I started a Flipside post, I dunno, last night? But something happened, I got distracted, my computer froze, and I ultimately went to bed instead.
What is today? Wednesday? I've been home two days now and conscious, oh, about thirty seconds.
I tend to move at full-speed-ahead, but doing that in over 100F weather with 40% humidity is a recipe for disaster. I would have keeled over a couple of times if it weren't for the support of my friends. As I sat in the reclining camp chair during strike, trying not to sob from exhaustion, all I could think was, "I can't stop moving yet, I'm not done!"
I suppose in 20 or 30 years, that devotion to "getting things done" is going to kill me... I'll try to slow down some by then.
I found this Flip to be a tad less of a mystical experience than the first, but then again, it's never the same as your first, is it? The burn went weirdly (e.g. not according to expectations) and was shorter than I would have liked, but had moments of eerie beauty that we would not have seen if it had burned according to plan. The crowd was more passive this year, and for that I blame the brutal pounding weather. The fireworks before the burn were brilliant; there were things in there I had never seen before! Or, maybe I had seen them, but when put up with small lift charges, to be seen RIGHT ABOVE MY HEAD (as it were) and not five miles away, it was awesome. Very very nice. Who did that? Where did the pyros get their stuff? What did they use?
No -- must. not. begin. new. hobby.
Anyway, my garage is full and getting a pyro license takes more teamwork than flame effects, and I'm not so good at belonging to groups, going to meetings, and stuff.
Our camp, the Odd Ones, revolved around the emergency event transmitter ("this is Mad Spark with KFLiP 100.1, We Pump Less Thump, 40 watts at 40 feet from our all-natural Moso bamboo tower"). Of course, to be useful in emergencies (and we were), we had to keep people listening (we did). It was awesome! It's a tech job where I get to annoy and entertain people for hours on end! I was in heaven.
As for my own technology, it suffered some from the brutal weather. Did I mention it was hot? Behringer makes a fine piece of inexpensive equipment (hey, I'm not going to pay top dollar for stuff I use just a few times a year), but I found some limitations.
In the heat of the day, their mixer tended to get an intermittent buzz in the right channel. At first, I thought it was in the Fender amp, which I was using for the house speakers, but no -- it was in the mixer. Maybe if I get really bored I'll tear stuff down and look for, I don't know, ant bites or little six-legged corpses. Because ants were freakin' EVERYWHERE, and I killed one on my equipment every few seconds with my thumb.
The Behringer A500 reference amps sounded, I dunno, a bit soft and not terribly bright, coming out of my Fender 128W PA speakers. However, the Fender 128W PA sounded all kinds of bright and crisp, projecting out into the hilltop. Fancy that, a package system sounding better as a package. At home, though, I love the sound of the Behringer reference amps. The only difference being their location: the small confines of my living room, versus the great outdoors. Inside, the Fender sounds sharp and brittle.
Anyway, the A500 was a trooper! I drove it from half an hour to an hour at a time, in the red clipping zone, and until one channel after another turned off because of thermal overload. I doubt they really drive at 500W (250 per channel). Poor amplifiers. Amazingly enough, they both still work.
Which is more than I can say about the Pyle 8" subwoofers I had driving the dancing flame tubes. In at-home testing I noticed that one pillar had problems. It wouldn't always work; it worked when I _pushed_ on the cone, but not when a thump displaced the cone. That worried me. I marked it and went on.
During the trip to Flip, the pole pieces of one driver (the heart and core of the speaker!) just... fell out. I saw it laying there in the bottom of the pillar during unloading. WTF! It turns out the bolts arrayed around the bottom of the speaker were just... decorative. The pole piece is in fact epoxied into place, and that epoxy was NOT doing its job.
I managed to re-insert the pole piece into the voice coil, and it all worked again and it is now being held in by just the shear force of my frustration. And magnetism. I suppose the magnetism is doing most of it, since I'm kind of mellow today.
So, ultimately, one tube was only running one speaker, and I turned it off entirely when Tall Matt noticed that fire was coming out of the dead-speaker base, driven there by the other speaker. Not so good. I expect the silicon check valve is going to look a bit weather when I do my tear down and overhaul.
The other, recently built, tube held up like a trooper.
