Hardest part of making anything
Hardest part of making anything is definitely not the actual making part. No, putting something together is where all the fun happens. The mistakes, learning, and growing from doing it is the most fun. Hardest part of making anything is sourcing. Finding supplies. Happens all the time. There are two routes when you are a maker: scavenging and saving stuff for potential future uses, or scavenging and buying for desired current use.
Saving things for the future is obviously the most cost-effective route, but it can take up a lot of space depending upon what exactly you are trying to do. I have a bunch of old, wooden windows I want to make into either a cold frame or a greenhouse if I can find more. I’ve had them for five years now. I even moved them with me when I moved back to Waterloo. Seems silly to keep them for so long, but I tell myself “We’ll, if you’ve kept them this long…”. Following this route, you have to be comfortable being a bit of a pack rat. Some projects are easier to be a pack rat with than others. Electronics, due to the small size of components, is an easy area to be a pack rat in. They can fit in such a small space, it really isn’t that big a deal whether you save something or not. Building your own greenhouse requires more room and a more tolerant wife.
The other route, buying things, is not cost effective, but it does have immediate benefits. Less room is used storing components, and there is a quicker turnaround time creating new things. At the same time, it seems to go against what I feel to be a key ethos of being a maker; recycling. Finding new purposes for old things is better than finding new purposes for new things. Keeping things out of landfill and breathing new life into them is something that inspires pride in your work. Just going out and buying components makes you another consumer. The other side, having a quick turnaround time, is sometimes key to getting something done. Some projects will never get done unless you strike while the iron is hot. My wife and I were looking for a desk for my son, but nothing out there met our needs or came close to my standards, so I made one for him. From the moment we decided that I would make it, I worked on it six nights in a row until it was completed. If I hadn’t we probably would have kept looking at desks in stores and in used ads online until we found something we would settle on.
I realize there are exceptions to both philosophies, but I have to admit, it is a hard balance to strike. Being a pack rat, you have to learn when to let go of something. Being a consumer, you need to be able to realize when there is a reasonable free alternative. Just don’t ask me to get rid of my windows just yet…
TEDxWaterloo 2012
Yesterday was the third annual grand old TEDxWaterloo hook-up. Staying true to its namesake, it was an awesome event. I thought I would ramble on and share my thoughts of the speakers and the overall event itself.
Speakers
Read bios and see pictures of all the speakers on the TEDxWaterloo site
Izzeldin Abuelaish
Sometimes known as “the Gaza Doctor” this man has done more with his life and seen more hardship than most of us will ever experience. Despite the tragic loss of three of his daughters and one niece he has committed himself to not hate and started a charity in their honor here in Canada. Words cannot reflect the respect the audience had for this man, nor can they sum up how still and quiet the theater was when sitting there listening to him. We all can only hope to be a strong as he is.
Jean Béliveau
Spent 11 years walking around the world for peace. I loved his talk. And the graphic that he used to start his presentation was slick as hell. Aside from being a really cool animation, it really served to convey to the audience just how far he walked. Despite that English was obviously not his first language, his presentation still communicated a sense of simple charm and contentment from what he accomplished that made him endearing and engaging regardless.
Shannon Blake
Founder of The Bench Theatre Initiative, Shannon’s presentation, basically about using the Arts to bridge communities and give a voice and opportunity to those in need. She was one of the most polished speakers of the night, but would you expect anything else from someone who works in theatre?
Scott Chantler
Comic book artist, native to Waterloo, and really cool guy. I must admit I have a weakness for the graphic novel format, so I am incredibly biased. I loved his Scott McCloud references in his talk (at least 2) and the recognition he gave towards comics being more important and a bigger part of our culture than they are given credit for. At the end of the night, I also scored a signature from him in a copy of his “Two Generals” book that I purchased in the lobby.
Mathew Ho
He was probably my favorite speaker of the night. This is one of the two guys (I originally wrote kids but out of respect felt they should be promoted to adults) who put the lego man into space recently. Not only was he an excellent presenter, he seemed to be so full of energy, and I couldn’t help but be preoccupied with the idea that he will go far in life. This, in turn, became a feeling of overwhelming jealousy. Guys like him make me think “damn, I wish I thought of, and did that, first” and inspire me to do more with myself.
