Growing up, my family didn't do a whole lot of movie watching.  Sure, we watched some TV every now and then, but growing up in small mining towns doesn't leave you with a whole lot of options for places to go in the evenings.  Instead, we did something that I am so proud of my parents for embedding into our lives - we played games.

I still remember a time when the power went out for a few hours. To make the most of the opportunity, my folks went into the closet, grabbed flashlights and the board set for Othello.  We played for a couple hours before heading off to bed for the night.  It wasn't a massive tragedy because we were perfectly content with each other's company and a little friendly (mostly) competition.

As we've grown up, newer (and more challenging) games have been brought into the family.  Most notable are Phase 10 (even made up a spreadsheet to track your phases and points) and Trains, which is often called "Mexican Train Dominoes".  I'm not a fan of the latter term and don't know its origin, but it's a fun game regardless of who's playing it.  Once we send the kids (who are 4 and almost 2) off to bed, we'll break out the case of dominoes and begin the game.

This time, it was a lot different.  My oldest son has a case of Hand/Foot/Mouth, which is a gnarly looking rash that covers his, you guessed it, hand, foot, and mouth.  To a non-medical person (me), this looks like it would be painful and pandemic-ish. To my wife (a nurse), it's nothing to worry about, so I defer to her feelings on the matter.  Rather than going outside and potentially making matters worse, we hung out inside during his younger brother's nap (aka peace and serenity time) and dumped the box of dominoes.

This was either going to be a huge test of patience or a fun learning and playing opportunity.  We played open hands just to make it more of a fun experience and let him in on all of the rules.  He was very aware and caught on pretty quick.  The cool stuff started happening immediately, knowing that he is learning to count and understand the difference between identifying whole numbers in school.  To throw this in here, I am constantly inspired by Christopher Danielson's work with "Talking Math With Your Kids". Check it out.

He's a rock star when it comes to matching colors, shapes, and even images, so the first step of Trains was a no-brainer for him.  We had him match the dots in a row.  He picked that up right away and it helped quite a bit that he just so happened to pick three "starters" (we just randomly started with the 8).

From here, things got fun.  I asked him how many dots were on the first domino, and he proficiently stated that there were eight. But wait, there are more than 8!  He was able to keep the two sides separate from each other.   Maybe it was the black line, maybe it was the different colors, but he knew what I meant when I asked him the question. Great start.

Before we really got going, my wife asked him which row would be the best one to play. In other words, which one had more dominoes.  He reverted back to his counting skills, but no longer the dots.  Instead, he was counting whole dominoes to determine which one had more.  We were all happy when he chose the middle row. Why? "Because it has more in there". For now, I'm super happy with that justification.  Later on, we'll tease that out.

We started to play the game and shared the rules along the way about waiting your turn, playing on your own train unless someone else can't go, and a few others.  He was alert and looking around the board at the whole time. Now, a quick disclaimer: I'm not the dad that always lets my kid win for the sake of his feelings. He needs to earn it.  Well, not long into the game, he proved his prowess of the board.

As you may be able to see, he caught on pretty quickly.  Things got even more interesting when he was met with this fork in the road:

See, the goal of dominoes is to get rid of all of your dominoes first.  However, in the event that someone dumps theirs before you do, you want to end up with the fewest points possible.  Being as how this one hand alone took about an hour, we didn't worry about score, but this was an awesome opportunity to introduce "difference".  He was required to play an 11, but he had two.  Which one should he play?

At first, he just reached for the closest one, but we stopped him and asked him to think about it.  Count the dots on both and see which one you would rather use. Once again, he disregarded the 11s on both dominoes.  Did he already know that those were irrelevant? Equal? I wish I could see in his thought process during that portion.  Either way, he counted. "...7, 8, 9 and ...3, 4, 5".  Once he had his values, 5 and 9, we asked which one he would rather use.  He promptly perked up and replied "I want to play this one (holding up the 9)".  When asked why, he said that "it has more dots".  I'm just oozing with joy, even still, that this was processed in his head without assistance.  Sure, I should have asked him how many more dots there were, but I was just excited that he could conceptualize a count being greater than another.  One thing I do regret is not asking him to explain his reasoning a little bit more. Oh well.

This one here was a perplexing and meaningful conversation.  Maybe an elementary teacher can help me by weighing in on this, but he randomly drew the empty domino.  As soon as he did, I asked him to count the dots.  He looked at me like I had just lost my mind.  Instead, I asked him how many dots there are on the domino.  When he said that there weren't any dots, I asked him what number that was.  Not too surprisingly, he didn't know.  In this case, I'm curious as to where "zero" gets introduced to kids and why it isn't intertwined in the beginning stages of counting.  We always start with 1 - why?

Either way, it was another fun conversation to talk about zero and zero plus zero.  He wasn't as amused with it as I was, but he still played along with my silly math game.

