When eLearning Evolves from Electronic Learning to Enhanced Learning via VR

I got into virtual reality way back in 2015, to the point where my secondary computer engineering program was making VR systems for other schools in our board and we developed a board-wide Ministry funded research project on it.  Having worked with this emerging technology from the very first commercially viable system, I’ve watched with interest as the field matures and it has me thinking about how we can move beyond the prejudices in our very conservative education system and toward a mindset where the ‘e’ in elearning stands for ‘enhanced’ rather than ‘electronic’ and is considered a necessity for a superior pedagogical experience rather than an evil to fight against or an excuse to cut funding.

Back in 2017 the only way you could do VR was with the processing power of a desktop computer.  We built those machines to spec and then set up a variety of fully interactive, high resolution headsets on them ranging from HTC Vives to Microsoft supported setups by Samsung through our board’s SHSM program.  I’m still providing hardware support for those machines years later.

We travelled to other schools and conferences around the province demonstrating immersive VR for students, parents and other educators.  In most cases they got stuck on the games, but games are often the early adopters, like the first-returners after a forest fire, they push technology and create systems that are adopted by later industries, like education.  Many people turned their noses up at VR even as they were stunned by how immersive and engaging it could be simply because it’s ‘all about gaming’, but (of course) that isn’t the case.

At Skills Canada Nationals in Moncton in 2016 I wandered the floor while our IT & Networking finalist duked it out in competition.  I came across a VR training system to operate one of the all-in-one lumber cutting systems (the kind that grabs the tree, cuts it, trims it and stacks the finished poles for transport).  These complex mechanical systems cost millions and the only way to train on them was to train on them, before VR got involved.  The VR training system they had cost upwards of $80,000 to put together, so it was far from cheap, but what it did was allow the company to train operators prior to putting them on the real multi-million dollar equipment and it reduced user-error in new operators by over 80% when they finally got into the real machine.  The end result was millions saved in broken equipment and lost productivity.

In applying immersive VR in our classroom I’ve come across instances where students with special needs could suddenly express their genius and I’ve had students produce complex VR based games that gave them the portfolio they needed to move on into high-demand post-secondary digital media programs.  It has also reframed for me how 3d modelling and emerging digital media have their own literacy requirements that many people are oblivious to.  This ongoing work culminated this year when we won Skills Ontario provincials in 3d animation and then went on to win Skills Canada nationals to become the top 3d animation school in the country.

All of these experiences and development feels like it’s leading somewhere, and that somewhere is beginning to come into focus.  A digitally enhanced classroom offers many benefits and improvements to pedagogical practice, but it requires staff and students who are fluent and proficient with the technology.  This is an ongoing problem in an education system that diminishes the potential of technology and clings to old ways, usually to the benefit of the organizations involved in public education.

Things have been, let’s say ‘rough‘ during COVID as the system fell into repeat rounds of remote learning without any kind of plan or expectations of success.  The new normal became to just do and expect less as the limited and atrophied format of elearning became evident to all, but any educator who approaches the job from that angle should probably be looking elsewhere for work.  As things come back toward some kind of normal I’m hoping we can explore virtual and digitally augmented learning without the entrenched prejudices surrounding webpaged based/screen delivered elearning because this emerging media offers some powerful opportunities.

In the time we’ve been in pandemic-limbo VR technology has moved along.  Those 2017 ‘coming soon’ stand alone systems are no longer lower resolution options and they are now pretty much where a desktop top driven wired system was in 2016, for one quarter the price.  The evolution toward fully interactive, high-resolution virtual reality will continue and education needs to get over it’s e-prejudices to better understand and leverage it.

My son gave the Hololens a go back at the ECOO conference in 2016.  It was very much a prototype-proof-of-concept device, but the idea of eye glasses sized headsets is where VR is headed.  Along with a pair of haptic gloves and other IoT type sensors, we should be seeing portable, capable, fully interactive systems in the next couple of years that continue to expand the bandwidth between us and our rapidly expanding digital infrastructure.  Interacting with digital information through a two dimensional low-resolution/screen will look as archaic as dot matrix printers in a decade.