Roberta Hunt
Performer who played two songs. I must admit, I have a weakness for women who can sing, and she definitely could.
Taylor Jones
The originator of the “Dear Photograph” site and, now, book. His presentation was simple, and attempted to be humble, but sadly, it was obvious he wasn’t 100% comfortable on the stage. Still, his “Dear photograph” idea is amazing. The whole concept that we was able to take a simple, nostalgic idea and turn it into a hugely popular web site and book deal all within nine months is mind-boggling, it must have been (and probably still is) one hell of a roller coaster ride. “Dear Photograph” reminds me so much of the “Carousel” pitch scene from Mad Men
Peter Katz
Excellent singer. Definitely had an Elliott Smith vibe to him, another artist I would recommend listening to if you like Peter’s genre of music. I loved the fact he got the audience to sing during his last number, it was a very fun and humble way to end the evening.
Karen Morris
Her talk was excellent, engaging, and funny, although I did have a hard time following the narrative once in a while. I’ll spare you any spoilers, but there is a moment in her presentation that hits you like a punch to the gut.
Alicia Raimundo
A mental health advocate, and super-young at that. Another fantastic speaker, very much in the same vein as Mathew Ho; young, eager, and already very accomplished in life. Her talk was passionate and well worth listening to, and discussing after. She seeks to end the bias towards mental illness, so that it is something people are willing to discuss and address instead of ignore and pretend it doesn’t exist.
Krister Shalm
I see Krister wandering the halls of my building from time to time, so again, there is a bias here. His presentation was definitely the most fun, and the magic trick incorporated into it was very effective at simply communicating a really difficult concept in Quantum Computing. I loved the fact that they still were swing dancing during the after-party (and there was live music, too!)
Sarah Williams
She basically figured out a way to map out Foursquare and Facebook posts onto cities. It is a damn cool idea, and made for some really neat graphics, but the presentation left me wanting more and a little unsatisfied. Again, my bias this time is due to having a degree in the Social Sciences, but I felt she could have done so much more with the data which would have made the presentation more engaging. I think she could do some sort of Bayesian self-organizing analysis on the data to get broader and funnier results that would span a wider area on the maps.
Overall TEDxWaterloo feelings
I loved it, and still feel very privileged to have attended. I think my favorite part of the whole day was the walk back to my car. The city was dark yet still full of life, stars were shining yet there was still warmth in the air, and so many thoughts swirled through my head. Some thoughts were directly related to what I witnessed at TEDxWaterloo, some were totally unrelated but inspired by the day. The event is a wonderful gift for all who attended.
Food
Can’t have a blog post about the TEDxWaterloo event without talking about the food. It was awesome. Although, it started off a little worrisome. During the first break, there were snacks, but the line was huge and long and by the time I got to the tables all that was left were some apples. No huge deal, but I really wanted to have a taste of some of the finer fare. During the second, “dinner” break, meals were well-planned, organized, and delicious. The “box lunch” idea was marvelous, and helped to keep lines short and quick. I, however, went for the buffet and thanks to how well organized dinner was, the wait was not long. The mini-burgers I think had schnitzel inside of them, and they tasted awesome. From an event-planning perspective, the food was my favorite part of the day.
Photographer of planets, defender of the CBC
The call went out from Heather Hiscox, a CBC morning news host, asking for people to photograph the Venus-Jupiter conjunction that was occurring the evening of March 13, 2012. Being an eager fan of the CBC, and an amateur shutterbug, I decided to borrow a tripod from work and take it home to take pictures of the conjunction and, if anything decent came from it, send them in. I sent in 3, and apparently one did air, but I missed the 7:55 broadcast because I was busy getting my kids and car ready for a trip to the ROM (another adventure and blog post in and of itself). I am trying to track down a copy of the broadcast, but in the meantime, here’s my favorite picture from that night (click for the larger copy, you can barely make out Venus below, let alone Jupiter):
It was a fun time all around. I took the photo on my driveway, using the old family Nikon D40. My strategy was to take a few dozen photographs every 15 minutes for an hour, the logic being that I knew very few would turn out great due to the general difficulty of astrophotography (I had to manually focus each picture), and that the backlight from the sun setting would be an unpredictable factor in the long-exposure photograph. My son came out with me in his pajamas and was so excited that he could locate and identify two planets “That’s Venus, dad! It has sulfuric acid clouds! And that’s Jupiter! It’s the king of the planets and has a great red spot!”.
