Maker Faire: Popsicle Stick Tools!

As you may or may not know, I’ve been working with Amon in EASE lab which does education research and k-12 outreach. Part of my work this summer has been developing an activity that we could implement in a mobile makerspace (aka. trailer) that we could deploy in proximity to ice cream trucks.

Two posts ago, I wrote about what influenced me to pursue engineering, and part of how I got here was the introduction of new tools and technologies during my education. I wanted to fold part of that narrative into my activity, and what I eventually came up with was “popsicle stick tools,” an activity where kids make tools out of popsicle sticks (do I sound redundant?). So far I’ve developed three tools, the protractor, the calipers, and the screwdriver.

If you’re interested the instructions can be found: tinyurl.com/h738yhu

So this past weekend I ran a booth at the Boston Mini-Maker Faire (at the Children’s Museum) with our popsicle stick activity representing Ease Lab and Olin. I had thought this was my first Maker Faire but then I remembered that a few years ago I represented my robotics team at a Kansas City Maker Faire.

Caliper popsicle sticks chilling out after a cut job.

Originally we were having kids cut their own popsicle sticks using wire cutters, they would often forget to wear their safety glasses and splinters from the sticks flew everywhere. After some reconsideration we decided to pre-cut/pre-perforated using the laser cutter so we didn’t have to worry about safety logistics. We used a template acrylic sheet to line everything up to properly laser cut everything. In total I spent about 5 hours cutting out ~300 caliper sticks and ~600 screwdriver sticks.

During setup before the storm

The weather app told me it was going to 95° with scattered thunderstorms on Saturday, instead it was 95° and way too sunny. We were set up under the tent so we were partially shaded but as the sun moved across the sky it slowly encroached on on our station. The Children’s Museum estimated an attendance of around 10,000 people, so I was honestly expecting a monster swarm of kids. We prepared enough materials so that 30 of each tools could be made per hour. Turned out that there was plenty of stuff at the faire to keep everyone occupied, and we had a modest flow of kids coming to and from our tables.

Birds eye view of our booth (we changed configurations to be more shaded).

We had engraving stamps on the table so people could stamp their names into the popsicle sticks to personalize it. We also brought our mini router, so kids could drill holes on the spot. Interestingly the few adults that came to our table were only interested in the router.

Kid using his screw driver to fix Wall-e.

In addition to making the tools we had some “try” stations set up, we had a board with screws that people could screw in, pokemon with angles for people to measure (riding on that pokemongo wave), and a scratch game hooked up to a makey makey that would allow kids to fix a virtual Wall-e using their screwdriver and a hammer.

Sliceform Studios: Vineyards

I ran the morning shift and got to walk around the Maker Faire afterwards. Most of the stuff there was targeted towards kids (not surprising since it was hosted by the Children’s Museum), but I did come across a cool booth called Sliceform Studios, which is a software that generates a laser cut template for beautiful tessellated art pieces. I totally have plans to make my own now.

By the end of the day I was completely pooped. I was hot, sweaty, tired from standing all day, and kind of sick of explaining how to make calipers for the nth time that day (I was also probably the #1 consumer of candy in our booth). I am pretty in awe of people who do this every single day.

A few things I learned from this experience:

• Kids are better at following tutorials when then can easily flip flop between the instructions and their project (so keep the instructions where they are working)
• Your voice will inexplicably jump an octave when you’re helping out a small child
• Using a proper amount of glue is an undervalued skill

Four year olds don't care for your adult insecurities

Eliza activating the button on her Rainbow Dash.

Disclaimer: This is entirely from my own point of view.

Today I met a little girl, let’s call her Eliza, at a go meetup. Her dad was in a large group of go players discussing a professional game, and Eliza was running around the table bugging her dad to pay attention to her. I tried to be interested in the discussion at hand, but the table was long, I was sitting at a distance, the level of discussion was way over my head, and I was getting more and more bored.

“Ni yao wan ma?” I asked her, do you want to play? Eliza reminded me of me. Her parents seem like recent immigrants, and she would switch back and forth from english to chinese. For the first game I did my best to speak chinese, she had difficulties understanding me and as it became clearer that she spoke english perfectly fine, our conversations shifted towards the English spectrum. Truth be told I am very self conscious of my mandarin. Talking to strangers in chinese will usually result in me feeling ashamed, judged, or both. I’d imagine they’re thinking her chinese sucks for someone who’s Chinese. It doesn’t help that I’m constantly translating my cantonese into mandarin. Sometimes there are phrases that feel so wrong translated that I just get stuck mid-sentence unable to continue. Eliza speaks better mandarin than me, Eliza is four.

