Electronics for Intermedia

Well, the art class I was not super stoked about has become my favorite this term. I am not an expert at this stuff, but I am learning a lot about it in CMPS 10 and then this class is the fun version of computer science. It's like, how can I fabricate this? Not "how can I get all related knowledge in this field from the bottom up and write my own codes?".
I am especially bad at the arduino software, since I can literally only do the things we have talked about and even then only by looking in my notes and asking for help. Like, oh yeah, making a light blink.... got it. Making 2 lights blink? Um...... let's ask the TA. But it's a very supportive class. We do a lot of helping each other, which is nice, because I got to help people solder (kind of. by telling them what heat to put the gun on and reassuring them that it looked all right and the resistor is the right voltage "because look, it's red red gold brown", not really helping them like people help me write code by finding relevant tutorials and troubleshooting for me) and other people help me with the software and it is so nice. Always in school you are supposed to ask your peers but usually they don't know or only some students have the skills to help. But in this class someone who isn't a natural at this can help someone who is because the person who isn't has extra alligator clips or knows where the error is bc they just got that debugged by the TA. So it's really nicely collaborative. I helped a girl who has a much more sophisticated first project than mine by telling her you can hold wire in pliers when you strip it instead of wrapping it around your finger.
This is my "project". I don't know how to light it up. I might not be done on time (monday) because i wasted wednesday replacing my different colored clear LEDs (thought they were white or yellow, nope: white, red, dud*, red, yellow, yellow, green) with red ones so I could actually use it in my final project if I want. (initially I was going to do just a project to learn the concept but when i met with the prof to discuss my proposal he said to actually buy my briefcase and wire the leds to it so i didn't want my defective ones wired to it)
This is our wire and little components station. The bin in the foreground is of clear leds that I will test next time I want to use them, before I get out the solder and heat shrink plastic. (ugh.)
This is the coolest. It holds wires next to each other in alligator clips so your hands are free to solder. I love it. It makes me feel like such an inventor. However the magnifier is probably for breadboards or circuit boards or something, it is not useful to be and i have to bend it out of the way.
I am sorry for the quality of this picture. It is my final project. I have to go to class soon, so I can't explain it very much. Basically we had to design a labor saving device and have to manufacture at least a prototype this quarter. Mine saves me from checking on my keys and everything dozens of times by an RFID scanner than I scan my essentials past when I put them in my briefcase and then lights up an EL wire squid that reassures me I got my neccessary tools in the bag. If not all of them are scanned, the leds above will flash. I thought about a 2 way mirror/calendar component but it's quite expensive for the glass... my prof suggested mylar and a picture frame glass... I am not as keen on this anymore, once I understood how much a primitive rfid reader would cost and take to get set up. Actually now I like the idea of a freestanding one, which doesn't help bc it's not portable and would be a companion to planner not a replacement, but then again i don't need to cut a hole in a briefcase and get acrylic so it won't shatter and everything. And find a portable power source for a lightbulb in my briefcase.
*the dud may have been an ultraviolet one, but basically it did not make light so it is a dud.

Soaps!

I was really excited to make soap from oil and lye while watching Fight Club with Andrew and Max, but lye is used to manufacture meth so it is no longer sold in supermarkets in california. We read online about a crystal drain cleaner made of lye with no additives according to the manufacturer, but couldn't find any locally. So, we went to the craft store and bought clear glycerin soap, then went to longs to buy nice things to color and shimmer the soap.

Lavender, leftover cubes of glycerin soap, fragrance oils, mineral loose powder body shimmer, soft pastels (ground for coloring, which don't stain the body but might stain a plastic soap tray)

Max took his beautiful soaps home before I took this picture, but you can see that we made a variety. The top ones have brewed coffee mixed in and they are very, very exfoliating.

This is the other side of my pink bar. It was the last one I did and I think it came out great except that the soap designs float when you pour glycerin onto them and so it will be a few washes before they show up clearly.
I might have just sliced it off but I found it very hard to slice off a consistent amount without the blade sinking in really deep and making it lopsided. I could also have rinsed it until the red layers showed through properly but that would waste.

