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It’s low and away.

The count’s oh and two.

I Taught 2 classes at The Crucible, Extreme Gizmos (8-12 yrs old) and Radical Robots (12-14yrs old). Phew, it was a lot of work to get ready for the classes! And a lot of work and mental energy to run them. But it turned out great.

Each class was 3 hrs/day for 5 days, June 15-19. Gizmos: 9-noon, Robots: 1-4pm.

We did way more than I have photographed. One note: NEVER let your students take their projects home before they are done! I let several kids bring their almost-finished (excellent) projects home on Thursday. All but one kid forgot to bring them back to finish and present.

It was a bit of a nervous thrill when I saw the cover of one of the Crucible’s catalogs

Extreme Gizmos class

Radical Robots class

Extreme Gizmos posing for a photo with our gizmos

A Radical Robot, an Arduino, servo and photoresistor open the box when you pass your hand in front of the box

Lee and kids

Another Radical Robot, a tripod holds an Arduino and 2 servos to point a mirror or camera in an arbitrary direction

Here’s the full class listing:

Youth Extreme Gizmos KIN14-Y

Class size: 8
Monday – Friday 9-12pm
June Camps: Jun 15-Jun 19
5 sessions
8-12 year olds
Cost: $235.00 (Tuition: $180.00, Materials: $55.00), Members: $217.00

Learn kinetic techniques to design, engineer, and construct a mechanical sculpture, contraption, or gadget with lights and moving parts. Using new and salvaged components, you will learn how motors, lights, and switches work, how to create mechanical structures, how to create different types of motion, and how to incorporate switches to operate your very own fantastical contraption!

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Youth Radical Robots KIN15-Y
Class size: 8
Monday – Friday 1-4pm
June Camps: Jun 15-Jun 19
5 sessions
12-14 year olds
Cost: $295.00 (Tuition: $220.00, Materials: $75.00), Members: $273.00

Build a simple remote-controlled robot . From the wheels up, you’ll create your robot’s shape and personality from salvaged components, mechanisms, and electrical components. You’ll also learn soldering, mechanical construction techniques, and how to remove and repurpose these items. Each student will receive a kit of motors, wheels, and a remote control toy.

Oop, I haven’t updated my adoring public in a while. Here’s what’s been up recently, in no apparent order. Some of these items took up seconds of my time, some of them hundreds of hours.

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I was on the curatorial committee for the Robogames Art Competition with Marnia, Niladri and Corey. Marnia and I each made the most lovable Tweenbots as a cute marketing ploy for the Art Competition. We set a sign on him that read “Help me get to the Gallery!” and let him loose at the front entrance of Robogames. The tweenbots were a great success! As I left on Sunday with him under my wing, several people stopped me and said how great they were!

At the Crucible class, the kids changed  changed the sign to read “Hi! My name is Ron. I am trying to get to the Kinetics Lab. Help if Stuck!” It’s interesting and telling that the kids insisted that the robot have a name. :-)

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Went to Robogames. The awesome new Exploratorium permanent outdoor exhibits at Fort Mason are awesome. Firefighting robots are awesome. Robogames is awesome. The Robogames art was awesome. Awesome!

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A firefighting robot at Robogames 2009
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Hung out with Magnus Wurzer of Roboexotica fame. I drove him to Robogames from the East Bay and caught up with him at Dorkbot.
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Went to the Dorkbot 7th Anniversary Party. Saw 2 tesla coils and 1 Tesla Roadster. The coils lit some fireworks… after much consternation; more than one person asked if we couldn’t use a lighter instead of a giant tesla coil to light them. Twas funny, using a hammer to kill a fly sometimes doesn’t work so well :-)

Saw the fantastic Snail Art car. The metal work on it is Fantastic! I haven’t yet found a photo that really captures it perfectly. I chatted with some of the crew and marvelled at it.

Met up with Shameless Heather… we met 5 years ago at Burning Man. 5 years. 5 years! Phew. Five years.
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I’ve learned a bit about Rotoscoping from Slim at Noisebridge (sat in on 2 or 3 classes)

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Got an f*ing awesome tour of the Advanced Light Source from Marcus

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I taught 2 week-long classes at the Crucible. Read about it.

