Blizzard

Just a small clip of the howling blizzard that dumped over a foot of snow earlier this week. School was canceled and we woke up to about 3 feet of snow drifts against the door.
We had a great time afterwards shoveling, stomping and sliding. Here we are all bundled up!

Visit to Seekonk Public Library's Innovation Center

Recently I stepped in to the Seekonk Public Library and I encountered a Makerbot-- soo exciting! You bring your file and print it out.

 You can print in 2 colors, choose from among 10 different colors.

 They have samples of what the machine can do.

You pay by the gram (starting at 50cents), and there is an FAQ on the wall:

They also have a video training (lynda.com), whole bunch of digital tools (Adobe creative cloud), and VHS to DVD conversion software. This is true innovation, and can do wonders for job creation, educating citizens on technology and promoting interest in STEM for all ages.  As someone who has seen a neighborhood library close due to lack of community engagement, having a makerspace like this could unite a community. Having spaces like this can encourage people to share knowledge about how to seek information, design, build and fix things. This is a direction where all libraries should go to foster community interaction!

If anyone know of other libraries with makerspaces, please let me know. I'd love to learn more about these places and see what types of machines they have. I imagine a lasercutter would be pretty useful, along with a digital photography station.  Library makerspaces are totally awesome and cool! I'm going to have to come back some day to try it out.

Team Synesthesia Muse profiled in Fashion Globe

Recently, I've been collaborating on a fashion project called Fashion Descience  in an artistic collaboration with designer Harry Umen. Our team, "Synesthesia Muse" was profiled in the Fashion Globe article decribing the competition.
It has been eye opening working with Harry and I just had a great time meeting many fellow artists at the premier at the MIT Museum. Here's a few pictures of the event, courtesy of Todd Lee and Descience.

Enjoying the event

Logan modeling the prototype

You can see more of the process portfolio here.

Seeing my research group in Chinese media

My mom is visiting me to see her grandkids, and recently picked up a free newspaper in NYC Chinatown. To her surprise, she spotted my old research group, the Personal Robots Group, in the "True Buddha News Weekly." So excited to see people she recognized, such as my colleague Kenton and the sociable robot Nexi.

An old invention comes to life

many many years ago, my senior product design class project was a water powered scooter.  Recently, on a trip to costco, I was pleasantly surprised to find the very toy.

They had similar details, such as the propeller size and grill size.

Unlike our design, this was way smaller. However, it has been over 16 years (ours was done in 1997), so circuits have come a long way.  Also, its missing the "cool factor" we had in our design, the LED light bars that glow when you zoom ultra fast. 

Spinning Art

Thanksgiving in NYC

Hal and his Uncle B

Here are some pix of the kid at the playground with my awesome big bro Ben taken in NYC. It was so nice to see everyone, including my nephews and brother/sister-in-law. We had a terrific time and celebrated with lots of family.  We had some great NYC pizza ,twice, and good home-cooked food too.  There were cats, lots of running around, and general kid shenanigans. What fun!

Libraries are awesome!

I love going to our small local library with my kid.  We have a terrific time looking through potential books that we might bring home,and critiquing the books as we flip through them.  My little one, H, loves to choose books that have colorful covers, and I like to peek at the endings. JG likes to look at the writing and art style. . Discovering new books and new authors is definitely an adventure. So far we have discovered many great authors like Chris van Dusen and Mo Willems. We've also enjoyed interactives like Peek-A- Pet and Pat-A-X Books. Little H learns about sharing, and taking care of things that are not his. And we all enjoy getting great recommendations from our librarians, Yan and Christy, who are the best librarians ever.
The best feature though are the community events held by our librarians. Almost every day of the week, there is something like a toddler sing, lap sit, story hour or language exchange.  Once a month there's a potluck and the neighborhood has really come together to enjoy meeting each other.  The decorations are always festive and bring up lots of conversation. The O'Connell librarians are superb in their curation of books and cultural events.  There are always Mandarin and Portuguese, and Spanish language books and movies around for the local population, and this branch hosts many cultural events to discuss different cultural holidays. My kid loves to see the familiar faces at the desk, and says hi to the librarians everytime.  He enjoys talking to Christy about her colorful sweaters and seeing what books she's holding for us. He loves talking to Yan and getting new updates on recent library events. I think our little local library is just exceptional in its level of engagement with the community and kids of many different ages.
We try to get new books every week, and many of the books we've checked out we've ended up buying. So its done wonders for helping us develop H's interests in science, art, and storytelling.  Best of all, it's free and reduces house clutter because we bring the books back. Go Public Libraries!

Today Hal touched a Lobster

Hal loves this bead center and sees this as the reason for checking out the Aquarium. Luckily, he was able to take some time away from the table to touch the presentation Lobster. The volunteer brought the lobster in a white tupperware bin, along with a bubbler. It was cool (literally, there was a blue ice pack floating in the same water). He did it twice.  Hal liked to touch the bubbles even more than the lobster. Today we also saw jellies (blue ones are his favorite), and touched the stingrays.  I think Hal touched one stingray, but I couldn't be sure. After he touched it, he said "You don't like this." So we left to go back to the beads. He is so focused...

