AmosLightnin

To distract the finch who constantly battles his reflection in our window.

Preparing workshop site for Maker Faire.

Prepping for Maker Faire.

Quasi solar handcranked creature.

Quasi solar handcranked

@mark I know! I tried to find the right switch too. Me and Henrik were playing with sticking wood on it and bonking the end but not enough leverage. I think we need a lever with pivot about 2 cm below switch, slot for switch to fit in, extending way out past top at an angle to give enough leverage to throw it.

@mark No man it's all good! I know the SoMe train ain't one we should ride everyday. :)

When using a powerpack and a solar panel, overall speed is slower but it's no longer sensitive to panel shading (in the short term), since it has a capacitor full of juice.

A cable crawler traverses the backyard Zipline.

Solar panel in full sun into 5F powerpack. Slow start but less sensitive to shading on the panel.

Virtual Reality in the 1800s :thinkerguns:

#Video #TunnelBook

More photochromic pigment fun. I love how layering the “exposures” creates interesting patterns. This is just photochromic pigment plus white glue, painted onto paper, and a uv pen light. #tinkering #xp

When we're reading before bed the kids like to lie under the suspended table.

Today we set up an outside course for children to make solar powered cable crawlers.

Solar cable crawlers workshop today at Dokk1. http://playingwiththesun.org

Today two kids made this ingenious weighted cantilever designed to hold the solar panels perpendicular to the sunlight. http://playingwiththesun.org

In today's workshop a kid had the idea to charge 6 power packs to see if their cable crawler would make it to the top. A concrete experience of the tradeoff between power to weight ratios.

Henrik did a first pass at a charging station base for 3 watt panels. Good start! Needs lower angle stability and some xt30 strain relief.

Initial experiments in cable crawlers activity design: The pin pokes a balloon.

#introduction 👋 Hi! I’m Luigi. I’m an educator, tinkerer, and activity designer for the Tinkering Studio at the Exploratorium. I try to create educative experiences that reject scarcity paradigms and instead center joy, belonging, agency, and relationships for learners.

In addition to #education, #making, and #tinkering, I will try to also share things related to #photography, #capoeira, #politics, and other parts of myself. Please engage in conversation!

@jpf Cool! I think the kid did too, but it's difficult to know or measure. Such is the struggle with tinkering / project based ed. :)

@jpf Nope! Parallel means it gets the same voltage. It just ran for a very long time.

Workshops with kids often result in previously inconceivable stress tests. This future QA engineer put all these powerpacks in series and charged them at about 30 watts, then put them in parallel into a single motor.

In Danish what Americans would call a backhoe is called a Gravko, which translates to "Digging Cow." I find that terribly charming.

Yesterday's experiments included a little time to test the new solar bug. It's rather like sailing.

Two 3 watt panels charge a powerpack from red to white in about a minute in overcast skies.

I forgot how much energy there is even in a cloudy day.

@natematias I love several of the ideas in that book. :)

Making solar panels in the library for https://www.playingwiththesun.org

My latest attempt at Reggio inspired documentation of children's creativity. https://www.eer.info/activities/playing-with-the-sun

Coffee table leg came off, so I fixed it.

@bkm :) Guess they don't like their own dogfood.

Coffee table leg came off, so I fixed it.

Just need a little sun Denmark. :) https://www.playingwiththesun.org/

A workshop with Playing with the Sun in a Berlin art gallery. https://www.eer.info/activities/playing-with-the-sun

Mass production of www.playingwiththesun.org construction kit elements in the library today.

Here's a link to the project's website: https://www.playingwiththesun.org/ :)

I'm seeking a web designer to help solve a design problem on the Playing with the Sun website. Know anyone who wants to help an open-source design project geared towards helping kids learn about sustainability through play? https://gitlab.com/playing-with-the-sun/pwts-website/-/issues/7

Here's a brief video describing a Playing with the Sun workshop I ran in an art gallery in Berlin. https://vimeo.com/799029719/0d8e101386

Building hand crank generators and cutting wheels today.

It's much easier to solder a resistor onto another resistor than to take out the original and put a new one in. Adding a 12 ohm onto a 180 ohm gives me a lovely 11.25.

Pcbway put 180 Ohm resistors on the 15 power packs when spec called for 18 Ohms. Turns out 12 Ohms is best anyhow, so I got some desoldering to do.

Rev. 3 motorboard assembly.

@dnoh Gorgeous! :)

teaching folks about the relationship between electricity and magnetism through tinkering and play!

@samhenrigold I am rather fond of Bulleit.

@blogmywiki Pull request was accepted, I think it'll go live on the production Bangle JS server in a couple of days? Meanwhile it's here: https://github.com/espruino/BangleApps/tree/master/apps/rings

Rev. 3 playing with the sun boards arrived! :)

1.0 release of the Rings watchface I made for Bangle JS 2, remixed from another user contributed watchface called Rinkulainen. There's an amazing open source community around #espruino.

This hand cranked circle drawer shows promise. #tinkering

New watchface I'm working on for the #BangleJS 2 #espruino smartwatch. Read time outside in (14:12). It shows the date in the outermost ring when you press the button.

Cargo trams are #SolarPunk.

https://www.reddit.com/r/solarpunk/comments/10xfzfc/cargo_trams_not_trucks_should_be_how_we_move

Oh look, Google being Google.