During the pandemic I got to try Meta’s latest Oculus Quest 2 headset.  These are completely wireless, have school-day long battery life and offer interactive, immersive digital media access for close to the price of a Chromebook.  Early adopting programs (like mine) will be able to offer VR experiences much more easily with this gear, but it’s the next step that is most exciting:  the convergence of virtual, augmented and mixed reality into a readily accessible digital media-scape for most subjects of study.
“Education will be transformed into something far more vivid. History teachers will transport their students to the beaches of Normandy or the Cu Chi tunnels of Vietnam. In biology class, the entire room will become the inside of a mammalian cell.”
We’re getting to the point now where the hardware engineering isn’t the limitation.  The next few years will be about developing the software engineering in this new medium because having the tech in hand doesn’t help when the media isn’t there to make use of it.  The focus I’ve placed on our game development program has always included a big push beyond games as students develop increasingly complex digital portfolios.  It’s why we’ve crept into animation and 3d modelling in our engineering as well, because these skills are going to be in short supply to fulfill the needs of this emerging medium.
Our success with Skills Canada this year in 3d animation lies very much in the realm of digital media as this kind of 3d media is exactly what is needed for both virtual and augmented reality experiences to work:
Made over 2 days (2×6 hours), our team of 2 had to storyboard, script and animate an 11 second video.  They were allowed to pre-model and rig 3d character models (the loon and the beaver) but the metal pot was a wild-card model that had to be made in the competition window.  All sounds were prescribed for all teams, so the animation is storyboarded to fit them.
Our success at Skills (and the fact that it was 2 grade 11s who achieved it) means we’re integrating 3d animation into the game development training curriculum next year.  This all grew out of me pushing for better narrative structure in last year’s game, Rigged.  That led to several students (including our Skills competitors) branching off and forming animation teams to better frame the narrative in the game:
All the modelling, animation and sounds in that video were made from scratch in our classroom by grade 11/12 students in our TGI3/4M Software Engineering/Gamedev class.  We were unable to develop a VR based game as we have in previous years due to COVID restrictions, but I’m hoping to get back to it sooner than later.
It won’t be too long until you see teachers asking students to take out their headsets and join a virtual classroom where avatars allow students to be whatever they wish and the level of interactivity means teachers will be able to know whether or not a student is engaged and present.  Many online teachers during the pandemic experienced the ‘logged-in-but-absent’ student.  That kind of low-resolution online interaction would be rendered obsolete once Meta and the rest of the industry has education-ready virtual reality ready to go.  If you’re inhabiting an avatar online you can’t hide behind privacy as an excuse to not participate, and an inactive avatar in VR would look like an inactive student in class, making avoidance much more difficult.
This also means that the idea of a brick and mortar classroom as we know it is going to quickly become irrelevant and our schools as we know them will require rethinking – something that the drag-inducers in education (the vested interests in how things run right now) aren’t going to want to cooperate with.  I fear the public education system in Ontario is going to need a hard reboot to make this happen.  That may be the only way to break our ties with a past that makes little sense in the 21st Century and craft a ‘world class education system‘.  Thinking that the way things were is the pinacle we need to get back to is a big part of the problem.
Instead of passive information delivery, interactive, immersive learning opportunities mean students will experience history, science and literature first hand, bringing formerly static information to life and allowing them to explore it rather than have it land on them.  Living Lord of the Flies is much more memorable than reading it.  I did a role play of it over a decade ago in an English class and former students still talk about it today.  Interactivity is the key to engagement with modern students as this is the mediascape they live in when not in class.  They will no longer be forced to step back a decade in terms of media in the classroom if we can engage with emerging digital mediums.
In the book (and film) Ready Player One, after the collapse of an oil based transport economy virtual reality becomes the default schooling option.  A better future would be a bit less apocalyptic but the idea that VR would augment learning and help teachers produce engaged classrooms with interactive and powerful learning opportunities also suggests that we don’t need to burn tons of diesel every day transporting students to remote schools since any local school could provide digital enhancement.  Even in augmented situations where students are building in technology classes or experimenting in science, augmented reality could offer insight and direction that would enable far more students to enjoy success while also making our schooling more green; yet another aspect of our ‘perfect’ system that never was.
From the early days up until now, virtual/immersive/interactive digital tools have offered the hope of a future that finally removes us from a static relationship with information and offers radical differentiation of learning for all students.  In our increasingly information rich (or overwhelmingly information overloaded world, depending on how you look at it) we need to find better ways to find and make effective use of the information at our fingertips, and this augmented, virtual mediascape will be the key to that as well.  That it also offers a solution to our current wildly unsustainable educational transport habits is icing on the cake.  Now it’s just a matter of getting a system mired in political self interest to move forward.

