tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86700354761219148612024-03-13T06:56:48.335-07:00Let's MakeAll about Making, Makerspaces, and, all things Tech and DIY. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04174591996842198269noreply@blogger.comBlogger30125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8670035476121914861.post-7730515455093421862015-09-01T16:00:00.000-07:002015-09-01T16:00:00.535-07:00Why you (Yes, you) should apply for the AiC Award.This last fall, I had the chance to apply for something called the National Center for Women in Technology's Aspirations in Computing Award. I learned about it at the National Girl Scouting Convention last year, while wandering around the convention floor . This award is for High School girls who are interested in computing, have pursued education or achievement in computing, and who want to connect with other girls who are interested in the same.<br />
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The requirements aren't restrictive: no matter how much experience you have, or what area of computing you're interested in, you can definitely apply and still have a chance of winning. The big things the judges are looking for are passion and the drive to pursue it. There are two levels of awards: regional, and national. National awardees and runner's ups get a scholarship, and all awardees get an award and recognition from NCWIT. The application requires you to talk about your plans for your future in computing, and how you want to achieve them, as well as supply an "educator's endorsement" that functions as a letter of recommendation. I won a regional award and was a national runner's up this last year. As a result I got some nifty swag, and the opportunity to go to a regional awards ceremony with 11 or so other regional winners. These were some of the coolest people. I met other girls interested in programming, design, research, and so many other things. It was a great experience, lots of fun.</div>
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But by far the best part about the AIC awards is the wide range opportunities made available to the winners. For example, all awardees gain access to a special Facebook page where they can discuss school, jobs, computing, and the world of technology. It's very active, and the people there are all kind and helpful. But in my opinion, the most important benefit that comes from the NCWIT awards are the networking opportunities. At the regional award ceremony, I met a girl who later invited me to join her FTC robotics team, the professor I worked with as a research intern at a university robotics lab over the summer, and the woman who helped me fund my school Makerspaces' Donorschoose project, getting us a 3D printer.<br />
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Applications open <a href="https://www.aspirations.org/participate/high-school">today</a>, and close on October 26th this year. If you are in any way interested, I can't encourage you enough to look into it. It's an awesome opportunity, an impressive resume builder, and there are many award winners each year from all different backgrounds. Be sure to take the next step toward fulfilling <i>your</i> aspirations today. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04174591996842198269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8670035476121914861.post-50065129373687571802015-08-31T21:21:00.001-07:002015-08-31T21:21:31.091-07:00Make your own Light up ShoesHere's another good project for kids (or anyone, really) starting to learn about making with electricity. It's a good step up from the previous project I posted here, the Lightbulb Bauble. This project uses most of the same parts, but it's a step up in complexity, using parallel circuitry and a DIY pressure sensor to make the LEDs light up every time the wearer takes a step.<br />
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For this project, you'll need:<br />
Lace-up Tennis Shoes<br />
6 LED's with attached wires (or solder on your own)<br />
An Index card<br />
Aluminum Foil<br />
Duct or Electrical Tape<br />
1 Watch Battery<br />
Index Card sized piece of Cardboard<br />
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The first step: if you have not yet attached wires to your LEDs, go ahead and do so. The wires should be about the distance from the eyelets closest to your toe on your shoes to your heel.<br />
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Next, you want to thread the ends of each LED through the eyelets of the shoe, and pull the wires toward the heel. Add as many as you like, though make sure that the shoe is still wearable.</div>
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To prepare the pressure sensor, fold your index card in half, and attach some foil to both sides of the inside. Attach the wires from each LED to the foil - black (negative) to top, red (positive) to bottom. Then tape down the battery on one side so that when you close the index card, the foil only touches the battery. You may have to cover excess foil with tape. </div>
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When the pressure sensor is closed, the circuit it completed, and the LEDs should light up!<br />
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To increase the durability of the design, fold a piece of cardboard in half, and glue your index card pressure sensor to the inside.<br />
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This is a great project to teach kids about parallel circuits. Ask them why a parallel circuit is necessary - what happens if the LEDs are wired in series? It also introduces the idea of an open/closed circuit. What other ways can a circuit be opened or closed? How do we use this in everyday life?</div>
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If you're interested in purchasing the materials to make this project, you can find my new store <a href="http://letsmake.tictail.com/">here.</a> All proceeds go to supplying school STEM programs and Makerspaces with fun and educational resources. Have fun making!</div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04174591996842198269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8670035476121914861.post-41914192297758001422015-07-02T10:07:00.001-07:002015-07-02T10:07:39.646-07:00Can AI 'experience' emotion?<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Emotions are often portrayed in sci-fi as the last realm of humans, the only aspect of thought unavailable to most machines. Think of Data’s long quest for emotional experience on Star Trek, or the hard questions faced by Decker in <i>Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?</i> (Or <i>Blade Runner</i>, if you're more a film person) . For all their apparent unmarred rationality in stories, robots in real life can’t seem to escape from the emotional attachments and influences of humans. From military troops mourning their lost mechanical comrades to apps like Siri that depend on conversational interaction, humans tend to anthropomorphize AI as having the same feelings they do to some extent. But when asked directly if a computer can have feelings, many people would argue no, because of the inherent rationality assumed of mechanical systems. Is it possible? Could AI ever feel emotion?</span></div>
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<span class="s1">As humans, we define our emotions categorically - we feel happy, or sad, or angry, or so on. How is “happy,” as a category containing who knows how many subcategories of semantics - pleased, content, euphoric - defined? There are a few different ways you could approach a definition - </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Emotion as a pre-determined response - The way I feel after I get something I want is “happy.” </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Emotion as a physical state - Elevated serotonin and endocannabinoids are “happy.”</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Emotion as derived from desire - Not needing or wanting to change anything about my current state is “happy.” </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Woman? Salad? <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=women+laughing+alone+with+salad&espv=2&biw=1177&bih=638&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=o22VVcaFDIHRtQXy1ovYCQ&ved=0CCkQsAQ#imgrc=0ucybdYRDy44tM%3A">Definitely happy</a>.</td></tr>
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<span class="s1">To most people these definitions probably seem roundabout and strange. Humans have a unique gift of language that allows happiness to encompass all of these things, it’s typical definition boiling down to the abstract “feeling good.” But when exploring the concept of emotion in an artificial system, one without the convenient crutch of human consciousness and understanding, we have to look for more concrete rules. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">By using any of these definitions I’ve listed above, I’d argue that yes, an artificially intelligent system could feel emotion. It’d be easy for an event of lip a switch in an AI’s programming, setting “mood = ‘happy.’” Bit-and-byte facsimiles of the chemical changes in the human brain that correlate with emotional response would be simple to measure and categorize. And for a system that monitors its goals constantly, the third definition of emotion would be quite useful - I’m reminded of THIS STUDY, in which humans with a damaged center of emotion in their brain were rendered incapable of simple decisions like picking a pen to write with, because there was no “rational” distinction between the choices. Emotion could be defined in this way as a wash of small influences in each of our desires and decisions based on current circumstances. AI can have emotions defined in these ways. But, as I’m sure many of you are shouting at your computers right now, that’s not the real question. </span></div>
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A better question is: Could AI ever experience emotion the same way that <i>humans</i> do? </span></div>
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<span class="s1">This is also a much harder question because we have no reference point. We don’t know what turns a chemical highway into an emotional experience for humans, but we can at least see the same correlation between stimulus in response in dogs, mice, apes, babies, etc. One prime example is the tongue-extended expression that comes with liking a taste - replicated by different species as an instinctive reaction that seems to prove that emotion is not a solely human experience. With AI, there’s no such connection. To assume any would be to anthropomorphize a machine to a dangerous extent. We can program the classification of emotion. We can program the physical qualities of emotion. We can program decisions and goals for an AI that rely on a self-perception of emotion. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">But can we program emotion itself? </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Or is it really necessary to? </span></div>
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<span class="s1">One of the beautiful things that comes from consciousness is the shared experience. We all agree that the sky is blue, the arctic is cold, and the live action Avatar the Last Airbender movie would’ve been terrible, had it ever been created. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Through language we are able to connect the personal to the universal in this way. But it’s a flawed system. There’s no way to prove, for example, that the blue I see is the same blue you see. Or that the happy I feel is the same one you do. Each of these things are entirely subjective, impossible to measure, and impossible to share without the shaping force of language. If the true, pure essence of my “happy” was your experience of “sad,” who would ever know? We could only define happiness in a truly universal manner as a measurable response, physical, behavioral, or cognitive, to whatever experiences we had shared. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">So it doesn’t <i>matter </i>whether the emotions an AI experiences are the same as ours, because we’d never know. It would only matter whether these objective, concrete definitions of emotion held true. These are the only things we can measure. Anything further is an argument on consciousness, humanity, and the ineffable, and their definitions, which have been debated for centuries. These concepts too will need concrete restrictions as AI becomes more and more prevalent in our human world. AI means a new era of philosophy in which questions are no longer enough. We can debate the existence of qualia or the Chinese Room experiment all day (and in a later post.) But beyond philosophical misgivings, does it matter if an AI’s blue is the same as yours, if you can both tell me the color of the sky? In such abstract terms, an AI can experience emotion - but only as much as we’re willing to attribute to it.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Questions? Comments? Arguments? Please add below, I'd love to see what you have to say. </span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04174591996842198269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8670035476121914861.post-68362722432498914842015-06-06T18:00:00.000-07:002015-06-07T09:43:45.931-07:00Makerspace: A Semester's Resource Masterpost<br />
Overall my makerspace has had a great year. I't's gone by super fast - there's something to be said for just jumping in there, but there's a learning curve that can be a little hard to jump. So in case it can help anyone else, I'm going to write about some of the opportunities I've found and the stuff I've learned here!<br />
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FUNDING:<br />
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<a href="http://www.codecademy.com/en/tracks/donorschooseorg">Codecademy, in a collaboration with Google and Donorschoose</a>, offers codes worth $100 on a Donors Choose project to support a classroom program to every student who completes their tutorials through a school program. This is a great opportunity for ANY school Makerspace to get some funding while teaching kids about programming. Although the program advertises itself as solely for High Schools, there are options for all grades and schools, and it wasn't a problem for my middle schoolers. The program is closed for 2015 right now, but it pops back up annually, so watch that space!<br />
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I'm also going to be looking at the <a href="https://www.ncwit.org/project/aspireit-k-12-outreach-program">NCWIT AspireIt</a> awards. I was a national runner up and regional winner this last year, which is how I learned about the opportunity (For other girls in high school or college - <a href="https://www.aspirations.org/">APPLY, APPLY, APPLY!</a>)<br />
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Also, the teacher sponsoring my club was even able to set up a Donorschoose project, where we're trying to raise money to get a 3D printer for next year. If you want to fund the project, you can find a link here. If you're able to give support, any would be appreciated!<br />
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ACTIVITIES:<br />
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However, even though funding was limited, I was able to come up with ways to make the materials I DID have stretch, to groups ranging from a core group of about 20 students, to larger groups of up to 50-60 at one point. What I found worked really well was:<br />
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- Dividing the kids into groups, and assigning each group a different part of the activity. For example, I was able to spread my two Mindstorms kits across a large group by assigning each smaller group to build a certain part of the robot.<br />
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- Alternating activities between groups: While I was able to raise enough money with my earlier fundraiser to buy 15 Arduino Uno clones for the Makerspace, I was still limited in the number of computers we had to program them. To fix this problem, I divided the kids into two groups: one spent the first half of the time building circuits, and the other, programming. Then they switched, so everyone got a chance to try everything<br />
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-Large group discussion/brainstorming activities: During the weeks I was short on materials or planning time, I defaulted to activities that didn't need anything more than a pen and some paper, or computers. I took inspiration from a middle school SMU competition called Visioneering, which I participated in in the 7th and 8th grades. In the competition, teams of students are challenged to create plans for solving some problem with technology, no matter how expensive or "out there". For my adaptation, I had each table brainstorm a plan for improving the school using technology, which they had to share with a group at the end of the class period.<br />
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Those are just the ones that come to mind right now. Over the summer, I plan on putting together some guides to the various lessons/projects we did, and, ideally, I'll publish them somewhere online (though exactly <i>where </i>is TBD. I'll post a link here as soon as I figure it out).<br />
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PLANS:<br />
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For next year, I'm looking at trying to expand my program to merge with one at an existing elementary school in the area, though that plan is still very much in its "what if?" stage. I'll also have a chance to talk to the principal soon about getting the sorts of programs we'd need on the school computer. Plus, over the summer, I'll hopefully have a few more volunteers to assist me with planning meetings and keeping track of the budget. So overall, there's still a lot of work to be done, but I feel good about my plans as the next year comes around.<br />
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OTHER HELPFUL THINGS:<br />
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Don't be afraid to ask for help, information, or anything else from people who seem interested. You'd be surprised what you can learn.<br />
<br />Practice talking about your project. You should be able to give a compelling summary in 30 seconds.<br />
