Maker Space Dreams

This is a stream-of-consciousness gathering of my dreams for an ideal maker space. I've cleaned up the spelling and grammar a bit, but it's still very rough. I really would be thrilled seeing these ideas brought to fruition. Enjoy.

I want to see maker space with show and tell hour.  No one is allowed to sell their products there.  Can exchange time teaching others how to do something for time credits. Can earn time credits for show and tell.

Public schools would be ideal spaces for this, except lack of space.  Encourage adults to get involved too though.  How to make it for both?  Set times for adult space and times for kids space and then have show and tell for each. Or have adult maker spaces at high schools only. No, maybe the schools would be better for demos only, just to introduce kids to the concept and encourage them to come hang out at the actual space.

Maybe libraries should be the controlling force. For space, empty warehouse type buildings. There are lots of unused commercial properties. Perhaps the owners could receive subsidized rent or tax incentives for allowing use of the space?

Businesses like Home Depot and Lowes and Tandys and Radio Shack could be sponsors. No selling on location, but advertising, signage. And maybe tool rental?  Like would ABC Rentals participate?

Importance of being creative article

Have recycle bins for material scraps by size and type, free for anyone to take from. Employees and volunteers sort and discard as needed.

Have full sheet materials available for at-cost purchase.

Admission free to use open tables and just hang out. Encourage an arcade atmosphere.
Anyone under 14 must be accompanied by parent or guardian.
$1 per hour to use a booth (basic equipment/tools) - have coin-op doors with a credit card slot, but just waist or chest high doors & walls so people can talk with you and observe your project while you work
$5 per hour to use advanced booth (power tools)

Would require security for locking up things, and one or possibly two full time staff members on site during all open hours. Have volunteer opportunities for anyone over 16.

Needs to open around noon and close around 9 pm so students and workers would have plenty of time to work on a project. Open Tuesday through Saturday to cater to customers. The employees would have Sunday and Monday off.

Science + Art

Well dammit. I just listened to an interview today and went to look the guy up, and he's dead. Sheesh.

Charming British fellow, captivating speaker (maybe it's the accent), recipient of a lifetime achievement award for design, author of two books - the latest one he discussed briefly on the podcast interview.

Okay, so Bill Moggridge, industrial designer, was interviewed on Design Matters podcast. He explained his goal is (was) that every student should have some sort of chance at design experience by age 12. That if people understood that everything they touch, every physical item around them, has all been designed ...

Well it was quite a good interview. And someone needs to carry on spreading this message.

Science plus Art equals Design.  And everybody can design something. Everyone interacts with things and experiences and tastes and senses. We are surrounded by design. It's all about how a thing is designed that makes an experience stellar - or completely invisible.

The invisible or unnoticed design is the most perfect - because it doesn't interfere with one's natural actions.

Art is so very closely related to engineering, and I have come to realize there are a huge number of young folks passionate about art, and yet the message I had in my mind even just a decade ago was "art is a hobby, not a career." I was so wrong.

To anyone interested in art, explore it fully. Art isn't just creating an attractive surface on a canvas, it is the very thing driving our economy - and the economy of the entire planet. Cars, planes, trains, automobiles, cell phones, robots, prosthetic limbs, hearing aids, shoes, seatbelts, door handles, computer interface devices, solar panels, telescopes, materials like Kevlar, ALL of the man-made things we can touch or see around us have artistic input!

So don't give up on art just because math is scary. We have computers to do the crazy math anyway. And even you don't want to be an engineer, business needs artisans, designers!

Confidence

I listened to an unexpectedly profound StarTalk today. NDGT interviewed Anthony Bourdain in a two-part show (part two link). His story surprised and touched me more than once.

This all sounds gobbledey gookish when written down. It sounds better in my head. All the things in my head that are so important to get out. I succeed when I like myself. I have definitely figured that out.

The three steps to confidence outlined in this article are similar to these ideas that have been floating around my semi consciousness for the past ten years or more, having come across them in other articles. 1. Mind- awareness 2. Dream outloud 3. Impress me (yourself)!

