Kevin P. Mahan

Humanizing the Computersphere

A connector that gets ultimate joy when solving human challenges with technology. I love learning, soccer, volunteering and simple efficiency. Welcome to my online business card.

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I strive to be the same person online and in real life. Let's connect on any of the above. I believe peppering every human experience with amazement and awesome is one of the greatest human gifts we have and exactly what our increasing digital world craves.

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Little buddies enter our lives creating chaos everywhere. Little buddies cripple our strength and steal our rest. Little buddies make common things difficult. Little buddies need help with everything and everything is gross. Yet, Father Life is a worthy calling of connecting with the heart of our little buddies. Little buddies enter our life to test our selfishness. Over time they reflect a better us. That’s Father Life.
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Little buddies enter our lives creating chaos everywhere.

Little buddies cripple our strength and steal our rest.

Little buddies make common things difficult.

Little buddies need help with everything and everything is gross.

Yet, Father Life is a worthy calling of connecting with the heart of our little buddies.

Little buddies enter our life to test our selfishness. Over time they reflect a better us. That’s Father Life.

Tweaking

Prepped for the day without a digital device.
Removed email from my phone.
Unsubscribed to a dozen non-useful emails.
Archived straggling desktop documents.
Closed computer and found work still happens without it.
Talked in the waiting room instead of phone browsing.
Docked phone in the other room for the evening.
Played with son without media filling the background.
Read the Bible, paper version.
Laughed without control.

Canceling at home Internet.
Planning picnics and porch meals.
Experiencing memories without recording them.
Sitting around without being lazy.
Making things from scratch.
Interviewing people that fail well.

Our lives are personal experiments that we both orchestrate and live. Every little tweaked detail matters to all the others in the system. You don’t like something? Change it. Experiment.

This is not my brag list. These are my experiment notes.

Learning how to make things is a worthy endeavor unto itself. By force I demand myself to make artistic things like this sketch. Moving a thing from idea to concept to fear to sweat to done is a process important to learn. It is the process for every artistic idea like parenting, financial management, sports, public speaking, drawing, etc. It is a worth endeavor to learn the process now and how you work the process. Go ahead. You have permission to make things just to make them.
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Learning how to make things is a worthy endeavor unto itself.

By force I demand myself to make artistic things like this sketch. Moving a thing from idea to concept to fear to sweat to done is a process important to learn. It is the process for every artistic idea like parenting, financial management, sports, public speaking, drawing, etc.

It is a worth endeavor to learn the process now and how you work the process. Go ahead. You have permission to make things just to make them.

We and Trees

are a lot alike. Branches fill as our days march towards the finality. We hold out hope that the current storm is not the last but will only shake our branches, prune leaves and leave us standing.

We weren’t always this strong.

Years ago, many trunk rings before, our small stature was sheltered by taller trees. They shaded our fragile bark and brought important wildlife into our ecosystem where we drew life and learned to be strong.

The best honor for the trees before us is to become like them. We all grow to bear more weight, endure tougher storms and shelter the next batch of saplings.

That’s how it works. We and trees are a lot alike.