Next up: better subwoofer drivers (bigger than 600W I think) with more linear throw and better ::mumble:: rating to handle the front pressure. I need a subwoof that likes pressure, such as it might feel in a sealed box.
The pillar of fire was pretty, this was my new project in flame this year. I liked the lantern topper I made in metal class, and it helped keep the flame burning during the stupid big winds we had all weekend, but with it you could not see the vortex nature of the flame. After the first day, I took the topper off and kept the vortex spinning gently at all times the radio was running in the dark. It was beautiful, if subtle.
My color change for the flame worked fairly well, with the Red (Strontium Carbonate, terrifying though that may be, but only $4.50 a pound) being absolutely fantastic. Green started to work at one point -- I had several green chemicals in there, and I don't know which one was doing the heavy lifting -- choices are Copper Oxide, Barium Carbonate, and Boric Acid. Yellow was also fun, and it was basic ordinary baking soda. I used a carrier of pool filter powder (diatomaceous earth) as a carrier, so very little actual chemical was released. And I didn't run it much with people downwind. I do try to avoid actually killing or maiming with my toys...
I need to empty my tanks now and dispose of, or store, these chemicals safely. It is all just pottery glaze. But then again, pottery glaze is kinda dangerous stuff.
The pneumatic valves that drove the powder had an effect that caused my air to leak out too fast, so I couldn't run much color (since I couldn't recharge the compressor unless it was the only thing on the generator, something I will fix next year). When I exhausted the valve, powder blew back down the supply tube and clogged the spindle. Oops! It didn't do that in testing! I need to drop a check valve into the system and it will all be fine. Before then, I need to completely tear down those three valves and service them, because they are now small complicated doorstops.
Like last year, I loved being a DJ -- I was one of those DJs you hate on the rock stations. Who knew? But it was a blast. I'll try to collect better music for next year -- I had some new stuff this year, too, but I'll get more. I want a new playlist for the tubes anyway.
I really needed wind breaks (again, as always) because when we weren't being fried by the sun, we were being sandblasted by the wind. We rigged up some tarps, and it was not bad, but the wind was vicious. I made translucent wind breaks when I ran the tubes in the wind tunnel, er, horse barn at Maker Faire 2007, but those were made from temporary materials. I have a half-baked idea of how to make some permanent ones, that could transport and store, and be decorative, that I can use at Maker Faire 2008 and for future Flipsides. Have to do this. Yup.
I need more propane next year; I froze out about an hour before I was ready to, and I was running only one tube at low pressure for all of the last night. I want to run at the 10-20PSI range, I _was_ running in the 15-30PSI range which is too much, but I _did_ run in the 5-15PSI range that last night.
I need to get off my ass and make remote ignitors; I swore I wasn't going to run Matt ragged relighting, but I did anyway. I have the switch wired in and everything! He does enjoy policing the crowd, though, and he gets to interact with people and stuff, so it works out anyway. I just don't want to take advantage of his good nature needlessly.
The Tesla was cool, for the short life that it had. During packing, we essentially dropped a house on it. The four nylon bolts that hold the secondary column to the base all sheared off, causing the secondary to jolt onto the strike rail's support, lifting and snapping two loops of wire. It also made the toroid go all catywumpus, but that part was no biggie.
I made a delicate surgical repair on the Tesla Saturday evening, and by some miracle that worked! Matt is going to help me make transportation cases for this Tesla and the big one when I complete it, which will be awesome.
When I fired the repaired coil up to validate it, the Singing Tesla guys (Arc Attack) heard me and came over, and we chatted and stuff. Those guys rock... they noted that my Tesla wasn't really in tune, which is true, and they made polite happy noises about the little guy. Its a sturdy and capable little coil, and I was pleased to show it off.
They kept asking if I'd blown a coil yet, and I hadn't which seemed to amaze them. Of course, Sunday night, I was tweaking my settings trying to set up maximum spark (for my untuned coil, with no decent ground, using air strikes) and it blew it's little brains out. Poof! No zappies for Sunday. I told 'em I blew the crap out of my coil, and they welcomed me to the big time.
Debugging the failure will be educational, though, and give me more fodder for my new coil's design. I want to make it bullet proof, if possible.
