Week 1: Principles and Practices/Project Management


Wednesday 27/01/16 was a very big day for me and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Watching a lecture through the internet had it′s challenges, but I certainly felt grateful that I have been given the chance to participate in this Academy.


On Thursday 28/01/16 I returned from the Fab Lab quite confused and a little bit upset. I thought that after every local lesson things would be much clearer, but this was definitely not the case! Thankfully, I got a lot of useful tips from people around me. I know in my heart that html can′t be that difficult… It is merely a matter of understanding, rather than simply executing. Upon my return home, I scanned the neighbourhood to find some Gin - I had already tackled the Tonic issue… Unsuccessful in my second quest of the day, I returned home to watch a tutorial on how to build html pages. I am sure that I can win this first Fab Lab challenge - and I remain positive that I will be able to reward myself with a Gin and Tonic!


On Friday 29/01/16 I spent a lot of time on Sublime Text 2 and I am happy to say that I have been able to answer my own questions successfully. I managed to include images, change fonts, make spaces between lines, fix the quotation marks, apostrophes and even the ‘three dots’ which were appearing as the Euro symbol. One valuable lesson is knowing that if I spell something in British English it will not show correctly and I need to remember to use American English.


Saturday 30/01/16: I concentrated on attempting to make things a little more beautiful. I asked for the help of a friend in looking up the code on Google and I managed to turn my homepage into something that I actually like! I can't say that I am completely happy with the whole website, but it definitely looks better than I thought it would. The big challenge is to get it live as my attempts today were not fruitful. The best news of the day is that I can finish off with a Gin and Tonic, since I have managed to solve the riddle of buying alcohol in Amsterdam!!


Sunday 31/01/16: I added pages for all weeks and days so that it is as ready as possible for my daily/weekly additions. I made sure that navigation works and proceeded a little further with my cosmetic changes. I remain unsuccessful with ‘Git’.


On Monday 01/02/15, I devoted some to time to watch some tutorials on ‘Git’. As it turns out there was an issue affecting the whole system so by the end of the day, (and as that was fixed) I managed to finally get the website online. To my suprise some of the links did not work, though they had been working fine in offline mode. Upon inspection of the code behind it, I realised that the problem was the capitalization of some letters, so I proceeded to fix my ‘typos’ and get the website running smoothly again. It is very rewarding to have found my way around ‘GitHub’ as I also get to see other people's work.

To begin with, I must admit that Git was a very big mystery to me. The first class was very confusing and I wasn't sure how it worked, or which parts of it were html and which was ‘Git’! As a result I thought that it operated like Dropbox and I was wondering why I seemed to be the only one working during that weekend! It was only after I spoke to Sander and told him to check out my website that I realized that it was not live on the internet!

The first ‘push’ was tricky to say the least and to get the hang of it took me at least three weeks. I can say that I have developed a ‘system’ which I find convenient. It allowes me to see my changes first and then push.

Also find here an interesting article about gender bias pull requests on Git Hub!

Tuesday 02/02/15. I attempted to add images and further description for the last day, but there was an issue which prevented me to ‘git pull’ and ‘git push’. The issue was the invisible file ‘.DS_Store’ which Macs create while operating. It took me quite a while to work out how to delete it, mostly because when I deleted it, it kept re-appearing! It really drove me insane that I just couldn't tell Terminal to overwrite it! I had to ask for support from the Fab Lab, do a Google search, find out how to see the invisible files, find how to hide them again until the solution was found through Terminal. I had to be in the directory where the invisible file was and type ‘rm .DS_Store’. Now that I have the website up and running, I am really looking forward to making something. Though it seems that this will take one more week, I′ve already had enough of computers - I need some hands on action!

The documentation that follows is my initial final project proposal of an insense burner with adjustable light.

Making sense of ‘In Sense’


As a final project I would like to work with motion, light and any other kinds of sensors, mostly in developing a design that I made in December 2013 when I started realizing my many limitations as a maker. I would like to revisit all the problems I had in making ‘In Sense’ (pictured above) and turn it into something that actually makes sense to me! I believe that it is a good starting point from where new knowledge can spring.

Back then I had asked for the help of a friend who had more knowledge than me on circuits and electronics. We made a base for the insence burner where we nested an Arduino board. I have to admit that I was never trully happy with the end result.

It had a lot of disadvantages such as:

  • The light was not very strong
  • I wanted the intensity of the light to increase with every hand gesture but there was only a light-off/light-on function
  • The laser cut base was too tight for the mechanism and it ended up damaging the wires
  • When it was exhibited, the infrared motion sensor stopped working after it got exposed to the exhibition hall strong lights
  • I had no knowledge of this kind (sensors, Arduino etc) and I couldn't be of any help!

The desired result was to preserve a ritual that is disappearing from Cypriot homes. In the morning, the woman of the house would burn incense, olive tree leaves and sometimes orange peels in the burner in an attempt to call for god and sanctify her house and her family. In order for this ritual to reach the hearts of her children and grandchildren she would hold it in front of them and they would make a characteristic motion of ‘gathering’ the smoke towards them. Then they would… cross themselves!

Though at this point I feel the need to clarify that I am not a religious person at all(!), I have always been interested in preserving customs and traditions through contemporary design.

I would also like to push the boundaries of the particular item much further…

  • Could it be releasing smoke or… calling for me to cross myself?
  • Can it release smells? Can I combine the actual burning of the leaves with technology?
  • Do I have to use actual traditional incense burner or can I replicate convincingly through modelling?

In general, during the course of the next few months, I would like to revisit problems which may have risen in my previous practise regarding the wiring of my lights, as well as the Health and Safety Issues in regards to them.

Home

Project Management Lecture

Back to Weekly Assignments

Home