North Campus of uWaterloo and its secret swings
As a lifetime local, I can remember when there was very little to the Kitchener-Waterloo area relative to today. My parent’s first house was near the corner of Queen and Fischer Hallman, backing onto Fischer Hallman road, when it was only a two-lane street. Across the street from our backyard was an abandoned farm field, which is now the Real Canadian Superstore. When I was a kid, there wasn’t much beyond Fischer Hallman; the Forest Heights neighborhood was just starting out, and construction was everywhere. Growing up, I spent countless hours in the farm field, watching ducks in the pond, picking the “wild” daffodils that grew by the pine tree stand, and building forts with construction materials that were seemingly abandoned everywhere.
It’s sad to think that there aren’t too many places left like that around here. Construction is booming, and wild areas are all quickly filled in with homes. New parks are built everywhere, and there is very little reason for kids nowadays to wander off into the woods in search of adventure. There is still some space left like that, wild and free, but you just have to look harder, and one spot is hidden in the University of Waterloo’s North Campus. Slowly construction is filling it in with the business park, but there is still the stream and wild area surrounding it.
The area has changed considerably since when I was a kid. There used to be a golf course up there, and Columbia Lake looks nothing like it did a decade ago due to its recent re-engineering. North Campus was pretty far to bike to when I was younger, but I still made the trip once in a while. During lunch the other day I went for a walk through the woods along the stream, just off the bicycle path, part reliving the memories of my youth, part for the sake of adventure, only to be pleasantly surprised.
I counted at least three swings installed on trees along the stream through North Campus.
The one pictured above is tried to a cedar tree growing beside the stream.
Immediately upon finding the first swing I was transported back to my childhood. I felt that same sense of wonder and magic that comes from venturing off the beaten path and making new discoveries. Finding the first one was pretty cool; subsequent discoveries of more swings turned it into an adventure. How many would I find? Who put them there? Why? From my childhood adventures I knew there was a foundation that the stream ran through further back into the forest, possibly it was an old mill, and it was a target I wanted to find again. So, I trudged further back into the woods, to find the best swing of all was installed looking over the little “waterfall” that ran through it:
Here’s a closer look at the swing:
It was a rare treat to find something like this. If you are feeling adventurous too, I recommend you go look for them in the near future. I only wish I’d thought of doing this first.
Making meth… or soap… or another internet… whatever
All the legislation and effort that governments around the world are putting into censoring or tracking everyone and everything “undesirable” on the internet are just so… futile. As though it is possible to suppress an idea or hide knowledge. Thing is, this sort of censorship always has been going on. As soon as one person does something bad with a service or product there are all these knee-jerk, reactionary laws put into place that make what was legal the day before illegal, as if creating a new law will magically make undesirable behavior stop. New laws don’t solve problems, they just create more criminals, and send undesirable behavior further underground.
My grandfather once told me that when he was a young man, it was possible to buy TNT in the hardware store. Today, no one could imagine being able to buy TNT so easily, but in reality, if you really wanted to, making TNT isn’t that hard, it’d just take you five minutes on the internet, a friend with a background in chemistry, or a copy of Fight Club to figure out how.
My point is although legislators who made it difficult to purchase TNT went home feeling like they accomplished something, they really didn’t. It’s still ridiculously easy to manufacture TNT on your own, yet we don’t see widespread use and criminal activity with it. Most of the time people are reasonable with their freedoms, and the occasional nutjob will slip through the cracks, but marginalizing everyone because of the actions of one will get you nowhere other than giving yourself a false sense of accomplishment and security. And a disenfranchised public. Your time/money/effort would be better spent helping the “nutjobs” to be healthy, productive members of society instead of marginalizing them.
As much as all the internet censorship makes my blood boil, I know that even if the worst scenario came to pass, people would rise to the challenge, and create a new internet. A decentralized wireless darknet with no central tracking and no way to eliminate or cut off information will rise up, and hopefully on its own and soon. I’ve heard stories that darknets have sprouted up en masse in Syria due to government crackdowns.
