Oh my. Last weekly post.

• Decided that the reprap would have to wait until I got myself across the country. Yup, no print in California before the end of the summer, very sad.
• Finished up my internship. I'll post about it soon, but suffice it to say that I had loads of fun and got myself a fair bit of experience.
• Finished K&R. I learned stuff about ANSI C I hadn't seen before, and saw some actual good C getting slung around (sans error checking, which is arguably not good C at all). Like all forays into lower level computing, it makes me really appreciate things like objects and exceptions... You know, things that our parents couldn't have while they were going to school, uphill both ways. At any rate, taking things from the standard library as examples of how to write C style code is an interesting one: I have yet to see if this would work with python. The best thing about the examples is that they aren't contrived: they solve fundamental problems in very C-ish ways, and introduce you to the mechanisms behind the libraries you will be using on a regular basis. It's a very elegant way to introduce examples.
• Did a knight move: first up to Seattle, and then across the country and back to New York. Yup, I'm a chess piece.

So now here I sit, moving into a school dormitory for the last time (at least, in my undergraduate education). It’s been good, summer, but now it’s time to rest. Autumn is here, and I wouldn’t want you to see all the blood that’s gonna come out of this encounter.

• Worked at home for the first time: needed to make a good impression with this whole demo thing
• Had a bacon cheeseburger pizza. It was deliciously decadent as it sounds

It doesn’t look like I did much this week, but I have made progress on the reprap. Yeah, really, that’s pretty much the extent of my life right now. I am doing some project write ups, too, but you know where to find those.

Oh my only a month left.

• Techshop laser class: I know, I already did a laser cutter class but Techshop is much more concerned with how their equipment is used than your usual hackerspace, and hence whatever previous experience I have is null and void. Which is a good thing, because my previous experience pretty much adds up to... null and void. Essentially. The class was very straight forward, and was geared towards people that would never set foot in a hackerspace. Hell, even some old lady that could've been my mom attended the class. Now, I have to put this class to good use, and I figure cutting for 2 hours will break me even. Better get started...
• Another outing to the San Francisco Symphony, this time to see the somewhat traditional Four Seasons mashup concert, featuring Vivaldi and Piazolla with their respective Four Seasons (no, I didn't like Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks). In contrast to last week's concert, the soloist was amazing: she had ideas that really challenged my preconceived notions of how the Four Seasons should be played, and just killed the Piazolla pieces. I need to get my hands on her Four Seasons album, and then be depressed I didn't at least seriously try playing as well as her.
• Happy Hour! The usual, except there was also a commercial space meetup at the same time, and I got to talk to guys doing space. Very different from the usual social media/analytics/ads dance in the valley, and gave me much needed perspective.
• ebook reader reconnaissance: earlier I've mentioned my thoughts on ebook readers, and how I lacked one, but recent developments have had me reconsidering my position. First is the fact I keep finding myself in public transportation with nothing to do, or sitting anywhere without anything to do. The second was finding out they have touch-based ereaders now, which may change my objections to the Kindle. Previously, I hesitated buying a Kindle because its handling of print-sized PDFs was subpar, and didn't want to shell out almost twice as much for a 10 inch model or one of it's brethren (really, $300+?). But upon finding out touch-based PDF handling was fairly snappy, I've given serious thought to the Kobo Touch. I went and tried it out at a closing Borders today, and got to see everything but the PDF handling. However, it's almost enough for me to order one, and I'll sleep on it for another night or two before buying one, receiving it in the mail, and reviewing it.
• Throughout the week, I've been working on my reprap. This is week 1 of the build, and I've been breaking new ground. Hopefully this won't stretch out to a week 3; eventually, I'll post my build log as a project, probably after I'm done with the mechanical build, hopefully sometime this week

So.

My first phone interview.

Didn’t crash and burn, didn’t do fantastically well either.

Just so-so.

One thing that got me thinking, though, is my off-the-cuff response to “tell me about an interesting project you’ve worked on recently”, to which I launched into a brief, somewhat tangled exposition on the Reprap project. Even as I was doing so, my inner critic was screaming “WHAT ARE YOU DOING, YOU’RE TALKING TO A SOFTWARE COMPANY. AN INTERNET COMPANY. HARDWARE PLAYS NO ROLE IN ANYTHING THEY DO, SO SHUT UP AND TALK ABOUT A SOFTWARE PROJECT”. But I couldn’t help myself, and later, while munching on a burrito, I think I figured out why.

Recently? I haven’t been writing much software, so there’s not a lot to choose from to get an interesting project. Even then, my projects in progress are, honestly, not very exciting. They’re infrastructural, sure, (the positive news index is meant to support a particular feature of the clock, and the CPU cost/core calculator is meant to help system builders get the most bang for their buck) but honestly, they don’t fire my imagination. Like Hacker-mapper (too big a solution for too small a problem, I realize), they don’t solve the most important problem I’m facing at the moment, and as said by Yudkowsky (or someone he quoted), the thing that made Einstein different was an important problem to solve.

That’s why I immediately started talking about the Reprap when asked about an interesting project: once it’s built, it promises to change the way I look at things. Heck, it’s already changing the way I think. Wouldn’t it be nice to a have a widget there? What about there? Once done, it poises me as a point person to start introducing printer tech to the University. It’s interesting, it’s impactful, it’s disruptive. When you compare that to my software projects, it’s no wonder why I started talking about it instead.

Figuring out what is my most important problem is not immediately apparent: even problems that are ‘good enough’ aren’t apparent. However, I think I have a problem that should keep me busy for the time being without being somewhat silly, concerning a rewrite of how textbooks work. I think it’s a good idea, but it just seems too easy to do, and hence not very enticing, which is why I haven’t started on it yet. But it seems like the idea/project that will yield the largest potential impact, so I should be working on that instead of anything else in my github repos. As Devfest quickly approaches, I won’t have tons of time to write, but I know what I’ll be working on during my spare time.

My reprap, of course. $&%*#&@ rods.

My gosh, so much happens in a week.

So, I got evicted (not my fault, although now I know that I have to keep tabs on the people I rent from, too), started really whaling on my internship (partly why I haven’t been posting lately), and played out in public. Granted, I sucked, and I’ve been out of practice for about a week (and my god, why can’t they leave a grand where I can get to it, and let me at it when I can get to it?), and there wasn’t anyone around to hear it, but it’s the thought that counts! Right? Right…

But since real life is boring (at least until I start finishing projects, which are all in varying states of incompletion, aka don’t expect anything soon), I’ll be talking about something that I’ve slowly come to realize. It’s been a feeling that’s been with me around a year, starting as something innocuous, but I’ve only recently figured out what it actually means (I know, it’s kind of late, so my word-smithing is somewhat off. Do forgive me).

I realize just how cool of a place UPS was, and I wish (in a way) that I could’ve stuck around for a little longer, or maybe gone back and done some things differently.

Of course, I only realize that UPS was a delightful place to be when I’m leaving it, as such things are apt to happen. In this case, the relationship is not entirely coincidental: getting to know how other schools do bureaucratic work gives me an appreciation for the close knit-edness of us around UPS. For instance, I just need maybe 2 days to a week in a machine shop to finish the mechanical bits of my Mendel. The fact it’s not finished doesn’t mean that I’m lazy, just that it’s nearly impossible to get permission to wrangle around in a machine shop here at Calpoly. I can see why (not a student, summer quarter, safety up the wazzoo (although I think that everyone should adopt metrix:createspace’s liability release, hehe)), but it’s frustrating to be right in the middle of an engineering school and not be able to engineer something. So, I’ll have to use up part of my week back home to hack at it, or figure out how to navigate Columbia quickly and get access to a machine shop there.

But so what? No one cares about how Universities handle machine shop access. Rather, it is indicative of the larger ways and methods of how things are done, and it is with regret that I now know I haven’t been using my professors as much as I should have been. Now that I actually know that, I fear that Columbia is going to be a much different sort of place. Maybe not quite so different: professors that are enthusiastic about teaching are everywhere (the converse is also true, unfortunately). However, Columbia is big enough to have TAs teaching classes, rather than having professors teaching every single class, all the time. Time lost getting to know the actual prof.

Then, there’s the geekiness factor. But Nathan! you may be thinking, Isn’t that one of the reasons you didn’t like UPS? Because geeks that you could engage with were few and far between? True, but not being surrounded by geeks means that I’m not completely cut off from the larger world, that I can have a direct impact on the world of those around me just by being geeky, especially being enthusiastic about being geeky. Of course, I missed this sort of chance to really engage people, although I really wasn’t quite geeky enough most of the time back then… so I guess I’m only partially off the hook. Cause, you know, a real geek would have already been geeky enough.

And there’s some of the usual suspects: leaving behind friends, a familiar place, a familiar admin system, and a campus small enough to sprint across in less than 5 minutes. That last one was still causing me trouble up until last week; this last week of work has been me coming in and working until I get too hungry for dinner, so I haven’t been strictly keeping tabs on getting to work on time. Gonna have to fix that before I get to Columbia.

So, didn’t know what I had until it’s gone.

Mind you, I’m really anticipating a different flow in New York, a new chapter in life, and a whole lot more learning, so I’m not going to change my mind about moving. These are just some thoughts about what insights hindsight has given me concerning the past few years.

