Journey vs. Destination

There is a little restaurant in Palo Alto, really on Stanford, sort of near the mall. It is frou-frou food: if you get the fritatta, you don’t get to choose what is in it, you just get to be happy with the deliciousness that comes to you. With Nutella toast.

I love Tootsie’s. I love the cappuccino with its microfoam and deep espresso. I love the tiny donuts (zepole) that make me remember a time I liked donuts. The salads are great, the fruit is fresh, if you are there when they have macarons, get some. I sit outside, courting a pink nose, because the lavender is about to bloom (and the roses are already).

So, though it is a bit closer to her house than mine, it is absolutely no hardship to meet Elizabeth at Tootsie’s to talk about the are-you-ok manatee. It was almost enough to make up for the loss of the mock-up manatee that was so soft and spent so much time in my lap last week.

I’ll be getting a prototype in the next few weeks, probably with the LED and accelerometer sewn in. She’ll have to deal with the boards, though we’ve figured out that right angle connectors would have been better for the next revision. The height of the wires ended up being a bit, um, deformative to the stuffed animal.  I don’t know if Elizabeth is going to try modifying the sewing pattern to put more pocket inside the manatee or if it is going to be a bit lumpy.

Of course, it may not be a manatee. Elizabeth warned me that a whale would be good (for the twitter connection) and a narwhal would look great with an LED on the top of its tooth. I’m excited about all the options.

As punkiepunkie noted in the comments, I did update the agent code in github, cleaning up the comments and starting to indicate what other people are likely to want to change. I’m not done but I am very excited someone is trying this out. I do intent to add comments regarding using AA batteries and non-Sparkfun accels to the device. (Though, I’m hoping to make this a tutorial for Sparkfun. No, I don’t know how to do that. One step at a time… I’ll write up a proposal for the tutorial soon.)

I’ve got a few other things that need doing this week. I was cramming them in since the weather is about to get warm and I’d like to play hooky and go to the beach. But now I’m cramming a bit so I can stop mining salt (short contract) and get back to my gadget.