(In case you were thinking of learning/using Go, I’d say skip it. There are plenty of other fish in the sea. Unless you like telemetry by default in your programming languages and tools, that is. In fact, just don’t touch anything tainted by Google if you can help it.)

https://github.com/golang/go/discussions/58409

#google #alphabet #go #surveillance #capitalism #peopleFarming #privacy #development #dev #software

Remembering past vids from CES recursive prompting, where this little moving mirror garden emerged. https://www.playingwiththesun.org #tinkering

Experimenting with photochromic pigment embedded in other materials like bioplastics or in this case, glue. Using a UV pen you can make ephemeral paintings. Photo one is the paper before painting and photo two is the paper after. The painting only lasts for a couple of minutes! I love how the strokes of the brush I used to paint the glue + pigment mix on this piece of paper become visible when the pigment changes colors. #tinkering #artexperiment #making

The rotating hand powered pen drawer was popular among the 2-5 demographic.

Human powered playthings at Dokk1 tonight! This fellow really put his arm into it. www.playingwiththesun.org

Hey @saustrup - I have a friend on mstdn.dk that says they can't see my posts. Wondering if it's a security setting? I'm running my own instance (in DK too) on a raspberry pi.

Here's a human powered toy wrecking ball, which shows signs of becoming a music machine. #tinkering #playingwiththesun

I'm still obsessed with this 1 min video of Gregory Bateson from the film 'An Ecology of Mind.' You can see it in the design of the terrain we did in Berlin workshop. How can I invite children to explore these kinds of ecological relationships?

Were you given a laptop for work? Are you an office worker Were you asked to download software to your phone to access work content?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, our research team at Princeton would love to interview you! 🎙️

You’ll be compensated with a gift card for a 60-min interview over Zoom.

We have a robust privacy and anonymization policy. DM me or email monaw@princeton.edu.

Please boost! 🙏

Yesterday with the teknologiforståelse team at Dokk1 we did R&D on PlayingwiththeSun.org activities for younger children built on Tinker Cubes. Well offer these to kids on Thursday.

@Cemocreates Yeah it's born out of that Greg Bateson statement about the lawn and horse I've been obsessed with for years. :) I'd love to make a way to explore the relationship between a creature and its terrain. I have a ways to go, but this was a fun iteration.

As we took various video and photos, we would upload them to Artivive, an AR image recognition program. So when these printed pics on the wall are viewed through the Artivive app, one can see the video play on top of the corresponding image. This allows the kids to have a record of the actions of their creations. https://www.playingwiththesun.org #tinkering

As has emerged several times, one family came upon a kind of rotating sculpture design. This one had some nice tension in that the arms would slowly drop down and begin to sweep the sand. #tinkering

In Berlin we did a two round design exercise in which the kids selected what to build in round 2 based on what was discovered in round 1. This tethered solar critter invented by two girls played a big role.

Last Friday in Berlin at PSM Gallery we did a http://PlayingWiththeSun.org recursive prompting experiment where we built a mountainous landscape covered with sand on which 5 kids could build creatures. #tinkering

Without the power pack the crank drives things a bit too fast. But a pot will mean you have to go fast to get it to go. So using packs for now (this is an activity for kindergartners). #tinkering

Experimenting playfully with new activities at Dokken.

A hand crank powered critter. #tinkering playingwiththesun.org

Perhaps a starting point for a solar creature building #tinkering activity.

#tinkering with cable crawlers powered by light and muscles.

Hey @NilsenMuseum Check this out. Maybe Ivory will be the Mastodon app of your dreams. https://tapbots.com/tweetbot/

Here's the battery-powered Pi setup that I hope will allow me to program during power cuts.

The Pi is running on a 13,000 mAh battery pack and the 7 inch HDMI display is running on a separate 10,000 mAh battery pack.

I made a simple display stand out of cardboard and set things up on top of my cupboard. The top shelf of the cupboard is at a convenient height for my keyboard (it's a standing arrangement).

I've been given the "beware of xyz" talk from several folx but let's see how it goes.

Experimenting with AR as a means to support collective reflection in open ended design explorations. #tinkering

The design of this wheel reflects hours of work by my colleague Jane, an idea from a colleague at the library in Ballerup, and lots of iteration from me and colleagues.

Rotating solar plants. #tinkering http://playingwiththesun.org

Hmm, light tubes. #tinkering http://www.playingwiththesun.org

Great episode of Volts about putting batteries in induction stoves. The principle is the same as with water towers. The water tower handles peak load in the morning when everyone's taking showers. Then they fill it back up the rest of the day and night with a much smaller and cheaper pump than they'd otherwise need to handle the peak load. #voltspodcast

Episode webpage: https://www.volts.wtf/p/induction-stoves-with-batteries-built

The Albert Kahn Museum in France has just made available for download thousands of early autochrome photos from around the world: Kahn, a banker, had top French photographers travel the world documenting everyday aspects of global life which he believed would soon vanish as the world rapidly developed.

