A Saturday Afternoon with "We Care Solar"

A generous donation, from LWHS Parent Brad Rock, has connected the Lick/Drew Senegal Trip with the Berkeley-based NGO, We Care Solar.  On Saturday afternoon students learned about the solar suitcase's lighting and charging abilities, as well as how to install the units and properly train local health workers.  We'll be installing 3 of these units on the upcoming trip! 

Trying out the LED lights.  Very bright at only about 2 watts each.

Installation exercise.

Hal Aronson and Laura Stachel have an amazingly well designed and engineered system.  It's very exciting to make this connection and to be able to work with such a high quality device. Find out more about We Care Solar.  We'll post updates on the installation from the field.  Look for them on the LWHS/Drew trip blog.

Lick-Wilmerding and Other Things @ Bay Area Maker Faire 2014

The Lick-Wilmerding Booth in the Young Makers Area.

Other great things at Maker Faire:

More Planning for LWHS/Drew Senegal Service Learning Trip 2014

Some of the playground parts going with us.

Swing and climbing wall parts

Quick Concept Drawing (Overall Layout)

Quick Concept Drawing (Central Structure)

Tool Training

Tool Training

Donations and Parts are piling up in our office!

Bill Kipp talks about the Challenges of Energy Transmission in the Southwest

Two weeks ago Bill Kipp talked to the Sustainable Energy class about the administrative, environmental, and political challenges of building new transmission lines to deliver sustainable energy to the various states in the Southwest.  His project, now 4 years in, will deliver wind and solar energy over thousands of miles at a cost less than that of a public utility company. Getting permission to cross lands owned by sovereign Native American nations, Military testing sites, wildlife preserves, and protected national monuments isn't as easy as you might think (nor should it be!). Check out the details here: http://www.southlinetransmissionproject.com/index.html

Beautiful lamps just completed by LWHS 9th graders

Each lamp built from 12"x12" acrylic, 12"x12" steel, 30"x5"wood, lit by custom Arduino LED circuit.

Good Stuff in April in Chelsea

Ghada Amer

Erwin Wurm

Roy Dowell

Daniel Canogar

Visit to the MIT Media Lab

Media Lab working on growing its own food!

Adhesive circuits by Jie Qi of the 'Responsive Environments' group

The 'Lifelong Kindergarden' collaborative lab

After years of hearing about the Media Lab, it was a special treat to finally get to see this set of innovative creative technical labs in person. Thank you Jie Qi and Tiffany Tsung for hosting me @medialab.

Ethiopian Coffee Ceremony

From Sit Please: Illustrated Experiences in Senegal, Mali and Ethiopia

New Work: CNC Steel + VFG Fir Modular Surface

CIRCULATORY SURFACE

2014
Powder Coated CNC Cut Steel, VFG Fir, Fasteners

Modular, Reconfigurable

Some New Excerpts from My Upcoming Graphic Novel

View excerpts : http://www.extrasleepy.com/sitplease/

Excerpts from Sit Please: Illustrated Experiences in Senegal, Mali and Ethiopia.  160+ pages of short stories.  Researching publishing options now.  Expected availability: Fall 2014.

Working with Students on Designing Playground for Senegalese Village

Working with LWHS and DREW students to design a school playground for Santhiou Mame Gor, in Senegal. We plan on building the palyground during our annual summer cultural exchange trip.  Next step: send the ideas to the village for feedback.

Great talk by Processing creator Casey Reas @ UC Berkeley.

Thank you to the creator of a brilliant open source tool.  Great work presented to a packed Monday night house.  Use processing!  http://reas.com/

First Design with LWHS's CNC Plasma

After working out some high frequency interference issues, we have the Tourchmate CNC Plasma up and running.  Very easy .dxf file export from Illustrator to the CNC control software.
I only have 100 projects floating around in my head now.

Just finished an outrageously good GAFFTA workshop with Lauren McCarthy and Kyle McDonald

These two covered so many topics on internet and electronic media art.  It will take me months to sort through all the ideas.  Really fantastic and thought provoking class!  Get to know these two!  http://kylemcdonald.net/  http://lauren-mccarthy.com/  http://grayarea.org/

Sustainable Energy Class Visit to Bloom Energy!

If you don't know about Bloom Energy, look into it.  The Bloom Box fuel cell system is the most amazing and efficient energy source I've seen.  It's going to be huge.  We're so fortunate to get to visit two years in a row. The company is humming along.  Thank you to K.R., David (pictured on the left) and the whole crew.

OpenSCAD: another way to tinker away the 3D day

And it's free!  
http://www.openscad.org/about.html