I Vomit Rainbows

Chris (cnelson) showed me a video about augmented reality cookies, and I knew that had to be the next baking project. The premise behind this is to hold a cookie with a special mark on it, and a webcam would render a shape over the cookie, even if you rotated it. We were going to make it so that when you bit into a cookie, you’d get a silly mustache on your face.

Of course, I waited til last minute to make the dough, and was trying to measure out 1cm tall chunks at 2am. But the bigger problem was that the dough was defrosting fast as I was trying to build the cookies, and I was worried that it wouldn’t be smooth enough to scan.

But the cookie block did look fine the next day, and sliced easily. We laid them onto cookie sheets and baked them. In Chris’s sunny computer room, they did scan. However, the program was having problems with the contrast. Next time, add more blue and red food coloring, as well as more melted chocolate, to give your cookies more contrast.

Chris was in charge of making the code work with the cookies. He used Processing and NyARToolkit to make that happen.

I also made some onigiri rice balls with the trigger shape cut out, and some quick California rolls. The rolls didn’t trigger the software, but the riceballs did. We showcased these at Hacker Drinkup 100, at Rick’s Tavern.

I drew a bunch of mustaches that would display randomly. Here is what your options were:

Screenshots from Chris’s App: http://id.cnelson.org/augmented-stache

Eliot’s Blog Post: http://www.robotskirts.com/2010/05/27/augmented-reality-mustaches/

My Flickr Set of Hacker Drinkup 100: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinguino/sets/72157624155168304/

I think we’re a bit obsessed with augmented reality now, so expect more cool stuff from us soon!

Every year for our birthday, Dave and I throw a party called NinjaPenguin. This year was NinjaPenguin 4, held at the Good Nite Bar in North Hollywood. Every year, we do a crazy cake. The first year was a penguin. The second was  2girls1cup. The third was longcat. This year… we proudly introduce the META BAR. The Meta Bar is a 20,000 calorie candy bar made of every candy bar we could get our hands on.

Take all this candy. Seperate it into food groups. We did Nut, American, International, Fruit, and Meat.

Bake at 180 degrees (or whatever the lowest your oven goes) for like 30 mins til its all melty and fused. Leave in your fridge overnight. The chocolate won’t stick to the parchment paper. This is how it’ll look out of the oven:

Then make a wrapper using butcher paper, foil, and sharpies. This will also make transporting and showing off the candy bar easier.

We used a saw to cut it into pieces.

Here’s a cross section of the inside:

Overall, a successful kitchen experiment, and a memorable birthday cake!

Photos by Vissago. The rest of his awesome set, including the party trying out a bunch of KFC double downs, is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vissago/sets/72157623992971289/