Tuesday, October 27, 2015

8. Reflection

REFLECTION
Our creativity warm up of the mummy hand was fun. Growing up in Malaysia where Halloween was not celebrated, I never had the exposure or opportunity to make these kinds of things. It was interesting how we had to wrap the tape around the curves of the hand and try not to get the fingers stuck together on the first round of tape. I think making the Star Trek hand would have been very cool and interesting to make sure the hand sign is obviously visible.


READING SUMMARY
From Kristin's blog post, I definitely agree that it would be super cool to have a State Fair type rather than a Science Fair. When I think Science Fair, I think of an indoor hall with small tables showing off cool gadgets and science experiments. But with a State Fair, I think it definitely makes room for a whole lot more other stuff. It could be a small booth or it could be as big as a small farm animal pen to show off the stuff that was made. Because sometimes you just need that kind of space to really showcase your stuff. It wouldn't be contained to a small table where a crowd has to maneuver around. So I definitely think a state fair is way more appropriate for STEAM. The reading on the World's Columbian Exhibition also describes the State Fair very well and complements this idea for the Maker movement.

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XTRA TO SHARE
We're halfway through the semester and many times I am just checking FB or watching YouTube and I just come across some pretty cool Maker stuff that I'd like to share with the class. The problem is I'm not sure when or how to share it cause in class we have an agenda to go through and I've sent out a couple of emails before but I don't want to spam everyone. So here is a little column, I guess you could call it, where I will share some cool stuff I stumbled upon. Hopefully, it would also provide more content for other classmates to comment on for your 300 points! ;)

Today I found this video on YT of a guy on TEDxSydney 2014 who made a clarinet out of a carrot! Amazing! It sounds great too!

Check it out: https://youtu.be/BISrGwN-yH4

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

7. Reflection

REFLECTION
I had heard that 3D printing takes a long time and I did not really know why. But by the end of class, I understood. The way it "printed" was to create layers of fine melted plastic and the larger the surface or thickness, to more layers it will have to make. It's a little bit annoying that it takes so long, but maybe it's because we've been in this digital age for a while and expect things to be 1-click fast. In either case, although I don't see the ways to improve it yet, I do believe the engineers who specialize in this field will eventually figure out how to speed things up over time.

On the flip side, it is pretty cool that I got to print something useful! Unfortunately, it does not fit my current lens caps but I will be getting new camera equipment in the future and I'm sure there will be some time when my lens cap will fit since this is for standard Canon lenses. I also have a photographer friend who uses Canon lenses so she might have some use for it too. In any case, it was very interesting to watch it get made. How fine the plastic is as the printer slowly forms the virtual design into something physical. Definitely giving this another try in the future!


READING SUMMARY
This week's reading and video focuses on Dr. Leah Buechley's talk at the FabLearn Conference. Very interesting indeed. Although I'm not that fond of focusing on this topic again, I do agree with her and appreciate very much that at least she is talking about making the change instead of merely complaining. I believe that if we want to make the Maker movement more diverse, we need to make the change. We in this class are abnormally a majority of women. And that is just fine. It's a start. We need to make more things, both electronic things and other things like ceramics, sewing clothing items, paintings, music, and other less electronic things. And I believe we have been doing so. Maybe not as much as Buechley wishes but Audrey sews, Emily is a writer, Alyssa makes music, and I'm sure they have way more non-electronic makes that I just don't know about. Furthermore, we can personally encourage our female friends, friends of different ethnicities and cause them to realize that they are makers when they talk about their hobbies or the things that they do. It all starts from us. And I believe that is what would work the best. Although giving large talks such as Buechley's have their own function too, I don't know how much it actually does in terms of making individuals realize they can be part of this movement especially when the audience she is talking to already knows about this movement or is involved in this movement in some kind of capacity. In any case, I do totally agree with her and praise her for her boldness in speaking this to the public so enthusiastically.

Lastly, the Makerbridge blog was an enjoyable journey. Although, maybe because of Buechley's talk, I ended up analyzing the blog posts to see what the overall blogs were about. I noticed that there are a lot of blogs just about the Maker Labs around the country, Maker Faires and conferences and Maker events as well as what is making and what defines a maker. Secondly, I found a lot of blogs on 3D printing. Then there are a minority of posts which talk about knitting, baking and other non-technical maker activities. This is a great blog, for sure. But I wonder if people would be drawn to this even more if they saw the activities that they are interested it. People may not be initially interested in understanding what a maker is but I think they would be interested in what kind of projects they can contribute as well as learn from the Maker movement. So perhaps more blogs on people's maker projects which include a wide variety of fields would attract an audience. Not even like my blog which talks about whether baking is a making because this topic is still focused on the definition of making. What about refocusing it more on how my making experience was with learning to bake Challah bread instead of questioning if it is a maker activity or not. Just say that it is a maker activity and people will believe it. In other words, I just don't think that we should bring people into the debate of "what is making", rather, we should bring people into, "this is making and you are a maker because you also make things such as.... And you can help define the maker movement with the things you make." I think 80% of the blogs should be on a variety of projects and 10% on Maker events, and 10% on definitions about Maker activity would be appropriate. This is just my opinion. I do not claim to know the goal and aim of this blog. You can ignore anything I say. But nevertheless, Makerbridge was still fun to peruse.

Monday, October 12, 2015

#56 Guest Blogger @ Makerbridge

Who da guest blogger? Dats right. It's me! Woot!

Lol. Ok, enough with that. I'm so excited! My blog post about making Challah bread was published today on Makerbridge! I'm famous now. (Jk!) If you haven't already read it on my blog, check it out at Makerbridge! If you have already read it, check it out on Makerbridge anyway! The link is below:

http://makerbridge.si.umich.edu/2015/10/baking-a-making/

Thanks for your support, everyone!

Sunday, October 11, 2015

"Not I, But Christ": Artist Statement



ARTIST STATEMENT
As I sat along with a few others in the dimly-lit living room of a friend's home for our regular church home group one Friday night, the elaborate and frequently revisited discussion on the lack of essential lighting in that particular room surfaced yet again. I scrutinized the plain walls around me with the goal of contributing my two cents about the situation. Instantly, I realized that the "paintings of Bible quotes" that I have longed to attempt for so long a time finally has a purpose to be created. I chimed in, "I have been meaning to paint some verses from the Bible anyway, how about I paint a couple of brighter ones for your living room?" My friend was surprised and grateful that I would even consider such a thing. But for me, I was just excited to have a reason to make time for this hobby I've wanted to venture into. I asked him what his favorite Bible verse was and requested that it was short (for the sake of my first attempt) and he quoted me this portion of Galatians 2:20, which is also inscribed in his college class ring.

The essence of this verse is captured by the shortened four-word phrase, "Not I, But Christ". "Not I" (or "No longer I" in the full verse), does not mean an exchanged life whereby Christ comes in and we go out because in the latter half of the verse it says, "I live". The "I" does not leave. Rather, as regenerated people, we have both the old "I", which has been crucified and corresponds to the phrase "Not I", and the new "I", which has God as life added to it and corresponds to "I live". The new "I" came into being when the old "I" was resurrected and God was added to it. So even though Paul, the writer of this verse says, "No longer I who live", he also said, "But it is Christ who lives in me." So it is Christ who lives, but it is in us that He lives. The two, Christ and us, have one life and one living.

As for style, tools, and materials, I wanted to make a two-canvas piece with figure-ground reversal. The style should be bright, clean, and contemporary to fit the olive green tone of his living room and the primary colors of the two canvases would be gold and white. The gold would signify divinity while the white background would be pure and clean to emphasize "Not I, But Christ and nothing else." Since it is fall season where dry leaves are abundant, I decided to go for the fall look which would compliment the gold background of the first canvas as well as the olive green room. Spray paint would be appropriate as it provides an even texture over the entire canvas compared to water color and paint brush. It also fills all the crevices between the stencils and the canvas to ensure clean edges for typography. Because this statement is rather bold, I wanted a bold typeface. It was difficult to find a particular typeface stencil that was cheap so I decided to be resourceful and cut my own with a Silhouette Cameo. For a first attempt, this is very successful and it has been an enjoyable and satisfying experience to see my vision come to life.