I am now realizing that I already started on this path awhile back: my life was on hold for many years, stewing in introspection. The first step I mastered was mindfulness. I was so painfully mindful I froze into inaction.

Now I dream, and dream out loud. I make plans of how to reach my dreams. Even if I die before I attain my dreams, at least I have a workable map laid out.

And despite many regrets, I like myself more now than ever, plus I have come to like my past self as well. I like who I am, who I was, and who I will be. And anytime I start feeling bad, I identify what I could do to make me like me again. Usually it has something to do with getting up and being ballsy. I like me best when I'm up and at 'em, in your face.

College Decisions

Enamored of paper and pencil and gadgets and gizmos since childhood, when I was about 12 years old, I decided I wanted to be an architect. I found out some ten years later I liked structural or mechanical design much better.

I had a small scholarship I never used because it wasn't enough to pay for everything and feed me too.

I still wish I would have followed my friend to the Army. She is a mechanic now. And she has unused college money that she has no desire to ever use - she just wanted the on-the-job training.

For purchasing two $60 textbooks and honing my skills on the computer I'm doing far better than the useless associate degree I got 8 years ago.

Message to students: if you think you "have" to go to college just because that's what you've been told a bazillion times, ask yourself why. If it's just about earning more money and you have to take out loans to do it, explore other possibilities before you go into debt that is going to overreach the income.

And if you're going for a two-year degree, do not take business administration or anything generic like that. Huge waste of money. It should be a crime for two-year colleges to even offer that "major." If you can only do a two-year program, focus on a marketable skill.

Or start with a two-year skill program so you can actually earn a living while you then pursue the real four-year college degree. If I could go back in time:

1. Go Army the day I turned 18, learn a trade
2. Work full time and actually earn enough money to pay rent & buy food
3. While simultaneously attending a real four-year college as a night student, fully paid by Army benefits
4. Be the engineer I wanted to be

Education Reform

There has been a buzz about online college classes, and the potential for education to be self-directed. I was going to save this post as a draft and continue working on it, but I just saw that Big Beacon is having a twitter discussion about Engineering Education Reform tomorrow June 11, 2014.

I was just listening to episode #54 of Engineering Commons today and the discussion resonated with me. While I did not get to complete my engineering education for financial reasons, I did pursue less expensive options that from my perspective had little to no value for their cost.  I learned more on the job, and by purchasing textbooks and teaching myself, than I ever did in any tech school or college.

Eureka moments and skill mastery have nothing to do with education. To paraphrase, education is just teaching math and theory with no guidance on how to use this information. (I believe he said "Exploration is stifled.")

My initial thoughts as I listened to the podcast were along the lines of 'things you learn in school just don't tie into real life' - theory vs. comprehension. A good direction that came out of the discussion was that perhaps educators need to be more like mentors, and draw the theory courses from online sources where the most highly skilled theorists can sell pre-recorded course lectures, but the in-person professor can be freed up to provide a more relevant guidance model to integrate the student into real work.

More thoughts on this later - wanted to get this out there in time for tomorrow's twitter discussion.

Podcasts!

A huge upside to being out of the front office is the ability to listen to audio again. I had missed that soooo much at my last job. While getting the opportunity to learn SolidWorks was definitely worth the time I spent there, being in the front meant no headphones, so my entire day was spent in silence. I've only had a couple of jobs where I was off in a cubicle and could listen to music or internet radio; I cherished and longed to have that perk again.

Now that I do once more, I have been exploring the new world of podcasting. I grew up listening to old-time radio replays on KRMG news radio. They would play ancient classics like The Shadow, Jack Benny, Dragnet, and even would replay the War of the Worlds on Halloween. Being that my family prohibited television, listening to the old-timey radio rebroadcasts was the next best thing for me. Although I was growing up in the 1970's I was reliving a world wars era childhood (maybe explains my obsession with career and duty).

Podcasts entertain and enlighten me as I work (have I said how much I love being able to listen to audio at work? It's absolutely wonderful!). I looked up a couple of old-time radio shows for nostalgia's sake, but the best ones are new.

