Edwin Wise

Dreaming, part two

"I'm sorry I broke my old dreams. I promise to take better care of them if I get new ones! Really!"

That's the tweet I'm not making right now. Strangely enough, there are people in the internet that worry about me, care for me, and such an inflammatory tweet would make them worry more. Even stranger, there are some people that hate me, think I am a horrible person (sometimes for good reason, other times not), but there's not too much I can do about that now, nor can I easily change what they think. I'm told I should let it go, not care, and for the most part I don't. But it's a strange feeling, knowing that both categories of people are out there.

I woke up feeling broken today, with a sense that I don't know what I'm living my life for.

I used to know. I used to have a good set of shiny sparkling dreams to draw me through the murk of existence. Things I wanted to do, things I wanted to be, goals of life and family.

I wasn't necessarily nice to those dreams, I broke them like expensive toys. It took a few years for me to shake off the shattered pieces of them and now I find myself in a nearly empty room looking for more toys. Where are they? I learned my lesson, I really think I did, I promise I'll take better care of them this time! Don't leave me like this.

I'm not saying my life is empty now. Far from it. I have the best friends now that I've ever had in the history of ever. I wouldn't have made it this far without them. And yet I still dream of the dreams that I used to have -- the family, projects, and passions that used to carry me.

I have such good times still, wonderful time with people I care about. But it seems to be a quirk of my psyche that, on weekends especially, when I wake up in bed alone it hurts so much. The dawn light is filtered through streaming tears.

Weekends used to be a time of energy and excitement, exploring new projects, new skills, making and shaping and designing; things I loved to do, things I still love. Now, I'm still looking for that energy, that hope. What happened to me? Am I broken now? I used to be a marvel of activity, people would gape from afar and wonder how I did all I did. Now, the couch calls to me, the book, the nap. Nascent projects lay scattered in my imagination, discarded and accusing.

I dream of my dreams and wonder what happened.

I do have one dream. Perhaps it is hopeless. But I keep my feet on the path and try to have faith that my energy will return to me, the passion, and maybe again, someday, more.

And if not? I still have these amazing friends that make life a better place to live. That's a lot, and I'm blessed. But perhaps it's just a quirk of my psyche that I always want... more. That's how I made such a mess in the first place.

Perhaps I haven't entirely learned my lesson after all. But I'm trying. I really am.

It's just that some mornings still hurt so much.

I wonder if anybody comes to this blog anymore? I almost hope not. I don't want you to worry about me. I'm sure I'll be okay. I usually am. This was just one of those mornings, and I needed to write, to exorcise, to think.

Dreaming

The last handful of years have been full of many things, good and bad, and yet none of it really fits into this space. Maybe someday I'll document those triumphs and failures. And oh yes, I've failed in some spectacular ways.

One thing about me, though, is that I dream. I dream big when I do, too. And as everyone who knows me knows, I tend to do things the hard way. So my big dreams aren't simple, sensible ones; no, that would be too easy.

Sure they reflect the common zeitgeist as often as not -- the hope for love, for family, for interesting challenges. But I will give them a twist like few others can.

I tilt at windmills, I try to achieve the amazing, some might say the impossible, and sometimes I fail spectacularly... and sometimes I make it. I feel it's always worth trying. Maybe that makes me reckless and stupid, maybe it makes me too clever by half (goodness knows I suffer from that malady), or maybe I just have big dreams and I can't help it.

I'm also so very aware of all the ways we defeat ourselves. It's easy to defeat yourself; you are your own worst enemy when it comes to achieving your dreams. You know your own weaknesses, you know your own insecurities, so you know exactly where to stick the knife and how hard to twist it.

I achieve what I do achieve because of where I put my focus, my attention, my energy. I feed the goal at hand, I stay focused in the moment, and work through the big picture one step at a time. It's the journey that's important, and while yes you do have to keep the big picture in mind, you don't live the big picture, you don't solve the big picture; you take one small step at a time and over time you achieve a great thing.

When I get distracted or overwhelmed by the vastness of my goals, I write them down, put them in a form that is not in my head, so I don't have to carry their weight around all the time.

I can be positive, and focused, and determined all I want to be, but there will still be events that rattle me. Or night dreams. The subconscious is an evil bastard sometimes. Dreaming of failure, when I'm defenseless, asleep. Not fair, brain! Not fair at all.

I refuse to give up. I will (grudgingly, unwillingly) accept failure if it turns out that way, but I will not create failure by giving up. I will see how this story turns out, read it until the very end, and then look for the sequel. Sure, chapter three is scary, and it may seem hopeless for the protagonist, but that is no reason to close the book and put it back on the shelf.

I refuse to give in to my impatience. And yes, I can be so very impatient. I want what I want, and I want it now. There is a frustrated two-year-old in my head stamping his feet and shouting his demands. But I know better. I know that to push too hard, to go too fast, to give in to impatience can kill a fragile dream. Some things take time. Some things need nurturing. Some things need patience. And, as someone once noted, and to my surprise, I can also be one of the most patient people around.

So I continue to dream, and while dreaming, put one foot after the other and hope that the path I am on leads me somewhere interesting.

Life, the universe, and nothing.

I haven't written in here for so long that I now have too many things logjammed in my brain, jockeying for position to get out. Of course, almost anything I write that is relevant to my mad (as in hatter) behavior this last year will look like justifications, obfuscations, or masturbations, so I'm not sure what is actually going to get written. Also, it's all too fresh, and many of the actors in this little melodrama are still a little bit miffed (to say the least) already. I have to ask myself, how much salt do I want to be spreading around, anyway?

But write I will -- because this is how I make myself sort things out, put them in order, and hold them up to the light for inspection. It's part of how I discover what is true, and almost every time I write in here, I also discover something hidden in me.

