January 2020

New Years Day was a bit boring so the kids decided they wanted to go skating.  I figured Robson Square Skating rink was either going to be empty or the busiest places in Downtown.  Turns out it was the latter - the wait to rent skates was about 20 minutes.  We got the skates on just before the Zamboni came out.

Vancouver doesn't normally get a lot of snow so our infrastructure isn't really setup to handle a big snowfall event.  It doesn't take much before the roads become clogged with cars without snow tires and the sky trains lose connections to the power rails and stop running.  The Vancouver School Board apparently seriously considers any closure but on this day, they decided closure was the right call.  School might be closed, but Helen and I both have to work.  It makes more sense (but just barely) for the kids to come to my work than to go hang out in the hospital.   We live at the bottom of a hill that the buses can't get up when it's covered in snow so going to work means walking.

Vancouver doesn't have a lot of snow plows, but amazingly, they do seem to have one that clears the side walks on bridges.  One slushy days, the bridges are terrible because the cars splash you as they drive by but today the snow was cold enough that it stayed down when the cars drove by.  We were far from alone walking over the bridge.

Wet winter days can be a bit hard to fill.  There are the usual indoor suspects - the Blodel Conservatory, Science world or the Vancouver Aquarium, but each of these have admission fees and sometimes parking challenges.  If you do some digging, it's amazing what is else is available.  I stumbled onto the East Van Science and Maker Jamboree running in one of the Gym's at the Britannia Community Center.  There were a number of presenters - Vancouver Hack Space had a bunch of tables.  Science World had a demo area and chairs setup at one end.  The port of Vancouver was showing how hard it is separate plastics from soil.  Metro Vancouver had a demo table for bio-solid applications.  SFU Forensic Studies had an art station where kids could use House Fly Larvae to make very cool art cards.  The kids don't have a lot of values around maggots so they were fine with picking the up with tweezers and covering them in paint and they really liked the results!

A second big attraction for the kids was the Vancouver Hack Space flashing LED soldering project.  It was a small kit where the kids solder components to the printer circuit board and make themselves a button with flashing LED's on it.  This is my kids first experience with a soldering iron but they really seemed to enjoy the experience.

The process is pretty reasonable.  First they match the components (everything is in pairs - 4 resistors, 2 capacitors, 2 LED's, 2 transistors) to the board and then push the wires through.  They then spread the wires a bit so the components don't fall out.  Then they solder the components in place and use a cutter to remove the extra wire.   Repeat a few times and all the components are mounted.

And just like that, the kids had working buttons!  The person guiding the project did help debug it a bit (a few weak solder joints needed touching up), but the kids mostly built it themselves!