Edward L. Platt

Here's an outline from my Penguicon 2013 panel "Seltzer CRM."

Here's an outline from my Penguicon 2013 panel "Voip, SMS, and MMS."

While I was in Michigan over the past week, I got to play with i3 Detroit's new laser cutter (affectionately known as "Bumblebee"). When my friend Roger showed me how to use it, he mentioned that the laser cuts away part of the material, so the finished part will be slightly smaller than it is in the file. This lost material is called the "kerf" of the laser. To complicate matters, the size of the kerf depends on the material being used, and the power settings of the laser.

TL;DR: Inclusion and diversity need to become core hackerspace values. When our spaces lack diversity, we should accept responsibility and take action, not make excuses. A little effort can go a long way.

For Maker Faire Detroit this year, I collaborated with Matt Oehrlein to build MindFlame, a mind-controlled flame effect game.

Here's yet another geometric math/art/code thing. It's a javascript-based Mystic Rose Generator. What's a mystic rose? Draw a circle with n evenly spaced points on it and draw a line connecting each point to all the others.

In order to stop losing keys off my carabiner when I unclipped it from my belt, I modded it with some heat shrink tubing. The process is documented on this instructable

I wanted to do something interactive for Maker Faire last year. I had been drawing my PenFlakes, and thought it would be cool if people could design their own and print them out. So I created FlakePad, a javascript/HTML5 web app that enforces the basic symmetry of a snowflake, and provides a hexagonal grid to work off of.

For one year, starting on May 5, 2011, I sat down with a pen and paper every single day and drew a black-and-white geometric design with sixfold dihedral symmetry, AKA a snowflake. The finished designs can be seen at http://penflakes.com.

I gave a talk on sleep and how to hack your sleep habits at Penguicon 2012. Here's a PDF of the talk outline: Sleep Hacks.pdf.