Eliza was also unsurprisingly good at go. You could see that she played purely by instinct. She took less than no time to respond to my moves, and I had to concentrate hard to not get caught up in her pace. Give her a few more years and I feel like she would easily surpass the players on the table next to us. I say she’s unsurprisingly good because I could imagine (my hypothesis gathered from evidence between the three of our interactions) her and her dad at home playing hours and hours of games, quiet except for his stern lecturing on her mistakes. On one hand that’s probably why she’s so good, on the other it feels kind of crushing. I’m no child prodigy but I feel like the pressure that comes from the heavy expectations of your parents easily smushes the fun out of anything. It reminds me of going to piano classes when I was younger. I don’t remember any of the details but I do remember hating practising, hating the piano, and quitting before I got anywhere near good. My socialization tells me I should condemn this sort of parenting, but part of me believes that this is how the 0.01% is created.

Genius aside, she is still just four, during my turns (her breaks), she would take the broken stones (she called them “the bad guys”) out of the container and quarantined them to the side of the board. During one turn she wanted to show me her Rainbow Dash’s song (which was activated by a button in her chest). It was hilarious... for the next two minutes it looked like she was strangling her plushie trying to activate this button. I was impressed by how much play she incorporated into what people usually consider *scrunches up face* a serious game. However you could feel the playful mood change whenever the adults decided to look over. It went from our whimsical nonsensical chatter to a quiet silence punctured only by their commentary. And of course I can’t help but feel bad too. Here I am playing with a four year old that’s almost as good as me, and all I can feel is silent judgement from her dad about how terrible I am at go and how shitty my chinese is.

How did I get into Engineering?

Because being an adult doctor is scary.

So for those of you guys who don’t know, this summer I’m working with Amon Millner (an Olin professor) in his lab the EASE Lab (Extending Access to STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) Empowerment). A lot of what the lab does is related to STEM outreach for K-12, and in an effort to understand how to get young people into STEM I figured that it’s probably important for me to examine how I personally got to the place I am today.

For our preschool graduation they had each one of us stand up and tell our captive audience what we wanted to be when we grow up. I said pediatrician. I was a kid, of course I would want to be a kid doctor, being an adult doctor is too scary. Throughout my K-12 education it wasn’t really a question of whether or not I would take the honors class: I was going to take the honors class, I was going to test into the gifted program, I was going to test into a prestigious private school. I felt like if I wasn’t taking AP or honors then I was stupid. And though I could point to external pressures like my parents, after middle school I was the one enforcing this on myself. In terms of purely academics, it wasn’t difficult for me to switch from the doctor path to the engineer path, after all it was just a matter of declaring a different major when I got to college.

Anyway. I always really liked art, but I also always understood that I could not do art. Kinda like how some kids are discouraged from taking upper level math classes, I was discouraged from being an artist. That’s not to say that I wasn’t allowed to take art classes, or go to art camp, I just had to understand that art was a hobby, not a career. It’s easy to understand why my parents (or any other parent) would do this. Most artists are not in it for the bling. My parents were poor kids growing up, and they didn’t come this far to let their daughter sink into the dredges of poverty.

I actively kept a sketchbook in 6th and 7th grade, this is probably the only time I’ve ever actively kept a sketchbook. I would bring it to class and instead of listening to the teacher I would draw in my sketchbook. I was also fiercely protective of my sketchbook, I didn’t like people rifling through it lest they found some naked people, *gasp*. I stopped drawing as frequently in 8th grade when teachers would start calling me out on blatantly not paying attention to their sleep inducing lectures. The summer of my 8th and 9th grade year I went to this pre-college art program called NYSSSA. There I took college level classes in sculpture, figure drawing, printmaking, and mixed media. And for those two magical summers I was allowed to fantasize about going to art school.

In 8th grade we had this technology class. It’s all kinda fuzzy in my head, but I remember the wood working unit the best. I made a Bleach napkin holder,

The bleach on the left not the bleach on the right.

and a combination lock out of wood. I thought it was the coolest thing ever, and for me it wasn’t like technology, it was like art. When I started high school it became increasingly difficult to fit “recreational” classes into my schedule. It seemed like year after year I would have more and more AP and honor classes vying for a golden spot in my seven period day. One class I did wind up taking my sophomore year was Woodworking I. In that class I was finally allowed to use the big machines: the table saw, the jointer, the sander, and there was a certain pride that I held because I was able.

