Please note: This post is being sponsored by Best Buy and HP. I am being compensated to write this post with product and/or cash. Nevertheless, all opinions are my own. I take my integrity seriously, and so should you.
If you are like me, you've got more electronics and computing power in your possession than you know what to do with. Phone. Computer. Tablet. Camera. Laptop. Video camera. Smartwatch. Backup Laptop. Drone.
And that's just me! My wife has almost all of the above as well, and my son has most of these things also. Our house is one large hotbed of electronics! Thank the lord that we only have one child!)
(And I'm not even including all of my legacy electronics. I have a MAC PLUS that I bought in 1991 with a 10MB hard drive! it still works, but I can't figure out how get the data off the hard drive-- I no longer have SCSI capabilities, and there's no internet/ethernet capability.)
Anyway, if you are looking to streamline your morass of electronics, HP has an interesting solution-- The HP Envy x360 series.
The HP Envy x360 laptops are 2-in-1 devices that transform from a laptop to a tablet in seconds. These are touch-screen laptops that come with a keyboard, Windows operating system, and Windows Ink capabilities so you can write on the screen with your stylus. They use a standard AMD processors and they are (as are most computers these days) fast and thin.
GET AN EXTRA $100 OFF THROUGH JULY 28
Through July 28, Best Buy has a special deal for an extra $100 off. In reviewing these offers, I thought it was interesting that the 13-inch models are more expensive than the 15-inch models. You pay a little extra for smallness.
Full HD touch screen
A 1920 x 1080 resolution with impressive color and clarity. Finger-touch navigation, IPS technology for wide viewing angles, and an energy-efficient WLED backlight.
8GB system memory for advanced multitasking
Substantial high-bandwidth RAM to smoothly run your games and photo- and video-editing applications, as well as multiple programs and browser tabs all at once. Models come with either 128 or 256 SSD hard drive.
360° flip-and-fold design
Versatile functionality with laptop, audience, tabletop, presentation and tablet modes.
Windows 10 and Windows Ink
Windows 10 brings back the Start Menu from Windows 7 and introduces new features, including Windows Ink, which allows you to quickly jot down notes and ideas with ease.
While I have been firmly a Mac guy for almost my entire life, I have to say that these babies have me tempted to switch (or at least to add on to my already impressive collection.)
The Mini Maker Faire on Chicago's North side is today from 10am-4pm! Yes, Cinco de Mayo is also synonymous with crazy technological fun!
If you've never been to Maker Faire before you are in for a treat.
The Schurz High School at 3601 N. Milwaukee Avenue (Milwaukee and Addison) gets taken over by Makers- craftsmen, artists, engineers, scientists, and hobbyists that have been creating cool things all year, and here's your chance to see what they do, how they do it, and how you can do it. You can ask questions, try stuff out, poke, prod, and share tips.
We've been to the big one in NY a few times, and the one here (while obviously not as big in scope) is in someways better. They don't have as many cool bells and whistles (Have I told you about the Giant Life Sized Game of MouseTrap?) but BECAUSE the scale is smaller, you get more time to ask questions and look around. And the people who are exhibiting have been waiting for this all year, and can't wait to share their passion and knowledge with you.
You can learn to make ice cream, fly a drone, learn to pick locks, check out the latest in 3-D printing, and see all kinds of cool hacks, old-school technology, and just plain weird fun stuff.
It's STEM and STEAM on Steroids.
It's free to attend (although there is a suggested donation of $10 for adults and $5 for kids to keep the thing going)
Yes, digital technology is a great boon and can be a tool for good and it's a transformative power that is reshaping the world we live in.
But not all change is good- you can make an argument that it's also ruining people's lives by making them feel like they have to be always on, always available, work 24/7 and miss out on all the good stuff in life.
There was a recent article in the NY Times where columnist Farhad Manjoo only got his news from printed newspaper for 2 months and the lesson that they learned was that 24/7 can easily lead to panic and paranoia, slowing down your news intake gives you time to take a break. READ THAT ARTICLE.