There are a lot of questions that I have for myself, and I hope to eventually find answers that I can live with. Things like... why have I spent my life (from age 23 through 45) married and I don't even know why I was married? Why did my life seem to become meaningless when I turned 40? Why did it take 5 years for this realization to catch up with me, when I finally fell apart? Why did I try to do it all alone, instead of laying my load at the feet of my friends and companions? Are my experiences at Flipside and following revelations and integrations going to make any real difference in the long run? What can I do next to go on to a better evolution of being me? What the hell am I doing with my life anyway, and was it really so necessary to fuck up the lives of those around me in the process?

When I was in my 20s and 30s I always figured I'd be less busy with life, more settled, more able to figure out the deeper questions of existence, once I reached the (then distant) age of 40. While I was curious about life, the world, and my place in it back then, it seemed an intractable problem (though I expected it would fall over easily enough with a little thought and research, in time). I also figured I'd set myself the appointment to figure it out when I turned 40.

After all, how hard could it be? And how wise would I be by then anyway, decades into the future? Nothing to it!

(Yes, I hear all you old-timers laughing back there, and don't think I don't notice your eye-rolling either).

(And you whippersnappers? Yeah, you have it easy with your youthful enthusiasm, your sense that life is just for the enjoyment of life, and with simple goals and simple motives for living; I was there too, I remember it. Not EASY, mind you, and some of you have it quite hard indeed... but still straightforward for the most part; school, job, girlfriend, music, movies, parties, friends; the basic things that are almost pre-defined and hard-wired for us).

(As always, your mileage may vary).

Needless to say, it didn't work out quite as planned.

A surprising number of the people I've talked to have experienced anxiety attacks before -- stress, chemistry, poltergeists... all manner of things can trigger these. For me it was my life, my visible future; in the moments when I wasn't distracted by my distractions, I'd be freaking out about my mortality. I wasn't where I wanted to be in my life, and I didn't KNOW where I wanted to be in my life, but I knew this wasn't it... something was missing, and I spent some years casting about trying to figure out what that missing piece was, how to fill it, where to find it. I'm still not sure... but in the process I do know that I wore myself down so far, had stressed out enough, that I fell apart, and in falling apart, I quit everything.

Okay, not EVERYTHING; I still dance, I still have my dayjob, I still work on FX at SCARE, but essentially everything else.

So now I have even less than I had before, and in my free moments when I'm not being distracted by my distractions I'm no longer panicking but I'm alone and lonely, and I'm not entirely sure which is better and which is worse. But that was also kind of the point... I need to live my life on purpose, consciously, and I had been doing it on autopilot for too long. And I had found it impossible to change the autopilot machine, so I ended up breaking it instead.

These days I'm operating on the theory that nature abhors a vacuum; that closing one door opens another; and that by making space for myself, by stepping away and looking at my life and my connection with humanity and the world, that maybe I'll be able to find a path through the next years of my life that leads me in a good direction.

As part of my process, I went through some seriously dark places, as documented at least in part by my Flipside 2010 entry... and then, in therapy and in reflection, I discovered some amazing things about myself and my past, and the illusions I lived by that were based on faulty data. And yet today I don't feel all that significantly different; I feel the same drives that led me to where I am, the same wants, even some of the same insecurities.

Looking at myself today compared to the me ten years ago today, I'm very different. The most concrete and stark example is from the Haunt. I took, and last night dropped in on, an Improvisational Acting class being held for the guides -- and I did well, and I enjoyed it. Improv, for those of you unaware with the form, and unfamiliar with the Edwin of the past, is a thing that I would neither thrive in nor enjoy, nor even be remotely capable to doing, as the old me. I even sing, in public, unabashedly (and of course, not being able to remember any lyrics, as that's not how my brain works), as part of this class, and if you've heard me sing, well, I'm sorry... but this marks a huge shift in my extroversion.

My current operating theory (akin jumping off the cliff and hoping it's not rocks below) is something I'm trying to assemble after the fact, and was not part of any planning or guiding process. I didn't have a coherent big picture but was operating in a fight or flight response, doing what seemed necessary and hoping that it was either the right thing, or at least would lead to a place where I could figure out what the right thing is. An animal trying to survive.

And now that panic is gone, and the drive to run has faded, and I don't lay there at night haunted by my mortality any more. But I also have less drive, less enthusiasm for the mundane things, and more time to contemplate and be melancholy.

So that's where I am now. I still want some things, I've lost some things, I think I've gained some things... but I'm so definitely not "there" yet.

If what I've heard is true, I never will be "there"... I just hope that the journey I'm on is interesting, fulfilling, and one where I don't end up hurting my best friend in the world in order to continue forward.

There are several forces coming to a point for me right about now as well.

One is the Fall season; this is a season I love above all others, with Spring a close second. A season of snuggling, of nesting, of warm comfort while the world shifts around us and storms drive us wet and windblown into winter. And of seeing the couples around me, and of wondering.

Another is my son's visit, which follows a predictable cycle for me emotionally. When he's here, I'm always amazed by how awesome he is, and I take him around to show him off to my friends and to talk with him and rant with him and make things in the Lab or Haunt with him. And then, always, he has to go, and I'm struck with an inescapable sense of irrecoverable loss like a knife in my heart, of all the time I didn't have with him, of all the moments I missed of his growing up and growing into adulthood. A sense of somehow, maybe I've fucked up my life beyond repair, to have ended up missing all of those pieces of his life; but you know, I have this great son anyway, so that's something.

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to live a more normal life story, but I rarely wonder long ... it would bore the socks off me, and my own particular psychological bent pretty much renders the possibility impossible. For the most part I enjoy what I do, how I live, and where I'm going... but I'm not happy with "okay", and want to reach out for "spectacular". Or at least, less emotionally damaged... and I'm making progress.

