Long service leave of approximately three months + need/ want a boat + must be a beautiful boat + must be capable of satisfying everyone in the family’s needs = my new project.
This could indeed be a wonderful adventure. But could I do it? After all, building a boat is no small undertaking, fraught with unknowns, perils and dangers. How many backyards have I seen littered with someone’s unfinished dream boat? Too many.
Amateur boat building means just that. You are starting something incredibly complex that you know nothing about. Still this hasn’t stopped others doing it (and doing it well).
Here are two of them. This is a beautifully completed and finished “Tammie Norrie“.
This is Alan Richards‘ journey in completing his Tammie Norrie.
I finally have some long service coming to me in 2012.
This will be the first time in my working life that I have worked with the same institution for more than 8 years. I tend to want new challenges in my working life after 8 years and have usually moved on. Not this time.
How to spend my time off is the question. I had thought of a trip or overseas travel but as my wife would still be working and my daughter will be in her final year of school, decided this might not be the best time for travel.
I recently sold my 13.5 ft aluminium fishing boat ( a decision I have regretted ever since).
My old Quintrex
I want a new boat. So how about building one? One that can take me fishing. One that I would be proud to show off. One that my wife could sail (she sailed across the Aegean Sea in her youth). One that I can row (I love rowing). Heck I might even learn how to sail it.
A few years ago I came across “Australian Amateur Boatbuilder” magazine and discovered Iain Oughtreddesigned boats built using traditional wooden clinker methods. They were absolutely beautiful. All of them. I particularly loved the “Tammie Norrie“.
And that’s where my love affair with traditional wooden boats faltered – until now.
Douglas Engelbart invented the mouse in 1963 while working at the Stanford Research Institute and it has been a part of our computing since 1981.
The mouse and the development of GUI certainly made our computing lives more friendly and easier (anybody out there still remember command line computing – computing as a linguistic activity). It has served us reasonably well during all that time.
Lately though it is beginning to look a little peaked.
Is the ‘mouse as our finger’ metaphor (ability to point, drag, select and activate) able to keep up with the increasingly demanding computing interactions of today? Or has it in fact hindered and slowed down what might have been possible?
If my mouse dies (mine’s already lost its tail and has a gamy red eye) what am I going to replace it with? Perhaps gestural recognition or even thought recognition?
I’ve been looking around and is one of these coming to a desktop near you? Will we even have a desktop?
Perceptive Pixel
Multi-touch Interface (from Adobe TED)
The Future Apple
3D Desktop
Microsoft MS Surface
BrainGate Neural Interface
The folks over at Future Interface have also been busy discussing what might happen to my poor sick mouse. Have a look – some interesting possibilities ahead.
We are living in an age when changes in communications, storytelling and information technologies are reshaping almost every aspect of contemporary life — including how we create, consume, learn, and interact with each other. A whole range of new technologies enable consumers to archive, annotate, appropriate, and recirculate media content and in the process, these technologies have altered the ways that consumers interact with core institutions of government, education, and commerce.Henry Jenkins
Lego™ used to be the stuff I stood on in the middle of the night going to the loo….%$#@* – kids and their bloody Lego! But not anymore. It’s now your pathway to self expression. Have a look at what you can do with Lego and what else can you do with Lego?
Now perhaps I’m just jealous because in my day you had your basic block, your 1/2 block and your 1/4 block, (in red AND white), a basic window or two, a door, a couple of boards for the floor and roof and that was it bub. No building the Sydney Opera House or the Eifel Tower. No Lego assembly line to make Lego cars with computers to run the whole thing. No Stars Wars – Episode 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, AND 3.
Now I might be wrong but have you noticed how YouTube seems to have a controlling share in Lego? What’s going on here? Half of the videos on YouTube seem to be made with Lego!
You have your comedy acts.
Eddie Izzard – Death Star Canteen
Rating: ****- 5,120 ratings – Views: 3,662,400
You have your whole television series.
The Apprentice UK Series 4 – Week 1
Rating: ****- 73 ratings Views: 38,604
You have your movie trailer.
Lego 300
Rating: ****- 3,101 ratings Views: 952,766
You have your original script, screen play and direction.
Nice Pants! Lego Animation
Rating: ****- 2,785 ratings Views: 790,935
You have your songs.
Beer Song
Rating: ****- 8,940 ratings Views: 3,410,176
You have your musical.
