maker

I've had a great time during my Professional Improvement Fellowship working in the All-Campus Makerspace. It's a vibrant community of people working on projects they're passionate about. I enjoyed going in every morning, getting a few hours of work before anyone else arrived, and then breathing in the atmosphere as the place filled up. I've made good progress on my project and learned a huge amount about the topics I'm studying. And it's been fun.

I fear the students didn't quite know what to make of me. I wasn't staff and I wasn't student. I was just kind of there. But they were very welcoming and let me be a peripheral participant. I got to help out, in minor ways, with a dozen or more projects going on in the Makerspace. And they were just starting to discover what a weirdo I am. 

On Wednesday, March 11, 2020, it became clear that the University would be taking steps to enable social distancing and the Makerspace made the decision to close operations to give staff Thursday and Friday before spring break to plan and prepare for the changes.I swung by on Wednesday and took home my box of materials and got set up to begin working on my project from home. I had realized, even as the pandemic was in its earliest phases, that working there was probably risky. It's a campus crossroads with students from all over campus coming through. So I had been expecting to step back at some point. It was just a surprise to have it happen so suddenly.

I haven't made much progress since I started working from home. I assume that once the excitement over the pandemic wears off, it will be easier to focus and get stuff done.  But I'm really going to miss working in the Makerspace and all the new friends I've made there.

A staple in Japanese manga and anime are the trappings of shinto practices. Shrines are frequent settings and, although they're rarely discussed directly, you see the architecture, objects, and designs as part of the background. I probably saw a shimenawa first in My Neighbor Totoro, which was perhaps the first anime I really watched. The giant camphor tree is almost a character in the movie and although I saw the shimenawa around it, I didn't know what it was or what it meant.

(image via ecostories)

I also saw a shimenawa in the anime Natsume Yujincho and the Book of Friends. Natsume breaks a shimenawa that releases a dangerous yōkai that ultimately becomes his guardian and tutor. Most recently, I've been reading Nekomusume Michikusa Nikki which includes shrines in the various settings and in which shimenawa feature prominently (if anonymously). There are also end-of-chapter information pages and one of them may have shown shimenawa.

For whatever reason, I realized that I didn't know anything about them, so I googled them. I didn't even know the word when I started, just searching for "japanese shrine tree rope" which helped me find a series of pages about them, including a wikipedia page. And that led me to the wikipedia page for shide. And a number of pages that described how to make them. I resolved to make one for my sakura tree.

In the pictures I had seen, a shimenawa seems to traditionally have a rope, tassels, and shide. So I went out to find the components to make one.

Shimenawa are traditionally made with rice straw, but hemp is also used. I was dubious about finding rice straw in this area. I thought about trying to find raw hemp, as it is increasingly grown in this area. But making rope looked like a lot of complicated work. So, cheating just a bit, I went to the store and found a heavy sisal rope for $1.35/foot and got a dozen feet.

When I got back with the rope, Alisa asked, "Did you measure it first?"

"Guess," I replied. She just smirked. But it turned out that 12 feet was exactly right: just long enough to tie a knot with no extra. OK. Maybe 14 feet would have been better.

For the tassels, I looked online and saw that people often make them with embroidery thread. The bundles of thread are already looped which makes it easy to tie up one end and cut the other to make a pretty tassel. And I considered getting brightly colored thread. But that seemed gaudy and out-of-place given what I had seen online. So I just bought a big ball of thick, jute twine, wrapped it around a large shim (I used an old 18 egg carton) and then tied up one end and cut the other. I also bought a length of thinner hemp string that I used to tie up the tassels -- and the ends of the rope -- and to hang everything.

I also bought a pad of thick drawing paper to make the shide. I had found a page on how to make shide, which explained how to make a series of cuts and then fold the paper up while rotating. It's easy, once you get the hang of it.

I ended up making 8 tassels and 4 shide. Once I had everything in hand, it was simple to tie the rope around the tree and then distribute the tassels and shide at likely spots along the length.

I'm pleased with the results. The total cost in materials was about $30. It took me several hours to purchase everything and then a couple of hours to make the tassels and shide and to hang everything on the tree. But it was a warm winter day with sun and I enjoyed the chance to do something outside and dream of the sakura blossoms to come.

And of course, I had to post a thread on twitter.

made a shimenawa for his beloved sakura tree / faris ŝimenavon por sia amata sakuro https://t.co/GjaW8PSoKr

— Steven D. BREWER (@limako) February 17, 2020

This first time was an experiment. Maybe by next time, I'll be ready to try actually making the rope. Or maybe not. It's fun either way.