Sophomore year also happens to be year I moved to Kansas. I was a new kid who desperately needed extracurriculars (and friends). The only people I kinda knew were on the robotics team and I ended up joining the next year.

FIRST robotics PR stories usually go something like: “she joined the robotics team, got exposed to more STEM than she could ever dream of, became a core member of the leadership, and decided to pursue engineering.” For me it was more like my woodworking knowledge was useless, the cool kids were all operating alien technology (read: laser cutter and CNC router), and there were too many people with too little to do. All the time I spent watching instead of doing ultimately lit a fire in me. I was going to go to college for engineering, to do all the things that I never got to try.

When I got into Olin getting trained on all the machines was somewhat of an obsession I had.

Including all the shiny eevees.

I got trained on, in this order,  the band saw, sander, drill, mill, lathe, MIG welder, laser cutter, 2-axis CNC mill, 3D printer, TIG welder, and sheet metal benders & breakers. Having a row of checks next to my name on the “who’s trained” spreadsheet outside of the shop was so gratifying, it was the same feeling that I had in elementary school when I had a line of gold stars.

Machine shop aside, I was never quite certain what I wanted to do. By the end of our sophomore year when a lot of my classmates decided what they wanted to major in I was still in this searching phase, trying out different classes. I ended up declaring as General Engineering with a concentration in Design, but even now I don’t feel like I have a concrete story to tell when I’m explaining who I am and what I do. I guess the scariest part is what’ll happen a year from now when I graduate. Things that always worry me are things like, will I find a job? Will I feel challenged? Will I be inferior? Will I be happy? And what if I’m not?

I’ve kind of just followed this path that has been lain out for me but it worries me what will happen when I can no longer see the road.

Monster Hunting and Cross Stiching

The Lagiacrus, the star monster from Monster Hunter Tri. The electric water lizard.

So I’ve been spending some time here and there during my break to finishing up some cross stitch pieces I started around a year ago. These are actually my first cross stitch pieces (of official game pixel art (read: not my original art)), but cross stitching (so far) has been super easy to learn. If you have any amount of patience and are willing to redo things (and print out your pattern from pixel art online), then you’re basically set to pass beginner cross stitching with flying colors.

The Great Jaggi, the first boss in most Monster Hunter games, both the easiest and hardest monster you’ll ever face.

Anyway, listening to someone go on and on about cross stitching probably isn’t the most interesting thing in the world, so instead let’s talk about what I actually cross stitched. For most of you guys the word “Great Jaggi” or “Lagiacrus” should not strike fear into your heart. For the few who know about what I’m talking about you’re probably a niche player of a game called Monster Hunter.

Monster Hunter is a Japanese real time action game focus on (you guessed it) hunting monsters. People usually say it’s similar to Dark Souls (or the more obscure Shadow of the Colossus) for those of you who like that franchise. Personally I played Dark Souls for about an hour before I quit because the game maps were seriously creeping me out, but the game mechanics were familiar.

And it has battle cats, what’s there not to love.

Basically you control a character that can wield one of several badass weapons: Great Sword, Long Sword, Dual Blade, Hammer, Hunting Horn, Lance, Switch Axe, etc, etc, and you go out into these maps to hunt monsters several times your size. The game is real time so you have to actively dodge things like dragon breath, tail whips, and giant rolling lizards, while also attempting to deal crippling damage to said monster using your weapon of choice.

My personal weapon of choice: the Hunting Horn. Make sweet music as I bash skulls in.

This game is really great for people who like skill based action games, there’s no real way to cheat in a boss fight, or to suite up in an OP ensemble so you can mindlessly mash A. It’s also infuriating when it’s the 15th time you’re fighting this neon blue green dinosaur with exploding arms, and you get your ass handed to you every single time. But for the masochistic and/or the overconfident, this could be the game for you.

We meet again neon blue green dinosaur with exploding arms *cough* I mean Brachydios.

Right now the newest Monster Hunter game released in the U.S. is for the 3DS (and WiiU I believe) called Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. I actually haven’t progressed too far in it for 1. lack of time 2. these new monsters… I suck so bad. But! Hit me up for local co-op if you wanna relive your childhood memories of being connected to another kid’s game boy via usb cable. An older version (that I suck less at) that’s just as fun is Monster Hunter Tri (which is for the Wii) which you can do local co-op  with two controllers, and Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (for the 3DS) which I also own.