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The fancier the technology, the less time you'll have to do the activity (You have to account for the <i>ooh-and-aahing</i>).<br />
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If y<i>ou're</i> having fun, chances are everyone is.<br />
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Anyone have any comments, other suggestions, or anything to say? Please, comment below!<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04174591996842198269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8670035476121914861.post-86606336270443777152015-04-16T20:25:00.001-07:002015-04-16T20:26:33.288-07:00The Importance of the Humanities in STEM<div class="" style="font-size: 12px; margin: 0px;">
Let's start with an easy opinion to swallow: The US has a problem with its STEM education. But not in the way you might think. The trouble with STEM in the US isn't that we rank <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/pisa-rankings-2013-12">low worldwide in math, or in science</a>. It's that the money going toward improving those test scores is too often taken from the arts. And it shouldn't be. That might sound odd coming from me - the organizer of a STEM program that serves 50+ kids, as well as an engineer and programmer - but hear me out. It's not that I think STEM education is useless, or that we need to take resources away from science and technology classes. But too many schools teach STEM materials poorly, and at a much bigger cost than they realize.</div>
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In the digital age, we're hyperfocused on teaching math and science to "catch up" to countries like China and India in terms of scores on international exams. This emphasis on test scores <i class="">has </i><a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/fy_2015_stem_ed.pdf">increased funding for STEM programs</a> - great! Student interest can flourish. Teachers can get new technology for their classrooms. And where the funding is used to improve test scores, they improve. It's a win/win deal. But that funding has to come from somewhere, and often it comes from budget cuts in the liberal arts and humanities. <i class="">That</i> is very, very bad.</div>
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We seem to have this idea that STEM and the arts are two immutably separate entities. Just ask an engineering major what they think of the liberal arts at their university, or vice versa. It follows that they have to be in constant competition - one has to be more important. You can't have both science AND religion. You can't love both math AND painting. Maybe such a divide meant more when technology was factory machines and assembly lines, but the way we use technology has changed immensely even in the past few years. Supporters of STEM education often remind us that, in the future, every job from will require some knowledge of technology. But the reverse is also true: every worker in a STEM related field would benefit from the kind of education that comes with the arts. </div>
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There's so much more to building, programming, and selling a computer than hardware specifications. A computer has to be used by humans, humans that bring their own aesthetic preferences, learning curves, and emotional pulls to the table. All of that has to be designed into the machine, and there's more to it than statistics. There's some psychology, some visual arts, maybe even some music or some writing. Computers are sold as lifestyles, not machines. And that' s not even counting the interpersonal skills the production team had to use to brainstorm, or the dozens of concept sketches and pitches created before the final design was chosen. There's a creativity needed to get ahead in technology, and it doesn't come from the skill set that makes kids better at taking math tests. But somehow, although the need for the humanities in technology becomes more prevalent every day, we've been devaluing the classes and the skills they give us. What can we gain from the humanities in STEM? And how can we make sure those skills aren't left out?<br />
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The best STEM class I ever took was a technology class taught by a middle school librarian. (I've mentioned it before, <a href="http://makersunite.blogspot.com/2014/11/super-secret-special-project-makerspace.html">here</a>.) She started the school's technology club the first year I attended - I was one of the founding members. In the club, we tried to finagle our favorite technologies into different parts of the school and curriculum. We taught the English and Social Studies teacher how to make Google Earth tours. We made videos for new students using editing programs and green screens. One member even designed a new website for the school. By the next year, the club has become a class, and one that was unique in two ways. One, we were working with people outside of the class and our experience with technology. Anything we created had to be presented in a way that was easy for anyone to understand and use. Two, our projects were working to solve real world problems, problems that required skills beyond just our programming expertise. </div>
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So we wrote tutorials. We created animated sequences and music for the videos. We read books and drew pictures and argued over the latest technology news. We were able to use the skills we learned in our English, History, Art, and Music classes to augment our projects in the class. While I know the class wouldn't have worked for everyone, many of the later engineering and science classes I took only focused on teaching the minimal technological skills necessary for a basic concept. That's fine for a technology class. But those are skills you have to get somewhere. This only emphasizes the importance of Humanities focused classes in all student's education. Those classes are where students gain the skills needed to turn technology into real world solutions for real world people.</div>
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As I mentioned before, this is more important today than ever. Take a minute to watch these commercials :</div>
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Notice anything about these advertisements? They aren't selling their products based on how many processors they have, or how many transistors they can fit on a chip. They sell computers based on how people use them. And computers are used for so much more than pedigree STEM purposes. You need artists who can create programs for artists. You need historians. You need musicians. If for no other reason, you need art educated people to create the media you enjoy so much today. Every TV show, game, article and more you find online comes from arts education every bit as much as STEM. Who'd want to live in a world without the art we love? How could we move forward without the art that has inspired us to create new things?</div>
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We play a dangerous game by ascribing innovation to the kinds of skills that can be measured by standardized tests. Support your local arts and humanities programs. Bring art into your STEM classes, and STEM into your art classes. Read, watch, create, and enjoy how the world you live in hasn't been created by opposing forces, but a beautiful mixture of every skill humanity has to offer. Push for access to education in each and every one. We've got to create a future that's worth the time we put into it. </div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04174591996842198269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8670035476121914861.post-33268182139579781002015-03-31T19:45:00.002-07:002015-03-31T19:46:17.152-07:00Review: How to Create a Mind by Ray KurzweilHello again! Finally I can get back to business now that the Spring musical is over and most of the teachers have recovered from their post-break assignment panic. I read this book a few weeks ago, over my Spring break. It was an interesting book, though very different from Barrat's pessimistic analysis of the state of AI research.<br />
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In <i>How to Create a Mind</i>, Kurzweil focuses on trying to predict AI's next step through a mix of neuroscience, mathematical analysis, and philosophy. I picked this book over some of Kurzweil's more famous works, like <i>The Singularity is Near</i>, because I wanted something a little more technical than I assumed those books would be, and I wasn't disappointed.<br />
But the great things about the book are: a) it's easy to read, and b.) fairly well cited. I've seen lots of <a href="http://www.science20.com/eye_brainstorm/blog/kurzweils_how_create_mind_severely_lacking-97013">criticism</a> <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/on-kurzweil-the-sleight-of-hand-that-makes-it-seem-we-understand-the-mind/273742/">online</a> about Kurzweil "dumbing down" the theories he talks about in the book, which range from discussions of Hidden Markov Models and the Pattern Recognition Theory of Mind, to thought experiments like the Chinese Room. I think these critics miss the point of the book - it's not meant to be a textbook. It's meant for the masses, the people looking to understand more about AI and how it works, and in that respect it works very well.<br />
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I do have some doubts about Kurzweil's qualifications as a neuroscientist. (Not that I'm any more qualified.) He spends a good portion of the book talking about his Pattern Recognition Theory of Mind (PRTM), where he theorizes that the neocortex of the brain is made up of multi-neuron "pattern-recognizers" that are arranged hierarchally to allow for the recognition of more and more complex patters. Kurzweil does a LOT of guessing in these chapters, from the number of neurons in each pattern recognizers to how they would be structured in the brain, that he almost stipulates as fact. His explanation of the theory is convincing, at least to someone like me; Plus the inspiration has created several useful AI tools, such as the Hidden Markov Model and Hidden Temporal Model. But I'd have to do more of my own research to say anything substantial about the validity of the theory.<br />
Kurzweil's thoughts on consciousness and the mind, the focus of the second half of the book, match up pretty well with my own, and I enjoyed reading his justifications for them. They make for good argument fodder, and, as I'm sure you know, argue I do. And more than anything else, this second half is a place of argument: Kurzweil goes out of his way to defend his predictions and disprove his detractors and their positions. In some cases it seems almost a little desperate, and one chapter late in the book becomes quite tedious as Kurzweil tries to defend his Singulatarian movement (On which my views haven't changed. See my review of Barrat's Our Final Invention).<br />
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But you shouldn't let this criticism stop you from checking out the book. It tends toward overstatement and futuristic optimism, but, so does Kurzweil. The information is well cited, inspiring, interesting, and a great base for further research. I would wholeheartedly recommend the book to anyone interested in AI - So long as they know nothing there, or anywhere else, is the final word.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04174591996842198269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8670035476121914861.post-54574497969898569182015-02-25T13:24:00.000-08:002015-02-25T13:24:00.591-08:00AI and Tic-Tac-Toe - If you've seen any of my posts in the past, you know about my <i>clearly negligible</i> interest in artificial intelligence. I also mentioned in my review of James Barrat's Our Final Invention that I wanted to take the next step, and bought myself an Artificial Intelligence Textbook at Half Price Books (this one, to be exact, although only the 2nd edition.) I'll be short about it - SO. COOL. I've talked my family's ears off about every chapter so far, which is about a third of the way through. However, I have one major complaint about the textbook - it doesn't feature any actual programming exercises. It refers to possible problems to solve - games, like chess; mathematics problems and solving theorems; P vs NP problems; but the book doesn't offer any exercises that let you try out the methods for solving them in real time. And for me, that just isn't good enough.<br />
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So, I decided to take matters into my own hands, and try out the first problem mentioned by the book: Tic -Tac-Toe.<br />
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WARNING: THE FOLLOWING SECTION IS EDUCATIONAL, BUT ALSO REALLY LONG<br />
SKIP TO THE PROGRAM PICTURES IF YOU JUST WANT TO HEAR ABOUT MY SOLUTION<br />
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The book uses Tic-Tac-Toe to introduce the concept of a <b>heuristic search</b>. A <b>heuristic </b>is a way of gauging whether or not a potential solution to a problem is a good one. For example, if you were trying to walk downtown in a foreign city, a good heuristic would be to take a path that goes toward the tall buildings. This might not always be a perfect method(some cities are more labyrinthian than others), but it will usually do a good job of finding a solution for your problem. Our thinking is completely tied up in heuristics - they're the rules you make up about how you run your life, whether it's how much money you save each month, or the lucky socks you wear to every test.<br />
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In the context of Artificial Intelligence, a <b>heuristic search </b>is one way a program can do its thinking.<br />
Let's look at this in terms of Tic-Tac-Toe<br />
The program looks at a problem as a series of <b>states.</b> These are possible states of a Tic-Tac-Toe problem.<br />
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Pretty simple, right? You can perform an action on a state to change it to another state - like making a move on the board. Now a <b>solution </b>to this particular type of problem is a progression of actions and states that ends in the program either getting a three-in-a-row, or tying with the opposite player - a "winning" state.<br />
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In order to find a solution, the program takes a state, performs an action on it to create a new state, and checks if it's a winning state. If it is, it returns the action it took. Otherwise, it tries a different action.<br />
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The most basic kind of thinking is trial-and-error. You generate a random possible action to solve a problem, and if it doesn't work, discard it and try another. This WILL get you a good solution... eventually. For small problems, this might not be an issue. But for big problems with millions upon billions of possible solutions, there's no way.<br />
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This is where the heuristic part comes in. I find it useful to imagine an AI as on a map, starting on a base state, with paths to every other possible state representing every possible action it could take. When the AI tries an action, it moves along the path to the new state, which has paths connecting to all of IT'S possible states, and so forth. And every state has an elevation - the higher up it is, the better is fits a <b>heuristic</b> (with the highest being winning states, of course). Your AI's goal then is to find the action from the state it's at that will get it to a higher state (one that better fits the heuristic). This means a lot of heuristic search techniques have funny names like Hill Climbing. The program's ultimate goal is to get to higher (or highest, when possible.) ground.<br />
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For example, your Tic-Tac-Toe playing program (assuming computer plays X) might decide that a good state is one that has the most possible, shortest paths to a winning state for X, or, in other words, the most rows, columns, and diagonals with only Xs in them. From a base state, a program with this heuristic will make a move in the middle space as it's action, because the state created is the "highest" state - it gives you 4 possible ways to win. It's the best possible action.<br />
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At this point it's important to note, however, that finding a best possible action isn't always possible - for problems where you can take a lot of different actions, it might take too much time. For problems where states can be far away from the winning state, you can get stuck on a 'ridge' or a 'plateau' where you've found the best possible state for your local area, but there's one much better many, many actions away. This is the reason heuristic search algorithms can get so complicated, and why so many different ones exist. AI's greatest achievement and it's greatest challenge is dealing with situations where 'best' isn't possible.<br />
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However, Tic-Tac-Toe is a relatively simple problem - one small enough that it COULD be solved through trial and error, we just want it to be solved faster. For my programs, I decided to combine two different heuristic techniques - Steep Ascent Hill Climbing and Minimaxing.<br />
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<b>Steep Ascent Hill Climbing</b> is a heuristic search method where you evaluate all the possible states you could reach from your given state and pick the <b>best</b> one. Because of this, it can take longer for your computer to complete than plain old vanilla hill climbing, which just finds any state that's <b>better</b> than the current one. But it will typically take fewer steps to get to a winning state, and, in the case of a game like Tic-Tac-Toe, a 'good' move really isn't good enough.<br />
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<b>Minimaxing</b> is a a method more specific to game theory. You assume that, for every move each player makes, they are going to try and maximize their own gains and minimize their own losses - while maximizing the losses and minimizing the gains for the opposing player. In true minimaxing, you estimate the number of moves it will take for you to win the game from a given state, and use that to assign the state a score. I combined this approach with a different heuristic to make my program as fast and effective as I could<br />