Such prescience.

https://www.rferl.org/a/color-photos-archive-planet-albert-kahn-history/32166970.html

@histodons #photography #autochrome

*** EDIT: The collection can be searched here, & you will have to search in French!

https://opendata.hauts-de-seine.fr/explore/dataset/archives-de-la-planete/images/?disjunctive.operateur

Hanging one's deskfan by a single point above the woodstove makes for all kinds of interesting resonance. #tinkering

One of the toughest things to get right in the http://playingwiththesun.org construction kit is the wheel attachment system. This is one of 3 alternative possibilities to explore if the press fit solution doesn't work. #tinkering

Experiments with handcrank charged cable crawlers. #tinkering #playingwiththesun

Making blue tube components for https://www.playingwiththesun.org #tinkering

Matilda and Sara made this bug today using Henrik's origami like "shield" design, two motors and a hand crank power pack. #tinkering

Are you a math person looking for an interesting space on Mastodon? Try https://mathstodon.xyz/about

https://boffosocko.com/2022/11/16/55811641/

Welcome and peace to everyone in this next wave of Twitter emigres! You've made it to the Good Place! :trekbadgetng: :vulcan_hmn_g1:
#StarTrek #TrekTwitter #NewHere #TwitterMigration #FollowFriday

🌿 plant tomatoes by the escape pod whilst you wait for the outer rim team to pick you up 🌿

#illustration #gamedev #solarpunk #digitalart

In Denmark the family dances around the Christmas tree. Yesterday a 9 year old kid made this hand-crank powered Christmas tree that "dances around for you". #tinkering https://www.playingwiththesun.org

How to build the Playing with the Sun hand crank generator. https://gitlab.com/playing-with-the-sun/pwts-const-kit-hardware/-/wikis/Hand-Crank-Generator #tinkering

Hand crank generators for www.playingwiththesun.org. #tinkering

Playing with the Sun has a website!
https://www.playingwiththesun.org/ #tinkering

Two Playing with the Sun solar creations interacting with one another via mirrors, by Liam. #tinkering

A stippling "furry drawer" with the playing with the sun construction kit at CES. #tinkering

@humanetech Thanks for the invite! I will drop by for sure.

Added a diode and now these guys seem viable as hand crank chargers.

@humanetech I hear you. It's a miracle it all works as well as it does. But I wish it worked better.

Need to find some of these to try out for joining pieces of plumber's strap. Keystone clips they're called. https://www.digikey.dk/da/products/detail/keystone-electronics/3335/4759686

Latest version of square wheel, with reinforcement under screw head and tighter spline meshing, courtesy of Celeste. https://www.tinkercad.com/things/5nHGV9J4JFq-copy-of-wheel-for-playing-with-the-sun-activities/edit

Recursive prompting board for solar drawing machine workshop.

Solar drawing machine from yesterday's junkyard social club workshop. #tinkering

A 4 solar panel creation from today's workshop at Junkyard social club. #tinkering

Mark is nearly finished with the rev 2 prototype boards, compatible with plumber's strap! #tinkering

The square wheel tends to hop out of the hula hoop. #tinkering

A lovely little solar "satellite" made by a participant in Saturday's workshop. #tinkering

A guy at McGuckins found a wall anchor that fits perfectly. Need one for the top to get back to strap and should have a working solution.

The Boulder sun is strong! #tinkering

Really impressed by Denver's IdeaLab Library spaces, and the skill and thoughtfulness of Jesse, the coordinator I met there. #tinkering

Lovely circular design for a solar cable crawler, from an ATLAS student at CU Boulder, who also suggested adding mountable adjustable mirrors. #tinkering

Hey @mark do you know where I could source these back home in DK? I need 'em to fit into the holes in plumber's strap.

I need to source some of these push in rivets, or possibly interlocking shank rivets, for putting into strap when I get home.

@mark Isn't a plain old driven DC motor just about as good, and cheaper? I don't think it even needs rectifyin'.

Speculative shadow dancer base. Would be much more adjustable if I could get this damn ball joint to attach. I bet I could do it with a bolt, nut, and two washers.

Speculative drawing machine base model.

Embarrassing. But can't get my hands on a DPDT switch of the right size to reverse motor direction. Hence the "cap killers" are born.

Ran my first tinkering workshop with a live funk band. Not sure I'll ever go back. #tinkering

Play testing at the Junkyard.

Thinking through recursive prompting with Celeste, planning for an upcoming workshop.

Gluing party.

@mark actually everyone on the webs seems to use em to light Leds, which is pretty much like a short. Think I just need a bigger prop.

A solar string climber made with the #PlayingwiththeSun construction kit. #tinkering

That last one has very low output. This one only gets up to about 2.3V in front of a box fan on high.

Wind generator v. 1. #tinkering

Speed control by shading. #tinkering

This one makes striking patterns. It raises the question of how to make a building system based on flexibility rather than rigidity. #tinkering

Celeste and I spent some time exploring simple solar drawing machine configurations that makes use of the flex in the wire. #tinkering

Without wires, the components of the Playing with Sun construction kit make a simple solar machine. #tinkering

With multiple solar panels in parallel one can have finer control over the motor speed by shading different ones. #tinkering

Celeste made this beautiful self shading crab-like critter solar drawing machine. #tinkering

This guy just wants to go to sleep. #tinkering

Lots of pulling hot glue off of panels today, then some testing of JB weld plastic adhesive and classic 30 min epoxy for holding sockets on panels. So far both seem pretty strong.

Mass production of motors.

Hot metal and glue in hot South Dakota, about 2 weeks ago.

Is this kind of book a possible template for a creative activity involving recombination? Or are the modules to big, too pre-customized? What are the bricks between the customization?

@praxeology Adherents to the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education use these to great effect. They are delightfully tinkerable and generative when you provide a good selection of interesting materials to play with.

#Tinkering with inchworm like movement with Jane at Dokk1, the cardboard takes on an organic flexing motion.

A solarengine construction kit.

