My 7 year old recently acquired a fish bowl with a betta fish.

Apparently, the PLA plastic used in 3D printers doesn’t degrade significantly in a fish tank, so I started looking for aquarium decorations we could print.  And I came across a design for a fish feeder: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1257953

I started modifying it to accommodate our fish bowls.  She asked to help out, so I suggested she do a sketch of her design.

About a month ago, my youngest daughter borrowed a really neat toy called “Talkative Chick’s House Ppiyak-e House Bird Toy Mimiworld”, who’d brought the toy back with her on a trip from Korea.

A while ago, my daughter and I built an outhouse out of Popsicle sticks and a cereal box.  I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but she held on to it and kept it alongside her toys.  She even brought it to school one day when she had to present a craft she had made.

I wrote previously about James Bond entering the public domain in Canada.

I love the idea of work in the public domain - I’ve actually read a number of Ian Flemming’s books since they’ve come out of copyright, I’ve read more of George Orwell, and I’m currently reading a book about the history of rocket fuel.

In Canada, a work enters the public domain 50 years after the author’s death - the MPAA is looking to get this extended to 70 years according to a recent article by Michael Geist:

We have harvested our 2017 crop.

This is an interesting year, as we had a late start to the season, and less sun than normal.  We’ll have even less sun in future years, as a new condo building is going up in front of us and will certainly reduce the amount of sun received by our balcony.

• I’m not sure what happened to our corn, but we only had a couple of very sad looking cobs.
• As the corn didn’t grow very well, the pole beans didn’t have anything to climb, so they didn’t do very well either.
• The tomato plants did well
• We grew more carrots this year - they were amazing
• All the flowers did well

My daughter has been making some really impressive earrings using Sculpey clay and earring hooks and studs sourced from Michael’s.  Lighting them up, like these studs, would take it to the next level.  Light up earrings present an interesting challenge, as size and aesthetics constraints conflict with a battery holder, light, and wiring.

We built a simple design we found on YouTube which uses painted googly eyes to hold the battery and a small container with sparkles to diffuse the light.  There is room for improvement, but they turned out OK - they look great in a darker room or from a distance, but crude up-close.  We may refine them further.