Bierfaristo Blog

I had a great weekend running the Maker event. At the same time, several other things went south. On Friday, as I was trying to finish up work before the Maker event, I got a call from Alisa saying that my mom had reported that something was on fire at home!!! She picked me up and we rushed home. It turned out it was my linux box: the molex-to-sata power connector had shorted out. I spent the whole rest of the weekend wondering whether any of the components had survived, but was too busy to get a replacement cable and try hooking things up. Topping everything, this morning, the washing machine overflowed and we realized the main drainpipe for the house wasn't working. We spent much of the day waiting for the tradesman to arrive and then clear the obstruction in the drain. Then I finally had time to get to the store and buy a new power adaptor for the hard-drive. After replacing that, I was pleased to find that everything else seems OK and my computer is back up. Whew.

In mid-September, Don Blair and I got together for coffee and chatted about the idea of setting up a Makerspace in Amherst. We have both been advocates of the potential for technology to enable individuals to create -- Make -- innovative solutions for themselves.

Don and I go way back: he was a BCRC staffmember when I first arrived in the Biology Department. We reconnected a couple of years ago talking about open hardware and software as he worked to launch Pioneer Valley Open Science. Last year, we had a nebulous series of discussions about Makerspaces: we talked about Turners Falls or North Star as places that might be a good fit. When I was interim IT Program Director, I talked to a number of people as well. Tony Maroulis and I chatted about looking for a home downtown for a Makerspace. But when I met with Don in the fall, I'd had a realization. There was already a perfect place for a Makerspace.

Over the summer, I joined the board of Amherst Media. I had wanted to get involved for years, but I was too busy with Esperanto and other interests. My older son and his friends (especially Josh Wolfsun) had used Amherst Media to launch Riverwolf Productions: filming several movies, a news program, and a sketch-comedy program. They recently won the Jean Haggerty Community Engagement and Social Change for their work. When I stepped off the board of Esperanto-USA, I decided I could probably find time to serve on the board of Amherst Media instead. I floated the idea of a Makerspace with the Director who was enthusiastic.

Jim Lescault immediately saw the connection between Maker culture and the roots of the community television work that he's been doing his whole career. Community television grew out of the concern that television was increasing being controlled by corporations and that regular people were being excluded from using it to reach an audience. Jim recognized the potential interactions and synergies that building a technology center or Makerspace focus could do and committed the organization to helping launch the project. That brought Nick Ring, the technology director for Amherst Media, into the project.

Finally, we copied in Charlie Schweik on our first email. Charlie has been studying the collaborations around open source hardware and software for 10 years and has been tirelessly trying to network and organize people to work together around these ideas. His Knowledge Commons project at UMass had brought a number of folks together who ultimately contributed to the volunteer effort and provided the nucleus of the outreach effort.

Our first challenge was to pick a date. I thought Intersession might be a good time, but for the past three years, I've been swamped trying to organize Drupal Camp. As these efforts were happening, however, Kelly Albrecht was pitching the idea of transmogrifying Drupal Camp into the NERD Summit and pushing the date forward (originally to March, but now October 3-5, 2014). That freed up the last weekend before the Spring semester, and by early October, we had begun reaching out to communities we though might be interested. Ultimately, as the project came together, more and more people joined in the organization -- too many for me to remember and thank individually. It was incredibly gratifying to see everyone working together to pull off the event.

Charlie put us in touch with Nick Harrison, a technology teacher at the Middle School, who immediately joined the effort. Don organized a registration system via EventBrite. Charlie put together a flyer. Nick Harrison distributed the flyer and we did a minimal amount of publicity, and the weekend was full -- indeed oversubscribed almost instantly.

What we ultimately did was pretty close to my original plan:

We propose a 1-2 day workshop on building interactive 
devices with Arduino.

On Friday evening: A public presentation, reception/ice-
breaker, and install fest for people to get help 
installing the arduino IDE on a laptop or computer that 
they'd like to use for the workshop.

On Saturday Morning: Intro to arduino programing starting 
with blink (to light up an LED) transitioning to a simulation 
of a six-sided die with LEDs.

lunch (offer a box lunch? or catered lunch?)

On Saturday Afternoon: Students will use a temperature 
sensor and a row of LEDs as a visual indicator.

