Aaron Smith @theartguy@is.aaronbsmith.com

#Introduction / #Introductions

I'm Aaron, a Media Arts / Technology teacher for a K-8 Creative & Performing Arts Academy.

Before I did this, I was a Visual Arts teacher.

I'm very much into #DIY, #STEM, #STEAM, #DnD, #photography, the #Maker movement, and the idea that artists should be fairly compensated for the work they do (vs reposting said work without even attribution).

My politics lean left, but I don't talk about that much here.

I'm a widower.

I talk about games on @Crash.

*"Follow-for-follow." Life's too short to clutter my timeline.

*Post, boost, or favorite profanities. Yes, even the ones included in super-insightful posts. My students can find me.

*Post, boost, or favorite copyright infringement or endorsements of the same. Copyright law needs reform, sure, but it is still used to protect artists. If you're punching down and up at the same time, You're still punching down.

1/?

Monitor at the thrift store for $15, heck yeah!

Greenery

https://aaronbsmith.com/photos/2019/09/22/greenery/

#photoblog #wordpress

Morning on the Lake

https://aaronbsmith.com/photos/2019/09/19/morning-on-the-lake/

Hm, having scrolled through my emails it seems I purchased this computer in early 2012. The older files I found on it must have been transferred over.

Still old, but still newer than the box it'll be replacing in my classroom.

There's a lot of memories I have with this old box.

It was my first Windows tower, ever. (Before that I much preferred MacOS).

I used it to play games alongside my wife, including Warcraft, Minecraft, Diablo, SWTOR, and the now defunct City of Steam.

That said, it will be of much more use in the hands of my students than it would be as a bit of nostalgia in my closet.

Reformatting an old computer of mine and installing Linux on it for my students to use.

On one hand, it's maybe a decade old with an i3 processor.

On the other, it has 4gb of RAM, a terabyte HDD, and it's 64 bit, so it's already a huge leap above the computer it will be replacing.

Today I managed to configure 4 Raspberry Pi computers to play nice with our network's ntp server.

I'm feeling kind of good about that.

Turns out since the Pi4 provided through Donors Choose came with an SD card I can verify works, I can now verify that the Pi4 I bought with my own money ... doesn't work.

Better than the other way around, but I'm still sad that my personal Pi4 is DOA.

Today's adventure in teaching creative problem solving involved turning off all the power strips before class, then having students using the "Define, Prepare, Try, & Reflect" steps to find out why the computers didn't work.

4 / 21 aging computers in my lab will now be replaced, thanks in part to generous donations from the Fediverse.

Thank you.

Maybe it seems like lately I'm only talking about my Donors Choose project but thanks to some very gracious donations we're ONLY $42 FROM BEING FUNDED!

https://donorschoo.se/e/wbr9obRGGZ

(Oh, and FYI the moment this is funded you can be darned sure I'm making another Donors Choose project for another R Pi. I started the year with 21 computers I've slated to replace, and I only have so many computers lying around at home.)