Personally, I’ve ran into this sort of reactionary law recently. I want to make soap. I found a really simple recipe to try it out. Basically fat and lye and water. In this case I am going to use coconut oil for the fat. In a well-ventilated area, while wearing gloves, goggles, and long sleeves, mix the lye in water, and it heats up really hot (the solution is very dangerous, and vents off lots of bad-for-you gases). Wait for the solution to cool to 110 degrees Fahrenheit. While the lye solution is cooling heat the fat to 110 degrees Fahrenheit, and once both liquids are at the same temperature, mix them together, and blend until a haze forms in the new mixture with an old, no-longer-used-for-food, blender. Then pour into a mold and leave it alone for a month for the saponification process to complete. Presto, you have soap.
So I’ve started collecting the materials to make soap. Hard part was finding lye. Turns out, there have been significant efforts made recently to eliminate all lye sales, to to replace raw lye products with some sort of chemically-similar-but-not-lye products. The reason being that lye is necessary in one of the simplest processes to make meth. Notice I said “one of the simplest processes”. There are still other methods to make meth without lye. So while legislators feel as though controlling and outright banning sales of lye is helping the problem, they, once again, are just disenfranchising the public.
My other point: I had no interest in learning how to make meth before, but thanks to the roadblocks put in place to my finding lye, in my research I stumbled across multiple recipes for it (many of which are on Youtube). By making something illegal they only served to disseminate the information quicker; where I had no interest in the knowledge previously, secondary curiosity has brought it into my focus now. While trying to collect the materials to make soap I couldn’t find lye, and out of frustration I naively asked Google ‘Why is it so hard to find lye?”.
Problem is, for a soap-maker, you need lye, no substitutes. And there are still 100′s of valid uses for pure lye out there.
The solution for my lye needs? Easiest would have been to order it through the internet. You can still get anything through the internet, and everything is tracked electronically so some government agency can track you and put you into a database and do analysis of your behavior. That wasn’t good enough for me, it would take too long and shipping can be expensive. My solution to finding lye was to drive out of town. Ten minutes, to be exact. Most of those 100′s of valid uses for lye reside on farms, so just go to a hardware store in a farming community. During the momentary banter with the clerk as my debit transaction was being processed I was complaining how hard it was to find lye, he said to me “now don’t go making meth with this stuff”.
I won’t, but thanks for the tip anyways.
Positive feedback
I am a big believer in giving credit where credit is due.
If you provide crappy service to me, I will complain. I will talk to you, to your manager, and I will sometimes write a letter. In that order, depending upon the responses I receive.
As emotionally satisfying as it may be to shit on someone who is doing a bad job, often we lose sight that it frequently isn’t their fault. They could be having a rough day, they could have a lousy boss, or customers could be walking all over them and they’ve had enough of being everyone else’s doormat. That’s why the ladder approach is best. Talk to the person who has slighted you, try to get their side, show them some empathy, and often they’ll open up and fix the wrong right away.
Now, if you provide great service to me, well, that is even more reason to celebrate. And to have fun doing it, too. Often we overlook giving positive feedback because we think “well, it’s their job, that’s what they are paid to do”. But a little bit of positive feedback can go long way to ensure you get great service every time. It also creates a little satisfaction for employees doing the jobs we wouldn’t shouldn’t or can’t do ourselves.
In the end, kindness wins, and we should try to lead with that first.
Today I submitted some feedback for an employee who has always been awesome whenever they do stuff for me. I’d like to share it with you:
How can we improve our response the next time?
Pay (employees_name) more. Also, crown him Emperor of IST, Defender of the Services, Monarch of the Bits. He requires a cohort of co-op students working for him, massaging his feet and fanning him with palm leaves, occasionally feeding him grapes and red bull.
Was there anything that was particularly well done?
I don’t know what it is, but when I see that I request I have submitted gets assigned to (employees_name), the hairs on my arm stand up, as though some long-dormant genes going as far back as to perhaps my Gothic heritage have been activated.
Suddenly, it isn’t a request for a new subdomain or server share: I am standing outside of Rome, getting ready to attack it, yet I am not nervous. My experience in the army has taught me to keep my leather armour on tight, my bronze blade sharpened to a razor-sharp edge, and my faith in our leader – (employees_name) – absolute.
