Never Interrupt A Programmer

Amazing! :)

Amino: Desktop Bioengineering for Everyone

The countdown begins - there are just over 24 hours left to get your hands on the first do-it-yourself bioengineering kit! The Amino, which originally began as a school project by Julie Legault out of the MIT Media Lab, is a kit made to encourage people to experiment with synthetic biology. So much of our life is created through bioengineering, and the Amino lets everyone from artists to hackers experience the fun of the lab at home. Better yet, it lets you do so without the expensive equipment.  

When you first think of bioengineering something Frankenstein might come to mind, but there won’t be any dangerous monsters growing in this package. The Amino uses friendly strains of bacteria that are safe for home use. In total, the Amino lets you grow living cells while also getting data on what is going on, and is sophisticated enough for professional labs too! The kit comes with DNA programs (“Apps”), and in the first order you can choose from making a glow in the dark living light or experimenting with several DNA programs. 

The kit looks like loads of fun and I’m excited to see where this goes!

1. Read up on the backstory of the project on the MIT blog. 

2. Check out the Amino Indiegogo campaign

Finished one of my Altoids-friendly Arduino Menta’s from Adafruit

Summary:

online trainings on how to use NASA Earth science data, regarding:

air quality,

climate,

disaster,

health,

land,

water resources and

wildfire management.

Everyone (Even You!) Can Use Satellite Data

At NASA we’re pretty great at putting satellites and science instruments into orbit around Earth. But it turns out we’re also pretty great at showing people how to get and use all that data.

One of the top ways you can learn how to use NASA data is our ARSET program. ARSET is our Applied Remote Sensing Training program and it helps people build skills that integrate all these Earth science data into their decision making.

ARSET will train you on how to use data from a variety of Earth-observing satellites and instruments aboard the International Space Station.

Once you take a training, you’ll be in GREAT company because thousands of people have taken an ARSET training.

We hold in person and online trainings to people around the world, showing them how to use NASA Earth science data. Trainings are offered in air quality, climate, disaster, health, land, water resources and wildfire management.

For example, if you’re trying to track how much fresh drinking water there is in your watershed, you can take an ARSET training and learn how to find satellite data on how much precipitation has fallen over a certain time period or even things like the ‘moistness’ of soil and the quality of the water.

Best yet, all NASA Earth observing data is open and freely available to the whole world! That’s likely one of the reasons we’ve had participants from 172 of the approximately 190 countries on Earth.

Since its beginning 10 years ago, ARSET has trained more than 30 thousand people all over the world. They’ve also worked with people from more than 7,500 different organizations and that includes government agencies, non-profit groups, advocacy organizations, private industry.

And even though 2019 is ARSET’s 10th birthday – we’ve only just begun. Every year about 60% of the organizations and agencies we train are new to the program. We’re training just about anyone who is anyone doing Earth science on Earth! 

Join us, learn more about how we train people to use Earth observing data here, and heck, you can even take a training yourself: https://arset.gsfc.nasa.gov/.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

First Post

Forward Lang: Hello Everyone! :D

Hopefully someone else: Hello! :)

The best pull request (PR) in 2017???

Wearable Raspberry Pi by Jason Benson on flickr, who is clearly living in 3018

If you're ever asking an autistic person to do something, be sure to explain why you want them to do it.

When I was a kid, I always kept the windows open when it rained. I saw no reason to close them even though my mom kept asking me to. She never gave a reason, so I never listened. She'd say it let the rain in and I'd think "no shit" and continue to keep them open. Eventually, she explained that it could cause mold. That made sense to me, so I started closing the windows. Simple as that.

When we first got cats, they kept jumping onto the counters. Once again, I saw no issue with this. My mom kept chasing them down and I couldn't figure out why. She'd get annoyed whenever I let them stay up there. Once she told me that it was unsanitary, I thought that made sense so I stopped letting them stay on the counter.

To an outsider (and probably to my mom at the time) it may have seemed like I didn't understand the instructions or was being intentionally difficult. But I can't just follow an order without a reason. I must decide for myself if the order makes sense before I follow it, and I need the logic behind it to do that.

So if you're asking an autistic person to do something, explain why it needs to be done. It's very hard for a lot of us to override that part of our brains.

How to build a horse with programming language 🐎

fractals!! :D or at least patterns :P

Johann Eduard Jacobsthal, “Süd-italienische Fliesen-Ornamente”, South italian tile ornaments, 1886. Chromolithography. Published by Ernst Wasmuth, Tübingen, Germany. Source: archive.org. Via frizzifrizzi