Core Issues

It's tricky, since I'm not allowed to talk about pretty much anything that is going on for me this year. But I think I can still drag out a coherent post to help illuminate, somewhat, the processes that are occurring these last many months, and to highlight, perhaps a little, of why I'm not up to my usual standards of productivity and accountability.

That I'm writing this today at all is a good sign -- as of Friday I had vowed to quit everything -- OddOnes, SCARE, work -- and to delete all of my accounts, remove myself from the 'web, and basically just up and move somewhere and see what I could do from there.

Because I was tired; stressed, lost, and feeling very very alone and unloved. I know these feelings were not true, and I think I feel how they are not true today, but subjective and objective reality don't always intersect cleanly. But I'm jumping ahead here, putting the conclusions up here in the introduction.

I had a hard time growing up, and I know that almost everyone else did too. However, how easy or hard your childhood was has no bearing whatsoever on what it was that I experienced as a child, or to the resources (emotional, familial, and otherwise) I had to deal with it at the time. So yeah; my childhood sucked. And it left a mark.

That mark is what I've been trying to deal with this year, because that mark has been fucking up my life and my relationships ever since... forever. So I want to fix it, because I really have no other choice, since continuing on with the level of suck I live with is not a choice that fills me with joy.

Every young child develops, through experience, a model of what the world is like and how they fit into it. The experiences we have as very young children are rarely perfect, rarely idyllic, and often full of sampling quirks and bad data. The model I developed early on was that I was not worthy of love, that I couldn't rely on other people, and that I had to do everything myself... because not only would the key people in my life just not be there to help out, but I wasn't even worthy of such help when they were. I was a nuisance, a burden, a chore.

I know why I developed this model, I know how I developed this model, I know this model is false and based on limited and insufficient data, and I know I've since grown far beyond the world this model was created to help me survive. But none of that helps; the mind is not the heart, and some of this stuff is branded deeply into the soul.

Also, we constantly moved as a family, and I had no home support structure, and limited access to any other family; I had few friends, and I never developed any deep relationships. I was terrified of most of the world, seeing it (rightly, in a sense, but in an amplified manner) as a dangerous place, with the people in it being erratic, confusing, and hostile (school, you know; other children are truly monsters sometimes).

At a late age I decided to learn how to be a people person, like you would decide to learn to speak German or Italian.

As I actually got a girlfriend, and then more girlfriends, and then a wife, and another wife, and another -- I thought things were going okay, but at the same time there was a continued emptiness and things were always coming apart, pretty much on a schedule.

I've had jobs of different sizes and flavors, and hobbies like nobody's business, and I have a fairly dazzling collection of skills and interests -- but most of that was not very satisfying, and I always felt like I was just faking it anyway. After a while at any one location or situation, I felt like I was running out of the energy needed to continue faking it, and that people were beginning to catch on to the real me -- an unlovable fraud.

My sense of worth, of value, has been tied up in what I _do_ and not who I _am_ -- and I've always been aware of that, which doesn't help, because I really had no idea what to do about it. So I continued doing, and feeling useful by that doing.

I spent a week in therapy over Christmas and learned some interesting things about myself, and some interesting models of how the kind of damage I incurred as a child happens, and some interesting tools on how to try to repair it.

But at the same time, my stress levels rocketed, I started dropping the ball on some basic activities and commitments, and of course, at work I started a massive, important, and otherwise interesting if ill-timed project.

So my work project has not been going as awesomely as I like; my role in some of my other community activities seems to be eroding as people with newer and shinier and perhaps more relevant skill sets wander in; and I'm wading around in middle age, thinking I'm going to become useless soon, because frankly, who wants an ancient technologist anyway?

So at Flipside I finally come unraveled. It's a safe environment, safer than any other environment I can think of; it's familiar to me as well, having elements of the world I grew up in (in a sense; it's a long story). And it's hot, and I don't do well under high temperatures. And it's tired, because nobody sleeps well at FS, and I don't to well under sleep deprivation.

I noticed at one point that I was about to come to blows with a friend over... nothing. So I left camp. Gone. And I sat in a secluded area and just let my mind unravel in peace, sobbing and rocking and taking apart my cell phone for much of that afternoon.

Then I curled up under a giant mushroom (really; not real, though, but made from a parachute) and let the world pass by for a while longer, emotionally drained for a time. Until it got crowded, and then I took my damaged self to a quiet bench, but there the tears were more noticeable and the rangers collected around me with their quiet voices and supportive concern. The PET checked me out to make sure I was healthy (I was), and I asked them to get a camp member for me, and they did. I announced that I quit (everything) and allowed Anna and Marla to comfort me for a little while until I could stand life for little longer, and then I returned to camp.

If I had been found that way in the "real world" they would likely have committed me. And rightfully so.

I pretty much spent the rest of that day and the next sitting in a corner ignoring the world, crying most of the time under my hat. I even snapped at Susan, and if you know Susan you know what a crime that is. But my friends were really there for me, in that they let me have that space; they checked in, but didn't push. And on Sunday, when I had actually recovered a tiny bit, they let me re-integrate into being a camp member and doing the radio stuff I love.

Interestingly enough, the deeply buried, deeply scarred child in my psyche noticed something (because I pointed it out to him, but hey, that's one of the tools my father gave me over Christmas) -- and that was "these people are being nice to me; they honestly care for me."

This was, in fact, perhaps the first time I had ever felt (FELT, not understood) that I was cared for, that I counted for who I was, and not for what I could do, or make, or buy, or charm. And this first came from that one Ranger, and then the nice PET, who helped me at the trail; and from Anna, and Matt, and Marla who came to me at the river; and then from my many friends at camp afterward, and even these new people who I had never seen before but took me under their care for a lovely walk and introduced me to some more nice people.