I'm using a free Android app, Podcast Addict, to feed podcasts to my phone nightly and then I listen as I work during the day.

For anyone involved in design and/or engineering at any level, The Engineering Commons podcast is fun and informative.

For a rich sound somewhat NPR-ish in style, but mostly history with a side of design, 99% Invisible is an absolutely heavenly listen.

And for slightly shocking PG-13 humor from scientists, StarTalk, hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson (now the host of the new Cosmos TV series), is a must.

My absolute favorites:
99% Invisible
The Indoor Kids (hilarious, and all about video games)
StarTalk (Neil deGrasse Tyson, superstar)
BackStory (History professors chatting about history!)
Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine (authors reading their own short stories)
The Engineering Commons
STEAM Power Podcast (interesting topics, rough production quality)
Stuff You Should Know (5-10 minute tidbits by the How Stuff Works website)
The Infinite Monkey Cage (Brian Cox, British crush-worthy scientist)

Book Review - Cordelia's Honor

One of my gamer friends mentioned a sci-fi series he'd just finished as being fairly good, and so I took up the first book. Ugh it was awful. Too much sappy romance. Yuck.

Cordelia's Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold, this book just absolutely was awful with 'the lovely curl of her hair' references, 'check out his rear, oh he's not hard on the eyes,' ewww! If I wanted to read romance I'd go down that aisle.

Look, references to tragedy and love and desire are fine and great, but talking about wanting to lie in his arms... and matchmaking... Gawd. Puke.

The redeeming qualities of the heroine, promising at the start, were cut dead center by the entire middle of the book. She starts strong and decisive and becomes a simpering damsel in distress that doesn't pull her head our of her ass till the very end of the book, and even then the end of it ties up too neat and pretty. Not a book I would recommend, and I have no desire to continue the series.

I checked this book out from the library - a paperback. I've decided I strongly prefer using my e-reader. I have gotten spoiled to the accessibility of highlighting a word for the definition. Reading in bed is also much harder with a low-tech book - I can't enlarge the text so I have to wear my glasses.  I'm spoiled. I love my Kindle.

Meditations - the Ancient Book

Finished "Meditations" today. This was the next on my Harvard Classics list I'm working my way through, and it seems a wordy version of "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff" to me. Having never read "Small Stuff" myself, I suppose I shouldn't throw that comparison out there, but it is what kept popping into my head every few pages.
I only take objection with his repeated insistence of not worrying about others' offenses. What about horrid murderers? like some of the recent horrific conscious-less assholes here in Tulsa - sweet old people being attacked and raped, random innocent people being gunned down - crap like that is what kept coming to mind during reading.
However, after reading his multiple treaties on not worrying about or wailing against death in general, that concept finally clicked, and I feel much improved emotionally for it.

Some of the points that stuck with me:
Of speech "(Whatever you must say) speak it kindly"
Of rough or evil persons: "teach them better or bear with them"
Of any wrong a person might do you: "no such occasion why it should trouble thee"
Of those who bring "false accusations ... behold what manner of men they be."
"..either there is a God, and then all is well, or if (not, you make your own) providence ... and then are thou well."

Essentially I would boil the entire book down to  ~ Life is short and then you die, what of it? Don't make such a big fuss about it. Chillax, peoples. We're all good.

More Drafting

In an effort to balance my leisure reading and my educational efforts in drafting, I split my Friday up a bit and did a little bit of each both morning and afternoon. Marcus' Meditations are good (mostly practical philosophy but occasionally peppered with superstition common to his day), but the dry moral reading benefits from frequent breaks.

So I pulled out the SolidWorks textbook. I'm on section 5, second-to-the-last section. This one I had put off for a few weeks during the holiday season, especially right after I got my Kindle. But I delved in with ease.

Upon following the instructions to draw two circles, one large and then one small, on two different planes, I wasn't quite sure where this was going. And the "pierce" command was a new one. It snapped the two circles together like so:

Following the next instruction, to insert a sweep, brought on another of those "aha!" moments, and it suddenly all made perfect sense.