Atop his steed, (employees_name) raises his fist into the grey, foggy sky. And with relish, he drops it down, signalling the attack to commence. A roar trumpets from the crowd, and in the distance, the legions of Roman soldiers can, ever so slightly, be seen to be losing their nerve. They shift on their feet, look nervously at each other, and grip a little tighter on their swords.
Fire arches up through the sky, soaring majestically over the advancing Goth lines, and hitting their marks true, creating panic amongst the Roman ranks. But the Romans have an Ace up their sleeves. Unbeknownst to the Goths, the 22nd-century version of the Pope had authorized a special team of scientists to clone, train and send back in time a squadron of genetically-engineered, highly intelligent Velociraptors to fight for Rome. Their mission: to ensure Rome never falls, that the reign of the Holy Roman Empire to be world-wide, absolute, and everlasting.
The sight of these strange creatures, to this date, no man has ever laid eyes upon before, breaks the resolve of the Goth lines. No longer thundering forward, they stumble and sputter to a stop; unsure and slightly fearful of the sight before them, they stare blankly in silence at these scaly, toothy Deacons of terror, from a time-yet-to-be.
A slight pause of silence echos over the land, only to be replaced with a singular, blood-letting scream. From behind the Goth, a trample of hooves can be heard rapidly approaching, soaring, and landing in front of the Gothic lines. Without hesitation, with the pure, singular focus of a thousand suns onto a single point, (employees_name) races forward toward the Velociraptors, sword in hand, teeth clenched tight.
The terrifying beasts surge forward with reptilian efficiency, thirsty for blood.
Both parties approach rapidly and without breath, and when they are within mere feet of each other, in the blink of an eye, (employees_name) leaps from steed. His writs flick quickly three times, and he lands on his feet. Behind him, three dazed Velociraptors pause, and for a few seconds, they appear as though they are considering the ridiculousness of their existence. And as though those thoughts have formed their new reality, they suddenly drop to the earth, dead.
And that’s when (employees_name) stood up, splattered in foreign inter-dimensional blood, and went to work.
(employees_name) is efficient, the most efficient soldier of IST I have had the pleasure to work with, and there is nothing that isn’t done well under his watch.
New job – the best part
I have a new job. Sort of.
The University of Waterloo has a pretty awesome secondment policy. Basically, when a job is a secondment opportunity, it means you can work it for a predefined time period and when that time period is done, you go back to your old job.
I now work for the Institute for Quantum Computing, a research institute at the University of Waterloo, on the communications team doing web stuff, and trying oh so hard not to immediately break anything and redo everything.
The best part of it all is that it is a clean slate, a field of freshly fallen snow just waiting for me to create something with it. This position is a new one, and as far as I know it never has existed before, and it affords me the opportunity to look at how I’ve created web sites in the past and look for more advanced/easier ways to do the same jobs again.
But now is the time to put my head down and get some more work done.
2011 Staff Conference – My Experince
Suffice to say, I felt that my presentation at the 2011 Waterloo Staff Conference (#ohdconf and #uwaterloo hashtags for those who twitter) went well. Not that I had any doubt it wouldn’t go well; public speaking is usually one of my strengths. Links to the presentation and other random content discussed are available here.
Looking back, it is ironic I was over prepared for my presentation. I spoke highly about pulling a MacGyver, but I thought about my presentation way too much and had way too many demonstrations packed up that I never ended up using. But there is always next time.
I spoke for about 45 mins and did 30 minutes of activities, and if anything I should have flipped that; less talking and more action. I felt the audience got more out of the demonstrations rather than the talk (although I do feel the talk did generate a lot of interest and laughs). I am looking forward to getting more specific feedback once I have an opportunity to read the feedback forms.
One of the things that shocked me was how few people had heard of the term phreaking. I figured that being a university-based audience at a school known for its technical programs there would be a good chunk of people aware, if not openly involved with, this sort of activity. Only three hands went up when asked if they knew the term, out of a group of about 75. I have always known that I am a knowledgeable guy; I have destroyed many opponents in trivial pursuit, and I can get very aggressive during scrabble games, but I still find that I take it for granted other people spend as much time as me reading about… everything.
After introducing the audience to the world of hackers, I picked a volunteer who had never programmed before (April, thank-you again for braving the stage with me) and demonstrated just how super easy it was to program (and modify programs with) a micro controller. She even hooked up an LED to the board as well. Thank-you Arduino.
