Rikomatic

My 2017 Year in Review: Pies, Dancing, Safaris, Pastries, and More Dancing!

Clouds erupting from Mt. Sutro. OMG THAT SKY!

Okay I am WAY late to this, but I felt compelled to throw something together tonight. Here's my 2017 year in review.

Quick 2017 Stats

• Freestyle Dance Videos Shot: 7
• Number of Marches and Protests: 3
• Number of Pies Baked: 5
• New Hobbies Acquired: 1 (rock climbing)
• Dance Competitions Entered: 5
• Countries Visited: 1 (South Africa)
• Theme Parks Visited: 1
• Conference Presentations Delivered: 3
• Kouign Amman Consumed: NOT ENOUGH

And now on to the highlights...

Best Trip: South Africa!

More about the South Africa trip: Johannesburg, dancing in Capetown, and on safari. 

Runner Up: Disneyland for Dapper Days

More about the Disneyland trip.

Dance Highlight: Competing with the Shimmy Shakers at ILHC and CH

More about the Shimmy Shakers at ILHC and Camp Hollywood.

Runner Up: Shooting Freestyle Videos in SF

My most produced dance video shoot. 

Best Pastry Outing: Birthday Pastry Tour

Runner Up: Kouign Amman Tour 2017

More about the 2017 kouign amman tour.

Best Meal - A TIE! Chicken for Two at Zuni Cafe and La Tête in Cape Town

The incomparable "chicken for two" at Zuni Cafe in SF, celebrating five years at the Cal Academy!

More about La Tête and other meals in South Africa.

Best Outfit: the Stretch Suit

More about the Stretch Suit.

Runner Up: Gaff from Blade Runner Costume

More about cosplaying as Gaff.

Best Photo shoot: the Abandoned West Oakland Train Station 

 More about this epic photo shoot.

Other 2017 Highlights

Dawn Hampton Celebration

More about the Dawn Hampton celebration.

Learning to Make Pie, So Much Pie

Chocolate pie!

Spam musubi pie!

Buko pie!

Coconut flan pie!

Learning to Follow in Lindy Hop

More about learning to follow.

Dance Jam at Lindy Focus

More about the dance jam at Lindy Focus.

Miscellaneous Fun Pics

The ray tank at the California Academy of Sciences.

Chiara and Krystal doing the choreo I created for the Shimmy Shakers routine. 

So many shoes, for so many activities!

Crushing my health goals in 2017!

Always a blast when my niece Aria and I get to play together.

Wonderful family picnic with the cousins.

Breaking it down at Day Breaker event in Oakland.

Twinsies with Julia in Dolores Park!

Skyping with my mentors Eve Gaus and Barry Joseph.

My best buddy Mole Negro.

On the set at SwingNation.

At the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago.

Scooter life.

Best Lindy Focus pic ever with my buddy Miranda.

Juliana is goddam fantastic as a dapper dame.

I'm so grateful for all the blessings in my life, the wonderful people in my community, and the many gifts that I've been given. All in all, not a bad year at all. 

Here's to 2018!
 

"Know the Elements" Hoodie: The Science of Hip-hop

Check out this wicked "Know the Elements" hoodie by 5e Gallery. There could not be a more perfect hoodie for me, combining hip-hop and science nerdery. And it even fits nicely. Hip-hip Heads: Do you get all the references underneath the elements?

My colleague Christine and I shot some pics of the hoodie at my museum the California Academy of Sciences today. Cause, you know, SCIENCE.

Small Changes for a Big Planet: Eating Less Meat

I love beef. Hamburgers, steaks, corned beef, beef rendang, pastrami, meatballs... I could just keep going.

Other meats too: lamb, chicken, pork. Love 'em all.

But I also love living on this planet, and would like this planet to stay beautiful, ecologically diverse and healthy forever.

So I'm making some small changes for myself and the planet. 

It's becoming clear to me that our eating habits make up are a large proportion of our impact on the Earth. As a top predator on the food chain, our food choices effect every other creature down the line, from livestock close to home, to wildlife in Africa, to fish in the open ocean. One scientist even suggests that eating less beef would have a more positive impact on the environment than not driving a car.

Difference between a Geeky Costume and a Nerdy Costume

Teens Learn Citizen Science, Create Digital Games on Mt. Tam

A couple of years ago, I led a summer camp for middle schoolers called the "Pearson Young Scientists" at the California Academy of Sciences. It was a super fun program to develop and facilitate, taking a group of a dozen middle schoolers from the Bay Area and exposing them to citizen science, local parks, and game design.  

