Keenan Johnson

If I knew that people on the internet would immediately build a robot to live stream folding my foldable phone until it breaks, I certainly would not have the guts to release such a folding device.

I have always been a bit of a mechanical pencil nerd and was just gifted this Uni pencil that has something called the Kuru Toga Engine. Japanese companies really have over the top branding figured out.

Really strongly considering writing a book or something about what things machine learning / AI is good at in robotics / science and what things it is not good at. There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding amongst the people on this topic.

The banana label that is also a sticky bug trap is an incredible idea

Finally got one of those Santa Cruz shirts to wear around europe on my last trip to california. Excited to wear it and not feel like the most vanilla poser haha

Heading back to London for a while after a week in the Bay Area, CA. Glad to know some things really don't change

Since I started doing underwater robot work my desktop if full of random videos like this.

I need some crunchy peanut butter but hummus.

Back to CA / Bay area for work next week. Excited for lots of beige and Philz coffee.

Nothing more weird than seeing the lead singer of what you assumed was a successful old band on linkedin with the headline: Writer, Musicker, Performer, Executive Thinker

One of the fun things about thermal cameras is that you can see reflections of thermal radiation in windows and stuff

Was passing by Drury Lane in London and asked partner is they knew the Muffin Man. They looked at me like I was insane. I’m starting to realize that the point of the rhyme is that really not everyone does know the muffin man.

Vortex strawberries

Overheard walking outside: “I am trying to pivot my career, so I asked an AI. Truly it just made my confusion even worse brah.”

My main premise is that most engineering teams don’t actually want to be good, but some do and I love helping them. I do a lot of coaching / mentoring / consulting on that and I love it. If I was better at marketing myself maybe I could just do speaking / do that full time.

This is your brain on pcb

One day I hope that I'll be able to just work on whatever I want and create things that are useful or needed, but would never get built because capitalism.

Had a meeting today where someone validated and then talked about the next steps for an idea I've been working on for over five years. It's taken a long time to find the right fit, but some ideas just take that long.

Sending a new PCB for sea otter conservation robot out to fab today. So fulfilling to do great engineering for good causes.

I need access asap to whatever that blue tool is.

Of all the things I could not have predicted this year, seeing T-Pain become a dad cave, basement lair 3d printing enthusiast is at the top of that list

If I have learned anything today it’s that the internet likes sea otters, robots, and especially the combination thereof.

I’ll be impressed with new software tools when this class of bug is fully solved and no one thinks of it anymore haha

Wishing all products I used came with such a concise and awesome info sheet like this:

Just heard someone say: "The internet, it's not all bad"

Been working on this nice little easy to hand solder pcb for the seattle aquarium in between other harder EE projects for secret clients.

Had to call a customer support. Got passed between three separate AI support bots which had to interact with in different ways (voice, numeric entry, and then voice again). They each had unique hold music. This is a new kind of support hell.

My main technical niche seems to now be helping out robotics and sensing teams that have raised a lot of money, built a prototype and have not a lot of ideas how to make it reliable next.