Forty

LONG LIVE THE KING: Yesterday and this morning, our art curriculum consisted of paying tribute to The King in confectionery form. Specifically, sugar cookies with fondant, with Elvis-related images carefully painted atop. 

A friend of mine was born on the day Elvis died. She turned 40 this year, which means Elvis Aron Presley has been gone for four decades. 

Wow.

I'll never forget hearing the news. 

It was a sweltering hot day in Southwest Washington. My sister and I were playing ping pong in the semi-basement garage of our home when we got the devastating news.

Today, I was thinking about that day and that year, and really, '77 was seminal in my life.

A humble peanut farmer became president of the United States.

And 1977 was the year the first Star Wars movie came out. Talk about a game changer. 

That year, David Bowie's album "Low" was released. 

Tracks on it included the haunting "Heroes."


And then, come August, Elvis Presley died. 

Devastation.

Forty years. Gone in the blink of an eye.

But enough of me reminiscing. Back to the cookies. ;)

SMART DREAM HOME: This afternoon, the kids attended a workshop at Living Computers: Museum + Labs. 

The challenge was to take a dollhouse and turn it into a 'smart home.'  

I'll let CJ tell you a bit more about it. 

At the Living Computer Museum today, we participated in a 2-hour workshop, titled the Barbie Smart Home workshop. As described on the Living Computer Museums + Labs' official website, "In this 2-hour workshop, student teams wire-up a doll-sized smart home to come alive at night. Learn what it takes to merge good interior design with predictive sensors, circuits, and Javascript programming in this program for 10-16 year old students."

Annabelle and I were the only 2 students in the class, thus essentially making it a private tutoring session. Using a device known as the micro:bit [sic], I managed to hook up multiple devices to a dollhouse to turn it into what is known as a "smart home".

For example, I was able to program an LED to turn on when its sensors (located on the micro:bit) were in the dark. I was also (with trial and error) able to get a speaker to play a ditty upon the front door being opened.

And here's what Annabelle had to say. ...

Today at the Living Computers: Museum + Labs, my brother and I took a workshop called “Barbie Smart House”, which involved programming multiple functions for a toy house. We used a Micro-Bit Brand Micro Controller to program things like switches, motors, speakers, and lights. In my toy house, I included a speaker doorbell, a servo motor ceiling fan, and a light-sensing LED that would turn on when it was dark.

The actual programming was a lot like another programming language me and my brother have used called Scratch. The system allows you to easily program by putting blocks of code together like a puzzle. The Micro-Bit was set up in a way where we could simply download the program and it would almost immediately work. The only bad part was that CJ and I were the only two people to sign up! That did, however, give us a chance to go at our own pace and get lots of help from our teacher. It was really interesting to learn more about smart homes and how to make one on our own!