This may seem a silly thing; or maybe you might dismiss it as being untrue, that I must have felt loved before, in all my 46 years, and on some levels this is true -- but that broken child deep inside had not, trust me there; HAD NOT; and then did, and it is the most painful, disturbing, unbelievable feeling to feel friendship for the first time like that. It still hurts. It hurts a lot.

Because, if for no other reason, than it highlights what I have been unable to feel during all the years leading up to this point.

I hope the lesson sticks, that the memory continues to sink in to my psyche; because that is the memory, the feeling, the lesson that I have to learn (or absorb, or feel) -- that the time of being helpless, and alone, and abandoned, is behind me, and the tools and protections I developed then are not needed in the same way now.

I'm not fixed yet, but I have hope that I will be. I have a nice therapist now too, who can help continue this healing. And I have friends who, it seems, will give me the room to be an idiot for a while and still accept me into their midst.

I'm still wracked with misery, but it's more like the pain of a healing scab than the pain of damage being inflicted. Maybe it will switch over to an itching soon... and then heal over.

There are still things I want in my life but may never have, perhaps because these are unreasonable wants. I'll figure it out eventually. And I still don't feel nearly as competent as people make me out to be, but I'm also still learning so I hope that gets better.

I don't have any real dreams to drive me forward right now; I've pretty much let go of everything, and maybe I'll pick up a strand or two as time goes on. I'm doing some things, like SCARE work and DAYJOB, out of a sense of momentum as much as for any internal impetus.

Everything is temporary, and this too shall pass. I wonder what I'll find on the other side of this journey?

Updateness though a bit lateness

Yeah, I think my blog titles suck too.

Looking at the calendar, and a LONG TIME seems to have passed since the last update, but really just a weekend and a half... and two weeks!

Okay, a long time.

Last weekend, I don't even remember exactly what happened, but a new FX volunteer, Matt, came out and did diligent work on the vacuum former's oven -- drilled a zillion holes in a very difficult material, and tested out a couple different configurations of heater coil with me. Initial testing gave us way too high a resistance, so we went with a bunch of shorter coils in parallel -- but then we found that a coil or two had rather lower resistances, giving us uneven heating. A good set of experiments, and tedious, but that's science for you. He then went on to help with the shifting of materials for a bit before escaping the greater oven that is the Lab.

Phil and Yvonne have continued their explorations in dentistry, and are getting better and going deeper into new territory every visit, I'm quite pleased. Brad (right? Darn these names) and Kyle also got to see the results of their previous tooth casting, and do a bit more in the sculpting department.

I've spent a couple of weekday sessions working on Nathan's Elmo, and have pics going online now (link at the bottom). He'll be ready to mold and cast soon, at this rate, which is good, because time is short!

Last weekend I spun up the ring sections for the vortex and today I finished the other two rings for the vortex tunnel's outer layer, and last weekend Debra (not Deborah, as it turns out) helped with that some (if I recall correctly). Events kept her away today, but I suspect we'll see her tomorrow again and I'll put her to work drilling holes for the eye-bolts for the guy wires (unless she reads this and sensibly decides to hide).

Robert and Henry have been continuing in their Blood Pump work and I believe it's ready for mounting and powering now -- though I need to buy another package of my ad-hoc O-Ring material to seal them.

I'm hoping Jean brings the new burner to the Lab soon -- she sent pictures, and the work in progress is lovely -- so I can cook up some water and begin the color work for our custom blood formulation.

While I was waiting for Tall Matt to wrap up his work at the Lab so I could carpool him home, I threw together some concept skulls to see if I could -- I guess I'll be making a variety of skulls to decorate furniture and fireplaces with! I'm thinking vacuum molding forms, so I can make a bunch of 'em cheap.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something or someone... I'll fill in on the next post if I remember!

Elmo on Nathan, work in progress:

http://tinyurl.com/n4eme6

Monstrous fangs, top set painted and modeled:

http://tinyurl.com/mnrey6

Skulls test:

http://tinyurl.com/l8kv3w

Update-o-matic

I've ramped up my efforts a notch, spending more time on weekends and more time during the week working on SCARE projects.

I'm also just now getting my head into the new stuff in my new group at DAYJOB, and should be starting to be useful there soon too; though; the manager has this weird idea I'll be instantly productive in a new group with new code and new co-workers, even though none of it is particularly well documented. I've been working to disillusion him.

I assembled the high-power mGoblin's power supply and plugged it in... got a spark, some light smoke; very disappointed. I want either dramatic failure or a working device -- and got neither. Now I need to build it up piecewise and figure out what dumb thing I did to this perfectly good vendor circuit.

I got parts and the new PCBs in last week, so I also built up the new version of the sumGoblin (sigmaGoblin) and was able to program it, so that's good! I've got most of the code framework assembled for that as well now, so I hope to be able to monitor the Goblin Net from it soon.

I also took the blinking code and the communication code and put them together into the final form for the uGoblin (microGoblin) device and I'll build up the large-chip versions of that soon for testing.

A lot of code changes all at once means hard, painful testing... but oh well!

I spackled and sanded on Nathan's stone model and then did two coats of Alcote release agent -- which I hope works as well as advertised! I use it a little bit on teeth, but without success (I did it wrong; just one coat), and I've been putting it on all the new tooth models... so we'll see how I like it as things progress.

I didn't start the Demon sculpt on Nathan yet, nor did I do a positive from my mold, but that's okay; the Lab was too busy this weekend to really be able to settle down for the creative work of sculpting. I'll do the rough sculpt this week after work and have a first-pass kibitz this coming weekend on it.

I cast all four of the teeth that have been waiting for casts, and popped them from their plaster positives -- they all came off perfectly , except for Marla's, so I had to make another copy of teeth for her.

