When I go to the library with the kids, I end up coming across books I wouldn’t ordinarily see.  I recently stumbled on Robotics: DISCOVER THE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY OF THE FUTURE in the kids section.

Although this book is targeted at older children, and my children aren’t particularly interested in robotics, we still had fun completing a couple of the simpler projects at home.

Last summer, I built a pop-bottle sailboat with my (then) four year old.  After trying a couple of designs with keels in our bathtub, we settled on a catamaran style design with two pop bottles.  We tied a string to it, threw it into the pond, let the wind carry it away, and then pulled it back to shore.

And I thought, wouldn’t it be cool to add remote control functionality?

The apartment we live in faces east, and in the morning, we get a lot of sun.  This year, I thought, wouldn’t it be cool to have a little natural shade?  As corn grows tall, it seemed like a good candidate.

We successfully grew 8 popping corn plants in two large pots.  It was pretty easy - plant the seeds, water daily, fertilize.  This was not organic corn.  The plants did grow tall, but 8 was not enough to provide us with any significant natural shade.

Electricity and energy are such abstract concepts.  We just plug things in and they work.  One day, my daughter brought home a toy windmill from school, and I guess I thought I could take that understanding a little bit further.  So I told her: “We can make electricity with that”.

I did a little reading beforehand, and found a few people who had made wind generators online, so I had a rough idea of what I was going to build, and what parts I needed.  We took the subway to Active Surplus, picked up a couple of electric motors, some flashlight-sized light bulbs, some LED lights, and some diodes.

I’ve been wanting to take aerial photos for a while now.  Suspending a camera from a kite seemed like the best way of doing this.

I picked up an inexpensive camera on craigslist.  I modified it with custom firmware from http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/CHDK , which allowed me to trigger the shutter at pre-programmed intervals.  I picked up a kite that was recommended for this sort of task, a “Sutton Flow Form”, which has a parachute-like design and has 16 square feet of surface area for plenty of lift.  Finally, I cobbled together a mounting bracket with some screws and random stationary supplies from Staples.

Here is a story that is unusual in that it illustrates both the importance of traditional media as well as the ability of the Internet to empower an individual.

Our federal government is a massive institution - our 2010 budget had the Canadian government spending 280 billion dollars despite only pulling in 230 billion dollars from its 33.5 million residents (source).  There are many opinions on deficit spending, but I’m sure for most of us, we just kind of accept what our elected representatives put on the table.  We might complain amongst our peers,  45% of us vote, some write our local newspapers or directly to their MPs.