A propos of this, from sundown to March 9 to sundown March 10, the organization Reboot is encouraging you and your family to unplug and give your cell-phone and other technology a rest.
The day has its roots in the idea of the Jewish Shabbat (Sabbath) which is supposed to be a day apart, a day where you don't work, a day which you can dedicate to something other than your workaday world.
Reboot's communications manager Tanya Schevitz was recently quoted as saying "The practice of taking a break is familiar to Jews, but this modern day of rest was developed for people of all backgrounds as a way to bring balance to the increasingly fast-paced way of life and reclaim time to connect with family, friends, and communities."
This project grew out of a larger project called the Sabbath Manifesto, also sponsored by Reboot, which is a way for people to slow down and re-connect. They've created 10 principles, open to interpretation by you, as a way to be mindful in the ways that technology is intruding on our lives, and to remind us to slow down, once a week at least, to enjoy and savor our friends, family, and community.
Here are the 10 principles they espouse:
1. Avoid Technology
2. Connect with loved ones.
3. Nurture your health.
4. Get outside
5. Avoid commerce.
6. Light candles.
7. Drink wine.
8. Eat bread.
9. Find silence.
10. Give back.
If you are planning to unplug, they suggest that you upload a message to your account letting your friends know that you'll be back. Here are two illustrated messages they created for you to upload to your social media.
So I got an email this morning that made me a little uneasy.
It really shouldn't have, as I knew all about it, but the ramifications of it are a little staggering.
The email was this:
That's right-- my car sent me an email saying that my windshield wiper fluid needs refilling.
It's been snowy here, and yes, I've been using the windshield wiper fluid maybe a little too much. and the light did go on yesterday, and I do need to bring my excess fluid out and fill it, but I did not really expect to get an email about it.
The Internet of Things issue from Wired
This is the Internet of Things I've been dutifully reading about in Wired Magazine, and other than getting a quarterly report from my NEST account or Alexa reminders that I manually requested to be sent, this is I think my first experience with it. (Do low battery warnings on my smoke detector count? I have never gotten an email from my smoke detector, just an occasional annoying beep.)
I'm not sure how I feel about this new development. On one hand, I see this could be pretty useful (see smoke detectors), but I drove my car about 30 minutes yesterday, and every 30 seconds the flashing windshield fluid signal chimed and flashed with no obvious way to shut it off. (well the one obvious way is to fill the fluid, which I will do today without fail.) Telling me stuff I already know is not exactly the future I was hoping for!
I wouldn't mind a text from my water heater telling me it's about to explode or a friendly reminder phone call once a month from my recumbent bicycle telling me it misses me, but when is enough enough? I'm a little concerned that my cookie jar will start sending regular messages to my wife about its relative emptiness, and she will start to draw conclusions about my consumption that I would prefer left undetected.
Yes, I know that Alexa is listening to everything I say, but it's not going to act on the information it receives. If I thought Alexa would send an email to someone every time I dropped an f-bomb, I would have a very different feeling about it (One that, coincidentally, has an f-bomb in it. Maybe that's not so coincidental?)
How about you? Have your appliances been texting you? Please let me know in the comments.
I'll respond as soon as I am able-- there's a Nigerian royal refrigerator that needs my urgent assistance...
First off, I'd never been to the museum before but had always thought about going. It's in Skokie IL, just off the highway, and it is pretty spectacular. It's the third largest Holocaust remembrance center in the world (after Yad VaShem in Israel and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC.
One of the great things about the museum, is that in addition to being committed to remembering the Holocaust, it's also committed to helping people create social justice in a number of areas. Their new Take A Stand Center is proof of that.
As part of their $30 million dollar Commit to the Future Capital Campaign, they have installed a new part of the museum which they are calling the Take A Stand Center. It's comprised of three unique interactive galleries that will hopefully move museum-goers from knowledge to inspiration to action.
