Lee.org

Small Business owner – T. Pen

Teaching Faculty at the Crucible – teaching 2 classes starting in February
– Introduction to Mechanical Sculpture
– Electromechanics for Everything

Tutoring School Students – right now I have a 2nd grader and 4th grader

Teaching Bread Making at the Institute for Urban Homesteading

Presentation Manager for SWARM’s trip to Kanpur India

Update 1-18-10: I have temporarily(?) disabled this plugin. Read the comments.

I just installed RSS Count Comments. Findable  on WordPress.

When you read my RSS feed, you’ll now see the number of comments in each post. So a title might read:

It Was on Fire When I Got Here (3 comments)

I installed this because comments are so very important but you’d easily miss them when reading just the RSS feed.

I encourage all my friends to install this very small plugin! It’s just 7 lines of code. :-)

…immunizations.

In preparing to go to India to show off SWARM, I had to get stuck with a bunch of needles. Joy.

I got my immunizations at the San Francisco Department of Public Health Adult Immunization & Travel Clinic

They knew which vaccines I needed but I checked up myself with the CDC here and here.

I made an appointment a few days in advance. It took about 1.5 hours with the interview, shots and discussion.

I received

• Typhoid – 4 pills taken every other day for 8 days. Take at least 1 week before travel. Don’t take with antibiotics (my antimalarial is an antibiotic!). Effective for 5 years.
• Doxycycline – Antimalarial.  1 pill a day starting 2 days before travel, ending 28 days after. Most other antimalarials have a very high incidence of side effects like hallucinations and psychosis! Everyone (5 out of 5) (update 12-5-11: 6 out of 6, Michael Sturtz too) I’ve ever spoken to about antimalarials has said their mental state was strongly negatively influenced by other antimalarials like mefloquine!
• Polio – injection. You should get 1 booster in a lifetime. This was it.
• TDAP – Tetanus, Diphtheria, and Pertussis. injection. Effective for 10 years
• Hepatitis A – injection. Effective for 10 years. I need to go back in 6 months for a booster
• Azithromycin 500 mg – 3 oral antibacterial goofballs to take with me in case of illness while travelling (update: I needed it after a meal, good thing I had it!)
• Hep B immunization (Lee already got in 2005. Effective for 10 years.)
• MMR  – Measles Mumps Rubella – 2 shots needed in a lifetime. By 1990 almost all colleges required boosters. Effective for life.
• Ultrathon 34% DEET insect repellent (Followup: I’m VERY glad I got and used this!)

Total bill from San Francisco Department of Health: $307
I have to pick up the Azithromycin  and Doxycycline prescriptions from Costco. (you don’t need a membership to buy from their pharmacy. It was crazy cheap, like $7 for each.)

A day later, both my arms hurt and are stiff from the injections. A few days after that, I felt “under the weather” as if a cold was coming on. Then all was well.

I’ll have to pick up some permethrin for my clothes from REI and I’m ready to go. (Followup: I’m glad I did!)

Whoever said international travel was fun was in the middle of a psychotic episode from the mefloquine.

And it sucks but this post belongs in the “Art” category.

I make a lot of bread.
I believe that in the last 2 years I’ve gone through 3 25 lb bags and 1 50 lb bag of flour. It’s time to start taking better notes. Here we go!

I just added the “Bread” Category to this blog. I have retroactively put all my bready posts into this category.

I just finished a 25 pound bag of First Street Bread Flour from Smart and Final. It was about $12. Standard loaves come out a bit softer and sweeter than with the previous Hotel all-purpose flour (I forget the exact name, it’s from Smart and Final and has the word “hotel” in it). I like it.

I just made some focaccia with it and it was very easy to flatten out. The Hotel flour has a strong tendency to spring back.

I am excited to say that starting in February I will be regular faculty at the Crucible. I had taught some classes in June. Now Michael Shiloh, head of the department, has asked me to take on 2 of his regular classes: “Electromechanics for Everything” and “Introduction to Mechanical Sculpture”.

The classes start in February. Of course, I’ll be in India for part of February so another Crucible faculty member and all-around-good-guy Sudhu and I will be co-teaching some of the classes and he’ll be subbing for some :-)

Last week at The Exploratorium After Dark (which was loads of fun), I saw “Animanemone”. Fittingly, it looks quite a bit like an anemone in motion. Alan, one of the creators gave me the whole skinny, starting with “Well, my friend bought 2,000 stepper motors for like $0.23 apiece on eBay. So we needed to find something cool to do with them…”
Ah, here’s more about Animanemone from the artists!

It’s a really nice piece! I’m pretty psyched to say that I took the photo to the right with my iPhone. It came out awesome. Use the power of the Google on “Animanemone” and watch it! They’re from Minnesota.

It’s great to mull on…. it’s like watching grass in the wind. Totally fun to put your hand on it and feel the buzzing of the motors. And it’s just so many fun tiny pieces. It’s zen and not zen. :-)

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And Ken Murphy’s awesome “History of the Sky” was there as promised. I zoned on that for a while. Tototolly groovy!

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I only got to look at Cubatron from afar :-( … not enough time in a night :-(

Feb 4-16 or so I’m going to India with SWARM!
We’re showing the orbs for 4 days and giving a presentation at Techkriti in Kanpur, India.

Do you want me to bring anything back with me?

My car is in for service. I just got a call from the dealer in Walnut Creek, Michael Steads Walnut Creek Chrysler Jeep Dodge.

…
The service rep asks, “The mechanic opened the hood and… has there ever been a fire in your car?”

“Hmm? mmm. Ha! No, but it’s been to Burning Man! All that dust under the hood! And you can never get it out. The mechanic has never seen a car that’s been to Burning Man, has he?”

“Ah, he thought that was fire extinguisher dust…”

This morning Sparkfun had a “Free Day” giving away $100,000 in $100 increments to shoppers. Obviously, their servers came crashing down.

Eric asked on the SWARM list
Eric: anyone get anything?
Lee: I clicked Refresh until my fingers were bloody stumps. But nothing. I’m writing to you now with voice recognition soft wear because I have no fingers.
Mark A: lolz… “soft wear”

I was lying in bed this morning (after being up a while) and the bed started rocking. An earthquake! Wee!! It was really tiny, like 5 seconds total. It felt like someone was at the foot of the bed wiggling the frame a little.

Just now I just tried to wiggle the bed like the earthquake but the frame is too stiff. It was the building doing that wiggling! The motion was entirely horizontal, head-foot / east-west.

The US Geological Survey says this about the earthquake: