Trial And Error

Nassim Taleb had plenty to say about trial and error in his book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder.

In trial and error, the rationality consists in not rejecting something that is markedly better than what you had before.

(Taleb, 2014)

and

Trial and error has one overriding value people fail to understand: it is not really random, rather, thanks to optionality, it requires some rationality.

(Taleb, 2014)

It’s fortunate that the materials I’m experimenting with are relatively inexpensive (PVC pipe and cheap, 3D-printed pieces), because I have gone through several iterations of just some adapters I need for the boxing glove dryer. In the picture above, you can see several different versions of the same adapter as I try different fittings to make a square fan fit in a round hole. Taking an idea, putting it into software (123D Design) then have it made into reality via 3D-printing, and having it work is a bit tricky.

I was using Sketchup for 3D design, but kept having problems, as it’s not intended for 3D printing and it often has hidden geometry that gets printed but isn’t viewable in the software…frustrating. So now I’m learning 123D.

I’ve also scrapped the Grove Base Shield and the two different humidity sensors in favor of two DHT11 sensors. Initial testing shows that they indicate nearly identical readings, albeit only a few centimeters apart from one-another. However, getting rid of the Grove Base Shield and sensors will save space and reduce complexity; both physical and logical as I can reduce lines of code with the removal of the Grove gear.

I have a functional solution to the original problem of stinky gloves, but making it purty is taking a lot longer than making it actually work!