I could do this with any profile now. Sketch a path, establish the profile ... What sounded like a foreign language when simply reading the text is now readily apparent since I actually used the software.

Reading the Harvard Classics

As I make my way into the Harvard Classics, I'm three books in and starting a fourth. The first three I downloaded through the Amazon store directly. Much to my chagrin, I discovered these were just raw scans - not cleaned up at all. Missing letters, jumped lines, out-of-sequence text ... not pleasant to read at all. But I got through them.

As for the content of the work themselves, I greatly enjoyed Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography. Much more interesting than I expected. The next two were more dry and moralistic, not nearly as engaging, but informative nonetheless. William Penn's "Some Fruits of Solitude" is wordy but provides some insight on the moral instruction of the day. Likewise, "The Journal of John Woolman" is repetitive and over-lengthened with unnecessary words, but this seems to be the standard of the time. However, I found this one much more interesting than "..Fruits" simply because the author was instrumental in spreading his conviction against slavery throughout the New England Quakers, influencing a great number of persons during the years immediately prior to the American declaration of independence.

Woolman wrote extensively of his low-key pleadings with his peers for freedom for all men, the argument being that plain living (such as prescribed by the Quakers) makes for more equitable treatment of others (therefore making slavery incompatible with the Christian man), as piling on wealth and giving in to vanity can only be made on the backs of others hard labor. Think Apple / iPhone for a modern comparison.

His message of moderation, humility, charity, consideration and awareness of one's fellow man still speaks to us today.

Now once I finished his book, I was ready to crack open the next set of three. I started by loading three books of the Harvard Classics at a time on my Kindle, so in continuation of such, I loaded the next three when I neared the end of the first set. However, this time I went to Project Gutenberg for properly formatted works.

It was a great pleasure to open Marcus Aurelius' Meditations and see clear words, clean pages, formatted chapter titles, hyperlinks - ahhhh. So much better! Beautiful, in fact. Thank you pgdp.

Now reading the famed emperor's words, I begin to understand the historical respect he holds and yet am surprised at the simplicity of the wisdoms. Reading through this "bookshelf" is promising to be an entertaining adventure for my brain.

Reading on the Kindle

So the Kindle has been a very entertaining gift. I am very pleased. I finished The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, as downloaded via Amazon.com, and am now halfway finished with the next book on the Harvard Classics list, Fruits of Solitude by William Penn. This version is a raw scan of the book and is desperately in need of the Project Gutenberg polishing treatment. While I can read typo and can make my way through the book so, it is not pleasant to read.

I will definitely be looking for the next books on the list at Gutenberg.org. I may have to soon resume my volunteer work with proofreading if I keep reading as voraciously as I have been these past few days.

As a side note, I've also sent some PDFs of my SolidWorks drawings to my Kindle. They are clearly viewable, even if the screen is a bit small for trying to really look in detail at a drawing. It does have zoom and pan capabilities. Nifty.

On another side note, Google+ being what it is, I am finding myself posting there rather than writing a blog post. I may migrate all my posts there; I'm yet undecided which is better for what exactly. G+ doesn't seem to have the nice organized history function though.

Back to Proofreading

So my new job is super-easy, mostly because it's like I've stepped back 20 years in my career and started over again. I'm a receptionist again. Wheee. I do daily posting in the books (and they use paper ledgers o_0 alongside using QB), invoicing, and price verifications on incoming customer orders, but *yawn* I do about an hour's worth of work and the rest of the day is spent waiting for the phone or fax or email to ring or beep.

The first couple of months, I cleaned up the desk drawer where the supports had fallen in, relabeled the peeling files, typed new labels for some customer pages in the shop and p.o. books that had changed their names over the years but we hadn't updated our book tags although we use their new name on their invoices and in the price book, so just updated the other books to match. Oh, what else? Made a couple new A/P files as needed. Anything miscellaneous I could find to do. I was sorely tempted to ask if I could dust and label all the part sample shelves, but after watching what they use them for, I decided they might find that annoying, so I didn't ask about that.