Enough rambling. Guy is still playing with his flash editor on the couchahemmy bed, so I guess I’ll get him to move.

Here’s a thought: similar to how martial artists strive to not use their skills, printmen should strive to not use their printers.

Why do I say this? Well, printing is based on the idea that we can make any object our minds can think of, to fill needs that aren’t so easily met by the larger market; moving fulfillment of the long tail out to the long tail, in a sort of lingo-speak. Us print-dudes* believe that this is a net win, that the costs of printing adoption and sustaining a printing public are less than the benefits of having more creative power and flexibility available in the goods available to the public.

So if printers are a good thing, then why the proposal that print-dudes try not to use them?

Back to my comparison with martial arts**: the master and the novice know that their art is a last resort. To think otherwise would mean an abuse of power, a violation of the societal trust that restrains people from using firearms to settle petty disputes (usually). The difference between the firearm and the martial art is about 10 years, assuming that martial arts are among those things that take 10 years to really learn; then, one can imagine that a martial artist would struggle with himself over whether to invalidate all the effort put into learning the art, versus settling a dispute turning nasty in the quickest way possible.

Now, what does this have to do with us print-dudes? Now, I can’t add up all the externalities, but I am quite sure that printing is not a net-green-gain. For example, the reprap*** runs stepper motors and a heating element for a couple of hours in exchange for one object. True, it is custom made, but that’s still a whole ton of energy for one object. The reprap has other things going for it conceptually****, but the point is that if we can go without it, we should. Better would be recycling objects: not melting printed parts back down to filament, but re-purposing ready-made, old objects, and scraps to fill functionality we normally think ‘3D printer’ for.

So my thought went something like that. Meh.

• I’m trying to figure out what the signifier for print-men should be: print-men seems somewhat sexist, and printer refers to the actual machine itself. Hmm…

** Note that I am not a martial artist. You should essentially assume that I am bs’ing this entire paragraph.

*** I’m building a reprap, no offense intended. Also take this as a plea to ignorance about the true power consumption of the reprap.

**** On a different note, printers like the reprap can help decentralize the economy to the point that regions can nearly decouple from each other. Maybe I’ll write on this particular vision later.

AHHHHHH I went to metrix create:space and it is AMAZING. I was geeking out pretty hard, and actually ended up going there twice in one day: once to just take a look around with my friend, and again to attend makerbot night. Being in the presence of 4 printers in various states of function was something awesome to behold, especially since I’ve never actually seen a real-life mendel running. Wade’s extruder is pretty prevalent across the board, and surprisingly painter’s tape is pretty prevalent as a flat board cover (as opposed to kapton). While I was there, I also desoldered stuff from my destroyed extruder board, and got the wrong-sized trimpots off my stepper boards, as well as a melted switch on my motherboard (that heat gun was niceeeee… also, the soldering iron with a dedicated fume sucker right next to the tip is an amazing idea, and I want one, maybe by hacking my hakko ). Now, the trimpot holes are now filled with solder, which could be problematic, especially since it won’t come out easily. I might have to make another trip to metrix create:space…

Okay, enough talk! Now time for pictures: I actually made it into the metrix create:space flikr stream:

Me looking thoughtful

Me being happy

Very cool. I also got myself a hobo token (essentially metrix’s token of good will; I think it’s a laser cut wood coin): I’ll pop up a picture eventually, just to prove that I’m a big geek.

I also had some fun remixing this remix of a D-Day picture; my some of my friends (probably jokingly) decided it would be a cool motivational poster, so I called them out and whipped one up. Here’s one style, and here’s another (thank god the source image is unrestricted). I made larger resolutions if they actually want to print them out; ask if you want them. (Is it disrespectful of the soldiers? I think not: those guys were pretty bad ass, and I think the message just serves to highlight that)

On a different note, I really want to remix rainymood.com. It’s essentially a high-quality 30-minute loop of rain, and it just begs for a piano solo on top. Or maybe violin, too… At any rate, it’s begging to be remixed, and it’s CC-licensed, and I have a compulsion to do it, so you might or might not get something aural on the blog soon.

And for pure conjecture, I want to hack a wii nunchuk: I have a feeling it would be an amazing mouse-like device.

Okay, it’s way past my bedtime (I know, I know). I’ll post again soon, hopefully with some results for something.

EDIT: congrats me! I made my first blog post (at least the one the I’ve managed to keep un-mangled) 2 years and 2 days ago, so it’s kind of a blogging birthday. Fun fun.

So, it just occured to me that I haven’t updated on the status of the reprap in a while. Obviously, I didn’t finish the metal mendel, although my partner in crime is moving the project forward while he stays for summer school. I think the metal mendel will be finished by the time summer is over, too: we were at least halfway done, and now he has a bunch more time on his hands to put into the project.