RESOURCES

VR isn’t the only emerging digital technology that can empower our pedagogical practice.  Artificial Intelligence is also opening doors to radically individualized learning opportunities that would benefit all students and make our rows of desks in overcrowded classrooms look positively medieval:

Virtual possibilities back in 2016 (education has made little effort to engage in any of them):

Our MoE grant research into VR in 2017. No follow-up there either:

Reaching out to industry at the FITC conference in 2018.  Industry doesn’t know how to engage with the prickly world of public education either:

In 2016 I was looking to escape the staid and restrictive world of #edtech in order to try and explore emerging technologies.  Six years later we’re churning out national champions in fields ranging from cybersecurity to 3d animation:

Meta’s Project Cambria, the next gen in VR:

Facebook is morphing into Meta in order to drive a more complex interface with digital information:

VR in education:

10 best examples of VR in education (Forbes):

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Gas Prices And Riding Your Motorcycle

NOTE:  when gas was $112US/barrel in May this year, retail pump prices were $1.95/litre.  Someone’s getting rich off climate disaster.

Petro-Canada is putting everyone
over a barrel charging 6ยข a litre
more for super than ESSO is.

I was out and about on two wheels both Saturday and Sunday last weekend.  Because I live in one of the most geologically tedious places in the world, I often have to ride for 20 minutes just to find *any* corner.  This has me juggling contradicting ideas when it comes to the latest round of record-breaking fuel prices.  On the one hand, fuel is more expensive.  Thirty bucks used to be as much as I ever put into a bike, now it’s over forty.  On the other hand, after riding for twenty minutes to find a damned corner there are far few people driving around like gormless idiots on it so I get to actually enjoy the lean.  I think I’m OK with the return on investment with strangely high gas prices: it’s expensive but the roads are nicer to ride.

This isn’t the first time fuel prices went this high.  They did in 2012 as well due to Middle Eastern instability, but back then (with costs per barrel similar) fuel at the pump out this way reached $1.36/litre and had everyone apoplectic.   A decade later the same crude oil prices have us paying almost $2.50 a litre, but hey, if you can’t get rich from declining resources and a climate disaster you were instrumental in causing, you shouldn’t be running a petrochemical company.

My son and I two up on the Kawasaki are averaging over 42 miles per gallon…


The Tiger is mainly doing one-up work now that the Concours takes care of pillions.  With its new sprockets the RPMs have dropped a few hundred in any given gear and it’s now averaging over 60mpg on long, top gear rides.  At this kind of mileage I can handle higher fuel costs.


LINKS


2012:  “Retail pump prices rose early in the year, starting at $1.21 per litre, peaking at $1.36 per litre in April, declining to $1.23 per litre in July”

“Crude oil prices… ]averaged $703/m3 (US$112/bbl)”

https://www.statista.com/statistics/262858/change-in-opec-crude-oil-prices-since-1960/

It might be unpopular, but I believe we should be charging the environmental damage in each litre of gasoline.  