Oh, I've made some new templates, both paper and electronic. Fixed their fax cover sheet using the correct letterhead that matches their invoice. Oh, yes, and when the one computer that had a USB wireless adapter kept having trouble staying online, I fixed that by hooking up an unused hub between that computer and the other one in that room that was already wired in to the network.

I've run out of things to fix unless I really start going around and poking into stuff that is not in my area.

So I started spending a lot of time reading e-books on my Blackberry, or browsing the net on my BB, but lolcats load really slow on the BB, and I didn't think it would be appropriate to browse lolcats on the work computer. My counterpart (or I guess she's supposed to be an assistant? I don't quite get why that position was created, but I'm not going to pry since it sounds like they've had an assistant for my position for many years), anyway, she plays Solitaire all day and occasionally checks Facebook, and an IM program loads on start-up on her machine - I noticed this when she was gone for two weeks) so I suppose she chats, too, but I haven't actually seen her use it.

I can't bring myself to play Solitaire - ugh - and I generally don't type-chat with anyone; for gaming we get on voice chat if there's really anything going on. So I dove into reading. After I read a variety of books, both paper and electronic (Slan, Homonculus, Snow Crash, Moby Dick, and The Iliad, plus several short stories from a 1930's sci-fi magazine), I downloaded The Odyssey to my BB and started it, but I ran out of steam and needed a break from the classical works, but also wanted to do something other than read all day.

Then I was at the store and spotted a word search book ! aha ! so I bought that and took it to work last week. I did half of it Monday and Tuesday, bought the Guild Wars' book Ghosts of Ascalon and read that Wednesday (yes all in one work day), and then finished the word search book by Friday. All 64 puzzles. I bought another one to work on this week, plus bought a new game for my BB - Mahjong - so Monday I started on the word searches again and played some Mahjong. Tuesday and Wednesday, same thing again. I could tell this was only going to entertain me for a couple of weeks before I would have to do something else, but I was okay with the thought that I could alternate between word searches, Mahjongg, and reading books and that would suffice.

Now, I had been to Project Gutenberg to download those e-books I just read, including the 1930's magazines, so pgdp - Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders - had been on the horizon of my mind, but I hadn't consciously dwelt on it.

And then I got an email from pdgp. It was an automatic notice that someone had posted in a thread I was following at the forum. I hadn't been back to pgdp since last July! It had crossed my mind a couple of times, but see, last August was when I started that job that I never should have taken but it was an adventure so then again it's neat to think that I did it, and anyway that job had me wiped at the end of the day every day, so I didn't even think about pgdp till this year a month or so after I was let go (they lost their contract with US Cellular) and I had been job hunting for awhile. But then I was so busy sending out hundreds of resumes that I didn't have the time or the inclination to do volunteer work - I was too worried to relax.

So receiving that email couldn't have been better timing. I'm in a better state of mind, I'm searching for something to occupy my time while still being able to instantly focus on the phone or visitors and easy to set aside or abandon (pages that are inactive for a short period of time automatically get returned to the round), and I really do enjoy doing something productive rather than just wasting time with games. Games are great for a temporary diversion, but it gets tiresome playing them all day long.

So Wednesday evening I logged on at pgdp and refreshed my memory on the guidelines and such, and proofread a few pages. And Thursday, not quite an hour after I arrived, and when work had nothing more for me to do but wait, I logged on and started proofreading. And omigosh, the day went so quickly. I felt like I was actually doing something productive. And Friday morning I awoke looking forward to the day!

Aaaaah - it's so much better to be busy than to feel like a seat-warmer.

Proofreading for Fun

So I had signed up as a volunteer proofreader at Distributed Proofreaders a couple months ago, but the stresses of work kept me from digging in, until this week. And now I'm happily buzzing right along, having gotten past the "beginner" stage, and now moving on to the next level of "easy" and "normal" projects. I am still tagged as a "novice," so that gives me a goal to work on - moving up to the next level.

Proofing one page at a time is a very nice system indeed, giving just a few minutes' work, so you can stop any time. No worries about interruptions - all contingencies are thought of and prepared for; the system has timers in place that return pages back to the queue even if you accidentally forget to come back. The multi-level proofing ensures that each and every page is examined thoroughly.