Saw Deborah Violin playing in Berkeley with her friends. Most of it was really cool. They played these really really short, dense quartet pieces that were cool. And the Bach was nice. A guy played his Doctoral Thesis violin piece or something… yes, he’s now a doctor of music… and it sounded like 40 minutes of “Yeyt!  Yeyt!  Yeyt!  Yeyt!  Yeyt!  Yeyt!  Yeyt!  Yeyt!  Yeyt!” Oh my god it was awful, I prayed for death’s sweet release, but his professors apparently liked it. So what do I know?

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Dinner with Charlotte’s friend Kevin in Brocceley

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Went to sensitivity training at The Crucible so I could be Faculty. I now believe that straight,  white  European males are responsible for all evil in the world. I would kill myself but that would just be another demonstration of their subjugation of us all.

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Went to Memoir Spool at Climate Theater, June 25th. Great Storytelling!

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I’m now learning SolidWorks so I can design my T. Pen.

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SWARM went to SubZero1 in San Jose. I just went to look at the art. It was cool. There was this piece with a woman on 4 TV screens eating hot dogs until she was near puking, it was as if she was having an eating contest with herself. It was really really cool. It reminded me of how I sometimes eat to excess to push away bad feelings.

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I went with SWARM to the Google IO Developer Conference. The conference topics were pretty much lost on me. I tried but no. But we had lots of fun!

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I’ve been sitting for a friend’s children. They have an artichoke tree growing in their front yard (yes, yes, I know that artichokes don’t grow as trees but the artichoke at the top of this plant is a full 9 feet off the ground. So there. And they are delicious!

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PS. Though I’ve barely mentioned Charlotte in this post yet. She rocks.

I’ve been doing all manner of odd jobs recently.

• Due to the idiotic Swine Flu idiotic panic, Malcolm X Elementary School in Berkeley was closed for a few days. I babysat for Erin for a couple days.
• I’m still working on the T. Pen idea. After a week, the first beta customer is very happy with it. :-)
• I submitted a proposal to the San Francisco Unified School District with Noisebridge to teach an after school program. That might manifest in the fall.
• I’ve been making a little money on my Mozy referrals and Google adwords.
• I’ll be teaching a mechanical sculpture class at the Crucible in June.
• I’ve been working part-time for  Charlotte’s company, fixing computers and such. I logged many hours saving her computer this week
• I’m going to be working a trade show on commission with Charlotte soon.

I need a real job….

In other news…

• A problem and solution I had with  Sporatic bad LCD initilization in 4-bit mode of an Arduino and LCD is going to be turned into a code change in the main Arduino library.
• SWARM performed at the Google IO Developer Conference and we’ll be at Maker Faire, SubZER01 and Robogames. :-)

I recently finished listening to an excellent audio version of Sun Tsu’s The Art of War. Wow, extremely worthwhile but watch out or you’ll start seeing the world in very extreme terms.

Just before that, I finished listening to  Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. Bokonon is a bastard. I like him, I think.

A few nights ago I went to a Pecha Kucha event with Charlotte and Barry Cogbill. I think I would have liked it better without the loud, incessent backbeat the DJ added to everything. Though I suppose we sat too close to the speakers. I like the idea though.

I’ve been babysitting a bit. Tuesday and Wednesday. Tommy and I practiced spinning bamboo sticks, started a crystal growing kit growing, tried working out a way that he wouldn’t automatically win at his favorite game Heroscape, found out where the hidden laundry chute door is, re-worked some of his Mission to Mars Lego sets into cooler configurations (skeleton-footed rocket-pack aside), learned some karate, got really good at ReMovem on the iPod (knocking his sister’s scores off the high-scores), and all around had a good time. Phew and that was in just 2 days.

I applied for a job with Michael’s company, Earthmine. Taking apart and rewiring fancy SLR cameras. It might have worked out but unfortunately (for me) a guy with an EE degree and a willingness to do the work presented himself well :-(

Rich Humphrey had hired me 1 or so days per week to help with computer stuff. It really had the potential to go someplace but just two days ago his largest client didn’t get the funding it needed so they are likely folding / massively contracting soon… and Rich’s company is going into hibernation. :-(

Last night Rich came to the SWARM meeting and I think really pointed the group in a good direction, toward very accessible robotics for the masses. :-)

With all this laid-off-edness, I still never get enough time to work on the T. Pen!