Solar engine construction kit prototype. :)

The hand crank generator gives a sense of proportionality to different sources of energy. #tinkering

Is it computational if the machine reorients itself in different directions in relation to the sun? #tinkering #lookmanocomputer

Lots of bright sun makes them frenetic. #tinkering

My favorite base model for playing with the sun drawing machines. The strap can be an attachment point for pens, a leg, or other machines. #tinkering

Mirroring this machine created a nice effect. #tinkering

Lander made this amazing mirror mask. #tinkering

Lander noticed the wheel turns too fast to climb over the tape in full sun. Shading it a little slows it down so it can climb over. #tinkering

Mathias facilitating solar drawing machines at Gellerup library.

A South pointing chariot had a statue that pointed South no matter which direction the chariot was turned. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/South-pointing_chariot

@doenietzomoeilijk No, there's no sensing or computation involved. Each panel drives a motor on the opposite side. The angle of the panels determines the direction it goes. When it hits shade, the motor pulses happen less often.

This config runs towards the sun.

The south facing chariot - always goes South when the sun is in the West. #tinkering #playingwiththesun

You remote control it with your shadow. #tinkering #playingwiththesun

Candidate base model for critter island activity. #tinkering

*Hot

Wow, hit glueing food storage shrink wrap bags onto the back of a solar panel to protect electronics and then hitting it with a heat gun while clamped actually kinda works! #tinkering

Bug wings leads to more bug segments as a building medium.

Exploring some interesting potential build systems with the Playing with the Sun Team at Dokk1. #tinkering

Really beautiful work by Kai from Vilvite in Bergen. The prop is made from wire and balloon.#tinkering #Ecsite

Sumi ink drawing, a beautiful and classic example of collective creativity in the #tinkering space at #ECSITE.

Erik's Strawbees shark tries to eat Luigi! #tinkering ##ECSITE.

Proud that a #tinkering activity I made back at MIT helped spark a new idea for an AI activity in the playful mind of Erik from Strawbees. Its wonderful to be part of a "scene" of play designers! #ECSITE

The sunlight was variable in yesterday's workshops with solar critters at #ECSITE, which is ideal because it makes changes in power tangible. #tinkering

Lots of playful anthropomorphising going on in the playing with the sun workshops, and mounting of the pen on the drive wheel doesn't spray ink everywhere. #tinkering

"The three-legged teenager" from the art and #tinkering workshop at #ECSITE, with offset wheels.

Colleagues from the #ECSITE session on Art and #Tinkering invented this critter when she started climbing over obstacles.

5 minute solar bug prototype for #ECSITE Session on art and #tinkering.

Happy to be at #ECSITE representing Aaarhus, the pirate city! Aaar, Matey! #tinkering

Liam's air tubes make for a nicely adjustable motor arm. #tinkering

Kyocera 6v 2.5F. Retrimmed 20 Ohms, comes in at about 3 minutes to 2 sec between pulses. Small package too. I think this is my favorite.

6v 1.5F takes 1:25 to 2 secs. 2 takes about 2.5.Still 18 ohm.

3.5F ic 5.5v at 15 ohm trim pot takes 3.10 to get to 2 secs. 2 of them take 2:47. Something fishy. Retrimmed pot to pulse at full (18.6), pushes seem more robust and got 6 mins plus. Single 3:10.

2.5 F kyocera takes about 3.5 mins to get down to 1 pulse per 2 seconds on a 2,7v trigger with trim pot at 15Ohms. Pulses seem kinda weak though?

Removing back cover of the gear motor, filing down the tube, and cutting a notch in panel side allows epoxy to hopefully do the rest. Now where to put all these damn electronics?

An important question is how does this attach to children's creations? Kara suggested this experiment. #tinkering

A prototype hand chargeable solar engine driven...thingy. #tinkering

About 19 Ohms with two 2.5F caps in parallel gives about 3 minutes. If start with continuous running, you get about 1 min. 20 before pulses get to 2 secs each.

@alxd I'm using it as a kind of provocation for design work on toys that invite children to explore sustainability through play. https://hedge.amosamos.net/ko-n7OvNTri1rDH5aiLg9Q#

Not sure what I got this pot set to, but I've got about 3.5 mins run time before the pulse rate drops to about every 2 seconds.

Well I did my best to make a solar powered human sized drawing machine for #markmakingmay, but in the end the mark was rather small. :) Perhaps I'll try again next May! #tinkering

@alxd yep, solarpunk. Thanks for heads up on SSL troubles. Https://www.amosamos.net should work. :)

Something about the supercap causes the solar panel to be much more sensitive to the sun. #tinkering

Prototype crank chargeable solar critter, for those not so sunny days. #tinkering

Prototype circuit for solar drawing machines w hand charging.

Today I saw the term "open-ended" used to describe a toy that would better be described as "4-5 functions-ended." To me, open-ended means infinite creative possibilities. #tinkering

Colleagues from the library at the marble machines workshop.

Ryan suggested an exploration of creature movements and made this lovely little thing out of string and notched straw.

Consider that on cloudy days, you could hand crank generate some energy that you bring your drawing machine to, hold it against the contacts for 10 seconds, and then you are good for a few minutes while the cap drains out.

You can attach one to something and see what it does, and then maybe attach another to see what else you can make it do. This puts the tinkering focus on relationship / orientation to the sun, less on particular qualities of materials.

Consider the panel / motor / solar engine as a sealed unit (maybe w a switch to change direction of motor). Its offered as a ”part" for drop in activity, and sample projects demo different ways to attach it to cardboard body and get different behaviors.

Consider that the panel powering the vertical wheel runs when in light, which takes it out of light. Consider how this would work if light suppressed the motor, until light decreased, then let the motor use stored energy to get itself rotated back into sun.

