What About Socialization?

As I talked about earlier, Lydia and I are working on learning electronics together using the Arduino programmable microcontroller. Here’s the first episode of our video blog, in which Lydia demonstrates the “hello world” of electronic circuits: The Blinking LED.

I’m so excited!

I’ve been working with a small group of women on a new co-op to start in Fall 2008. And it’s all starting to come together! We have a get-to-know-us event coming up that ought to be fun– making Artist Trading Cards.

Website is still getting cobbled together, but there’s some really-poorly-formatted information up at the location in the meantime.

Here it is: The Community Co-op . Be kind, I do know it is hideous. I don’t do html and wanted to get something up there. The ever-talented husband will be launching a multi-featured lovely site there as soon as he’s done being a perfectionist about it.

(I am of the “schlock-things-together-and-call-it-a-day” school of crafting, writing, decorating, and every other -ing. He is of the “I’m-going-to-measure-to-make-sure-this-is-absolutely-perfect” school. We make a good team. How he puts up with me, I’ll never know.)

But I digress. It’s really fun for me to see all of these nebulous plans and hopes start coalescing into something real.

Lydia and I have started working on electronics together. I’ve finally got a decent kit of materials together: a collection of basic components as well as an Arduino programmable microcontroller. My goal is to help her understand the way electronic things work, to help her become a maker and not just another consumer of technology.

So far, for source materials, we’re using two primary sources:

• Electronic Circuits for the Evil Genius, and
• a great set of notes from Tod E. Kurt, from his ‘Spooky Projects - Introduction to Microcontrollers with Arduino‘ classes.

The thing that I like about our approach is that Lydia is getting the fundamentals of both programming and electronics. And we’re having a ton of fun.

We’ll be taking pictures of our projects and maybe even making some videos. Stay tuned!

(My Great (x3) Grandfather McKinney in the Civil War)

For the last week or so, I’ve been ditching the schooltime classical music in favor of a bunch of Smithsonian Folkways recordings. Woody Guthrie & Mahalia Jackson are every bit as important as Puccini. More relevant, too, since we’re studying American history at the moment. Ms. Lydia will be wandering around singing “In the Pines” for weeks now.

Also, while we’re on the subject of American history, we’ve been watching Gone With the Wind for the last few days. I’m ashamed to say I’d never seen it before, and wow, wow, wow! It’s amazing. Yes, I do realize that everyone else in the world already knew that.

So many Civil War books this past month. I really hope that there is at least one read-aloud book before summer that won’t make me bawl. Probably not. I do so love all of the literature I’ve been exposed to in Sonlight this year, even if most of it makes me cry. I’m rather sappy that way.