Making Things: Hardware & Gardening

Last weekend, I got to participate in Hackbright's first-ever Hardware Hackathon, Silicon Chef! It was incredibly fun, challenging and inspirational. My team was working on ZigBee networking with XBee shields: tiny devices that create small personal area networks using radio signals to communicate on a "mesh network" -- that is, networks with no central control or high-powered transmitter/receiver.

In theory, we would team up with 1-2 other teams and generate, transmit & process signals that would activate LED lights, power a motor, send a message to an LCD screen, or some other fun & creative network project.

XBee shield with antenna

The idea was fairly basic, and we got these AWESOME SparkFun kits to build out our ideas - each kit had an Arduino redboard, a bunch of wires & resistors, LED lights, an accelerometer, LCD display, and booklet with illustrations on how to build each circuit. As it turned out, we spent the entire first day troubleshooting our XBee shields; we realized at the end of the day that they weren't actually compatible with the red Arduinos that were supplied in the kits [cue the sad "You Lose" gameshow music]. 

On Sunday, we returned with renewed energy, determined to build something cool with what *did* work. Our fantastic mentor, Bill Ward, showed up with Arduino Blue boards, which had the proper connectors to work with the XBee shields. After a brief brainstorming session, we decided to build an LED light show powered by a remotely-networked accelerometer. Fun AND pretty! We worked our butts off to get everything working, and in the end we were able to demo our project, albeit at the very last minute. Hooray!

Me (center) with teammates Joanna Ma (left)
aka @Pegui and Erica Baker (right),
aka @Ericajoy. Brilliant ladies!

Yes, I love seeds.

On the homefront, we've been working after-hours to get our garden into production mode. Sent off some soil samples for a test to make sure we're okay to plant directly into the ground, and in the meantime, we sowed a cover crop of buckwheat over the areas we hope to plant veggies. Buckwheat makes great green manure, meaning once it begins to grow, you till it under for extra soil nutrition. We also planted "Bee-friendly" and "Hummingbirds' Delight" flower mixes in our front garden beds, and have been watering them twice daily -- hope to see some of the little guys sprouting up soon!

Little sprouts, all in rows 

Speaking of sprouts, we have those too... Rainbow chard, lettuce mix, broccoli raab and mustard greens, to be precise. They didn't take more than a few days to pop their pretty heads up out of their starter pots, and in a couple weeks, will be ready to go into the ground. If our soil test results come back with the thumbs-up, we have all these other seeds that we'll start at that time -- I can't wait!


And finally, here's a pretty picture of our cranberry bean plant, who's really going off right now. We'll probably save 10-15 beans to sprout into new plants, since we won't get much of a meal out of the total harvest these pods will produce. That being said, I'm sure we'll cook up a few of them, just to enjoy some of the fruits of our labor ASAP!

Beauteous beans

Back from a break

I've been on a bit of a hiatus over the past month... So much has happened!! Here's the run-down:

(1) I finished Hackbright!!!

Our program ended about a month ago, though it still feels really fresh. I miss being with all the brilliant HB ladies & instructors every day, but carry the experience with me and am constantly using the lessons I learned there, programming and otherwise. Check out this short video of our career day -- the culmination of the program!

 

My project is still in "stealth" mode, so you won't find it on the web. Ha! Not really stealth, but I'm implementing unit testing and some APIs before deploying. It's a barter web app for businesses, and will be a valuable tool for us, friends who run their own bizs, and others, so it's gotta be solid when I launch. Wish me luck!


(2) I got married (again)!!!

What happens when you don't want a big, intense, emotionally-/financially-/life-draining "wedding"? You end up with 3 (or more) little ones! Whoops :)

Wedding #1 - June 9, 2013

A friend recently said, "It seems like you guys have gradually gotten more & more married over the past year." She's right! We had a religious ceremony + party last June for my husband's family, and a civil marriage ceremony in Oakland last December. Then this past month, my parents hosted a celebration for us back in NJ... Whew!