I also made the mold and a casting on my Humongous Fangs of Doom -- pictures linked at the bottom! They need cleaning up and painting still, since the gums are tooth colored and they are all ragged around the edges, but you get the idea. They turned out FAR better than I could have hoped, and I can even (mostly) talk in them.

Phil and Yvonne did more tooth molding and I got them up to speed on the plaster work techniques for making the copies, so that's good. While they were doing that, Kyle and Bill also made some alginate molds, and then Phil did the plaster for them. Skills are drifting out into the group, which is very exciting.

Saturday, Robert and his boy (or at least he had a boy in tow) came to the lab and I set them to work on making the second piston/valve assembly for the blood pump; their work is progressing nicely and I look forward to seeing them again next weekend. The big question for the blood pump will be how we want to power it.

Saturday afternoon, Matt, Paul and I chatted about stilts, as a result of this conversation I got a bug up my nose and went back to the lab to whip up a prototype stilt. I taped that monstrosity to my body Sunday morning (when I was fresh and less likely to damage myself) and got some good feedback on the forces involved.

There's a BIG force in only one location (the anchor point for the long toe), and that can be resolved in several ways, and it can be reduced in several other ways. I have hope! We have several plans for the stilts -- I'm poking Plan A right now, which may evolve into Plan B (which is Eric's stilt style), and could even go into Plan C (e.g. painter's stilts and a far clunkier shape for the demon).

Today I got to the Lab early and put the segments for two circles in the Vortex Tunnel into shape -- finalizing their curvature, cutting the flat ends off, cutting the fittings that hold them together, and marking all the drill points.

Deborah showed up in time to help drill stuff out, file it, and then she helped me assembled the test section of the vortex tunnel (one of three, with two of the four rings).

We then used ratcheting cargo straps to tension the section and the result was better than I could have hoped. The tunnel, with no rigid connections, no screws, no bolts, nothing more than some holes and ratchet straps, was strong and amazingly rigid.

I then went through the entire set of straps and made them the correct length, and the tunnel section snapped to square, all clean and tidy.

All in all, a weekend full of successes.

Lifecasting pics: http://tinyurl.com/ms97ha

Monster Fang pics: http://tinyurl.com/mnrey6

Updaterizing

I did the inventory of acrylic materials that I got from Dr. Carpenter, and it's a good haul! I need to actually TEST the materials to ensure they are good, but I think acrylic is pretty robust. Also I need to test a theory on how to ensure the darned stuff gets poured all the way into the tips of the teeth -- even poured very thin, it tends to not get into the tips. In some cases, I suspect capillary action, but I've also taken steps to avoid that.

Maybe when I review the three books he lent me, I'll find more tips and tricks. Those orthodontists cheat; they start with pre-cast teeth and just do the gums and plate!

Another Wednesday was consumed in meetings, this time a general SCARE meeting, plus board of directors meeting. We are making great progress! Also, we have an amazing trailer video now:

http://tinyurl.com/n4c8xu

Work on the Goblin Systems timing and control modules is working apace; this programming and electronics stuff is very time consuming. Rushing through some of the development, and being done with infinite distractions, has cost me a prototype PCB cycle (oops, bad chip definition!). However, the new PCBs are coming tomorrow, and I also have an upgraded MCU set (added a dollar to double the RAM/ROM) in a box at home waiting for it.

Today's big news on the Goblin front is that I'm sending and receiving complex commands between timing modules now.

Last Saturday, I got a lifecast of my lovely self, and the mold is now sitting on a table waiting for me to pour plaster into it.

Sunday, I did pour plaster into Nathan's mold. Actually, I laid up a shell of burlap and ultracal 30 along the mold, then filled it with giant chunks of foam and THEN poured plaster into it. Trying to alleviate the weight; I only used 75lbs of plaster, instead of 150lbs.

However, the shell phase of the process made a pretty poor outer skin; lots of bubbles. These are on non-critical areas (I cast the face solid), and I will fix them tonight... but still, it lacks perfection.

After doing Nathan up stone solid, I ran over to the Lodge for our Kickoff and Casting event -- good turnout, and I got some great names of people who can do work in the FX area. I'm excited to have new help!

Last night I spent a few hours at the Lab, under my new extended Lab time model, and made the molds for four sets of teeth plus did the first-pass cleanup work on my monster fangs of doom.

Tasks in planning or in process include the vacuum table (Paul's taken the lead on that), the vortex tunnel (parts are there waiting for some structural tests), and the Demon's stilts (plus we have a new, experienced, player in that game, Eric Peterson, to help me and Paul). Exciting!

Updateification

I still haven't done the materials tests needed to transform my PVA powder into a nice plastic. Soon, maybe? Hard to say.

I also need to do an inventory of the materials that Dr. Carpenter gave us, and make a shopping list of what is needed to round them out. Wednesday tends to be my random task night, but Wednesdays have been busy lately! And NEXT Wednesday is the Scare meeting at the Lodge.

The last two Wednesdays a few of us have gotten together to round out the Scare project / task list. We've filled in some estimates and cut out some projects, and generally tried to get a grip on the massive task that is building an ambitious haunt. All of it is in the Wiki, so for those who have access, go check it out!

What I have been able to do the last week, however, is still pretty good. The Goblin program is coming along, and I've got a basic system of lights worked out. I need to work up some of the advanced features, and get the communication network integrated too.

I built up three of the little blinky circuits (the so-called "micro-Goblin"), and I still need to build up some of the other circuits -- the bridge/power board, the laptop interface, and the 110VAC control version.

Saturday I spent the morning reinforcing the weaker of the mother molds on Nathan's lifecast, and extending both halves of the mold down to an even, square base with a nice flange. This will make it easier to hang upside down (or plug and clamp into the rotomolding machine) later.

