Instructively uninstructed

For reasons that aren’t clear yet, no instructor turned up to teach us this evening. It could not have come at a more embarrassing time. Two new people had come along for their first ever class. They had bought their gis, they had paid their year’s subscription, they had psyched themselves up, and… nothing. A third guy had been just twice before – and he had had to cross the whole of London in the rush hour to get to the class, and… nothing.

For the honour of the academy, we decided to hold a class anyway.

How we learn

The job of an instructor is to cause us to learn. Quite often they do this by teaching us; but it’s not the only way.

Anticlock simulation

Here is a simulation of an hour-and-minute display (no seconds), showing progress from 6.00 to 7.00. The simulation runs 10 times faster than reality, so if you watch it for one minute you see what would happen in ten minutes of real time.

This simulation is designed to demonstrate fundamental principles and isn’t intended to be beautiful!

Sorapot arrives

Joey Roth’s Sorapot has arrived. Within five minutes there was blood on it. Here’s a picture that explains why.

Agaves are sharp. They remain sharp even when you’re trying to balance a Sorapot on them in an artistic way. They remain sharp when you stab your thumb directly on the point of one of the leaves. Fortunately blood wipes off the Sorapot very easily. Was this a design criterion when choosing the materials?

I haven’t yet tried making tea with it. I’ve read why it should make good tea and I’ve read why the design is the way it is and I’ve wished that I’d designed something like that. But actually making tea… that brilliant shiny glass will be dulled by the deposits from the peppermint tea, it’ll get misty from the water, it’ll never be the same again. And how to find tea worthy of it?

Perhaps it’ll be better to keep it as a piece of garden sculpture. Here’s a safer picture.

The packaging of the Sorapot is designed to be easily recycled. It fails miserably at this because it is too beautiful to throw away.