We Love Sugru (by sarah)

We love Sugru which is a putty like stuff that you can form into shapes, sticks to just about everything and is flexible - it is basically a funky silicon rubber from my understanding. When we first heard about it we couldn't get hold of any and so had to wait as they had sold out but the wait was worth it!

Since then we have used it for tonnes of things from embedding electronics in hair pieces, making creatures for the visually impaired, fixing fridges, shoes, adding little feet and buffers to all things electronic, fixing broken mugs and making jewellery. I plan to fix my electric guitar with it though need to see how it reacts to having glitter added to it!

But it is more important to me than it's usefulness. To me Sugru represented something more, when it appeared I was struggling with both scientists and artists telling me that there was no cross over between the two areas. My tag line o twitter is that I am The Artist Scientist or Artistic Scientist and to see this product - the result of something an artist (ok design student) had produced, being so wonderful for science/tech and artistic endevours.

This was the sort of fusion of art and science that I was sure should exist but was being told didn't and my examples of how the modle builders of film dinosaurs had ended up solving the mystery of joints and movement that paleaontologists has been struggling with was falling on deaf ears.

So I turned up at The Cheltenham Science Festival debate on science verses art that year with my sugru bracelet and my ESA t-shirt I'd won for Celestial Montage and found that people didn't seem to really cae on either side of the divide, they have their opinions of the others and that is that. Stuck in the middle as all ways I gritted my teeth and looked for more science-art related things and found it under the title science communication.

Recently Sugru posted their life story so far and asked what inspired others, so I told them - they inspired me! They provided the evidence I needed that science and art can create wonderful productive and helpful things by learning from each other, they are an example of a dream that was followed and they provided the very material I had been trying to work out how to make myself - I was mucking around with resins casting, silicon mould making and fimo in order to get something like sugru and I was failing and could not make the projects I wanted. I hadn't even thought of applications beyond my own ends and there WOP! appeared sugru ready to go and so I went and so did Al and he has even written up one of his repairs/hacks for their website!

World Book Day :) (by sarah)

Thursday was world book day - it caught me slightly off guard as it was a day earlier than I'd put in the diary! But I'd known what Jean wanted to be for a while - a Dwarf, not just any dwarf but the one that carries Bilbo about in The Hobbit. So we dug out a knight outfit I picked up in a charity shop a few years ago and made a beard out of some fun fur we had laying around (left over from a dog costume I made for a halloween party right at the beginning of the dawn of this blog!).

Jean loves The Hobbit and after Alaric had read it too her read it herself and has been getting me to read bits of it too. She was grumpy that I wouldn't take her to see the film!

I think she made a really good dwarf 🙂 You wouldn't believe how militant she was over exactly what colour and length and fit the beard had to be! But it was all accomplished without any actual sewing.

We love world book day here, my little girl picks who she wants to be and we make the costume together normally the weekend before as a family activity and she takes the book into school.

She enjoyed the dressing up but was a little disappointed this year as they have a supply teacher who didn't realise it was book day so did normal work and she had to show her friends her book at lunch time instead. She said everyone was sad about this.

So when I came across this BBC article I was annoyed and hacked off. So much so I posted a reply:

The idea of them picking a character from a film or TV tie-in book is actually a good thing. Those books are essential to getting reluctant readers reading. The kids get to play games and talk about their favourite books and share stories.

Then there are the vouchers which though under used are appreciated by many families and I myself bought my first reading book because of such a voucher.

I think this article misses the point of fun from books, gently encouraging the children into the realm of reading rather than making it inaccesible and academic.

There is also the issue of costumes - really they shouldn't be an issue - you have to spend time with your child anyway so if you don't want to spend loads of money make something out of what you have at home with your child. With Fabric glue and stick on velcro you don't even have to sew. Most children also now have some sort of dress up gear in the home if you get really stuck.

Also I am seeing a lot of reaction against making subjects fun for learning at the moment. This makes me sad as it is a way of getting those who are uninterested interesting - after all World Book Day isn't really that needed for kids like Jean - she loves reading, she adores books and so on. What they are for is the ones who are struggling or have given up or think they can't do it. That is where the magic lays and for the kids that aren't struggling - well these fun days give them social skills and good memories.

I've seen people saying that kids associate fun with 'a doss' but they don't - not really get bored if it is too easy. For the kids that want it to be easy maybe that's because they are actually struggling - now don't get me wrong we all no there are lazy oiks out there but they are a minority and who knows such events might even get them interested - sometimes they are the more intelligent ones anyway.

Especially at primary school age children learn through play, this doesn't mean the play can not be challenging and useful. Different children learn in different ways so have a good variety of techniques and methods is good at least for the younger end of the school age range.

This is How Stupid People Die (by sarah)

That moment when you've gone off to take one photograph and realise it is dusk, you are in a tumble down industrial area amongst broken glass and iron rods half exposed from crumbling concrete. You have £100 odd worth of camera around your neck, you've left your phone in the car along with you husband and kids, and worse you have no idea anymore which direction said car is in. Then just to add the icing to the cake a group of three 'youths' wonders into sight and you realise it was their shouting and the ring of a beer can football that pulled you out of the contemplative glaze of photo snapping bliss you had been in moments before.