I personally learned a lot from this program, including how beautiful and important the Mount Tam Municipal Water District is to the region, how to create geo-located digital games using the platform ARIS, and how to keep engaged and excited a diverse group of middle schoolers for two weeks during the summer.

Here's a neat video about the program created by the Pearson Foundation.  

 

Awesome Hippo Skull

Today was the Member Preview of the new "Skulls" exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences. 

It was great seeing all of the visitors oo'ing and ah'ing the specimens, playing with the interactives, and taking lots and lots of pictures. Particularly all of the kids.

I really love this massive hippo skull I encountered today!

 

Learn the Science of Skulls at Cal Academy Starting May 16!

This Friday, the California Academy of Sciences is opening our newest exhibit "Skulls" which I'm super excited about.  

This latest exhibit will focus on all of the things you can learn about an animal from its skull, why we collect skulls and skeletons, and our impressive collection of skulls ... from the tiniest bird skulls the size of a quarter to gigantic whale skulls. 

One of my favorite parts of the exhibit will be a live exhibition of dermestid flesh-eating beetles, some of our hardest working "volunteers" at the Academy. These little guys will reduce a small animal carcass to a gleaming white skeleton in just a few days. Check out this time-lapse video of a host of dermestids making short work of a sea otter skull in just four days.

 

Surprising Feedback from My Co-Workers: I'm "Positive," "Fun," and "Cheerful"

Earlier this week at a staff meeting at the Cal Academy, we did this ice breaker activity called "Back Writes" that was surprisingly insightful. Basically everyone in my department had a piece of paper taped to their backs and you were tasked with walking around and writing some kind of affirmation on it, either about the person's work or the person in general.

We're a pretty tight-knit, friendly department, so of course the comments were going to range from professional to completely silly.

Here's what mine looked like (click to enlarge).

The silly ones really made me laugh, particularly "sweet moves yo".  But the ones that emphasized my "positivity," cheerfulness, and fun nature made a deeper impression on me.  

Surprisingly, I think I'm a lot more upbeat and positive in my 40s than I was in my 30s and 20s.

Irish and Bay Area Kids Learn to Code Together at the Cal Academy

On Thursday, the California Academy of Sciences hosted a fun coding workshop for middle schoolers that I helped facilitate.  The occasion was the visit of five young programmers from Cork, Ireland to the Bay Area, along with the Deputy Lord Mayor of Cork, and various other dignitaries from Ireland.  The sponsoring organization was called CoderDojo, which is a movement of young programmer clubs that is sweeping the world.

It was a blast bringing together our local youth with these visiting kids, who all had a great time despite all of the paparazzi and non-youth-friendly speeches afterwards.  I loved seeing kids eyes light up using free tools like Gimp and Scratch to manipulate images, create simple games, and tell stories.

As a youth facilitator, it was also great for me to see how a workshop could be done that was largely youth-led, with only light support by the adult facilitators.  Adrian from CoderDojo jumped around and trouble-shooted when kids got really stuck on a problem, but otherwise it was the five Cork youth who were running the show for their peers.  And each kid got to tackle the challenges on their own, in their own way.

We talk alot about peer-to-peer learning in my field. Seeing an entire global movement of clubs run on those principles was powerful to see in action.  I'd love to explore more ways to build those kinds of practices and norms into my own youth programs that I design and lead.

Check out this video of the day produced by ABC7.  Hey, I recognize that guy in the suspenders in the back!

 

Cal Academy of Sciences in NY Times Article on Bringing Museums Online

The California Academy of Sciences got a nice mention in a recent article in the New York Times on how museums are increasing their reach via offering lectures and other experiences online.  

"Another innovator is the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. In January it began offering an online biodiversity course, devised for teachers and high school students, and for parents to teach their children, with Khan Academy, a free online schoolhouse that has over 10 million users worldwide each month.

"Since 2010, the California Academy of Sciences has posted on iTunes U free lectures on ecology, sustainability, natural history, biodiversity, astronomy and space science; it also offers courses there, for middle- and high-school science educators, on earthquakes and how science works."

I've been remiss in keeping up with our awesome Khan Academy course and our other online educational resources we produce. Nice to see them getting wider attention though.