On Saturday, I drove to Somerville to meet up with Don Blair, a former student/staff member who was offering a presentation as part of Somerville 2069: Imagine Somerville, billed as an "interactive tour of the future" at a local elementary school. Don had been persuaded to demonstrate a "robot" and talk about emerging manufacturing techniques. He brought a Morphorn CNC (or similar) and set it up to show students an example of applied robotics.

It's an inexpensive, nifty little device that Don has used to make prototype circuit boards: you can quickly and easily route out traces on copper-clad boards.

The other tables in the display were not particularly interesting, although I did appreciate the Gentrification Obelisk:

Gentrification Obelisk: a testament to those who had to move away from Somerville. pic.twitter.com/tL52Z1qg8C

— Steven D. BREWER (@limako) October 26, 2019

Afterwards, we visited Aeronaut Brewing where I tried a flight of their IPAs. It was busy, but the bartender I got was cheerful and very knowledgeable. She helped me figure out what to try and promptly got me filled up. No surprises: I liked "Louie", the American Imperial IPA, the best. The others were fine, but that one was really very good.

Just down the street from Aeronaut is Artisan's Asylum, a giant makerspace. People rent space for a "stall" and then gain access to various "shops" with tools for woodworking, laser and plasma cutting, welding, electronics, fiber arts, etc. A big part of the attraction is the focus on community and they have a nice spot in the middle with lots of comfortably-worn furniture where you can hang out and chat with interesting folks.

One thing I hadn't really thought about a makerspace was to envision it like a home-away-from-home workshop. For both young people without settled means and for older people downsizing, having a place for a workshop is really useful. And, of course, everyone could benefit from being engaged with a supportive community.

It was a long day of driving, but time well spent.

I decided it was a Really Good Idea, having proposed to make infrastructure for the the Poem Windows, to try out the system to make sure it would actually work like I expected. I bought a Geeekpi 7" 1024x600 display with Acrylic Stand and assembled it.

It arrived without instructions of any kind. There were 5 acrylic pieces, a PCB, an LCD, and a bunch of little nuts and screws and other things. I went to the Amazon page, where there were several pictures that were actually sufficient for most of the assembly. I discovered the hard way that you needed to get all the cables connected before trying to assemble the stand, but I had only been hooking pieces together very loosely, so it was not much work to disassemble and then reassemble the stand after everything was hooked up. The only really frustrating part was trying to attach the ribbon-cable video connector, which was not described anywhere nor clearly visible in the video.

Eventually I got it assembled and was genuinely amazed when I hooked everything together, powered it up, and it lit right up. And then turned off. I checked the connections a couple more times and then logged into the pi via ssh and un-commented the safe_hdmi directive to see if that would make it work. And it did! So from that point on, it was just a matter of getting the HDMI configuration right. Eventually, I found that there was a page with configuration information. The magic recipe (from that page) was
hdmi_group=2
hdmi_mode=87
hdmi_cvt 1024 600 60 3 0 0 0
hdmi_force_hotplug=1

Voila! One Poem Window prototype, suitable for testing and display.

With all my "free time" this summer, I decided to write and shop around a proposal for a Makers at Amherst Media project to refresh the infrastructure of the Poem Windows in Amherst. I've been working with Rene Theberge and the the Amherst Public Art Commission to craft a plan and find the necessary funding.

Created in 2002 by a Japanese artist, the project was abandoned after the original technology failed. Evidently, it never worked particularly well, especially in cold weather and, after a few years, quit altogether. But it was an idea that resonated with me.

A few years later, Amherst Coming Together tried a second attempt that used iPads, but it was not a good technology decision and mostly seemed to display error messages about installing updates.

I propose to replace the equipment using inexpensive Raspberry Pi computers and small displays that simply show a URL in a full-screen browser window. This is all the system actually does: When the computer starts, it consults a file on the network that determines which URL to show: the page displayed at the URL is responsible for showing the necessary content. The browser also uses a plugin that will retry periodically in case there is a transient problem with network connectivity. In addition, the system checks the operating system for integrity and pushes updates out to the computer every morning, which is important for security. This design is based on the system for providing Inexpensive Digital Signage that I developed for the College of Natural Science at UMass. We support around a dozen signs and also use a variant of the same system (combined with a script mostly developed by BMB) to monitor -80 freezers. It should work fine in this context.