As predicted, the game ended with a waking giant, his almost 2 year-old brother, coming by and wreaking havoc on the playing board.  That's perfectly fine, though.  I look forward to the days where we can sit around as a family and play board/card games to build camaraderie and that element of family that I hold so close to my heart from my own childhood.  Until then, we are stuck looking for the missing domino in the house:

Happy Missing Domino Fishing

So my kid has a bike and I have a desire to keep my back in fair order for the next few years.  The problem is that, if I really want to help him pedal the bike that's just a little bit too big for him, I need to bend over. The WHOLE TIME.  Sorry buddy, that just isn't going to happen.  Instead, I need a stick that can be used to just push you around.  I went ontoTarget's website and found, well, nothing that I needed. I'm sure it exists, but I don't have time to search and just so happen to have a printer.  Challenge accepted.

First order of business was to draw it out on my workbench (you see, the whole paperless garage isn't really the best mantra to live by).  From there, I needed to measure the dimensions of the seat handle that I need to clamp onto.  Knowing that it was ~3cm in diameter, I jumped into Google Sketchup and designed something that I thought would work.

Next up is the printing time.  In three, no wait, four hours, I'm going to see a finished clamp that will go onto the back of his bike.  In the first slot, there will be a bolt to keep the clamp from traveling too far.  In the second slot, there will be another printed piece that will attach the broomstick that I'll use to push the bike around.  

While this piece prints, I'm creating the spacer to go into the near side by the clamp and the end that will attach to the broom.  The fun part of all of this is that I don't know if it's going to work.  The scary part of all of this is I have no idea if it's going to work.  

During the printing process, I'm realizing that the holes for the bolts are too big, watching the printer struggle to make round holes that size in the middle of a print.  For future reference, I'll be modifying this to adapt to smaller bolts.  I wanted them to be big so that there would be a strong connection, but the ABS material is solid itself, making the need for reinforced bolt sizes a bit irrelevant.

Also, there is a little bit too much "curling", when the plastic peels up off of the glass.  Dang it John, stop being so cheap with the glue!!!! Nobody said that this was going to be a simple learning process, so fortunately I have a low stress environment in which I can just tinker and learn. Wait- wouldn't it be nice if students had the opportunity to do the same? Nah, this is totally different than a classroom setting.......

The spacer printed out, but it's boring to talk about.  I'm moving on to the reason my beard is growing grey hairs at the moment.

Either way, this is the picture of the piece that will connect to the broom and the clamp's end.  As long as all holes are the same level of error, there shouldn't be an issue.  There is a hole for the broomstick that I'm planning to use, although it's a little bit wider in case I end up using something different.  To keep the broomstick in place without drilling into the plastic, I've included a small screw hole that should suffice. It won't be perfect, but hopefully it's just enough to make this possible without compromising strength.

As the piece is printing, I'm actually pretty happy with it. It's flat on the top and bottom and has some play along the sides, which will allow for adjustment and wiggle. This is turning out to be pretty daggum cool.


6/8/14 (7:29 pm) 
Update: I'm stuck. For some reason, the code for the model is skipping about a dozen layers, creating a pile of filament and not printing the middle portion of the piece.  I've gone back, filled gaps, tried a few different renderings, but it isn't working for me. If you know anything about Google Sketchup and 3D modeling, I would really appreciate a hand.  Click here to access the file I'm working on.  I've given up for the evening, but will come back to face my demons tomorrow.

6/9/2014 (9:25 pm and counting)
Update 2: I'm (maybe) unstuck.  Thanks to a kind fella on the Twitters who knows a thing or two about Sketchup, I've gone back and repaired my non-solid solid figure. Yeah, oops. Ever been that kid who forgot to do that important step to solving the problem because you already knew the answer?  Meh, me neither...

The reason that each piece is being printed out separately is because of the travel time it would take to print all pieces out if they were on the same print.  If you think about it, the Airwolf prints one later at a time, so it would be traveling between each piece every time a layer shifts.  YUCK.

As you can tell below, this has required a lot of persistence and patience...

I'll need to keep that in mind as I go through this.  So, below are the printed products laid out (well, they would be there, but my problem mentioned above prohibits this portion from being true.  Once I get it done, I'll put the pictures into the post).  If I do this again, I'll make the diameter of the clamp a little bit smaller to make for a more snug fit and probably not make it so thick.  The reasons for both of these are just to ensure that it would fit and be strong enough for me to push my little guy around on his bike.  Now it's time to go test it out!

In reflection, this would be a great lesson for kids to recreate.  By default, I was measuring, drawing, relating back to my sketches and math, making modifications, accounting for flexibility, a small margin of error, and modeling a ton.  Hey - that's what Common Corgi wants us to do! Not only that, but I made multiple modifications to the design and regenerating the design and seeing that something wasn't right.  I reached out for help, consulted with others, and persisted in the problem solving process.  This is far from a perfect design, but it's something that I wish all kids would have a chance to experience, seeing their final product actually get printed for them to be proud of.

If you have recommendations to modify the design, or would like one of your ideas come to fruition, please let me know in the comments or find me on Twitter.  Thank you!

Happy Dumbfounded/Confused Fishing