via adafruit.com
Nice. This is the iron I use now. The difference the cord makes is astounding. It keeps the heat up and is light weight. Highly recommended.
In Response to “Innovation, education, and Makers” | soundcyst industries
Dear Mr. Kalil,
I cannot tell you how overjoyed I am that our Nation’s leaders have finally opened an intrigued eye to the blossoming Maker movement. Your speech following the Maker Faire in New York was encouraging, exciting, and promising. It put a well deserved spotlight on the achievements of garage tinkerers and hackers around the country (and let’s be honest, the world). That our leaders are paying attention to these atypical, underground activities and interested in turning them into mainstream, common American values is incredibly motivating to me as a maker.
There is, however, one facet of this movement that was overlooked in your speech, and as far as I can tell, is unfortunately overlooked everywhere STEM is championed. It is an undeniable aspect of humanity as valuable to Captain Picard as it was to Albert Einstein. It has been a driving force, technologically and economically, in the multi-billion dollar video game industry (and thus, the personal computer and home entertainment industries). It is introduced to Americans before Kindergarten, but somewhere along the path to high school, it is hopelessly abandoned as impractical and unproductive. But, it is also how we stop fragmenting ourselves into STEMs; it is how we come together to pick up STEAM for the renaissance (and yes, the ice cream was its idea).
Of course I am talking about art.
While art is a broad word that is dangerously all-encompasing (there is indeed an art to routing a circuit board, and a quite different art to designing a state machine), the art I am talking about here is fine art — that which Wikipedia defines as “developed primarily for aesthetics and/or concept rather than practical application.” Fine art is no longer just painting on a canvas, drawing musical notes on a stave, or spinning clay into a pot. Fine art, in addition to everything it used to be, is electrical, dynamic, and algorithmic now, and to borrow from Oscar Wilde, as “quite useless” as it ever was. Take as an example, Syyn Labs‘ recent contribution to GLOW.
I wasn’t at the Maker Faire in New York, but I have been to two in San Mateo, and many of the projects I saw there not practically useful, but were quite inspiring. Many of the useful projects I did see had one thing in common with the beloved MakerBots and DIYDrones: They were based on an Arduino, the open-source microcontroller and programming environment designed by artists for everyone.
Yes, the Arduino does fall under the blanket category of Technology, but it would be naive to think that its developers were trained only as technologists and engineers. Their training in art, sociology, and community is doubtlessly and inextricably linked to the platform’s success across its diverse applications. Their desire to create something useful for artists is what drove them to simplify the user interface and lower the barrier to entry.
As I mentioned above, art also has a crucial role in the video game industry. Visual arts in video games are the reason why many of my friends own HDTVs. They are also the reason that companies like nVidia and ATi have had a thriving market in which to sell graphics cards and innovate parallel processing. By and large, people want the latest GeForce and Radeon cards for artistic reasons: they want their games to look good. It wasn’t until very recently that using these massively parallel architectures for anything else was even reasonable.
I could go on about other examples of influences of fine arts on technology, like “Daisy” and the Altair 8800, but your time is valuable, and so is mine, so I’ll cut to the point. This letter is to ask you to take a step back, have a look at the immense discrepancy between grant opportunities from the NSF and those from the NEA, and think about what we can do to pick up STEAM: Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math. Educating and encouraging our children to embrace artistic expression is just as important as teaching them calculus and the periodic table. Let’s encourage our engineers to design new Most Useless Machines. Let’s inspire our mathematicians to devise new mind-boggling N-dimensional fractal animations. Let’s teach our artists to write programs and draw schematics so that they might create an electronic Mona Lisa. And let’s show our children how fun and intertwined all of these fields are, so that they may form communities that flourish as they grow older and spread the joy to their children, and so on.
The train is headed in the right direction, we just need to invite everyone aboard.
Sincerely,
Kevin Nelson
Computer Engineer, Electronic Musician, Crasher
via soundcyst.com
He's right. Art is the reason we want to live. STEM is how to make it work. In other words Art is the goal, STEM is the process.
Symphony of Science - the Quantum World! - YouTube
via youtube.com
Not about robots, but without this kind of knowledge then the rest just doesn't matter.
Blinky Grid and Blinky POV | Wayne and Layne
This is a great little project that I just completed. The programming is the cool part. You just go to their website and they have a little javascript page that you can type in your message. You set you Blinky to receive mode and it programs by blinking parts of the screen. The Blinky has two tiny light receivers that detect the flashes on the webpage. You can program any message up to 253 characters. The hard part is waving the Blinky back in forth the correct timing to read the message.
It was very easy to assemble. The only compliant I had was they combined the build instructions with the Blinky Grid. Not a big deal, but it did confuse my eight year old son for awhile. For early beginners this could be enough of a problem to cause a fright.
I purchased my kit from Maker Shed, but they do sell them directly from their website. All of their projects are Open Hardware, so you can build on their ideas.
Here is a link to the programming page. http://www.wayneandlayne.com/blinky_programmer/
I plan to show this to the students at our schools technology night. I ran the programmer from my iPhone and it worked perfectly. I wonder if I can download their javascript page and run it offline. I may try that in the future.
