Saturday, 25 February 2012

February classes, MLG, and a toy President

Hey All,

Reading Week has provided much needed time to work on our project! First things first, over the next few posts, I will be doing a recap over what has been taught to us over the last few classes. This, in turn, will provide a template of skills and tools that can be utilized for our prospective class project.

Last week, our class worked on GoogleSketchUp. I decided, or at least attempted, to sketch a model of the Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. The historic building, otherwise known as the "Grand Old Lady" on Church and Carlton Street, was built in 1931. See images below.

Side view (Top) and Front view (Bottom)
After working on my depiction of MLG - I shifted my focus towards integrating the tools provided by SketchUp for our project. Just as a refresher, Catherine and I are building a model of the White House. The model will contain an interface as a means to communicate historical information pertaining to a specific president of the United States of America. We searched Google for a SketchUp model of the White House. We were lucky - we found a detailed scale model of the White House. See pictures below.
South Lawn
West Wing and South Lawn
North Lawn
This SketchUp model is beneficial in many ways. First, it provides a blueprint on how to create detailed sketches. Second, in terms of our project, it showed a detailed version of the White House for our model that will be constructed using foam core. We expect to use construct a similar model (not as detailed) and place an action figure of a president in a certain spot on the model. See below.
John F. Kennedy Action Figure
When placed on a certain spot on the model, the action figure will trigger the interface via weight sensor. As of right now, we have purchased the foam core and are awaiting the arrival of our President of the United States of America (toy version).

My next post will be focused on using the Arduino. Stay tuned!

Sunday, 15 January 2012

The Vintage Goalie Mask

Early January has arrived. Students loathe this time of year. The pleasures enjoyed over the Christmas holidays are gone. School assignments have arrived, and are here to stay. My first assignment is to "brainstorm a 'history appliance'". Keeping with what I know and love, that being hockey, I am planning to invent a "Vintage Goalie Mask". Since the device must be connected to the past, I had envisioned a hockey goalie in the Sixties. My next thought was formulated from the notion of "communication with the dead". Aside from the morbidness, I was intrigued by this potential mode for understanding the past. Also, the combination of hockey and history was unbeatable.

In order to take this concept a step further, I decided to visit a few websites that Dr. Turkel had posted (see: Rube Goldberg) as well as YouTube clips on hockey. A link about the "The Evolution" of goalie masks had sparked interest, but the specific function of my device remained unclear. What information will it provide? Then, I thought of the audience. Who is interested in both hockey and its history? I immediately thought of the Hockey Hall of Fame - a place where millions of fans visit each year to see relics of the past. EUREKA (see Dr. Turkel's step two). Therefore, the device's function is informing fans of distinct eras of goalie masks.