You do not run as that is provocation, beside satistically you know that the middle aged man on his own that passed you at the beginning of this adventure is more likely to be a danger than three young men. Apart from some cat calls they are fine - you take another photo of graffiti and as you know they've seen the camera anyway and just keep walking, with confidence hoping it will come out to somewhere more populated by people. Maybe even somewhere you know.

And the monologue that is spinning in you brain is one of half remembered self defense techniques though you do not dwell on them as being afraid in the half light of urban decay is a sure way to draw attention to yourself in unwanted ways. Same goes for the crowded city streets and the apparently safe board room. You keep walking aware of your surroundings and potential escape routes, you do not avert your gaze nor do you linger.

You think, 'This is how stupid people die,' and then you snort with the realisation that you have nicked the quote from a TED talk you watched the night before. And that shunts your brain into thinking that it is thinking and what it is thinking about and the words Third Thoughts sneaks in and you're like damn! Now I am quoting Terry Pratchette in the almost fear - that fear you are not feeling, that fear you are keeping at bay.

The kids are gone, they went into a side alley and now you are in territory you recognise and daydreams of pirate days with real tall ships and Christmas Fayres with real snow filter in your brain and you think - I'm actually quiet a away from the car and the quickest way is back through those buildings that now seem to loom out of the dusk.

So you again consider how stupid people die, but now you have your bearings and know the way and this way is much shorter and there is an old couple out for a walk and they might be lost but they are walking into the corroded corridor of split wood and ripped metal.

You follow and storm your way home, reasoning that you are wearing big boots and a flappy coat and yes it's all purple and your over weight but it is probably dramatic or something.

And you still stop to take photos because things look different from this angle and hey wow that was a fantastic one of the birds flying away and it shall be called The Escape.

There is a world within worlds in this place you walk unwittingly, there are jungles and homes and hope.

And really it is only a few derilict buildings with seagulls roosting, slowly the industrial endevours of a previous centre are being consumed by the small of nature and you feel previlaged to see it all before it is ripped asunder and the new of this centery is put in it's place. Clicking the button on the camera you try and capture just a little bit of the awe.

Kenyan Jean (by sarah)

So Jean has run out of reading books to read at school so they are giving her factual books instead, so far she has brought home ones on photography, democracy, Egypt and this weeks one was Kenya. She got very excited about this as I had done a talk on my time in Kenya a few weeks previously for Al's cub pack.

She started asking me questions and then disappeared upstairs - there was a picture of typical Kenyan dress so she ferreted through stuff and produced a costume she announced to be Kenyan Jean.

It was: my mothers old belly dancing outfit or harem pants from the 60's, tights with rainbow wellies (she said it was too cold for no shoes and sandles), then she had on a t-shirt with a sparkly 2000 on it covered in her victorian style red coat. On her head my hawaiian wrap around skirt - it was surprisingly effective though it looked more Ethiopian too me compared to what I saw in Kenya though I'm aware there were different styles of dress depending on Tribe etc...

She went to the park like it - initially I was worried that people might take it the wrong way but then I thought - you know she is not taking the micky she is interested in another culture and playing and as it was people only smiled.

Also I pointed out she looked a bit like my nan as she always used to wear a head scarf to stop the wind mucking up her hair! (think Mrs Figg out of Harry Potter!).

Bedroom Tax (by sarah)

I wrote this post a while ago but never go around to publishing it!

I saw something about bedroom tax or the spare room tax and thought 'Argh! We have spare rooms oh no!' but when I checked it out I found out that it wouldn't affect us. You would think I would be happy about this as if we had to pay it we would have to move or get lodgers or something as we couldn't afford it - but I am not happy.

I wish that it did affect us as at least then it would be fair even if it was horrible for us.

Instead this tax affects those who are on benifits or in social housing. The idea is that it will make people move to smaller houses but in many places there are not smaller houses availble meaning that they will have to pay. Charities like Shelter have warned it will lead to an increase in homeless families as they fail to be able to pay it and end up loosing the homes they are in.

Siblings will have to share - sounds sensible and money saving until you realise they are not taking the size of the room into account so a house with tiny rooms counts the same as one with huge rooms, nor do I agree with the age barrier for different sex siblings sharing. The sharing will lead to what has previously been considered over crowding. You are allowed an extra room if you have a disabled person living in the house but there are still issues with the families most going to be affected being those with disabled children and a move would mean they would have to have all the ramps and stuff put in all over again...

There is another issue here were a young people who may have been thinking of staying on in education will feel they can't - they move out and their parents get whacked with the tax. If they stay they will have to pay but they can be earning money to do so - if they can find a job.

If I'd been faced with this I would not have been able to go to university.

I think though that my anger actually lays in the fact that the person who thought this up has 18 bedrooms most of which are not used. Now a tax to solve the housing crisis because it made people take on lodgers... I might have swollowed.