I Taught 2 classes at The Crucible, Extreme Gizmos (8-12 yrs old) and Radical Robots (12-14yrs old). Phew, it was a lot of work to get ready for the classes! And a lot of work and mental energy to run them. But it turned out great.
Each class was 3 hrs/day for 5 days, June 15-19. Gizmos: 9-noon, Robots: 1-4pm.
We did way more than I have photographed. One note: NEVER let your students take their projects home before they are done! I let several kids bring their almost-finished (excellent) projects home on Thursday. All but one kid forgot to bring them back to finish and present.
It was a bit of a nervous thrill when I saw the cover of one of the Crucible’s catalogs
Extreme Gizmos class
Radical Robots class
Extreme Gizmos posing for a photo with our gizmos
A Radical Robot, an Arduino, servo and photoresistor open the box when you pass your hand in front of the box
Lee and kids
Another Radical Robot, a tripod holds an Arduino and 2 servos to point a mirror or camera in an arbitrary direction
Oop, I haven’t updated my adoring public in a while. Here’s what’s been up recently, in no apparent order. Some of these items took up seconds of my time, some of them hundreds of hours.
————————————————– I was on the curatorial committee for the Robogames Art Competition with Marnia, Niladri and Corey. Marnia and I each made the most lovable Tweenbots as a cute marketing ploy for the Art Competition. We set a sign on him that read “Help me get to the Gallery!” and let him loose at the front entrance of Robogames. The tweenbots were a great success! As I left on Sunday with him under my wing, several people stopped me and said how great they were!
At the Crucible class, the kids changed changed the sign to read “Hi! My name is Ron. I am trying to get to the Kinetics Lab. Help if Stuck!” It’s interesting and telling that the kids insisted that the robot have a name. :-)
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Went to Robogames. The awesome new Exploratorium permanent outdoor exhibits at Fort Mason are awesome. Firefighting robots are awesome. Robogames is awesome. The Robogames art was awesome. Awesome!
A firefighting robot at Robogames 2009
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Hung out with Magnus Wurzer of Roboexotica fame. I drove him to Robogames from the East Bay and caught up with him at Dorkbot.
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Went to the Dorkbot 7th Anniversary Party. Saw 2 tesla coils and 1 Tesla Roadster. The coils lit some fireworks… after much consternation; more than one person asked if we couldn’t use a lighter instead of a giant tesla coil to light them. Twas funny, using a hammer to kill a fly sometimes doesn’t work so well :-)
Saw the fantastic Snail Art car. The metal work on it is Fantastic! I haven’t yet found a photo that really captures it perfectly. I chatted with some of the crew and marvelled at it.
Met up with Shameless Heather… we met 5 years ago at Burning Man. 5 years. 5 years! Phew. Five years.
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I’ve learned a bit about Rotoscoping from Slim at Noisebridge (sat in on 2 or 3 classes)
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Got an f*ing awesome tour of the Advanced Light Source from Marcus
I taught 2 week-long classes at the Crucible. Read about it.
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Saw Deborah Violin playing in Berkeley with her friends. Most of it was really cool. They played these really really short, dense quartet pieces that were cool. And the Bach was nice. A guy played his Doctoral Thesis violin piece or something… yes, he’s now a doctor of music… and it sounded like 40 minutes of “Yeyt! Yeyt! Yeyt! Yeyt! Yeyt! Yeyt! Yeyt! Yeyt! Yeyt!” Oh my god it was awful, I prayed for death’s sweet release, but his professors apparently liked it. So what do I know?
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Dinner with Charlotte’s friend Kevin in Brocceley
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Went to sensitivity training at The Crucible so I could be Faculty. I now believe that straight, white European males are responsible for all evil in the world. I would kill myself but that would just be another demonstration of their subjugation of us all.
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Went to Memoir Spool at Climate Theater, June 25th. Great Storytelling!
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I’m now learning SolidWorks so I can design my Tap Pen.
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SWARM went to SubZero1 in San Jose. I just went to look at the art. It was cool. There was this piece with a woman on 4 TV screens eating hot dogs until she was near puking, it was as if she was having an eating contest with herself. It was really really cool. It reminded me of how I sometimes eat to excess to push away bad feelings.
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I went with SWARM to the Google IO Developer Conference. The conference topics were pretty much lost on me. I tried but no. But we had lots of fun!