It still feels surreal to have had so many "weddings", since one of the reasons we hadn't wanted to do a whole big shebang was that we didn't want people making a huge fuss over us -- fusses tend to lead to stress, fights, meltdowns and such. But it turns out the people who love you most actually *want* to make a big fuss over you when you decide to spend your life together & sign a form about it. And because we had no major expectations, we left the planning to our families both times, which kept relations pretty chill. Luckily we both have awesome families, so have now had 2 awesome wedding parties; one on each coast!

Officially "married," at
Lake Merritt in Oakland
Dec 20, 2012

The most recent of the parties was on June 1st, also my dad's birthday! It ended up being a family reunion of sorts, with cousins, aunts, uncles & friends flying in from Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, Seattle, Las Vegas & even Peru!! We felt so lucky, so blessed, so grateful... and we still do. We have so much love around us!

#3 - Dad's toast with the fam! June 1, 2013

There was barbecue & bluegrass, cupcakes galore, cousins & their adorable offspring, so much hugging & laughing. It took us a couple weeks just to come down from the euphoria of the weekend.

So finally I'm back in the swing of things. We've been smoking fish on our new stovetop smoker which is fantastic. I'm working on some code challenges and tutorials, going back in to Hackbright a few times a week, generally appreciating what life has to offer right now, and of course - always learning!

Bigtime Week 9

Another week is flying by and we're getting really close to Career Day (May 7)! Things are moving along pretty well with my project, though of course there's always going to be more to do on it.

For now, here's a flow chart I put together for a tech talk on MVC (Model-View-Controller) model in Flask. For those unfamiliar with the jargon, MVC is the architectural framework for the type of applications we're all building, and Flask is a web framework for implementing MVC.

Making it helped me understand all these moving parts and how they interact with each other; getting a firm grasp on these parts meant I was able to focus a lot more on writing my code and planning ahead... It feels great to have demystified one tiny little portion of web engineering for myself! Hope others might find it useful too.

On Intense Creativity & Building Things... Week 8 of Hackbright!

Curious. Driven. Thoughtful. Inquisitive. Funny. Irreverent. Brave.

I find myself repeating these words when asked about my colleagues at Hackbright Academy. Everyone is intense about something: traveling, tinkering, dancing, cooking; intensely critical, intensely ambitious, intensely focused.  We must be intense, otherwise we wouldn't thrive in this environment, where we set aside our insecurities to plunge headfirst into pursuing a dream once thought inconceivable.

Programming gives us an entirely new way to control our environments, in super-creative capacities. Suddenly, we all have new tools at our disposal. Suddenly, we can talk to machines in their languages and make them DO things we want them to -- and the ramifications of this newfound power are almost unlimited.

Arduino micro-controller, able to
communicate with lights,
cameras, motors & more! 

We've discovered that robotics isn't just for high-level scientists in research labs, and programming isn't just for tech-wizards who started in grade school. Today, affordable technologies like Raspberry Pi and Arduino, along with vast repositories of open-source software & project guides, enable anyone with a basic knowledge of programming and a knack for problem-solving to build nearly any practical computerized gadget they can imagine.

Raspberry Pi, the brains behind
the automatic pet feeder

So while I'm not about to construct an automatic cat feeder this weekend, I *am* already reading the instructions, checking out the code on github, and talking to my partner about how he can help with each step of the project. It feels amazing to know I can take control of my surroundings by building things that make life easier, more interesting and ultimately, more functional.

Leap motion controller

And in the past week, I've seen my classmates demonstrate 3D motion sensors, devise their own algorithms, instruct our teachers on new technologies, and encounter more "A-HA!" victory moments than I can count. What an amazing transformation from when we started! As intense people, we can be pretty hard on ourselves -- but it's clear to me that we've all acquired a new superpower. From "Hello, world" to "Watch out, world" in just 10 weeks!

Fish & Code and Code & Fish

Somehow I deleted an entire blog post that had been saved from earlier this evening. Here's the replacement.

Tech -- it's already Week 6 at Hackbright! We've finished the formal curriculum and are beginning our projects, which is really exciting. I'm happy with the project I chose & have already had an awesome time storyboarding, mapping and creating my data model. Had an energizing meeting with my mentor where she pointed out small gaps in my data model and potential clusterf*cks to avoid -- SO HELPFUL! I continue to be absolutely blown away by the calibur of the teachers, alum and other mentors.