Ryan's modularized machine has a nice sway to it.

A pleasure #tinkering with Ryan Jenkins on the first day of his residency at Dokk1. Cart based workstations make it easier to iterate when Playing with the Sun.

The 60 watt solar drawing machine. Will replace IKEA drill with something with a bit more heft, and see if it will spin a human pilot tomorrow. #tinkering

A digital bookshelf to be projected next to my workspace for passers by to browse. Might use something like https://victordibia.com/handtrack.js/#/ to make it casually browsable. https://www.amosamos.net/bookshelf/ #serendipity

@greenfediverse No, sadly. Panels got reused for a solar drawing machine. But I will try again one day.

@greenfediverse Had mine on solar powered pi for a bit, but the winter in Denmark got too dark for my little battery.

Farther the drive wheel is from center, slower it starts rotating and less torque required. #tinkering

Propulsion testing for solar human piloted drawing machine. #tinkering

Jane's awesome solar drawing machine sample projects. #tinkering

Experiments with Velcro fasteners for tinkerability. I'm not so keen on the way it holds together.

Consider cheap penny whistles (holes tape-able to make different tones), perhaps constrained to 5 tones of pentatonic. Not sure what makes the bladder - perhaps a very large rubber balloon, or one cylinder inset into another like a syringe.Not clear how to make it tinkerable / diverse outcomes, other than the possibilities of the group tuning of the "performance." I like that as the sun changes, the tempo of the music (and perhaps the timing / rhythmic relationships change.)

A beautiful solar powered mobile by Björn Schülke, called Luftraum #1. Has potential to inspire solar #tinkering activities. https://vimeo.com/74537637

Another solar kinetic piece by Björn Schülke https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb0Zv5JbD00

A beautiful solar artwork by Björn Schülke called Aerosolar #2. #tinkering https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oM9hdwZY6qQ

Managed to make a working solar powered Ikea drill as a step towards a solar powered human piloted drawing machine. #tinkering

My colleague Mathias made this guy with only a panel and motor - it turns until it's too shaded and then stops. Could we make a clock - a solar powered sundial - out of this?

I'm excited about the rich aesthetic and functional potential of wire in cardboard. #tinkering

3 iterations of using wire to make solar panels positionable.

Trying to figure out what size cap this drill needs to start from solar panels. Supercaps are rather spendy.

Cordless (and battery-less) drill. #tinkering

Cardboard that keeps its shape with wire, for motor mount flanges on solar drawing machines / critters. #tinkering

Needs better drive wheels and universal mounts for panels and motors. But it has character in abundance. #tinkering

Experiments with Solar bug activity for playing with the Sun. #tinkering

Secured with: wire tightened around panel going through tube joint. Or super glue?

Tentacle mount similar to flexipod, motor permanent mounted on end.

2 new design goals for drawing with the sun: 1.Motor hub to cardboard adapter to enable custom cut wheels. 2. Multi angle motor mount attach points (bendable metal strips?

I think the variation I thought was due to motors was more due to the clips shading bottom sections of the panels. #tinkering

I believe this is a 1.85 v or maybe 2. You can see even in full sun it struggles to get around when rotating through shadow.

Not much difference between 2.4 volt and 2.7 volt trigger (right) on these. Most variation seems to be in motors #tinkering

"Another common and mistaken idea hidden in the word 'learning' is that learning and doing are different kinds of acts." -John Holt #tinkering

Was reminded today of an instructable I made pushing the boundaries of the medium to better show the emotional and improvisational nature of the creative process. #tinkering https://www.instructables.com/Turn-an-RC-plane-into-an-RC-boat/

Onboarding Dokk1 Playing with the Sun design team with classic art machines. Lots of good reflections on childhood play experiences. #tinkering

Realized that removing the seal ring and just shaping the wire around the seal ring channel of the bottle neck makes a smoother bearing. Still need better blades though. #tinkering

"So that's the reason the windmills have 3 propellers." #tinkering

How to make your Ikea Kura children's bed in to a large guinea pig hutch. https://www.instructables.com/IKEA-Kura-Childrens-Bed-Guinea-Pig-Cage/ #ikeahacks

"When we consider the phenomenon of collective creativity, which combines all these drops of individual creativity that frequently are insignificant in themselves, we readily understand what an enormous percentage of what has been created by humanity is a product of the anonymous collective creative work of un- known inventors." L. Vygotsky #tinkering

Me and the kids converted an IKEA Kura child's bed into a large guinea pig cage. #tinkering

First run windparade setup in Dokk1,a Playing with the Sun activity. #tinkering

3 Generations of invented creatures on the same evolutionary line, oldest to newest.

3/3 The 3rd generation retains the head and neck of its predecessor but elaborates on the round body and adds triangular spikes to the back. Made by two students at Aarhus University. #tinkering

2/3 The next generation was made several weeks later by a designer working in a library. Note how the single eye and the binder clip neck persists, but the body becomes round, more like a snail. #tinkering

1/3 Evolution of @tinkeringstudio Cranky Contraptions. Tinkerers were invited to evolve any existing creature in a taxonomy laid out before them. This cyclops tadpole was made by an 8 year old. #tinkering

New favorite overgeneralization / fantasy thesis title: "Thinking as a means of understanding things is overrated, especially when compared to playing with them." #tinkering

Got to share an instructable for a desklamp phone holder I made at the start of the pandemic with some researcher friends. It makes me happy when people find my hacks useful. https://www.instructables.com/Swing-Arm-Lamp-Phone-Mount-for-Video-Calls/ #tinkering