The True Cost of Burning Hydrocarbons:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-015-1343-0

https://archive.thinkprogress.org/heres-what-gas-would-have-to-cost-to-account-for-health-and-environmental-impacts-c0ed088e8f38/

https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/our-natural-resources/domestic-and-international-markets/transportation-fuel-prices/4593

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Moto Art

Various photos from rides over the last month, worked over with photoshop into not-photographs!

Kawasaki GTR1400 at sunset (and below)

Triumph Tiger on a Sunday Ride

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Fireblade Fountains

I finally got the carbs sorted on the Fireblade project (sense of achievement!) and when I fired it up they felt very responsive… but then a giant geyser of oily water spewed out of the valve cover exhaust pipe and hit the ceiling (!).  Never seen that before.

Rather than repeat the fountain, I put a pipe on it, ran it into a container and videoed the weirdness…

(it’s a 360 video, you can move the mouse to look around – like at the oily water dripping off the ceiling)

So the fountain happened both times I ran it, and the stuff that came out looked like watery oil rather than oil with some water in it.  Next step:  drain the oil…

… which looks like water.  That’s not good, and it’s something I’ve never seen before.  Why on earth would anyone ever put water or coolant in an engine like that?



I’ve done head gaskets on cars before and I’m pretty familiar with the consequences of oil mixing with coolant.  It usually goes both ways (oil gets in the coolant, coolant gets in the oil, but the coolant looks brand new and the level is good.  When running there is no bubbling in the coolant overflow (usually a running engine will force gas and oil back into the coolant reservoir if there is a blown head gasket).  As amazing as this sounds, I think the idiot who owned this before me filled the engine with coolant instead of oil, but I really can’t understand why.  It’s either gross incompetence or he sold me a bike with a known blown engine, which is a pretty shitty thing to do.  Incompetent or nasty, not a great set of choices there.

Next up is actually putting oil in the engine and running it again.  I’ve got some used stuff out of the Tiger which is the right weight.  If it works, then the guy who owned this thing before me might be the dumbest human in history.  Once I’ve run the old synthetic out of the Tiger and confirmed everything works, I’ll drain it and put some new stuff in.


My first sports bike has been a bit more baffling than the XS1100 (air cooled, nothing weird there other than the ownership) and the Concours sports tourer which had been through hell, but was owned by a guy who knew what he was doing.


The muppet who owned this bike before me will have me going top to bottom on it before I get it out on the road – I can’t trust anything that was done to it.

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May Motorcycle Photography

 Motorcycle photography over the past couple of weeks.

Two-up sunset ride on the Tiger with a Ricoh Theta SC mounted to the rear view mirror with a flexible tripod:

Testing a new Theta SC 360 camera mounted on the windshield with a flexible tripod:

If you’re curious about how to do this, click HERE!

Kawasaki Concours 14 on a sunset ride (no 360 camera this time, just the phone):

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Rich Man Poor Man

I think three bikes would comfortably fit in the garage with room to work.  I’m hoping I can find an insurance deal that lets me run more than one bike without insurance doubling each time.  

If I were to go with three, these would be my poor man/middle class man/rich man choices:


Three of a kind: the low budget option

Keep the current ’07 Kawasaki Ninja 650r. I’ve already cleaned it up and it’s got tons of life left in it.  It’s the obvious choice for a sport/track day bike.  I’ve still got a lot to learn from it as far as sport riding goes.

This ’86 Kawasaki Concours caught my eye last summer.  It’s up for sale again on Kijiji.  For only two and a half grand I’d have a capable touring bike that would comfortably carry two up over long distances.  It has a lot of miles on it, but it looks like it has been meticulously maintained. If I could swing it, I’d get it.





I just stumbled across this ’02 KLR650 on Kijiji.  The price isn’t listed, but with any luck I could pick it up for about what the Concours above cost.  It’s fuggly, but if it would be a simple matter to strip it and repaint it.

I should be able to pick up both bikes for under five grand.  They all happen to be Kawasakis, three of a kind.


