Thursday night – Vermont Fablab at Essex Tech

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Busy work day with a fun, geeky finish . This afternoon I was invited over to the Essex Tech Center to watch my friends Joe C. and Jim D. On the Vermont Fab Lab at Essex Tech. This has been a long time in the making. They got a grant last year that helped them buy the tools and renovate the space. Today was the ribbon curring. It was so cool and exciting.

The name is special to me.. when we created our center at UVM we decided to partner with Essex (and anyoen else who’d like to join us) to create a set of networked facilities. Our hope is to have facilities like this eventually accessible to folke living anywhere in the state.. wouldn’t that be cool ?

The setup at Essex is really nice. The rapid prototyping tools are all in a glassed in clean space. here’s their 50 W laser cutter

A cnc lathe

a very nice electronics bench with some nice arduinos on display

a tool chest

a vinyl cutter

Armando V. , the state Sec’y of Education did the honors of ‘cutting the ribbon’  .. though the ribbon was a piece of acrylic and the cutting was done by laser.. at least he hit the button.

Doug the shop teacher gave us a VERY cool demo of his new Safe Cut saw. it has sensors in the blade that detect if it ever accidentally touches skin. If it doe it fires a chunk of aluminum into the saw blade and stops it instantly.. it destroys the blade, but saves your fingers !

Megahn from 7 days checks out the workings of the saw

 

My buddy seth was there.. he had his middle finger cut off in a door accident when he was 3.. but it was reattached.  looks good now !

 

we then mosseyed over to the 3D printer. .. we heard how a student made a 10cent plastic part that prevented the need to replace a 300 dollar part for one of the school’s big mixers.. Nice !

here are the parts.  This technology is going to change the world.. mark my words !

One of the kids, Abdul gave me a very cool money clip that he designed and printed.. (now if i just had the money to put in it 🙂

the party ended with a demo .. we all went back to the main room

and doug used a hot dog to simulate his finger and tried to cut with the saw. The thing made a loud bang and the blade dropped out of sight. There wasn’t even a nick in the hot dog. AMAZING !

 

After the Essex event, Seth and I went down town to meet some of the other folks from Vermont Makers. We were having our final org meeting before the Champlain Makerfaire on Sat Sept 29th at Shelboune farms,,

We’ll all be there.. will you be ?

nite all, nite sam

-me

Wednesday night – blog for blog sake

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My friend Dale did a brave thing at work today.. she blogged about blogging.. She was blogging on our company’s internal blogosphere.. which is alike a tiny copy of the outside world.. a kind of cool fish bowl. Actually, she wasn’t talking about blogging per sec.. She was actually talking about not blogging.. or the things that kept people from blogging. she identified three main things: Fear of the unknown, Perception of being uncool and Under developed capabilities. It was interesting to see how much resonance this got with folks in the few hours I watched after its posting. Quite a few folks dropped in to comment that they were afraid of blogging.. which is interesting to me.. because commenting isn’t all that different from blogging.. is it ?  The most common thread was that folks were self conscious about their writing..whether it was content or form. . .. again.. a very interesting concept to me.. I’m certainly self conscious about my writing when I’m doing a technical paper.. but. for some reason.. I’ve found it very easy to write here.. .. .. her’s what I said:

 

8 John M. Cohn commented Today 6:23 PM Permalink Recommendations 0

Dale,
LOL.. this is great that you’ve put yourself out there and blogged about blogging. 🙂 I think you’ve nailed some of the major things that stop people from writing. .. No one likes to be judged.. For that reason, putting yourself on record online is … well… scary !
For me the big secret that got me beyond that fear was to write for one person.. .. ..and that one person was me ! That helped me get past the worry about what folks would think about my poor grammar and dyslexic spelling (Dale.. you’re laughing now, I’ll bet 🙂 . I found that there’s no better way to figure out what i was thinking about than to write it down. .. and I have blogged every night for the past nearly 6 years in that spirit. (http://johncohn.org)
I submit the same is true here at work.. write for yourself about what you’re passionate about. Don’t worry so much about what others will think.. Don’t worry about your style .. People will be happy to learn from your thinking if not your punctuation .. 🙂
-jc

reading that now, i wonder if i was too flippant.. I’m not saying that I don’ care about my readers.. its’ that I don’t think you’re there.. . if i did, I’d never write another line.

 

nite all , nite sam

-me


Tuesday night – blast from the past

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I love when unexpected things happen to me..,., an I love how SN tools like Facebook ad Twitter help that sort of thing happened. A couple of weeks ago I reconnected with my friend John H. from High School He’s just retired after a long and distinguished career in the air force. . over the last couple of weeks we’ve been comparing notes on who we’ve kept up with and who we’ve lost track of.. and though that started to reconnect with even more friends from at least 35 years back.. (OMG !) So interesting to learn what people have done with their lives..

Today John surprised me by finding our HS graduation book.. something I certainly haven’t seen since the day I received it in 1977. Amazing how something like this can take you back..

OK.. I have a ton of homework tonight.. so more will have to wait until tomorrow
nite all, nite sam
-me

Monday night – Rosh Hashona 5773

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Just back from a quick trip down to Boston to see my folks for Rosh Hashona, The Jewish new year. My aunt and uncle were visiting from ohio so it was a twofer ! It was a good visit. I hadn’t been to shul with my folks since.. hmmmm.. maybe since I was a kid.. We all got dressed up and headed to the synagogue. The place was huge.. so huge in fact that they actually had two sittings for the service. Ours was the later one.. which meant more sleep for me 🙂

 

The service was really nice.. I’m not much into organized religion these days.. but the service felt familiar.. it was weird dragging out my rusty Hebrew. but I found I could keep up fine. One of the bonuses of having80% of the service in a language you can’t really understand is that what you’re saying doesn’t necessarily have to interfere with what you’re thinking. Even so, i managed to keep my mind in a good contemplative place. The music was soothing and familiar and it was good to be there with my folks and my aunt and uncle.

The Rabbi did a good talk on the importance of mindfulness.. he mentioned that about 30 % of professors of Buddhism in this country are actually Jewish (an amazing number since only 2% of Americans are Jewish) . he mentioned the importance of meditation of being  present .. even of yoga.. he himself had just come back from several weeks at Kirpalu.. including 2 weeks of silent practice   His talk was wonderfully ‘out there’ for a upper middle class ,  reform new england congregation . I liked it !

 

After the service there were apples to greet a sweet new year..

then a quick visit to a nearby-ish Turkish restaurant before I got back on the road home

i said goodbye and got on the road about 4 ..it was great seeign my folks and my anunt and uncle..   a good way to start the year.

I worked the entire way home o the phone.. by the time I’d arrived home.. I had received more than 140 emails for the day.. and that’s after i got rid of spam.. ugh. .it hardly pays to take a day off.. I’ve made a dent in them tonight.. but tomorrow I start the day a little spiritually richer.. and a little further behind..

 

we;ll.. actually.. I’d say more than a little spiritually richer.. the day of contemplation really did me good. Hope the peace can make it through the week. We’ll see 🙂

Happy new year everyone.. I hope its a sweet one for you and your families

Shana Tova all, Shana tova sam

-me

 

ps. The Haftorah on this day is always the story of Issac.. The Leonard Cohen song about Issac kept going through my head.. So here it is to get it out of my head and into yours..