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I actually built the first two iterations of this program back in mid-October, but I was then hit in quick succession with the Girl Scout National Convention and GSLI conference, my Gold Award Project, make-up work, then school, and it's just been crazy ever since.<br />
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The first draft took about a week to build. I coded everything in Ruby.<br />
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Basically, the computer takes the tic tac toe board, uses is to test all the possible moves it can make, and picks the one that gets it the highest score. </div>
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It played Tic Tac Toe, for sure! It just... didn't play very WELL. I used a heuristic that scored the board on the number of open rows, columns, and diagonals, but it just didn't give the weight needed to winning states. So I tried again.<br />
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I found a promising looking heuristic here. This one made use of an array to store all the possible ways to win, and another to score the state based on how many ways X and O can win on the board. But even better, I gave the computer the ability to look one move further ahead, and try to guess how the opponent would respond to its move. This was minimaxing - the computer assumed the opposing player would play their best, and could then use its move to put the opponent in the worst possible position.<br />
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This program worked GREAT! It was almost unbeatable!<br />
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But, it had one weakness.<br />
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It could only look two moves ahead, and beating THIS trap required the program to look ahead 4.<br />
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In the end, I found it was easier to adjust my heuristic than to double up on the moves my program watched. I made sure it treated getting these traps - the three corners, or this triangle - as winning when scoring the boards, but NOT when checking for a win. In this way, the program finally worked.<br />
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Next, I'm working on trying to make a program that can learn the game on it's own from repeated trials - but that's a whole other ball game. For now, I'm just happy with how my first foray into AI programming worked out!<br />
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If you have questions/or comments don't hesitate to ask! I'm always happy for feedback.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04174591996842198269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8670035476121914861.post-56919622377529526452015-02-24T12:48:00.001-08:002015-02-24T12:48:24.990-08:00Makerspace: Chugging along!Sorry for the dearth of posts! It's been a rough couple of weeks here, what with school, theatre, and even a coding competition (2nd place!), and the NCWIT Aspirations in Computing Affiliate Award Ceremony!<br />
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But mostly, I've been slowly pushing forward with my Gold Award project.<br />
I've held 4 meetings so far this semester. I try to start each one with some kind of a question. For example, a the first meeting I asked what each student thought technology was, and what it was used for. ( I keep the questions open ended, so I sometimes get some... interesting answers.) Then I introduce an activity, and the rest of the meeting is devoted to that activity. <br />
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The first one focused on the engineering design process. I built a ramp at home out of old K'Nex kits, and had students divide into groups to try and design a Lego car that could jump off the ramp from one desk to another. The group work turned out well - it's definitely something I'll continue. The kids really enjoyed the chance to talk more while they worked. Later meetings have been about programming, and more recently, robotics and game design.<br />
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The club is also making use of a Google Classroom to keep in touch outside of class. I like the Google Classroom setup, although I find myself wishing it was a little less of a bare-bones framework. I'd appreciate an easier calendar application, intersectionality with google hangouts, etc.<br />
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Finally, I was pointed by my sponsor to an assistant principle at my school who was interested in creating a Girls Who Code club at the school. This kind of thing requires a higher-up approval where I live, so it probably won't get started until next year, but it's a step toward getting a wider recognition of what I'm trying to do, and I'm excited to help.<br />
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Anyway, this is what the space looks like right now:<br />
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The new boxes and ramps are from some of the previous projects.<br />
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Slowly but surely, we're getting there!<br />
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Coming soon: I <i>PROMISE</i> I will finish my post on my Tic Tac Toe program soon - every time I start writing about it, I end up working on improving it again. Then I've got another book review from the opposite end of the AI spectrum - Ray Kurzweil's "How to Create a Mind." So stay tuned!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04174591996842198269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8670035476121914861.post-18938716480027136822015-01-11T14:31:00.001-08:002015-01-11T14:31:06.385-08:00Simple Circuitry Projects: Make a Lightbulb Necklace!<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8670035476121914861" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a>Note: This is a more seasonally appropriate version of my <a href="http://makersunite.blogspot.com/2014/12/teaching-basic-circuitry-holiday-way.html"> Holiday Bauble Project</a> - both projects can be made from the same parts, and are put together in a similar way, and are great as a first project for individuals or groups interested in circuitry!<br />
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<b>Here's what you'll need: </b><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">1 Miniature Glass Ornament</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Some silver ribbon (I used Easter Basket filling)</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">2 Pieces of Wire</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">1 Lithium Coin Battery</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">1 LED</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">A hot glue gun</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">A pencil</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Some tape (electrical tape works best)</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">How to make your ornament:</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small; letter-spacing: 0px;">Carefully pull the silver top off the glass ornament, then pull the pin out.</span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JWak6biYO1E/VI-jBgkH4wI/AAAAAAAAEZk/jWC7FI_CSGM/s1600/IMG_1781.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JWak6biYO1E/VI-jBgkH4wI/AAAAAAAAEZk/jWC7FI_CSGM/s1600/IMG_1781.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small; letter-spacing: 0px;">Use a pencil to push the silver ribbon into the ornament.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small; letter-spacing: 0px;">Put a piece of tape on the inside of the silver ornament top so that it covers the two holes. Poke one of the leads of the LED through the tape and through the hole so that the bulb is UNDER the ornament top.</span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z9U4U3HEL4c/VI-i_phpjXI/AAAAAAAAEZc/STRycFZerhs/s1600/IMG_1782.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z9U4U3HEL4c/VI-i_phpjXI/AAAAAAAAEZc/STRycFZerhs/s1600/IMG_1782.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small; letter-spacing: 0px;">Use the hot glue gun to secure the LED to underside of the lid so that the bulb sticks out by about half an inch. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small; letter-spacing: 0px;">Then glue the lid back to the top of the ornament so that the edge of the lid touches the top of the glass neck of the ornament, and wrap both in your choice of duct tape. </span><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-N-c9LykXbqU/VLL2Zxk_MJI/AAAAAAAAExI/yk7IPXahOAU/s1600/IMG_1846.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-N-c9LykXbqU/VLL2Zxk_MJI/AAAAAAAAExI/yk7IPXahOAU/s1600/IMG_1846.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Make sure to test it! If the LED doesn't light, it could mean that you need to wiggle the leads so they aren't touching the lid of the ornament. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small; letter-spacing: 0px;">Loop one of the metal ends of the black wire around the shorter lead on the LED, and secure it with hot glue or tape. Make sure the wire is directly touching the lead! Then, do the same with the red wire on the longer lead.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">If you're interested in doing the experiments (which require 2 or more baubles), here are the instructions I'm giving out with the kit below:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">PARALLEL AND SERIES CIRCUIT EXPERIMENT</span></span><br />
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<a href="http://www.cdn.sciencebuddies.org/Files/4803/6/fig2_parallel-series-circuit-battery-light-bulbs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.cdn.sciencebuddies.org/Files/4803/6/fig2_parallel-series-circuit-battery-light-bulbs.jpg" height="170" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Series circuits are created by wiring all the components of a circuit in a line. The electricity moves straight from one component to the next. They’re useful when you want a circuit to shut down completely if it’s damaged. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Just connect the wires red to black for series, and make sure the red wire goes to the positive side of the battery, and the black to the negative. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">What happens when you add more ornaments to the chain? Try touching a paperclip to both leads of an LED in the circuit. What happens? Why is this? </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Parallel Circuits are created when each component gets its energy directly from the same energy source. They’re useful when you want each component to work independently of each other, or if you don’t want damage to one component to affect the others. </span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">For a Parallel circuit, the black or red wires for each ornament connect with the black or red wire leads of the next LED. The last black wire in the chain goes to the negative side of the battery, the last red wire to the positive. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">What happens when you add more ornaments to this chain? Try touching a paperclip to both leads of an LED in the circuit. What happens? Why is this? </span></span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qS24WVmbMOc/VLL2buPujVI/AAAAAAAAExQ/6Zlii0jao8A/s1600/IMG_1848.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qS24WVmbMOc/VLL2buPujVI/AAAAAAAAExQ/6Zlii0jao8A/s1600/IMG_1848.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small; letter-spacing: 0px;">Finally, to finalize the lightbulb, tape the other end of the red wire to the positive side of the battery, and the black wire to the negative. The LED should light up. If it doesn’t try swapping the wires or moving the LED’s leads. If they’re in contact with the metal of the ornament top, the LED won’t light.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Now you can use your lightbulb as an ornament, a necklace, or whatever strikes your mood! And don't be afraid to personalize it with further decoration.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: x-small;">And if you happen to make one, please, send me a picture at <a href="mailto:rach.s.thompson@gmail.com" target="_blank">rach.s.thompson@gmail.com</a>. I'd love to see it!</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04174591996842198269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8670035476121914861.post-16089838872801656252015-01-05T11:50:00.001-08:002015-01-06T18:13:12.144-08:00More Web Design: Learning Rails OnlineSo, if you haven't seen <a href="http://makersunite.blogspot.com/2014/11/trying-out-web-design.html">my other post</a>, as a part of the application process for a more advanced Tech Theatre class in 11th grade, I need to have a digital portfolio.*<br />
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Now technically I could just have my every project hard-coded into each page using html and CSS, but that sets off every alarm bell I've got. It's just bad code. I don't want to have to type all that out over and over again! It would be much easier if I could create and projects without having to program each one in individually. So, I visited my good friend Codecademy again to take a crack at one of their newer, longer, tutorials: <a href="http://www.codecademy.com/en/learn/make-a-rails-app">Ruby on Rails.</a><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_zTSCI7DnF8/VKrdGlNObXI/AAAAAAAAEvI/uHDxbE4USrw/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2014-12-27%2Bat%2B11.04.16%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_zTSCI7DnF8/VKrdGlNObXI/AAAAAAAAEvI/uHDxbE4USrw/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2014-12-27%2Bat%2B11.04.16%2BPM.png" height="183" width="320" /></a></div>
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* I have since been informed that a powerpoint would have been fine, but where's the fun in that?<br />
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I picked Rails over PHP or the other options because I've had more experience coding in Ruby than any other language (except possibly Java, through <a href="https://itunes.stanford.edu/">iTunes U's Stanford CS101</a> course, but that was a while ago). I wanted at least some sort of base to start from because, and let me make this very clear: I had no clue what I was doing. I'd never done any sort of web applications before. I'd never done any programming projects where I had to juggle multiple files or languages. So I figured if I was going to take my trial by fire, I might as well wear some sturdy shoes.<br />
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I installed Rails through <a href="http://brew.sh/">Homebrew</a> (a package manager that mimics linux) for my mac. All the files I created defaulted into Xcode and not Textmate, which surprised me, and then I used <a href="http://brackets.io/">Brackets</a> to edit my views and stylesheets.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-X6nYQXPAZSo/VKrdGCcAvVI/AAAAAAAAEu4/fQ_VVaeJ4eo/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2014-12-30%2Bat%2B12.45.12%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-X6nYQXPAZSo/VKrdGCcAvVI/AAAAAAAAEu4/fQ_VVaeJ4eo/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2014-12-30%2Bat%2B12.45.12%2BPM.png" height="168" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">So like this, but with at least seven more windows open, and a cat lying on the keyboard.</td></tr>
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The rails tutorial has a very, VERY slow start, especially if you already know how to code in Ruby. It's essentially a Ruby and a Rails intro all in one, and I couldn't find any way to skip. Prepare to spend a good hour on 'hello world!' type lessons before getting to the good stuff. And the good stuff is good, but I had one major problem through the tutorial - some of the code doesn't translate well to building your own app because it leaves out bits to simplify the tutorial. Which meant I saw an awful lot of this:<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZF2hcFgXaqU/VKrc9WxzjUI/AAAAAAAAEuo/GhzGrfj8mXE/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2014-12-20%2Bat%2B2.39.27%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZF2hcFgXaqU/VKrc9WxzjUI/AAAAAAAAEuo/GhzGrfj8mXE/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2014-12-20%2Bat%2B2.39.27%2BPM.png" height="188" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Add your own hair pulling and incomprehensible screeching.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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And don't get me started on associations. For the basic structure of my web app, I want each project to belong to a category, and each picture to belong to a project. It turns out that Codecademy's take on explaining how to create these associations... assumes a lot, in the best of cases. In the worst, trying to replicate the code structure just doesn't work because they leave pieces out.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wOhpWfwWeqE/VKrdGcQLO7I/AAAAAAAAEu8/lMRvrgYJntQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2014-12-30%2Bat%2B3.09.27%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wOhpWfwWeqE/VKrdGcQLO7I/AAAAAAAAEu8/lMRvrgYJntQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2014-12-30%2Bat%2B3.09.27%2BPM.png" height="224" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sometimes though, it's your own fault and you know it.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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So, I supplemented my learning with <a href="http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html">this Rails Guide</a>. The great thing about this guide is that it can act as a sort of cheat sheet. Every time I looked at something in the codecademy tutorial and had no clue what was going on, I could look back to this page, and find the no-fluff method to getting done what I want to do. In my opinion, it does a much better job of explaining the structure of Rails than Codecademy. But the benefit of Codecademy is being able to type in the code for yourself and see the different files side by side in the simulator. For better or for worse, I really needed both.<br />