Converting an Ikea Kura reversible child's bed into a large guinea pig hutch w/ raisable floor for easy cleaning / corralling. #tinkering

Experiments painting candy. All but the most porous exteriors cause beading. #tinkering

@pixouls Just posted more about this here: https://www.eer.info/activities/drawing-with-the-sun

Nice to see that an experiment with collective creativity I did last summer is on the EER homepage. https://www.eer.info/ #tinkering

@pixouls Here's a "care and feeding" document that has links to the various parts that I made up for a collaborator - maybe it's useful to you. https://hedge.amosamos.net/FYnb7xp5RhGICHWiO_tZkw#

Watching the Beatle's 'Get Back,' I'm struck by their near constant playfulness and relentless messing around, like when John and Paul sing the entirety of 'Two of Us' through clenched teeth. #tinkering

@pixouls Sorry for the delay - my yunohost Pleroma installation is bugging out a little. I don't really have this documented yet, but if you'd like to chat / have any questions I'm happy to explain.

Windpower into linkages and cranks in motion. What else should we try? #tinkering

Imagine if children played with the materials they will depend on for energy in the future, instead of cars and trucks. #tinkering

Imagine a future 20 years from now when we've successfully put in place technical and social solutions to climate change. What are the toys children are playing with in that future? #tinkering

Anyone out there in the #tinkering world have a design for a toy reversible pitch propeller? I want to change direction on the fly.

Wind driven #skyparade demonstrates a powerful idea: ratcheting. The gear friction acts as a brake so it eventually goes the entire distance. #tinkering

#PwtS wind driven skyparade experiments. Gearing is fairly easy. There's the possibility of up w wind, down with gravity oscillations.

The relationship with the oscillating fan is worth exploring.

Playing with the wind, #PwtS Lander's wind powered string climber. #tinkering

Wind powered contraptions, for Playing with the Sun.

Sketch for method of mapping collective creativity in tinkering experiences.

Prototype wind powered skyparade. Not enough prop thrust, too much bearing friction.

The seal ring on the bottle cap has potential for a bearing. But needs more oomph from the props to work. #tinkering

Working towards wind power activities from plastic bottles, stumbled upon this wind powered top. #tinkering

This really helps spread the heat from my woodstove around. I also like the way hanging the fan changes the oscillation. #tinkering

5 hours into the audiobook of The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber & David Wengrow and it is fantastic! happy to share the file if anyone wants, its 600mbs.

This is a good, hopeful, insightful read:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/20/rightwingers-us-social-change-coming

FYI: the piece talks about right-wingers, but the context is such that I don't think a content warning is even necessary.

"Perhaps, a less formulaic approach to language can benefit social science, which might also consider whether it is sometimes art and not always science." -Shaun McNiff

Imagine a screen in the library showing a current question, from something the Atelier is working on - such as "Does anyone know about sustainable laundry detergents?" when we're testing out a heatbox that makes the drier more efficient. Someone walking by knows about it, then goes up to wherever the project is, and says "I know a little about that - what do you need?"

Prototype for a device for pixelart mediated by people's synesthetic perception of candy and color. #tinkering

Gemini, a pi based videoconferencing system for remote design work I built during the last corona wave. #tinkering

"Moreover, it has long been suggested that innovation and social learning might be linked, and could coevolve, and that these processes may play a role in driving brain evolution " - Social Learning (2013), Hoppit and Laland. Fascinating to think of how the need to rank and independently evaluate each individual in school seems to lead to isolation and age segregation, which works against innovation and probably intelligence. School shrinks kid's brains.

The culmination of a morning of research into movement and friction. #tinkering

@lilmungo@twitter.com shared some of his Reggio-inspired documentation of playful learning in a talk for colleagues at Dokk1 last night. I was struck by how enabling a child to develop the skill of inquiry often requires suppressing the instinct to correct their mistakes or misinterpretations. Process wise, a correction can easily shift them from self-driven inquiry to accepting what an expert says. Both are important, but developing the former is more difficult. #tinkering

We made a cowboy that rides our vacuum cleaner "Dusty." He triggers the sensor with his leg and turns him when you yell "yee haw!" or when he sees he's gonna crash. #tinkering

@sean You make a good point, and I can't claim my use case is likely to be very common. In fact, my ideal import would also copy and preserve the existing time stamp from the original, so hopefully it wouldn't even show up on people's timelines. It'd be a bit like importing an old database into a new one, making the text, hashtags, and attached videos / photos searchable via the fediverse, but not likely to be seen otherwise.

@sean I've been needing something like that for a long while, to pull old tweets I made as a kind of public design notebook onto my pleroma instance. Seems like it'd be a great utility for anyone migrating away from corporate social media.

Playing with radiometers in the Ray of Light atelier in Reggio Emilia, Ben Mardell and I wondered if we could make a more tinkerable version using mason jars and a vacuum pump as part of Playing with the Sun https://hedge.amosamos.net/s/xfKYsI81H# #tinkering

Colleagues from Dokk1 Library playing in an interactive installation by Gerhard Funk, part of Future Inventors, a project at the Leonardo da Vinci Science Center in Milan.

