Buying Things and Making Things

Yesterday I went and bought a new backpack. I was expecting to have to spend a lot of money, like maybe $100, and frankly I was not enthused by that idea, because I've got model-making supplies to buy, too. My old backpack cost $10 several years ago in Oregon, when I needed another bag to carry some books I'd bought at Powell's. Tough competition on the cost front, and the old pack was serviceable, if not quite large enough for all the crud I haul around campus at school. Noel offered me a backpack he has, but it was too long in the torso and it hurt my back to carry it.

So I drove 25 miles to Target (yes, that is right; the nearest Target is 25 miles away) and of the five backpacks in the display that could hold all my stuff (no Hello Kitty or Sponge Bob packs for me, alas), there was one that had just enough pockets and more room inside than the others, and it seemed to fit nicely, so I bought it. $25. I was quite pleased.

Not only that, but it carries like a dream. It brings the load nicely in to the back, so there's not a huge torque being applied (um, sorry, lots of structural engineering work here, lately), and the straps are comfortable and well-balanced. There's even a pocket that fits the iPod perfectly. I could not be happier with it.

I was recently asked what I've been making at school, but the truth is that I haven't been making a lot. Mostly I've been studying and doing a lot of vector math. Nonetheless, I present to you some of the fruits of the last three weeks:

For my structural engineering class, my lab partner and I made this lovely penny mobile, and then calculated the forces in every string:

We also made these force models, stabilizing rods and planes in space, sometimes with far more support than was strictly necessary:

In studio, I copied these trees from a drawing in a book:

And finally, the biggest thing I've made this quarter is a gigantic mess of my workspace in studio: