I have a lot of disabilities. Some are more debilitating than others for sure, most are just annoyances or give me weird quirks that people sometimes are frustrated with, other times get a laugh from. For the past few days I’ve been dealing with a flare up so bad I’ve never experienced anything like it in my life. It was a painful reminder that I was in fact stressed.
If you’re following along you’ve made it to week seven! This course is taught using FREE SOFTWARE so if you ever wanted to learn how to solid model, this course is the one for you. If you’re just joining then you can find all of our classes listed here in our Solid Modeling for Beginners category. They are in reverse order, so start at the bottom. Today we are setting aside our lightbulb for a moment to create something to put it in. I’ve given up keeping what we’re doing a secret (since I always put the final product in the header image anyway). So with that let’s get to it!
This is how I start all my technical writing.
Another day, another set of problems. So what better way to put off my writing for the day than to write about not wanting to write. I feel like I’m living in a meme all of a sudden. Today I’ve got about 4353453421 things to write, give or take 4. Is it odd that I would rather be writing this than any of the stuff that matters?
Here in the US we paused, it was only for a moment, it wasn’t long enough, and not everyone did it, but we paused. Then just as quickly as we tried to adapt to the changing times we went back to pretending everything was normal. Beaches opened, restaurants opened, bars opened, we saw celebrations and parties and we ignored a single digit daily death count, which turned into a double digit, then triple digit, now we’re hovering in at roughly 1000 deaths a day from the pandemic.
I’ve probably mentioned this before, but I feel stuck. With the pandemic going on and the protests (Which are still happening!) I don’t feel like there has been any forward movement in anything I’ve been involved with. I hate feeling like this, it’s so frustrating especially when I feel like I’m drowning in work to be done.
Still trying to get used to the idea of virtual conferences.
Well we still have a month of summer break left, but we do have the end of summer courses coming. In just a week we’re having our undergrad researcher conference (virtually of course). Everyone will get a 5 minute block to showcase their poster, talk about their experience, and get a chance to answer questions about the projects they worked on (another 5 minutes max). The whole thing will take three days to get though.
Wear the mask!!
I was up bright and early today, 4:30am to be exact. We had two experiments planned for the day, one first thing in the morning, the other in the afternoon. Being the dependable person I am, I was up and out on time, arrived here early and setup to get started. That’s when it all fell apart.
Finishing our bulb today!! Wooo!!!
Welcome to week six! As always, this is a free class using FREE SOFTWARE. If you want to learn how to solid model, but couldn’t afford fancy or expensive software, then this course is for you. We’ll be taking things step by step so you (hopefully) will be able to follow along easily. If this is your first visit to my lovely series, then I would suggest you start at week one, which you can find in our incredibly helpful category Solid Modeling for Beginners. Today we’re going to finish our project from last week and make a super neat light bulb!
One of the slides I used in my 3D printing course, this was the robot I designed and 3D printed (prior to assembly) for my Masters degree.
Well I got a chance to give my last lecture yesterday (virtually of course) on 3D printing. I worked literally weeks to get everything ready and it went off (mostly) without a hitch. The world of 3D printing is full of vast, multifaceted, and divergent technologies with more applications than I could possibly list in a single lecture. In fact, they offer entire 12 week courses on 3D printing, so I had to cram everything together into a nice 1-2 hour presentation, where to start?!
My 3D printer still working hard, but I’m still having troubles!
Yesterday was the last day for my solid modeling class and surprisingly I got more questions than the previous days so that made me very happy. Today is my 3D printing course, so we’ll talk about how that went tomorrow (and push back our online 3D printing course by a day sadly).
Yep, still dealing with printing issues so I have the dual extruder on. Ugh!!!!!! 5 HOURS still left on this print. Why does 3D printing have to be so sloooooooow?!
Well yesterday was day 2 of my solid modeling course, today is my last day of the class. Unfortunately tomorrow is my 3D printing course and I still haven’t got my printer well behaved yet. I guess we get to see all the 3D printing troubles! In any case, let’s talk about how the class went yesterday and what I have planned for today.
The dual extruder attachment, the current bane of my existence!
Well can’t complain too much about the first course. I’m used to people talking to me so it was an odd feeling talking into a screen with no one talking back. I had a few questions, but mostly the course was on how to think about solid modeling, so maybe not a lot of room for questions?
I love mass effect, so I really thought this was a perfect header image for the post since I am… assuming control!
Well I mentioned it a few days ago, but it’s day one of four today. I’m teaching three courses on solid modeling and one on 3D printing * Shakes fist at 3D printer who keeps giving me problems * and I figure I can talk about how my classes go after the fact, but let’s talk about my prep for these classes so my students get the most out of what I have to teach them.