In Reggio I'm often struck by the beauty of children's artwork. It reflects not only the creativity and intelligence of the children but also the environment - esp. the reverence for creativity - maintained by the teachers. #tinkering

In Reggio there is a deep attention to aesthetic experience. I notice that this seems to influence myself and others psychologically, inviting an open, reverent, and often playful mindset. #tinkering

This week in Reggio Emilia I visited Orologio, a library and after-school center, with colleagues from IMC and Dokk1. The prominence of documentation of children's research in the space supports a culture of creative inquiry and exploration. #tinkering

Preventing cat burglars with #MakeyMakey and #Scratch. #tinkering

Lander's homemade marble run. #tinkering

Lander's mechano sword thrower. #tinkering

Heisenberg remarked, "We could clearly sense that he [Bohr] had reached his results [the theory of atomic structure] not so much by calculation and demonstration as by intuition and inspiration. . . . Quantum theory thus provides us with a striking illustration of the fact that we can fully understand a connection though we can only speak of it in images and parables." From Paul Tatter's The Role of Esthetic Processes in Cognition. #tinkering

@pixouls Glad you like it. I'm using this instance kind of like an open design notebook.

Covered a solar drawing machine with Velcro to make it easy to reposition components. Promising. #tinkering

Maximum tinkerability in terms of ability to reposition motors on this solar drawing machine, using Velcro.

At the shared drawing table creative learners encounter one another's ideas. They take the inspiration from their peers back to their worktable. #tinkering

Dancing with solar powered drawing machines and mirrors.

Along the way I'm developing what I see as a coherent criticism of #STEM as a focus, based on life in the info age. Trying to get a comprehensive understanding of the STEM fields is a lost cause and a poor goal, because success means the learner is almost certainly overwhelmed with more info than can be integrated. The goal state should not be to have each student at a similar level, but rather to give them the ability to use formal or engineering methods "on tap." To understand what the right tool is and where to find it. Project based learning is the best way to achieve that.

Ran a taxonomy of invented creatures workshop in Dokk1 with Klaus and a group of pedagogs from Norway where the topic was aesthetics. In general they confirmed my impression that an aesthetic experience invites a mental openness to playfulness and curiosity. One described how a collaborative aesthetic experience seemed to invoke emotion, which when reflected on together led to the sorts of conversations that seem to support danelse / bildung. One said that for her Uni students it seemed to provide a motivation for synthesis of ideas and theory making that was important.

Ecology of Invented creatures workshop on the ramp in Dokk1. At three generations one can begin to see the lineage of ideas. #tinkering

Generations of invented creatures at Dokk1. #tinkering

Gemini portal in Dokk1.

Layout in Dokk1.

Moving the tulle with projection, rich with interesting aesthetic distortions. Extremely engaging. #tinkering

Scrolling through the @scratch sprite library projected into tulle at Dokk1 library. #tinkering #aesthetics

Projection into tulle at Dokk1. #tinkering

Scratch projections into tulle at Dokk1 library, researching aesthetics and #tinkering.

Lego zeppelin, by Lander and Finn. #tinkering

Self-hosting is cool, but have you thought about community hosting for your city, town, and neighborhood? #tw

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkb4ng/meet-the-self-hosters-taking-back-the-internet-one-server-at-a-time

The standing model with stationary foot is interesting too.

The kids built this installation at #skibetmakerspace . It suggests a new direction. #tinkering

Wind and mirrors are a challenge.

Placing a small protrusion on the bottom face of an oblong wheel parallel to the ground makes for wonderful floppy movements. #tinkering

Mirroring light onto the solar machines in the shared drawing table, an example of a "watering hole" designed to encourage cross pollination of ideas in #tinkering workshops.

The use of mirrors to increase power changes the experience of solar art machines. #tinkering

It's over 9000!!!!! #tinkering

Solar drawing machine and watercolor pen is a step closer to drawing with the sun. Masking tape dampens power a bit in full sun. #tinkering

4 base models for solar drawing machines. #tinkering

This base model for Drawing with the Sun illustrates its relationship with the sun through its movements relative to its orientation. #tinkering

Note to self, when ordering electronic parts from Mouser, be sure to look carefully at the package size, or you'll end up with MEGA CAPS! #tinkering

Liam's wire and cardboard base model. #tinkering #playingwiththesun

The A4 plastic mirror adds a new dimension of tinkerability. #tinkering #playingwiththesun

Solar art machine art at Dokk1 with Liam. #tinkering

Without the solar engine it gets stuck whenever it gets its angle too far from perpendicular to the sun.

The 2.25 trigger with 4700uf cap has a fast, bug like movement. #tinkering

As the machine changes its angle to the sun it moves faster or slower. #tinkering

Experiments drawing with the sun. #tinkering Working from conversations with Liam, Andrew, and Sarah.

A very enthusiastic creature in the arms of his co-creator. #tinkering

A beautiful but menacing bug born out of a collaboration. #tinkering

The taxonomy of invented creatures grows as the collective makes discoveries. #tinkering

Solar automata from today's Taxonomy of Invented Creatures workshop. #tinkering​

Solar automata from today's Taxonomy of Invented Creatures workshop. #tinkering

New frames for solar cranky stands, bent on the jig.#tinkering

New curvy design for Taxonomy of Invented Creatures solar powered cranky-contraptions stand. #tinkering

@checkervest This reminds me of something Ivan Illich said, that the best way to take away someone's freedom is not to tell them what they can't do, but to tell them what they must do. This seems like a corollary in that the best way to stop people exploring the meaning the poem is to put them in a system that pretends there is a simple answer.