My camp mates were awesome, across the board. People just did what needed doing, there were some rough spots (I hear) but we also worked our way through them (as far as I know). It was wonderful to see neat things happening as a group! I could ignore aspects of camp and know they would just get done, by those more capable of doing them. It was awesome.
Plus, Sofia kept me alive Monday. I really appreciate that. It turns out that working in the heat until your arms tingle is a bad thing.
Who all was in there? I'm going to cheat and look at the list...
Marla (M2 on the radio) came too this year! It's SO not the type of thing she would go to spontaneously, but she enjoyed it, got to swim in the creek a bunch, and hung out with me some. She even DJ'ed and got good responses to her music.
Sofia is, I swear, the heart of the group, she is the central spinning repository of love that binds us all together. Dave is part of the Sofia and Dave (Dave and Sofia?) pair, and he's a solid, quite, nice, capable guy, with powerful big camping skills. I'm pretty sure his work was vital for keeping large bits of our camp from becoming airborn...
Silona has a catalytic role, and she is a scout and a gatherer of people, finding interesting folks and hooking them into our web. We got new camp mates this year, who were cool folks that look like they may integrate nicely.
With Silona came JRob (JRW on his LJ, so I call him JRob; someday I'll have to ask if he hates that) also called Robmumble, and I swear I heard him called silent Rob on the radio too... dunno. A quiet guy, but talented, into the video and graphic arts. He did our signs, and made our logo awesome, and did beer labels; tentative at first, he seemed to pick up on the ad-hoc nature of our madness, and his talent really added a touch of class to everything! He even spun a DJ set!
Tall Matt and Susan of course, to be thanked separately but listed together. Matt and I (and Jim and eventually Randy) did the load up and initial setup of camp. Matt brews awesome beers and got me started up in brewing again, plus the tie-dye, plus his mellow nature, plus all the effort he put into the camp with the work, the couches he built, the ranger work he did during the event; he's my good friend in Austin and a valuable core piece of our camp. Susan and Matt come as a pair, and Susan helps keep us alive, and has such a calming presence (I feel); it's always delightful to be doing things with them.
Michelle (just Michelle) is part of what I feel is my core friends group; from the haunts to flip to the odd ones, there is a core set that overlaps for me. She is the party person, which is funny as she is also an auditor and an accountant of sorts, but sadly was left to her own devices once the evening drifted into the deep hours and us fogies fell into our tents to sleep to the serenade of thumpy music. Michelle rocks, and I give her grief online, but things wouldn't be the same in the group without her. She brings party, food, and good times to us all.
Beth is new to the camp, and a fun lady; our worlds overlapped in distant ways back in the days of the SCA, it turns out. With Beth is Randy Z (or was it the other way around?), and these two launched into the entire event with great enthusiasm. Randy cooks masterfully, and takes justifiable pride in his culinary work.
Chris and Mindy made it too, long time odd people but first time to flip; alas, things did not turn out for them (for reasons to distant from me to have made it into my awareness) and could not stay. Mindy made a super nifty generator baffle for us, but our generators were so awesome we were able to put it around a dangerous bush in our camp where it served valiantly. Chris is quiet, like many of our group, so I don't know him well yet, but he is a nice guy.
Jim Radio, of course, is our Radio Guy, and an amazing experience in his own right. A force of nature, a nice guy, or a bastard, I'm not sure which, his family has been associated with Sofia's for, I dunno, generations, and also with Silona... that's some core group there! I'm thrilled to be doing things with Jim, he has passion and ... stuff.
Karen came with Jim this year, and she, the World's Most Dangerous Blonde, is thirty one flavors of awesome. The two of them together create some kind of event horizon of awesome, that once you have crossed it, there is no return. She works as a medic (a tame word, medic; she's a medic's medic I hear), was a PET at the event, and may well play with us in the haunt this year (and I may get to play moulage with her! Heaven!)
Sheilagh, neat lady! Don't know her! Had fun!
Tanjent, Sean, and Corprew -- new guys. All seemed pretty solid, engineer kind of guys, camped with us and did stuff around the event. I enjoyed my chats with them, Tanjent especially I think.
All in all, a great camp, a good time. It will be fun to see what next year brings.