Hi All! Apologies for the lengthy hiatus. I started graduate school at MIT in the fall. What a whirlwind! Learned a lot, slept a little... you know the drill. I made a lot of fun stuff though. Check out some of my new makes from the class "How to Make Almost Anything." I'm trying to put together some new Instructables from the new techniques I learned. More to come!
Mr. Octopus Finale
It's done! Check out the instructable here.
Sidewalk Chalk
Two weeks ago I participated in a street painting fundraiser called, Italian Street Painting Marin (check out their website here) for the second time ever. My mom, my fella and I were an indestructible team of three, threatened only by the more-complicated-than-we-thought border. After 20 hours of sweaty labor, many rolls of blue tape, and A LOT of chalk dust we completed an 8'x8' psychedelic rendition of a fountainhead in front of the Pantheon in Rome.
Mr. Octopus
I realized I haven't written anything in over a month, but a lot has been happening! Aside from the normal grind of work and regular life things that just eat up time, I've been pouring my energy into finishing up an electronics learning project. I actually started this project awhile ago (let's not say EXACTLY how long it's been...), but it turns out learning new skills takes much longer when you're no longer a full-time student. So, with much perseverance and electronics assistance from my fella, I've managed to create an interactive nightlight. Kinks and bugs are yet to be worked out, but I've definitely made a lot of progress. I present to you, Mr. Octopus!
3D print and PCB designed by yours truly. Shout out to OSH Park for fabricating these awesome boards! As you can see, this revision needed a little debugging (not to mention it started smoking when I tried to program it). The newer revision is in the works. I can see the finish line!
GIF Discovery
So, to give you all some context, I joined a 6-week fat loss competition in the office with some coworkers three weeks ago. We decided to provided each other with encouraging emails each week (to promote healthy eating and increased exercise, blah blah blah... I haven't managed to totally give up sweets despite the effort). Anyway, I thought it was an opportunity to finally learn how to make animated gifs. Definitely a life changing experience. I followed this tutorial in case you are interested in making them too. For the last few weeks, I've used illustrator and photoshop to create the content, but next week I might experiment with aftereffects for fun.
Knitting Newbie
After many months of commuting back and forth to San Francisco, reading many novels (including the LOTR series, finally...), staring at my cell phone and feeling generally uncomfortable on the lovely BART trains, I've started to knit hats. I usually only participate in yarn crafts during winter months, but I figured my hats might turn out better if I practiced them all year. A formal apology to my friends who received lumpy blobs for Christmas (this year is looking up though!). I've made two simple hats so far and I've started a third one this week. I'm hoping to advance to more awesome patterns as the year progresses -- right now I'm trying to master the basic knit and purl stitches. Feel free to share any tips, stories or patterns!
First Blog Post (ever)
Hi there! Today marks the beginning of the J. Berry Blog. I will be posting updates of small personal projects, weird discoveries and other random cool stuff that pops into my head. For now, here are some tiny egg-shaped cars I made for my LEGO friends. If you would like to make one for your own LEGO people, check out my instructable here.