***

Below is a before picture of how I used the stencils printed from Silhouette Cameo. The canvas on the right though I ended up peeling off the sticky part and sticking it directly onto the the canvas.



Tuesday, October 6, 2015

6. Reflection

REFLECTION
I really enjoyed the TechBox Tricks exercise we did this morning. It was simple and every one had the same standard pieces to come up with something creative. It was a bit tough at first but I think it was interesting to just play around with what we were given and use them to create something. I only wished we had a bit more time as these kinds of creative things do not always come naturally to me and may require more thought from my brain. I also wish I had the talent to think of something I want to create then use what I have to create it. But I think, for me, that comes from seeing a problem in daily life and then trying to solve it with what I have, instead of just being given a set of tools and being asked to come up with a pitch. One thing I would suggest to not repeat though is asking special guests to award special bonus points to a single student. Don't get me wrong, I am happy for the winner today and have no hard feelings towards them but I would be lying if I said it didn't discourage me a little. It reminded me of the story in AnnMarie Thomas' book about the girl who cried because her teammates yelled at her to not fix the robot mid-race or they'd lose points and how competition does not really benefit learning that much. Rather, it somewhat destroys their passion. I have always grown up (in the typical Asian family) without much praise for my accomplishments and I think that has harbored a character of low self-esteem in me which has been both beneficial in keeping me humble and striving to always learn new things yet detrimental to my overall level of confidence. So when these situations happen, I always feel that I'm not good enough and maybe this just isn't for me. Aside from that though, overall, I still would like to see more of this kind of simple electronics exercise and more time to complete it (Even though I know we were given a time extension already. Lol.)


READING SUMMARY
Charrettes (by Nielson/Norman group) is something I definitely believe is worth investing time in. Practically, it's a brainstorm session and it reminds me very much of IDEO's practices as well. All throughout my summer internship and well into my current part-time job I have always felt a need for a UX team to throw ideas around with me while I am designing the interface for my work projects. Sometimes I do feel stuck in what I'm doing and feel like there is no way out. I just need someone to suggest things to help move the project along even though I may not use their idea entirely or even at all. But it helps for them to just throw out ideas because something might inspire me to think in a particular direction that I have never thought of before and that definitely generates more direction and ideas.

The article from Charrettes Institute is for the most part on the same line as the Nielson/Norman group. I think they are just much more structured in their guidelines. I don't think this is a bad thing. Both types of Charrettes are similar to each other and both work. The structured guideline in this article is definitely helpful, probably based on a lot of past failure and success experiences, and perhaps aimed at making optimal use of the charrettes time. Many of the things they mentioned are also common sense to me. For example, working collaboratively with a cross-functional team is important to encapsulate as many aspects of the work as possible. Another example is working near or on-site is of course much better than working too far away, which makes it not very feasible if there is just one measurement that needed to be double-checked to progress in the charrettes session. Overall, very helpful tips.

The SUNY Albany's reading on critiquing is also very helpful. Everybody has some level of self-love and so everybody loves to talk about themselves and their ideas. The problem is nobody really listens. Listening is a skill that we all need to learn and must continue to learn throughout our lives. If we don't listen, we don't receive what the person is saying. I admit to be lacking in this area many times. Another point I liked is the last, which talks about leaving our ego at the door. This is very difficult to do but it is necessary if we are to improve.

Though I thoroughly enjoyed reading the "How to write an Artist Statement" article, I'm not too sure why we are reading it at this point. I did get the opportunity to read this earlier in the semester when I pitched my painting idea to the professor. Re-reading this I am helped and reminded to write in terms of "I" and not "you". Particularly, I am impressed again with the 4th paragraph of the answer portion, which talks about how the statement expresses the fundamental underpinnings of my art and I should write it for people who want to know more and not for people who already know everything my art is about.


