a holiday in my head

starting the new year off with a blast of inspiration and energy. it's great.

for one, this site blew me away. i guess it never really struck me to view logic gates as a mechanism... but it's logical... just like logic gates? hmm. maybe i should just stop my rambling there. or maybe not. i'm tempted to try to figure out my own (cheap and non-lego) versions of these things, just as a simple exercise in mechanism design. i'm sure i could make at least one of these out of things i have around my room. maybe. assuming i bring my tools up from the second floor to my room. and maybe i should charge my drill.



ok. so on top of lego logic, what else am i excited about? well... this is also pretty awesome. i'm really tempted to try to build one of these, too. in all my copious spare time. ha. ha. seriously, though. two cheap stainless steel coffee mugs + sink strainer + some other parts (z.B. JB weld, fuel nozzle, fuel of some sort, and a source of inflow) = ramjet awesomeness. maybe this is more of a summer project. i don't think this would work so well firing up in my room with my lovely wooden floors. (by the way, that picture is from the website that is linked to above.)




oh so many more things! the one thing i'm most excited about, though, is this woman who works with art students to reclaim abandoned robotic animals and to basically reprogram them and make them able to travel more easily (she does more than that as well). her name is natalie jeremijenko and she teaches at the visual arts department at UCSD (she used to teach in yale's mechE dept). in vol. 02 of make magazine, one of her statements really struck me --"we need to rethink toys. most of them are not truly engaging and have a very limited ability to teach us anything about the world we live in." i couldn't agree more.