My boss is not happy with the work I’m doing, you can tell since she didn’t want to look at me when I took this photo.
I’m giving a class on 3D printing this week and of course my printer decides it wants to throw a fit. So my print had to be stopped (18 hours in) and the printer needed a good talking to. It’s not the printers fault, maintenance happens, so let’s talk more about my poor FDM printer (Acronym defined yesterday).
Well it’s time, in a few short days I’ll be doing a marathon session of courses for the summer interns. I admit it I bit off a lot! I’m doing three solid modeling courses, so the basics, plus a 3D printing class. Today we’re talking 3D printing because, well it’s a headache even though the prints themselves can be worth the pain. I know if I can pull off printing what I’m working on now it will be worth it… I hope.
Okay everyone, I had a bright idea for our sphere… get it, get it!?!
Wow, week five already! As per my usual intro, this is a free class using FREE software so if you ever wanted to create a 3D model, this is for you and all you need is internet access to use the program we will be using. Now if you are just joining you’re going to want to start at week one, which you can find all the posts in the super lovely Solid Modeling for Beginners category. We finally did it, last week we made something cool looking! Today we’re going to expand on that and use what we learned to create another awesome thing!
Facilitation of stepping-like volitional oscillations using non-invasive transcutaneous electrical spinal cord stimulation in SCI subject. (A) Position of the participant in the gravity-neutral apparatus. (B) Biphasic electrical stimulation was delivered using unique waveforms consisting of 0.3–1.0 ms bursts filled by 10 kHz frequency that were administered at 5–40 Hz. (C) EMG activity of right soleus (RSol), right tibialis anterior (RTA), right medial gastrocnemius (RMG), right hamstrings (RHam), right vastus lateralis (RVL), right rectus femoris (RRF) and angular displacement in the knee and hip joints of both legs during leg oscillations with a voluntary effort alone (Vol), stimulation at T11 (Stim), and Vol + Stim are shown. (D) Schematics demonstrating the approximate location of transcutaneous electrodes above the lumbosacral enlargement, in relation to the location of the motor pools based on Kendall et al. (1993) and Sharrard (1964).
Well it’s been two weeks (roughly) and my PI asked specifically that this week I do a review on the state of spinal cord research, with emphasis on the spinal cord stimulation work I’m doing. So this review is going to look slightly different, namely it has a rather long references section (15 total). If you find this research fascinating I recommend “And yet it moves” (reference 5). It’s long, but open access and worth the read. I’m a little bias though, my Co-PI is one of the authors. In any case, I had two weeks to write this, so hopefully it is a good dip into what we know about the spinal cord and a lot of what we don’t. Enjoy!
I’m not here to tell you how to live your life. Then again, that’s the point of the post. The United States was founded on the idea that we can believe, or not believe, whatever we want and the government would not do anything to impose one religion on people above any other. We’ve failed miserably, but that was decades in the making.
Today is a bunch of meetings and a bunch of editing. As I mentioned (or at least think I mentioned here), I had to meet with the senior author for the paper I’m working on and I got a lot of feedback, some of it was good, most of it meant more work for me. That’s the process though, write, rewrite, re-re-re-re…rewrite.
Today is going to be fun, I’ve got a ton of meetings, but I also get to do outreach. If you’re a scientist, you can do it too, no matter where you are in the field, sign up at Skype a Scientist. While I wanted to write this post before my sessions I ended up having to write it afterwards so let’s get into what I talk about and how it went.
Ever feel like you’re just going around in circles like a hamster in a wheel? I’ve been working on about a million different things and I just can’t seem to get them off my plate. The work just keeps going and it’s got me somewhat down. Maybe I just need a day off or something.
Today is just a simple plea to my readers. Wear the damn mask. It’s not that hard. When you go out you put on your clothes, you can put on a mask too. Since people seem to be making this a political statement now, I guess I can explain why it’s not one.
We’re making something a little more exciting than a cube today. Yay!
Welcome to week four! For those of us just tuning in, this is a class for solid modeling using FREE software, so if you have internet access, you can do this too! You can find the whole course in the handy Solid Modeling for Beginners category. Last week we introduced a whole lot of navigation tools and helped you get situated into the world that you’ll be able to model in. So let’s get started by doing a quick recap of the past weeks and hopefully you’ve done your homework because we’re using that part today to make something more impressive than a cube.
Look around, we’re drowning in information. It’s an overload, we literally were not made to absorb this much information all at once. News stories bombard us with new bits of it. Social media is full of it. Ads promise you forbidden knowledge with this one weird trick. It’s no surprise it’s hard to tell what’s real.
