot on the whiteboard (Pic 1 Fig. B). This can be done, both in real time (displaying while users scribble on paper) as well as after the fact, allowing users to write and then choose whether to share.

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Neighborhood Health Score

Project Status: Complete with working hardware and software

A multitouch table and a Google Maps application that uses the tabletop interface to present the health score for any selected point or area on the map of Austin, TX. The user interacts with the application using finger taps and touch gestures. Drawing a circle on the Google Map of Austin with one finger shows a transparent gray overlay for the selected area and displays a health score for that area. 

Holding down two fingers on the screen opens up a menu with options to conduct a ‘neighborhood search’ and ‘keyboard search.’ The selected neighborhood is highlighted on the map in a transparent red overlay. Selecting the ‘keyboard search’ option brings up a virtual keyboard. Text can be entered into the on-screen search box by tapping the keyboard keys with your finger. The user may enter a specific address or a zip code.

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Dots and Boxes Game

A simple online two-player version of the pencil and paper game Dots and Boxes. The goal was to learn how to use node.js and socket.io and the project was simply a small proof of concept. The game does not have any audio or a lobby but it works if two players can coordinate playing together over some other channel like IM, email etc. 

I will have a link to the actual game in a few days as I'm in the process of moving it off of AWS. 

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Learning Box2D

This is a small weekend project to learn the basics of Box2D. It doesn't do anything beyond being able to move objects around in space (mouse or finger) and having them collide and bounce off of each other as well as off of the walls/floor/ceiling. The goal was to make a real game using it. The two images are random finds on Google. I will upload the code to github.

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Making cupcakes

I love chocolate cake but cannot eat it because I'm allergic to gluten. I also don't want to spend the time to make a huge cake in the oven. So I started experimenting with a mug cake recipe I found online a few years ago and came up with a gluten free, sugar free chocolate cup cake recipe that I'm happy with. At the Festival of Learning at the MIT Media Lab, I ran a cupcake making workshop and since then people have been experimenting with their own recipes and it's all very exciting. For now let's see how I made the cake in the photo above. 

Before microwaving (left) and after 3 minutes in a 700W microwave, the cake looks like the picture on the right, chocolatey deliciousness ready to eat.

Flourless Sugarless Chocolate Cupcake

Yield: 1

Cook Time: 3 mins in a 700W microwave so the time will be slightly different for other microwaves.

Total Time: 5 mins

ingredients:

4 spoon almond meal

4 spoon xylitol

3 spoon oil

3 spoon milk

2 spoon cocoa powder

1 egg

2-3 drops vanilla essence (optional)

1 coffee mug

directions:

Mix all ingredients together in the coffee mug and microwave for 3 minutes.

notes:
spoon = tsp or tbsp or any other spoon as long as same spoon is used for measuring all ingredients

almond meal or any other flour or flour combination is okay too 

xylitol or sugar or any other sweetener would work fine

oil = any cooking oil like walnut, grapeseed, peanut etc. Perhaps not olive oil :)

cocoa powder = I use dark unsweetened but this depends on your taste

egg = I use a large egg

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