HOLOGRAPHIC SURVIVOR STORIES EXPERIENCE
The first and most prominent of the galleries is the Abe & Ida Cooper Survivor Stories Experience. They have installed a 66 seat holographic theatre in the museum, where you can interact with the holograph of a Holocaust survivor. In case you are wondering, yes, holograph. It's a 3-dimensional representation of a Holocaust survivor, sitting in a chair, and the most astonishing thing is that he (or she) can take questions from the audience and answer them.
They will eventually have 13 survivors stories (7 from the Chicago area and 6 from places around the world including Israel, Los Angeles, Terre Haute Indiana, and the UK)available for display, and each holograph can take in questions from the audience.
Survivor Aaron Elster and his holographic doppelganger.
This is the first museum in the world to use this interactive three-dimensional technology. Each survivor spent 6 days in the special studio in Los Angeles, surrounded by hundreds of high definition cameras and microphones for up to 6 hours a day, recording their stories so that they may be told and re-told for decades to come.
The technology is pretty spectacular, although it is new and still has some bugs-- when I saw it, there was a noticeable hesitation as the computer thought about the question, and in some cases, the answer didn't quite fit the question. But this is cutting edge technology, and it's going to get smarter and better and even more amazing as time goes on.
Before each holographic interview, there is a 5-7 minute film of the story of the person's life, followed by the interview process. At the preview that I saw, the man being interviewed was also there, and it was just amazing to see him and his holographic doppelganger interact with each other.
The plan right now is to have one survivor story on per month, and that you'd have to come back 13 months in a row to see and hear all of them. (This may change, as they figure out how to best utilize this amazing new technology)
GOODMAN UPSTANDER GALLERY
Marley Diaz and her lifesize photo.
Outside the theatre is their brand new Goodman Upstander Gallery, where they explore the lives and works of 40 historical and contemporary "Upstanders" (as opposed to bystanders) There are life-size story portals and digital interactive videos that tell you more about these upstanders and how they managed to make a difference. Some of them are well known, such as Cesar Chavez, Billie Jean King, Malala, Nelson Mandela, and Gloria Steinem. But many of the upstanders are not well-known personalities.
One of the upstanders that I met was a 12-year-old girl from New Jersey (Marley Dias) who started a movement called #1000blackgirlbooks, which is a movement to collect and donate children's books that feature black girls as the lead character. She started it in 2016 and she's already donated over 12,000 books to places that need them. Marley was so poised and well-spoken and on top of stuff that I thought she was a college student. But she's just 12! She's got my vote for the 13-under-13 list, should anyone ever make one.
An example of one of the interactive displays.
There are lots of amazing and inspirational change quotes on the walls of the gallery.
THE ACT OF ART
Augmenting the three primary galleries of the Take A Stand Center is the Act of Art gallery which highlights art as a form of social action and activism. The gallery, which takes fine art through the lense of social activism, displays historical and contemporary artistic expressions reactions, and calls to action for social justice. The plan is to display art not just about the Holocaust, but about all sorts of injustices, including Black Lives Matter, the Armenian genocide, the ethnic cleansing of the Balkan states, and others throughout time and history.
Here's an inspirational video that plays outside the TAKE A STAND CENTER by local poet Harold Green that gives a good idea about the act of art.
TAKE A STAND LAB
The final gallery is the Take A Stand Lab, which allows museum-goers to get involved, make a pledge to get involved and email themselves resources to help them get involved in the area that they are interested in.
They have an older fashioned system where you can write your pledge and put it on the museum cork board, and they also have an electronic setup where you can tell the computer through a quiz what you are interested in doing and it will help you find ways to do that. It was really great way to keep people involved in the good feelings and great inspirations of the previous gallery.
The other thing about it is that it shows how even doing one small thing can make a huge difference. The most common objection to doing something good is "What good will my one lone action do" Many of the stories told in this area show that all large things that happen start with a small action.