I once got yelled at in a high school literature class because the teacher asked what The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock was about and she stopped me mid sentence and told me furiously that the only correct interpretation was "a dinner party." after class she took me aside by myself and said "yeah there's a lot of other stuff and we could spend weeks on it but what's the point of discussing it if we can't spend weeks on it, and it won't be on the test anyway" and I think about that a lot

@renatolond Yep! Done. Let me know if I can help test or anything.

@renatolond Ok, np. I'll post a link to the issue here for future reference. https://github.com/renatolond/mastodon-twitter-poster/issues/593

@renatolond Happy to! And many thanks. Note though that I can't view the tweet you linked me to above - "This Tweet is unavailable."

@renatolond Source toot: https://masto.amosamos.net/notice/AANMfxAurxPwUaJONc, crossposted tweet: https://twitter.com/AmosLightnin/status/1427172862142652418?s=20

@renatolond Interesting! On my pleroma instance the crosspost to twitter shows a link even though the toot is public with no CW / image not marked sensitive. Maybe an issue with pleroma?

@renatolond Are there any plans to support cross-posting of media like images and videos, instead of crossposting links back to the toot? Or is that perhaps something that our pals at the bird site have made difficult?

Hiya @renatolond - First, thank you for making and hosting a pleroma compatible cross-poster!

Alpha #tinkering workshop on taxonomy of invented creatures at Dokk1, which invites tinkerers to evolve @tinkeringstudio's cranky contraptions.

This 1000W spot I bought doesn't seem to drive a 1 Watt Solar panel quite as well as I'd hoped. Still researching the best artificial lighting. #tinkering

https://www.thecgo.org/news/bring-back-hydrogen-lifting-gas/

@glyph https://bandcamp.com/lightnin

Have you considered the Use Case where the User is angry with you, doesn't like you, doesn't like your Product (tm), thinks your entire socio-economic class are measurably making everything worse and accelerating a global slide into fascism, genocide and extinction, and is only sullenly interacting with your Product (tm) at the cracking point of the harsh whip of capitalism because they will lose the ability to eat if they do not

because you might find that's quite a large class of users

@ilja It looks like h265 videos upload, but don't play - at least not on my instance. Here's an example: https://masto.amosamos.net/notice/AA7iWBLvR9FCv5o1r6 Searched h265 in issues and didn't find anything...

Landers invented creature. #tinkering

@Tusky Hmm, when I try to upload a 60 MB file via the web interface on pleroma instance, I get this rather unhelpful error message.

Finn's amphibian. #tinkering

@Tusky Thanks! Curious to hear what you find out.

@Tusky Thanks! I can't find anything in pleroma settings other than max attachment upload size, which I've got set to 100. So I'm not sure what is imposing the 40 MB limit.

Hey @Tusky - is the 40 mb upload limit for Videos built into Tusky, or is it something I can configure on my pleroma server? I have attachments at 100 already. Thanks!

Solar #tinkering experiments at Skibet Maker space greenhouse.

Read and sign the open letter protesting against Apple's roll-out of new content-scanning technology that threatens to overturn individual privacy on a global scale, and to reverse progress achieved with end-to-end encryption for all.

https://appleprivacyletter.com

#ApplePrivacyLetter

Fancy an accelerometer-equipped skirt?

https://hackaday.com/2021/02/21/beautiful-and-bouncy-rgb-led-skirt-reacts-to-movement/

This summer, I'm gonna be re-releasing a 4-part radio documentary series on anarchism via The Rebel Beat podcast feed, "Freedom on the Air". Originally produced for CKUT 90.3FM in Montreal back in 2004, this in-depth audio documentary on anarchist history, theory and practice has been unavailable for years... until now! Hope you enjoy Part 1: Anarchy 101. Part 2 coming next week. https://anchor.fm/rebelbeatradio/episodes/Freedom-on-the-Air--Part-1-Anarchy-101-e156va9

Amazing. After 20k upvotes nonetheless.

@funkwhale HIya! Been using Funkwhale to share my collection, with my wife mostly. But I find it tough to understand how to find others to federate with, and what copyright issues there are or are not. Is there a FAQ or getting started guide for those who've got past the setup stage, and are wondering how to dive into the social aspects?

@aral @teawithfir Aral, have you considered adding site.js to something like Yunohost? Curious to hear your thoughts on things like yunohost.

Oh I am so in love with this little thing, let me tell you. :) If I can manage, some of you established #LEGOtinkering folks will be too someday. https://twitter.com/LEGOIdeaStudio/status/1030388231714627584

Twitter Maker-Educator friends: If we setup a Mastodon instance (like twitter but free-er), would you join? I’m imagining it as a space for deeper conversations about play and learning- like the great thread we just had about kits.

Computational art at #ScratchMIT2018 with #LEGOtinkering hero @joshburker! https://twitter.com/AmosLightnin/status/1022875545313468416/photo/1

Cool to see different takes on #LEGOtinkering, like this one from @joshburker. https://sites.google.com/theschool.columbia.edu/burker-mdtech/lego-tinkering@LEGOIdeaStudio

Papa Randy’s 3rd iteration of the #LEGOtinkering remote control paddle boat really moves! https://twitter.com/AmosLightnin/status/1020687114449670145/video/1

A #LEGOtinkering orbital hot-dog cooker. https://twitter.com/AmosLightnin/status/1020098097110806529/video/1

Planet-wide picket line: no one go back to work for corpos till you get a dignified living wage. Fuck McDonald's.

Just reading @darius 's lovely site on small scale community. But I found myself wishing it included Reggio-like documentation of what its like to be in one. Is there a story that exemplifies the qualities of a digital neighborhood like friend camp?

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