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Of course, neither of these things stopped me from spending hours on <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/">stackoverflow</a> because <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12762939/rails-dev-environment-not-updating-html-css-assets-even-after-restarting-server">my CSS wasn't updating as I refreshed the page</a>, <a href="http://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/active_record_migrations.html">or my migration wasn't taking</a>, or <a href="http://guides.rubyonrails.org/v3.2.19/association_basics.html">every single one of my pictures was apparently owned by every single one of my projects</a>. That's just part of the learning process: you can't really, truly learn a programming language until you start to program something in it.<br />
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So now my website is finally coming together functionally!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jpEhpLIxyZA/VKrjt6kxewI/AAAAAAAAEvs/Q7dy7y0tIJU/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2015-01-05%2Bat%2B1.18.30%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jpEhpLIxyZA/VKrjt6kxewI/AAAAAAAAEvs/Q7dy7y0tIJU/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2015-01-05%2Bat%2B1.18.30%2BPM.png" height="230" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0_7XURtanBA/VKrnT563ViI/AAAAAAAAEv4/QSTeqm6H-dE/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2015-01-05%2Bat%2B1.34.15%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0_7XURtanBA/VKrnT563ViI/AAAAAAAAEv4/QSTeqm6H-dE/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2015-01-05%2Bat%2B1.34.15%2BPM.png" height="224" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">CSS could still use some work though.</td></tr>
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I've started to look at options for hosting. I'm going to try out Heroku, because it's free to start out, and I've heard good things about it so far. Any thoughts or suggestions? Questions about the tutorials, or where to learn more? Ask away!<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04174591996842198269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8670035476121914861.post-91384756121824163192014-12-16T15:00:00.000-08:002014-12-16T15:00:03.353-08:00Teaching Basic Circuitry the Holiday Way!If you've seen my last post here, you've probably seen this little bauble.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HIegYhg2-F8/VI-jFpga-QI/AAAAAAAAEaI/cJXt8bAlTfI/s1600/IMG_1786.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HIegYhg2-F8/VI-jFpga-QI/AAAAAAAAEaI/cJXt8bAlTfI/s1600/IMG_1786.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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This is the final product created by the no-solder kit I'm selling to fund my Gold Award project. The idea is that the kit is easy to assemble as a kit to teach younger kids about Parallel and Series Circuits, while still leaving something cool for them to take home. Each bauble costs less than a dollar to make*, and all the materials can be bought with a trip to a craft store and an electronics store, so I'd say it's pretty successful!<br />
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*If you buy batteries online, as most coin batteries I've seen are insanely expensive at grocery stores. I bought 100 for $17 from <a href="http://www.cheap-batteries.com/">this website</a>.<br />
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<b>Here's what you'll need: </b><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">1 Miniature Glass Ornament</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Some silver ribbon (I used Easter Basket filling)</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">2 Pieces of Wire</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">1 Lithium Coin Battery</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">1 LED</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">A hot glue gun</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">A pencil</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Some tape (electrical tape works best)</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Scissors</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">How to make your ornament:</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small; letter-spacing: 0px;">Carefully pull the silver top off the glass ornament, then pull the pin out.</span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JWak6biYO1E/VI-jBgkH4wI/AAAAAAAAEZk/jWC7FI_CSGM/s1600/IMG_1781.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JWak6biYO1E/VI-jBgkH4wI/AAAAAAAAEZk/jWC7FI_CSGM/s1600/IMG_1781.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small; letter-spacing: 0px;">Use a pencil to push the silver ribbon into the ornament.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small; letter-spacing: 0px;">Put a piece of tape on the inside of the silver ornament top so that it covers the two holes. Poke one of the leads of the LED through the tape and through the hole so that the bulb is UNDER the ornament top.</span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z9U4U3HEL4c/VI-i_phpjXI/AAAAAAAAEZc/STRycFZerhs/s1600/IMG_1782.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z9U4U3HEL4c/VI-i_phpjXI/AAAAAAAAEZc/STRycFZerhs/s1600/IMG_1782.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small; letter-spacing: 0px;">Use the hot glue gun to secure the LED to underside of the lid so that the bulb sticks out by about half an inch. </span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-o9jMp78d1BU/VI-jC_hGdPI/AAAAAAAAEZ0/V6UOMl9RbYQ/s1600/IMG_1784.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-o9jMp78d1BU/VI-jC_hGdPI/AAAAAAAAEZ0/V6UOMl9RbYQ/s1600/IMG_1784.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small; letter-spacing: 0px;">Then glue the lid back to the top of the ornament so that the LED is hidden by the silver ribbons</span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WNurOijJMQE/VI-jFuhv1XI/AAAAAAAAEaE/GOnVcW3IuaM/s1600/IMG_1785.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WNurOijJMQE/VI-jFuhv1XI/AAAAAAAAEaE/GOnVcW3IuaM/s1600/IMG_1785.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small; letter-spacing: 0px;">Loop one of the metal ends of the black wire around the shorter lead on the LED, and secure it with hot glue or tape. Make sure the wire is directly touching the lead! Then, do the same with the red wire on the longer lead.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">If you're interested in doing the experiments (which require 2 or more baubles), here are the instructions I'm giving out with the kit below:</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">PARALLEL AND SERIES CIRCUIT EXPERIMENT</span></span></div>
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<img height="301" src="webkit-fake-url://1bea828b-002f-43c9-babc-73596f21edb2/image.tiff" width="400" /></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Series circuits are created by wiring all the components of a circuit in a line. The electricity moves straight from one component to the next. They’re useful when you want a circuit to shut down completely if it’s damaged. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Just connect the wires red to black for series, and make sure the red wire goes to the positive side of the battery, and the black to the negative. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">What happens when you add more ornaments to the chain? Try touching a paperclip to both leads of an LED in the circuit. What happens? Why is this? </span></span></div>
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Parallel Circuits are created when each component gets its energy directly from the same energy source. They’re useful when you want each component to work independently of each other, or if you don’t want damage to one component to affect the others. </span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">For a Parallel circuit, the black or red wires for each ornament connect with the black or red wire leads of the next LED. The last black wire in the chain goes to the negative side of the battery, the last red wire to the positive. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">What happens when you add more ornaments to this chain? Try touching a paperclip to both leads of an LED in the circuit. What happens? Why is this? </span></span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HIegYhg2-F8/VI-jFpga-QI/AAAAAAAAEaI/cJXt8bAlTfI/s1600/IMG_1786.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HIegYhg2-F8/VI-jFpga-QI/AAAAAAAAEaI/cJXt8bAlTfI/s1600/IMG_1786.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small; letter-spacing: 0px;">Finally, to finalize the ornament, tape the other end of the red wire to the positive side of the battery, and the black wire to the negative. The LED should light up. If it doesn’t try swapping the wires or moving the LED’s leads. If they’re in contact with the metal of the ornament top, the LED won’t light.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: x-small;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I hope this lifts your holiday spirits! It's fairly durable (I was able to wear one on a necklace all day at school </span>with<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> minimal </span>problems<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">.) and it looks good. Try it as an </span>ornament, a necklace, and augmentation to an ugly sweater, or just a shiny reminder to say "Happy Holidays!" </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: x-small;">And if you happen to make one, please, send me a picture at <a href="mailto:rach.s.thompson@gmail.com" target="_blank">rach.s.thompson@gmail.com</a>. I'd love to see it!</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04174591996842198269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8670035476121914861.post-49019776304461173922014-12-12T14:00:00.000-08:002014-12-15T18:54:46.596-08:00Makerspace, Part 2: The Plan. Last week, I finally got to have my first meeting with the middle school Technology club I'm working with to create the Makerspace. We talked about what a Makerspace was, how we were planning to use it in the school, and the various bits and pieces of old projects that I brought to show what kinds of things could be made in a Makerspace. Basically, it was a condensed version of this post, with a few pictures from Big Hero 6 and Iron Man 3 as reference points.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://s.yimg.com/cd/resizer/FIT_TO_WIDTH-w500/d8ed22ee860790f58ad96cf0266b861457b9c7ed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://s.yimg.com/cd/resizer/FIT_TO_WIDTH-w500/d8ed22ee860790f58ad96cf0266b861457b9c7ed.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Good movie... but it was no Wreck-it-Ralph. </td></tr>
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At the end of the meeting, I had ever student write down on their slip of paper the top ten things they wanted to be able to make/learn in the technology club. Over the weekend, I looked through all the answers I got, and came up with the five main units that would be the most useful and interesting to kick off the Makerspace and the Tech Club. The Technology club has two types of meetings - "Class" meetings, which teach skills like the one's seen below, and "Business" meetings, where we'd focus more on the Makerspace itself, and where members would have time to share the projects they've been working on (THAT is for a different post). But the introductory skills are important for the students with little or no experience. So here's what I've put together: </div>
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/Scratch_cat_large.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/Scratch_cat_large.png" height="320" width="296" /></a></div>
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1. Programming</div>
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This is the obvious one, but I've put it as the first unit because it's a vital skill so many of the other projects the students were interested in, and because it doesn't require expensive materials. I'm working on lesson plans for a programming intro class for Scratch, which will hopefully give enough of an introduction that the students will feel comfortable working on Codecademy tutorials or learning from other online resources<br />
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<a href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81vPWhz-G%2BL._SL1500_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81vPWhz-G%2BL._SL1500_.jpg" height="260" width="320" /></a></div>
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2. Robotics<br />
These kids love robotics almost as much as I do. The issue here is limited time and materials. I'm planning on doing two classes with Mindstorms Ev3 - one for building, one for programming. I'd also like to incorporate robotics into an Arduino introduction later on - I have an RC car that I robotized with an Arduino that would make a good example.<br />
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/LittleBits.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/LittleBits.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
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3. Circuitry<br />
While I'd actually prefer this unit before robotics, the littleBits are one of the more expensive items in the budget, and, while I have an Ev3 kit at home that I could bring as an example, the same isn't true here.<br />
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<a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Raspberry_Pi_B%2B_top.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Raspberry_Pi_B%2B_top.jpg" height="214" width="320" /></a></div>
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4. Computers<br />
This is kind of a catch-all unit. Here I definitely want to have a class on the Raspberry Pi, but I also want to bring in some of the other Technology Club Alumni to teach classes on things I'm not as familiar with, like App programming and Web Design. (It's interesting to see how our individual interests were foreshadowed through Tech Club and the technology class. The ones who spent all their time on the iPod touches now program them, the ones who spent all their time tweaking Powerpoints and Tshirt designs have gone into 3D animation or computer graphic design. And yours truly MAY have turned in a final paper analyzing potential uses for robots that could create their own languages after researching <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/05/19/136474935/researchers-create-robots-that-make-up-their-own-spoken-language">this</a>. I really should post it here if I can find it.)<br />
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5. 3D Printing<br />
I have never had the opportunity to use a 3D printer, and I could not be more excited to learn. That's why this unit is last - I know the least about it, and I need that time to learn. I'm planning on getting the<a href="https://s.yimg.com/cd/resizer/FIT_TO_WIDTH-w500/d8ed22ee860790f58ad96cf0266b861457b9c7ed.jpg"> Printrbo</a>t kit, and using Google Sketchup and Autodesk inventor to do the modeling, since our school system already has that software.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kIkBndEYzeE/VI-e4ZPTWAI/AAAAAAAAEZQ/7RYacVRJyOQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2014-12-15%2Bat%2B8.53.43%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kIkBndEYzeE/VI-e4ZPTWAI/AAAAAAAAEZQ/7RYacVRJyOQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2014-12-15%2Bat%2B8.53.43%2BPM.png" height="308" width="640" /></a></div>
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These are the things we decided would be the most useful. I've said before that you don't need expensive tools to make a Makerspace, and I stand by that statement. But good tools make making more accessible, and especially in a school setting, that's important. And tools cost money.<br />
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About $1,300 worth of money, not counting shipping or storage.<br />
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I'm looking at a couple different ways of doing money-earning. For the more expensive kits, I've talked to my sponsor about using DonorsChoose. It seems like a great program, and I'd appreciate the help in offsetting the cost. However, with finals rapidly approaching, we haven't had the chance to talk to the school administration yet. So I've started with some simpler money-earning opportunities. Right now, I'm creating kits for making small light up ornaments to teach younger kids about the basics of circuitry. The kits would also be good for making a string of lights, good for teaching Parallel vs. Series. Plus, who doesn't love holiday themed illumination? Here's a picture of the prototype. I'll be posting a tutorial soon.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-25dkHV5WpnE/VIqRMVisEjI/AAAAAAAAEY4/zRp31mSKcZw/s1600/IMG_1786.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-25dkHV5WpnE/VIqRMVisEjI/AAAAAAAAEY4/zRp31mSKcZw/s1600/IMG_1786.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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I'm selling the kits to local scout troops as an end of year craft project and my goal is to raise about $100 to start off with.<br />
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And finally, while I can't expect to rely on donations, I had the opportunity over Thanksgiving break to collect some of my great-grandfather's old tools for use in the Makerspace, which I cleaned up and labeled.<br />
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It wasn't anything too fancy - just screwdrivers, wrenches, a level, things that would be useful for building or disassembling small projects. But that toolbox has officially become the first thing in the Makerspace.<br />
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It's a long road ahead, but we have a plan. Let the making commence!<br />
