Hey everyone,

No doubt, many of you are busy watching the Fifa World Cup this summer, and it’s been quite exciting, especially for Americans, as USA managed to make it to the knockout round with solid plays and some pretty heart stopping moments filled with victory.  Before I mention my opinions about USA’s somewhat abysmal ending in the World Cup, I’d do like to take a moment to clarify to everyone that there will be a delay of orders. Since Brennon has to leave for personal purposes for a month and all of our products/kits are all hand wrapped by us to check for quality service, BW Science Labs will undergo a delay. So again, to clarify, order shipments will be delayed for one month effective immediately. That way, we’d love to avoid the angry plethora of emails that we would receive to report shipments that have not been received yet.  We apologize profusely for this sudden and unexpected change, but as soon as we return, we will go back to sending out our shipments at full speed in order to make up for that.  So again, order shipments will be delayed for one month effective immediately.

Now, second order of business: the website.  Brennon and I are currently undergoing several “meetings” every week to discuss the remodeling/reconstruction of our website.  Our intention is to shift our website and upgrade it to a much more professional looking website.  In that sense, the reason why we are spending so much time on our website and taking longer than what both Brennon and I anticipated, is because we are actually considering some significant and major remodels.  Not just simple theme changes, but an actual change of our host, from WordPress’s service to Drupal. The format will remain the same, but there’s a lot of what one could call “smoke and mirrors”, or what I personally refer to as “technical nuisances” that hinder us from going ahead. We’re still spending a lot of time on the plans themselves, working with our contractors, but hopefully, the website plans will be done by the end of summer.  One of the biggest changes that comes with our remodeling of our website is the new online store with shopping carts, accounts, ratings, consumer reviews, and consumer credit/rewards program. (The way the consumer credit rewards program works is actually very simple, if you’ve been a consumer with us before our remodeling/having purchased our products before we’ve launched the new store, you’ll have some form of credit/reward. That reward translates into several different things: it could be a discount, depending on how long of a consumer you’ve been with us, a free product with our compliments, some kind of Hall of Fame, etc.  This is just a taste of what you guys can expect from our website after its done remodeling, and we are just as excited as you guys for this.)

Now, final two cents.  America’s abysmal, awful, god awful performance in Ghana in the knockout round.  Absolutley awful.  And trust me, I’ve been a supporter of Team USA in World Cup for years, and this was the one year America could have really stepped up, considering their top players, Landon Donovan and Clint Dempsey were in the best moments of their career.  Landon and Clint’s teamwork to establish USA as the “comeback king.”  But honestly, the reason of why we lost to Ghana so poorly was because of Bob Bradley, the head coach.  He was also the coach in Fifa in Germany, and we also lost to Ghana there.  When a coach chooses his favorites to play key positions like midfielder, AKA Ricardo Clark, or Jozy Altidore as the striker who is supposed to put pressure on the goal and score, instead of the players who really have proven themselves over and over again in MLS.  For example, Ricardo Clark’s god awful performance against England where he played midfield, and allowed an early goal and let England score in the early game.  The guy just can’t defend, and considering his Fifa ranking, 5.5/10, there’s no way he should be playing anywhere near in a World Cup team ever.  Jozy Altidore is no different, he’s been set up several golden opportunities to score in all of the games where he’s played the striker, and he always misses.  We could have gotten somwhere, but when the coach is the source…it’s impossible.

Have a great summer,

BW Science Labs

This post is going to be a lengthy one, but it’s all, thankfully, great news for all.  Its great news for us, and for you guys, so forgive me for this long post, gonna be quite lengthy, but it’s all worth it.  I’d thought I’d start out explaining the current status of our website. Our website at the moment is currently going through a slightly major construction.  Our objective of the “remodeling” of our website is to make the website look more and more professional, so consumers won’t feel uncomfortable about making purchases and readers won’t feel confused by our layout.  With the arrival of the summer, Brennon and I are launching both a Summer 2010 business/website proposal that we’ve worked on for weeks that will improve both the website experience for new and old viewers and make it easier to navigate, and squash a few of our bugs that have been running around too much.

A quick history about our website to demonstrate my earlier point about moving the website out of its BETA stage.  We don’t openly state on our website that the website as a beta, and as a result, many of the you guys may not realize that, and we apologize for the any confusion you may have had about the website.  This website has been out for at least two years.  BW Science Labs was established in late 2008, early 2009 as its Alpha stage.  In its Alpha Stage, the theme was green, and the website was in a very early stage whereas there was not much of a formation or organization.  In 2009, thanks to Brennon’s sole efforts, the website was pushed into a much more advanced stage, the BETA stage, with a complete visual overhaul, organization, and a working store.  Currently, in mid 2010, we are in a BETA stage at this point and we wish to push our website to its final step with a few more visual tweaks and one more major update.  We at BW Science Labs heavily thank all of you guys, the viewers, the commenters, especially the people who have purchased our products and placed faith in our company.  With the money that we have earned, we are able to take action and move the website to its final step.  Thank you all for (unknowingly) participating in our BETA, and we will repay all of you guys sometime in the near future for helping us so much with this.