Yes, there are FOUR kinds of oysters here.
If you ask, I'll tell you where to get 'em!

Food/Life -- Had another insanely busy but awesome weekend. I managed to squeeze in a bikram class each day before I had to tutor, which keeps me calm, balanced & pumped full of endorphins, and is a minor foil to sitting in a chair all week. Was regaled on Saturday evening with a lovely bouquet of flowers & a few dozen oysters from my husband (aka the sweetest person I know) to celebrate my Hackbright halfway point. Then we explored an Asian strip mall in Milpitas and discovered a pretty respectable (ie, actually *Japanese*) sushi place. We had whole mackerel sashimi and I so wish I'd taken a picture of their gorgeous presentation! Rows of beautifully folded sashimi slices, with the fish body curving around them and seaweed salad accents, topped with a pile of shaved green onions & ginger. After you eat the sashimi, they deep-fry the carcass karaage-style and you eat it like a cracker. A hot, crunchy, greasy fishmeat and fishbone cracker... Heaven :)

On Sunday we made smoked albacore tuna salad to sample for the folks at Three Stone Hearth on Wednesday (Hackbright friends might recognize it as my Monday lunch). It's really good. Here's the recipe:

Smoked Tuna Salad (4-6 servings)

Ingredients

• 8-10 oz smoked tuna loin, chunked
• 4-5 radishes, diced
• 2 celery stalks, diced
• 1 medium shallot, finely diced
• 1 dill pickle, diced
• 1/2 cup parsley, rough chopped
• 1 tbsp mayonnaise or mayo substitute
• 2 tbsp plain yogurt (I use 2%)
• juice of 1 lemon
• fresh black pepper

Instructions:

Combine first 6 ingredients in a mixing bowl; stir to combine well. Add mayo, yogurt & lemon juice and fold mixture to thoroughly incorporate the dressing into the salad. Stir to less to keep the tuna chunky; more if you like it mashed-up. Sprinkle on some fresh black pepper to taste and refrigerate before serving.

Week 4 at Hackbright

Week 4 - another challenging one! Just when I feel like I've grasped one new concept or syntax, we're onto another, and I feel as perplexed as when we started, though I know I've already come a long way.

First, a delightful fish picture, since that is the other major part of my life right now, and more interesting to photograph than code! Note: if you're squeamish, skip the 2nd picture (below).

Recently, we've had a bunch of Black Gill Rockfish left over from deliveries, and decided to make some lovely ceviche with it. Ingredients were simple -- citrus juice (lime & orange), cilantro, red onions, radishes, cucumbers and avocado. On the side are some whole wheat pita, toasted into chips. YUM!

This week we've been working with Flask, SQLite3 and JavaScript, which are awesomely powerful when pieced together. Even while I don't grasp precisely how to use these tools, its easy to imagine what they're capable of. And kind of amazing to realize that basically the entire internet (and most computer software) is built on top of these simple databases, queries & functions! Of course there's a little more to it all than that, when you factor in graphics, design and usability, but much of that is the so-called icing on the cake.

Anyway, I haven't stopped feeling overwhelmed, and am looking into staying over in SF a couple nights a week, so I can focus on studying & still get a good night's sleep. The thought of a 20 or 30-minute commute to a place where I can delve back into the computer for another few hours unhindered makes me wistful... Not that I don't absolutely adore my amazing husband & crazy kitty, but my time at Hackbright is so limited, I really want to make the most of the remaining weeks.

And now for picture two: Smelt heads! I processed a bunch of night smelt for a customer who had requested fish without heads; it was pretty funny & interesting to wind up with a tupperware full of little fish heads. Also fun to dissect a couple of 'em and check out the brains, sand/pebbles, tongue & tiny little bones inside.

Quick & Easy Fish Soup

Tonight we had a surplus of black gill rockfish on our hands, along with some fish stock, veggies, and very little time. We threw together a soup pretty quickly that ended up being delicious!

