Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Makers (and Muad'Dibs)

Recently I've spent more time making things and thinking about making things. It's nice to be planning and making little drawings again, even if it's about silly little things like LED throwies, or puppets for my niece. I think when we have a kid that it would be fun to make a bunch of white throwies and mount some light sheet metal so they can have little stars at night, and make constellations. It's been interesting looking through places like Make or Instructables for ideas and jumping off points.

I really really need space to organize my collected "stuff to make other things from." I have things like yellowed crackly pages from old novels, copper wire, mason jars, wire brads, glass beads, plywood scraps, old postcards and black and white photos I collect from flea markets, various stones, paints, fabric scraps, yarn, fishing line etc, ad infinitum. Not to mention the quadrillion pairs of needle nosed pliers and implements and soldering irons. It's scattered in little caches around the house at this point - a box of stuff here, a bag can fit there - What I really need is a big cabinet with lots of drawers. Many many little drawers. I'm positive there's something Freudian about my obsessive need to organize things out into drawers.

The Boy might be a little miffed that I've been snickering about him. He's at his desk, I'm at mine (as often we are in the evenings). There was a long period of silence, then a few minutes ago suddenly, in a flat, robotic voice, he said, "Help." And then he said it again. And again. Of course I turned to see what he could possibly need help with that would require such a weird way of expressing it, and I realized that he wasn't talking to me. He was apparently conversing with his new smart phone, because once it was up and running, it asked him, "What would you like help with?" Out loud. In a phone lady-voice. Crazy. "Call Mom," he told it. "Mom at home, or Mom's cell?" it asked.

In any case, the "help... help... help," bit had me laughing, because it reminded me of a story about one of my sisters. When she was about 3 or 4 years old, she got stuck crawling under the couch or something, and called to my mom for help. Mom, seeing that she wasn't in immediate danger, let her know she'd be there in a second. My sister still squirmed and continued to call for Mom until it fell into a rhythmic, "Help!....Help!....Help!" Eventually she became resigned and the urgent note in her voice turned into a flat robotic tone, and Mom heard her little voice repeat, "Help...this is a recording...Help." If it were me, it would have taken a couple minutes for me to stop laughing and assist her.

The boy has just informed me that his Smarty McCellphonepants will not only play MP3s, but he can simply say, "Play Godspeed You Black Emperor," (or whatever) and it will. Or if it's on random, he can ask, "What song is this?" It also plays movies and such, and does the whole camera/video thing (even has a flash). It's easy to see why he's enamoured with it. It's basically a little computer he can take everywhere. Boy + computer = loooove.

I proudly informed him that my phone can not only make calls, but it can receive them as well.

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