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PS: One last thing. One of our main concerns with the technology club is the participation of girls. I was one of two girls out of about fifteen people at the clubs inception, a ratio that improved a little the next year, I suspect because both of us were so active in the club. Now, she's actually come back to help with my project. But we still see the same problem. There were only two girls at the meeting and about twenty boys. Do any of you have suggestions for getting more girls involved? </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04174591996842198269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8670035476121914861.post-89455290270614353782014-11-27T16:24:00.000-08:002014-11-27T16:24:17.019-08:00Why Artificial Intelligence IS Real Intelligence<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/digitaltrends-uploads-prod/2014/01/google-deepmind-artificial-intelligence.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/digitaltrends-uploads-prod/2014/01/google-deepmind-artificial-intelligence.jpg" height="425" width="640" /></a></div>
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One of the most common arguments I've seen in the face of AI research is that computers aren't REALLY intelligent. They merely emulate intelligence, something that is inherent to biological life, or , in some views, only humans. In his article <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2014/11/21/365753466/artificial-intelligence-really-is-pseudo-intelligence">"</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; line-height: 1.125;"><a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2014/11/21/365753466/artificial-intelligence-really-is-pseudo-intelligence">Artificial Intelligence, Really, Is Pseudo-Intelligence,"</a> Alva Noë</span> argues that computers lack 'drive': they can't attach meaning to things, and therefore they can't have wants like biological beings do.<div>
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Lets say, right now, I want a chocolate bar. "Want" is a pretty complex term. Does it refer to the lack of calories, calcium, sugar, magnesium, or even serotonin that my body's sensors detect in my bloodstream? Does it refer to the physical symptoms that manifest in my stomach and mouth that my brain recognizes, or the memory of how a chocolate bar negated these symptoms a week ago? Does it refer to my memories of having a chocolate bar while at the computer that have taught me chocolate is the "right" choice in this situation, just one of many learned behaviors? Does it refer to an emotional component, a combination of learned behavior and brain chemical levels that tell me that chocolate makes me 'happy'?</div>
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"Want" encompasses all of these things. It's complex, and it's more complex than anything AI can do right now as a whole. But when you break it down this way, what up there can we do that computers can't? We can create programs that take information from sensors. We can create programs that can access memories and find patterns, and determine a course of action based on that pattern. That's all intelligence is. The human mind, our meanings and desires, are only complex derivatives of very basic mechanical things, in the same way that the leaves on a vine create a beautiful spiraling pattern simply as a way of maximizing the sun coverage each leaf gets. Biological machines aren't inherently different from artificial machines. They've just had a head start. </div>
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Another argument he uses is that of understanding. Computers can't understand, they can only perform the actions they are told to. One example is that of the Translator's Room. A human is locked in a room with nothing but a pen, and dictionaries that translate one foreign language into another. The human knows neither of these languages. However, every day, they receive papers with writing in one of the languages. Using the books, they are able to perfectly translate the writing into the other language before passing the paper back out of the room. They can complete this task despite not 'understanding' either language. </div>
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This argument doesn't negate the possibility of artificial intelligence. It shows that a system can only do so much with limited information. If the books in the <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/">Translator's Room</a> scenario had a picture for each word they translated, the human would be able to understand another component to the sentences they wrote. What if they were familiar pictures? Just like Helen Keller, with her hand underneath the spigot, the human could recognize water in any language if they just had another reference point. Another piece of information. Could that be considered understanding? A computer can store associations and memories just as a human mind can, and the more data a computer has access to, the more associations can be made. Isn't that all that understanding is? A summary of our experiences and the patterns we've derived from them? </div>
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The Jeopardy-Playing robot, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_(computer)">Watson</a>, which the article cites as an example of a lack of understanding THRIVES on those summaries. It doesn't have any visual or physical references, which make up most of our human understanding. But it knows a river is a flowing body of water. It knows water is a compound in a liquid state that is common on Earth, and necessary for human life. It knows flowing is a type of movement only fluids, like liquid, can achieve. Even without visual reference, how is this not understanding? Watson can induct. It can deduct. And it can use those abilities to answer questions.</div>
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I'd argue that's what intelligence is. Our ability to derive patterns from information and act using those patterns. That ability is just as real in computers as in any biological creature. It's just our job to prepare computers to use it.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04174591996842198269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8670035476121914861.post-5383834353468280012014-11-24T12:00:00.000-08:002014-11-25T13:26:04.728-08:00Super Secret Special Project: Makerspace!: A Long Introduction.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nMIJMGprHXI/VHTzybN4CCI/AAAAAAAAERc/uxfP5hx20OY/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2014-11-25%2Bat%2B3.23.51%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nMIJMGprHXI/VHTzybN4CCI/AAAAAAAAERc/uxfP5hx20OY/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2014-11-25%2Bat%2B3.23.51%2BPM.png" height="464" width="640" /></a></div>
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I've finally caught up with my teasers! I've been pretty busy with school, scouts, other projects, and, yes, my Gold Award project, where I'm hoping to build a Makerspace at my old middle school!<br />
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Note: For the uninitiated (credit xkcd)...<br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">A Makerspace, Hackerspace, FabLab, Techshop, etc..<span style="color: #252525;"><span style="line-height: 22px;">. is a space devoted to providing materials, instruction, and community to anyone interested in creating. It goes hand in hand with movements like OpenSource, STEAM education, and free information. A Makerspace wants everyone to be able to make, and to find other people who make.</span></span></span><br />
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To give a little background - my middle school librarian was an awesome teacher, interested in sharing information, technology, and connection through the library. She started the technology club my first year at our school, where teachers could come and talk about the technology they wanted to use in the classroom (e.g. Google Earth Tours, iPod touches, online video-editing software, etc) and it was up to us to A) figure out how to use the technology, and B) teach the teachers once we figured it out. The club was only the beginning. By the end of the year, 13 of us were enrolled in the Independent Study Tech Team class, taught in the library, by the librarian, for an entire class period each day. The teacher brought some brilliant ideas to the class: 20% time, bringing in projects from other classes to try out the technology, etc. It was basically a maker class! The only thing we lacked was materials.<br />
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In the library, we had three things we could work on: Software on the computers (the basics of Windows 7 plus a few class specific things, like Alice), thirty-something iPod touches we rented out to classes, and books. This was a great starting point, but I kept having to bring in my own materials for 20% time to feed my interest in robotics and programming. The teacher introduced me to the idea of a Makerspace my eighth grade year, and the more research I did the more I liked it. The materials I've collected are important to the kinds of projects I get to do - I hate the idea that another kid somewhere won't get to learn about robotics because they don't have access to a mindstorms, or an arduino to learn on.<br />
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Ninth grade taught me how useful a Makerspace could be. If you've even taken just a quick look at this blog, you can see I took Tech Theatre, and made full use of the workshop we had available. That workshop is my favorite place in the entire school, because it has everything you need to bring a design to life. Tech Theatre may not be a class devoted to engineering, but I feel that, because of the workshop, and because of the self driven nature of the class and the projects, it does a better job of teaching problem solving, design, and engineering skills than the note-and-test heavy engineering-specific class I took. <br />
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<a href="http://www.ophstheatre.org/uploads/4/8/9/4/4894318/7564493_orig.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.ophstheatre.org/uploads/4/8/9/4/4894318/7564493_orig.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
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I decided to try and find a nearby Makerspace - it turns out the nearest is an hour's round trip from my house. I got a tour to see how the space functioned. It was REALLY cool, but I noticed that it was definitely geared more toward the adult, experienced engineer in price range, classes and tools available, and supervision. That wasn't quite what I was looking for, so I contacted my old librarian to ask her thoughts on creating a Makerspace in Plano... and a few weeks later, she's my Gold Award Project Advisor, I've sent a powerpoint proposal to the principal of the school, and I'm prepping one to send to my local public libraries! (See the powerpoint here, if you're interested)<br />
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What's the plan? Well, the main issue is cost. I spent a long time looking up the costs of materials I'd like to include, and, to say the least, cost was high. I'm planning on organizing a tool drive to try and get some of the cheaper items, like paintbrushes and screwdrivers, old toys to take apart, Ewaste, and the like. Some of the rest will be funded by club member fees, but for a lot of it I'm looking at funding online through Donorschoose.org, or something similar.<br />
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Another constraint is space. The area we're looking at converting is currently storage for books that get lent out in English classes for reading assignments. We get a grand total of one bookshelf for storage, so we'll have to use it wisely. This is a real model of the space I made in Sketchup. I'm betting the Technology club will be happy to have it. Right now, I'm still waiting on the final green light from the principal, which will hopefully come in the next couple of weeks. Then I can turn in my paperwork, and get the ball rolling! Expect to see more about this soon, and all the little mini-projects it entails.<br />
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(NOTE: I'm going to publish this as is, but it's a little outdated now. I've since had my project fully approved, and the first meeting with the students will be next week! I even had the chance to talk about my project at the Girl Scout Leadership Institute at this year's national convention. I'm super excited to get started. If any of you have ideas for fundraising, or know of good projects or resources for a middle school Makerspace, please comment below! I'd love to hear what you think.)<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04174591996842198269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8670035476121914861.post-59590667500438737152014-11-23T12:00:00.000-08:002014-11-23T20:29:18.241-08:00Trying out Web DesignSo, as I posted here earlier, I'm planning on revamping this blog's appearance. This isn't a random burst of inspiration: this year, for my Technical Theatre class, we're required to create a digital portfolio. That's practically what I've been using the blog for so far, so, although I'm creating a separate website for the portfolio specifically, I'd like the two to have a unifying theme. Also, I may be using this blog to document my Gold Award project (which was approved yesterday! Expect the post to FINALLY make it up later this week.) I want it to look more professional, and, in general, more "me." So, here are the steps I've taken so far to try a whole new kind of coding.<br />
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<b>Step One: Learn how to code.</b><br />
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I'm going to be painfully honest here: prior to this project, I had never used HTML before. Never. Not once in my life. Not even a little. It's one of those things that would have been useful that I just never did. Thankfully, it's 2014 and the internet flourishes. I tried out a couple of different online tutorials, and by far the best one was the <b><a href="http://www.codecademy.com/skills/make-a-website">Codecademy: Make a Website</a></b> tutorial, covering HTML and CSS. It's straightforward, it's fast (I did an hour here and there over a week and finished easily), and it's what I needed to know.<br />
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Even later, when I actually started coding, I could check the Codeacademy HTML and CSS glossaries, which made for handy cheat sheets, and had everything covered in the course, and more.<br />
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A word of warning though: The website recommends the javascript-based "<a href="http://www.codecademy.com/skills/make-an-interactive-website">Build an Interactive Website</a>" tutorial immediately after the one I took. For that tutorial, you really do need to have a decent understanding of Javascript before you take the plunge. I left it pretty thoroughly confused after the first few problems. I started the <a href="http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/javascript">Javascript tutorial</a> a few days ago, and it's pretty basic stuff, but I'm hoping when I finish I can take another stab at it.<br />
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<b>Step Two: Get a good editor to work in.</b><br />
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For most of my day-to-day programming, I use <a href="http://macromates.com/">Textmate</a>. But I got a good recommendation from a friend as far as a good Wed-Design specific text editor: <b><a href="http://brackets.io/">Brackets</a></b>.<br />
And I have to agree: Brackets is the best.<br />
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There are two things that make Brackets really useful:<br />
One, it keeps all your files organized in the sidebar, where they're easily accessible without making you go dig through folders and directories. All of them. Pictures, HTML, CSS, add-on libraries. I'm not very organized on my own, so this was a LIFE CHANGING revelation, and the second most useful thing about the program.<br />
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Two, it comes with a way of previewing your website live as you make changes. It comes with the download, and you need <a href="http://www.google.com/chrome/index.html?hl=en&brand=CHMA&utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-na-us-sk&utm_medium=ha&utm_term=chrome">Google Chrome</a> to use it. But there was nothing better than being able to tap away on my keyboard and see the elements of the website come to life in front of me. It's not always perfect. I usually had to reload the page on chrome after any big changes. But it was helpful both in designing the page and understanding the code I was designing with.<br />
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<b>Step Three: Start Designing!</b><br />
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I'm working specifically on the Portfolio website right now. I have a plan drawn out (which I'll upload once I redraw on something that <i>isn't</i> my English HW). Once I figured out how everything fit together , it was really fun to manipulate. I used <a href="http://getbootstrap.com/">Bootstrap</a> to make the designing a little easier, which was super handy, and there's a lot of support out there for it. This was what I had at the end of the day:<br />
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The idea is to have each project organized on the timeline from most to least recent. Each one will be contained in a box with it's title, a short description, a picture, and a link to a page with more information. What's here isn't quite right either - I want the red timeline thinner, but that's a challenge for another day.<br />
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I think I want to try and use Rails to make adding and updating projects easier. I tried the <a href="http://railsforzombies.org/">Rails for Zombies</a> tutorial a few months ago, but I never felt really comfortable with the material. I guess it's time to retry, maybe with the<a href="http://www.codecademy.com/en/learn/make-a-rails-app/topics/ruby/exercises/ruby-strings"> Codecademy</a> tutorial as well? I figure that will be useful for a blog design too! At least I don't need anything solid to turn in until April.<br />
