Chestnut Tree

We are participating in an effort to bring back the American Chestnut tree from its virtual extinction 75 years ago from Chestnut Blight. We picked up a sapling from a park worker in Prospect Park that had been grown from a seed from a tree in Greenwood Cemetery, where they are experimenting with blight-resistant strains.

Buying a Kindle 2nd Gen

 I just got my first Kindle, a Kindle 2 (D00511) on ebay. It's great, but getting such an old model—2009-2011 or so—required some detective work to get a good workflow figured out. I'll explain the process here, both for others and for my own use in case I need to set it up again.

Thoughts About AI Taking All the Jobs

Maybe this is obvious to people but I just realized the "AI will take everyone's jobs" line is being pushed so hard because huge multinational corporations want it to seem normal and expected when they replace huge numbers of jobs with AI. I'm looking at this latest move by Amazon and thinking of course, they're one of the central players in Cory Doctorow's "enshittification" trend in which companies that have monopolized a sector of the economy can sacrifice the quality of their service or product to maximize profits.

Some data points that support my thinking:

From my extensive research on reddit (lol) it's clear that AI is only successful at doing very specific tasks and only then will extensive oversight. Even the most narrowly defined jobs have to deal with edge cases and anomalies and that's when AI screws up. So it's not capable of doing anyone's whole job well. But I've also been teaching high schoolers to write apps that incorporate it and it's just really hard to keep its hallucinating tendencies in check.

So any small to medium company that needs to maintain the quality of their product or service is just not going to be able to replace people with AI. It's only huge companies that will still reap their profits as their product suffers.

New Tree

An infestation of whiteflies at the mid to end of summer '24 killed the 12' holly bush and I had to remove it. We were not unhappy to see it go. After some research we chose a 'hearts of gold' Eastern Redbud tree to replace it with. It's been beautiful to see its transformation as it's grown over the first 6 months.

Growing Flax

 Last spring I planted some Blue Flax (Linum perenne) to cover the ground around the new tree. I wanted something native and pollinator friendly that would provide flowers with a nice color contrast to the many yellow and white flowers we have. We won't get the flowers this season, though, but it's a perennial so next year I look forward to many small blue flowers in early summer.

Wild Bees

I've enjoyed the wild bees this summer. One of the highlights of the summer was coming upon a nectar and pollen feast these black bees were having in a gentle winding ravine behind the Las Madres Pueblo on my dad's property. 

VFD Filament Driver Circuit

Don't give up! I spent the last 3 years troubleshooting this circuit with an LM4871 chip with the goal of supplying a low voltage alternating square wave current across the filament of vacuum fluorescent displays. Spoiler alert: it was the addition of a single 10Ω resistor to lower the voltage from ~5V down to ~3.3V.

Intro to Basic Python App with ChatGPT

I spent a couple days figuring out how to make a good basic app with Python to have a conversation with ChatGPT so that I can teach it to my high school students. There are some good resources for novice coders to engage with machine learning and ChatGPT with blocks coding (Micro:bit , Scratch, App Inventor) but I could find no clear resources on getting started with text coding that don't require some deeper understanding of programming concepts to get reasonable results.

Alligator Clips in the Classroom Tip

How do you keep alligator clips from getting tangled up? I thought of this a few years ago and will never go back to my bin of tangled wires. It's so simple!

Learning to Solder Technique

I've been teaching middle schoolers to solder for years but I only came up with this approach to the workflow this year and it has been a game changer.

Milling PCBs in the Classroom, Updated Workflow

I'm continuing to teach high schoolers to design their own circuit layouts and mill the boards so they can solder them together and have their own custom hardware to keep. The microcontroller I use for these is usually an ATTiny 85, 84, Adafruit Metro Mini, or Raspberry Pi Pico, all relatively inexpensive. What follows is an easier workflow than I've outlined in previous posts.

Make Gears With Turtle Art

 

You can code gears with Turtle Art! If you have a fabrication machine such as a 3D printer, laser cutter, or CNC machine you can download the SVG file from a Turtle Art design to fabricate in your material of choice. Here is how I made these gears—5 and 10 inch in diameter—with a Fox Alien CNC machine.

Mycelium Bluetooth Speaker

 

Someone gave me the electronics to a bluetooth speaker so I figured I had to make a mycelium case for it.

Backyard Inspiration

We have a small—18' x 19'—backyard that was shaded by a large maple until a year and a half ago when it had to come down due to a fungal condition. The yard was hard to do much with because of the shade but now with the increased sunlight we've been able to experiment more with gardening and other decorative planting. Last summer I discovered that grass takes way too much watering to maintain so I've been waiting for inspiration to strike to find an alternative. 

Making a Plastic Press

In another post I showed how to use a tortilla press to compress melted HDPE plastic in flat disks to use for making things. I made a bit more elaborate press to get bigger pieces while keeping them flat and as thin as possible, between 1/8 - 1/4 inch. The key ingredient is a bottle jack.

Melt HDPE Plastic For Projects

I wrote about this a couple years back and I have significantly refined this process so I figured I would provide an update. I still find melted and flattened HDPE plastic to be a useful building material for projects as long as the project specs require something simple like a box, backing, or frame. I've developed a pretty simple workflow that anyone can do with limited tools.  

Arduino Controlled 5V Relay for Christmas Tree Lights

Our christmas tree lights plug into the wall behind the tree and are always hard to reach without sprinkling needles on the floor when we want to turn the lights on or off. This year I made an Arduino controlled relay that can turn the lights on and off with a switch that extends out next to the tree. Here is a video of the switch in action:

Hacked an Answering Machine

I found this old answering machine and originally thought it was a good find for just harvesting the 7-segment display. But as it sat around my work table it occurred to me it would be fun to use the display and buttons to insert a Simon game inside the case. I put it off because it seemed daunting but once I started on it yesterday it turned out to only take a day to put together.

Generative Art with TurtleArt

I made a series of drawings with the LogoTurtle a while back and I am revisiting the same idea of "exploded shapes" using Turtle Art. With this simple idea:

Starter Circuits and Blocks Code on Tinkercad

1. Blink one LED
2. Blink 2 LEDs
3. Turn on an LED with a button
4. Use a potentiometer to dim an LED.
5. Control a servo motor