Jill and Eric Penne

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A Real Man
(author unknown)

A real man is a woman’s best friend. He will never stand her up and never let her down.
He will reassure her when she feels insecure and comfort her after a bad day.

He will inspire her to do things she never thought she could do; to live without fear and forget regret.
He will enable her to express her deepest emotions and give in to her most intimate desires.
He will make sure she always feels as though she’s the most beautiful woman in the room and will enable her to be the most confident, sexy, seductive, and invincible.

No wait… sorry… I’m thinking of wine. It’s wine that does all that…

Never mind.

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My friend Paul Marlier has a pretty fun gig at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. His job as a workshop specialist is to come up with new ways to teach science to children (and their parents!). Recently, he took a few minutes to explain his latest prototype, which is a set of wooden blocks with electronics on them that museum visitors can connect up in any way they like. The idea is that they can learn by trying out different things to see what happens. The blocks themselves are nothing more than squares of plywood with different components stuck to them, and finishing nails for binding posts that can be connected to using alligator clips. To run the activity, he sets them out on the table without instructions, and participants are invited to hook things up and see what happens.

Paul explained that he chose this simple design over commercial products because he wanted to emphasize that these are just parts that anyone could find and put together. So far, the blocks have met with great success, with some interesting results. His favorite moment of discovery was when an inquisitive child hooked a motor up to a battery, through a speaker- the result was an amplified version of the noise that the motor makes when running!

He’s certainly not the first person to construct a setup like this, however I like the homebrew way in which it is made. I’m also a huge fan of the radically different switches that all do basically the same thing.

Have you ever built something similar? Have any tips for how to improve the design, or suggestions for cool components to include? There are more photos of the setup in my Flickr stream.

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Digg this!

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I am blessed in many ways, but the thing I value most is to work with kids.  I'd like to say that doing so keeps me young but I can't…that would take a miracle on the level of loaves and fishes…

I do own a mirror or two.

Most of our work…work done by The HeliOS Project involves working with kids one-on-one.  We find children that do not have computers due to financial disadvantage
 then we build them one from donated or broken machines.  It is indeed gratifying work.  I have not had many chances to work with kids in large groups before…I mean working with them in a technical environment.

Until last week.

Skip Guenter, who is our Director of System Engineering lives in Hutto Texas….about 15 miles outside of Austin.  Pastor Paul Gravley of the Discovery United Methodist Church of Hutto approached Skip and asked him if we would be interested in doing a summer camp at their location.

Well yeah…ya think?

The idea was to gather 20 kids, ranging from 3rd to 5th grade and teach them how a computer works.  We were going to use perfectly good computers, take them apart, teach the kids how to identify the components, teach them the function of said components, put it back together and then install Linux on it.

Given it would even start after said exercise.

I had my doubts.  I personally felt that this age range was a bit young.  I just didn't think kids this age would sit for 4 days and participate in this program…much less understand what they were doing.

I was wrong….

We brought in 10 identical Dell computers with monitors, mice and keyboards and set up the stations so there would be two kids to a computer.  We took a collective deep breath and opened the doors.  22 kids flooded in.

What I believed to be probable mayhem stopped well short and developed into this great experience.

We started the program with an introduction to computers in general.  There was a short question and answer period to make sure everyone was understanding what we were going to do…and then we began doing it.

I have to admit surprise from the beginning.  Not only did these kids grasp the understanding of the parts and components of a computer, they were eager to understand what they did and how they worked.

And sure, we covered the basics…RAM, Video cards and chipsets, optical devices and hard drives, but we found that our class was so eager to learn that we shifted gears and drilled deeper into the machines.

We began talking about IDE vs SATA, 20 pin vs 24 pin ribbon cables,Molex connectors, power supply detail…

They wanted it all.

 I don't know how many of you have worked in a "teaching" environment but I sure learned a few things during Camp HeliOS. 

Keep them engaged or they will venture ahead of you.

A few things surprised me here.  First off, this was a first-come first-served camp.  That means that all the kids voluntarily signed up for this camp.  The second thing that surprised me was the number of girls that signed up.

Now wait, I know that statement smacks of sexism but given the top-heavy male numbers in IT, one would think that there is little to no interest in technical stuff in the female population.  I don't know if our little camp was an anomaly, but I can tell you that the number of girls in this camp was just short of 50 percent.

Another thing that surprised us was that we had few if any dropouts during the 4 days.

I have to attribute that to the great volunteers we had during Camp HeliOS.  Sam Woods, a long-time friend of the Blog of helios and The HeliOS Project volunteered his time to come in and help instruct these future geeks.  Pastor Paul and Sam Pritchett from the church helped greatly…and both being geeks at heart, they helped instruct as opposed to simply keeping massive bundles of energy contained.