Another one of our major changes that we’ve emphasized and highlighted as one of our major focuses on our 2010 Business/Website Proposal is a complete overhaul with our current store system.  Our current store system is unfortunately at a very early stage, where it appears more like a blog entry rather than a professional store.  We are going to completely overhaul our store system, and reward our loyal consumers who have purchased from our store before, and offer some limited time discounts depending on the day, and make it easier for new consumers to understand and purchase.  It’s a very brief description, but hey, we dont’ want to reveal too much.

Brennon is hard at work at the robot, and the robot has had very successful tests, and it will be a matter of weeks before we fully unveil and feature it.  Once the robot is unveiled, it will be available for purchase in our newly remodeled store. Not to mention, we have a lineup of great products that are ready, just have yet to be added into our store.   They won’t be anywhere as expensive as our huge project, but they’ll certainly add a great deal of diversity into the store, and offer more a great range of products for the consumer to purchase.  Anyways, thanks for bearing with me, guys. Its always great to hear feedback, so please leave a comment if you are interested in any of the topics mentioned above or below this statement.

Hope you all have been doing well throughout the entire year, and do well on all your final exams AND enjoyed the Lost season finale! First of all, I’d like to sincerely apologize for the lack of posts and updates.   Brennon and I will be taking a short hiatus that should last another week due to end of the year exams, but after this week, BW Science Labs should be running at a much faster pace and will be able to update you with our information.  As a two man team, its hard to find time during the school year, but again, just another week, and we’ll be able to update with some of the projects that Brennon has been working on, and some news here and there.  Updating the website is a tad hard for us to do during the school, but if you have any specific questions or want to know what Brennon/BW Science Labs is up to, be sure to check out our Twitter links on the side.  Brennon constantly checks his Twitter, so it’s definitely a good way to catch up with us when we don’t have much time to update the website.

Now, moving onto what some of the projects that Brennon has been working on – and believe me, some of them are really awesome.  These projects were soley created by Brennon’s hard work, and they’ve been made not for financial purposes, but actually for fun.  Brennon has been working on a Unity project – the last time I met with him, he was working on a project that resembled one of a “open world – sandbox” racing game.  The project is in quite an early state, so I wouldn’t expect an ETA anytime soon, but hey, Brennon has been known to work miracles in terms of time, so who knows?  Another project that he’s been working on for several weeks, perhaps months, is one where a robot can be fully controlled from directions given on an Apple iPad.  The project is very successful and is working very well – unfortunately, being the PR, I can’t say an ETA or a detailed paragraph on its current state, but once exams will over, I’m sure Brennon will find the time to update you guys with what he’s been working on in a much more detailed manner.

As for news, I’m sure everyone’s heard of the oil spill.  Staying out of the politics, it seems that the current methods of dealing with oil spill are actually failing, much to everyone’s surprise.  It seems that the old tradition of pumping giant amounts of mud to stem the flow of an oil spill don’t appear to work – but this method appears to a solid solution that has been presented in front of the US government. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5SxX2EntEo)  Click the link to see a presentation on how this “new hay method” will replace the old traditional mud method of getting rid of oil in water.

Take care everyone, and good luck on your exams,

BW Science Labs

Ever since Steve Jobs published an open letter on apple’s home page regarding the lack of Flash on the iPhone and iPad, both companies, Adobe, and Apple, have been exchanging blows ever since.  Steve Jobs’s letter had several well put points on the lack of Flash – for example, Adobe’s Flash Player, although it is used in over seventy percent of all the websites on the internet, including this one, it’s also unreliable.  I’m not establishing my opinion or basis as a Macintosh/Apple user or a PC user, (although I am more of a Macbook Pro person), but I really dislike the combination of Safari (Apple’s official web browser) combined with Flash.  My browsers have crashed almost five times a day due to a Flash plug in issue.  The issue is usually when I load up a web page, then one or more of the Flash advertisements begin loading, but then the plug in fails, and proceeds to clog up the entire website, forcing the browser to force quit.  I’ve sent reports to Apple for quite a while, but the issue hasn’t been addressed yet in any way.  I’ve also googled this issue, and it’s almost evident Flash has a problem with internet browsers on both Macs and PCs.

Adobe retaliated to the open letter by saying how it was Apple being irresponsible and not cleaning up their web browsers/computers before they could point out who was the culprit for constant web browser crashes.  Adobe also boasted that their new Flash Player would work on some of Google’s upcoming projects, the “iPad Killer.”  I respect both of these companies very much, Adobe has crafted some of the best applications to date, such as Flash CS3, and there’s no denying the technical genius it takes to make Photoshop.  Apple has cranked out some of the most user-friendly and reliable computers and has added a sense of style with their computers.  However, I think the fiasco has escalated to the extent where it’s just impossible to mend these problems – both companies are in a terrible relationship.  Any thoughts on how it might play out in the future?

