This weekend I was helping people make Toy Mash-ups at Market Collective when a girl named Georgia* came in. She was pretty stoked about the activity and as picked her toy parts she asked what we had to put them together.

I slid the big hot glue gun away from her as I gave her a low temp glue gun and explained how to use it.  She cut me off and said, “I already know how to use a hot glue gun. I learned at the science centre.”

Amazing! We almost never get to hear this part of the story–how confident and skilled people feel *after* a visit. With bells going off in my head I told her, that may be the very glue gun you learned with at the science centre. We’re from the science centre. She then took a closer look at the table and pointed out where we’d collected each material from Open Studio at the science centre. The wires and capacitors from “the place where you take apart electronics.” The buttons and sequins “from the place where you make stuff with glue.”

She didn’t use our fancy exhibit names, but she was carrying around a model of Open Studio in her mind–and a vision of herself as someone who definitely doesn’t need to be told how to use a hot glue gun.

*Yo Georgia, sorry if you read this and are embarrassed. But you are quite rad. Will you please think about volunteering with us when you are old enough?
-dana

Thanks to Ziff for help with this (and many) blog posts.

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This modifiable pie chart stencil sure is going to come in handy in the New Science Centre. I think we’ll try to attach a fan-like sheild to the moving arm to increase the contrast between the two parts of the chart.

Thanks for the awesome design Golan Levin // STUDIO for Creative Inquiry.

http://infosthetics.com/archives/2011/06/infovis_graffiti_spray_painting_infographics_in_the_wild.html

-dana

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I don’t know what we’ll use it for yet, but I know we’ll need this. It’s a hand held printer that you slide across the paper to print stuff. Amazing.

http://boingboing.net/2011/06/03/handheld-inkjet-prin.html

And here’s a more believable demonstration… look at its resolution!

http://www.youtube.com/user/PrintDreams#p/a/u/1/_eU8TEaXRlE

This hand held print on anything machine is pretty rad too.

-dana

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Its been a while since we’ve had the Prorotype Lab open, but you can still be involved.

Come to this DIY Instrument and Circuit Bending workshop this weekend at Local Library!

We’ ll be exploring the weird and wild side of DIY technology, Frankensteining beloved childhood toys and making our joints sing in a series of afternoon workshops.

The New Science Centre team will be doing a Circuit Bending drop-in program that we’re planning for the NSC. Our pal Craig Storm will be showing us how to make Light Theramins. I’ll be helping people (somehow) hack circuits to our bodies to make a giant dance piano. And there will be a free tour of Cantos at the end.

Come play and learn stuff!

This Saturday, June 4th, 1-4pm
Local Library
131 7th Ave SW. Entrance is from the alley behind the church.

-dana

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We are getting ready for Market Collective where we want to create a time lapse video of the cardboard forest we’ll be building over the weekend. (If you’re in town, come by and help!)

We’ve used a lot of kludges to create time lapse videos over the course of this project. I’m here to announce there will be no more time lapse rdiculousness because I just found the best time lapse software in the world and it’s open source!

Gawker

Download it. This program is amazing! Seriously, it took me 45 seconds to schedule and make a time lapse video of the Lab. It can also do motion detected video, which I haven’t tried yet because I had to stop messing around with it to write this post.

Actually, it is taking infinitely longer to find a VGA adapter to connect it to a computer. Anybody have one we can borrow?

-dana

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When not at the science centre I help do rad things at a local all-ages space called Local Library. This weekend is our one year anniversary. We got a sweet write-up in FFWD and will be having a anniversary extravaganza this weekend! So if you’re in town and want to come to some every-age-welcome ridiculousness from 1-5pm on Saturday there will be:

bands
tacos
silk screening
button making
a wild dodgeball game
and cake!

-dana

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We tried a pilot during E&I where we attempted to make our own light bulbs out of found materials. Our efforts kind of mirrored Edison’s experimentation with filaments (hair, bamboo, bits of wood.) I’d post pictures only unlike Edison’s attempts this one never got out of the lab (and that’s saying something for a pilot.)

A mind-blowing link Katherine sent me about 10 minutes ago sent me through a spiral of links until a Japanese site taught me the real way to make your own light bulbs.

In case you’re interested, here you go. This one’s for you, Dan.

http://www.hosobuchi-lamp.co.jp/

It looks harder than what we had in mind for the pilot.

hand made light bulb

-dana!

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