With everything going on it’s been tough to write about just one topic. When I started 365 days, I started it with the intention of highlighting my struggles and trials through one full year of my PhD with the idea that I may (or may not) keep going for the duration of my PhD process. Then COVID hit, Black lives matter protests took off (finally), and I had the realization that I, like most people, am more than just my studies.
I scream it loudly from the mountain tops, I suffer all the fucking time from mental health issues. I do it because staying silent doesn’t keep me from feeling them and it does nothing for others who are suffering. Yes, it’s embarrassing to talk about it because it feels like a taboo, or something you’re making up, but that’s why we need to talk about it and why you need to keep track of your own mental health.
For those of you not in academia, summertime means we get interns in the lab to learn about how research works in a real-life setting. We typically have them help with things that require basic skills, but lets them see how research really happens. This year, we are doing everything virtually thanks to COVID-19. This is a great thing because it really means we’re doing what we can to stop the spread while still giving students a chance to experience research.
For the past week or so my PI has been away, so I’ve had the chance to work on other projects from home. Unfortunately he returns this week so I’ve got to switch gears from protests, working from home, and undergrad mentoring back to experiments and experimental setup. As the senior student in the lab, I’ve got a lot of responsibilities.
Step right up boys and girls! Hurry, hurry to the greatest performance you’ll ever see… Who doesn’t love a good show, right? I mean you get to escape reality for a moment, forget your troubles, and see a whole different world. Unfortunately, once the show is over, it’s business as usual and that can’t happen, not this time. So why are the people in charge doing the same song and dance?
This course will all be taught using free software so have no fear, you can do it too! For those just joining us you can find all the posts in this series in the handy Solid modeling for beginners category. For the past two weeks I’ve been going over best practices. The reason is the tools are straightforward to learn, but how we use them is what separates someone who is learning from someone who is a pro. I have had some thoughts about what I wanted to cover this week for that reason, but this week we’re making something and by me we, I mean you! First, let’s do a quick recap of what we’ve learned and we can get started.
It still appears there is a media blackout on the protests (first mentioned in my other post). That doesn’t mean we’ve stopped though! It also unfortunately doesn’t mean the police have stopped. In fact we’re seeing some really… umm scary tactics being used by the police to * checks notes * beat us until we stop protesting police violence.
Rawr! Beware, the Gerry-mander!
I’ve been debating about writing this post and it’s just been rattling around in my head for the past month or so. Voting can change the course of history, frankly we saw that in the 2016 elections, but we also saw something else. Your vote doesn’t matter and that isn’t by accident. But wait, I just said voting can change the course of history, so how does it not matter? Well for that we need to go back, way back.
Spatiotemporal spinal maps of ipsilateral a-MNs. (A) Experimental set-up for ankle plantar flexion. (B) HD-EMG is decomposed into a-MN spike trains using a convolutive blind-source separation technique. (C) The spinal output to generate the neural drive to muscles is estimated from the a-MN spike trains.
The world is on fire, we’re protesting for a future, but today I have my review paper due so instead of writing about my frustrations I’m going to share my review. Today we’re looking at the effects of trans-spinal direct current stimulation (tsDCS) on alpha motor neurons and how we can determine that effect using electromyography. It’s actually a very cool paper, the work is well done, and it’s open source so you can read it if you’re interested.
If I ignore my bills, I would have very few, if any. If that logic seems, well wrong, then I’m not surprised. Ignoring something doesn’t make it magically go away. Yet, Trump has touted, yet again, that if we slowed or stopped testing, we would have very few, if any cases of COVID19. I mean, with that kind of logic, you could have no more bills with this one weird trick!
Believe it or not, there are some people who can’t even lift a hand, much less hold a glass of water.
For those of you just tuning into my corner of the internet, I’m a disabled vet. If you looked at me most days you wouldn’t know it, but not all disabilities are visible and my TBI, back issues, shoulder issues, knee issues, chronic pain, chronic fatigue, memory problems, PTSD, aphasia … I could keep going, but you get the idea. My disabilities are (mostly) not visible. So today I have a very simple request, don’t be ableist.
Despite the media blackout the Black lives matter protests are still going strong. To say I’m proud would be an understatement. Unfortunately with all the protests going on people are claiming that COVID19 isn’t as bad as people said it was, or that the protesters should stop because of the pandemic. The critiques all miss the point, this one simple trick will slow the transmission and it really works.
We’re back again with week 2 of solid modeling for beginners! For those of you just joining in, you can read the introduction (pre-week 1) in this post. You can also find all the posts in this series (including week 1) in the Solid modeling for beginners category. Solid modeling isn’t too difficult, but it does take time and it does mean you need to learn to think about objects in different ways. Week 1 did a great job of introducing this type of thought process and today we’re going to continue from where that left off. Let’s just dive right in!