Here's what was in it:

• 1/2 lb rockfish fillets
• 3 cups stock of your choice
• 2 tbsp citrus juice (orange, lemon, lime, etc)
• 1/4 cup white wine OR 1 tbsp sweet vinegar
• 1 carrot, diced
• 1 celery stalk, diced
• 1/2 cup frozen peas
• 1 cup frozen spinach
• 1 shallot OR 1/2 cup onion, diced
• Olive oil

Here's what we did:

In a saucepan on medium heat, sauté onion, carrot & celery in some olive oil for about 5 minutes. Add stock, wine/vinegar and citrus, bring to a boil on medium-high heat. Add peas & spinach, stirring to mix well and maintaining the boil. Add fish; cover and reduce heat to low. Simmer for 5-7 minutes, until fillets begin to form visible flakes. Serve immediately.

Week 3 at Hackbright

Today is the first day of Week 3, and it's already great. We wrapped up last week with DevFest Silicon Valley at Google HQ on Friday... It was intimidating and awesome. Almost all attendees were women(!) and though most of the talks were over my head, I learned some cool things about browser functionality, HTML5, user-sniffing & feature detection. And our fabulous teacher Liz gave a hilarious & very relevant talk on gay marriage's impact on databases!

Google HQ kiiiinda feels like the center of the universe. There are obviously Very Important Things happening at all times, which necessitated security escorts everywhere, including the restroom. Not even kidding. They also had those crazy automated toilets with heated seats in every stall, further emphasizing how even poops at Google are Very Important Things requiring much consideration, attention and even temperature control.

So although I'm starting out with little sleep and 2nd-degree burns on my face (fish fry casualty), I am SO EXCITED because today my pair partner Kelley and I completed an awesome assignment -- we created a Twitter bot that compiles bits of text from Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" to make "new" 140-character poems!!!

Our bot! Click to see him in action.

Also, this morning I met one of my idols: Paul Johnson, who wrote the amazing book Fish Forever -- required reading for anyone who cares about seafood & sustainability. J & I woke up super early & headed into SF to pick up fish from Paul's company, Monterey Fish Market, for the first time! We took a quick tour around their facility, saw their guys cutting up LOTS of gorgeous fish, and talked conservation, catch methods & seafood seasonality with two of the most knowledgeable and engaged people in the local seafood movement! It was a thrill.

This week at Hackbright we'll be learning about cool stuff like regular expressions, SQL and of course, even more useful & interesting applications for python. I'll also be cooking up some blackgill rockfish at home & for our customers, trimming smoked albacore loins & turning those trimmings into a tuna salad for samples at Three Stone Hearth on Wednesday, and hopefully meeting & connecting with a techie mentor on Weds. night!! So much awesome.

Week 2 at Hackbright

After an action-packed weekend, I'm back at Hackbright for week 2. I'm definitely feeling more comfortable with the basics, but we're rushing right ahead into some fairly advanced (for me!) object-oriented programming, which leaves me on shaky ground.

I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in my class who's co-running a business and also working at a part-time job (tutoring) in addition to this course; it's probably not the best idea. If I had only one of those outside commitments, I'm sure I would be able to get a little more rest and rejuvenation over the weekends, but since I have both, they're making me a little crazy.

Today we worked on a source file for a maze-type game, which was really fun and challenging. It's exciting to be able to think of something I want to do and then work through how to make that happen -- and even more exciting when it actually does happen! Problem-solving can be exhausting though, and by 6pm I've been running out of brain juice.

This week, I resolve to go to sleep early. Gotta keep the brain juice reserves well-stocked.

Day 2 at Hackbright

It's been over 5 years since I've updated this blog, but here goes.

Today was my second day of class at Hackbright Academy.  It's a whirlwind! So many super-smart, ambitious and interesting women in one place. Already I feel like I've learned more than I thought possible in such a short time.

My brain seems to be adjusting well to the code mindset. It's been so much fun to work through the assignments and problems, and to see the various solutions that everyone comes up with. I can't help but compare it to food -- particularly recipe writing, which I have plenty of experience doing.

Both rely on a specific set of ingredients and tools, and a static code for telling the user how to combine those elements into the desired product. Good recipes, like good code, follow rules about syntax, order and logic. And just like in cooking, if you're writing code, the best way to tell if you did something wrong is by sampling the end product!