On Sunday (optional) Open Exploration. Participants can 
work on projects independently with support from workshop 
staff.

Originally, we looked at purchasing the parts and constructing kits that just had the parts we needed. I discovered, however, that there was a pre-built kit that cost only little more than what buying the piece parts would and that included everything we needed — and more: more sensors and parts and wires. So we purchased those kits instead.

On Friday, we weren't sure how many people would ultimately show up for the opening session. We had opened it to the public and told participants that it was optional. We started with seating for around 30, but the room quickly filled up and we started getting out more seats. In the end, we had nearly 70. Parents, middle-school kids, presenters, and Maker enthusiasts turned up to see a series of lightning talks that outlined a vision for what we hope our Maker community could become.

Nick Ring had done yeoman's work to set up a display table with two large screen TVs and a document camera, so presenters could show the screen of a computer at the same time as an Arduino or other small device. In addition, cameras filmed the presentations and a photographer walked through snapping pictures.

The presentations were a compelling vision for a Makerspace at Amherst Media. As people arrived, Justin Leone ran a Makerbot in the lobby that people could watch as they waited to check in. Jim Lescault and Nick Ring welcomed everyone and discussed how the project fit into their vision for Amherst Media. Charlie Schweik provided an overview of Maker culture and I did a quick demo of an Arduino and outlined how the weekend was going to be organized. Don Blair showed a bunch of Arduino based projects and parts focused on various real-world applications. Nick Harrison discussed the challenges of bringing Maker approaches in the public schools and the need for extracurricular opportunities for students. Paula Rees demonstrated lilypad-based e-textile projects and parts that could be the basis of future Maker events. Rui Wang, a UMass computer science professor, described SquareWare SquareWear and Raspberry Pi based projects that he's using as the basis for a local startup. Alex Schreyer showed another Makerbot and demonstrated making a shapefile and sending it to the printer. Scott Payne and some students demoed an Occulus Rift that a Maker group at Amherst College had been hacking to show protein structures.

After the more formal presentations, participants were invited to share their perspectives and ideas for organizing the community. Alex Chan talked about entrepreneurship and the upcoming visit of Alexis Ohanian. Megan Briggs Lyster and Roxy Finn of Hampshire College described efforts to organize a Makerspace via Five Colleges. John Caris from Smith College described a Smith College group that has been working with various kinds of drones and copters for collecting aerial imagery. A few local groups had been able to participate, but were remembered to the audience: the Belchertown Hackerfarm the Geek Group of Springfield, and several other regional groups have complementary goals and we'll want to work with them going forward.

In the end, there was strong support among the participants for some kind of ongoing Maker activities at Amherst Media. The exact form these will take will probably evolve over time, but a few points seem clear: there's a great need for such a space where parents their children, and college students can interact around building things. We hope to organize some form of weekly opportunities for Maker activity with additional presentations by people to demonstrate particular technologies or to direct projects. There was also a consensus to use the group to accomplish specific aims that students work on. Some students will want to work on independent ideas, but others would rather be part of an organized project and the group should support both modalities.

On Saturday, the 35 participants who had registered came in and got to work. Some picked up the kits they're pre-ordered and some were matched up with others. Some borrowed a few of the additional kits we had purchased (of whom a fair number ultimately purchased the kit). People dove in and accomplished "blink" quickly. And then simply charged ahead. Several groups had already accomplished everything before lunch that I had hoped to get through during the whole day. I spent the first several hours constantly circulating, checking in with groups, and helping to solve problems. After lunch, we had a shared session for the kids that wanted to shared what they'd accomplished. Wow! Impressive!

We went into the workshop with a lot of questions. We weren't sure how many people would bring laptops and how many would want/need to use one of Amherst Media computers. It turned out that most people brought a laptop: we ended up using only one computer lab. We weren't sure how many parents would drop their kids off. It turned out that every kid either had a parent, or came with another parent/kid pair. We weren't sure how many people would want a structured versus unstructured curriculum. It turned out that few people wanted a structured curriculum, and those who wanted the structure were happiest working through the book. I wasn't sure whether the parents would get frustrated -- I wasn't as worried about the kids. But everyone seemed very happy. Finally, we weren't sure how many people would come back on Sunday for the day of open exploration.