A Monster Hunter ad in Tokyo wishing you a happy New Year (and reminding you to buy the game).

There’s a new one slated to come out this summer called Monster Hunter X! I saw a lot of ads for the game while I was in Japan (it’s freaking huge there - like people will play with random strangers on trains as their commuting to work huge!) and while I’m excited...I should probably finish up MH4U before I buy the next one.

[Japan 2015] What's inside these Lucky Bags?

So this is another long overdue blog post... (〃艸〃)

So in Japan after New Year’s Day, a massive sale breaks out nationwide, it’s called 初売り or hatsuuri which roughly means “the first sale of the year”.

Sale items on a table at Loft. Look at all the people!

I would say that it’s a bigger more extravagant event than Black Friday here in the U.S. and will go on for several days to several weeks. And unlike in the U.S. where it’s an all out brawl to get that plasma TV at a 50% discount, really hot items in Japan will usually have a really long line facilitated by store employees hold signs telling you where the end of the line is.

Employees handing out free Loft sample bags to the people waiting in lines.

Many of these hot ticket items are 福袋 (fukubukuro) or lucky bags which are mystery bags with an assortment of heavily discounted items that stores sell. Most department store brands have their own lucky bags and loyal customers will line up early in the morning outside the store in hopes of snagging one of those limited edition bags.

I spent winter vacation up until New Year’s Day in Tokyo. To get from Tokyo back to Sendai, we took a night bus which arrived at Sendai station at ~5am January 2nd. This positioned us in downtown Sendai at a perfect time to start queuing up for those lucky bags. The initial plan was to go to Uniqlo and get their lucky bag, so we lined up outside the department store.

It was pretty dark and kinda cold, but at least it wasn’t raining right? At 7am the department store opened its main entrance so we could line up inside the building instead of outside in the cold. We didn’t know at the time that that line was actually the line for Starbucks lucky bags, and by the time we found out it was like “hey, why not.” Apparently they had only one hundred bags available so the store employees handed out redeemable lucky bag tickets to everyone waiting in line so the 101th customer could go line up for some other place.

Starbucks barista busily putting Starbucks lucky bags out.

My friend happily exchanged her ticket for a small lucky bag, I didn’t wind up getting one. I could have if I wanted to but I’m not a starbucks super fan or anything. Inside her bag (if I recall correctly) was a starbucks coffee tumbler, various starbucks coffee beans, a starbucks gift card, and some other stuff I can’t remember.

After that we ran all the way upstairs to the Uniqlo only to find out that they didn’t actually have a lucky bag that year. But it was only ~8am which was still plenty of time to go get lucky bags in other places, so we went to Loft which I blogged about here. Our target wasn’t actually the Loft lucky bag but the Lush lucky bag which was in the Loft store. I’ve never bought any Lush products before but I figured if all the beauty youtubers only ever rave about their stuff, I can’t go wrong.

Lush employees enticing young women to buy 5000 yen and 2500 yen Lush lucky bags.

I ended up getting the 5000 yen Lush lucky bag which was packaged in a furoshiki.

I got my Lush lucky bag inside of a Lush bag. Bagception.

The beauty unfolded.

Inside the bag was:

The Comforter Shower Cream which is that pink bottle up there. I thought it smelled kinda like that pink soap you get in public restrooms that remind you of medicine, but it was alright. It was really sparkly though.

Little Dragon which is that red looking popsicle stick looking thing. I’m not too sure what it is and I still haven’t gotten the chance to use it.

Green Gold which is the green and gold (who would’ve guessed) soap bar. I currently use it as my hand soap, and I generally like it. It has a bunch of fibers in it which is pretty good for scrubbing. This one’s also sparkly.

Fun - Gold which is that gold candy looking thing. It’s some kind of multi purpose soap, it smells a lot like toffee and we all know that toffee is delicious.

Guardians of the Forest which is the green bathbomb. I actually got to use it because Japan’s big on the bathing culture and my tiny bathroom actually came with a bathtub. So I got to relax in my tiny bathtub in glittery green liquid while watching Kill la Kill (which is definitely a weirdo anime).

Hanimi Scrub was the final thing in there, the whiteish looking round thing. It was a salt scrub, for exfoliating and stuff. While I appreciate it’s dead skin cell scouring abilities it also tasted pretty cool, like salty flowers.

