Thursday, November 13, 2014

First real day in Jinja


I made it from Dubai.  

As I said customs was a chore.  It wasn't any different in Uganda except the electronics are red flags and they couldn't figure out why I had so much booze.  Apparently they haven't had a pumpkin spice latte or vanilla shot in their venti vanilla machiato.  




In Dubai it was countdown timers on the arduino boards they wanted to know about.


I knew I had made it when I saw the stack of journals.  These are created in the leather shop on the grounds.  Look at the cool design.  I am going to talk leather later but its pretty amazing.  It is also a huge opportunity to help out.  If you are artistic and have ideas for leather design, reach out.  Lets get these guys some more options or even custom work.  You work with the artists and they turn these out with high quality and attention to detail.



I was tired last night.  As I explained, napping is evil and that is what killed my day the next day.  That and some really long car riding.


Today, after a sleepless night from travel and African sounds that were too interesting to sleep thru, I woke early.   There are about 10 billion things outside that are trying to communicate with something that is very far away.  Goats, bugs, dogs, birds, probably bats that are bigger than birds, holy crap I am now envisioning that scene from Indiana Jones where she has the bat.  *shudder*

Hennyway.....


Beautiful day.  And today I get to give someone something that will change people's lives.   Its gonna be a good day.



Welcome to a new day in Jinja, Uganda.  I left the background lit in this shot, Lake Victoria in the Front Yard.


We wake and prepare to head out.  The Bed and Breakfast is a ministry to help weary missionaries and keep sanity amongst the lost.  They also run The Keep, a Coffee Shop/Restaurant/gathering place.  We head on over.  The Keep is a castle/d&d themed place.  Johnny, Jen and their youngest hit this place every morning as part of their routine.  It's very much like the community center in Finland MN, only it's also a coffee shop so it has lots of people from the community that pass through.  As you can tell, their barista is good, really good.  And YouTube trained.  The ministry of The Keep also helps to train people to work in real jobs that pay ok for the area.  The Barista here learned his craft from the Long's via YouTube.  *looks at camera* "you hear that every Barista in America?  There is a guy in Uganda that learned this via YouTube, you will make Latte Art or be ridiculed forever." </rant>

While there today Johnny met with a guy that will be fixing their car and we discussed the hackerspace/makerspace and he offered mechanical expertise and a place to have mechanical classes.  The Hacker Space is going to be something we talk about more but hear me out.  It isn't only going to be Ugandan's learning computer skills.  I think this could be a community of more than that.  I hope to see ideas from our discussions in the Hackerspace/makerspace.  Also, if you have run a maker space, please contact us we have some questions around lessons learned.  After breakfast and morning coffee, we moved on to the day.  The hardware store!  (could this day get any better?)

Let me try to describe the hardware store.  You know those tiny little ice cream shops that only have a counter.  Those are way bigger.  The transaction to find 4 bolts was long and involved.  Think about that they next time you are in Home Depot looking at 3/8" x 3" bolts and nuts.  We needed to mount that stitching machine so we could get it working.  

Returning from the Hardware Store we took Bodas (motorcycle taxis).  About 2 miles, maybe less, $1.50 for both.  This is inexpensive transportation and scales well.  It something we should consider in NYC.  At the same scale, Manhattan to Mid-Town for $3.

We had pressing issues to attend to.  My mission was to bring a very important piece of equipment to the leather shop.

This strapping thing right here is the Tippman Boss.  We had some assembly, and requisite fiddling but, it works.  I couldn't be happier.

This machine means more professional presentation, more speed, more accuracy and takes their products to a new level.  The Long's are making people into craftsmen that can go out and find their own work.  This machine makes it so they are still connected and was donated as a open source community project.  We all can support it by either buying the goods or donating, we all can offer talents for things that can be made or designs that would be something special for you.  The idea is if a craftsman strikes out on his/her own, they can use the machine to keep their craft rolling.  It isn't just for the Longs, its for their Leather Project.  If anyone in the graduate community from the Leather Tooling School (patent pending) needs to fix Tack for Horses, they can.  Any project is possible.

I cant wait to see DEFCON next year.  The items for sale there will for-sure be amazing.

Today was about ideas.  Little dumb ones and big a-ha moments.  Johnny showed me a video of a guy named Zack.  Zack needed an idea once.  He searched the Internet and got the idea, and this spawned another idea.  Google picked it up and did the video.  Zack got everything he needed to fulfill his ideas.  But, Johnny realized, no one ever got him to put forth his ideas.  They assumed a laptop would do it.  What they needed was collaboration.  More and more ideas but all formulated to solve a central problem.  Zach wants to help farmers.  It may just be that he can help them understand crop rotation, his idea is to help Farmer.  Mine is to find the appropriate solutions to problems and find the resources to make them happen.

I hope your day is full of ideas, great big ones, and little tiny ones.

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