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So that's my Thanksgiving break plan. I'll also be working on my Makerspace plans (Look for a post! I promise!), school work (bleck), and an interesting proposal I got from my Tech Director about using robots to move set pieces for this year's musical (More on that later, I hope). Not much of a break, but I'm just happy to have a few days I don't have to get up at 7 am if I don't want to. How about you guys? What are your plans?<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04174591996842198269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8670035476121914861.post-7919757881575927352014-11-06T21:40:00.002-08:002014-11-06T21:40:44.870-08:00Changes!Just a quick heads up that I'm doing a complete overhaul on this blog's appearance, title, and URL. I'm planning on using it as a part of my Gold Award project (I've had a post drafted for MONTHS about it now, which, hopefully, I'll post later this week. But school has really knocked the wind out of me. Basically: I'm building Makerspaces at schools in my area.)<br />
Anyway, changing title, changing url, etc. Eventually I want to move it to it's own URL, but that probably won't happen until at earliest Thanksgiving. So, apologies for any inconvenience! This should get sorted out pretty soon.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04174591996842198269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8670035476121914861.post-34588292999939302562014-09-21T18:12:00.000-07:002015-08-25T18:59:17.219-07:00The Theatre Tech Magnetic Survival BraceletI'm a sucker for simple solutions for even the most superficial problems, so when I saw <a href="http://www.amazon.com/MagnoGrip-311-090-Magnetic-Wristband/dp/B000WU9LCQ">this </a>magnetic bracelet for holding screws and nails during projects, I was sold from the start. But I needed something before I had to go work at the Children's theatre the next night (summer jobs, guys). Plus, that bracelet looked heavy, slippery, and easily scratched up. So I made a quick raid through my craft box, and ended up with The Theatre Tech's Paracord Survival Bracelet.<br />
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Pretty sweet, right? And it's magnetic enough to hold even 3in screws in place while you walk around. </div>
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Here's what you'll need:<br />
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Paracord (Measure around your wrist in inches, taking into account the fit you want, and, for this project, add an inch. Cut a foot of paracord for each inch. Ex. If your wrist was 8 in in diameter, you should cut 9 feet of paracord) Pick a color that makes you happy!<br />
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A Side Release Buckle (Mine was cut off an old backpack, wider is better for this project)</div>
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8-10 STRONG Bar Magnets, about an inch long each.</div>
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And your tools:<br />
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Hot glue (optional, but recommended)<br />
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A pair of scissors</div>
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A lighter or match<br />
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Measuring tape or ribbon</div>
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Start your bracelet like you would any other paracord bracelet, with two big exceptions:<br />
1. Remember, when you measure your wrist, before you start cutting your paracord, add one inch. This will give you enough material in the bracelet to cover the magnets, and still have it fit around your wrist.<br />
2. Lay your paracord flat on the table, instead of suspending it. This will make adding the magnets infinitely easier.<br />
Stop once you have tied the first knot of Step 3 of this tutorial, or, if you're a paracord veteran who doesn't need it, once you've tied the first know between the buckles.<br />
Here's the tutorial I used: <a href="https://www.operationgratitude.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/HowtoMakeaParacordSurvivalBracelet.pdf">https://www.operationgratitude.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/HowtoMakeaParacordSurvivalBracelet.pdf</a><br />
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Once you've got it started, take your first bar magnet. You want to push it between the two strings in the center of your bracelet that you're tying knots around. You can hot glue it in place, if that makes it easier to hold. Then, continue knots over both strings and the magnet. The strings should end up on either side of the bar magnet, with the knots holding the whole thing together.<br />
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When it looks like you've only got one knot left on a magnet, slide in the next magnet right below it, and keep tying. Don't worry if you run out of space for magnets. Just continue tying over the string until you reach the end, then finish like any other paracord bracelet.<br />
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If you want, you can also add a magnet to back of the buckle like I did, but, at least for me, it was more of a hindrance than a help. The paracord keeps the magnets from getting scratched, but it's not thick enough to negate the magnetic effect. It's heavy, but not too heavy. And it's definitely been helpful for keeping screws on hand when I need them, while not letting me take them home in my pocket. It's definitely an accessory I'll keep <i>on wrist</i> when I need it.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04174591996842198269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8670035476121914861.post-54124177604183912442014-08-20T09:13:00.001-07:002014-08-20T09:13:45.934-07:00Review: Our Final Invention by James Barrat<p data-mce-style="margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; font-family: Helvetica;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-m_Uczi0EVGw/U_TJMYNQ5AI/AAAAAAAADL0/1R5rPlLhhFo/s640/blogger-image--1611704539.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-m_Uczi0EVGw/U_TJMYNQ5AI/AAAAAAAADL0/1R5rPlLhhFo/s640/blogger-image--1611704539.jpg"></a></div><p data-mce-style="margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; font-family: Helvetica;"><span data-mce-style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;" style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br></span></p><p data-mce-style="margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; font-family: Helvetica;"><span data-mce-style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;" style="letter-spacing: 0px;">There are many different books about the robot apocalypse, but few are so well researched, or as urgent, as <a data-mce-href="http://www.amazon.com/Our-Final-Invention-Artificial-Intelligence/dp/0312622376" href="http://www.amazon.com/Our-Final-Invention-Artificial-Intelligence/dp/0312622376">Our Final Invention</a>, by James Barrat. I have a passion for Artificial Intelligence, probably born from too many Sci-Fi movie marathons. The philosophy mixed with the science and the unknown excites me. But Barrat doesn’t exactly come from a pro - AI viewpoint. He believes that AI will be the last technology developed by the human race. Our Final Invention is a book about the dangers of Artificial Superintelligence, when machines surpass human capability to predict or control them. It aims to educate readers about the most current AI research, while moving them to act on the dangers that could appear if the research continues unchecked. Was it successful? </span></p><p data-mce-style="margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; font-family: Helvetica;"><span data-mce-style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;" style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br></span></p><p data-mce-style="margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; font-family: Helvetica;"><span data-mce-style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;" style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The first thing I noted about this book was that it was very easy to read. Even though the material covered is sometimes complicated and advanced, the analogies and writing style is easy to comprehend. Some of the ideas are a little harder to digest once you understand them, and I think part of that has to do with the reverse-chronological path Barrat takes through the topic. He starts with something called the "Busy Child" scenario: a situation where a super-advanced AI decides it can't achieve its goal in confinement, tries to escape it's human captors. For this chapter, and the next two or three, I was rampantly annoyed. Every few sentences I found myself saying "Yes! But..." See for yourself! The chapter can be read online <a data-mce-href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2013/09/our-final-invention-excerpt" href="http://www.tor.com/stories/2013/09/our-final-invention-excerpt">here</a>.</span></p><p data-mce-style="margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; font-family: Helvetica;"><span data-mce-style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;" style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br>The problem is that Barrat makes his claims in a sensational, provocative tale BEFORE he gives you the facts he has to back them up. And facts he has. His research covers the political, technological, and social ramifications of AI, from futurists to researchers to what's already here. Late in the book, he has a chapter comparing future advanced AI to the current rising problem of malware, and it is brilliant and terrifying. Once I read the rest of the book, I had to go back and reread the first few chapters. What I hadn't seen before was this: When Barrat says AI, he doesn't mean the kind that controls industrial machinery, or even government drones. The kind that has built in safety precautions from a savvy engineer. He is talking about the hundreds of researchers trying to skip the middle step, who are only concerned with developing human level intelligence as fast as they can. With that precinct, the "Busy Child" scenario becomes much more real. </span></p><p data-mce-style="margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; font-family: Helvetica;"><span data-mce-style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;" style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br></span></p><p data-mce-style="margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; font-family: Helvetica;"><span data-mce-style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;" style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-eMZZUrFkVlM/U_TJNx-WgnI/AAAAAAAADL8/YVp_Wt6ov5E/s640/blogger-image--524156792.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-eMZZUrFkVlM/U_TJNx-WgnI/AAAAAAAADL8/YVp_Wt6ov5E/s640/blogger-image--524156792.jpg"></a></div><p data-mce-style="margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; font-family: Helvetica;"><span data-mce-style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;" style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br></span></p><p data-mce-style="margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; font-family: Helvetica;"><span data-mce-style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;" style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br></span></p><p data-mce-style="margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; font-family: Helvetica;"><span data-mce-style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;" style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Now this is not a perfect book. One thing that annoyed me was Barrat's claims that we shouldn't anthropomorphize AI, shouldn't assume it would appreciate us, or even consider us worthy, when a few chapters later he was discussing the four basic drives of AI, which seemed rather anthropomorphic to me. (And don't even get me started on the gross oversimplification that is "friendly AI") And only the last chapter of the book is focused on ways to stop this impending doomsday. I wish there had been more discussion of prevention, of precaution, not just an afterthought, because I do believe that this isn't just going to become relevant in five years - it's relevant NOW. Back to government drones - or even worse, Amazon's proposed domestic drones - what happens if one of these drones is captured, and destructively reprogrammed? If it becomes slave to a botnet? These are the concerns Barrat feels moved to act on. Does his book succeed at moving others too? I'd say... yes, but not how you'd think.</span></p><p data-mce-style="margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; font-family: Helvetica;"><span data-mce-style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;" style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br></span></p><p data-mce-style="margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: normal; font-family: Helvetica;" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; margin: 0px; font-size: 11px; font-family: Helvetica;"><span data-mce-style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;" style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Because it's worth noting that immediately after finishing this book, I went out to the nearest bookstore and bought an AI Textbook and a Lisp coding primer. Our Final Invention is a great introduction to real-world AI. And even more than it made me want to try and save the world, it kind of made me want to destroy it. I desperately want to be one of those hundreds of researchers on the cusp of tomorrow. I want to help Artificial Super-Intelligence come into being. I want to ask all the hard questions about consciousness and intelligence. And now I want to consider, and prepare for, the consequences of doing so. If Our Final Invention has done anything, it's made me more conscious of what we're creating. That's why anyone interested in AI, even just in passing, should read Our Final Invention. It gives everyone the knowledge to make their own decisions about AI, and the risks involved. Because, while I'm not saying your Roomba's going to challenge you, someday soon, who knows? It might be able to.</span></p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04174591996842198269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8670035476121914861.post-19927872759102469182014-08-08T09:23:00.001-07:002014-08-08T09:23:58.895-07:00Practice Project with Mindstorms<div>
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It turns out I prefer busy summers to boring summers, but I also tend to go a little overboard. So if this poor blog seems abandoned, that's because it is! But it's time to fix that.</div>
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This project was supposed to be a sort of automated set of drawers. A grid would sit over them, holding the drawers. The two motors could move to a certain "coordinate" to let the third lift the drawer. Overall, I was able to make it work well in concept. But I'm abandoning the project in its current form for now, just because the limitations of the Mindstorms kits and my own time and resources have made it difficult to complete.<br />
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I've noticed that the Mindstorms kits are optimized for compact robots. The pieces fit together with a fair amount of wiggle room, but if you aren't wedging anything inside that would allow them to move, you're fine. However, if you want to build a machine with a longer arm protruding from it, the leverage can cause connections to bend or even snap open. This made my plan of having one motor moving a bar holding the others difficult. As you can see in the video, the bar twists the motor holding and makes accurate movements difficult. </div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/XJ92CQL3QLA?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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Another difficulty I had was with the Mindstorms software. What I was looking for was a way to input a command from my computer that would trigger a method in the robot. While there is a Bluetooth connection option for the brick, it doesn't let me contact the brick with a command while the program is running, as there's no text input function. In the end I settled for inputting a "code" through the pressure sensor, so the robot would move to a position dependent on the number of times I pushed the button. This worked fairly well. This is the code I wrote that does just that.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-a1DvREhNwjA/U-T2UhzQLfI/AAAAAAAADB8/__B0STcUstc/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-08-07+at+3.39.11+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-a1DvREhNwjA/U-T2UhzQLfI/AAAAAAAADB8/__B0STcUstc/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-08-07+at+3.39.11+PM.png" height="162" width="320" /></a></div>
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The awesome people on the Google + Makers forum suggested I use MIT App Inventor, which lets any android device communicate with the brick through Bluetooth. This is a great idea! BUT, I regrettably have no android device on which to test this capability. I'll have to cross my fingers for my birthday. </div>
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The video shows the last test I did of the robot. The design is... Not great, because I had to keep dropping and coming back to the project, and every time I would get halfway through fixing a problem, and have to stop for the next camp or class.</div>
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The robot did better in earlier tests, before the bars started rubbing the nubs away on the Legos holding them together! Great. And now that I'm trapped between eschool, drivers ed, and another super secret project (coming soon!) that requires lots of time commitment, I decided to give this project a break. I'd like to come back to it at some point later, probably using an arduino and an upright set of drawers. I've got a few ideas written down. But for now, I'll just consider this project a good exercise in programming and design, and </div>
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move on.<br />