Straight from the man himself, this is a very real tweet by Mike Godwin (Here).
Godwin’s law states simply “as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.” Coined by Mike Godwin, Godwin’s law is often invoked when talking about Trump or the horrid state the so-called US democracy is in. Here’s the catch, the law was suspended by Godwin himself when talking about Trump and company, for very good reasons.
♫ One of these things is not like the other… ♫
COVID-19 is making headlines again and news reports are claiming the second wave is here. Well, that’s not quite right, we never actually stopped the first. We literally cannot have a second wave of outbreaks if the first wave is still going strong, it’s just a continuation.
Well here’s something I never thought I would have to write about, the food is all right. Contrary to reports by police, no one is poisoning their food. In fact, every time a new story comes up regarding tapered food and the police it turns out the officers involved were (surprise!) lying outright. There are strangely so many of these incidents that it’s hard to keep up with, what is it about police that makes them think it’s okay to keep lying?
Well as if we didn’t already have an overabundance of apocalyptic events occurring all at the same time, now we have trump rolling back protections for the LGBTQ+ community while the supreme court ruled in favor of protections for LGBTQ+ people. It’s all very confusing, but while we’re trying to burn down the system, need to build in protections for the LGBTQ+ community too.
Rayshard Brooks was murdered by police. Murdered isn’t quite a strong enough word for what the police did, but we’ll go with it. He was murdered. I don’t know the man, but I can tell you he had three daughters and a step son. I can also tell you he was murdered for being responsible. He was murdered for celebrating his daughters 8th birthday. He was murdered for doing the right thing. But today we mourn the wendy’s that was burned down.
The protests are still going strong and that makes my heart happy. You knew the protests were still going on though… right? I don’t blame you if you thought they had died down, turns out when protesters aren’t burning down buildings the media doesn’t seem to care, even when police decide to use excessive force and LITERALLY run people over.
Welcome to solid modeling for beginners! Each week I’ll post some new and exciting things so you can try your hand at solid modeling. It’s easier than it looks to get started and once you do, you’ll be able to create amazing things that you can 3D print, plans to build something really cool, or maybe you just want to create some art! You can do anything you want with solid modeling, that’s the beauty of it! Let’s get started.
Well today I was planning on posting a quick tutorial for everyone who wanted to learn solid modeling. Have no fear! We’re still going to do it, but that will have to wait to tomorrow. I’ve got a lot going on at the moment and creating a good tutorial from scratch will take a bit of time. What am I doing now? Well, I’m glad you asked.
Luckily teaching my course online makes it easier, not harder!
Today marks the start of my summer class. It’s a small group and while it doesn’t directly have anything to do with brain-machine interfaces (frankly none of my research in the lab does) in the age of commercialized 3D printing knowing how to solid model is an important skill that can be applied to basically anything, yes even brain-machine interfaces! Best of all, you can learn with us for free (software included)!
Transcutaneous posterior root stimulation: Paravertebral and abdominal skin electrode placement (this is just a portion of figure 1 of this paper.
Normally I’m somewhat excited to post these, but with everything going on you’ll have to pardon my lack of joy. However, it’s been two weeks so I need to review another paper so I’m sharing it here as well as sending my PI a copy. The study is a few years old, but it’s open access so you can read it if you’re interested. Transcutaneous spinal cord stimulation (TSS) is one part of my research in case you couldn’t tell from all the spinal cord and TSS studies and posts. I find it interesting and it gives me hope that we can help a whole lot of people living with spinal cord injury. Anyway give it a read and get out there and protest for a better world.
“What do you mean, I look nervous!?”
Well it finally happened. We’re doing experiments again. It’s kind of scary to be honest to be working in a hospital again when the pandemic is going on and we have protests still happening. While I could do without the pandemic, I hope with all my heart that the protests don’t end until the corrupt system that caused them ends first.
Yet another day for protesting and another day for police brutality. Every day I check to see what’s been happening and what is currently happening with the protest and I hold my breath every time I wait for the current update. I’m nervous the protests will slow down, I’m nervous we are going to get tired and stop.
The I’d march with you… if I weren’t so busy discriminating against you defense.
Sex, gender, depending on who you ask it’s very simple or infinitely complex. I’ll give you a hint the science is settled and it isn’t as simple as people who shout, “but biology!” would want you to think. Sex and gender are most definitely a spectrum, it’s literally what the biology tells us and if you disagree, well then quit trying to use science as a defence for your shitty opinions.
Oh hi there!
Lunatic Laboratories 