fastcodesign: This Soccer Ball Generates Energy While You Play, And You Can Buy It Now The Soccket is designed to replace kerosene lights in the developing world by converting games to electricity.  The Soccket, a soccer ball that generates and stores electricity during game play, was born in 2009. The ball was immediately a hit. For every 30 minutes of play, the ball can juice up an LED lamp for three hours, cutting down on toxic kerosene lamp use. Just plug an LED lamp into the light, and voila, free energy. Uncharted Play has made some changes to the ball since it was first developed. The first iteration could be inflated and deflated, but it didn’t last long. The second ball was really heavy. The third ball wasn’t that heavy, but it was rigid and had a full-size gyroscope inside. The version available on Kickstarter (a standard Soccket and lamp goes for $99) is dense, water-resistant, made with a super light foam, and contains a fist-sized gyroscope. “This version is significantly lighter and more efficient in terms of power generation. The only thing we couldn’t replicate in terms of a normal ball is the bounce. It was a tradeoff between wanting it to be hard or light with no bounce,” says Matthews. In addition to the standard ball, Uncharted Play is offering tricked-out upgrades for backers if it reaches certain stretch goals in the Kickstarter campaign. One version has emergency cell phone charging capability, so users can charge their iPhones instead of a lamp. Another features a revision to the circuit board that tells players how much energy they have generated. See the full story here.
Zoom Info
fastcodesign: This Soccer Ball Generates Energy While You Play, And You Can Buy It Now The Soccket is designed to replace kerosene lights in the developing world by converting games to electricity.  The Soccket, a soccer ball that generates and stores electricity during game play, was born in 2009. The ball was immediately a hit. For every 30 minutes of play, the ball can juice up an LED lamp for three hours, cutting down on toxic kerosene lamp use. Just plug an LED lamp into the light, and voila, free energy. Uncharted Play has made some changes to the ball since it was first developed. The first iteration could be inflated and deflated, but it didn’t last long. The second ball was really heavy. The third ball wasn’t that heavy, but it was rigid and had a full-size gyroscope inside. The version available on Kickstarter (a standard Soccket and lamp goes for $99) is dense, water-resistant, made with a super light foam, and contains a fist-sized gyroscope. “This version is significantly lighter and more efficient in terms of power generation. The only thing we couldn’t replicate in terms of a normal ball is the bounce. It was a tradeoff between wanting it to be hard or light with no bounce,” says Matthews. In addition to the standard ball, Uncharted Play is offering tricked-out upgrades for backers if it reaches certain stretch goals in the Kickstarter campaign. One version has emergency cell phone charging capability, so users can charge their iPhones instead of a lamp. Another features a revision to the circuit board that tells players how much energy they have generated. See the full story here.
Zoom Info
fastcodesign: This Soccer Ball Generates Energy While You Play, And You Can Buy It Now The Soccket is designed to replace kerosene lights in the developing world by converting games to electricity.  The Soccket, a soccer ball that generates and stores electricity during game play, was born in 2009. The ball was immediately a hit. For every 30 minutes of play, the ball can juice up an LED lamp for three hours, cutting down on toxic kerosene lamp use. Just plug an LED lamp into the light, and voila, free energy. Uncharted Play has made some changes to the ball since it was first developed. The first iteration could be inflated and deflated, but it didn’t last long. The second ball was really heavy. The third ball wasn’t that heavy, but it was rigid and had a full-size gyroscope inside. The version available on Kickstarter (a standard Soccket and lamp goes for $99) is dense, water-resistant, made with a super light foam, and contains a fist-sized gyroscope. “This version is significantly lighter and more efficient in terms of power generation. The only thing we couldn’t replicate in terms of a normal ball is the bounce. It was a tradeoff between wanting it to be hard or light with no bounce,” says Matthews. In addition to the standard ball, Uncharted Play is offering tricked-out upgrades for backers if it reaches certain stretch goals in the Kickstarter campaign. One version has emergency cell phone charging capability, so users can charge their iPhones instead of a lamp. Another features a revision to the circuit board that tells players how much energy they have generated. See the full story here.
Zoom Info
fastcodesign: This Soccer Ball Generates Energy While You Play, And You Can Buy It Now The Soccket is designed to replace kerosene lights in the developing world by converting games to electricity.  The Soccket, a soccer ball that generates and stores electricity during game play, was born in 2009. The ball was immediately a hit. For every 30 minutes of play, the ball can juice up an LED lamp for three hours, cutting down on toxic kerosene lamp use. Just plug an LED lamp into the light, and voila, free energy. Uncharted Play has made some changes to the ball since it was first developed. The first iteration could be inflated and deflated, but it didn’t last long. The second ball was really heavy. The third ball wasn’t that heavy, but it was rigid and had a full-size gyroscope inside. The version available on Kickstarter (a standard Soccket and lamp goes for $99) is dense, water-resistant, made with a super light foam, and contains a fist-sized gyroscope. “This version is significantly lighter and more efficient in terms of power generation. The only thing we couldn’t replicate in terms of a normal ball is the bounce. It was a tradeoff between wanting it to be hard or light with no bounce,” says Matthews. In addition to the standard ball, Uncharted Play is offering tricked-out upgrades for backers if it reaches certain stretch goals in the Kickstarter campaign. One version has emergency cell phone charging capability, so users can charge their iPhones instead of a lamp. Another features a revision to the circuit board that tells players how much energy they have generated. See the full story here.
Zoom Info
fastcodesign: This Soccer Ball Generates Energy While You Play, And You Can Buy It Now The Soccket is designed to replace kerosene lights in the developing world by converting games to electricity.  The Soccket, a soccer ball that generates and stores electricity during game play, was born in 2009. The ball was immediately a hit. For every 30 minutes of play, the ball can juice up an LED lamp for three hours, cutting down on toxic kerosene lamp use. Just plug an LED lamp into the light, and voila, free energy. Uncharted Play has made some changes to the ball since it was first developed. The first iteration could be inflated and deflated, but it didn’t last long. The second ball was really heavy. The third ball wasn’t that heavy, but it was rigid and had a full-size gyroscope inside. The version available on Kickstarter (a standard Soccket and lamp goes for $99) is dense, water-resistant, made with a super light foam, and contains a fist-sized gyroscope. “This version is significantly lighter and more efficient in terms of power generation. The only thing we couldn’t replicate in terms of a normal ball is the bounce. It was a tradeoff between wanting it to be hard or light with no bounce,” says Matthews. In addition to the standard ball, Uncharted Play is offering tricked-out upgrades for backers if it reaches certain stretch goals in the Kickstarter campaign. One version has emergency cell phone charging capability, so users can charge their iPhones instead of a lamp. Another features a revision to the circuit board that tells players how much energy they have generated. See the full story here.
Zoom Info

fastcodesign:

This Soccer Ball Generates Energy While You Play, And You Can Buy It Now

The Soccket is designed to replace kerosene lights in the developing world by converting games to electricity. 

The Soccket, a soccer ball that generates and stores electricity during game play, was born in 2009. The ball was immediately a hit. For every 30 minutes of play, the ball can juice up an LED lamp for three hours, cutting down on toxic kerosene lamp use. Just plug an LED lamp into the light, and voila, free energy.

Uncharted Play has made some changes to the ball since it was first developed. The first iteration could be inflated and deflated, but it didn’t last long. The second ball was really heavy. The third ball wasn’t that heavy, but it was rigid and had a full-size gyroscope inside. The version available on Kickstarter (a standard Soccket and lamp goes for $99) is dense, water-resistant, made with a super light foam, and contains a fist-sized gyroscope.

“This version is significantly lighter and more efficient in terms of power generation. The only thing we couldn’t replicate in terms of a normal ball is the bounce. It was a tradeoff between wanting it to be hard or light with no bounce,” says Matthews.

In addition to the standard ball, Uncharted Play is offering tricked-out upgrades for backers if it reaches certain stretch goals in the Kickstarter campaign. One version has emergency cell phone charging capability, so users can charge their iPhones instead of a lamp. Another features a revision to the circuit board that tells players how much energy they have generated.

See the full story here.

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