Mar 29, 2013
January & February 2013
January and February have been very productive. I am having a good run right now. My sewing skills are getting better: though I am still struggling with sewing exact linear lines, I can definitely see my own progress. So far I have sewed various things: pouches with zippers/clips, a camera lense bag, a shopping bag, a bag for lock-picking tools etc.. I needed about seven pouch iterations before I finally got it right. I actually think I made every possible mistake you can make, from making the pouch way to small to forgetting to insert the zipper, to sewing the wrong pieces together, etc.. Also I took part in a very basic course on sewing a T-Shirt. I am very satisfied with the result and also very shocked by the amount of work it takes to produce a tee (~7 hours in my case). Even if you factor in automizing a large part of the process and a very skilled sewer — how much wage is there possible for people producing a 5,99 € tee?
Further stuff I have done in the DIY direction include building terrariums. For terrariums the idea is very simple and you can find a lot of different tutorials and ideas online (here or here for example). Basically you take a glass, put some stones in them (you need those so the water does not collect and foul at the bottom). Then you put a small layer of active chalk on top of the stones. This layer is used to prevent fouling etc.. On top you put a layer of soil, then some plants, then more soil and then e.g. some moss. Et voilà!
In February matou and I spent another day at a school as part of the “Chaos macht Schule” program. We adapted our presentation to include more practical tips on how to use the so called “new medias” (who are not really new). It is quite astonishing that kids within the age 14-15 use the Internet/Smartphones/PCs practically every day but know very little about what they are actually using. As a consequence there is an extreme lack in competence of using those technologies in the way they intend to do. Each time we visit a school we are told about cyber-mobbing incidents were the bullies were basically completely unaware of the publicity of their posts. The teachers reported that when they explain this to the kids they often times regret their actions heavily.
On the technological site, the lacking technical education shows for example when we demonstrate how easy it is to fake a mail. We have done this several times by now and the effect is always the same: enormous surprise followed by questions. This was not at all what I had anticipated! I thought this demonstration was already old like 25 years ago! The same goes for showing the Google reverse image search or internet archives like e.g. the waybackmachine. Often times the pupils have heard the phrase “The Internet never forgets.”, but from my impression this is only a phrase until we demonstrate how easy it is to get the state of e.g. a public forum from two months ago, with all the “deleted” posts. Even though we are usually invited to speak on the media-competence/privacy topic, we try to not only warn about technologies but rather also motivate to use technologies in a creative way.
On another note, I have participated in some contests. I got the second place at a logo contest of an institute at university, as a prize I have been getting some money on my studentcard from which I have been feeding off for a week or so :-).
Also I have contributed to a local T-shirt contest by a clothing store. You can see my submission below. I was given the second place here as well, which in this case meant a nice package of clothing stuff. I love participating in contests and challenges. Most of the times I don’t really care about the prizes and am much rather interested in the challenge.