It's nice to feel productive, and to be part of a cause in which I am significantly interested. Distributed Proofreaders is the arm of Project Gutenberg that prepares works for public distribution as digital text (e-books). Primarily the texts are works in the public domain. The history of Project Gutenberg can be found on Wikipedia.

I first learned of Project Gutenberg through one of my kids' teachers, who directed us there as an option to the library to find a copy of a classic work. Over the last few years we have used this free resource for more than one school report. It immediately struck my fancy, as I love books, especially older works, and the ability to read and search through classic works in digital format excited me.

More recently, I went there searching for another e-book to read, and noticed the links to Distributed Proofreaders, and being a lover of books and editing and writing, I naturally wanted to dive in. There was a bit of instructional reading to get started, but as time allowed I got through it. And so here I am, beginning a personal involvement in what is already a huge community accomplishment, the preservation of classic literature for not only ourselves, but for generations to come.

Lunar Outpost

Yesterday I came across a featured article at NASA on why we humans should go back to the moon, and an argument for building an outpost there. The article covers all the basics: practice for future deeper space exploration, testing of materials, buildings and systems for extra-terrestial use, further deep-space astronomical studies placed on the dark side of the moon (shielded from earth's interferences), and of course, the real biggie - dispersal of the human species to other worlds to ensure the survival of the species.

Yes, it's a topic that borders on the fantastic, the unimaginable. Humans living somewhere other than Earth. It can almost sound paranoid. But you know, it's not sounding all that crazy anymore. Even if Earth never gets hit by a giant meteor, or never has some crazy dictator start a nuclear war and kill off the population, or never has any disaster of epic proportions, it just wouldn't be smart of us to not try to spread out to insure against calamity.

Of course, if anything catastrophic happened to Earth, a lunar outpost couldn't survive long unless some serious work had been accomplished as far as making it viable for independence. This would mean the ability to grow food and make water. Not likely on the moon, at least not anytime soon. The first industrious task is likely to be focused on mining helium 3, while the more intellectual strategies will focus on establishing science outposts for experiments, importantly including those attempting cultivation and solving the water resource problem.

But with all the practice and the things we would learn there, the next step could be Mars. And maybe by then we will have figured out water production and farming. And if we aren't motivated to attempt to live on other planets for our species' survival, then at least to satisfy our innate urge to explore, learn and discover.

It may be hundreds of years before we can figure out how to leave our solar system - at this moment it seems like we never will - but with each step we take, we learn. And I have a small glimmer of hope that we will someday unlock the secret to (relatively fast) interstellar travel and deep space travelers' sustainability.

Upcoming Space Radiation Research

Today NASA's Johnson Space Center list server news announced impending research into the study of the risks of space radiation to humans living in space. This is the next major hurdle we must overcome before we embark on anything longer range than short-term visits to the moon.

Our inability to shield the inhabitants of a space-traveling vehicle from deadly space radiation is not a subject addressed on our fun fictional shows, even that famous standard of television sci-fi, Star Trek. But it does grind our hopes of interplanetary space travel to a screeching halt, at least until this problem is solved.

I wonder what possible solution may lie ahead, and if it will ever be found during my lifetime.

Terraforming

Last week I was walking with our son and as usual we talked about strange and interesting topics, most always related to science in some way. He brought up the subject that we should try to find a planet to terraform and how we could go about it - identifying suitable candidates and then he posited we would need to import plants and animals for sustenance. I pointed out that perhaps there would be existing plant life we could identify as edible (or catalog as poisonous) or even larger animals suitable for meat. We talked about cross-breeding with our crops and all sorts of fun fantastical ideas. Not sure what brought the idea into his head, but yep, that's the discussion we had.

Now today as I flipped through channels, Naked Science on NatGeo, episode "Deadliest Planets," is talking about searching for possibly habitable planets near to Earth. As the name implies, the focus here is on the dangers and challenges we would face on each planet respectively.

These challenges are food for thought - problems and puzzles to be solved.