Lois Lowry's The Giver

The Giver by Lois Lowry is a book that has made an impression on me. The Giver is a a story of a boy named Jonas who lives in a perfect city. In this city all forms of emotion, such as happiness, fear, pain, love and sadness, are removed. The emotions are all stored inside one person called the "Receiver of Memory" who holds memories of the past. The memories are kept away and brought out when decisions are needed to be made to prevent making similar mistakes. In this world there is no color and they kill off defective people. The book made an impression on me because it shows that you cannot have a perfect world. Our flaws are what help make us who we are.

RoboFrog, My 3 lb. Battlebot

This year I made my second generation battlebot, a 3 lb. combat robot called RoboFrog.

 Its weapon is an aluminum spinning drum with spikes on it. I competed at a 3 lb. battlebot competition in Miami at Starbot, Inc on December 7, 2013. I won three out of the five matches I competed in.

During one of the matches, another drum robot ripped my drum off and I had 10 minutes to completely rebuild it.

I was able to rebuild it and compete again. I took 2nd place in the competition.

Robotics Competitions - Mini Robots Battle

My essay on Battlebots was selected and published by The Bunk Room magazine. Robotics Competitions - Mini Robots Battle

105 miles on the Appalachian Trail

In the summer of 2012, I hiked 105 miles on the Appalachian Trail with Eagle’s Nest Foundation.When I decided that I was going to hike the Appalachian Trail I trained for 9 months by going to the gym, lost 30 pounds and got into great shape. Now I am training for a triathlon with my dad. We run, bike and swim in the ocean every weekend. When I set a goal, I work towards it.

 I carried a 50 pound pack containing food, clothing and tools needed to survive. I love the simple living on the trail, from cooking delicious meals over a portable alcohol stove to sleeping under the stars in a sleeping bag. The surrounding area was mostly a luscious green forest. The experience was challenging but very gratifying and rewarding.

3D print of my leg

Over the summer I broke my leg, so when I saw this model on thingiverse I thought I would make a cut out model of what happened to my bones. First, I printed out the skin STL and the tubular fibula STL.

Then I carved out the shin portion of the leg with a knife. I broke the tubular fibula print in the area where I broke my own bones and glued them in place. Then I painted it.

I think it came out great! I also printed out a bigger tubular fibula and the foot.

I broke my leg! Part two

After the surgery was done, the doctors put a permanent splint on my leg with a water cooling system that weighed 30 pounds.

I was sent home and told to come back in a week. I lay on the couch at my grandmother's house for a full week without getting up except for going to the bathroom. I had to use a commode.

After a week I went back to the hospital and they took off the impermanent splint, put on a removable boot and said that I could now walk on crutches. The first time I stood upright, without weight-bearing, the blood rushed down to my leg. It hurt a lot and I was instructed that I had to do this every hour during the day to keep the blood flowing in my leg so that it would heal faster. 

I broke my leg!

This last summer I broke my right leg while I was visiting my grandmother on Whidbey Island, an island near Seattle, Washington. A few steps past the backyard of my grandmother’s house is the beach. One day I went exploring  on the beach with my friend Michael. Looking for driftwood, we came across a very intriguing clearing. There was a clay wall hidden behind blackberry bush vines. I decided to go in between the wall and the blackberry bushes. I still can't recall why, but I decided to climb up the clay cliff, not knowing the possible consequences. When I was about 15 feet above the ground I realized that it would be very difficult and dangerous to go back down, so I decided to go higher to find an easier way down. Once I was 25 to 30 feet up, I realized the only way down was a very steep slope. My plan was to grab onto trees on the way down and work my way to the bottom little by little. As I was getting into position for the first step down, the root that I was holding broke free of the clay wall and I plummeted down! As I was sliding I realized that something bad was going to happen, but I only thought it would be a sprained ankle and not much more. By the time my feet made impact I was going roughly 15 miles an hour. When I landed, I felt a small pain in my leg but I thought it was just the impact of the landing and in my mind I thought that I had made it. Michael, who was watching me climb and saw me slide down, pointed at my right shin. I looked down to find what appeared to be a second knee a few inches underneath my real knee. All of a sudden, I felt a very sharp pain jolt through my body and at that very moment I realized that I had severely broken my leg. I quickly sat down and positioned my leg up right and was in agonizing pain. My friend ran back to my grandmother’s house to get help as I took cold rocks and placed them near my break to prevent major swelling and because it felt good. I was about a quarter-mile down the beach and it took around 45 minutes for the paramedics/firefighters/police to come and rescue me. They wrapped my leg in a splint and put me on a stretcher. Then they put me on a one wheeled structure to carry me off the beach. I was rushed up to the Coupeville hospital to get x-rays. As it turned out I had severely broken both bones in my leg.  My tibia and fibula were completely cracked in half, as shown on the x-rays below. The doctor said that this was a major injury and I needed surgery. I was then taken by ambulance off the island to Seattle Children’s Hospital, where I had surgery the next day. Titanium rods were inserted into the tibia of my right leg.