Total cost:  ~$5000

Shopping for favourites: the reasonable budget choices



I’d probably still hang on to the Ninja in this scenario, but I like the look of naked street bikes more than the fully faired sport bikes.  if I were to go for an athletic street bike I’d consider the FZ-09 from Yamaha.  It’s surprisingly affordable, super light, and looks great in Orange.  
~$10767




The touring option would get three wheel funky at this level.  I’d go for a Royal Enfield Classic 500 with a sidecar.  As a way to share riding with my son, it’s a fun way to putter around.  We’d have to get some vintage style helmets with googles.  ~$12000





The dual sport choice would be a new Kawasaki KLR650, specifically this very KLR.
~$8700

Total: ~$31500 (taxes included)
       or $20733 if I keep the Ninja


Big spender: the cost no-option choices

I keep hearing about how utterly awesome the Triumph Street Triple is, so if money weren’t an option this would be my naked/sport choice, the top-of-the-line R version.
~$13800
If nothing else the Triumph Configurator is fun to play with.



The Explorer below is an excellent two up bike, so it could do the job, but if cost is no problem I’d consider a Soviet style Ural sidecar outfit.  The Ural Gear-Up is an on-demand 2-wheel drive no-nonsense rig with classic military styling.  It could also handle off road duties when needed.

~$16553


For the dual sport option I’d be looking to Triumph again.  Either the Triumph Tiger 800XC or the big Triumph Tiger Explorer XC.  Since the big bike actually gets the same mileage as the little one, I think I’d go with the distance machine.  It’s big, but I’d train off road and ease into using it that way.  I’m a big guy, I’ll manage it.

~$22000

Total $52353 (taxes included)


You gotta love motorbikes, even the rich-man option that gets you three distinct imports costs less than a Volvo SUV.

1997 CBR900RR Parts, Cables and Hose Routing

Notes for next round of work on the Honda.  Doing it for myself so I can follow what I’m doing on the laptop in the garage, but might help out other ’90s Honda Fireblade CBR900 restorers too.


Missing tank mounting hardware:
BOLT, FLANGE (6X40) (missing bolts for front of gas tank)
COLLAR C6.3, MOUNTING


Throttle cable running under the right side of the centre triple fork

Vacuum routing – but not particularly helpful – air vent tubes probably connect to bottom of air cleaner box…

Upper and lower throttle cables are clear in this – they are over the handlebars now (wrong) – and like a burk, I put them together backwards, so you have to throttle off to throttle on – remove carb, remove cables, reroute and confirm on this before reattaching.

I tried a replacement LED in the neutral light – no joy – try reversing it?  Light receiving voltage when in neutral.  Confirm that?  Trace that  neutral switch wire?  

Double check choke cable – seems good the way I had it, but bike’s in a choke right now, so no movement of front wheel to check routing when the handlebars are turned.

LINKS:


Online Microfiche for parts:
https://www.hondapartsnation.com/oemparts/l/hon/50541057f870021c54bede5e/1997-cbr900rr-ac-parts


’96 Technical Review Document:
https://mototribu.com/constructeur/honda/1996/1000cbr/doc/revuetechnique_900rr.pdf


Sub Air Filter  Honda FILTER, SUB-AIR CLEANER Part # 17254-KAZ-000
https://www.amazon.ca/Honda-17254-KAZ-000-Air-Filter/dp/B00HPTLPEO
Looks to be a foam filter – might see if I can source an equivalent – take the plastic bit in an size a filter.
https://www.hondashadow.net/threads/sub-air-cleaner.300257/
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/hondashadowacetourer/sub-air-cleaner-what-is-it-39-s-function-t11508.html
https://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/atlas-briggs-stratton-lawn-mower-foam-air-filter-0607024p.html#spc





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Signs of Spring 2018

The weather is fairly crap, but there are signs of spring as the sun returns more and more each day.  All done with the Canon T6i.  Macros are done with the 18-35mm kit lens, the birds are using the ‘kit’ 55-250mm long lens.

 

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Beware The Dinosaur’s Lawyers!

Watching broadcast media, one of the giants birthed of industrialization in the Twentieth Century, struggle with theย recent Olympicsย was enjoyable.

