Andrew R Gross

Last month, I joined a makerspace called HexLab.  It's been around five years or so, but the founder concluded that he no longer has the time to manage it, so he transferred ownership to Allen Pan, a YouTuber I follow.  At the same time, HexLab is moving to a new location. I've been volunteering weekly for the last four weeks, so I've gotten to see something old become new again and then take shape.  Last Saturday, HexLab had its first member meeting since I joined, and I volunteered as the interim facilities and safety coordinator.  For the next three months, I'll be responsible for setting up the equipment.  Equally exciting, though, is the opportunity to promote the ideal environment.  I think most tinkerers dream of getting to work in a place like Tony Stark's garage , or Shuri's lab , or  the batcave .  I want this to be a space with flavor, and as interim facilities coordinator, that's what I'm going to try to do.

I've been busy.  Work got pretty exciting, and then I went on vacation. The vacation was built around friends' wedding.  Since it was in Pennsylvania, I really made the most of my trip. First, I spent two days in Pittsburgh, during which time I hung out with family: my mom, my grandmother, and my niece, as well as my aunt and sister, as much as the short time allowed.  We went to the zoo, and I watched the first episode of this amazing Turkish drama on Netflix that my grandmother is into (it's called  Kurt Seyit ve Şura , you're welcome).  I also met up with two high school friend's for dinner, and in one case tennis .  It was like what a child imagines grown-up life is like. Then, after about 48 hours of compressed bonding in Pittsburgh, I drove up to Erie with Jack, my mom, and my sister.  We biked along the beach, and hung out on the beach, and saw the new Mr. Rogers documentary, "Won't You Be My Neighbor".  I'd give it a B: it was surpri...

If you've read this blog for a while -- a long  while -- you might know that I have been working on an underwater ROV on and off for more than a year.  This is another update. The good is that last year, I had a crude body for the Remotely Operated Vehicle.  It had propellers that were hooked up to a battery and spun.  It had a microcontroller that told them when to spin.  It had a Raspberry Pi single board computer to receive instructions over a USB tether and send them to the microcontroller.  And I had a program that would read data from a joystick over a long USB cord.  I finally thought that I just about had some kind of system I could put in water and drive around with a controller. Not so fast. The defining feature of an underwater ROV is that it goes underwater.  Which means that the electronics need to be inside of a waterproof enclosure.  And since radio waves don't travel underwater*, there needs to be a cable that ...

Tony wrote a novel.  It's an Iron Man novel, naturally, but it's really a stellar product that stands up whether you like the comic book character or not.  It's not confined to the typical superhero genre, either.  It's a psychological thriller with science fiction elements. archiveofourown.org/works/13791474 Check it out.  It's GOOD.

Tony, Jack, myself and a bunch of other friends dressed up to see Avengers: Infinity War at the Arclight Hollywood, and it was a blast. I started my costume six weeks ago, because I wanted to do something pretty ambitious.  I'd made a Captain America costume for Civil War in 2016, and based on the lessons I'd learned, I wanted to make this costume as a leather jacket that I could use as an actual day-to-day jacket.  I also decided that I didn't like the costume Cap wears in this new film, and so I'd ignore it completely and make something like what I thought his costume should've been. The outcome The final result was this jacket, a harness, and a belt.  It's made of some kind of artificial leather. The outfit is based off the uniform a disaffected Steve Rogers adopted when he renounced his identity as Captain America in 1988.  In the movie (left, below), Captain America is wearing the costume from his previous movie, but it's distressed and dark...

I went to Vegas for a little weekend trip and we ended up seeing the Backstreet Boys.  I never listened to them, but Tony was a big fan back in his youth, so I went along.  It was good!  They put on a solid show.

Last weekend, we went to a truly amazing party.  In celebration of the solstice, everyone was asked to come in the guise of one of the ancient deities.  Upon arriving, we were each given three coins labeled with the powers conferred by our characters, and told that we could not use the powers, but were able to trade them and use the ones we received.  We were also each given personalized win conditions.  I attended as Loki, the god of mischief.  Tony attended as the mighty Thor.  Jack came as Heimdall, the watchman.  And we had a blast.  The Egyptian gods, Greek gods, and Aztec gods were present, but the Norse gods clearly owned the night. At the party, I arrived in the guise of Sif, Thor's wife and goddess of the Earth.  Heimdall was given instructions to reveal me, so I spent the beginning of the party trying to evade discovery.  Eventually, after several thwarted attempts to uncover me, Odin and the rest of the Norse gods used som...

Voldemort mask: start-to-finish how to

This summer has been pretty nuts. Work In June, our department encouraged participants to pitch an idea in 5 minutes that could be funded with $3,000.  I suggested that we buy a 3D printer and won.  This meant that I got to buy a 3D printer for our department and establish guidelines for its use.  It also kicked off my boss' long-held interest in 3D bio printing.  Regular 3D printing binds plastic into complex shapes in order to make 3D objects out of plastic.  Bioprinting is a very experimental process in which cells are arranged in 3D instead of bits of plastic in order to create 3D objects made of of cells.  So we bought a kit and now I'm building a 3D bioprinter in addition to the regular 3D printer that I'm having a lot of fun with. On the right is our department's first printer.  On the left is our lab's new experimental bioprinter. Recreation I've been working (so... so... slooowwly) on my underwater robot.  It's been one ...

