User:Mchua

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Revision as of 21:15, 1 February 2008 by Mchua (talk | contribs) (→‎Current)
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@ mel
laptop.org
help@ This user is a Support gang volunteer.
Specializes in: documentation, peripherals, new volunteers, grassroots
IRC Nick: mchua
Nuvola apps edu miscellaneous.png This user is a spare parts hound.
en This user is a native speaker of English.
zh-1 这个用户是能够有助于满足于基本 水平的 中国人 。.
ja-1 この利用者は少しだけ日本語を話すことができます。
Nuvola apps kworldclock.png This user's time zone is UTC-6.

Who are you?

Mel Chua, itinerant hack of all trades and OLPC summer 2007 intern. I'm active in Support gang, OLPC Chicago, and an alumni from (and involved in the OLPC groups of) IMSA and Olin. You may also know me from the MIT Media Lab or Design Continuum. I'm an electrical and computer engineer by training, educator by passion, artist by hobby, journalist by accident, and everything else out of sheer curiosity. Pressed for a short job description, I would say that I engineer educations. More at http://melchua.com.

Contact

To find out where I am, check the Doppler badge on my blog. Leaving a message on my talk page or sending me an email (my first name at laptop dot org) is the best way to reach me 99% of the time. I usually respond within 48 hours. You can also find me on IRC (mchua) and skype (mel_chua). If something's truly urgent, text or call me at 847.970.8484 - please don't leave a voicemail though, as they're extraordinarily difficult for me to understand (I have a hearing loss).


About me

Mchua portrait.jpg

What... is your name? Mallory Solomon Lim Chua. Most people call me Mel.

What... is your quest? To make a world where makers make themselves. (I need to come up with a more elegant wording of this.) The job I'd like to retire from is that of an university professor with two PhD's, one in engineering and one in education, teaching and doing research at the (currently shaky and fledgling) union of the two disciplines. My goal is to have as many interesting things happen between now and then as possible. (And, of course, to seek the Holy Grail.)

What... is your favorite color? Yellow.

Random background: I am Chinese and my family is from the Philippines. I was the first person in my extended family to grow up and be schooled outside the developing world, and the first to develop hardware, software, and participate in internet communities. I grew up as a "disabled" kid with a hearing loss severe enough to warrant a host of technological aids, special classes, and a full-time sign language interpreter. I also grew up as a voracious library addict (at a young age, books were easier for me to understand than people talking) and a tomboy who hung out with the guys to talk about math and science (and occasionally play football). This has shaped many of my attitudes towards education, access, technology, globalization, and development. I am a hacker of hardware, software, brains, and the boundaries between them. Please feel free to grab me if you think I'd be useful for a task.

As an electrical and computer engineer, I work with microcontrollers and design simple peripherals and control mechanisms. That sounds a lot fancier than it probably should; basically, I make Things With Electrons Talk To Each Other. I'm still very new to the hardware world, and feel less comfortable in it than any other, but I've "learned enough to teach myself more," as a prof once told me at the end of my undergrad career. (My choice to major in electrical engineering is a canonical masochism story involving a dartboard and the decision to study the field I had the least background in and the most terror of.)

As a coder and Linux user (thanks to some high-school friends and a stack of Debian install floppies) I adore the command line and have picked up programming along the way, primarily in C, C++, and Python. I can usually pick up other languages fast (and forget them even faster) with the exception of assembly, which tends to drive me slowly insane if I work with it for extended periods of time. Open source software has also led me into the related topics of open licenses, open content, and (the young but burgeoning field of) open education.

As a long-time TA (since 2001), I'm fascinated by how people learn and believe in the power of nosce te ipsum. (Personally, I am a highly visual, big-picture person who learns best by teaching and writing documentation, which is usually highly convenient for classmates and fellow hackers with new projects.) I have fairly radical ideas about classroom structure (my preference: none), information distribution (my preference: everyone has read-write access to everything) and student evaluation (my preference: feedback yes, grades no), but these ideas are still quite open and under formation, and I love talking to people about these and related topics. Having completed my undergrad degree in engineering, I'm planning on going to graduate school in education in the near future.

I'm also an enthusiastic (if amateur) wordsmith. I keep a blog of entropic thought at http://blog.melchua.com, on which I occasionally post about OLPC-related things, but no promises are made as to coherency or relevance.