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I’ve been sitting for a friend’s children. They have an artichoke tree growing in their front yard (yes, yes, I know that artichokes don’t grow as trees but the artichoke at the top of this plant is a full 9 feet off the ground. So there. And they are delicious!
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PS. Though I’ve barely mentioned Charlotte in this post yet. She rocks.
Due to the idiotic Swine Flu idiotic panic, Malcolm X Elementary School in Berkeley was closed for a few days. I babysat for Erin for a couple days.
I’m still working on the Tap Pen idea. After a week, the first beta customer is very happy with it. :-)
I submitted a proposal to the San Francisco Unified School District with Noisebridge to teach an after school program. That might manifest in the fall.
I’ve been making a little money on my Mozy referrals and Google adwords.
I’ll be teaching a mechanical sculpture class at the Crucible in June.
I’ve been working part-time for Charlotte’s company, fixing computers and such. I logged many hours saving her computer this week
I’m going to be working a trade show on commission with Charlotte soon.
I recently finished listening to an excellent audio version of Sun Tsu’s The Art of War. Wow, extremely worthwhile but watch out or you’ll start seeing the world in very extreme terms.
Just before that, I finished listening to Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. Bokonon is a bastard. I like him, I think.
A few nights ago I went to a Pecha Kucha event with Charlotte and Barry Cogbill. I think I would have liked it better without the loud, incessent backbeat the DJ added to everything. Though I suppose we sat too close to the speakers. I like the idea though.
I’ve been babysitting a bit. Tuesday and Wednesday. Tommy and I practiced spinning bamboo sticks, started a crystal growing kit growing, tried working out a way that he wouldn’t automatically win at his favorite game Heroscape, found out where the hidden laundry chute door is, re-worked some of his Mission to Mars Lego sets into cooler configurations (skeleton-footed rocket-pack aside), learned some karate, got really good at ReMovem on the iPod (knocking his sister’s scores off the high-scores), and all around had a good time. Phew and that was in just 2 days.
I applied for a job with Michael’s company, Earthmine. Taking apart and rewiring fancy SLR cameras. It might have worked out but unfortunately (for me) a guy with an EE degree and a willingness to do the work presented himself well :-(
Rich Humphrey had hired me 1 or so days per week to help with computer stuff. It really had the potential to go someplace but just two days ago his largest client didn’t get the funding it needed so they are likely folding / massively contracting soon… and Rich’s company is going into hibernation. :-(
Last night Rich came to the SWARM meeting and I think really pointed the group in a good direction, toward very accessible robotics for the masses. :-)
With all this laid-off-edness, I still never get enough time to work on the Tap Pen!
I tried selling residential solar for 5 months last year. It didn’t go well. I didn’t sell any. :-(
Before that, I sold yellow pages to try getting my feet wet with direct sales… eh.
Over the last few weeks, I found myself babysitting a bit… for Binka’s 11 month-old and Jessica’s 6 and 9 year olds.
SWARM brought me to Scottsdale Arizona and we got paid real money but that money goes to SWARM. Maker Media brought SWARM to the Head Royce school but they pretty much paid gas money.
I’ve been working on making this tap pen invention… but not enough.
I started working part-time with Rich Humphrey. Something could develop there to make it more than a couple days a month but it’ll take a good while first.
I’ve been working a couple days a month for Charlotte sporatically for Kern…
Last Friday Marnia and Jessie and I presented SWARM to 3 assemblies at the Head Royce school in Oakland. It was a lot of fun! It’s amazing how the 3 different crowds, 6-8 grade, 9-12 grade, and 4th grade needed COMPLETELY different presentations. And over the course of the 3, we all became better presenters :-)
Also presenting was Ken Murphy of Blinky Bug fame and Dan Goldwater with is POV and acrylic bike :-)
Great Thanks to Michelle Hlubinka AKA Binka from Maker Media for inviting us!
We got a followup comment from a teacher:
When I picked him up, [the student] said that today was the “best day of the entire school year.” He was enthralled with the “Make” guys and knows that he “wants to be those guys.” Owen, [the student] plans to talk to you to find out how he can connect with them with the goal of working with them in the summer or the future.
Thanks for getting one teenager very very excited about the future.
Sitting in the kitchen while VNCing into the bedroom on the snazzy-fast new UltraVNC 1.5.3. The smell of very successful home-made bread (NOT bread machine, the real deal) wafting over my shoulder… and [nom nom nom] the taste proves it :-) Listening to SomaFM “Space Station Soma” station on my (very pretty!) new iPhone (thanks Mom & Dad!). Finally finding a good display to use for my Tap Pen invention. Tapping away on my super-great-deal laptop.
