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3D printer assembly, this is where we landed

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We got the 3D part.

We got the 3D part.

Ok, three and a half hours and we have the frame built and a few of the sections that will make up the traveling components holding the extruder. And we ate a bunch of pizza and candy and ice cream and drank a ton of soda and I’m buzzing like a 9 year old after a birthday party where they got too much cake.

Overall, I’d say we’re doing pretty well, here is what we’ve learned so far:

1. Clameditor KT Toomey laughs anytime you say the word “nut.” She is twelve, apparently.

2. If you turn on the close captioning in the video instructions, you get the best found poetry in existence. I am seriously going to do a whole post on these. Things like: “Bar owners ask a ranch to hold on,” and “You put the last place to the cruncher and hold the disease,” and the amazing classic:

My Dog? If this thing is going to throw up squirrel parts on the rug then, sure, I guess.

My Dog? If this thing is going to throw up squirrel parts on the rug then, sure, I guess.

3. The kids who were there were amazing. Students have already built a couple of units and were serving as resident experts. How cool is that?

4. Stevens and I may have brought too many tools. The extra wrenches were a good idea but the fact that we had three soldering irons and two hot glue guns between us may have been excessive.

5. Someone should open up a brewpub where you drink beer and build electronics from kits. It could be called “The Cask and Allenwrench.” I’d go.

Ok, back at it at 8:00 am tomorrow. Wish us luck!

And it begins!

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5:21

Everything you need is in the kit, including your own personal software engineer

Everything you need is in the kit, including your own personal software engineer

Allright, here we go people! I’ve got the kit, I’ve got a pile of sugar and I’ve got Marty. I await Stevens while I get my game on.

Progress: nill

Number of mistakes: 0

so far, so good

3D printers at O’Maley Liveblog of Glory!

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5:21

Everything you need is in the kit, including your own personal software engineer

Everything you need is in the kit, including your own personal software engineer

Allright, here we go people! I’ve got the kit, I’ve got a pile of sugar and I’ve got Marty. I await Stevens while I get my game on.

Progress: nill

Number of mistakes: 0

so far, so good

The pregame:

Salutations Clamunauts!

A special treat this weekend as you while away the hours of hurtling towards non-existence in this cruel universe of ours. I, your humble Clammisar, along with Clam Staff Photographer and “Guy who says he can get us free wifi” Stevens Brosnihan will be among those brave souls who have volunteered to “give up” our weekend in order to assemble two dozen 3D printers at O’Maley Innovation Middle School (motto: We don’t just call it that. Seriously, there’s a crap-ton of innovation going on here!).

Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.

Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.

Yes you read that right, two dozen. 27 kits to make these babies were donated* by the Gloucester Education Foundation to create a 3D printing lab at the school. YOU SHOULD GIVE THEM ALL THE MONEYZ FOR BEING THIS AWESOME!!! Three are already up and running, it’s up to us volunteers to assemble the rest.

Also, the suggestion I would be “sacrificing” by having to “give up” a weekend to do this is laughable. The tenor of my weekends as a parent with active kids and community responsibilities is somewhere between the flight deck of an aircraft carrier during combat operations and that scene in Apollo 13 when they try and make an air filter out of duct tape, a glove and an adult diaper. Chilling for the weekend in one place with my favorite people working on a fabulously geeky project that benefits kids while cramming pastries into the big hole in the center of my face? I think I can handle this.

But can I? You be the judge dear readers. 3D printers are notoriously finicky beasts. Seth Stevenson at Slate.com tried to get one to work and wound up making a bottle opener that looks like this:

An added dimension of Fail

An added dimension of Fail

So stay tuned as I try to turn a kit full of parts into a Star-Trek level tool of pure Geekgasmic W00t!.

“Point of order: First, Jim, tell us what the Hell is 3D printing and why should kids do this?”

I’m glad you asked that, mysterious bold italics. 3D printers, at least the ones we’re making here, are actually pretty useless. No, seriously. They are like home computers in 1981, they don’t really do much that’s useful from a day-to-day perspective.

Yah, sure, laugh. That kid probably spends weekends racing his mega-yachts now

Yah, sure, laugh. That kid probably spends weekends racing his mega-yachts now

But that’s not the point. What’s going on with this technology in general is nothing short of a fundamental shift in the way we design and make and consume things. Over the past 30 years we’ve digitized numbers and text then audio, video and eventually almost all meaningful communications. Every time we’ve done this there have been huge shifts in the way the world works as digital versions are replicable and easy to manipulate and share. 3D printing is part of the next effort in that long chain of digitization- the digitization of actual, material stuff.

With a 3D printer, to make something you either download an existing design or you create your own (kids will be creating their own). They will learn everything from using Computer Assisted Design (CAD) programs and actually producing objects.

Also, if the currency of the future is Yoda heads, we're stylin

Also, if the currency of the future is Yoda heads, we’re stylin

Just like with computers in the early 80s, learning this skill will have huge positive implications for our future, just like learning programming in the 80s had for a generation of programmers. 3D printers are also not the only technology that use the fundamental principles being taught, but it is the most accessible to students. And it opens the door to emerging technologies like nano-scale fabrication (MIT is building a 50 million dollar nanotech center on campus as we speak, and they don’t do that on a lark), atomically precise manufacturing which will change the world and even digital designs used in film and video games today.

