Welcome to ELM – Explore Learn Make. My name is Gordon. This site will be for me to share the things I find interesting. How did this all start? Before we get into that I want to share a bit of my background.

Occupational: I am currently the Director of Computer Technology for Rio Salado College. Among my duties I help in the development and management of the computer courses. Before that I worked at a design studio were I was a project manager doing architectural renderings and animations.

Educational: My schooling covered computer aided drafting and design and digital entertainment and game design.

So back to how this all started. Well… I’ll blame a bit of boredom, a desire to learn new things, wanting to do something more constructive with my time, YouTube, and the maker movement. I started to watch videos of people using microcontrollers to create little devices and home automation systems that I found fascinating. I then started to explore more of the maker community and saw some awesome projects. The thing that really kicked it in gear for me was an article I read on Make.com of a family that converted their living room into a workshop [linkety-link to article: http://makezine.com/2014/06/02/our-living-room-is-now-a-family-workshop/]. That lit a fire under me so I sold my couch and TV to family members and now I am trying to convert the open space into a workshop. My first projects will be to create some work benches so I have a place to do the projects I have planned. I plan to document each project and post them here so you can see what I do.

So why did I decide on ELM – Explore Learn Make? Well, I did think of other names beforehand, but found that others were using those names already. So I decided to figure out what I want to do with the site and it boiled down to three (3) different areas – Exploring, Learning, and Making. I define those areas using the following criteria.

EXPLORE

I know that I don’t know everything so I have to do some studying so I know the best methods, tools, and techniques to complete my projects. This is my exploration into the world around me. Looking at the ideas and concepts that I and others have come across and documenting them here for my own personal benefit, and the benefit of others.

LEARN

Once I have explored and studied the concepts, I need to practice implementing them. This is where I learn them by doing. Or in other words, tutorials on how to use different tools and techniques in order to build up my skill set so I can make the quality projects.

MAKE

With the knowledge and skills under my belt, I’ll be able to put them into practice creating full projects. My goal is to be able to find new and interesting ways to apply what I learn in a variety of projects.

So what type of projects will I do? Who knows! And that is what is so exciting about it. Right now I have lots of ideas in my mind for things I want to do. I want to create costumes. I want to build furniture. I was to add electronics to those things. I want to learn how to cook. The only limit I have is time (and money as well), but I plan on doing these things for the rest of my life so God willing, I will have a lot of time to dive into a lot of different areas.

I invite you to leave comments, send me notes, or whatever. I would like to hear your comments… so if you see something on my site that you feel could be done in a different way, please let me know. I am willing to look into it and improve. Let’s Explore, Learn, and Make together!