 John Decker took the bulk of photos used here as well as many others and I want to thank him personally for his work.

I also want to give special recognition to a student aide during Camp HeliOS.  Madeline not only did many of the preparation tasks to get things ready, she also helped greatly in assisting the camp kids with questions they had. Thank you Madeline…you were more help than you know.

The first three days were devoted to disassembly, reassembly and then Linux installs.  To be honest, we scheduled this as a 4 day event because we thought kids this young would need that much time to complete and absorb the camp.

Wrong.

We ended up using the 4th day just to explore games available on Linux…and  guess which one was the favorite.

World of Goo.

Thanks 2d boy for the licenses.

Oh, and take another guess.  Guess who mastered the game twice as fast as the others?

Yep…the girls.

Bottom photos:  Pastor Paul talks about the importance of a cpu and cooling fan and explains how a fan shroud helps.

Ken troubleshoots a faulty USB connection.

Skip does some one-on-one about RAM and how it works for temporary storage…I think he tried to sneak in the North Bridge chip into the conversation as well.

 All-Righty Then

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Perfect photo for a Friday, going into a Summer weekend. Spotted this family on Alki with their custom choppers. Not shown in the photo is the sidecar. See it in this video.

Uploaded by Hugger Industries | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.

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Perfect photo for a Friday, going into a Summer weekend. Spotted this family on Alki with their custom choppers. Not show in the photo is the sidecar. See it in this video.

Uploaded by Hugger Industries | more from the Bike Hugger Photostream.

This post may not originate from Eric and may not contain all the text. Click here for the full article.

I haven’t much use for those fancy new “Air Multiplier” bladeless fans by British entrepreneur James Dyson, but this publicity stunt, in which dozens of the units are used to guide a neutral-buoyancy balloon around a complex warehouse “race track,” is admittedly pretty cool.

More:
James Dyson’s uphill water flow illusion”

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A 48 volt power house pushes this mountain bike at speeds up to 30Mph.  That’s a bit of a boost from many off the shelf E-bikes. [Jennifer Holt] wanted speed, and to retain the off road capabilities of her bike, so she made a custom one. As you can see in the video, this thing gets going fast and hills are no problem. She says that it will toss you off if you slam the throttle, and we believe her. We know some of you will insist on chiding her because she’s not wearing a helmet in those videos. She did manage to break her elbow offroading in the video after the break. That part is edited out though.

[via Makezine]

WooHoo! I hacked a different program written in python to work for us.

I hacked on the Terminal Pings script from http://www.pelikoira.net to get a working version for automating the LAMBA trail conditions status.

I changed the options so it didn’t require a text input and made the options, arguments parsing just like the examples I had seen for getopts.

Here is the result.

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A new feature on Failblog! For more Probably Bad News features, click here. Goodnight and good luck.

Picture by: dunno source Submitted by: dunno source via Fail Uploader

Fail Blog – Good Night And Good Luck – Politics – United States – Television

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Shared by NoyzSource

Chapters Include:
I. If the Host Compares His Opponents to Communists or Nazis, He is Crazy;
II. Why Politics Cannot be Simplified;
III. If the Host Uses Derisive Nicknames for His Opponents, He Has Nothing to Teach You.

When Cracked finally opens its line of private schools, you’re kids won’t graduate without having learned these essential skills.

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My personal and heart-felt thanks goes out to Lynn Bender of GeekAustin fame.  His organization of the Linux Against Poverty event this year was nothing short of phenomenal and on behalf of the Directors and Volunteers for The HeliOS Project, I thank you. – Ken

It was hot early.  this is, after all…Austin Tezas.

Last Saturday, Ron West arrived at the HeliOS Project shop out in Lakeway at 7:45 AM and after a short trip over to Lohman’s Crossing to pick up our donated truck, we began loading the computers and equipment needed to get the day started.  It was going to be a long day.

That Saturday marked the second annual Linux Against Poverty.

By 11 AM, two dozen or so local geeks assembled in front of Union Park on West Sixth street, the bar that we were soon to turn into a large computer testing and repair shop.  By 11:30 we had close to 50 volunteers pitching in.  People took turns parking their cars and trucks out front to unload things they had brought and within 30 minutes, we had set up shop.

We had received about 30 computers prior to the event…we have several drop points around town and after some earlier news coverage, those shops filled up early…some with near-panicked calls to “come get this stuff”, we’re over-flowing.”

While much of it was unusable or just simply junk, much of it was in great shape.  This is the equipment we unloaded at 11 AM to get things rolling.

Like last year, the Austin Techs that volunteered for LAP just got it done.  There was no drama or ego involved.  Teams Leaders had already developed their teams and everyone knew their part.  Roy Hall headed the Intake and Evaluation Team and they set up shop on the patio.  This is where the various machines were tagged,  triaged and inspected…their fate determined by a team that would send them to Repair, Install or…..Salvage.

