4. Reflection

REFLECTION
I really enjoyed our squishy circuit activity last Tuesday. Actually, when I was doing the readings last weekend, I was considering making some conductive dough myself on Saturday. I glanced through the ingredients list in the Squishy Circuit book and I had everything in the house to make the squishy circuit dough (minus the food coloring). But due to time, I didn't make it and decided to wait until class. When we were asked to make the squishy pig, I was feeling a little intimidated because I had to think of how circuits work. The only hint was that we would need insulating dough when making the pig but I wasn't sure how they would come together. But after observing how Andong made his "Picasso" pig, I took a few notes. For example, he connected the battery directly to the motor wires, which was something I would not have done on first instinct. But after his explanation, I understood why he did that. Apparently the electrical current was not strong enough to go through the dough to power the motor. When I got home, I tried out several ways to connect the circuit and finally found that only one wire had to be directly connected to the motor while the other can be connected through the dough. That was an interesting discovery.

For my readers' benefit, I am linking my squishy pig video here:
https://youtu.be/kxsMEex4naM

As for the discussion part of class, I found the topic of the day a little repetitive. We were still talking about what defines making, does it include cooking, does it include this and that and I guess I was just expecting us to move on from that topic. Didn't we already establish that in our class we do accept that making does not only revolve around electronics and technology and woodworks type of making? So I was expecting to move on from the "what is making" to more "what did people make" project-based topics. I want to see all the different kinds of projects that makers have made or are making through project videos or articles and tutorials about the kinds of projects done. And to add to my slight disappointment with regards to our discussion topic, we also focused a lot on that one lady who was not happy about being called a maker and we also bashed Mark Hatch's Maker Manifesto, which I actually identified a lot with. Perhaps I'm just interested to learn more about what people make and not so much whether or not what they made is considered a making. Personally, I'm kind of way beyond that point but maybe that's just me.

READING SUMMARY
The readings / videos for this week were really interesting! I'm really excited to start on the Arduino projects now! At the end of last semester, Andong introduced me to Arduinos because he was planning on taking this class. I thought they were really cool but I still didn't know that much about them and what they could do. In my mind, it was like they were just these little motherboards with no particular purpose. In a sense, that's what they are. We, makers, need to find a purpose for them and make them do what we want them to do. This is what I've been learning more and more especially since the start of the semester. Through our readings this week, I'm quite encouraged to see from Massimo Banzi's TED Talk, the different kinds of projects in, around, and outside the house that Arduinos can power and by using so much open source code and hardware. I was personally intimidated by the programming part of Arduinos because even though I have some exposure and experience in programming, they are very limited. I am not a programmer and have never fully enjoyed pure coding and solving multitudes of bugs. A few bugs here and there are fun and makes me feel accomplished but humongous bugs linked to other bugs just makes me so frustrated. Anyhow, through this week's readings, I am now very much excited to come up with a cool and useful project that would solve a problem in the house or would just be plain fun to do (like drones! But I heard they were expensive...). I would love to get started on project #610 Build In Arduino Examples and start learning to use them!