Last night, in my Applications class, we had 3 grads of ITP discuss their experience with entrepreneurship and working together. At one point, they discussed financials and working together. They listed several personality traits that apparently investors look for…I found this useful and inspiring.
integrity
passion
experience
knowledge
skill
leadership
commitment
vision
coachability
fearless
For my Physical Computing midterm, I worked with Andrea Wolf and Sindy Butz to create a balance board that controls a video in Processing.
Here’s a video of me demonstrating for our class.
Balance Board Media Controller from Allison Walker on Vimeo.
The way it works: User steps on the board, which completes a switch inside the board. An accelerometer inside the board reports back to Processing which way the user is leaning. Right – fast forward. Left – slow down. Tilt forward – screen gets darker. Tilt backward – screen lightens.
Here are some photos of us during prototyping stage and assembly. Here’s a slideshow on Flickr.
This week, my group finally presented for Red Burns’ Applications of Interactive Telecommunications. My group consisted of Chris Allick, Hana Newman, and Andy Jordan. Together, we successfully worked together to produce a presentation on our reaction to Craig Newmark’s talk the previous week. Not only did the class enjoy our presentation, we also enjoyed and didn’t feel like we were imposing on the other students at all.
Here’s the PowerPoint/Keynote presentation that describes our process.
What we ended up doing was coming up with a compliment for each of our 108 other classmates, plus our instructors. Everyone left feeling much better about themselves. What we thought was great about this activity was that thinking nice things about other people cannot help but lead to a better community, and Craigslist and Craig Newmark are all about building community. Many people have said that they really enjoyed our presentation. So, nice job us.
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After that, we had our guest speaker’s presentation. This week our discussion was on Assistive Technologies. In my experience, I spent 4 years in a school that incorporated students with relatively severe physical handicaps, some to the point where they could not speak. And, my step-brother has some cognitive impairments.
Overall, my impressions of Assistive Technology were a). There’s a lot of focus on physical impairments. What about cognitive disabilities?; and b). Is the motivation more to help people keep up with other people, or is it to just have a decent quality of life? I don’t know…. I think about my brother a lot while I’m here. I want him to have a fun childhood, because you only get one. I feel like there must be something I can do to help him not only keep up with his peers, or do things they cannot, but also to just have a decent quality of life.
They may not make much sense, because I was just jotting down notes, but my comments on the speech were the following:
I emailed Leeann Fu, who co-taught the Neural Models class the first time and is still teaching it, apparently. And, thankfully. She replied to my email and sent me the 17-page syllabus, as well as suggesting 3 books I might be interested in reading. Here they are:
“Vehicles“, by Valentino Braitenberg.
“Gut Feelings“, by Gerd Gigerenzer. Leeann said, “Steve Kaplan added this as a textbook the last time he taught his Cognitive Functioning class”.
“Stumbling on Happiness“, by Daniel Gilbert. Coincidentally, I just saw the TED talk where Gilbert asks, “What Makes Us Happy?”
“On Intelligence“, Jeff Hawkins, Donna Dubinsky and Dileep George.
Meanwhile, there are so many articles in the syllabus, it would be hell to find them all online…well, maybe not. I am a student, after all.
Anyway, to save myself the trouble, I’m going to see if the copy center in Ann Arbor will be willing to send the course pack to NYC. Hopefully, more updates to come!
In the Winter Semester, 2005 at the University of Michigan, I signed up for this interdisciplinary class between Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and the Psychology department call Neural Models. Due to the anxiety of figuring out my final semester before graduation (I think?), I missed one day of class. Unfortunately, the structure of the class meant that missing just one day put me so behind in the course reading that it would have been impossible for me to catch up. That’s actually what the professor told us on Day 2. I don’t remember what my other classes were, but I don’t think it they were at all non-trivial in the amount of work required, so it would actually have been quite impossible to catch up. But, I’ve kind of regretted not being in that class since then, since understanding the chemistry of the brain is quite a fascinating subject. The good news is that Part I of the, yes, three-part course pack is posted on their website. So, if desired, I’m certainly at liberty to look into the reading. I think I will. And to justify cutting into the non-existent extra time in my schedule, I’ll call it something, innocuous, yet ridiculous like “Neural Design: Primary Chemical Processes and Digital Design for Tactile Environmental Change”. Actually, maybe what I could do is email the professor, assuming he’s not retired, and ask for literary sources. It’s faster than hunting down all the reading materials on the ACM.
In this lab, I was only confused by one part of instructions, which refers to the jumper on the Arduino. The model I have doesn’t have a jumper on it, so I at first I thought I was stuck. But, a resident came over to help and explained that my model does the switching from EXT, drawing from external power, to USB automatically.
Well, I still finished the lab…sort of. I have an issue described in the code, where my LED blinks 3 times, and then blinks once, then repeats. Also, my motor doesn’t really turn off completely when I click the switch and use the pot. It actually slows down a lot, then sort of stops, then jumps before starting all over again. This behavior is coordinated with the triple-blinking LED, which should not be blinking 3 times repeatedly like that, in a cycle. Apparently, it’s caused by something resetting itself. I’ll have to check into this and see if I can fix the problem.
….
Later on I tried my connections again, and I’m still not sure what the problem could be. I don’t understand how to reduce the amount of voltage going to the motor, so I’m not sure how to not have this problem. In any case, I took more photos. Maybe my wiring is wrong?
