I was asked to give an "effective presentation" tutorial to a group of REU students at Texas A&M. As I talked with the organizers we thought it would be helpful to do a two part tutorial. The first is more of a technical, hands-on workshop on how to use …

This week we had a bunch of new students join the SEE-Insight research group. I put together a quick introductory presentation for them. I thought it came out fairly well so I decided to post in here in case anyone is interested in learning more about what our group is …

Our GE refrigerator shelf broke a few weeks ago. The connector on the door side was really weak and poorly designed.

Here is the other side to show you what it looks like when it is not broken.

I decided to 3D print a replacement. The design is fairly simple …

For Christmas my family got me a box full of MakerCrate projects from KiwiCo. There were five kits in the gift; one for me to work with each of my kids and one for myself. We had a lot of fun putting things together. The quality of the kits are …

I was honored to be invited to give a presentation to the Math department about the redesign of MTH314 to focus more on applications in python. Here is my presentation:

I purchased a discount Workbench CNC machine. I've been a 3D printing person for a while and was suprised how hard it has been to get gcode for a CNC machine. I assumed that I could just upload something like an STL file but there are not a lot of …

I am a big fan of OpenSCAD, it is my goto tool for making 3D designs. My kids have been getting into block coding like scratch and I thought, "wouldn't it be cool if there was a block code program that used OpenSCAD?" A quick google search showed me exactly …

I just uploaded my first developer release of my Python jupyterinstruct library on github. This library has been in development over the last couple of years but has really materialized in the last few months as I have been planning to pass on my curriculum materials to other faculty. The …

Michigan State University (MSU) has a Virtual Desktop System that is accessible to students and staff. If you have an account you can access it from here:

• vdi.msu.edu

I find it is a great for when I need to do something in windows or I need a backup …

Our house has a 2-zone heating and air conditioning system. Today is the third time in the same number of years that one of the automated damper has broken. The problem seems to be the CAM that triggers the limit switches inside the motor is made of a flimsy plastic …