This afternoon Charlotte and I celebrated Christmas… I found the perfect tree last night on my way home from the FLG “What Are We Gonna Propose to Burning Man?” meeting. We decorated it with candy canes, little disco balls my family got me for xmas, and “ordaments” my niece made for me. We had wrapped and put presents under it yesterday. Today we exchanged gifts to both our delight.
over the Fourth of July I was in Vermont with my family. I had not spent time at the house for several years.it is very reassuring that the place is still there. It smells the same as it has for more than 30 years now. Oh my, 30 years.
The best moment I had all week was when Julia and I went on the Bromley slide. We hadn’t really planned on going on the slide, Julia has a hard time getting into new adventurous things. Riding down the longest alpine slide in America at full speed would probably not be at the top of her list… well, read on.
I was surprised that she wasn’t freaked out by the chair lift… I would be. No, that was not an issue. We went up the chair lift saying that we would just “check it out at the top”. The lift operators said that we could go on a “scenic ride”, no problem. Though frankly I was a little worried about getting back on the lift on the way back down. Well, we got to the top and just sat around for awhile. We watched some people go down but not with any intention. I suggested that we go pick flowers at the top of the mountain but she was a little uncomfortable and said “no”. After a few minutes, Julia was ready to go back down the chair lift; we started walking up toward the lift. If I were Julia walking back up toward the chair lift I would have been a little bit unnerved at all of the activity… the people getting off the lift, the people helping, the chairs spinning around. Well, in one movement she turned around and started running back down toward the slide saying that she wanted to go. I grabbed a sled and that was that!
I’m off for a week to go see family. I’ll land in New Jersey and then we’ll be wisked off to Vermont. I haven’t been there in… geez… years. But I’m confident that the place will be relatively unchanged and comforting.
At Yuri’s night 2008 at NASA Ames, they had a ride called ISS. They’d put you in this capsule and slingshot you up to the International Space Station. We were really lucky because since the Space Station is orbiting so fast, only a few riders each day can get to see it up-close. You can see the space station in the reflection of the glass. It was really pretty spectacular! Charlotte and I had a great time. If you ever get the chance, you should absolutely go!
The fine folks at the Space Coalition hung out in low earth orbit and took photos of us tourists all night.
Lucille Rathyen was one of the two teachers in the early years of the Gifted and Talented program (renamed “Learning Unlimited” a few years later) in West Milford New Jersey. I spent many hours with Lucille and Cassie Lewis in middle school. This very well-spent time made a long lasting impression on me.
A few years ago, most of the first group of G&T kids got together at Cassie’s house for a very enjoyable reunion. I just looked over the photos and saw photos of these childhood friends all grown up.
This email came to me yesterday from Cassie.
I am saddened to inform you that Lucille passed away from a long bout with cancer last night. Her husband, Ralph, called this morning and said she was at home with her family and hospice. I last saw her a few weeks ago, just before she was scheduled for a final MRI to see is anything else might be done.
Lucille remained spirited and optimistic throughout the ordeal. She told me whatever happens is out of her control; the source of her illness unexplainable…some things just happen in life. She was grateful for the life she led, her family, friends and those years in LU and was making the most of the time she had left.
She will be cremated; Ralph will schedule a memorial service in the next week or so. If you’d like to send a note, the address is:
[contact Lee for the address]
I hope this reaches some of you, at least. I don’t have all updated addresses or emails…apologies to those I missed. I contacted the Hazens and Jim
Paretti’s mom. So please pass the word to any others. Feel free to email me or telephone ([contact Lee for the phone number]) if you wish.
In the coming weeks, I will republish articles I wrote under the title “Click Here”. You can find them all under the Click Here Articles category in this blog.
From 2002 to 2005, I worked with two publications, The Panther and Around The Greens. Actually, I helped quite a bit with them in addition to writing articles.
The Panther is the official publication of The Panther Valley Property Owners Association. I was a member of the Communications Committee, helping to get the newsletter out and helping with various initiatives in the Valley.