Things have been very busy for the last few weeks.  I've had too much going on to maintain a blog responsibly, so I'll try to compromise by maintaining a blog irresponsibly.  Here is a poorly composed report of what I've been up to. Work:  Work has gotten very stimulating.  As the lab manager of a stem cell research lab, I've found my work to be fulfilling for the entire time I've been working at Cedars-Sinai.  We study diseases by collecting blood from patients with a disorder, then modifying the blood cells so they revert back into the stem cells we all grow out of.  It's the same person's cells, but now we've deaged them to 9 months before the person was born.  We can then try to grow them into cells like the ones in the person today: heart cells, brain cells, kidney cells, whatever.  Which has several big applications. 1) Cloning a part of a person could let us make rejection-free replacement organs.  Not DONOR organs, but a fact...

Three weeks ago, Julie and I went camping.  Twice each year, our friend Ann organizes a game in the forest called the Fox Hunt.  It's a bit like hide-and-seek.  Foxes are given a twenty minute head start to go hide in the woods, after which the hunters pursue them.  The foxes attempt to make it back to the base they left from without being tagged, however their trails are marked with surveying flags. The dogs have gotten really good at camping The result is surprisingly tense.  Both sides have huge advantages and disadvantages.  The foxes simply have to go into the woods and come back without running right into someone, which seems easy, however the woods we use lie in a valley carved by a stream, which funnels people back towards the middle and makes it hard to circle wide.  Eventually, you've got to come down from the sides to come back.  The hunters, meanwhile, just need to follow a brightly lit trail.  In practice, though, it isn...

I finally got around to uploading wedding photos.

What a weekend. An old friend, Peter, visited town on his way back to his current home in Uruguay. He came to LA for my wedding, then visited his family on the East coast before returning to Los Angeles to fly home. On Saturday morning we went to the beach with the intention of diving.  The waves were too rough, so we hung out on the beach instead, which was just fine.  Afterwards, we got Mexican food before heading to a friend's wedding. Regan and Schno held a very personal ceremony.  They encouraged all guests to dress in whatever garb made them feel powerful, so their wedding was attended by wizards and a guy who might actually be the real Thor.  Afterwards, we all went back to their house for a party for the ages. Regan and Schno throw great parties on a regular basis, so it should be no surprise that their wedding reception was one for the ages.  It included a variety show, in which I participated.  I can't express how much fun this was.  ...

So, in short I'm burned out.  But in a good way. I got married on the 22nd of September.  Woo!  Married! It was a lot  of work.  Honestly, declaring myself bound to another human being for life was less stressful than the logistics.  Venue.  Catering.  Cake.  Clothes.  Invitations.  Guests.  I just barely pulled it off, and technically I'm not done until I finish thank yous, receive and sort photos, settle payment and rate the vendors who all did a fantastic job.  Oy. I don't know if I made myself sick, from exhausting myself or if I just feel exhausted because I happened to get sick.  In either case, I'm exhausted and a little sick.  But not like, out of work, sick.  It's cool. In addition to the wedding, Julie, myself, and all our friends had a whirlwind week.  Both Julie and myself had family and old friends visiting. I'm just going to break it all down. Sunday the 18th Marge and Zeke arr...

I finally posted an overview of the build process for the chicken coop.  I'm hoping that it gets selected as a 'featured' project, completing a hat-trick setup by the Captain America costume and the Arc Reactor. I started building that coop in March of 2015.  I finished it officially in October of 2015.  I meant to share an overview, since as my posts and this website attest, I'm trying to improve my skills in not just building things, but documenting how I did so and compiling all such projects into a kind of portfolio (which is this blog).  I'm very proud of the coop, but I was pretty daunted by the process of compiling it.  The challenge to get a third featured post on Instructables motivated me, though, and I'm really proud of the result. As proud as I am, it's humbling to see the entries people submit to Instructables contests.  People build and program drones from scratch, and present a summary of their approach with better communication skills th...

Recently, Julie and I discovered kombucha. We were at a vegan restaurant near our house.  Although their food is great and as a vegetarian I appreciate the service they provide, vegan restaurants tend to incorporate certain elements which feel very 'new-age'.  This is stuff Julie and I generally want no part of.  Imagined gluten allergies, for instance.  Or GMO alarmism. So it was on a lark that Julie purchased a bottle of kombucha.  It's fermented tea, which happens to be two of yuppies' favorite words.  To both of our surprise, it was great.  It's tangy and carbonated.  It tastes a fair bit like hard cider, although it has negligible alcohol.  It's like soda, but it's only got 30 calories.  Of course, that shit's going to be like $4 a bottle. So out of curiosity, I looked online to see how it is made and discovered that it is supposedly very, very, easy to make. You make tea.  You sweeten your tea with sugar. ...