Lee.org

Since I am done feeling bad, I am happy to report that it is time to feel good.

I was standing on the train talking to a student in my Electromagnetics class about a project I’m working on. He had come up with a really brilliant observation. His station came all to quickly and he hopped off while I stayed on. A moment later, the guy standing next to me on the train said, “That was a really interesting discussion you were having. Are you chemists?”

I responded with a glint of appreciation and a smile, “No, we’re artists.”

I revel that during the ride our conversation ranged from the nature of an electronvolt, linear accelerators, and power transformers to the hidden physics and volumetric-related difficulties of accelerating a stream of projectiles such that virtually no gap existed between them in flight.

A bunch of friends have asked me what the heck Occupational Therapy is. Here’s a music video that tells all.

(previously: Lee looking for help getting OT work)

This is very important to me. I’m looking for a job or internship as an Occupational Therapy Aide or Physical Therapy Aide. I’d love to hear from you if you can help. I need it to round out my experience before applying to graduate school.

Last year I volunteered at a pediatric occupational therapy clinic in Sausalito. And this spring I finished taking all the prereq classes I might need to get into an Occupational Therapy Master’s program. I want to get a job as an Occupational Therapy Aide so I can increase my experience and better prepare myself for the degree program I hope to enter next year. I plan on applying to San Jose State, Samuel Merritt University, and Dominican University

I really enjoyed working at the pediatric clinic but to round out my experience, I think I would do well to be at an adult or geriatric clinic. If you might be able to point me in the right direction, or you might be able to grant me an informational interview, please drop me a line!

Workshop Weekend Oakland registration is now open!

Join us on  June 22 & 23  to solder, craft, program, build, make and explore. At Workshop Weekend, a flat $40 admission gets you as many workshops as you can handle!

Register online by  Wednesday, June 12  and get $10 off with code EARLYBIRD0613. Select your workshops at  https://workshopweekend.net/oakland/catalog

For families coming to Workshop Weekend together, we’re keeping our $10 discount for all parent admissions with the purchase of two or more admissions for children (under 18). Sign up on the same account and the discount will be automatically applied.

We have over 30 workshops to choose from at this Workshop Weekend — a few old favorites coming back alongside new crafts, computer, and music workshops — and more! Join us for:

• Hands-on Genetic Engineering
• Robots: Build a Beetlebot
• DIY Doll-making
• Taste Hacking
• Computer Dissection
• Arduino Automation Basics
• Hands-on Nutrition
• Exploring Electronics: Speakers from Scratch
• DIY Coffee Roasting
• Hands-on Anatomy
• Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream
• Arduino Programming

…and many more!

Register and select workshops online at  https://workshopweekend.net/oakland/catalog

I hope we’ll see you in just a few weeks!

Cheers,
Gil, J.D., and the rest of the team at Workshop Weekend

I’ve been watching Dr Who with David Tennant… season 4 from 2008. I just watched episode 12 “Turn Left” where history changes just a tiny bit and the Doctor doesn’t exist to stop all the bad things that might have happened.
Wow that’s surprisingly good TV!

A couple weeks ago I got some fun invites to two Google events. Eyal Hershko brought some robots from Israel from his FIRST league; he started the first hackerspace and FIRST league there. He wanted some help running them at this afternoon lunchtime event at Shoreline Amphitheater. I went down with Michael Shiloh and we spun some folks in circles for a while on the bots.

A couple days later the robots were off to Google IO After Hours… the party that happens at the end of the Google IO Developers conference. They had a lot of entertainment there, including us. Billy Idol was the musical headliner. With Hand of Man by Christian Ristow, MakrShakr (the million dollar drink machine with 3 car assembly arms), Eyal’s spinning bots, Jon Sarriugarte’s Serpent Twins, some air powered rock’em sock’em robots, and lots more toys!

Here is the headgear I added kinetic elements to for the SFMOMA closing show last week.

Back row starting at left (sorry for a lack of creative names!):

• Bright flickering and pulsating illumination on top
• Machine-like pulsing illumination in the tea strainer
• Colorful glowing kaleidoscope in the top-hat
• Nervously rotating crown
• Communications dish searching for a signal
• (no kinetics)

Front row starting at left:

• (no kinetics)
• tubes jerking suggesting fluid flowing through them
• (no kinetics)

I didn’t get a good shot of the best headgear:

Two lights pulsing out of sync with one another, illuminating the face of the wearer

A great shot of Desiree:

A shot of  the performance:

(view in 3D wigglevision)

I love my new Lenovo T530 Thinkpad Laptop except for one thing, whenever I grab it on the side and brush the DVD Eject button with my fingers, the door pops open! It’s way too sensitive! I found a bunch of software solutions that disable the DVD Eject button with a program that lives in the Windows System Tray but that just seemed wrong to me. A hardware problem deserves a hardware solution!

In brief, I opened up the DVD drive and used my Dremel to trim just a hair off the button actuator. Now instead of opening whenever I flutter my eyelashes at it, you need to actually push the button. Perfect!

I wrote an Instructable about fixing the DVD Drive Eject Button

First, turn off your laptop.

Then remove the drive from your laptop. On my computer, there were two slides I had to move and the drive came right out.

Next, eject the drive manually. To open most drives, you just stick a thin piece of metal like a safety pin in a hole in the front and CLICK! out it comes!

Take the faceplate off the drive so you can get to the back of the button. On my drive I didn’t need to fully remove the faceplate to get the access I needed.

After getting the first tab off, I realized that getting the other tab off was much harder [frownyface] but I also noticed that I didn’t need to remove the faceplate completely anyway! [happyface]

As you can see in the image, I bent the faceplate just enough so I could see the base of the button. The little nub sticking off the back of the faceplate is what pushes the actual button that is on the drive itself. I shaved just the tiniest bit of the actuator off with a Dremel tool and Ta Da! the button is perfect!

I did it in 2 goes, I shaved it off just a hair and reassembled it. Then I shaved off another tiny bit before I was happy with it. I was worried the button would become loose where it sits but all I did was reduce the spring tension on the button. Snapping everything back together took just a few seconds. And actually, it took longer to write this Instructable than it did to do the fix.

Hope this works as well for you as it did for me!

Iconography says a lot. I like this!

Out with the old…

…and in with the new!

Read all about it

I found out about this from Instructables.com!