THis morning DIane and I woke early and headed out for a run. At the suggestion of our hosts, we hopped a low fence and took a gentle run along the streets of a gated community just across from their house. there were beautifully landscaped yards, huge houses and a golf course. not our style at all. but we did love the gardens. They were amazing !

THe class today went very well. Most of the class got most of their PCB layout done. Even though the circuit was proscribed, there was plenty of room for personalization  in the layout , shape,  decoration, colors etc of the board. We were so  impressed with the students technical ability and creativity . Again. sorry no pictures here.. but I will show pictures of the baords when they are all submitted. 

One thing that did make today differnt is that it was raining !.. San Diego only gets abotu 12 inches off rain a year (compared to .. say.. 50 for houston)   . The trouble is that San Diegoins  (?)  dont know how to drive in the rain. After class diane and I had a half baked plan to drive in to san diego to see the zoo.  If we were  able to leave at 2 PM.. and take 25 minutes to get to the zoo.. we’d still have like 2 and a half hours to look around.  The trouble was, the highways were down to a crawl because of the rain. waht was supposed to be a 25 minute drive turned into an hour and twenty minutes.. no fun ! 

The San DIego Zoo is famous for all sorts of things.. one thing I didnt know it was famous for was being so expensive.. it’s $75 / person.. so $75 per person , only an hour and a half to see the zoo and pouring rain all conspired to change out mind. No zoo for us, instead we headed to one of the many museams that are near the zoo in Balboa park. We chose the Fleet sceince museum.. Also pricey.. $25 / person.. ($22 for me since im older than 65).. the museum was cute.. but nothing to amazing. It was defintely geared towards younger kids.. many of the exhibits liek the electrical stuff were pretty dated. still it was fun to be out of the rain !   Here’s their poor tesla coil stuck in a cage and not operating.. 

Our tix included entry to the IMAX theatre where we saw a good peice on the resurgence of blue whales. .. I leanred lots abotu whales in the film…. did you knwo tha blue whales poop about 55 gallons of brigh orange krill leftovers that help fertilize the ocean.. I didnt know  that.

I also didnt knwo that this museum had one of the longest operating Imax projectors in the world. THye had the old one out on display. WHo knew they were this complicated ? 

We drove back on the rainy freways.. lucily the traffic had let up. We had good mexican food at a place right across from the high school.. then went home to sleep

more tomorrow..

Nite all nite sam
-me

Diane and I took a short run this morning around this super beautiful   community. We got a chance to say hi to our hosts Roger and Kari and their very cute labradoodle Posie. THey are reall great hosts and great people.. 

We got to the school, Canyon Crest Academy around 11 to set up.

THey have a pretty strict no pictures without permission policy in there .. so I dont have many pictures from our 3 hour and a half classes. .. Our host this year was Dvora.. we met her last year when we were doing this same class.. for the first time .. with her predecessor Tony. 

THis class and last years are made possible by the very generous support of the IEEE Solid State Circuits Society. Huge thanks to them for all the suppoprt and encouragment. 

The idea is to get a whole class of kids to make their own Printed Circuit Board (PCB) as part of Project OnBoard
a program I started with my friend Zach  at Hackclub.org and several of our friends.   When Diane and I were here last year, we were workign with High School Senior and Hackclub member Angelina T.  At that point we’d had only about 100 students build a PCB.. by the time we got there this week we’d had 852 high school students worldwide build a pcb !

Nearly all of those were students who found us through other Hackclub activities, Instagram posts, etc.. most did their designs on their opwn wiht help from their online hackclub peers. 

In class workshops like the one diane and I are running this week are rare.. I’d like to make them less rare.. in order to give even more kids the experience of building a PCB. Its a great maker skill to have just like 3d printing, coding, etc. 

Our goal in the next 3 days was to help all 26 of the students in Dvora’s class build their own customized version of a simple LED sequencer like  this 

its a very simple design.. it uses a 555 time and a cd4017 decade counter to sequence soem LEDs. here’s the schematic..

The funny thing is. this is a very old circuit.. first time I remember making one was in 1977..   I had the leds woven into my hair so I had a halo of sequencing red lights around my head. .. .. not something that people were used to seeign in 1977.. or thats what the huntsvill texas  sheriff who pulled me over for making an illegal left turn  told me . I still remember seeing my lights sequencing in his mirrored sunglasses 🙂 

Anyway.. last year, this class had lots of fun with the circuit and made soem pretty amazing personalized versions. Here’s what they built.. and after some  debug.. they all worked !

THis week.. I’m teaching the class by myself. DIane is helping with triage.. as are two students , The and Matthew who volunteered to go through the slides and learn the stuff a little earlier than their classmates. 

