I have never had a better idea in my life. I had to model something practical and functional and I did. The simplest solutions are the best.

The jump rope I bought from Wal-mart was a prime sample of capitalism’s flaws. The first handle broke off far too easily and the second handle broke off without me even using it. I just picked it up after a while and it fell off. I refused to buy into their scheme and I decided to take two birds with one stone. Success in academia and in rebellion as well. An outstanding victory on two fronts. I feel proud and I’ll make no effort to hide it.

The model was of course very simple. Important details I took into account were the width of my hands and the width of the jump-rope cable itself. I had to make the handle a comfortable length and a perfect fit for the cable so I could put the cable through and tie a simple knot and not worry about it slipping out. So the hole has a diameter of 5 mm for the 4 mm wide rope, and the the handle is 13 cm tall.

Here’s the jump rope with the first handle printed. I thought it was over. I thought I had won. But my enemies, the big corporations, are smart and cunning and relentless and they plan ahead. The other original handle fell off the next day.

I would not accept defeat nor present a pretense of victory. I could’ve uploaded that picture and said I was done. But I couldn’t have lived with that decision.

I went back to the lab and hit print again. Once again, the best strategies are the simplest. I had trouble putting the cable through the second handle but you helped me out with that Lucas.

Here’s a picture of me looking idiotic and doing a trick so fast you can’t even see the cable. Photocreds go to Tabitha.

I’ll probably give the jump-rope to my best friend who I’m going to visit in Canada next week. Sharing kills corporations. We won. See ya.

When you said we’d be working with Unity I got a little excited. I started imagining myself decorating a little mountain with cartoon trees. I really enjoy working the most when I have full creative control. However whenever there are academic and logistical restrictions, such as a deadline, the most fun I have is by fucking around.

The first thing I did with unity was make water. Then I made a little invisible platform so I could stand in the water. Seeing the water move all on its own because of what I did and hearing ”Woah!” from Tabitha and Luke sitting behind me made me feel cooler than a cigarette in the 60’s. My excitement caused me to quickly ruin the serene environment by adding an untextured character model, a floating palm tree and a plane that would fly straight into the water as soon as I’d hit play.

Once I started to cooperate with my partner, Daniel, we realized that the plane was controlled by player commands. Then we figured out how to make it something playable. I made the floor bigger so we had space to try things out, and he figured out how to get the camera to follow around the plane in a youtube tutorial. The water and plane moving simultaneously was a bit much for his mac and the water would clip in and out, and it was our main environmental asset, making the clipping stupid disorienting.

We made the floor a solid color and removed the water and downloaded a breakfast themed asset package for the banter. We then put in a stack of pancakes and a table and made them both big as a nod to Alice in Wonderland because insanity is a recurring theme in my life. Things are starting to make sense though. Fuck all the gaslighters. We should’ve put in a white rabbit.

I submitted the video of Daniel playing the game through canvas. The VR controls were actually easier to use than the PC controls. We actually couldn’t figure out how to get the plane to stop until we tried it out in VR.

He was really helpful! Here’s his blog post.

I am now an expert. I can re-create Obi. An improved Obi, better than yours, Lucas! I will transcend and pass my consciousness onto my robot and become immortal.

BUT FIRST! I need to figure out how to play Crysis on a pi. You just wait though.

The process of putting an OS on the pi was simple enough with a little guidance from Josiah who had it down the day you taught it. It really was just a matter of following what your step by step guide showed. It was all on windows too so everything we saw exactly like it was on the guide. I realized that what stops people is distraction and doubt. You just have to pay attention to detail and everything goes smooth. Josiah was good at paying attention to the little things. I feel like that’s why freecad wasn’t too hard for me either. It’s literally just following instruction. I do wish I had more time to mess around with the pi more though.

Ta da. Be amazed. I’m in group B by the way.

I bought a jump-rope from target and the rope snapped off the handle the first time I used it. It was a shitty jump-rope. A product of some selfish business model taking over some jump-rope designer’s love of creation. A tool made to be broken so as to lead the naive to buy another. A vicious cycle. Born to die.

But you Lucas, have given this jump rope another chance! Through your teachings I am able to give true eternal life to this rope. By 3D-printing a new handle I will be able to make this tool forever useful. What more could a tool want?

Behold! Salvation! A 5 mm hole made to perfectly receive the 4 mm wide rope. A glorious union! Rejoice!

My sanity is waning dude I need some stability and cookies.

I’m so tired. Here are the models.

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I don’t generally look for problems, so this was harder than I had expected. Also, when I encounter a problem, I never consider the creation of an object as a solution, I always try to see what I can change around me or within me. I saw my shoes sprawled out on the floor and my first thought was to order them into a row but then I thought I could just make a box to make sure I never have to order them again, I’m just not sure how big a box I can print.

I liked freecad actually. Once I figured how to use it, it was so much easier to make your own creations than in tinkercad. I also felt like I got better with it quick, and definitely feel like I’m a step up from where I was before.

First the basic tutorial:

Below are the clip I made for my charger and a pictures of where it would go on my desk.

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Lastly I made two simple blocks that would hook on to each other.

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Creation gives purpose and I am a visual person so I enjoyed TinkerCAD somewhat. It was my first time 3D modeling and I wasn’t bad at it. I definitely like messing around with this more than AppInventor. It’s still stupid and frustrating though. Or maybe I’m just lazy. Look at my inventions and decide for yourself.

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I think I like blogging. The whole stream of consciousness concept was new to me and I like it. Now I do it more when I speak. I used to think it would drive people away. It turns it does.

Wu wei is the Confucian concept of non-action. It aligns with the ideology behind Laissez-faire economics. I thought this project would involve hours of grinding on appinventor on my own to make a working button. As I’ve worked with more and more people as an adult here in Tallahassee, I’ve learned a lot about making a team work, and this project is helping me realize just how much I’ve learned.

Here’s us at our first meeting!

Gino came up with the idea of making a game where we can throw rocks at corrupt politicians from Venezuela. We agreed that it should be made in the style of little carnival game, having targets with the faces of the politicians on them moving side to side.

What we have right now is a working demo. We still have to replace all the images with the art Gino is making. Taylor, our ”5”, did the hardest part and made the slingshot. Josiah made the hit counter, Demani made the collision work, and I made the animation for the targets. Abby is doing the whole text portion of the project.

Here’s what we have right now.

It is playable already but not nearly as pretty as it’s going to be.

Getting appinventor to launch the emulator properly was hard. My computer was not cooperating, maybe I’m not feeding right or giving it the proper love and attention. I was lucky enough to receive help from a girl in the row behind me who also was using windows and successfully launched her virtual android. She was more patient so the computer liked her more. Her laptop had died so she was willing to occupy herself assisting me. I supposed it kept her from grieving her dead laptop too.

Anyway she saved me and got things working by uninstalling and reinstalling emulator starter and updating the emulator and resetting its connections and properly installing the companion app this time. I had fucked up when I downloaded the companion app. I need to read the small text and pay attention to the small details. That goes for lego block coding as well as in life. Once that was done I managed to do Advanced Coding by copying you, Lucas, and make a functional clicker.

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For the home assignment I made game in which you have to guess a number from 1 to 100. I followed this youtube tutorial step for step and it worked! Parasitic behaviour? No! Efficiency!

I had to reinstall the emulator and restart my computer to get it to work and here it is!