Saturday afternoon I packed up my makeup kit and wandered out to the IGDA picnic for abour four hours, doing some fun makeup on random strangers who foolishly wandered into our tent:

http://tinyurl.com/ljd8zm

After that I started heading to Paul's for a bit of party time, but never made it; overcome by heat and weariness, I headed home and turned into a blob.

Sunday I went to the lab a bit later than usual (10am, goodness, I'm slacking!) but I did spent an hour or two prior working on the Goblin system.

The first thing I did was clean up the INSIDE of the plaster part of Nathan's mold. I figure that cleaning up the inside of the mold once will be easier than cleaning up the two or three positive castings I expect to make later. I had hoped to cast a positive today too, but decided to let the fresh plaster cure for a day first.

Instead, I did the finish work and then heat-polished four sets of teeth; the first teeth I started when the whole dentistry project was launched months and months ago. I did some large fangs for Ian, and finally finished up Crystal, Marla, and this quiet girl's teeth (Niobium? Titania? Nicky? They are marked "Ni"... it could mean anything!).

Soon, I'll make molds and cast acrylic and be done with that phase of the project! Yay!

I also did a second pass of cleanup on these crazy saber-tooth fangs I'm experimenting with on my own teeth.

Oh, and I captured Marla's lower teeth, but didn't get Charlotte or Nathan today for some reason. Right! They must have slept in.

Coming up next: Lifecasting me, I hope I survive! Also, Nathan's first casting and the beginning of the Demon makeup in earnest.

Project blogging?

There has been some call for me to start blogging my projects again -- so I'll probably do that.

Need to find a way to RSS or otherwise feed this into Face Book and the Scare blog site; it already makes its way in to Live Journal.

Upcoming projects include the ongoing prosthetic tooth work (vampires and demons, oh my!); blood pumps and custom blood coloring/thickening (now with clots!); haunt timing, communication, and control; sculpting, molding and casting prosthetic makeup; digitigrade stilt development; articulated wings (possibly powered); and.... umm.... vortex tunnel and the tools to build it!

Either that, or live video footage of my head exploding from over-reaching.

Stay tuned!

Torture!

The whole debate over "torture" vs Torture is ... torturing my brain.

First we hear in no uncertain terms, "We do not use torture."

Then we get, "Ummm yeah, look at these memos. Some of these things are definitely torture."

Note that if your first, absolute statement on a subject is a bald-faced lie, other statements from people in your group are going to be received with more than just a grain of salt. You've already lost credibility.

The replies to the memo release came in stages. First it's "You stupid bastards, you are aiding the enemy! We can no longer use these torture, er, intensive interrogation techniques!"

The reply to which is a roll of the eyeballs and a "umm, yeah, you are right, that's the point." Also, the techniques themselves are not secret; what was hidden was the official permission to USE them, of calling them legal and acceptable.

Floating over the airwaves now is this fun bit -- "those aren't torture because they don't cause long-term psychological harm. Heck, we did that to people during training and they came out just fine!" Or the gem from the peanut gallery, "That's no worse than hazing at a frat."

Where to start with THAT unpolishable gem? Are you saying these activities don't really work? Or they work but don't leave a mark? Or what? More later...

Now we have cries from the wilderness to release MORE memos, the ones that show the good and valuable information we got from using these not-quite-or-perhaps-maybe-is torture-interrogation techniques.

Balanced against, of course, discussions from yet more people saying that we got more bad data than good, that the good data wasn't that great, and that what we DID get, we often got before we dived into the ugly stuff anyway.

There are several threads running through this.

1. Are these activities torture?

It sounds to me that yes, some of them are, or at least we have defined them that way in the past ourselves.

Ask yourself, do you want them used on your sons and daughters? If not then... we must not use them the sons and daughters of other organizations, no matter how misguided we think they are, or how valuable the knowledge between their ears may be.

If they are effective enough to FORCE information out of someone, they are effective enough to be considered torture. If they are not torture, what makes us think they will force out good information? People LIE, especially under duress.

1b. These techniques aren't really so bad. We trained with them! We did them to students!

Consider this. You are in a class, you know the people around you, and you know the goals and limits of what is occurring in that class. Now you are told to (to take a tame example) stand in a dark room, on one foot, not moving. You do so. You know it will end, you know what comes next, and you know you can refuse or quit at any time.

Now. You are in a prison, you don't know the people around you, you don't know their goals and the limits to which they will go, and you have HEARD all kinds of horrible things from your friends and neighbors. You are locked in a dark room, told, FORCED, to stand on one foot, not moving. You do so. You don't know how, or if, it will end; you don't know what comes next, and you are afraid of what may happen if you refuse.

On top of that, the people in charge think it would be worthwhile to one-up the documented guidelines and drop spiders on your head while they are at it, you know, to make it work better (to take an idea I just pulled out of my ass; but it seems that the interrogators were not really going by the book, or the "book" lacked some fundamental guidelines at first, so this seems a reasonable extension).

Yeah, just the same. Gonna have the same long term impact. Right? Somehow I don't think so. Saying they are the same is disingenuous at best.

2. If it gets good data, it is worth it.

No. Ends can not justify the means, for down that path lies madness; and remember, everything we do will be reflected back onto us down the roads of time, and applied to our own sons and daughters, but even more so; and we won't get to complain because we set the standards.

I've talked to people who interrogate, and I've heard other people talk in interviews. The best data comes from bonding with the subject, not beating them up. And being friendly isn't going to land you in international court for war crimes.

3. Moral high ground.

We should take it. If something can be construed as torture, skip it.

Use the techniques that actually WORK, and a hint here: from what I've heard, these techniques have nothing to do with this kind of abuse.