After grabbing the Lush lucky bag we went upstairs to the 5th floor to the MUJI store for their lucky can (which comes in a can instead of a bag). It cost 2016 yen since it was the year 2016 ;D. Apparently they also had lucky bags but those were only available at other MUJI locations.

The one. The only. The MUJI lucky can.

Luckily I didn’t need a can opener to open this one.

Dissected and laid out.

Inside was:

A handkerchief with a cat on it. They had different handkerchiefs in different cans, my friend got a red one with a daruma on it. I think that all the characters on the handkerchiefs had something to do with the New Year but don’t quote me on that one.

A monkey bobble head. It’s a monkey since it’s the year of the monkey, it’s made out of paper and hand painted. MUJIs in different cities had different ornaments in their cans. The monkey bobble head was specific to Sendai, and looking through the catalogue of what each city got I think ours was the prettiest.

Finally there was a gift card for MUJI for 2016 yen, so in the end I didn’t actually spend any money to get this lucky can. I went back the next week to buy a bunch of MUJI pens.

Learn 7 GRE vocab words FAST!!! (not an ad I swear)

Reading some of the weirder mnemonic out loud usually nets me a few weird looks.

Do you remember back when we were kids? We would get those sheets of paper at the beginning of each school year which would tell us which supplies we needed. The first year I took French in middle school on that list was an French-English dictionary. I could probably walk over to the dusty bookshelf in our study and still find that very same book, undisturbed for years. When I first got it, I flipped through the pages, scanning, glancing at random words that caught my eye. That’s probably the closest I’ve gotten to actually using it.

I was always terrible at Chinese school. Back then I had this red Chinese-English dictionary, towards the end of it’s use the cardboard on the spine was well on its way to separating from the mesh that kept the pages glued together. Every week we would learn something like ten or twenty new vocab words which I would cram for and then promptly forget the next week. In addition to the weekly quizzes, there was always a reading passage that the teacher would make us read outloud in class, every student would get a sentence or two. To hide my illiteracy, each week I would go through the new passage and look up every single word. In the small space above each character I would write in the pīnyīn that was my crutch. Sometimes I think if instead of spending all that time on faking my literacy, I spent it on learning Chinese, I would probably be able to read the chinese menu in Chinatown by now. I did this for nine years.

Enough about the past. I’ve been thinking about dictionaries recently, or more specifically words. I’ve started prepping for the GRE (which is “the SAT for graduate school”) this past week, out of fear of the future (dun dunn dunnn). What immediately became clear after taking a practice test was that they use some seriously fancy vocabulary. Words like

Gossamer (adj.) - Characterized by unusual lightness and delicacy

Parsimonious (adj.) -  Unwillingness to spend money or use resources

both of which I learned through GRE flashcard decks. Suddenly, I realized that I knew a lot less English than I thought I did.

During this time I was also finishing up Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (which I highly recommend), and I found that there were unfamiliar words that cropped up in that text. That got me thinking, how much vocabulary do I gloss over on a daily basis? Have I gotten comfortable with thinking that just because I’m a native speaker I no longer needed to look up words? That I could understand their nuance through pure context? That leads me to synonyms. How do you tell the difference between

Upbraid (verb) -  find fault with (someone); scold

Lambast (verb) - criticize (someone or something) harshly

Castigate (verb) - reprimand (someone) severely

Because they’re so rarely used, I’ve never gotten the exposure needed to understand the subtlety between the three.

On the other side of the spectrum, my flashcards have enlightened me to the fact that there are words that I have been misusing and misinterpreting my entire life. I always thought that ambivalent meant that you didn’t care:

Ambivalent (adj.) - having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about something or someone.

I also thought that being disinterested meant that you didn’t care:

Disinterested (adj.) - not influenced by considerations of personal advantage.

In addition to beefing up my english vocabulary I’ve also started reading Polar Bear Cafe (しろくまカフェ) which is a manga about Panda (and his friends) who are regular customers at the Polar Bear cafe (I recommend the anime).I’ve been spending a lot of time looking up Japanese words I don’t know. But it’s so rewarding in those moments when I read an entire page or two without having to reach for my phone.

I mean who isn’t?

I’ve been using a product called WaniKani for the past few months to learn kanji, and it’s working out pretty well. I’m at 715 kanji learned as of this blog post. I also super recommend this for anyone who has tried to pick up Kanji and then slid down the slippery slope of not doing it daily. After finishing their curriculum, which would put me around 2000 kanji, I’m going to work on actually learning Chinese this time around.