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**Rachel White:** I think that the fact that I don't speak about things in overly technical terminology, and I really try... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** You seem very down to earth... |
**Rachel White:** \[19:52\] Yeah, I really try and explain stuff in a way that makes sense. Like, I'm talking about Markov chains, I'm talking about stochastic stuff -- I had to look it up; I was like, "I don't know what this means." I know what Markov chains are and how they work - kind of - so I'm explaining it and I... |
I also think the fact that I'm presenting things in an interesting setting is interesting to some people, though at conferences you can definitely tell... You get a lot of different people. You get the people that are sent by their company, that are already developing enterprise applications; they could not care less w... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** We got derailed at the mention of my buddy trying to learn, and we kind of got back into this other groove, but I wanna go deeper in the hardware, and that kind of fun stuff. So you've done some things with NodeBots, I believe, right? |
**Rachel White:** Yeah, I'm involved in a lot of NodeBot stuff. I did the cat feeder... Another talk that I have is just about simple things that you can do with hardware that are impressive. People love lights, so there is one where you're controlling an LED strip that you have a flex sensor and it makes the lights li... |
There's the NodeBots NYC group where people go and they meet up, and the format is like one person gets up and presents something really cool that they've made. Then there's like a little hack night, or something like that. But most of the stuff that I've done is just freely weird, and I just remembered something that ... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** What? |
**Rachel White:** Yeah, so I have a little RFID chip right here... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Can you feel it? |
**Rachel White:** Yeah, do you wanna touch it? It's right there. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Oh, I feel it. That's crazy. |
**Rachel White:** \[laughs\] So I did a project where -- I don't know if you've played Fallout or if you remember those old terminals... The green CLI that you would get - I made a CSS version of it in a browser, that you scan an RFID tag, and if it's not me, like if it's any other RFID tag, it says "Access denied" and... |
But it's a hardware example of something that's super weird, but all it is is a NodeJS application with Socket.io. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Dedicated. |
**Rachel White:** ...and some fancy CSS. That's probably the weirdest thing that I've done. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Okay, so how did you get it into your body. |
**Rachel White:** I went to a professional piercer in Brooklyn, and there's a company called Dangerous Things that sells them. It's a tiny RFID chip that's encased in surgical grade medical glass, and they have a syringe that has a really wide opening, and all they do is inject it into the web in your hand and pull the... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Just like the movies. I've seen that in movies, and they're always like "UURRGGHHH!" Wasn't it in Bourne Identity? I believe he had something in and then he finally dug it out, or something. |
**Rachel White:** I didn't see that one. I mean, it's exactly the same thing as the one that they put in pets. They'll put it in a shoulder blade for a cat or a dog and then scan it if they get lost... I have one in my body. If you have... Is that an iPhone or an Android? |
**Adam Stacoviak:** iPhone. |
**Rachel White:** \[24:04\] Oh, iPhone closes off RFID stuff... But if somebody with an Android phone scans my hand, the text that pops up is "Follow me on Twitter" with my Twitter name. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** What?! |
**Rachel White:** Yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Oh, my... |
**Rachel White:** It's readable and writable. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Can you change it? |
**Rachel White:** Yeah, I can totally change it. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** How? |
**Rachel White:** It's not powered... It has a wire antenna that's wrapped around the chip, and the power comes from the devices that you're doing the scanning with. When it's close, then your field communication stuff allows you to -- it's really small; I don't remember the size of text on it. I can pretty much just s... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Okay... Very, very interesting. So this series we're doing for the conference is about the future - the future of Node. Someone with your experience, 15 years of experience developing software - the coolest job ever, in my opinion; hardware in your body - what role does Node play in the future of ha... |
**Rachel White:** Oh my gosh... Hopefully they're still going in a weird direction, for me at least; otherwise I'm gonna be out of a job. I hope that, honestly, there's more of a focus on making secure systems, especially the state of our world... I think that a lot of information needs to be more private. The big prob... |
I hope that the future just encourages people to keep on being innovative and finding ways to utilize technology in ways that are more important than necessarily enterprise-based. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Hopefully this background noise isn't distracting to you, because this is the loudest it's been since I've been sitting here. Most people respect the fact that we're sitting here recording, but clearly not the people that are passing by. |
**Rachel White:** Yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Anything else on your mind? I know that you're an interesting person with fun ideas... |
**Rachel White:** I just really hope that people keep on making stuff outside of their day-to-day job that they're interested in... You know, it's easy to say, "Yeah, I only wanna program if it's gonna make me money", and I understand that's super important, but if you have the time and the capabilities, make cool stuf... |
\[27:52\] I also help out at a lot of hackathons, and some of the students are trying Node applications for the first time and they're like, "I can't believe how easy this is." It's a really good feeling to be able to expose people to something that they wouldn't have picked up and tried on their own. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I guess maybe one closing thought I might have is what - on the hardware side, or whatever side is more interesting to you - what's happening in Node right now that you're most excited about? |
**Rachel White:** The Tessel is really, really great. I haven't gotten to play with it that much, but it has Node on it, so you don't have to run things... If I'm working with the Arduino and I wanna run Johnny-Five, I have to just use an Arduino as a middle point, I guess. The code runs on my machine, instead of runni... |
I think that we're gonna see a lot more community support for people that are building more Node-based hardware, now that they have the means to do so. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah, especially with the VM-neutrality thing, it makes it a lot easier to open up the VM market, at least. |
**Rachel White:** Yeah. Also, the Johnny-Five that came out - it also has a kit that is gonna be able to have people make so much more Node-based hardware, and I'm really excited to see what people are going to make. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** When you say Tesla, do you mean the car? |
**Rachel White:** Oh, Tessel. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Tessel? |
**Rachel White:** Yeah. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** I thought you said Tesla, and I'm thinking like, "Dang! You must make some good money that you own a Tesla." I'm just kidding. |
**Rachel White:** No, I don't have a car. \[laughs\] The Tessel. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** What is a Tessel. |
**Rachel White:** The Tessel is a micro controller that has -- let me look... I can't remember. I'll pull it up. This is what I said, and I can't remember anything ever, unless it's weird facts about things... |
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