Despite not finishing the metal mendel, I still want a reprap of some sort (there’s a reason I bought two sets of electronics), and I’ve opted for the recently developed mini-mendel. I got the RP parts, just ordered the motors and bearings, and am now waiting for more money so I can get the rest of the mechanical bits, plus extruder RP parts and bits, plus enough stuff to get my boards working again (they’re in pretty poor shape right now, I’m sorry to say). So, I have stuff, but I’m not quite ready to move forward. There’s also the small matter of stubborn de-soldering jobs I’ll have to do…

Basically, there is a very high probability that I will have a reprap by the end of the summer.

Yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve posted on here: since then, I’ve switched to being a comp eng major, got my financial aid stuff, and am probably going to Columbia. Fun times.

However, it’s the first time that I’ve really felt the weight of the cost of my schooling. For some reason, I’ve never realized just how much $10,000 was worth (much less $20,000, or $30,000). It’s amazing that I consented to go to college with the costs as high as they are: I can understand why I did, but man, it’s just so much money. The cumulative spent could have been good seed money for a startup. I could buy 10 makerbots with $10,000. I could have an impact on billions of people with that much money. Of course, I don’t know how to do it: I just think it’s possible. The point is, I think I have a better handle on how enormous the amount of university tuition feels.

The upside is that I now really understand why scholarships are a good thing: having in mind just how much tuition I have to pay has changed my mindset from “scholarships are cool, but they’re not worth my time” to “why yes, my time is worth a few hundred dollars per hour (if I spend a day on an essay for a $1000 prize)”. It’s a wonder how I’ve gotten through most of college without realizing this.

For something completely different, I’ve cut less than 5 parts in two weeks for the reprap (or, it feels like it). I put together the electronics, only to find that I had some missing parts; after ordering those, I found that I was missing a few more, which I haven’t ordered yet. For some reason, the desoldering braid I have isn’t wicking very well, and I can’t get the wrong trimpots off my board. Then, just today, I burned my extruder board while trying to smd solder a voltage regulator onto the board. Apparently, either coins don’t work at conducting heat, or a thin air space doesn’t insulate very well. Or something else went wrong… at any rate, my life would be considerably simpler with a heatgun. I also need to figure out how to salvage a burnt pcb, but seeing as I also melted a button onto the board, it might be better to desoldering everything and then put it on a new board. No, I really don’t want to source all the components again, although I guess I could use the extra atmega168 I got, then.

Once you add in school, then it’s no wonder that I’m ready to be done… I’ve stopped worrying about whether the reprap will get finished before the end of school, because it won’t be. Now, it’s just a matter of making sure I get as much stuff done before I leave, so that whoever picks it up next year can do it without too much resilience; particularly, an extruder should get stuck together, or something resembling one. That, and obtaining a set of mini-mendel parts is my new reprap goal.

Presentation tomorrow, 2 tests due Monday, project due Tuesday: I guess I’ll go to sleep as soon as this banana bread finishes baking.

Good night, world. Sleep tight.

So, it turns out that I didn’t get into Columbia’s Comp Eng program, but the EE program. I must have chickened out at the very at minute when applying and changed my major. When I look at what EE’s do for a living, though, I’m more and more convinced that it’s not what I want to do, and that while I could just do EE and take the cards life hands me after graduation, I would rather do Comp Eng. I think some emails to the Comp Eng department at Columbia are in order, although it might take some more finger crossing and pig sacrifices to get myself into the program.

When I lay awake at night, I (sometimes) think about the reprap. Again, I don’t think I’m going to finish it, and I’m getting more certain every day. I have 2.5 weeks of school left, and almost exactly 4 weeks until break really starts. Will my professors be around after then? Who knows? Can I finish an extruder, or even two? Who knows? Can my partner finish this on his own? Can I even finish soldering all the electronics together? Can I recoup the costs of putting a double order of electronics in (the school needs some results by next week, or they can’t reimburse me for this year)? Where can I find a tooling ball, and find someone that knows how to use one? If I started cutting, really cutting, at the very beginning of the semester, would I be done by now? I’m worrying about these things, and I can’t seem to forget them. I really want this to get into a working state, as kind of a validation of the force of my own will. At least, I’m guessing that ’s why I’m so concerned about this.

So, I better find out how to cut those corner brackets with or without tooling balls, and get myself a hotplate so I can start soldering smd components once the digikey parts come in.

And then, there’s everything else. I was reminded of all of it when my friend asked me, first, how to program: after trying to figure out why a microbiologist wanted to program, he told me he wanted to animate something. He has a ways to go, but so do I: god, everything that I want to do is on hold, and it’s bothering me. It’s making life harder than it needs to be…

Anyways, time to stop complaining and time to do homework.