BBC News - Transplant jaw made by 3D printer claimed as first
via bbc.co.uk
Wow, this is real right now! We should all be learning how to design and print objects in 3D.
NEW PRODUCT – 1 GS/s Digital Storage Oscilloscope + Extras « adafruit industries blog
via adafruit.com
I've been waiting for their recommendation. This really looks like the one to get. Any electronics workshop should have one!
Layer by Layer - Technology Review
So, it is already bigger that I realized. Production parts are already being flown on aircraft.
Discover the NEW AR.Drone 2.0. Fly, Record & Share in High Definition - YouTube
via youtube.com
Not a robot, but very cool just the same.
Chap 05 - Colbert and Flowers.mov - YouTube
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This is a great 8 minute introduction to FIRST robotics and what it is trying to accomplish. I agree with everything he says here. You can't just be informed, you have to know how to think.
All-new ASIMO (Nov 2011) - YouTube
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via youtube.com
Wow, just wow! Taking control of the physical world is here.
My predictions for the next five years
I'm not really big into making predictions but there are several technology forces all coming together that will lead to significant changes in our society in the next few years.
1. Robotics - Take Apple's Siri and Honda's Asimo and you could have a really useful robot assistant around the house or office. You will talk to it in very natural language and it will respond in very natural movements. In five years (say about 2017) it will not be unheard of to know someone with a robot assistant in their house. The time is right for an energetic individual to introduce robots to the common citizen. It is like 1978 for the microcomputer market. Most people can't imagine what it is all about and it sounds ridiculous. However, all the individual components and technologies are available, they just need to be brought together in a satisfying way and showed to solve some real problems.
2. Virtual Reality Work Force - Take the budget crises and the need for businesses to save even more money and it makes sense for them to reduce their office space and have even more workers work from home. We are now just in the beginning of virtual working, the interfaces are crude, the keyboard, the mouse, the 2D display are all tools from the previous generation that are being used for the next 3D generation. The new tools are on the way. We will have 3D virtual technology that we cannot or at least barely distinguish from the real thing. Technology has caught up with our senses and will be able to trick them anytime we want. I say in five years (2017) it will be more common to work from home or other remote location not owned by the business than going to work in a company owned office environment. What will this do to the auto industry? Could your family live with just one car?
3. Virtual Reality Classrooms - All the same forces are working here. Budgets are being cut, schools have difficultly keeping the kids safe, the best teachers are not always available in the cities where they need to be. The forces are quickly moving to virtual classrooms. Students will log in from home or a remote class location and join their friends and teachers in a virtual classroom. Teaching tools will be unbelievable by todays standards. There are lots of security, safety and social issues that will become apparent, but they won't matter, the lack of dollars will drive public and private schools into the virtual worlds by 2017. This also applies to colleges and universities too. In the not to distant past it was a poor choice to have a degree from an on-line college, today it is very acceptable, in the near future it will be the norm. The best universities in the world are already moving in this direction.
4. Personal Manufacturing - The technology is moving very fast here. Today you can buy a 3D printer that can create objects to display or use around your home and office. These objects can be very complex in shape and be printed in any color you can imagine. The home furnishings industry is about to be overwhelmed. An artist or designer can design the item in a 3D environment on their computer. That file can then be sent via email, website or any other way electronic documents can be transferred. The person on the end will just open the file and select print, just like an email today. The end result is a printed object that can be used anywhere. But this is just the beginning, all manufacturing will be done like this soon. The concept of large production runs to reduce costs will be a thing of the past. By 2017, just five years from now it will be common for anything you want to be created locally at a local print shop. Look for them to start showing up in your retail areas soon. Even better, you will be able to design your own items on-line, get the size, the look, the color, the feel of exactly what you want and send it to the printer.
5. There will be a huge spike in demand for artists and creative people. The first phase of technology is created by the engineers. These are people that can solve the problems, but they have very little creative style, taste or design. The rise of the creative types is quickly approaching. Apple has already proven that old engineering based designs are not what the consumers are looking for. These online virtual worlds will need to be human friendly, we will need nice environments to live in, to work in, to play in. We will all spend time with our coworkers, friends and families on-line, we will want to hang out in the prettiest most beautiful places on earth, or any other world for that matter. The 3D objects will need to be designed, the old school companies will not want to share their designs, just like the movie studios are trying to keep their old business model alive by getting new laws passed. The opportunities for open on-line markets for beautiful digital items will be huge and very profitable with the right business model.
Sounds crazy doesn't it? Who can imagine today what it will be like, but the forces are all in action right now. There is very little stopping it. Be prepared, the tools you are using today will be changing. The days of sitting at an office desk are on the way out. The social impact alone will be a huge blow to anyone over 10 years old. Your children's education and work environments will not be like yours. That I guarantee.
Doug
December 2011
Sensor tutorials - Tilt sensors!
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via ladyada.net
You should always know which way is up.
We Are LEGO Education.wmv - YouTube
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LEGO Education. They offer great programs for all kids. They are teaching kids how to make a difference in their future.