Blog

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Hiatus

Not sure how these stops and starts happen, but I’m planning to be back on track for daily writing. I guess this time it was my brother’s wedding, which required travel across the country and interrupted my schedule. Or I’m lazy.

Our students are in their last month or so of school, and are working on a variety of interesting projects. Juniors and Seniors have cardboard boats under construction, while the Sophomores are just finishing their Sumobots. They had their first contest with them yesterday, and will have some time to learn from the contest and rework the bots. Additionally, we have some metal signs being finished from our waterjet machine, as well as a lasercut wood barrel top for a local distillery. Lastly, we finally hung up our Tetris game in the front lobby of the school. It looks great, and is getting a lot of attention. Some images below.

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Spotify

I had a rather strange first world problem today. I’ve recently begun using Spotify more often because it is linked to me new Tesla. I added several BBC podcasts as well as This American Life to my Spotify account, but when I tried to listen to them through the Spotify app in my Tesla, all the episodes were greyed out. On my other devices, my desktop and phone, the episodes show up normally and play without issue.

So, I contacted Spotify to see what is happening. Not sure they totally understood the issue, but after a lot of explaining, this was the response.

Somehow the Spotify app in a Tesla does not have the rights to certain podcasts. Spotify suggested that I contact Tesla regarding the issue, but I told them the car works just fine, it’s Spotify that seems to be having the issues. For now, I can listen to those greyed out podcasts using the TuneIn app in the Tesla. A minor annoyance, but curious now about how licensure agreements work for Spotify.

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Cold

It was snowing this morning. Hard to believe we are almost in April and there was an inch of snow on the ground soon after I arrived at work this morning. Luckily, it quickly melted in the clear, sunny day that followed the morning.

It’s my week with the Freshmen, and we are focusing on learning CAD. Starting with this new group has allowed me to go over each of my past videos and redo them to make sure the important aspects of the tutorial are being clearly stated. Each time I make a video I think they are getting better. Below is a recent redo of the Soda Bottle.

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Skeptics Guide to the Universe

This evening Ash headed into Somervile to the Crystal Ballroom at the Somerville Theater for the Skeptics Guide to the Universe Skeptical Extravaganza. I’ve been listening to the Skeptics since 2007 when I had my first job working in an architecture office. The long hours of drawing went by a little bit faster when listening to something, and the Skeptics was one of the first podcasts I began listening to while working.

We had VIP tickets which included a private discussion with the Skeptics prior to the show as well as a photo. It was a fun evening, and I’m glad I got to see them in person.

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Road Trip Rain

Ash and I took a short road trip to Norwood this afternoon to help create some party gifts for an event Ash is hosting for work. We took the Tesla, obviously, and were able to give it a longer workout with regard to Autopilot. On our way home there was a pretty torrential downpour in addition to heavy Boston traffic. You will never want to be in traffic again without Autopilot. The Tesla handles the stop and go flawlessly, and makes sitting behind other cars almost fun. It really takes the annoyance of sitting in traffic away, and even with the heavy rain it had no issues staying in its lane or recognizing cars changing lanes directly in front of us. It was pretty impressive to watch.