Like many buildings, the building we live in has a panel at the main entrance which allows guests to call their hosts.  The guest initiates the call by looking up and dialing a apartment specific buzzer code, and the host can remotely unlock the front door by dialing 9 on their phone.

Occasionally, we’ve had the need for an extra set of keys when guests are visiting.  Given the ubiquity of smart phones, I’ve thought: Wouldn’t it be great to build a web interface which would essentially pick up the phone and dial 9, permitting entrance to the building without a set of keys?

I had fun making light-up Valentine’s Day cards this year.

They’re built from a patterns I found on Sparkfun’s website.

My design is much simpler, and requires fewer parts.

About 15 years ago, a friend of mine informed me that Sensirion would send a sample of one of their temperature sensors to anyone who filled a form on their web page (I’m not sure if this is still the case). After the Sensirion sensor arrived in the mail, I wired it to my PC’s parallel printer port, wrote a little code, and built a simple web page that could display the room temperature.

• Our strawberry plants have yielded a couple of mediocre berries every day
• The verdict is out on our first broccoli plants. They do not resemble what we get from the grocery store
• Cherry tomato yields are good (production is exceeding consumption)
• Carrots are tasty, but small
• All flowers are beautiful
• Pole beans are excellent
• Chives are excellent
• We added a third pot of sweet corn. In spite of our late start, it looks like yields have increased and quality is good.

I stumbled on an interesting article, Copyright quirk leaves James Bond up for grabs in Canada, in the Globe and Mail the other day.  In Canada, copyright expires 50 years after an author’s death.  Ian Fleming died in 1964, which means his James Bond series of novels have become a part of the public domain in Canada.

However, this might be short lived. Michael Geist, a Canadian academic specializing in intellectual property and technology law issues, writes that Canada will likely accept extending copyright to life plus 70 years in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Free Trade negotiations.  It has been life plus 70 years in the United States since 1998.

My toy subway car has generated some local interest!

Check out:

• Extra, Extra: 3D-Printable Subways, Pride’s New Executive Director, and Having Your Say on the Scarborough Subway in the Torontoist
• A Rocket for your pocket: North York dad’s design lets you 3D-print your own subway car in the Toronto Star
• Model subway car built with 3D printer on page 3 of the January 29th Metro (I couldn’t find this one online)
• Willowdale dad prints TTC subway car for wooden train set at Inside Toronto (Metroland Media, publisher of the North York Mirror)