Submarine Rides, Projects Galore, and Cooking without water.

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I’m tempted to call this the pre-Berlin blog.

Yep, I know that was the title two blogs ago, then you saw the blog about Berlin. But I’m going back, March 1-8th...so perhaps it is the pre-Berlin blog.  Again.

So SINCE last Berlin trip, its been an absolute whirlwind of madness. I think my to-do lists are secretly mating and producing offspring as I seem to have about 5 sheets of paper with tasks on them on my person at all times. School is one thing. Half Machine is another. My website company has a bit of business going on at the moment so that’s another thing. Then there’s design competitions. Then there’s the travel. Ie: Sterling airlines had a valentine’s sale - 2 flights for the price of one. Amanda and I are going to Krakow in May. 

So let’s skip all the boring stuff, I don’t even remember what happened in the past two weeks. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s all coming together - in the past twenty four hours the following has happened:

- Our project was posted on Engadget, a massively popular technology blog: http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/17/led-displays-keep-folks-guessing-at-nightclub-bathrooms/

- Our project paper was accepted to the SIDer conference, a design conference in Denmark in March

- The technology part of our project, based on Wiring, is being placed on the Wiring exhibition site.

- Artists we met last time in Berlin are interested in working with us and they do wickedly amazing stuff - see some of it here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=nTa-lCCB2L0 (That’s the performance we saw in Berlin)

- I actually crossed off 13 things from my checklist.

So all this is good, very, incredibly good. Trust me. If you don’t understand what engadget is, or you don’t get what the heck I mean by a design conference or Wiring, or whatever, it all means insane recognition which is great.

Sundays have also been fun. Last Sunday for instance, I spent on the barge. We programmed/website designed the night away and attempted to cook. We did cook, it was tasty, and we now have it down to a fine art, but the first round was special. The barge froze over winter, and now has no water. Thus no toilets, no dishwasher, no taps, no nothing. So this means when I decided to cook green thai curry and rice, I had to use bottled water for the rice (how posh!) and as I tried to open the coconut milk can with a knife (who the heck stole the can opener? I will find you and use it on you!!!) only to find that the coconut milk was in fact, frozen, and I had to pry it out in chunks... all the while laughing so hard I nearly cut myself at the ridiculousness of the situation. Oh damn that was all horrible grammar and a run on sentence and VH would be highly displeased, I apologise. But I’m ranting, its allowed right? Okay onwards.
So we cook dinner, enjoy, it tasted awesome. Then stuck our dishes on top of the three week pile. In the morning I get a text message “Sorry I forgot to help with the dishes” suuuuuuuure you forgot. So I got to it. Hauled two buckets of water over the side of the boat, lugged them upstairs, boiled the water (because its bloody cold) and made myself a lovely bath of dishwater. I thought, hey, dish washing will actually be fun cause it’ll be warm and soapy. So I get down to it, and a knife catches in the sink plug and all the water ran away. Then I nearly cried. I desperately tried to save the water or stop it but an evil vegetable piece was blocking the way and all the water escaped. So I went through the whole process again. To say the least, this weekend went much smoother. We were ready for it all.

ANYWAY, Sunday was awesome not because of the cooking experience, though that was fun, but rather because we inherited some mechanical wheelchairs which we raced around, and within about five minutes of playing on, managed to crash into each other. Whoops. Game o f chicken with a girl who’s used to driving a sports car? Give your head a shake. Of course I’m not backing down. So after that, we had a meeting about workshops and the gloriousness of how to create some awesome workshops for companies about how to build robots, work with arduino and all that jazz. Oh but why you ask? Let’s see, you get a bunch of people pushing paper every day (like you, my friendly readers), and you get them to do something completely out of the norm, something unique. They go for a weekend to a boat in the harbour, and learn how to work with wires, and electronics, and they put together a functional, charming robot. They’ve done something completely new - they’ve been creative, and innovative, they’ve learned a new skill. They go home and tell their spouses about it, they talk about it the next week at work, all of a sudden, motivation is up, people are joking about the weekend, people are happier, and more creative and innovative and they’ve realised they still can learn to do something new and not only that, but something they never ever thought they’d be doing - building a robot. Yep that’s right, its brilliant, and rewarding, we get to teach people something new and amazing. Woohoo!

So after this stroke of brilliance, we decided to get some group photos - you know, around the massive crane, on top of the submarine, we all climbed on top of the submarine, which is about 1.5 feet wide, and then Peter, the captain, drove the sub out to the middle of the water so we could get some on-water pics...truly interesting considering we all almost hit the water. After that he took me for a dive, and we got to go around the harbour. The cool part? Well besides riding ON and IN a submarine? He built it, himself. Its not a hobby though, just a ‘past time’. (http://www.vulcaniasubmarine.com/KRAKA.htm) Then my friend got to take it out for a spin. For the first time. To say the least, what is normally an elegant descent below the waves turned into a titanic-like moment of the sub going nearly vertical, with the propeller sticking out of the water. I think he got the hang of it by the end though.

This weekend I tried to figure out 7 segment displays. Like those ones you have in old-school clocks. I’m trying to tell them to say what I want them to say. Like my initials for instance, though unfortunately “V” doesn’t work so well. So if you have a 3 letter word suggestion, let me know.
Besides that, school is obviously awesome. Our last project is taking off like crazy, and our latest project, the barcode project (go see the video! www.halfmachine.dk, click in the giant barcode!) is doing really well and we’re way ahead of schedule which is nice!!!
Okay so enough bragging. Oh wait, one more, I DROVE! Yes, a car, not a bike, for the first time since August. It was just to go pick up pizza but it was glorious. Oh how I miss driving.

Hopefully I will have pics of the sub ride soon. I’ll show you when they’re up. In the meantime, I hope everyone is doing well and getting over the flu that all of you in Vancouver seem to have, and please feel free to email me or hit me up on Facebook cause I love hearing from you. 

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