A Post in the Meanwhile: After ToorCamp

Working on some paper mechanical toys.

I swear, I’m still around. Things have been busy here. After weeks of readying for ToorCamp, we finally attended! From August 8-12, we camped out at Neah Bay on the Makah Reservation with 500 other hackers and makers. Hubster conducted a workshop on making ones own MaKey MaKey clone to create a Banana Piano. His project was even featured at Hack A Day. I did a five-minute Ignite-style talk titled, “My First Life Hack: Unschooling in Childhood and Beyond.” There were some technical difficulties as some of the photos and slides didn’t make the conversion from Power Point to Open Office, but it’s on my August to-do list to record the spoken parts and upload the slideshow to YouTube (and this blog). I also did a workshop on making basic paper mechanical toys (automata), which is what I’ve been doing for the past few weeks. It was a fun experience, Hubster and I both learned a lot.  ToorCamp was worth the effort to get there, and we met some fantastic people.

Now that we’re back home,  I’ve been re-organizing so we can have more room in our 1000 square foot flat for “making” things. Apart from my small desk (which holds my desktop computer), and the narrow kitchen bar, we don’t have any table surfaces. We need workspace, and also more storage for our increasing boxes of wires and components (Hubster) and paper tools, and crafting supplies (me). Stuff has started to overtake everything as I’ve not de-cluttered in about two months. This weekend we’ll be looking at renting a spare room through ActivSpace, but before we pull the trigger on that (not-inexpensive) solution, I’m working to maximize what we’ve got. This means a lot of sorting through stuff, re-arranging things, getting rid of furniture that no longer works for us, and getting new furniture that will help us achieve our ends.

Also, I’m reading through books that need to be returned to the library. I borrowed too many several weeks ago, and now other people have them on reserve. What do you know, books on homeschooling are very popular right now, two weeks before school begins. Ha! More later, time to run some errands. Just wanted to check in and say Hello!