Love Robot (Papercraft for Andy)

Andy came to visit my dorm this weekend, which was so much fun because he's never been to Santa Cruz since I started going here. He was a little sick so we didn't go to this bonfire thing we planned, but we did have a fun weekend. I accidentally told him I got him a little present (liquorice soap samples from etsy) and so I made him this so he would think this was the present so when his soap gets to him in the mail he will be surprised. Then, I accidentally told him again while he was here, but played it off. At least he doesn't know it's liquorice.
You'd think it's called Love Robot because of the little paper heart on its chest, but really that heart is just an indicator of its contents, a 36 inch "printout" of a love note.
This picture is because I think it's funny that I'm in a nerdRomance (I learned to capitalize like that in my Electronics for Intermedia class :) ) and was getting dressed up for my "date" and deliberating between brown socks and blue socks.

I took this picture in my bathroom so my roommate wouldn't know. :)

Intro to Acrylic Painting

This is an amazing art class! I think even if you are good at drawing your drawing looks drawn, it isn't immersive like viewing a painting is. Paintings are comparatively complete, and warm. So, I've done a few dozen paintings in my life and several of them turned out good, but now I am really learning to paint in school.

Our first assignments were to get us used to knitting together areas of paint into a cohesive image without pre sketching, and for simplicity we are using only grey. For complexity it is a grey we mixed ourselves from sap green, titanium white, alazarin crimson, and ultramarine blue. But I put black in mine so I wouldn't use up all of my crimson on making gray.

Here are my 6 steps of grey. The leftmost one is pure the color i mixed out of colors, with traces of white from when i added a bit of it to the other colors and didn't wipe my palette knife (palette knives are amazing for mixing paint! I have never owned one, but they do a really good, fast job) and the rightmost one the same but white. We began with 9x12 panels painted with liquitex gray
Our first assignment was to paint a crumpled paper pinned to the wall. I picked an interesting shaped one. This is unfinished because most of the 3 hour class was spent mixing greys. We are finishing them on tuesday, but I probably won't post it unless it turns out amazingly, it will probably look about like this one.

Then at mandatory Saturday class we had to paint a model. I painted a close up because our panels are so small I couldn't finish in the assigned time nor get all of the shadows if I tried to paint all of her. I was surprised that of the ones I saw (not sure when we are critiquing them) everyone else had a little painting of the model taking up maybe 1/4 of the canvas in the middle. I am pretty satisfied with this exercise. I have lost my syllabus somehow, so I don't quite know what we are doing next but I think it is two tones, like green with orange or something.

Love Robot!

I made a love robot out of paper for my boyfriend. There is a 3 foot long love note that scrolls out of it, and then you can wind it back in with one of its arms.

Painting

I am enrolled in a painting class this fall, so by the end of the week I will be learning to paint. In one of my intro art classes we were told that naive or untrained artists have a freer take on things (or some such) and that trained artists operate within the framework of knowledge of art history, composition, and conventions, even when they reject these things in a piece their work is then being informed by the conventions. So. I am doing a painting as a "before" training exercise, even though I have made a lot of paintings this one is not based on a photo or purely invented, I drew upon images from my sketchbook and made a composite. Sort of. It is unfinished but I hung it up in my dorm already.
My friend Max took this photo, and even though the light is bad and there is clutter I really like it.
Here I have started the gradiated sky.
Oh dear. I thought I had a better picture of it, showing the leaping animals and everything, but it did not make it on to my flashdrive (I am on a library computer because my laptop hasn't internet. Possibly I should have brought it to the library to connect it to this internet but it was lovely to walk to the library unencumbered)

Deliberate Personal Growth

I am trying to get into the habit of being thoughtful and evaluating things and everything. It can be stressful, but I think it is worthwhile. I am seeking out areas where I am unsatisfied with my skills and going to work on them. I am not happy with my level of numeracy. At the same time, the benefits of mathematics courses seem very small compared to the time and energy commitment and the danger to my gpa. So I have compiled a short reading list of books about numeracy and innumeracy. I think that giving them a thorough read will fill in a gap, because I will be able to understand better the math that I am confronted with in newspapers. (Daily tasks math I already have under control, luckily.)

I love to get books used at local shops, but the only thing the 3 bookstores in town I tried (well, mom needed a book as well, or I would have given up sooner) had was "A is for Ox: The Collapse of Literacy and the Rise of Violence in an Electronic Age" which is a very interesting book. However, even though I like the book (and am reserving judgement until I finish it) I think it overemphasizes the importance of literacy in the workings of the modern mind/sense of self. I think nonliterate people raised in a literate culture can probably concieve of the self and whatever quite well. Also it uses Kaspar Hauser as an example of nonliterate thinking, and idk, that was a hoax.