Up next: an upgrade to an old robot, a super secret project, and a book review to finish up the summer.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04174591996842198269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8670035476121914861.post-62112519938005911592014-06-24T12:00:00.003-07:002014-06-24T12:00:48.582-07:00Finally set up my Raspberry Pi!From this:<div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-etpPVggLYGM/U6nK3neItpI/AAAAAAAACoc/uIuUuOm33n0/s640/blogger-image-423897568.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-etpPVggLYGM/U6nK3neItpI/AAAAAAAACoc/uIuUuOm33n0/s640/blogger-image-423897568.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div>To this:</div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-VcL_dZ0Vpo8/U5qCGM6utAI/AAAAAAAACfA/wvgKNJg9zzg/s640/blogger-image--1163142310.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-VcL_dZ0Vpo8/U5qCGM6utAI/AAAAAAAACfA/wvgKNJg9zzg/s640/blogger-image--1163142310.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div>In just three hours of "why doesn't the pound key on my keyboard work?" "I commented out the overscan code, why won't it fill up the screen?" (Pro tip: the Raspberry Pi defaults to the Great Britain keyboard interpretation if you don't tell it otherwise, and use an hdmi cable if you want any control over your screen)</div><div><br></div><div>I got the pi for my birthday, but I want sure until recently what I wanted to do with it. I've decided I want to try combining it with my arduino hardware to automate the blinds, lights, etc. in my room. I can't really get going until I finish up with my month of summer camps though. Expect a theatre tech projects after next week, as soon as camp gets done and I can finally take a nap.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04174591996842198269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8670035476121914861.post-88400795723144473302014-06-24T12:00:00.001-07:002014-06-24T12:00:41.618-07:00Tech Theatre Camp 2014!<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div>Finally, my summer begins! I've spent the past two weeks at three different camps, so my schedule was a little busy. This last week, I worked with 84 other students (20-something other technicians) for eight days, 9:00 to 6:00, to put on four one-act plays with full sets, sound, and lighting. It was understandably pretty brutal, but a great experience overall, and I got to work with a lot of awesome people making some really awesome things.<div><br></div><div>The show I was assigned to, although I worked on all the sets and helped out with every show, was a cut version of Urinetown, a silly musical we turned into a 40 minute play. I was specifically assigned to be the lighting technician.</div><div><br></div><div>The first thing we did at camp was a tutorial on google sketchup, which we were supposed to use to make a preliminary set design to present to our show's director. I've used sketchup for projects before, so it wasn't a big deal. I don't have the design for Urinetown on my computer, but my theatre teacher, the head technical director at camp, had me start designing sets for next year's shows while I was there. Here's a rough idea for Gossamer's giant door, for our first show, that I made in the class.</div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-G3UvngeglAU/U6nKr7MADaI/AAAAAAAACnM/G-uRNydeI5w/s640/blogger-image--1561665554.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-G3UvngeglAU/U6nKr7MADaI/AAAAAAAACnM/G-uRNydeI5w/s640/blogger-image--1561665554.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div>Next we started actually designing and building for our show. Urinetown had the most complicated set and lighting out of all the shows, and the director had some very specific ideas about the set, so we didn't do much in the way of "design" so much as "build and hope the director likes it."</div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-6BqxCQT4wrM/U6nKws6SclI/AAAAAAAACns/UcXg6ui7mK8/s640/blogger-image--174851426.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-6BqxCQT4wrM/U6nKws6SclI/AAAAAAAACns/UcXg6ui7mK8/s640/blogger-image--174851426.jpg"></a></div><br></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">The base of the set was some stacked "metal scenic pieces" (we weren't allowed by the district to use scaffolding in the set, but some rules were meant to be bent) </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-uUyiyfcNH68/U6nK0Kq9AwI/AAAAAAAACoE/mPHDxkz9wAI/s640/blogger-image-1199182031.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-uUyiyfcNH68/U6nK0Kq9AwI/AAAAAAAACoE/mPHDxkz9wAI/s640/blogger-image-1199182031.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">The tech director wanted to have two 8' by 8' doors hinged to the legs of the inner platform that we could swing to either side to represent different locations in the show, but the director thought it would cover too much of the scaffolding. I suggested hinging two 4' by 8' flats to the outside platforms so they would close and open easily. The idea made it into the set.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Sf-o3yfDd6E/U6nKtIruY8I/AAAAAAAACnU/35yDv3dn6QE/s640/blogger-image--210743157.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-Sf-o3yfDd6E/U6nKtIruY8I/AAAAAAAACnU/35yDv3dn6QE/s640/blogger-image--210743157.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">This was the Tech director's idea, and I ended up building it. The school we were working at had some jail blocks left over from "Chicago". We stacked them on top of one another, and spray painted plastic sheets to stretch behind them. The whole thing was backlit by a source 4, so that when a character gets pushed off the scaffolding and is harnessed, he falls behind it and you see his silhouette. It looked really cool onstage.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-q7tfc1kBoio/U6nKxiH75MI/AAAAAAAACn0/x0jgfaDx58U/s640/blogger-image--1171625357.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-q7tfc1kBoio/U6nKxiH75MI/AAAAAAAACn0/x0jgfaDx58U/s640/blogger-image--1171625357.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-E5lAXMRKVBU/U6nKysDVpbI/AAAAAAAACn8/s5djzlw7I8w/s640/blogger-image--794472119.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-E5lAXMRKVBU/U6nKysDVpbI/AAAAAAAACn8/s5djzlw7I8w/s640/blogger-image--794472119.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-_yu0qsHYfJc/U6nKuYBsB8I/AAAAAAAACnc/TgOfUD086lw/s640/blogger-image--1099803655.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-_yu0qsHYfJc/U6nKuYBsB8I/AAAAAAAACnc/TgOfUD086lw/s640/blogger-image--1099803655.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-eak5s718iXo/U6nK17Sv_3I/AAAAAAAACoQ/7RePsybHb3U/s640/blogger-image-1796747552.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-eak5s718iXo/U6nK17Sv_3I/AAAAAAAACoQ/7RePsybHb3U/s640/blogger-image-1796747552.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">The director wanted the secret hideout sign to be really, really obvious. We cut out the arrows and the sign, painted them, and then strung lightbulbs across them. For each lightbulb I used a tomato corer (which is a real life kitchen implement??) to poke a hole in the foam, pushed the base of the light through it, and screwed the lightbulb in.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">I don't have any pictures of it all lit up yet, or any of the lighting work I did for the show, because by then I was too busy to take the pictures. There was a staff member who was the designated historian, who took a LOT of pictures, but I doubt I'll get them until I get back to school. I promise I'll post them as soon as I get them though.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-aiCqNioUFl4/U6nK1BQXHNI/AAAAAAAACoM/BxzvdLfP7k4/s640/blogger-image-2082096685.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-aiCqNioUFl4/U6nK1BQXHNI/AAAAAAAACoM/BxzvdLfP7k4/s640/blogger-image-2082096685.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">This is the most 'complete' picture I have of the set. The final version had a wall that flew in underneath the secret hideout sign, and the swinging doors were painted. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">I was excited to try lighting, because it was something I'd never had the chance to try at school. I gave my stage manager a heart attack because I didn't know how to write down cues, and I was pulled away from paper tech to make the 'moon' for another show ( which turned out to be a three hour ordeal in hand sewing that ultimately was cut ) and again to reupholster chairs (the reason I didn't know how to write cues was that this happens A LOT even at school) </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">In the end the show went great. The only major hiccups were that a rig that made it rain on the top of the scaffolding broke halfway through the show and started spraying water backstage. I panicked and missed a cue, but once it was fixed, the show ran perfectly. The actors were amazing, my team did really well, the audience loved it, and, at the awards ceremony after the show...</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Nq7fVKWjJr0/U6nKvZAL4qI/AAAAAAAACnk/OVAIjTO5UtY/s640/blogger-image--20236039.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Nq7fVKWjJr0/U6nKvZAL4qI/AAAAAAAACnk/OVAIjTO5UtY/s640/blogger-image--20236039.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">I was one of 8 technicians to win an Exemplary Tech award, and the only student to win both that and the Callback scholarship, awarded to one technician and one actor, which means I get a full ride to next year's camp. (You can see me holding the certificate and gold 'C' onstage, which I thought was a horseshoe throughout most of the ceremony and treated it as such.)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">And I definitely want to go back next year! I loved the jobs, loved the people, and as busy as I was, I was having fun the entire time. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04174591996842198269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8670035476121914861.post-22539782330287474962014-06-07T17:00:00.000-07:002014-06-08T12:50:19.881-07:00Useless Lamp - Mindstorms EV3For our final project in one of my classes, we had to create an art piece based on a movement we studied. I picked Dada, and this is my project, <i>Lamp. </i>Here's a video of it in action.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxwQ8Ps7Q09gJyIEpLJ2XHd31LYM2z_BuBAyRW_7tWuZgdE1lmNB48HT37C_Hd-OAvDdodM-s6meWdMkPXQfg' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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I built the project using two mindstorms large motors and a pressure sensor. There are two halves to the mechanism - the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqAUmgE3WyM">"useless box"</a> half, and the half that controls the lamp. The lamp in particular I used had a wheel switch that I had to to try three different ways of operating, finally taking it apart and reworking it as a button. The box decorations are made of vinyl and fabric I had lying around the house. I'm only going to talk about the mechanisms involved in making your own useless lamp. The rest is up to you.<br />
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Note: I used both NXT and EV3 pieces in my project, but you should be able to find all the pieces used in an EV3 kit.<br />
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You're going to need:<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5GnCdkbZqPk/U46A_-ObNCI/AAAAAAAACU0/uxFBY5Cq7So/s1600/IMG_1255.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5GnCdkbZqPk/U46A_-ObNCI/AAAAAAAACU0/uxFBY5Cq7So/s1600/IMG_1255.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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2 Large Motors<br />
1 Pressure Sensor<br />
5 Blue Crossbar Connecters<br />
5 Blue Long Connecters<br />
XX Black Connecters<br />
5 Length four L pieces<br />
1 Length five L piece<br />
4 Gray Double connecters<br />
1 Length two bar<br />
1 Length two bar<br />
3 Length five bar<br />
1 Length three crossbar<br />
1 Length five crossbar<br />
4 Long Double-Bend<br />
2 Length nine angled bars<br />
1 Length three double sided bar (top left)<br />
1 Computer with Mindstorms software<br />
1 EV3 brain<br />
3 sensor/motor cables<br />
1 USB/Mindstorms cable<br />
1 Lamp with a switch<br />
1 roll of duct tape/gorrilla tape<br />
1 roll of masking tape<br />
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Part 1: Building the "Useless Machine"<br />
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Final Build:<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xUn6wsxYXMU/U46Ef2veKgI/AAAAAAAACVs/RjU0AiSs9NU/s1600/IMG_1248.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xUn6wsxYXMU/U46Ef2veKgI/AAAAAAAACVs/RjU0AiSs9NU/s1600/IMG_1248.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-iOJUPsmua24/U46Ef_jSTfI/AAAAAAAACVs/j91E7E1tYPY/s1600/IMG_1249.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-iOJUPsmua24/U46Ef_jSTfI/AAAAAAAACVs/j91E7E1tYPY/s1600/IMG_1249.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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First, attach the sensor to the motor using the double-bend bars<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uavas4-eYHs/U46EpVEsF1I/AAAAAAAACV0/B1y3pm9B-q0/s1600/IMG_1253.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uavas4-eYHs/U46EpVEsF1I/AAAAAAAACV0/B1y3pm9B-q0/s1600/IMG_1253.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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The long connectors should go through the two rows of bar shown on the motor in the picture and the sensor's bar (beneath it in the picture) so that the sensor is held between the two bars.</div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Q7lR9N3ysJw/U46FPtBChlI/AAAAAAAACV8/9yv_N1d0JNI/s1600/IMG_1251.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Q7lR9N3ysJw/U46FPtBChlI/AAAAAAAACV8/9yv_N1d0JNI/s1600/IMG_1251.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-plioF3Tm7gs/U46FPp08ZfI/AAAAAAAACV8/cDqlE5kDS-c/s1600/IMG_1252.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-plioF3Tm7gs/U46FPp08ZfI/AAAAAAAACV8/cDqlE5kDS-c/s1600/IMG_1252.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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The 'switch' should swing freely. It's attached to two length 4 L bars by a long connecter, and the bars are attached to the double bend arms, so that the switch, when pushed forward, presses on the pressure sensor. </div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hbj5M-OEgqM/U46F0l7_dPI/AAAAAAAACWI/Ab34F4wXolQ/s1600/IMG_1250.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hbj5M-OEgqM/U46F0l7_dPI/AAAAAAAACWI/Ab34F4wXolQ/s1600/IMG_1250.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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This is the arm that pushes the switch back into position after its been pressed. It's attached to the motor.</div>
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Part 2: Controlling the Lamp</div>
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This section is specifically for lamps that are controlled by a spinning switch. However, lamps controlled by buttons or flick switches could probably use a similar set up. </div>
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First, use a screwdriver and take out the screw that holds the two halves of your switch together. It should look something like this: </div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EDtUMB42AQ0/U46GkfuUh3I/AAAAAAAACWQ/x6IaM3lrjc0/s1600/IMG_1222.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EDtUMB42AQ0/U46GkfuUh3I/AAAAAAAACWQ/x6IaM3lrjc0/s1600/IMG_1222.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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If you look closely, you will see that there are two small incisions in the cord on the left side, and two protruding metal pieces on the right side. If you plug in the lamp and press the two sides together so the holes and protrusions match up, the circuit is complete and the lamp should light up. Pull them apart, and the lamp turns off. Because I couldn't get the switch to spin consistently, I used this trick to turn the switch into a push button.<br />
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Tape down the cord in its half of the switch with thin strips of masking tape. Be careful not to cover the holes for the pegs or the slits in the cord.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ae8XAaOsQrA/U4_Q0ztpZUI/AAAAAAAACWo/EHHfqjR7TMM/s1600/IMG_1245.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ae8XAaOsQrA/U4_Q0ztpZUI/AAAAAAAACWo/EHHfqjR7TMM/s1600/IMG_1245.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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Attatch the two long bars to the bottom of the motor using black connecters, and a double gray connecter on each side right behind them.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0ddRScJWEQU/U4_SdU5fowI/AAAAAAAACWw/S1d2nTTGHb8/s1600/IMG_1244.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0ddRScJWEQU/U4_SdU5fowI/AAAAAAAACWw/S1d2nTTGHb8/s1600/IMG_1244.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
Then attach a Length 3 bar to a length 5 bar, and the length 5 bar between the others, Like this:<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DKDbobNmEnI/U4_Sskp3iBI/AAAAAAAACW4/5PnpEvc9gFE/s1600/IMG_1242.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DKDbobNmEnI/U4_Sskp3iBI/AAAAAAAACW4/5PnpEvc9gFE/s1600/IMG_1242.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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Next, we assemble the 'base' the switch will sit on.</div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AEK7XegdEKw/U4_TWsGE59I/AAAAAAAACXA/VP7DoJrEHqg/s1600/IMG_1243.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AEK7XegdEKw/U4_TWsGE59I/AAAAAAAACXA/VP7DoJrEHqg/s1600/IMG_1243.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Vqwo79FWG_A/U4_Tfec3X7I/AAAAAAAACXI/ZracnMbf8xQ/s1600/IMG_1241.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Vqwo79FWG_A/U4_Tfec3X7I/AAAAAAAACXI/ZracnMbf8xQ/s1600/IMG_1241.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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The mechanism has to be pretty solid, so the table should be connected to the top of the motor as well.</div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-znIwzNPlCBY/U4_WSMgPRSI/AAAAAAAACXk/JloqjRWLbHE/s1600/IMG_1240.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-znIwzNPlCBY/U4_WSMgPRSI/AAAAAAAACXk/JloqjRWLbHE/s1600/IMG_1240.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MMboynPpkkQ/U4_WSD5oFtI/AAAAAAAACXk/Lw-eCEGF73g/s1600/IMG_1239.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MMboynPpkkQ/U4_WSD5oFtI/AAAAAAAACXk/Lw-eCEGF73g/s1600/IMG_1239.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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And, finally, the arm that holds the switch in place<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-D4UZ5iFMYrU/U4_Y44FjGrI/AAAAAAAACXw/Rm_LkIpjzIw/s1600/IMG_1232.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-D4UZ5iFMYrU/U4_Y44FjGrI/AAAAAAAACXw/Rm_LkIpjzIw/s1600/IMG_1232.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OeCUqKfLN-s/U4_ZbshQfnI/AAAAAAAACYI/o0zYSHlW5zk/s1600/IMG_1237.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OeCUqKfLN-s/U4_ZbshQfnI/AAAAAAAACYI/o0zYSHlW5zk/s1600/IMG_1237.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
