Halloween on Insignificant Bits

Arduino pumpkin lights

Mon, 02 Nov 2015 14:05:03 +0000

Lacking creativity this year, I kind of phoned in the pumpkin carving. We went with regular old triangle-eyed Jack-o-lanterns. It turned out this suited Alex fine: he has decided lately that a certain level of traditionalism is called for. Watching keenly as I cut away bits of pumpkin, he was quick to point out whenever I was doing it the wrong way.

Anyhow, not wanting Halloween to pass buy without doing something new, I decided I’d write a pumpkin light control sketch for Arduino. I have the original board with the Atmega8, and the last time I touched it, the SDK was arduino-0011, which was released about seven years, three domiciles, and one country ago. Since then, I’m happy to see that arduino-mk landed in Debian, and the SDK hasn’t changed APIs in any noticeable way, so it was easy to get back up and running.

Halloween, 2014 ed.

Wed, 05 Nov 2014 23:06:47 +0000

I believe I added just enough blog posts this year that there are not two years’ Halloween posts on the front page at the same time. That would be sad.

Alex told me in September that October was his favorite month of the year, “because Halloween.” And every day for the last few weeks, he would ask, “is it Halloween today?” I can only hope that this year’s candy crawl met his expectations. He went as Captain America, a decision that was entirely his own. Ian went as a penguin, or at least he wore parts of his penguin costume throughout the night, rarely all at once.

Pumpkins all Pumpkiny

Tue, 03 Dec 2013 14:52:54 +0000

It is a bit late for a Halloween post, but insert lame excuse here. Consider it a counter-balance to the force that causes Christmas decorations to show up in stores in September.

This year I chose Toopy and Binoo, a Canadian children’s cartoon pair that you have probably never heard of, as subjects for my pumpkin carving. Unfortunately, the pumpkins shriveled quite quickly, and the designs didn’t lend themselves well to preservation, so by Halloween, they grew a toothpick scaffolding to maintain their facade. Next year, I believe I’ll try not cutting all the way through to avoid such issues. (I’m not sure what that technique is called, but some of the more artistic neighbors employed it to great effect.)

Halloween!

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 21:25:05 +0000

I made two Jack-o-lanterns this year. On the left we have Elmo and Cookie Monster, a nod to our 16-month-old’s second Halloween. On the right, my best attempt at a cacodemon from the old video game Doom. My general technique is to sketch up the design in Inkscape, print it out, transfer the design to the pumpkin somehow, then go to work with one of those little pumpkin carving saws. The cacodemon was a bit simpler so I skipped Inkscape and free-handed it with a sharpie.