Why 3D Printers are Useful

Who wouldn't want a machine that can make almost anything? 3D printing is useful for manufacturing  because it is an additive process. It lets you make personal parts and gives you the ability to build quick prototypes.

3D printers are practical because 3D printing is an additive process. In other words, instead of starting with a block of material and shaping it until you attain your part, with 3D printing, the machine builds your part one layer at a time from the bottom up.

For the same price, and with the same machine, you can make personal parts. For instance, you can have a toy with your name on it and I can have a toy with my name on it for the same material cost.

Another useful application of 3D printers is the ability to make quick working prototypes. You can think of a product, design it on a computer with a CAD program, print and hold your idea in your hands.

3D printers are terrific for people who like to make things. The ability to hold your thoughts in your hands is going to change the manufacturing industry.

The City of Ember Book Summary

The City of Ember, a science fiction novel by Jeanne DuPrau, takes place in an underground city that was made to keep the human race alive after the war/plague. The underground city, Ember, is falling apart and running out supplies such as food, clothes, soap and school items. It is a dark, damp, mold filled, dying city. The people in the city have become less aware of what humans used to know and do not know how to fix broken things and only know how to replace them. This is why, when supplies start to run out, they are forced to leave the city because they do not know how to survive. In the book, the main character, a 12 year old girl named Lina, finds a piece of paper with instructions. The instructions explain how to leave Ember once Earth becomes safe to live on again. While on her journey, Lina gets help from a boy named Doon.  In the end, the people of Ember get to the world above, but have no idea how to survive. The book seems to be addressing that today we do not make our own things anymore and we are materialistic consumers.

Railroad Track Anvil

I could not believe what I saw in front of me. It was exactly what I wanted. Ever since I learned about backsmithing I have wanted to set up my own forge and blacksmith at home. Last year I made a forge and I made an anvil out of a double shoulder tie plate, a metal piece that holds the train track onto the wood beams. It works well enough but it does not have a lot of rebound. Rebound is the distance the hammer bounces back when you hit the anvil with a hammer. The higher the hammer bounces, the better the anvil. I have been trying to find a piece of foot long railroad track for over a year. Very recently I explored on the railroads in Miami. I went down the tracks for a quarter mile. I was looking around the bushes for railroad spikes and perhaps a chunk of railroad track. Listening to the cars passing by I saw a tent hidden in the bushes, where perhaps a homeless person lives. I kept walking farther and something caught my eye. Tossed near the bushes there were two five foot long, discarded pieces of railroad track thrown off to the side. I approached them and for a second I could not believe what I saw. Laying in between the two larger pieces was an 18 inch long section of railroad track. This was exactly what I have been looking for over the past year. My heart started racing as I ran over to pick it up. I was surprised how much it weighed. I imagined it was over 50 pounds. I carried it back to the car, stopping to rest many times along the way. My arms began to ache but I knew I had to bring this perfect anvil back. Once home, I weighed it on my scale and I was amazed to see that it weighed 64.4 pounds.