Here are the slides I developed based on the ones that Angelina created for the class last year.,. Its my hope to refine these so we can teach these kind of workshops even more easily..  (Comments welcome !)  

Its my hope that slides liek thiese could be used by IEEE members around the world to teach their own workshops with students. 

So.. today;s goal was to explain the concept of PCB’s, get everyone set up with the tools and get everyoen started on their schematics.. All in all, that went very smoothly. Dvora’s class were very quick studys and by the end of the class, most had their schematics completed.. and some were even on to the PCB creation. 

Best of all.. it seemed liek they were having fun..

Again.. sorry I dont have many pictures.. its a school policy I was tryign to follow 🙂 Here are some without people’s faces  in them . Dvora showed us all the electronics resources this class has.. tons of stuff. 

fter the class, diane and I heade back to the Airbnb , grabbed a quick lunch,  changed clothes and headed out for a hike. We chose a trail that followed a lagoon from from pretty far inland out to near the ocean. It was a very easy path.. .. the only catch was that the closer we got to the ocean, the coloser we got to the freeway and its noise. We pretended that what we were hearign was crashing waves 🙂

The great surprise was, that once we crossed under the freeway, there was a beautiful trail up to a narrow slot cannon called annies canyon trail. It was an amazing peice of geology. a very narrow and steep canyon.. soemtimes just one person wide.. travelled up to a great view on the top. Its hard to describe how cool the climb was.. imagine climing a steep hil with vertical sandstone  clifffs on both sides of your bodies.. Evidently the cliffs had proven to be a popular grafiti spot.. as much as it was sad to see them defaced, they had their own petrographic beauty

we didnt write this.. but it was fun to find

From there we walked back the 2.5 miles to the car.. saw some nice birds on the way

We got back to the car and changed in the car as discreetly as we could and drove down to La Jolla. Our idea was to find someplace to eat along the beach.… As as often the case in California… Traffic was pretty bad and it took us a lot longer to get down there than we thought. Cool thing is we got to see a lot of th biomedical industry that is around the university. This would be one of the places that could possibly work. I can see him alternating between surfing and snowboarding.

 

We found a really nice sushi place with tables along the water.… The food was amazing.!

After that wonderful dinner..w e still had a 30 minute drvive hoime.. We were pretty tired by the time we got home..

long busy day !

nite all, nite sam
_me

We got home late and happy last night.. and slept late-ish.. We packed up the sweet  airbnb and headed back over to Rafe’s and Laurence’s for a big breakfast meetup. Rafes sister Rima came up from Carmel.. and sophies choral friends  all showed up and we all invaded the kitchen one more time.. !

I’m so glad we had this time here with Rafe.. He is one of my oldest and dearest friends.. over the course of the last few days, Rafe’s been up and around.. he even took some walks around the block . He’s doing so much better ! 

We all said our good byes .. and diane and I hit the road..

Our flight to San diego was quick and uneventful. by the time we got in to San Diego, it was a late sunday afternoon.. .. We decided to spend the remaining daylight walking around balboa park.. it”s a huge park loaded with museums..  .. everything was closed by then.. so there  were very few people around.. which made it a great time to explore !

From there we headed down tot eh Old Town section to seek out soem dinner.. We foudn a fun Mexican place with outdoor seating 

After dinner we took a stroll around the old town.. touristy but still very nice !

It qas gettign dark.. so we hopped. back in the car and headed 30 minutes nnrth to Rancho Santa Fe where our Airbnb was.   On the way we stopped at a Trader Joes for supplies (coffeee, etc0> I went next door to the Rite Aid to find a few tools for my class.. What I found was a store with mostly empty shelves.. Whats up with Rite Aid ? 

We got to our lovely Airbnb about 9ish (I think). We were in this samep place last year.. its a beitiful apartment about the garage of a gorgeous house on 2 acres. The land is beutifully garndednd wotj trails, fruito trees, a small ppool, a pagoda.. So many cool little corners with small fun things to find.. A chicken coop, a childs tea set on a small table, cool small statures. Its a beautiful place

Happy to be settled and nervously excited abotu the class I’m teaching tomorrow !
nite all nite sam
-me

We took another great hike today with laurence up windy hill. THis one want as long.. but just as beautiful

then we headed back to Rafe and Laurence’s   for a mega feast.. We had planned to cook dinner . It started with us just cooking for us.. then Rafe and Laurence’s daughter Sabine was bringing over some friends from school to make dinner and hamantaschen !.. Then their other daughter Sophie told us she was going to cook for her whole choral group for their morning practice 

it turned into a crazy fun mix of scampi, hamantaschen 3 milk cake, salad and burnt cheesecake. 

Then diane brought out her basque cheesecake !

What an amazing day !

nite all, nite sam
-me