designapalooza’s posterous

Petek will be leading the SolidWorks tutorial 11:30-1:00 PM this Wednesday during class. It
is intended as a introduction into using a CAD program. It is optional, although
students who have a strong background are encouraged to stay and play
around/help out with the tutorial.

If at all possible, we ask that you bring a laptop with Solidworks installed
(install this prior to the tutorial) as well as a mouse. Students at the
Institute can install Solidworks following the instructions on the following
website:

https://web.mit.edu/mecheng/computing/Software/SW2007-8/

If you will not be able to bring a laptop + mouse, let us know ASAP!

People had some funny and quasi-dangerous stories in their observations over the weekend.  Now that you've had a first hand experience in observing people, you can try to fine tune your skills.  As you found out, writing in a large notebook is a dead giveaway that you must be observing something.  And that might bother people.

Next time you're somewhere, see if you can observe without having a recording implement right there.  Dont focus on the moment by moment details but rather try to get an overall feeling of whatever it is you are observing. 

If you still want to write something down, then having something smaller would help.  This way you could legitimately say that you are writing notes, to-dos, for yourself, when really you are observing (yes, 'stalking' could be used too).

Here are some recommendations:

CopyTech gives away the "REALLY COOL Note Pad" at their 11-004 location.

Moleskin and Field Notes have pocket size notebooks.

You can try adopting the hipster PDA.

Lab info to be placed here.

Room 3-446. Wednesday-Friday, 130pm-5pm.
You can bring stuff and work at home, but the lab wont be guaranteed accessible after hours.
A 2.97 Staff will be there at all times to help.
Safety first!

If you are interested in a Solidworks tutorial, fill out this doodle so we can figure out when and where to have it:

fill in your available times here

Petek will be leading a ~1.5 hr tutorial on Solidworks, the Computer-Aided Design (CAD) program that many people at MIT use.  It's very useful to learn.  However, it is completely optional and will not be part of either projects.

Topics include:
extruding
revolving
sketching options
cutting
some features like smart dimension and defining relations
lofting

There are many ways to keep track of what goes on with the designapalooza blog.  Google Reader is a great built-in RSS reader that you have in your gmail account.  Also, you can use RSSFWD to send RSS feeds to your email.  Firefox allows you to place an RSS feed into 'Live Bookmarks'.  There are many options.

This video explains RSS if you are new to it :)

Look at all the cool things you can do with Posterous:
http://posterous.com/faq/

On the 2.97 website, there is a section to display everyone's basic info and information, http://web.mit.edu/ideation/2.97/people.html

To submit your info, go to the survey here: http://web.mit.edu/ideation/2.97/profile-survey.html

If you dont have a picture accessible via URL, we'll have a camera the first day of class.