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And the arm that will press down on the switch<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-g19ft5uiB6g/U4_ZpHVH1NI/AAAAAAAACYQ/kVqBskEzYYA/s1600/IMG_1228.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-g19ft5uiB6g/U4_ZpHVH1NI/AAAAAAAACYQ/kVqBskEzYYA/s1600/IMG_1228.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XHGUyTtVIug/U4_ZpJQga3I/AAAAAAAACYQ/Kqftec4mIRo/s1600/IMG_1224.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XHGUyTtVIug/U4_ZpJQga3I/AAAAAAAACYQ/Kqftec4mIRo/s1600/IMG_1224.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vIncNY1Ib_4/U4_ZpBp743I/AAAAAAAACYQ/-Lo3zWpFi-4/s1600/IMG_1225.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vIncNY1Ib_4/U4_ZpBp743I/AAAAAAAACYQ/-Lo3zWpFi-4/s1600/IMG_1225.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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The switch slips into the mechanism like so<br />
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Push the two sides together underneath the L bars, but DONT SCREW THEM ON. Instead, use masking tape to attach the power cord to the base to hold it in place and roll up small balls to attach the top of the switch to the pressure arms.</div>
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Wrap duct tape around the mechanism to hold the base to the motor. This will keep the pressure arms from breaking apart the legos.</div>
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Now for the calibration. The program is relatively simple, but it can take some work to position the switch correctly so that it turns on and off with the motor. Gently squeeze the switch with the pressure arms (while the program isn't running) so that the lamp lights up when plugged in. Adjust the pressure until the lamp only lights up while you're squeezing. This can take some time and effort, so be<br />
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Next, you position everything in the box. You can cut holes to feed the lamp's cord wherever you please. Use the duct tape to fasten everything down. You may have to recalibrate the switch.<br />
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IF you want, you can decorate the moving "useless box" arm with tape and paper.</div>
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And be sure to add a place for the lever and the arm on the top! I made a flap out of vinyl and card stock.<br />
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Then you're done. Decorate and attach your lamp however you like. ONce you've loaded the program, you should be able to just plug it in, turn it on, check the calibration, and get rolling. My class thought the project was great, and I hope you do too.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04174591996842198269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8670035476121914861.post-57446412214537985222014-06-06T17:00:00.000-07:002014-06-06T17:00:02.187-07:00Feature Friday: An NSA Sarcasm Detector?There's a number of reasons why using social media as a method of finding potential criminals is both ineffective and dangerous, but the NSA seems intent to try and do so anyway. I'm not here today to discuss the ridiculousness of monitoring huge quantities of junk data for a threatening tweet, or the terrifying potential repercussions for the person who makes one too many jokes about the security inspection at the airport. I want to talk about the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27711109">NSA's search for a twitter sarcasm detector</a>, and whether or not such a program is feasibly possible, and how effective it could ever really be at filtering joke threats from the real ones.<br />
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First, lets pull up a definition of sarcasm.<br />
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sar·casm</h2>
<input class="au" style="background-image: url(http://www.merriam-webster.com/styles/default/images/reference/audio-pron-hw.gif); background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; cursor: pointer; height: 17px; margin: 0px 10px 4px 4px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: bottom; width: 18px;" title="Listen to the pronunciation of sarcasm" type="button" /><span style="background-color: #e8ecf5; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </span><span class="main-fl" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><em style="color: #717274; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold;">noun</em></span><span style="background-color: #e8ecf5; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </span><span class="pr" style="color: #717274; display: inline; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; margin-left: 10px;">\<span class="unicode" style="background-image: none; font-family: 'lucida sans unicode'; font-size: 0.9em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">ˈ</span>sär-<span class="unicode" style="background-image: none; font-family: 'lucida sans unicode'; font-size: 0.9em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">ˌ</span>ka-zəm\</span><span style="background-color: #e8ecf5; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"></span><span style="background-color: #e8ecf5; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"></span><br />
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: the use of words that mean the opposite of what you really want to say especially in order to insult someone, to show irritation, or to be funny</div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">It's understandable why the NSA would want to avoid lawsuits by filtering out everyone who didn't actually MEAN their threats. But, the difficulty with machines recognizing sarcasm comes in two parts: </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">One, sarcasm relies on the context in which it is made.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">This is an easy one. No one wants to have to wait for their food, right? We construe that as a negative thing. So, someone acting excited or happy about their food being late is being sarcastic. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">However, sometimes it can be more difficult. If I say "Wow, great new plan by the NSA," if you don't know specifically which plan I'm referring to, my opinion on or views previously expressed about the issue, or even what community or scenario I'm speaking in, you might have a very hard time telling whether or not I'm being sarcastic. Then tie in allusions I make to other situations or pieces of media that need the same amount of context to be understood. It's not looking GREAT for the NSA right now.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">Two, many people like their sarcasm as subtle as possible</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 20px;">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">Some trolls will a satirical account where they try and make as many people angry as possible through their content to get views. Meticulous troll sarcasm can be difficult even for human users to spot, but for machines, it can be downright impossible, as they wouldn't use #hashtags, </span><i style="line-height: 20px;">italics, </i><span style="line-height: 20px;">WAAAAYYY OVEREMPHASIZING, or other clues the more sarcasm sincere might present. Imagine Jonathan Swift's " A Modest Proposal." An important piece of satire, but how many HUMANS thought it was real when it came out? </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">This isn't to say that a computer CAN'T find sarcasm on the internet, but it's harder than it might look at first glance. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">A couple of projects like <a href="http://www.whatdoestheinternetthink.net/">What Does The Internet Think </a>and <a href="http://www.syfy.com/oppositeworlds/popularity">SyFy's Twitter Popularity</a> index have already attempted <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentiment_analysis">"mining the sentiments"</a> of social media. As <a href="http://www.wired.com/2014/06/how-to-teach-heartless-computers-to-really-get-what-were-feeling/">this awesome article</a> states, it's complicated, and while SyFy doesn't have the authority to arrest people if its program goes wrong, that's not the case for high-stakes web-terrorist stakeouts. As seen above, going by sentiment mining alone, half of internet users are neo-nazis. (Note: This demographic is only accurate for youtube commentators so far as I can tell. Sigh.) </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">The NSA can sink its money into making a complex, brilliant program that searches phrases and hashtags and formatting, tracks the sentimental tweets of users and their internet searches to determine their views and opinions, connect media references to their sources and the context involved there, link accusations of trolling to offenders and evaluate their veracity. They could sponsor the creation of an incredibly intelligent machine, and that is why I've included their claims as my feature today. I want this program to be made. But I don't want it in the hands of the NSA. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">In Cory Doctorow's <a href="http://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/">Little Brother</a>, he discusses the potential implications of a world where your every move and search is tracked, and analyzed for threats. Even as the tracking technology of the government improved, there were still so many false positives and negatives. .01% of a billion is still a huge number of people being put on the blacklist. And people kept finding new ways to trick the system. If the NSA gets its sarcasm detector and even one threat is missed, even one comment misconstrued, the first protest will be from those who make their sarcasm more complicated, harder to detect. So the NSA makes a new program. It's a battle without a winner. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">So don't let the silliness of such a request fool you. It CAN be done, and it WILL be dangerous to the neutrality and safety of posting even stupid things on the internet. This battle hasn't come to a front yet, but if you're interested, there are other battles being waged right now. Start with <a href="https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/restore-net-neutrality-directing-fcc-classify-internet-providers-common-carriers/5CWS1M4P">this petition on net neutrality.</a> And please, whatever sarcasm you choose to use, don't threaten violence where it could be misconstrued. If not for the NSA's peace of mind, then for mine, and the 7 billion other people on earth who might take you seriously and react accordingly. Stay free, internet, and I'll see you next week!</span></span><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04174591996842198269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8670035476121914861.post-65124912782494259852014-05-31T18:21:00.000-07:002014-05-31T18:21:27.770-07:00Elements of Computing Systems: Chapter 4This has not been a great week for me. This post was SUPPOSED to be a tutorial for making fluorescent lightbulbs run on batteries. The problem being, of course, that two months and entirely too much solder into the project, my lightbulb remains unlit. Sigh. So, instead I turned to finish Chapter Four, which describes the Hack machine language you'll be using in your computer. It only has two projects at its end, so I figure I can read through it quickly and finish before I start studying for finals.<br />
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This was before I realized that in Chapter Four, ECS throws all of its rational explanations and helpful examples out the window in exchange for a list of machine language commands whose functions remain a mystery after reading the chapter three times. I didn't actually finish this project on my own. I found solutions others had programmed and studied them in order to figure out what the code <i>actually did. </i>And this was after studying the Hack tutorial on the Nand2Tetris website and the forums. I'll do my best to explain my problems with the chapter, but considering I'm still not sure I understand it, the explanation may not be accurate. <br />
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The first issue I encountered was in their initial explanation of machine language. Their explanation uses syntax from some language other than Hack, which was very confusing.<br />
Then they go on to their explanation of the machine's two memory registers: A, which holds information that can be used in a command as either an address or a value, and D, which only holds values. These registers are manipulated through an @ command. The @ command is not well explained at all. The book seems to say that it works like a pointer in the A register. Actually, it loads a value into the A register. Consider this code.<br />
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@R1 // This loads the word "R1" into some space in the A register<br />
D = M // M refers to whatever is currently loaded in the A register, in this case R1<br />
// D is the D register, which is unaffected by @ commands, so it can store values that are<br />
// used by multiple @ commands.<br />
@x // This loads the word "x" into some space in the A register<br />
M = D // In a higher level language, this would translate to x = R1.<br />
// The program will now read R1 everywhere you type x<br />
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Some 'memory words' (a term not defined in the book, meaning "R1" or "SCREEN" if those point to a specific memory address.) appear to be predefined addresses, but these are never listed. One of the projects involves creating multiple loops, but the syntax for loop creation is never given. At one point the chapter detours to describe how C commands translate into binary, which is both useless for the project and intensely confusing. You have to clear each memory register before you use it, but are never told to do so. The list goes on and on.<br />
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I don't understand how others were able to create their projects from this chapter. I may have done an exceptionally terrible job with the reading and missed everything I needed to know. I've never used machine language before. I had no context for how it should work. After hours of study, I was able to recreate others' solutions for the projects, and I understand the language enough now to use it. But did it really have to be that difficult?<br />
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I'm also a bit concerned that there was no chapter where we created the Assembler and CPU (unless those are created in chapter 5 and we just skipped around a bit.) I understand that they may be too complicated for the course to include, I was just expecting to build the ENTIRE computer, not just the parts of it that were convenient.<br />
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Hopefully I'll find Chapter 5 easier to understand. It probably didn't help that it was the week before finals too, and every teacher assigned every project at once. The upside is, expect project posts soon! I've got two on mindstorms and one on tech theatre costumes as soon as they get back from the school.<br />
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Then it's on to summer! And summer means robots and space camp, so you know what? Chapter Four? Still worth it for getting me that much closer to having my computer BUILT.<br />
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See you next time!<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04174591996842198269noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8670035476121914861.post-79843443809889382142014-05-30T15:00:00.000-07:002014-05-30T15:00:01.668-07:00Feature Friday: Solar RoadwaysI come across more and more REALLY COOL THINGS that people have designed and made every day. Really cool things that I want to share with you guys, and that I think definitely deserve the publicity. I've decided to pick a project, plan, or product every week that I want to share the sheer awesomeness of.<br />
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This week, let's talk about the recently crowd-funded<a href="http://www.solarroadways.com/intro.shtml"> Solar Roadways.</a><br />
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A company run by a couple, Julie and Scott Brenshaw, Solar Roadways promises to bring clean energy to the streets. The two have developed a modular solar grid system, and they plan to cover every sidewalk, highway, and streetside across America that's been wasting away under the beaming sun. It's a far fetched plan for clean energy, but <a href="https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/solar-roadways">it's raised 1.6 million on indieagogo already, and the funding keeps coming.</a><br />
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Not only that, the couple proposes that their durable solar panels be equipped with LEDs to create light up symbols and warnings on the road, heating, to melt snow on the road, powering electric cars as they drive, and <a href="http://www.solarroadways.com/faq.shtml">so much more.</a> </div>
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The solar roadways project is incredible because it is able to tie in so many under realized technologies (solar panels, electric cars, etc.) I would give you the numbers, but I think it's more effective if <a href="http://www.solarroadways.com/numbers.shtml">they do it themselves</a>. Their fundraiser was so successful, it was extended for another two weeks. Everyone should take a look at this project, because it might be the future of our roads. "Walking on Sunshine" indeed.</div>
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