Sunday was very informal: we just opened up the space and then helped people who asked for help. More than half of the students returned for another morning of hacking. A few were dropped off, but they worked diligently and I spent a fair amount of time writing, in addition to helping people debug wiring and code. One student wanted to play with a Raspberry Pi he'd brought, so I helped him set up a monitor and keyboard. By mid afternoon, the participants had left and we wrapped up with a great far-ranging discussion of where we want the project to go.

It's obvious that this idea has legs and several ideas emerged from the discussion. First, we're hoping to organize weekly drop in sessions after school -- there's a huge need for that. We also see that on a regular schedule, we could run a presentation combined with a workshop on a whole range of topics and get good participation. We also see that there's a need for both open-ended exploration and the opportunity for students to collaborate on larger, authentic projects where their work will have value. We have several ideas already along those directions. It was an incredibly auspicious start and I'm confident we'll be doing more of these in the future.

I wrote this letter to my boys today:

I enjoyed our far-ranging conversation this morning.

I was reading something today that mentioned Cardinal Newman.

You probably don't care about that, although the statement attributed to him right at the end was interesting:

As Cardinal Newman warned, knowledge really is an end in itself.

You might not be aware that we have a Newman Center just down the street from my office with a statue of Cardinal Newman at the entrance (which is also a portal in Ingress). I didn't know who he was, so I looked at his wikipedia page and was intrigued by his educational philosophy. I particularly liked the quote by those criticizing him:

The discipline introduced is unsuitable, certainly to this country. The young men are allowed to go out at all hours, to smoke, etc., and there has not been any fixed time for study. All this makes it clear that Father Newman does not give enough attention to details.

I noticed that they referenced his book The Idea of a University), which is available via Project Gutenberg.

I thought I might undertake to read his book. And perhaps you would like to as well.

For the holidays, I spent some time taking a road trip to the midwest to see family. I'm lucky to have my mom living with me, but my brother lives in Illinois and my father in Michigan so I don't get to see them very often. Generally, I've avoided traveling during the winter, due to potential vagaries of the weather, but this year we got a new 4-wheel-drive car and I thought we'd give it a try.

I knew Lucy would jump at the opportunity to visit her other son, but I was rather surprised that both of the boys wanted to come too. We left as soon as Charlie was done with finals, although he worked on a paper in the car as we drove there and finished it the morning after we arrived.

In my youth, I tended to drive straight through when I had a long drive. When I worked for MobileEd I occasionally had long drives between engagements: once I did a show in Toledo one day and was in Red Bank, New Jersey the next: I drove all night and arrived just in time for breakfast. Once, I finished my last show of the tour just south of Boston and drove home to Michigan overnight, stopping only briefly at a rest stop to take a quick "power nap".

More recently, however, I've generally divided long trips into two days of driving. In recent years, Lucy and I would stop in Kent, Ohio for the night. The last time I brought the boys, we stopped there overnight and I took them to see the memorial for the Kent State shootings.

But now Charlie can drive. And he was eager to just push on through, so we did. Coming back, we did the same: There was a storm moving in, so we left Michigan, drove through Illinois to pick up Lucy, and then drove all the way back, arriving home after 22 hours on the road. Pretty epic.

Time on the highway in the dark can seem dull, but the enforced proximity also has a positive side. With our hyperconnected lives, I've sometimes found it hard to find time with my boys for deep conversations: they and I are always on the go and rarely connect for long enough to get past the day-to-day topics.

We had a wonderful, far-ranging conversation during the drive home. It was an opportunity for reflection on important topics: their childhoods, my parenting, and our shared lives. I learned a lot about them and how they're coming to see the world. They're both fine, upstanding, thoughtful people. It's a memory I will treasure.

When my kids were little, I was torn about public schooling. I believed in unschooling and other, more radical, kinds of educational models. I half-seriously considered trying to start an alternative school that would have an emergent curriculum, if not entirely self-directed and that would be project-oriented, with students doing Work — real work — that would benefit the community. I envisioned having multi-age student groups create public service announcements, running political/publicity campaigns, organizing public events, etc, as a means to explore not just reading, writing, and 'rithmatic, but social issues, communication, and analytics.