I tried selling residential solar for 5 months last year. It didn’t go well. I didn’t sell any. :-(

Before that, I sold yellow pages to try getting my feet wet with direct sales… eh.

Over the last few weeks, I found myself babysitting a bit… for Binka’s 11 month-old and Jessica’s 6 and 9 year olds.

SWARM brought me to Scottsdale Arizona and we got paid real money but that money goes to SWARM. Maker Media brought SWARM to the Head Royce school but they pretty much paid gas money.

I’ve been working on making this t. pen invention… but not enough.

I started working part-time with Rich Humphrey. Something could develop there to make it more than a couple days a month but it’ll take a good while first.

I’ve been working a couple days a month for Charlotte sporatically for Kern…

Feh.

Last Friday Marnia and Jessie and I presented SWARM to 3 assemblies at the Head Royce school in Oakland. It was a lot of fun! It’s amazing how the 3 different crowds, 6-8 grade, 9-12 grade, and 4th grade needed COMPLETELY different presentations. And over the course of the 3, we all became better presenters :-)

Also presenting was Ken Murphy of Blinky Bug fame and Dan Goldwater with is POV and acrylic bike :-)

Great Thanks to Michelle Hlubinka AKA Binka from Maker Media for inviting us!  

We got a followup comment from a teacher:

When I picked him up, [the student] said that today was the “best day of the entire school year.” He was enthralled with the “Make” guys and knows that he “wants to be those guys.” Owen, [the student] plans to talk to you to find out how he can connect with them with the goal of working with them in the summer or the future.

Thanks for getting one teenager very very excited about the future.

Sitting in the kitchen while VNCing into the bedroom on the snazzy-fast new UltraVNC 1.5.3. The smell of very successful home-made bread (NOT bread machine, the real deal) wafting over my shoulder… and [nom nom nom] the taste proves it :-)  Listening to SomaFM “Space Station Soma” station on my (very pretty!) new iPhone (thanks Mom & Dad!). Finally finding a good display to use for my T. Pen invention. Tapping away on my super-great-deal laptop.  

This afternoon Charlotte and I celebrated Christmas… I found the perfect tree last night on my way home from the FLG “What Are We Gonna Propose to Burning Man?” meeting. We decorated it with candy canes, little disco balls my family got me for xmas, and “ordaments” my niece made for me. We had wrapped and put presents under it yesterday. Today we exchanged gifts to both our delight.

Things feel pretty good at this moment.

Introducing a  new recipe page. Ida’s Kitchen.  

This website has recipes that I have been collecting, mostly from my grandmother Ida. It’s a family work-in-progress. Take a look.

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over the Fourth of July I was in Vermont with my family. I had not spent time at the house for several years.it is very reassuring that the place is still there. It smells the same as it has for more than 30 years now. Oh my, 30 years.

The best moment I had all week was when Julia and I went on the Bromley slide. We hadn’t really planned on going on the slide, Julia has a hard time getting into new adventurous things. Riding down the longest alpine slide in America at full speed would probably not be at the top of her list… well, read on.

I was surprised that she wasn’t freaked out by the chair lift… I would be. No, that was not an issue. We went up the chair lift saying that we would just “check it out at the top”. The lift operators said that we could go on a “scenic ride”, no problem. Though frankly I was a little worried about getting back on the lift on the way back down. Well, we got to the top and just sat around for awhile. We watched some people go down but not with any intention. I suggested that we go pick flowers at the top of the mountain but she was a little uncomfortable and said “no”. After a few minutes, Julia was ready to go back down the chair lift; we started walking up toward the lift. If I were Julia walking back up toward the chair lift I would have been a little bit unnerved at all of the activity… the people getting off the lift, the people helping, the chairs spinning around. Well, in one movement she turned around and started running back down toward the slide saying that she wanted to go. I grabbed a sled and that was that!

When we got down to the bottom, she ran to the chair lift. On the second run, we went down just as fast as we dared!