Alex Thurlow led the salvage effort this year and his team did an outstanding job.  As we talked about during the run-up to Linux Against Poverty…we were extremely short of RAM.  We had just enough salvageable equipment to get the job done plus have some left over for HeliOS Project use during the year.  Sharp eyes and people who knew what they were doing allowed us to harvest parts others would have deemed unimportant and thrown away.  We are going to be able to use these components as opposed to filling a landfill somewhere.

The Repair Team was co-led by Andy Krell and Skip Guenter this year.  As I stated to Omar Gallaga, the Austin American Statesman Tech Reporter who covered the event, I am not only grateful for the volunteers that helped us this year, I am humbled.  The accumulated knowledge in the room that day was astounding.  I mean, we had CIO's and IT Directors working along side of us grunts.  When this happens, the whole community benefits from it and I want to thank everyone who made this thing work for us.

Don Davis led the Install Team effort this year and never complained that his team was relegated to the darkest corner of the facility.  His folks made sure that all the machines received the modified Linux Mint distro on all computers and that all were functioning before they were pre-staged for loading.  Don also provided most of the USB media we used to house the HeliOS distro for install.  Being able to install from USB not only saves time but in the long run, they last much longer than the normal CD or DVD.  Don's team did a fantastic job…and they never panicked when work stacked up on them.  They handled it like professionals they are. 

 I do want to take a minute and thank a couple of people specifically…people who went way above and beyond what was expected of them.

Skip Guenter is a Director for The HeliOS Project so one would expect him to put in a little extra effort but Skip passed "a little extra" sometime in early May.  Skip worked dozens of his own hours to get equipment running, computers operational and things organized for the technical side of the room.  I also want to thank Ron West for his dedication to what we do and the sweat equity he put into Linux Against Poverty.  What many people did not see was the pre-activities prior to LAP.

 Equipment had to be sorted, trucks needed to be loaded and bins had to be filled.  Ron not only got up before the sun on that Saturday to come help, it was him and I that got the truck loaded and more importantly unloaded after the event.  The facility was hot and we had to hand carry over 150 pieces of equipment to where it was to be stored.  Others had long since retired for the evening before Ron got in his own truck and headed home.  It was hard work indeed and I want to personally and publicly thank Ron for his contributions.  He busted his @$$.

So how did we do this year?  Well to be honest, not nearly as well as we expected.  Whether it be a down-turn in the economy or the fact that we are asking for some specific level of computers we just didn't get the response we needed to have enough machines to finish the year.  On the bright side, the equipment we did get is extremely good and the kids receiving these machines will benefit greatly from the generosity of both the Greater Austin Community and those who showed up at Union Park that Saturday.

There were many pictures taken that day but most of them have not been published to the web or sent to us for use.  Our further thanks to Kevin Guenter who took the photos shown here and to be displayed when the other photos are available.  It was indeed a great day.

You can see Austin’s local News 8 coverage here

Thanks folks…thank you for helping us do what we do.

All-Righty Then

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I was talking with someone today about Rover’s Run, and the bear-related incidents that have occurred on or near that trail over the past two … well, now three, summers. She mentioned the often-discussed idea of of building an alternative trail that would be farther away from Campbell Creek and it’s tasty, bear-attracting salmon, and said she thinks some people at the municipality seem to favor this option.

That’s when I started talkin’ crazy and mentioned that if the city wants the trail farther from the creek, the city should pony up some money and fund the project. That’s not how things work in Anchorage, of course. If you want or need a new trail here, you have to spend a few years in public meetings begging for permission. You have to make sure the bike-hating Nordic ski community is happy. You have to raise a bunch of money to pay for the trail. Then, if you’re lucky, the city that would benefit from the project will grant you permission … and you get to pay for a permit. Yeah, the city charges you a fee to build it a free trail.

As I walked back to my office today, I thought about my recent trip to Canada. As my friends and I rode multiple trails with Anthony—a local in Whitehorse, Yukon—the conversation was sprinkled with his mentions of when the city built this trail or that one, and how the city crew was constructing that fancy new mountain-bike bridge at the bottom of the gully.

Whitehorse is roughly one-tenth the size of Anchorage.

One day, we rode to a little skills park tucked away in the woods at the base of Grey Mountain. There were log bridges and teeter-totters cut from the local timber. We asked, who did this? His answer: the city of Whitehorse.

Back in town, there’s a formal, fenced skills park full of jumps, wall rides, and all sorts of tricky challenges that most of us will never attempt, much less master. (Ever try riding on a steel chain over a shallow pit? Me neither. And I can still say that.) Where’d the park come from? The city. Public funds were spent on a public recreation facility—for mountain bikers.