I also had an idea that might provide some level of on-going support for the poem windows installation: invite organizations, businesses, and individuals to purchase their own "poem window" the price of which could be set sufficiently high to subsidize the permanent installation. It would basically use the same components, plus a low-cost acrylic frame, to enable it to sit on a counter or table. If there were more poem windows where people could see them, it could also increase the incentive for people to contribute poetry and images for the displays. It could also help keep the Makers busy, if they agreed to take up the support effort.

The proposal does not address how to collect and present the content for the new displays. That will need to be a separate effort that will technically require a website with a page to accept submissions and a presentation page that, when run full-screen, will be the display that is viewed by the poetry windows. But it will also require a committee of people to establish criteria for submissions, run a campaign to solicit submissions, and a process for judging submissions and approving some for display. I hope to also have time to contribute to and help shape that effort. But one step at a time.

Early in the fall, I got a call from someone in Facilities Planning to let me know that the campus was developing some kind of Makerspace project. It was kept under wraps until quite recently when a Makerspace Charette was announced. There were nearly 100 people that came: the usual suspects, but also a lot of new faces I hadn't seen before. The first hour was spent mostly with presentations from the administration, explaining the process and the context.

It turns out that, with the new Design Building, there is space in the Fine Arts Center Bridge that will become available to be repurposed and renovated. And there is money already in hand to do the renovations. The administration has heard of Makerspaces and wants to see if they can build one here. And to show how serious they are, they've hired a consultant: Cambridge 7 Associates.

C7A showed fancy new makerspaces at some of our peer institutions and also some really appalling examples of what some people build and call a "Makerspace". I thought they did three good things: One was to show what not to build, like a break room with some "electrical circuits" (extension cords, but he called them "electrical circuits") hanging from the ceiling. The second good thing was to make clear that the "build it and they will come" model is wrong headed. (Although, to be honest, this whole project sounds a whole lot like that). The recommendation of C7A was a "hub": something that can complement existing makerspaces. But they also pointed out (rightly, I thought) that the makerspace shouldn't be necessarily in the center of campus -- or necessarily even on campus. It should be peripheral -- or even off campus -- with the goal of being a place where people from on campus and off campus could meet and mingle. Which is, of course, exactly what we've been trying to do with Makers at Amherst Media for five years. Sigh...

After that there were a bunch more presentations from some of the makerspace leaders on campus: mostly engineering (M5, Innovation Shop, Queer Lights) but also from the library and the new entrepreneurship program.

As the presentations wound down, there were a number of occupants of the building who had only just learned that the charette was happening. They spoke up to mention their space issues and hopes that some of this space could be available for their needs.

It sounded like originally the organizers of the charette had planned for us to be sorted into particular kinds of groups as a breakout. As time was growing short, however, they just had people assort randomly, more or less, and take a few minutes to discuss. My table had a variety of interesting people: some people from art, engineering, library, and other places on and off campus. I agreed to be the "recorder" (mainly so that we weren't making a "girl" do it). These were our conclusions:

First, the process is completely backwards. We ought to be thinking about how to use the Maker movement and principles to transform pedagogy and the student experience on campus, where appropriate. And only then to think about how the financial, physical, and human resources on campus could be best deployed to support that mission. It's perhaps understandable, given that the money and space are available and that the funds can only be used on campus that people might ask the question this way. But it seemed that everyone agreed it was the wrong way to do it.

I learned that the UTAC committee is talking about coordinating with Amherstworks to develop a Makerspace. This was news to me. But, of course, everyone is trying to build a Makerspace everywhere.

In fact there are already makerspaces all over campus and all of them need resources to make them work better. A big challenge is that what makes makerspaces work is people with the right skill set -- that bridges technology and pedagogy -- with enough time in their portfolio to support a makerspace. This is especially true if we want to make makerspaces more accessible (to have a hub that can tie together all the satellites). But the largest challenges are perhaps the institutional barriers that make it difficult to collaborate across University boundaries and divisions.

In spite of the number of makerspaces, there are still big campus gaps. There is no campus space doing anything with virtual reality, for example.

And finally, our group offered a couple of practical tips: if building makerspaces in this space, one needs to think through the adjacencies of which kind of space can coexist with others -- and which can't. And to be sensitive to issues of gender and inclusion, as some kinds of makerspaces are almost entirely male while others are mostly female.

After the groups reported out, we were thanked for our contributions and dismissed. After the meeting, I have no ability to predict what affect, if any, our comments will have on the process.