The Heads on Fire Community

Over the course of the past several weeks, we have been in the process of creating a structure as to house the celluar phone of Pam, a woman with multiple sclerosis. Here are several photographs detailing the evnts that took place:

Caption: Affixing the pyramid structure to the wheelchair.

Caption: The majority of the team that assisted in creating the celluar phone structure.

Over the past few weeks we have been gathering together the materials needed to make a cell phone project for a quadripalegic woman. She is unable to make alot of movements in her limbs so it makes her hard for her to communicate with people on our cell phone. She sits in a wheel chair and we plan to extend a bar across her arm rest and the phone will sit on the bar so it will be easier for her to use it. We started out with an acrylic tab that had the dimesnions of the phone and we bent it in a way that it would support the phone without falling.

This morning we had a man named Steven Shmitdkey come in and tell us about GPS devices. He gave us a device that  we are going to be using next tuesday when we take our trip to mission trails. Next Tuesday we are going to Mission Trails Park to map one of the trails there because Mission Trails has not yet been put up on GPS  devices and we were assigned to map the trail of the park. Mr. Schmitkey let us borrow a device and he explained how to work the device so we can navigate through the park. Mr. Schmitdkey gave us 4 steps to help us use the GPS device

I am assigned to the structure group of the project and we worked on how to make press fit shapes on adobe illustrator under a limited time. Esteban was trying to teach us how to make projects under a limited time becasue the big project that we are doing has to be done in a certain amount of time. So for my project I tried to make a figure of a perosn on a rocket ship but there were too many lines on the figure and the shopbot wouldnt cut all of those lines.

For my project I decided to make a glove that looks similar to the gloves worn by Michael Jackson in his performances. To make the project I bought a pair of black gloves from the store and I put dots of crazy glue all over the glove to make it look like it had sequins on it. This is where I am currently at on my project but on thursday I will hopefully be able to put a series circuit on the glove so it will light up when I put the glove on.

For the past few days the fab lab interns have been doing presentations on each of their projects and seeing how each project connects to one another. During my project about the irregular settlements in Tijuana, I and the interns had engaged in a deep conversation discussing whether providing a large amount of aid(money) to poor people is really benefiting them or is it just creating dependency.

Laureles Canyon (http://seniorsequence.net/sr/gcrt/gc_detail.php?gcid=24)

- Laureles Canyon has become a living urban laboratory for innovative solutions

- Only covers a few square miles

- A virtual microcosm of the city of Tijuana and the issues impacting the Tijuana River

watershed

-Paved areas with basic infastructure, homes built with conventional construction next to a mix of semi-developed areas and irregular settlements with no electricity or running water

300,000 people crossing the border between San Diego and Tijuana every day

The Tijuana River (Río Tijuana) is an intermittent river, 195 km (121 mi) long

The International Boundary Wastewater Treatment Plant (IWTP) currently treats 25 million gallons per day (mgd) directly pumped across the border from the central collection point in Mexico. When there is any flow in the river, the river diverter kicks in and diverts up to about 12-13 mgd to the IWTP

http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/research/publications/hdm/

Description of the Smart Power Conference

Just the other day my mentor Katie Rast took me to a conference focused on disaster relief. It was about getting organizations such as NIUSR, HALO, AFCEA and C4SP together to help poor people and countries get through natural disasters. Many of them suggested things like getting technology to enable communications and humanitarian assistance support.

Links and Information
http://center4softpower.blogspot.com/2009/01/smart-power-conference.html

SPEAKERS:

Dr. Eric Rasmussen:
instedd.org

Dr. Wells:
http://www.star-tides.net

Here are some uploaded pictures of the two projects that we have been working on, the temperature sensor and the Fab @ Home. We are still not finished with either of the projects but I'd thought I'd post these pictures to show what we have been working on