At the same time, as a good liberal, I wanted desperately to support public schools. I mostly didn't believe in the factory model of education even then. But I did believe in the idea of the public schools as a shared experience — one of the few that remains — that binds our society together. And when we moved to the neighborhood by Marks Meadow School, the only small, neighborhood school left in Amherst, I was satisfied that it was a good decision for my boys. Although, watching them over the years — and watching what has happened to education generally — was very disquieting. The vilification of the teaching profession, driven first and foremost by the testing regime and standardization of the curriculum, has devastated public education.

It was painful to read this interesting and thoughtful essay about a parent who's child decided first to opt out of standardized testing. But then decided to opt back in, out of a sense of loyalty to the school. The school feels compelled to walk a line between doing what they believe is right for the children's education and engaging in duplicitous exercises: the school

offers extra credit points for attending CST prep sessions; that the school promotes a ‘CST Spirit Week’ with games and prizes; and that claims are made in school communication that imply the children should subscribe to the belief that high API scores offer the school a competitive advantage to other public schools

The author argues passionately that he is "a strong supporter and ally of the school". But how much longer than one feel that way? Some people are just giving up. But not everyone.

Some people are digging in for a fight. Barbara Madeloni came to public education just as things were getting bad: when she started working in teacher preparation she found herself on the front lines of the battle to privatize public education. When she encouraged her students to resist, her contract was not renewed. Now she's running for president of the Mass Teachers Association. The election takes place at the MTA Annual Meeting in Boston. I'll be there.

Antaŭ kelkaj jaroj, mi strebis konvinki la estraron de Esperanto-USA ke la praktiko kaŝi sian novaĵleteron kie nur pagantoj povas legi ĝin estis malbona ideo. Por allogi novajn legantojn, oni devas montri vivantan vizaĝon al la mondo, en kiu oni povas vidi ke aferoj okazas nun. Artikoloj aperu kiam ili estas freŝaj kaj oni povas dividi kaj disvastigi ilin por allogi intereson kaj novajn legantojn. (Mi diris same pri Esperanto-revuo, ekz en la artikolo UEA devas eliri el sia morta spiralo.) Mi ne suckesis konvinki la estraron de E-USA. Mi tial interesiĝis kiam mi trovis Gazetaraj Lecionoj de Novlanĉito Matter: Pagaj muroj malfaciligas kreskon de legantaro.

Johnson diris ke La pagomuro malgrandigis la videblecon de Matter sur la reto -- kaj tiel la kapablon allogi novajn legantojn -- ĉar malmultaj retfontoj volis alligi aŭ retflui enhavon kiu restos ŝlosita malantaŭ pagomuro. Kiel li priskribis ĝin: "Montriĝas ke la aliaj retfontoj -- de grandaj ĵurnalismaj entreprenoj ĝis unuopaj spertaj blogistoj, kaj ĉiuj en la mezo -- tre malmulte volas priverki, retflui, aŭ eĉ ligi al pagomurita enhavo." [...] la pagomuro malkapabiligis ke Matter estu parto de la konversacio -- kaj faris ke ĝi restis "for de la ritmo de la reto".

Mi notas flanke ke por lanĉi Matter oni sukcesis allogi $140,000 de donacoj. Oni ja pretas subteni novajn entreprenojn kiuj proponas trafan vizion de kien iras la estonteco. Domaĝe ke, ĝis nun, ni ne vidas tion por Esperantujo.

I've never really cared about parades one way or the other. There are a lot of aspects of US culture that I don't get. Topping the list are probably parades, spectator sports, racing, and lager. In Amherst, the Fourth of July parade has been a source of intense controversy between those who see it as a community celebration and those who see it as jingoistic militarism. My main goal with respect to parades, like the Holyoke St. Patrick's day parade, is simply to track them closely enough to remember to not try to drive anywhere within 30 miles of them.

This year, the UMass Marching Band is participating in the Macy's Day Parade, so the twitter stream of @UMassAmherst and @KSubbaswamy are full of references to the parade. So I'm reflecting on the parade more than usual. I like the marching band, although I rarely see them (since I don't pay any attention to the spectator sporting events where they typically perform).