Around The Greens is the official publication of the Forsgate Community Association. My aunt Ernestine McCarren ran the publication from 2003 to 2004. I wore many hats, technical advisor, graphic design and writer. I was instrumental in helping to put together the proof. We used Microsoft Publisher 2003. I did most of the ads. I’d get a laugh every time an advertiser would give us an old crinkled newspaper ad with their logo on it and say, “Here you go. Use this logo but make it a half-page ad instead of side-bar. Oh and our hours and location have changed.” They had no idea that in order to make that work, I’d usually have to rebuild the entire ad from scratch. But with the crinkled sheet, the best I could do for them was… not as good as they should care about their business!
During this time I was promoting my business, “The Computer Guy”. My tagline was “I go to people’s homes and small businesses, fix their computers and show them how they work.” To promote myself as an expert in the field, I wrote a series of articles with the title of “Click Here”. Over the next few weeks, I will republish those articles here. Computers being what they are, some of the content is out of date but much of it is still useful. In any case, it’s interesting reading (at least I think so).
It was an enjoyable challenge to write for print. You are always watching your word-count; I would write the first draft of my 450 word article, do a word-count and find out that I was over by 600 words. Taking an axe to my own articles showed me that I could write very concisely when I had to and not lose the intention of the work.
I went back to New Jersey for a week for Christmas and got to see the most beautiful girl in the world. She’s got long strawberry blonde hair and is 4′ tall. That’s my 7 year old niece Julia. :-)
I’m starting a new job as a residential solar power sales consultant at Premier Power. My good friend Barry introduced me to the position and I’m terribly excited at the prospect making a good income at saving the world. I had worked at Valley Yellow Pages over the summer specifically so I could get my sales chops. We’ll see how it goes!
Charlotte and I are doing well together. We’re still in our tiny 24th st apartment… with the new job looming, I’ve thought and said aloud many times, “I can’t wait until I have some money”. I haven’t often thought of how money could improve my life but now I am. Again, we’ll see how it goes.
I helped produce and sell $4,000 of Flaming Lotus Girls calendars for the Christmas season. That makes me pretty happy and proud.
Went to a couple baby-shower like events recently… Pouneh from FLG and Michelle H. It looks like everybody is getting bulbous bellies these days.
I’ve been helping Tad create the ultimate workbench. I’ve gone over to his house a couple times to cut wood and move things etc… he’s got a LOT of electronics gear in his house and he uses it! Maybe it’ll give you some glimpse to know that he has a $400 electric bill each month, and he lives on his own! Helping him has been fun. I’ll try to post pictures when it’s done. It looks like it’ll be 3 shelves, each capable of holding 600 lbs of gear (and yes, he’ll use it), the main table level is about 4′ x 8′, with the back being occupied by 2′ deep gear like oscilloscopes and the like.
For Christmas, my folks got me a Tom Tom (which will be good for my new job!) and are getting me tickets to Burning Man. I like very much that they have enough acceptance of “those crazy hippies in the desert” that they’d do that for me.
I suppose that’s the most of it. You can find out more about what I’m thinking by reading the rest of my blog. I see that this blog thing is getting quite extensive. I’ve made over 1,200 posts to it since I started it 5 years ago in 2002. I make a point of only posting things that are important to me.
I welcome you to see the New Year card I sent to many people this year. It’s really quite pleasant.
If the card isn’t available anymore, here’s a local version. Originally, the interactive card ended with “Happy New Year” and “May this be a year of peace, love, growth and good news”.
I created and submitted a video for the VIDA 10.0 international competition with help from my friends.
VIDA 10.0 is an international competition created to reward excellence in artistic creativity in the fields of Artificial Life and related disciplines, such as robotics and Artiftcial Intelligence.We are looking for artistic projects that address the interaction between “synthetic” and “organic” life”.
In previous years prizes have been awarded to artistic projects using autonomous robots, avatars, recursive chaotic algorithms, knowbots, cellular automata, computer viruses, virtual ecologies that evolve with user participation, and works that highlight the social side of Artificial Life.
You can make the video below play full-screen by clicking one of the buttons on the toolbar.