All of this is in addition to the museum's already stellar offerings, including a gallery about the power of art to help make people understand social justice, a kid's area where younger kids can be introduced to the ideas of social justice and the chilling facts of the Holocaust in a non-graphic manner, and other exhibit space.
(I walked through a great exhibit about music promoter Bill Graham (who was a Holocaust survivor.) That exhibit has just been extended into January and is well worth checking out.
The absolute centerpiece of the museum and raison d'etre is a moving and far-ranging exhibit about the Holocaust, which features artifacts, movies, stories, newspaper articles, and other elements to tell the horrific story of the Holocaust. I did a walk through as part of the preview, and I need to go back and spend some more time in there. It was moving and thought provoking, and not for younger kids.
The last image of the museum exhibit on the Holocaust is strangely hopeful.
My mother-in-law's cousin Hannah Messinger made this bra.
One of the most astonishing things there was an actual German rail car that was used to transport Jews to work camps. I don't believe in ghosts, but it was haunted by the memories of the terrible things that transpired inside. (And every museum-goer is given a choice of whether or not they want to go inside it.)
There's a personal connection to the museum as well, My wife's mother's cousin's story and artifacts are displayed in the museum, including a bra that she made by stealing thread and fabric while inside a German work camp.
The Illinois Holocaust Museum is a stellar and must-see place to go.
Hours: Weekdays 10 AM – 5 PM
Thursday evenings until 8 PM
Weekends 10 AM – 5 PM
Prices:
Adult Admission*: $15.00
Senior (65+): $10.00
Student (12-22): $8.00
Child (5-11): $6.00
Military personnel & up to 3 family members: 50% off Members: Free
I thought we were all set for camp this summer, but then I heard from a friend of ours about a camp (GreenApple® Campus) that seemed too good to not try. When I read the descriptions of the classes to my son, he just about cried with joy.
As devoted readers will remember, my son is very excited by the Maker Movement. We've been to a number of Maker Faires, and a couple of years ago, he was all about building mousetraps and Rube Goldberg machines after we saw the Life Sized Mousetrap at Maker Faire NY.
VIDEO OF THE LIFESIZE MOUSETRAP:
THE FIRST INTERATION OF AA'S MEDIUM SIZED MOUSETRAP.
These machines continue to fascinate. So it's no surprise that my son will be attending the GreenApple® Campus class COOL CONTRAPTIONS. This invention based program is all about building contraptions, vehicles and machines that move. Gears, beams, pulleys, wheels, axles, pieces that snap and flex. All of the kind of gizmos that will inspire the aspiring Rube Goldberg. (And will hopefully inspire him to use up the buckets and boxes of springs, cardboard tubes, rubber bands, and various detritus that he refuses to throw out!)
GreenApple® Campus is an educational not-for-profit 501(c)3 organization. Their mission is to inspire the innovators of the future through creative, challenging STEM or STEAM programs for kids. All of the classes, programs, and workshops feature some combination of science, technology, engineering, math, architecture, design, and invention. Classes are offered in robotics, programming and app development, tinkering and making. (And there are also some Lego robotics and Minecraft modeling classes!)
They also have an entrepreneurship startup program called Startup to Achieve for kids grades 6-9 that brings you the basics of being an entrepreneur (and very cool, one of those sessions is Just For Girls, so that gender stereotypes about girls and science won't be fulfilled.)
In the Chicagoland area, GreenApple® Campus has 4 locations, plus the StartUp to Achieve program is in a couple of different places. Go to their schedule page to find out where their classes are offered and which classes are offered when. They've got a lot of classes available, and I'm sure one of them will be right for your tech-hungry child.
DISCLOSURE: We are being provided free tuition at GreenApple® Campus in order to try the camp out. As always my opinions and my son's unfettered desire to build cool contraptions are our own. I take my critical reputation seriously, and so should you.