Early on, CTV’s London desk was showing video of a flash mob at Wimbledon. ย The broadcast anchor said, “I don’tย get this at all, why would people do this? ย What a waste of time.”

He doesn’t get why people would do back flips to get on mainstream media? ย Dude, your entire career is predicated on what they are doing… did you enjoy getting made up for your camera time today? ย Does your agent do what those people are doing all the time just to get your mug in front of more cameras? ย Do you throw a fit when they bring you the wrong tie?

The ‘let them eat cake’ distance that the corporate broadcast media has from a bunch of sweaty fools having a good time on a hill at Wimbledon underlines how truly out of touch they are.

Technology has miniaturized and communications have become a widely distributed two-way medium, yet the corporate broadcast media cling to their unidirectional economic model, frantically milking it for all it’s worth before the weight of inevitability forces change. ย I’m not saying there won’t be a place for professionally created media, but technology is allowing for smaller, niche groups to make what they want, how they want, and do it well while still making a living selling to niche audiences. ย The days of centrally controlled media are endingย becauseย the need for expensive corporate backing are no longer a technical necessity.

Where once an artist had to gather the corporate power of a massive enterprise behind them in order to get their hands on the technology needed to broadcast their story, they now find themselves increasingly able to create their vision and distribute it themselves, assuming the wallowing dinosaur doesn’t have a room of lawyers on hand, which they do. ย Deinnovation by legislation. ย Deinnovation by lawsuit.

A couple of years ago I came acrossย Quinn Norton’sย brilliant column inย MaximumPCย on the calamity that wasย Nina Paley’sย attempt to express her own miserable breakup using a complex mash up of Flash animation,ย Annette Hanshaw’sย blues, andย The Ramayana. ย To call this copyright theft is ridiculous… this mash up is insane (and brilliant – I use it every year teaching media arts). ย Yet Paley was run out of business by copyright trolls (lawyers) who look for out of date art, copyright it, then lay in wait, hoping to squeeze money out of something they purchased from other copyright lawyers – an open market of dead artist’s work being held to prevent new art from forming.

If that isn’t an example of the desperation of the broadcast media system, I don’t know what is. ย They are so intellectually bankrupt that they can only recycle and steal other ideas. ย The corporate media machine continually pumps out nearย identical filmsย at virtually the same time, desperately trying to tap into cultural memes that they aren’t agile enough to keep up with. ย Indy and social media media create far more current, personalized and pertinent media in the early 21st Century, andย younger viewers are cottoning on to it, even while everyone tries to dodge the wallowing dinosaur’s departments of lawyers.

There will always be money to be made in a good bit of story telling, and digital media is nothing if not a good bit of story telling (even the news). ย What we’re seeing now is a slow, painful adjustment as the habits we invented around expensive, industrially driven broadcasting give way to cheaper, individualized, technology supported media. ย Professional media isn’t dead, but we don’t require millions in corporate backing to produce it any more. ย Don’t expect an industry worth more thanย two trillion dollarsย to give up on squeezing it though.

I’d hope that instead of trying to cobble together another massive production, corporate mega-media would be trying to spin off divisions that support small, agile groups feeding niche markets, but I don’t imagine that’s the case. ย The problem with really big animals that are ideally suited to a specific environment is that they are horrible at adapting. ย They’re great while the ecosystem stays the same, but the minute the social mediaย asteroidย appears, they just keep trying to do what they’ve always done, thrashing around, hoping to hold off the inevitable, until they are extinct.


Note: thanks to Quinn & Nina, Sita will be shown again in the middle of our Flash animation unit this year. ย I’m looking forward to another year of grade tens wrestling with who owns what, what art is, how no one is free from influence, how The Beatles could steal other people’s musical influences and then lock down their own for ever, what is appropriation of voice, and the future of media art. That one little column led me to a wonderful teaching piece that is still raising hard questions for hundreds of students years later. ย Thanks!