Just prowling through my latest edition of Popular Science, and I stumbled upon this article.  This article had to do with a advancement in the technology of law enforcement – the mechanics of the Taser evolving to more and more weapons to replace the actual handguns and pistols that many police officers use.  The evolution of the Taser/electric stun technology solves many of the problems that are present with the commonly used Taser – the regular Taser being used in the police force all over America lacks the range needed to hit assailants.  If the assailant is more than thirty or so feet away, the Taser has absolutely no chance of hitting its target.  The new shotgun slug extends the range to 35-100 feet, solving most of the problems that come with the regular Taser.   The reason why this article is pretty significant is because more of the design and engineering in order to make a much more efficient stun weapon.  The transformation from large thick probes connected with wires flowing with electric current to a small, simple lithium battery powered plastic shock canister is a significant advancement for technology.

This is the link to the complete article with pictures if you’re interested in seeing what the slugs and shotgun itself look up close, and a much more in depth analysis of this new law enforcement weapon: http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-03/shock-bullet

I read up on watchmaking, and I learned a couple things about watches like what a jewel is and means. However, I’m very much a learn-by-doing kind of a guy so I ordered some cheap watches off ebay. I managed to destroy every one, the carnage would have made a hardened soldier cry.

Unfortunately, there is no place I know of where you can buy unassembled watch movements (the movement is the gears, wheels, etc. all assembled into one amazing device), so I’m stuck with making a watch out of existing parts. I would have really liked to assemble a movement myself, but I suppose the time will come.

I have a movement, case, dial, and set of hands on their way. Supposedly, installing a movement into a case is a really hard process, but I have to learn somehow, and the amount of online documentation on watchmaking is minimal at best. Consider this my watchmaking war diary, entry number 1.

Have you ever heard of a magazine called Servo? If not, Servo is a very popular magazine on robotics and engineering, where I now have my own monthly column. My first article will be published in this upcoming issue, be sure to pick up a copy or subscribe!

Make magazine just launched a new project called the Makers’ Market, where Makers can sell their products via their site. I’m happy to report that BW Science Labs’s application was accepted, and you can now buy some of our kits off the Makers’ Market website. MM is a fantastic way to support Make and Makers, I highly recommend you check it out!

In the coming weeks you’ll be seeing a lot of new products on BW Science Labs, Apple iPad beware!

2009 was an awesome year to say the least. Our success included being featured on the MAKE magazine blog 3 times, Boing Boing video, and a variety of other sites. In addition, BW Science Labs won Sun Microsystems’s (yes, that Sun, the creator of JAVA) and the Institute for the Future’s international innovation competition, the Digital Open. Not only did this give BW Science Labs quite a bit of media attention, but I got a real nice laptop (and some other stuff) out of it!

A couple months ago I got an offer by a publishing company to write a chapter of a book they were publishing on technology and its affects on society and the modern world. I just heard back from them, and they’re almost ready to publish it, and I’ll get 10 copies soon.

We’ve sold a ton of kits through our store over the past few weeks, and I got a lot of feedback that they are being put together by families and young engineers. If you’re curios as to how many we’re selling honestly it varies from week to week, however I always try and set a minimum of 2 per week (excluding holiday breaks because I can’t ship them if I’m out of town) and so far this goal has been surpassed nearly every week.

Over the break I drafted 10 new kit ideas, and I’m actively prototyping 2 of them, soldering iron in hand. The 1st I’m working on are a beginner GPS kit, where you put together a complete, handheld GPS locator that gives you your coordinates in real time. This is tricky, as the GPS module I’m working with has several wires, none of them labeled, so I’ll have to keep working on it very slowly. The 2nd is a more advanced robot kit, a sort of sequel to our popular Vivus the robot kit. I have selected an IR sensor, servo for a moving head, body, and so on. To keep costs down, I’m using a 18 pin microcontroller (as opposed to 28+) which means I’ll have to program it in as few lines of code as possible.

As far as site design goes, I just posted a job on Elance to hire a developer to redo the site. The new site will have a beautifully integrated store, web applications, and more.

I want the theme of 2010 to be “watch me”. I plan on surpassing all expectations and making BW Science Labs grow more rapidly than ever.

Watch me!

I’m working on redoing the BW Science Labs website, and will be moving from Blogger to the WordPress platform to integrate the store and blog. Unfortunately this also involves the less fun search for a good web host, artist, and so on. However, once the site is done it’ll be really cool.

Here’s an interesting project called The Lumen, a 3D display that adds depth to 2D images. The neatest part is how they get each little pixel up and down; they use a wires made of “shape memory allow” that expand when heated and shrink when cooled.

[or watch this video here]

Good look to everyone taking final exams!