This happened in a city of 26,000 people in the freakin’ Yukon territory. A place with only two bike shops.

And what happens when a town invests in such things? Its residents have a blast riding their asses off, for one thing. And people like us travel there to ride. We spend money in the town’s stores and restaurants. People start bike-related tourism businesses like Boreale Mountain Biking (and then let Alaskans hang out in their yurts to drink margaritas, but never mind that right now).

We know to go there because such places get noticed. Word gets around in the bike world. The media covers the town as a destination that people should put on their travel lists. Hell, people in the United Kingdom read about Whitehorse in British newspapers and bike magazines.

Anchorage—Did I mention that it’s roughly ten times the size of Whitehorse?—could never do such things, of course. It’s not as if we have a huge, stunning blank slate of mountains at the edge of town, just waiting for trails to be built if the city and state ever decided to work together. It’s not as if we have hundreds of thousands of tourists passing through every year, and surely, none of them would want to bring bikes and have some real fun and get a little exercise while their relatives buy shitty souvenirs or go fishing.

It’s not as if we could tell the grumpy NIMBYs to shove it. It’s not as if we have the marketing power to sell our world-class terrain to the world. It’s not as if we have thousands of hotel rooms ready and waiting for the bike riders who could easily get here from major airport hubs like Seattle, Salt Lake City and Minneapolis.

And it’s certainly not as if most of our municipal leaders have one-tenth the vision of the people who run Whitehorse.

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Dirt Master Trails Plan Proposal

Goals:
Increase trail types
Increase trail usage
Encourage new and beginning bicycle riders
Bicycle Friendly Community recognition

Summary:
I propose a Trails Master Plan that encourages the use of sustainable dirt trails as an interim and permanent part of the trail system.

Actions:
Utilize the current Trails Master Plan that was recently developed by Shive-Hattery and based on the LCTA proposed trails. We will develop a Dirt Trails Master Plan that identifies the trails where a dirt trail can be installed in the interim and for long term use.

The Dirt Trails Master Plan will incorporate users of trails in different areas of the county as “Trail Stewards”. These stewards will use the Trails Master Plan to identify areas/locations for connector trails and recreational destinations. The goal of the connector trails is to link the future trails with neighborhoods, schools, parks, sidewalks, and businesses. The recreational destinations include skate parks, singletrack trails, BMX parks, bike skills areas, running tracks, and other trail heads. The trail stewards will also identify trails that are on the Trails Master Plan that are prime candidates for a Dirt Now, Pave Later trail. These trails are the base trail for bicyclists and runners that can establish the trail corridor, identify potential issues, and tweak and modify plans to make a better trail system sooner. These dirt trails will be used to supplement the immediate need for trails while waiting for the 1 – 20 year funding period that has been identified in the Trails Master Plan. Once the main trail is paved there could be singletrack dirt trails added along the bikeways depending on the size of easement and other factors like foliage coverage / type, etc..

Trail stewards will also be used to identify city to city connector trails. These trails will utilize the state ROW to build easy to ride, highly sustainable, low maintenance dirt trails away from the road. The faster, more serious road bike rider can stay on the road that hopefully has a fully paved shoulder but still use the amenities like benches or shady areas to rest. This helps minimize road rage and lower biker fear for new riders. These trails will be encouraging to inexperienced riders and families as well as hikers and runners. These trails will connect to destinations like the Signature Parks that are part of the Cedar Rapids Parks Master Plan. The trails will be cut to make absolutely minimal extra maintenance for the state or city with mowing. These trails will have a strict adherence to IMBA guidelines. City to city connector trails can be used for competitive and fun races in many modes of transportation. Maintenance on these trails can be done with an “Adopt-A-Trail” style of system.

Groups and organizations that would need to be involved include:
CV Running Association
Bicycle Advisory Committee
Linn County Trails Association
Linn Area Mt Bike Association
Cedar Rapids BMX
Cedar Rapids Parks and Recreation Department
Local skaters, skateboarders, and other outdoor activists.
Local snowmobilers.

The Cedar Rapids Trails Master Plan is providing a solid base to plan our future Bicycle Friendly Community. The Dirt Trails Master Plan builds on the CR Trails Master Plan to implement minimum effort and low cost trails sooner. I believe this plan will help us get even more recognition and opportunity for quality trail systems. It will also provide an additional layer of planning for more multi-use trails that can be used as part of a Bicycle Friendly Community application.

Statistics: Posted by NoyzSource — Tue Jun 22, 2010 4:06 am

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You are all that is EPIC! I want you to rent yourself out so much it hurts. I would hire you to just show up at any special event and just stand there exactly like this, rocking it out. Birthdays, Barmitzvah, company meetings, Christmas, you name it, it would rock. In fact just go ahead and pencil in the next wedding i attend, cause your officially my +1.

South Carolina

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