Les Miserables
Rating: ****- 618 ratings Views: 142,434
You have your music video.
Chop Suey!
Rating: ****- 7,210 ratings Views: 1,319,002
You have your history channel (not as popular as it used to be).
Trebuchet
Rating: **— 89 ratings Views: 17,114
You have your science channel (doing reasonably well).
Danny’s Mindstorms NXT Rubik Cube Solver
Rating: ****- 4,785 ratings Views: 1,404,370
You have your porn channel (not doing all that well in LegoLand).
Lego Porn
Rating: ****- 127 ratings Views: 85,062
You have your political commentary.
Ron Paul Brickfilm
Rating: ****- 2,743 ratings Views: 85,291
Alright you get the picture. “lego” video results 121 – 140 of about 72,500 Now this doesn’t mean there aren’t more. These are just the ones with the word Lego in the title.
So where does this leave us?
There are whole communities of Lego enthusiasts out there. There are kids using Lego. There is the AFOL community (Adult Fans of Lego) who make, discuss and critique MOC’s (My Own Creation) and the reasons they make them. Have a look at The Brothers Brick (with their Ambassadors) for instance. There are whole communities of Lego stop motion animators out there with their Minister of Film Contests.
Remember “Death Star Canteen” – the first YouTube video in this post? That was the work of Thorn2200, a 15 years old, 41 videos to his credit and well over…. oh….. 8 to 10 million views and with a rating for any one of his pieces of no less than 3 out of 5 stars (one 2 1/2 – it was a bit of a stinker). This is a career not a hobby.
Now it might not be Spielberg but that’s the point. Virtually anyone these days can create, capture, edit, and share short video clips, using inexpensive equipment and free software to put it together. We can all contribute, play, produce, share, inspire, improve, succeed, admire, and be part of an immense conversation.
Me…. I’m getting my old Lego box out of the garage, grabbing the video camera and seeing what I can do to add to the conversation. Maybe I might buy some of those new fangled Lego bits first….
Not long ago I decided to expand the range of my fishing activities and try Fly Fishing. It looked challenging, fun and takes place in not unpleasant surroundings. Part of the attraction was also the idea of making my own flys. They are beautiful and artful designs in their own right and usually have a considerable history in their development.
So I purchased a basic vice, hooks, feathers and other fluffy stuff with which to make flys. As I was about to pay for all of these items, the salesman said “Of course you know you’ll need a whip finishing tool”. One can’t look too foolish about these things and I replied “Of course – better throw one of those in too”. So he handed me what looked like some medieval torture instrument.
Once home, gear was quickly assembled, hooks, feathers arranged by colour and size, tying threads all at the ready. On to the web to find a fly pattern to tie. Found one with step by step instructions and static images. After half an hour, a fair bit of swearing and two pricked fingers – my first nearly complete very amatuer fly. Only one more step to go:
“Step 8: Whip finish with three turns twice”.
While the salesman had said I need one, neither he nor the static image next to this instruction gave me one iota on where to start. Believe me it isn’t intuitive. I searched static websites high and low for a series of shots that demonstrated how to even get started. I did find an animated gif but it went so quickly it was as useless as the static image.
I hadn’t had much to do with YouTube up to this point. I saw it as something my children used to find silly teenagers doing silly things, filming it and showing the rest of the world how silly they could be (at least that seems to be what my children were looking at every time I walked past the computer).
I am a changed person and have seen the light. No sooner had I typed in “whip finish” in the YouTube search box, not one but dozens of links to whip finishing videos showed up. Some such as the one below were created by fly fishing retailers trying to attract more business and others by individuals who must have realised “Hey bet you I am not the only one in the world to have found this bloody difficult.”
Since my early foray into YouTube and the “whip finisher”, I have gone on to bigger, better and infinitely more difficult aspects of fly tying (tying hackle, reverse hackle, dubbing, parachutes). Not only that but I also know much more about casting techniques and streamcraft as well.
The thing I like about YouTube videos is that they contain top class information (usually – well most of the time), the production quality is mostly high and the passion about the subject always evident. It is a great tool for getting off the ground quickly on almost any topic in a way books and diagrams just can’t do. It helps connect you to a community of very experienced, passionate people with similar interests. It also highlights the truly international dimension to these communities.
Many educators are also realising its great potential and its appeal to a wide range of age groups particularly the young.
OK – So let’s see now
