3D Printing

So our blender broke last year. The only thing that needed to be replaced was the connector between the motor and the blade. This past summer Anthony drew up the replacement part on Solid Works and printed it off on a 3D printer. We tried it with the blender but the blender sheered off parts of the connector.

Tonight, Anthony reconfigured the printing instructions so that the replacement connector part would no longer be hollow. He tried printing the part with our new 3D printer. This second new replacement part was solid, and it worked when we tried it with our blender!

Unfortunately, the smoothie we made in the blender did not work. We had planned on a banana peach smoothie but the peach was rotten inside. We switched our plan to a banana nut smoothie. The outcome chewed like raspberry walnut vinaigrette, and tasted like banana bread batter- nasty.

 The Sheered 1st Replacement Part

 

Printing The 2nd Replacement Part

 

Banana Nut Smoothie

 

2nd Replacement Part Still Intact After Blending

Engineering 101 With Daddy

This evening Shastya got to observe Daddy assembling a new 3D printer from Baoyan Automation. Daddy continues to work on software for this printer. Mommy worked on some of the editing for the manual. We set the new 3D printer on a table next to our 2D printer.

 

 

 

 

The Lily Pad Game

Anthony and I did some more Python programming this evening. Anthony wanted to write a computer game. I thought it would be cool to plan a special computer game for our little daughter on the way. I came up with a lily pad game. I sketched a picture of my idea on a small scale, a prototype complete with lily pads, a lotus blossom, and a frog. To win the game, the frog has to reach the lily pad with the lotus blossom. To lose, he merely does not make it to the lily pad with the lotus in time, or worse he falls in the water and is disqualified.

Anthony and I started working on code for The Lily Pad Game. I learned two things about coding tonight: 1) if statements, 2) for loops. We didn't use the if statements in The Lily Pad Game but we did use the for loops. For loops is a function that allows you to repeat the execution of a section of code while moving an index over a sequence. We did two loops so that we could have the first index move over the sequence 1-10, and the second index move through the sequence small, medium, and large lily pads. Our next step will be to plot the lily pads on a x,y point graph/ Cartesian coordinates like you would see on a graphing calculator/ Cartesian plane. Below you will find some screen shots of our Python Lily Pad Game code, and our terminal output of it.

Python Programming 101 w/ The Grad Student Husband

Today UPS delivered to our apartment a BabyTrend Travel Jogger System.

My parents wanted to buy us a stroller for our little one on the way. Anthony's parents wanted to buy us an infant car seat. I ordered this combo off of Amazon to get both sets of parents the best bang for their bucks. I have briefed the parents on my findings, and the plan is they are going to split the price. Of course there are many ways they could split the price! The most obvious way would be to split the price evenly. I was curious though. I looked up what the items cost separately on Amazon.

I quickly jotted down by hand some figures and estimates as to what percentages the parents would be saving. Well, earlier this evening my husband had just taught me a little Python programming so we decided my curiosity would make great Python practice. So that is what we did.

Here is our code. You can try it out for yourself. Of course I did just note that the stroller was $139.00 not $139.99 so alas our numbers can still be more precise lol. But that will be for another day.

The Journey of Our World Map App

My Clemson grad student husband is having a lot of fun developing his first Android app! His app is called World Map App. He saw the need for such an app when we were in China this past summer. We would try to show people a map of where we were from and it would take forever to download a map. He decided to create an app that allows people to download an app with maps on it when they have a good internet connection so that when they don't they can still have easy, fast access to maps. He just released Version 5 of World Map App which allows users to download additional maps. The app has been traveling around the world. World Map App Version 3 update included me the wife translating the app into Russian. World Map App Version 4 involved Anthony translating the .xml file into Spanish. Below is a link to my husband's blog article with more information concerning World Map App Version 5 as well as an update on the tremendous success that World Map App is currently having in Russia. Underneath the link to Anthony's blog article is a Google play button you can hit to access our World Map App. Just look it up and download.

Anthony's Blog Article World Map App Version 5