All in all, the defending (torture is good) arguments play out like red herrings. We don't do torture (except when we do). It's not actually torture (except that it is). It's not actually damaging, so really, not torture (except the are comparing apples and kumquats; controlled training versus uncontrolled field conditions). So what if we do this, we get good data (except that we don't, and except that even if we did as a country we reject torture anyway so the point is irrelevant).

In my ears it has been translating to "please don't send me to the Hague."

Correction

I'm on Twitter as @MadSpark -- I'm on Flickr and YouTube as EdwinWiseOne.

Too many places, too many names.

Stuff! And Nonsense!

Been too busy to post, really, and my urge to babble has been assuaged by Twitter (@EdwinWiseOne) and Facebook (Edwin Wise).

Recently, though, I've been working up techniques and skills for making vampire teeth out of dental acrylic. I tried the build-up-from-blob-of-acrylic-then-grind-down method a few times and decided it's not for me.

What I am doing instead is doing a sculpt on a duplicate of my teeth, making a mold from that, then casting the acrylic. It has taken several iterations to get the acrylic casting to work, but I'm very very close now! It's all over but the subtleties... like, notes on how to sculpt for optimal strength and shape, and so forth.

I've also been playing with pneuamtics -- of a sort. Got me a nice little air amplifier that takes pressurized air and amplifies it in volume 20 times (says the literature).

Then I built one in PVC pipe (more or less), as well as several other air amplification and vacuum-generating configuration using various air-flow principles.

The result being a mechanism driven (currently) by a leaf blower (but later perhaps by a carpet drying fan) that sucks ping-pong balls up into the airstream and then amplifies that stream some more to shoot the balls in a swarm.

Of course, I'm still dancing, and taking Tai Chi, and going to my day job.

The next few weekends will see a bunch of work for some improved (but not really new) fire displays for Flipside, plus a beacon (not fire) for the top of our bamboo tower.

And, because I have no sense, I'll be doing promotional makeup at Scare for a Cure's cupcake stand at Eeyore's Birthday this coming Saturday! I have third shift out of four... it should be fun!

Finally, I turn 45 in a couple of weeks. Wish me luck.

Useful Stuff

Have you ever stumbled across a tool and then wondered how you ever got along without it before?

I have! Just recently, too!

Hemostats (haemostat) -- "a surgical instrument that stops bleeding by clamping the blood vessel"

The jagged TEETH on these things, though, make me thing that the version I got would make a pretty unpleasant blood vessel clamp.

However, for holding wire, tiny jewelry bits, hose, or really anything, they are excellent! Mostly I use them for holding tiny bits of wire as I manipulate the in-bead LEDs that I am building up these days.

I can't hold the wire by HAND since soldering makes my fingertips burn, and frankly, my fingers are just too big to get into that small space.

I could hold the wire with tweezers (my previous solution), but I keep dropping stuff.

I could use squeeze-to-open tweezers, but those don't hold all THAT well and I never could find a set I liked.

The hemostat, however, especially the one with the curved tip, clamps down on the wire like a hungry piranha and does not let go... until you ask it nicely. A piranha with manners.

Now I'm using (and abusing) my 3 hemostats with abandon, wondering how I ever survived without them.

Small

I have now truly experienced the small.

Imagine: An LED chip, nay, SPECK, that is 0.6 x 1.0 mm in size, and only 0.2 mm thick.

That is not much different in size than the period in a 12-point font, and not all that much thicker than the paper it is printed on.

I have, however, successfully soldered two 22-gauge wires to this chip (note: the wire is 0.6 mm in diameter), one wire on either end.

And.

It worked. I made it light up.

It only took three tries, too. Fortunately, I started with 150 LEDs, so even a 1:5 loss is not going to be a problem.

Now I have to epoxy it into a bead and I'll have a glowing bead!

You may all now bask in the glory that is me.

Bad Boomstick

So, did I already mention that the Boom Stick crapped out this year?

It's had a rough run -- during a photo shoot, using it to make vortex rings at high speed, the piston component fractured. The PVC glue couldn't cope with the stress of HUNDREDS of firings and just let go.

So I epoxied it back together and it worked again!

Then, at Scare, I dropped it and fractured it just above the piston mount area, where the air is managed.

So I fixed THAT, and it worked.

But, it stopped working. Stiction, it seemed to me, probably aggravated by a misalignment somewhere.

So I tried a new lubricant -- a spray-on graphite, very exciting. Nope.

It killed an O-Ring so I replaced it. I also worked up a new firing protocol, and it worked mostly okay for a while.

But no. I think, ultimately, the stiction (which can be fixed by reducing the diameter of the piston) plus the piston repair which made the O-ring groove too narrow (so the O-ring can't deform, hence making it harder to fit into the target area and eventually damaging the O-ring) conspired to make it just... not... right.

Plus the dropping, plus the long runs. This Boom Stick is now retired.

Next up -- another one! Bigger! Better! Boomier!

Some Title here

I had a great title for today's post ... and some great ideas for the post... or maybe I just dreamed that I did and actually didn't.

Either way, it's gone now.

I started a batch of ginger cider yesterday, er, Tuesday actually, and it's making happy bubbling sounds. I love the sound of fermentation!

I also put up the page for Scare 2008 and for Maker Faire 2008.

Scare is mostly done with strike now, at least, I've stopped working it! And we are hot on the path of next year's planning; there is way more enthusiasm post-show this year than we've usually had.

I'm also hot on the design for MakerBrain.com - my next website - and hope to have a framework in place for development and testing early 2009.

At NI work, my big EtherCAT project was finished and released pretty much at the 11th hour just before I vanished for the Scare build. So that's cool.