Thursday, October 1, 2015

5. Reflection

REFLECTION
Today in class I was really glad that we got to just jump right into Arduinos. Even though in my previous posts I mentioned how intimidated I was of them, after seeing all the cool things they can do, I was also very excited to learn how to use them.

Andong and I worked together on the 3 projects in Silvia's Super Awesome book and we ran into a few frustrating points. Overall, it was a good experience but that speaker though. It was really loud and somewhat irritating after the initial novelty of getting it to ring wore off. Especially because we did not understand how touching the analog pins was actually changing the sound. Maybe this would have been different had we used a better quality speaker. But anyhow, at least we managed to pull through and I have more confidence moving forward to work on the examples in Getting Started with Arduino.

Here are the links to the videos demonstrating the test and 3 projects we did:
Blink Test: https://youtu.be/1ll5Sa59omM
Strobe Light: https://youtu.be/9e-3WHZXxO4
Riff: https://youtu.be/ue6EnS1Pgtk
Tapper: https://youtu.be/uKi6bC9CSXc


READING SUMMARY
Massimo Banzi's story of how Arduino started from just an idea to eventually becoming what it is today is really inspiring. It seemed that it was not getting much traction for a while until the professor in NY started to see some opportunity for it to develop and grow and eventually bringing it to several smaller manufacturers was also very helpful. But most of all I was quite impressed with how they just kept doing it, they kept developing it, they kept even the hardware open source and I think that is how it became what it became today. In my experience, I find that a lot of people tend to not take the open source approach. Something I made is something I made and how I made it is a secret. It is my success, I'm not sharing it with you. I myself admit to having such a mentality on more than several occasions. But there definitely is a sense of community and mutual ownership when people are able to let go and allow others to participate and eventually the product that you get is so much better than if it was made by only one person. People with different skills and different backgrounds view things in a different way and can build upon these kind of basic and fundamental ideas in order to advance it and make it bigger and reaching even more people. Open-sourcing definitely a very excellent culture and breeding ground for innovation.

Becky Stern's guide to the Lilypad Arduino is also very interesting. I enjoy sewing things and have done quite a bit of it throughout my childhood. The shapeon the Lilipad and its numerous ports definitely make it more versatile to fabric projects compared to the regular Arduinos. However, I fail to see it being useful in a way other than flashing LED banners, flashing bike bag patches, and maybe the kids annual Halloween costume. Perhaps I should look up some more Lilypad projects. But several questions that came to mind include: are the Lilypads (and their battery holder counterparts) washable? Are they machine-washable? My guess is not. Also, the boards are quite large so I would worry about sitting on them or falling on them and they crack or break. So in that sense, I'm thinking that you just made your clothing item something that you can only wear for a limited period of time since you can't wash it without destroying it, which is perfect for the once-a-year Halloween costume and bike backpack but not so much for my everyday socks. Not that I would want my socks to flash anyway. And what if it rains? Sometimes you can't help but ride your bike home in the rain or heavy mist (common SF weather), will that not destroy the lilypad or at least harvest mold on some parts of the circuits of your bike bag? So all in all, though it is pretty cool that you can now attach electronics to your clothes, unfortunately, I still don't see the usefulness or practicality of it.

I was checking out some Arduino projects on Instructables.com and I came across this project: http://www.instructables.com/id/Instagram-Inspired-DIY-Photo-Booth/
and this project:
http://www.instructables.com/id/A-Makers-Wedding-Photo-booth/
I'm just amazed! This is really cool and it would be something I would really like to do if I had all the time in the world. It would take me several months to a coupe of years to really get a project like this completed due to my skill level with wood and electronics. Not to mention the space needed to store this project while it was in progress. That is not something I have right now. But when I have my own home and garage, I would definitely like to have a workspace to make something like this. Just amazing!