One of the cards my wife personalised.
Here are some more by her and her friends:
Tag Archives: creativity
Kickstarter Update #3
As promised, here’s the latest update from our Kickstarter Xceed Xpectations project tentatively named “All Sols Day.”
Today, let’s take a look at a couple of the early prototype bumper stickers the Creative Arts department crafted to get their imaginations going…
We can’t wait to get this party started. As soon as the next batch of art is ready, we’ll post it here for your perusal.
Have a peaceful sol!
A six-foot photo
Rosie Revere, Engineer: picture book about intergenerational makers – Boing Boing
Yard Art Sculpture Update # ICANTKEEPCOUNT
After setting up an offgrid meeting with the powers that be, using a dance-with-my-shadow practice session as a cover story, I’m returning to the yard art sculpture currently in S-L-O-O-O-O-W-W-W progress.
- Took the old tangerine iMac apart, setting aside the electronic components for later use as/if needed.
- Started mapping out the sculpture’s “face” using a camping lantern and controllable LED strips.
- Looked at converting the battery-powered camping lantern to AC-power.
Still on the to-do list:
- Creating the metal framework for the arms.
- Creating the arms with keyboards and computer mice.
- Creating the body armor using old floppy disks.
- Incorporating an 18-foot LED rope light.
- Deciding how much animation to put into a yard art sculpture exposed to the weather 24/7 —
- Phase/Version 1: easy, wind-activated response
- Phase/Version 2: moderate, motion-activated response
- Phase/Version 3: time-consuming, animatronic interactive response
The outdoor sculpture shapes up!
Sandbagging
How to maximise the local resources?
That question dogged us for many years as we planned our electromech construction crew that would “set up house” on Mars before we got there.
The mechs were fully capable of building adobe houses on Earth.
Water, though, was a key missing factor.
That encouraged us to find liquifying alternatives because we wanted to minimise the material we sent with the mechs.
We could have sent tonnes of sandbags and had the mechs build dry adobe huts under which our habitation modules would fit, providing extra protection in the Martian atmosphere, like parking an RV or caravan in a garage.
We challenged ourselves to create a solution that was both energy-efficient and easy to build.
Then, one day, after we had received the list of common chemical elements in Martian soil samples tested by the first wave of mech probes sent in the early 21st century to find suitable colonisation sites and entered it into our lab network, our semi-autonomous 3D printer on a mobile robot base started constructing an extruded Martian home.
Watching the 3D printbot create its own construction scaffolding was fun as it built a two-story structure that hinged and opened up to accept our current working version at the time of the habitation module that also served as transportation ship and landing craft.
Our Test and Evaluation department set to work calculating the wear-and-tear on the 3D printbot, estimating how many spare parts would be needed as the bot coordinated with the mechs to excavate Martian surface for the right ingredients, processing the Martian soil and then feeding the bot or its future equivalent the “right stuff” for habitation module protective shells.
To verify their theories, they drove the printbot and several prototype mechs out into the high desert, skipping a Martian landing simulation in order to focus on the printbot/mech adobe house construction techniques.
One of our lab personnel proposed commercialising the process, which later helped fund many of our side projects that we encouraged in case a crazy idea panned out and led to better procedures and/or understanding of settling Mars — whole desert communities were 3D-printed, followed by sustainable neighbourhoods in temperate zones around the world.
The simplest of thanks…
…but with a boundless appreciation.
To Abi and your own creative, unique, life-affirming ways, I humbly thank you for sharing with me your joy for living.
Little would I have guessed that you in my life would have such a large impact in so short a time.
I am blessed.
Walking to the bus to catch a ride to work
Today we were scheduled to give you an update on our Kickstarter campaign but our Creative Arts department had secretly accepted a contract to make propaganda posters for a government that goes without saying and said government pushed forward its publishing deadline due to changes in global politics.
We think the real excuse is the art department’s employees spending last night and today breaking down the subliminal messages hidden in the video, I Don’t Need a Reason, by Dizzee Rascal.
However, just because our ISP has documented logs that Dizzee’s video had been viewed and downloaded more often than Blurred Lines over the Labour Day weekend does not mean proof of cause is in the correlation pudding.
For you, the readers, the bottom line is this: an empty bottom line.
Time for this author to take apart an old computer for a future yard sculpture display — he may be bad at reading signs and signals between members of his species but he can always analyse electronic messages and hug his cats to meet his minimal companionship needs.
Salami, or as they say in Gaelic, c’est la vie!
How the house burned down
“What story, Mom?”
“Well, Amish pirates are not known for subtlety. They’d rather kill you and turn you into fertiliser than negotiate with you.”
“But we’re not like that, are we?”
“Shadowgrass, let me tell you the quick version of what happened when one of your great-great-uncle’s cousin’s boy’s father’s cousin’s nephew’s cousin’s uncle’s father’s boy’s cousin’s uncle burned the house down. It started one day when the two of them were clearing a field…”
“How big was the wasp?”
“Bigger than the farmhouse.”
“Bigger than our Martian habitat module?!”
“Yes.”
“What did they do?”
Bai popped into their thought trail. “Hey, guys! I’m back!”
“Hi, Bai. How did it go?”
“Great. But boy, am I mentally wrung out. Alek advanced me to the next level of dancing. I’ll tell you something funny. He said, ‘You know the way a guy keeps pestering you to dance with him and you aren’t interested? He keeps asking and asking until you are giving him the look that says ‘Get away from me!'” I told him, yeah, I’ve made that look. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘stop giving me that look. Act like you want to dance with me. Flirt with me!’ Me! As if I don’t know how to flirt.”
Guin and Shadowgrass laughed with Bai.
“Hey, can you believe Stephane only drank water last week? And he’s accusing me of finally growing up!”
“When are you coming over to our colony?”
“I don’t know, Guin. Depends on my schedule. I’m booked for the next two marsweeks.
“Okay, I’ll see you when you get here.”
“Sure thing.”
Guin turned to Shadowgrass. “Where was I?”
“Jersey and the Frenchman were about to battle the great, big, gigantanormasaurus Wasp.”
“That’s right. But it’ll have to wait until tomorrow. You’ve got work to do.”
“Ah, Mom. I thought you said that you and Dad brought your electromechanical design wizardry to Mars so no one would have to work again.”
“We did. But then we found that we liked to share time with our creations. Nothing like getting your hands into the soil yourself.”
“Must be the Amish pirate in you, eh, Mom?”
“Well… I don’t know…”
“Stabbing giant worms with your sabre! Slashing through deadly grass blades!”
“That’s right, son. You can imagine what all we faced on Earth and why we wanted to start over here. Just make sure you get plenty of nightmares letting your imagination run too wild. And remember to tell us about them tomorrow.”
“Mom, you’re being facetious, aren’t you?”
“Am I?” She smiled at her little genius and scrunched her nose. “Maybe just a little bit.”
treetrunkdings 