LookIt

Bowing to my father, maker-style

I went to the Maker Faire this weekend to hang out with the Old Skool misfits, even the young ones. I ran into a friend who was volunteering at the "learn how to solder" booth and, peeking in, could see people of all ages learning Soldering 101. They had bought $1 kits that, when put together, became a badge with a blinking multicolor LED.

Soldering and basic electronics something that my father taught me starting when I was six. We put together Heathkits, starting with the very basic and moving up to full stereos and a television, part by part. There was a lot of parts sorting, reading the instructions, and soldering. I loved it, and the experience definitely helped shape many parts of my personality. I am quite willing to try technical things with which I have no experience; fixing comes second nature; organizing projects is not a concern.

After wandering around the Maker Faire a bit, I came back and offered to volunteer to help in the booth. "Go for it" the organizer said, and I plunged in. People there were genuinely interested in learning the most basic of electronic assembly. Kids were wary but excited. Adults, many older than me, wanted to see if they could learn this skill. A number of dads with their sons and daughters quietly admitted to me that they had no idea how to solder, and I let them save face by making it look like they were remembering as we went along. I gave my "soldering 101" pitch about 40 times in the next 90 minutes, held kits so folks could make their first joint, got minor burns a few times by irons held in shaking hands, encouraged newbies along the way, saw big sisters who finished quickly turn and help their little brothers, and got out of the way of the folks who were already doing fine. A couple of people came up to me later in the day and pointed happily to their still-blinking badges.

I intend to volunteer next year for more time in the booth, and maybe a few more folks who would never otherwise touch LED to battery will get the sense of accomplishment that the folks I worked with yesterday did.

Dad: thank you for getting me going here. Sure, you also did the normal taking-off-of-the-training-wheels stuff too, but I deeply appreciate the early electronics experience.

Screwdriver kit

My latest geek tool fun: a 54-piece bit driver set. I doubt I will ever need a spanner, but I have already used the tiny Torx and Philips 00 bits for installing a new hard drive in my laptop. It feels like a quality product for $20, and the iFixIt folks run a great service on the money they make from selling tools and replacements.

Why does Facebook want me to be friends with Rosalinda Walters?

Amid all the legitimate concerns about Facebook's default privacy invasion, I have come across a mystery. At least a few times a month, Facebook suggests that I should be friends with a particular person I don't think I know:

I'm 99% I'm sure I don't know a Rosalinda Walters. (And boy am I going to be embarrassed if I'm wrong...). The number of Facebook "friend requests" from people trolling for contacts is growing, but this is different: Facebook says it thinks I might know her. Clicking through to her profile is of no help:

Still no clue. Facebook identifies this person as male, although the photo kinda disagrees with that. He isn't friends with any of my friends. Why does Facebook think I should be friends with this person? Is this a test of whether I would say "yes" to a suggestion of an almost-comically buxom person whom I didn't know? Or just more bad database mining on Facebook's part?

One disturbing part of the profile page is the "Report/Block this Person" link. Given that I got to the profile page from Facebook's suggestion, it is completely inappropriate for me to have the possibility of hurting Rosalinda's online reputation at this stage in the interaction. It is probably too much to expect Facebook to have a "Report Our Error To Us" link, but to allow me to trash someone that Facebook suggested shows a callous disregard for its users' reputation.

Decentralizing Wikipedia

Jason Scott has an interesting thought-piece and call to action on Wikipedia. His argument about the problems of centralization of Wikipedia is not black/white. He proposes decentralizing only the parts that people want to support as decentralized. His examples of what might get published are intriguing and show the vast possibilities of using Wikipedia not as a central place for finding knowledge, but as a central place for knowledge dissemination.

Multi-user iPads

Daring Fireball points out an interesting post about family use of an iPad. Others have already talked about the difficulty of sharing iPod Touches: what if two people have different desired sets of apps? Or different sets of high scores on the games?

If Apple can make a simple way of "switching users" for the iPad and iPod Touch, they could easily become family tablets. I propose that passwords be optional, and parental controls of some sort be part of the picture. This could be done on other brands of tablets, of course, but I suspect that Apple will do it better than a typical Android tablet supplier.