All this is preface to the fact that I noticed when a news report talked about how the famous Macy's Day Parade balloons might be grounded due to the weather. The report mentioned how in the past crosswinds had driven balloons into light poles, killing and maiming parade spectators. (There's another good reason to stay far away from the parade. Along with the reminder of the Republican sell-off of the strategic helium reserve.)

What really struck me, however, was that all of the balloons were representations of corporate properties: Toothless, SpongeBob, Hello Kitty, etc. Now, I suppose there's nowhere you should be less surprised to see crass commercialism than a parade sponsored-by/named-after a department store. But there's still something creepy about how American culture is dominated by icons that are trademarked proprietary images of corporations. I propose that only public domain characters should be allowed in parade floats, from now on.

And with that, I'll put on my asbestos suit and enjoy the rest of my Thanksgiving -- giving thanks that I'm not standing on a street corner somewhere watching giant inflatable corporate trademarks floating over my head or knocking streetlights over on me. Or that I'm not even trying to drive anywhere.

Mi ricevis hodiaŭ mian ekzempleron de Beletra Almanako N-ro 18. Oni elektis mian hajbunon Spuroj sub Franc-Reĝa Ponto kaj mi ĝojis vidi ĝin presite.

Mi komencis foliumi la aliajn artikolojn kaj notis artikolon de Kalle Kniivila. Mi komencis legi, sed tuj notis tajperaron. Mi sendis epoŝton al Istvan Ertl:

Mi volis averti ke mi trovis tajperaron en la unua piednoto de la artikolo de Kalle (sur paĝo 89): ŝajne estu "Aperos", ĉu ne?

Istvan tuj respondis por kontraŭi:

Fakte, ne - la teksto efektive *aperis* unue ĉe
kniivila.net/2013/songoj-pri-pli-bona-epoko, la 7an de marto 20013

Mi respondis:

Pardonu, sed la jaro 20013 ankoraŭ ne okazis, do devas esti "Aperos".

I used Twitter for several years, preferring it to Facebook because Twitter was different. But recently Twitter decided to start inserting image previews into the timeline. You can turn off this "feature" in cell-phone clients, but not in the web-browser. For me, this makes using Twitter in the browser to be not worth doing.

When Twitter first began, they promoted their service as an open API and a bunch of people rushed in to collaborate. There were several good clients and a bunch of affiliated services. (I particularly liked the Mac client "Nambu".) But then Twitter began to pull back. They gradually placed such onerous restrictions that all of the good clients, including Nambu, were killed off.

For me the value proposition of Twitter was high enough that even when my preferred client died, I transitioned to the web-based client to keep using it. I also used the client application on my iPhone and Android device. But I spend most of my computing time at a computer -- not using a phone. That means, I now end up checking Twitter only once or twice a day.

When I only check Twitter once or twice a day, it loses a lot of the immediacy it had for me. I don't know how often I checked twitter before, but I suspect it was closer to every hour or two. When you do that, there are a manageable number of tweets to check. When you only check in the morning and evening, there are way too many to read at one sitting.

Unfortunately, without Twitter, I'm now left without any social media outlet I find tolerable. Neither Facebook nor Google Plus are any better. It's a dilemma. But not a very serious one, I'll grant you.

I occasionally order pizzas from Dominos. Mainly, I'm lazy and the online ordering stuff at Dominos works better than anyone else around here. I feel guilty, but there you go.

In any case, when you order a pizza from Dominos, there's a little animation that comes up afterwards in a "pizza tracker" that supposedly shows a progress bar of your pizza from order to delivery. The steps are "Order Placed", "Prep", "Baking", "Quality Check", and "Delivery". Normally, the order moves almost instantly from "Order Placed" to "Prep".

Along with the progress bar, there is a little animated character "Pete the Pizzamaker" who goes through various motions while he makes your pizza, adds the topings, puts it in the oven, gets it out, and checks it. Normally, he's busy all the time.

But today, the store must be really busy. Or maybe Noscript is interfering with him. The bar hasn't moved off "Order Placed". One assumes that they're really busy working on other people's pizzas. But not Pete. Pete's just standing there. Blinking at me. I'm like "Dude! Start making my pizza already, you lazy SOB!" But he just stands there. Blinking. Pete the Lazy Pizzamaker.