Projects

Current

Reading list

While in 1cc

  • 'Zine articles: finish and upload to Weekly_zine/0 for isforinsects
    • Interview/talk-to Adam about support-gang
    • Talk to Adam & Kim about shipping situation
  • Talk to SJ and Adam about community-building, documentation situation
  • Talk to SJ about university infrastructure (with Seth et al)
  • SJ, Nikki, Chris, etc. about OLPC America (Sally Ford), grassroots, community centers, OLPC Chicago.
  • Meet up with Chih-yu in person and get going with testing / review docs
    • got b4. olpc-log.bat?
  • Seth and Ian: Health Jam in Seattle
  • Catch up with Manu about
    • entrepreneurship
    • XOs for adults
  • Read http://privacy.org, http://michaelgeist.ca, and http://epic.org to understand more about the privacy issues Adam has mentioned.
  • make wiki templates for grassroots groups, uni chapters, projects - send to Arjun
  • Recruit for Health. Recruit for Health. Recruit for Health.
  • Recruit for Peripherals. Recruit for Peripherals. Recruit for Peripherals.
  • Health and Peripherals activities?
    • Jam/Flash conf at Olin? (health periphs, chargers)
    • tv show filming design challenge for chargers?
    • d-lab? idds?
  • peripherals that could be built
    • sensor logging module (mcolyer's poe + my dcontinuum projects combined - or find a chip that's > pic, cheaper too)

While at Olin

  • Chris Carrick and chargers
  • Nikki, Greg, and the Disassembly Film
  • Read Greg's "Made To Stick" book - take notes
  • Get Olin kids hooked up with IMSA ones
  • Get Olin and IMSA kids to support other uni groups, write uni group docs
  • Springtime Jam at Olin? Flash conf? Chargers + health periphs needed sorely. W/ other schools?
  • Chris and HFID group - wiki cleanup/redesign
  • Nikki and task tracking interfaces/docs
  • Ollie and the internship-finding page
  • Chris Carrick + Appropedia + mechE development ftw?
  • Nikki, Chris, Andy, and OLPC Chicago office. We must talk.
  • Game Jam Boston 2008 - MIT might host, but Olin has experienced runners
  • [saturation test]

Once in NYC

  • Contact local support-gangers about starting NYC grassroots activities
  • Get hacking equipment with paltry streams of discretionary income
  • find python users groups. attend.

Upcoming events I'll be at

Ongoing

  • Jams
  • Working on resources and a framework for future content Jams of different types. Writing the woefully neglected How To Run A Jam cookbook.
  • Testing
  • Starting a program for Review squads of young testers and teachers to give feedback on our content. Now recruiting.
  • Wiki cleanup
  • Metacontent - Finding information can be tricky. Let's try to fix that.
  • Metapresentations - Compiling a review/summary of presentations on Laptop demonstrations and Presentations. Can you help?
  • Metawiki - Doing clean-up as per the Style guide whenever I can
  • Being a sort of wiki welcome wagon and helping out newcomers. Let me know if you're interested; we could always use more people to help show newbies around.
  • Grassroots groups I'm actively involved in
  • School chapters I actively mentor
  • Wiki pages I created/maintain

Back burner

Notes

  • /Todo - OLPC task list of things I've committed to getting done. If you'd like to assign me a task, leave a message on my talk page and I'll notify you when I accept (and move it to my tasklist). Feel free to harass me about anything on the Todo list.
  • /Braindumps - Thoughts in progress that are not yet fully formed or ready to go to main wiki. Probably inaccurate, half-baked, or some combination of the two. You have been warned.
  • /Sandbox - For testing wiki syntax, templates, etc.

Someday

Projects and ideas I'd like to do, or see done, but haven't committed to yet. Usually the missing part is a collaborator, knowledge, resources, or just plain old activation energy and free time. If you'd like to take one of these projects (the important thing is that they happen, not who makes them happen), collaborate with me on any of them, offer support, or just talk and brainstorm about related ideas, please contact me.

  • OLPC webcomic
  • Rosetta Stone clone in Pygame (Update: An IMSA student is now doing this as her research project.)
  • Front-end for music composition (GUI for Lilypond? Something to translate between TamTam and Lilypond?)
  • "Heathkit" style build-your-own peripheral kits for the XO (solder your own gamepad, etc)
  • Intro to electrical engineering through taking apart & developing for the XO
  • Ad Libris, a lightweight metadata structure spec for the Library. (Update: This may have been taken up by OLE Nepal, but I can't tell from their descriptions yet.)

Past

Goodies