about me
introduction
Hi! I'm Andrew Binder, and this is my Digital Fabrication Documentation Page! I'm very excited to have been able to partake in this course during the Summer 2020 virtual/online session and am excited to also tell you about myself. With the menu on the top, you can cycle between my final project, this page, and all of the other classes I attended throughout the course (with the exception of class 12, visible in my Final Project page), and each will provide thorough documentation of what I did (in class and out), what I learned, and will provide pictures and videos of contraptions I have devised (including circuitry, 3D printed parts and their models, and even inspirations), along with the code I inputted into Arduino, when necessary. Now, a little bit about me.
who am i?
As I've said before, my name is Andrew Binder. As of August 2020, I am a 17-year-old, Jewish/Ukrainian-American, rising senior at Stuyvesant High School. I was born in Bensonherst, Brooklyn in 2003, and have since then moved to Washington Heights and then Riverdale, where I live to this day. I have had a huge passion for mathematics and physics for a long time, and was able to pursue that passion through many extracurricular activities, including courses from the Harvard Extension School. Other than math and physics, I have been playing the piano for many years, participate in theatrical productions with the Riverdale Rising Stars community theatre program, and am a second-degree black belt at Riverdale Kenshikai Karate. Being well-rounded has been very important to me and my parents, and so these courses are also a way to broaden my horizons. My first language is Russian, but English is still native for me, given how long I have been speaking it. My parents moved from Ukraine (previously USSR) a few weeks before I was born, and so carrying on that culture is also important to me.
Now, I want to talk a little bit more about why I joined this course.
why did i join this course?
As said before, I have a serious passion for physics, both practical and theoretical. I've been fairly decently exposed to the world of theoretical physics and how physics describes the way things work, so actually seeing practical physics at work (and manipulating it) was something that interested me. Being able to model, design, program, and build a contraption that does something interesting is near-invention for me, and makes me feel like quite the engineer/inventor. If not because I really want to make something, simply learning how to be able to do that is quite interesting.
about this website
I would also like to talk a little bit about this website itself. I wanted to discuss how it was made, what its purpose is, and how to navigate through it.
how was it made?
This website was coded entirely be me. No 3rd-party software was used, such as any CSS or Bootstrap templates. All of the HTML, CSS, JS, and even Arduino (with the exception of the JavaScript in the ledplay website which was taken from Nathan's site as part of a demo (but even the CSS there was mine) and any Arduino code taken from Nathan's or Rob's site that was used in breakout rooms to get things to work) was coded entirely by me. I wanted this website to be unique, and I wanted to have my personal stamp on it, to personalize it even further, even though this learning experience is already unique as is. Any of my HTML, CSS, and JS can be seen in my GitHub repository, as this site was also powered by GitHub.
what is it for?
This website serves as thorough documentation of what I did during the PHYS S-12 Digital Fabrication course. It details anything I learned in class, my learning experience out of class, as well as descriptions, plans, and executions of any projects and homework assignments. It includes photos, videos, code snippets, and links to external sources. It is all embedded in the webpages, no extra looking necessary.
how do i use it?
This website is fairly straightforward to use. Each tab can be seen above, and is easily accessed by clicking respective links in the navbar above. Below, however, I will still cover each individual page and what it will detail.
this page
This is the landing page for my website, and simply gives the reader a brief introduction of me and what I am doing here. Any other links can be accesssed from here, but this is the main page. Here, I tell you all a little bit about who I am, why I joined this course, what I plan on doing in this course, and just any basic background about how to use this site. This is the "index.html" page in my GitHub repository. Another good name for this is the "homepage", where you can always come back if you're ever done looking through anything specific. Any other pages can be accessed through the navbar on top, and this one is accessed through the "About Me" page.
final project page
This course culminates in a final project that each student must create, which incorporates things they have learned throughout the course. This page details the planning, designing, and implementation of everything that pertains to my final project, from first proposals to the final result. This is really the end result and goal of this course, and is accessed by the Final Project tab above in the navbar. The top part of the page will have the demonstration and final product of my final project, while the lower part will contain and detail the process of getting to that final product, from first proposals to final execution. This all, again, can be found in the Final Project tab above.
class pages
This course consists of 12 classes (held on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 15:15 to 18:15, EST from Tuesday, 23 June to Thursday, 30 July), accompanied by lab sections on alternating days (Mondays from 13:00-15:00 or from 17:00-19:00, EST, and on Wednesdays from 10:00-12:00 or from 17:00-19:00, EST from Wednesday, 24 June until Wednesday, 29 July). Each one can be accessed by the respective number in the navbar above. Ie, anything done during class 7 (or pertaining to class 7) can be found in the "07" tab above. The class page details what we did in the class, what we did in the "breakout" room workshops, and what we did for the assignments. Again, all of them can be found in the respective number above, except for class 12, which is found in the Final Project tab. There were a bunch of lab sections held in the final week leading up to final project presentations from 3 August to 6 August, but that all really pertains to final questions regarding our final projects, which I handled mostly on my own.
There are a few secret pages that can be accessed through the corresponding class pages. These secret pages are extensions of the work done in class, and can be found on those pages. The most notable are the ones pertaining to remote control of some things taught in class 9. The links are embedded in the respective pages, and each page has a navbar on top to quickly and easily get back to the main pages of the website.
This is a very general and brief description of how this site works. Further clarification can be found on any individual page. All documentation is finalized on 10 August and will not be edited further after that, so everything you see on this page or any of the other pages in the navbar above was written and completed between the start of the course on 23 June (when I first got a GitHub repository and created the first draft of my website on the first day of class) and 10 August when the course officially ends and all edits are finalized (when course evaluations are due and Harvard Summer School 2020 is officially over, even though I presented everything 4 days prior on 6 August). Hope you enjoy reading through this documentation, and I hope you consider taking this course at some point, whether it's online or in-person, during the school year or during the summer!
final message: 10 august, 2020
As of 10 August, 2020 (the publishing of this final bit), all documentation of this website has been finalized, and no further documentation will be added to this website. No additional photos, videos, code snippets, models, or commentary will be posted to this site. This website is meant to serve as the documentation of my learning during the Introduction to Digital Fabrication (PHYS S-12) course during Harvard Summer School 2020, and the program officially ended on 10 August. Thus, this website will no longer be edited and nothing will be added to it. This is why my biographical information may no longer be accurate at the time of reading of this page. It has been a fun run, but sadly, the course is over, and thus my documentation is also complete. Thank you to anyone and everyone who helped me along the way, and I am excited for future endeavors!