This Yellow Pages salesman walks into a bar and says, “Hi, I’m Lee Sonko from Valley Yellow Pages.” It’s still kinda weird but it seems that I’ve changed careers again, from
Software QA engineer at Politzer and Haney, Course Technology, Softkey Intl, Shiva, Picturetel, MCI/Newscorp Internet Ventures, American Internet, Riverton Software Corp, BGS, Firefly, ADP and Wavexpress to
Owner of “The Computer Guy”, computer repair and training company to
Substitute teacher to
Customer Support Manager and QA engineer at Wavexpress to
Richard Hart and his camera man came by a few weeks ago to do a story on us. Alan Wang of ABC7News.com introduced
Here’s a transcript of the video:
Richard Hart narrating:
This is a robot. Well, actually a roll-bot. It doesn’t even have wheels. It just sort of rolls along. But then it’s not supposed to do much. This robot was born to dance.
Michael Prados – “I think a lot of it came from brainstorming about kinetic art. And a lot of the discussion is centered around dance as an inspiration. And so by thinking about dancers and the way they move, we started to think about how we could have machines that had some of those same aspects.”
At the bottom of the sphere you will see something swinging back and forth. That’s a very heavy battery. By shifting it backward or forward like a pendulum you can force the cage to roll backward or forward, even change direction. On top is a black radome connected to an inexpensive wireless network called Zigbee, connected to a laptop which is connected to a common video game controller. But wait, there’s more. Michael Prados, Lee Sonko and a small team developed this for the art festival in the desert, Burning Man 2007. They are busy fashioning aluminum ribs and electronics for five more robots which will all become dance partners; because the black dome atop the robot contains a GPS unit in addition to wifi. So a half dozen robots will be able to talk to each other and synchronize their dance without needing the remote control. At least that’s the plan.
Michael Prados – “We hope that we can impart at least some small bit of it and suprise and delight people with a new kind of machine behavior.”
With the next roll in bots, Richard Hart, ABC Seven News.
Aug. 19, 2007 – The Burning Man festival is only one week away, and, in warehouses throughout the Bay Area, artists are rushing to finish performance projects in time for the annual desert event. One of those groups is building a GPS ballet.
This is a robot. Well, actually, a roll bot. It doesn’t even have wheels. It just sort of rolls along. But, then, it’s not supposed to do much. This robot was born to dance. Michael Prados of the Swarmbot Project: “I think a lot of it came from brainstorming about kinetic art. And a lot of the discussion has centered around dance as an inspiration. And, so, by thinking about dancers and the way they move, we started to think about how we could have machines that had some of those same aspects.”
Look closely at the bottom of the sphere, and you will see something swinging back and forth. That’s a very heavy battery. By shifting it backward or forward like a pendulum, you can force the cage to roll backward or forward, even change direction. On top is a black radome connected to an inexpensive wireless network called Zigbee, connected to a laptop, which is connected to a common videogame controller. But wait. There’s more.
Michael Prados, Lee Sonko, and a small team developed this for the art festival in the desert, Burning Man 2007. They are busy fashioning aluminum ribs and electronics for 5 more robots, which will all become dance partners. The black dome atop the robot contains a GPS unit in addition to wi-fi.
So, a half-dozen robots will be able to synchronize their own dance without needing the remote control. At least, that’s the plan.
Michael Prados: “We hope we can impart at least some small bit of it, and surprise and delight people with a new kind of machine behavior.”
Burning Man officially kicks off on August 27, 2007.
——- Links ——-
The Swarmbots project is funded by
The Black Rock Arts Foundation, a part of Burning Man. www.blackrockarts.org
Last night we had an FLG fundraising party. (invites at various spots: 1, 2 , 3). It was a great success! I was out til 4am helping and partying :-)
SWARM is coming along. There’s a LOT of work to be done yet. I’ve got to weld orbs together (I’m getting to be a good aluminum TIG welder!), put battery systems together, buy some stuff (shopping for electronics can take an unhappily long amount of time), and help do choreography for the art. So far, we’ve been focusing on the HOW it works, not the WHAT it does; the orbs have sound, lights and motion. We’ve got to get some choreography action going!
On Saturday Richard Hart interviewed Michael, Jon and myself at the BoxShop, presumably for a new version of the Discovery Channel’s TV show “The Next Step”. He said that the episode might be out in a month or so. It’s kind of funny… I’m sure I’ll appear as the “brawn” in the piece. They got video of me grinding and welding. Jon is the geek and Michael the fearless leader and visionary. We’ll see. :-)
Charlotte made it on an internet television show before I made it to TV… There’s an internet television show (yes, real “internet television”… groovy) that did a piece about the Fire Arts Festival. Among other things, they talk about all the art at the show. And at the end of the show, they do an interview with Charlotte about the Serpent Mother and show her off!
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