My next volunteer was Carmen, my co-op student, who helped me to put the Arduino to practical use, setting it up with a garden watering valve, and a pair of nails, in order to monitor soil moisture and automatically water the ground when its too dry.
With time running short, we quickly moved into making LED throwies with the entire audience, and fortunately a few were left in some interesting places around the new accounting wing on campus.
Urinal Throwie
… and that was it for the presentation.
Like I mentioned, there was a lot we didn’t get to do. I had made a MIDI drum set (based upon the ardrumo project) and was going to show how it easy it was to duplicate that project. I really wanted to do that one because the new lecture rooms in the new accounting wing are awesome, with great speakers and acoustics. I was also going to show how easy it is to connect the arduino to the internet, and to make a roving robot with it. If I had 20 more minutes it would have all been possible. But again, there is always next time, and I am already prepared. Although, by the next time I do this sort of presentation again, I’ll probably have even cooler stuff to demonstrate.
I just want to say thank-you to the Office of Human Development at Waterloo for organizing an excellent staff conference this year, and for letting me present in it. I’d like to thank my audience for being awesome, and and extra big thank-you to April and Carmen for helping me out.
As for me, I think I’ll take a break from electronics for a couple of weeks. I’ve been meaning to learn how to crochet. Now feels like a great time to start. Anyone with any tips or suggestions give me a shout.
Photo of the day: Spring Spring
A spring spring in a farmer's field
This is a little spring that pops up every spring in the farmer’s field at the end of my street. It is huge this year, the water was shooting right out of the ground for a couple of weeks there, but it’s settled down now. There’s a pretty big hole in the bottom of it, and the stones around the hole are mostly from my son and I throwing them in there. It’s a lot of fun.
Something I want to study
I have many interests. I always have. Things fascinate me. Wikipedia is a great waste of time, although it always finds a way to make me eventually end up on some Second World War article.
One of many things I am interested in is the history of stuff. Go into a store. A big, scary box store like Walmart or Home Depot or Staples. Look around, loose focus, and notice all the stuff in the store. All the stuff hanging on little pegs, individually wrapped and priced. Thousands of items, different items in each store.
All those items were designed by someone to fill an unmet need, they were manufactured in a plant somewhere and shipped (probably) halfway around the world. Raw materials were extracted from the earth, and refined to a point where a machine could take the material in and spit out a finished product. They were packaged, marketed, advertised, distributed to where they are now. Hundreds, if not thousands of hours were spent by many different people directly and indirectly, thinking about and being paid to work on 3/4″ stainless steel washers.
People spent the majority of their working lives creating washers. They lived and breathed washers from 9-5. They passed away, their major contribution to humanity being a cog in the machine that created 3/4″ stainless steel washers.
Not only that, washers didn’t start that way. They evolved through different iterations, each iteration taking thousands of hours and thousands of people to breathe life into them, so that today they are sold $0.05 each, engineered to perfection of performance. The majority of the history of them being long forgotten, its just accepted that things are they way they are for a reason. No one really cares about the first, second, or third iteration of the washer, they all want one they can buy today that will do the job they need it to do now.
Boggling. Words can not describe just how good we have it, even with the most ordinary of things. We live in a privileged age. And that’s just thinking about physical items in a store. What about literature, research, music, stock markets, and software.
The ones that really fascinate me, however, are the natural items we take for granted. Specifically, vegetables.
Natural things aren’t engineered; they evolved to that point. And unlike the animal kingdom, vegetables can’t get up and migrate. Not very quickly, at least. They tend to evolve in very distinct climates suitable for their growth. Human trade has migrated them to just about every other part of the planet where humans find a way to grow them there.
But they all started somewhere. There was some little niche in some long-forgotten corner of the world where they thrived on their own, then man came around, discovered their deliciousness, and figured out a way to agriculture them (yes, I just used agriculture as a verb). With a little help, they thrived in their new environments and we take them for granted today.
Carrots started (apparently) in Afghanistan.
I want to study the origin and migration of carrots. Next maybe bell peppers, followed by garlic.
I want to find the exact spot they were discovered. GPS coordinates and all.
I want to know the name of the person who thought they looked edible and decided to stick them in their mouth, and what they thought after the first bite.
I’m looking for a Master’s program in the Origin of Common Vegetables.