Hooding and Graduation with Family

 

Hal exploring colors and architecture

I was cleaning off old photos from my phone, and realized I had taken a bunch of Hal at different art events. Here's the link to Hal surrounded by RGB lights, balloons, and inside a cardboard tent fort.

Workshop on Technology and Change in Developing Countries

Next week,  I'll be giving a talk at the media lab for the developing countries workshop based on my research. I'm really looking forward to presenting my work alongside my colleagues Rich and Leo, who have also done some pretty cool things in remote places.

The workshop was one of the first to fill up, but here's the abstract:
 "Inside-Out: How Developing Countries are Pioneering New Technologies in Health, Education and Civic Media"

While new technology is often associated with developed countries, the most radically innovative ideas are often deployed first in developing countries, where the need is greatest and out-of-the-box thinking is plentiful.  The most creative technologies, business models, and emerging trends can be seen in developing countries often years before they take root in countries like the USA.  In this workshop, we will briefly review a few of the developing country projects the Media Lab has spearheaded over the past 20 years and point to disruptive emerging tends in Healthcare, Education, and Civic Media that are currently transforming the world.  Many examples will be given, followed by open discussion with participants.  1-hour session, repeated twice.

Presenters:
Dr. Rich Fletcher -- Mobile Tools for Health Care
Dr. Angela Chang -- New tools for Education
Dr. Leo Burd -- New Tools for Civic Media 

Bios:
Rich Fletcher teaches the MIT class "Technologies for Developing Countries," and is currently Assistant Prof at UMass Med School, Director of Mobile Technologies, Dept of Psychiatry; and is also Research Scientist at Mass General Hospital, Department of Pediatrics, Global Health Division.

Angela Chang is a post-doc specializing in new technologies for literacy and is currently part of the research team creating and testing new scalable approaches to literacy in remote parts of the world.

Leo Burd is Research Scientist in the Center for Civic Media and has devoted the past 15 years to developing new communication and social media tools for use by communities and children around the world. 

Hal in Miami, Ft Lauderdale Museum of Discovery

Hal in Miami, Ft Lauderdale Museum of Discovery, a set on Flickr.

Finally uploaded some pix from Hal's trip to Ft Lauderdale Museum of Science and Discovery. He had a great time driving a car, flying a plane and running around causing a riot.

First day of Dangerous Readings

Today was my first "unConference" at the Dangerous Readings Conference. It was so much fun, can't wait to go back tomorrow. Made me think about how expressive the form of digital media is, and there is so much creativity out there. Electronic literature can be as wordy as a novel, as deep as generations of time, or as fleeting as a dramatic reading. I saw some cool stuff to check out, like "We Descend" and "Emberlight". Inspiring.

Linked to Galileo

My colleague Adam S. sent an email saying "I began following our academic ancestry. Here's what I found."
Cynthia Lynn Breazeal
Rodney Allen Brooks
Thomas Oriel Binford
Myron Lindsay Good
Henry Winston Newson
William Draper Harkins
Robert Eccles Swain
Lafayette Benedict Mendel
Russell Henry Chittenden
Wilhelm Friedrich Kühne
Rudolph Wagner
Johann Lukas Schönlein
Ignaz Döllinger
Antonio Scarpa
Giovan Battista Morgagni
Antonio Valsalva
Marcello Malpighi
Giovanni Alfonso Borelli
Benedetto Castelli
Galileo Galilei

I stopped there, because my head nearly exploded from being so excited.

Source: Mathematics Geneology Project: http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/index.php

WHOAAA!

Congratulations Mr. Koski!

Just went down to see some very important people. My family (mom & dad) and my cousin, Joyce (and Dan) and her new baby Andrea. It was fantastic. I also got to see my high school teacher, Mr. Sam Koski, receive an award for his inspirational teaching.

What a terrific surprise that the essay I wrote is the essay that got him the award. It was terrific to meet his new students, too. Then I got to give a speech on my work at the Media Lab, and also to help FIRST robotics kickoff in South Florida! Here are links to my slides:

my life in robots on Prezi

Dangerous Readings

I'm going to be attending an unconference on hypertext hosted by Eastgate Systems called Dangerous Readings. Looks like it will be awesome!

Shah returns to CSAIL

Welcome back Julie Shah!

My Dot Tour - Explore Fields Corner's Past, Present, and Future

Congrats to Leo Burd, who worked on My Dot Tour. This is a youth-led walking tour of Fields Corner in Dorchester that presents a narrative of their neighborhood. It is great to see communities telling their stories and learning about their history, value and residents.

Propellers and Hong Kong 2004 pix

Recently uploaded some new pix of Hal and the propellers
He's also a pretty fast walker now.

Running out of space on my HD and noticed I never uploaded my China 04 trip pix. First one is my favorite place: Hong Kong
 We visited my gunma and had awesome food,  encountering with towers of bao. We visited Lantau island and got invited to march and pray with the monks. My favorite was visiting the Star Ferry and taking the bus to see the floating restaurants.