You have 3D modeling to thank for this image

You have 3D modeling to thank for this image. And madness.

For us, what the technology we’re putting together over the weekend allows kids to do is learn these skills and see the outcomes of their designs that incorporate math, engineering, computer literacy and art with the result being a tangible object they can hold in their hands.

So, when I said above that they are useless, I was wrong. They are the ultimate education machines for these highly-relevant skills. It’s so amazing that we’re doing this. Right here in Gloucester, peeps!

Also with the right attachments you can print cupcakes! Stay tuned!

*The printers were actually donated with outside funds by raising money and stuff. For some reason we were recently told the awesome new Chromebooks the 8th graders all got were “donated” by the City, but that is obviously absurd. Providing funding for the schools to buy tools to teach kids in the 21st century is not “donating,” that’s what the city is just supposed to do. Do they “donate” gas for the snowplows? Do they “donate” hoses for the fire department? Oy.

Philosophy 101, 101

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What the fuck is the deal with all the memes around an imaginary college introductory philosophy class? Know what I’m talking about? Every once in a while from one of my super-religious relatives I get an email (they don’t try and fax anymore) telling the story of a noble student standing up to a pompous philosophy prof. In the tale the instructor has just said something no professor of philosophy in our universe would ever utter, like: “God does not exist. Here I will prove it with some shoddy logic or just stand here on this box and wait for God to push me off, har har.” These people obviously have tenure.

The Professor is alternately described as every bad thing a certain segment of old white people can think of: He’s an atheist. He’s a member of the ACLU. He’s gay, he’s drinking a fair-trade latte with wheat germ. And wearing a Che T-shirt. He has Sun Kill Moon tickets hanging out of his skinny jeans pocket and brews his own beer which he calls “SingleGear IPA” he has a cat named “Zune” and plays semi-pro amateur kickball. Both his ears are pierced. He was, up until very recently, on their lawn.

And then the noble student either refutes the dumbass argument in the most simplistic way possible or we skip that part and he comes down out of the audience of the lecture hall and just straight-up cold cocks him in his stupid ponytailed head with the fist-o-righteousness just like Jesus would have done. We then find out the student was Albert Einstein or a Marine named Todd or a Navy Seal or something.

Every word true

Every word true

Fortunately, the Internet has had a lot of fun with this meme, and has adjusted it appropriately:

Internet, you are my hero

Internet, you are my hero

But Internet aside, apparently enough people want to tell off/punch an imaginary philosophy professor that this has become a feature-length film starring TV’s Hercules as the asshole professor. This must be his penance for promoting paganism. We assume that his next role will combine his penchant for epic heroes and appealing to old people with a superhero action film called “The Cane Shaker.”

Also Walker Texas Ranger with a Walker

Also Walker Texas Ranger with a Walker

There is a lot of stupid here to unpack. So much stupid. But if there is anything worse than the Marine Todd, Albert Einstein and the Jesus of Hercules weirdness, it’s this turdwallop:

This shows up on someone’s FaceBook wall at least once per quarter and every time I physically restrain myself from using a quantum computer-enabled DNS attack followed by a well-placed series of hatchet blows on major fiber optic hubs in an effort to take down the Internet.

What the fuck class is this? Is this Intro to Platitudes? Do the study groups meet at Cracker Barrel in order to read off placemats? And why stop at the milk? There are radio waves, cosmic rays and subatomic particles aplenty coursing through the jar in between the solids and liquids jammed up in there. What do neutrinos represent, for instance? Skittles, maybe? There’s millions of them coursing through the jar every second completely unimpeded by matter, so maybe they could represent the persistent idiocy of humanity that makes me want to drink gasoline in order to weep flaming tears onto my laptop?

For the record, I took introduction to philosophy in college. You know what we did? We read a book of Kirkegaard so big it could be used as counterweight on a drawbridge. We talked a lot about “perception.” And I suppose the most important thing is we were forced to actually defend what we believed.

Pretty much like that, yeah

Pretty much like that, yeah

One assumes this is what’s got the inventors of Marine Todd, the writers of God’s Not Dead and the expropriators of Albert Einstein so pissed off. Not the bizarre “declaration of absolute truth” that anyone who’s ever spent any time around a philosopher knows never happens because that would preclude them getting off on their “pestering you with one trillion hypotheticals” fetish they all share.

It’s the requirement of having to explain some kind of logical underpinning to your beliefs rather than just, you know, having them because they feel good that’s got the ALL CAPS set so mad. FURIOUS, apparently. So they leave our reality and make up their own, where philosophy professors are stupid and where felony assault is a cherished outcome. That’s as close to an explanation for this phenomena as I can figure.

I have no idea what this is but people tell me it is funny. I don't have a TV.

I have no idea what this is but people tell me it is funny. I don’t have a TV.

But nothing explains the fucking jar upassedness. I will burn down the world next time I see that bullshit, I swear.