Forging Moto-Maker Spaces

As a family we attended a blacksmithing day at Happy Knife Forge last weekend.  Highly recommended, it’s money well spent.  Jason will not only show you the basics, but is keen to get you up and running as a blacksmith.  My granddad was a coal merchant back in the old country and the smell of coke burning on the forge prompted a sense memory from the crib; it smelled like home.

I’ve ruminated on fabrication and micro-manufacturing on TMD before from a digital perspective using the latest techniques.  Given the space and tools I’d quite happily spend my time designing and creating using everything from medieval blacksmithing through 20th Century metal working and on into 21st Century digital manufacturing techniques.  Connecting these processes separated by time but with the same intent would produce some genuinely interesting and bespoke combinations.

I’ve had the itch to get back into welding for some time, but a lack of space and gear means I’m not while I’m where I’m at.  The blacksmithing experience has me wanting to expand my metal working beyond just welding, which means even more space and kit getting added to the wish list.  You can do a lot in a tight space, and I am, but when it comes to storing the chemicals and managing the heat in some of these processes, there is no substitute for space.




A property with an old industrial building on
it would make for a fantastic restoration
leading to a multi-millenial foundry covering
everything from blacksmithing to digital design!

Given the time and resources I’d hit an intensive welding program, then set up my multi-millenial forge/shop/maker space with everything from blacksmithing tools through metal working and mechanical to 21st Century 3d scanning, digital modelling and printing.  The forge would be in the corner of a repurposed, old brick building that also includes space for metalwork, all very fireproof.  Across the floor in the same open concept.would be space for a paint booth/shot blasting station and plenty of mechanical workspace.  Upstairs (open concept, with just a railing) would be digital design and manufacturing in a cleaner workspace.  If I could walk out to that every morning to create, restore and repair, I’d hardly care if there were pandemics or anything else.  Put it near some good riding roads (ie: not in Southern Ontario), and it’d be just about perfect.




I’ve been thinking about a digital workshop for a while now, but the blacksmithing experience has me thinking old school as well.


The future-garage scene in Big Hero 6 gets the digital side of it right.



Dream Shop Links:

https://www.architecturaldesigns.com/house-plans/3-car-modern-carriage-house-plan-with-sun-deck-68541vr

https://www.coolhouseplans.com/plan-90821

https://www.towersteelbuildings.com/building-styles/garages/

https://www.olympiasteelbuildings.ca/garages/

https://canadianmetalbuildings.com/metal-buildings/cmb-ready-built/

https://tkmotorcyclediaries.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-stable.html

https://tkmotorcyclediaries.blogspot.com/2015/11/iihtm-digital-workshop.html

https://tkmotorcyclediaries.blogspot.com/2015/04/space-limitations.html

https://tkmotorcyclediaries.blogspot.com/2015/08/a-mclaren-p1-or-motorcycle-nirvana.html

https://tkmotorcyclediaries.blogspot.com/2020/10/diy-garage-expansion-plans.html

Forging Links:

https://canadianforge.com/products/l-brand-forge-coke

https://www.thecrucible.org/guides/blacksmithing/blacksmithing-forge/

Welding links

https://www.popularmechanics.com/home/tools/how-to/a15739/how-to-get-started-with-welding/

https://www.weldtechtraining.com/welding-courses/individual-welding-courses-certification-canada/

https://www.esab.ca/ca/en/rogue/index.cfm

https://canadaweldingsupply.ca/products/esab-rebel-emp-205ic-ac-dc?variant=14036287946796

https://canadaweldingsupply.ca/

Used Options:









Metal Working Tool Links

https://www.amazon.ca/Solary-Magnetic-Induction-Flameless-Automotive/dp/B08XTHTMZP

https://canadaweldingsupply.ca/products/metabo-5-variable-speed-rat-tail-angle-grinder

Digital Manufacturing Links

https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/car-sos-tv-show-uses-3d-printing-and-scanning-to-restore-classic-car-195222/


https://www.javelin-tech.com/3d/artec-3d-scanner-price/




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