My next NI project will be... something new. I absolutely do not want to go work in the area that I worked in when I first came to NI, because frankly, they suck and I hated id. So I'm putting feelers out to a new area, which is in fact an old area of expertise for me. But I'm not saying, 'cause of who reads this and I don't want to jinx it.

Anyway! I may be even MORE sporadic than usual posting (sorry) because I hope to be very very busy in the coming months.

Ugh

Gonna post soon I think, maybe this weekend.

Get Scare '08 pics in, write up stuff.

Gonna start working on the new website, gonna write a new wiki for it.

Lots of projects on the horizon.

Still dead from Scare; 16 hour days; 280 hours logged in October, over 370 total (from when I started paying attention).

Still more take-down to do.

Ugh.

Ouch

So, taking Fri/Mon off for a long weekend with Nik (my son) here, and I want to have some TIME with him this visit. Couldn't get a block of time out from work (stoopid project) but by damned if I'm going to have another month w/o having time with him. Normal two-day weekends are no good; there are still things to be done around the house and with other projects; it just doesn't work out.

Four day weekends are not bad. I'll see how many I can make before he leaves at the end of the month.

As for my journal posting -- I'm not going to sweat the details; it's going to be erratic.

BIG THINGS happening end of year; I'm doing design and research work for a massive website rebuild (not entirely true; not a rebuild; a fresh build; new website under a different name; you'll see. I hope). Scare for a Cure is firing up big now. And I still have Make articles to write. Putting big Tesla on the back burner a bit. Undecided about Maker Faire, what I want to do there.

Last night we had a mostly-successful test on a low frequency resonant driver (big fat tube, whum-whum-whum-whum... neat stuff; like an infrasonic air horn). The compressed air driving it was too hissy and detracted from the effect. Going to try a different air source today, higher volume, lower pressure.

Cutting the new port hole in the pressure chamber (through Sono-tube, tough cardboard), I managed to run the tip of the X-Acto blade deep into the tip of my little finger (weird freak accident, really!). Bled like a stuck... stuck... Edwin! So I dripped all over my white sink and took pictures for color reference.

Blood is a tad more translucent than I thought, at least my blood is. And pretty bright, too.

I'm waiting for it to darken up and "scab" so I can take some "after" pics, then I'll have to clean out the sink.

It still bugs me, though, when movie blood looks like red food coloring in Karo (which it often is). Or when it is basically red tempera paint. Blood isn't red (except that it _is_ red, but not THAT red); blood isn't transparent (though it is a bit, just not like candy).

Ah well, the quest for perfect blood continues.

The Five Stages of Programming

The Five Stages of Programming:

1. Denial

"My program doesn't suck, and this isn't my bug."

2. Anger

"You are an asshole for implying my program sucks, you can take this bug report and stuff it up your nose! If you would only use my interfaces properly, this wouldn't be happening."

3. Bargaining

"Look, I don't know where this bug is, but it's in a stupid feature; we cover the 80% use case just fine and the user is never going to use anyway. We should just remove the feature."

4. Depression

"My program is full of bugs and it totally sucks; I suck; everything sucks. I think I'll give up programming and go become a monk in a cave somewhere with no electricity."

5. Acceptance

"Yeah, my program sucks; all programs suck, it's their nature. However, they can still be useful. Let's find and fix the next bug, okay?"

Hi, umm, My Name is Edwin...

... and I do too much.

Going to be leading ("teaching" is too strong a word, given my own skill level) a really really neat class/group in Faux Painting (level 1) dealing with basics, metals, and textures. Gonna be great! Gotta figure out how to wedge a dozen people into my workspace! In such a way that they can work!

So, I need to post step 2 of my Tesla project, which will address the Primary and the DC Power supply, but I'm still researching the DC power supply ("you want HOW many volts at WHAT current? HAHAHAHAHHAHAH!" is pretty much what I get out of most references)...

... in so doing, I stumbled across this Gem:

"PM-SRC operates in three modes, namely, mode-1, mode-2, and mode-3."

Now I see why those PhD engineers get the BIG BUCKS.

Makeup Skillz

I has them:

http://www.simreal.com/content/IGDAPicnic

Tesla Design step 1

Because I’m a glutton for punishment, I am designing a Tesla coil from scratch. I’ll be using the work of those that came before me of course, because while I like to do things the hard way, I’m not entirely insane. This installment of my build notes is the starting point in my thinking; from a desired arc length, I will work backwards through the design until I reach the wall plug. Then I’ll refine and construct the coil, and hope that it works!

At first, I thought it would be useful to simply bring up the relevant theory, maybe run some calculations, throw up some graphs, make a SPICE model, and then the various parameters might be made obvious. As it turns out, there are quite a few models of operation for the Tesla coil; piecewise, you can assemble an amazing mathematical model of the entire thing (though poking around in these models made my brain hurt). The trouble is that there appears to be a lack of agreement on exactly what is the _right_model.

Corum & Corum wrote a detailed paper to refute the simple lumped-component model in favor of a distributed-inductor model [1][2], thereby throwing the gauntlet down between the two primary camps: radio people and non-radio people. The radio people tend to see the Tesla coil secondary like an antennae (and there is good reason to do so). However, the Corum^2 paper had a nicely-worded rebuttal by Terry Fritz [3] and work by Ćosić et.al. seems to show that the simpler lumped model does in fact work fairly well [4], which bodes well for easier SPICE simulations.

These two models only matter when it comes time to find the correct operating frequency of the coil. On the one hand, the inductor (coil) + capacitor (topload) LC circuit has a characteristic resonance in the lumped model. On the other hand, the wire length of the secondary coil (in conjunction with mysterious speed-of-electricity-in-copper issues [5]) gives a characteristic quarter-wavelength frequency for optimal voltage amplification on the top end of the coil.

Some calculators (and coilers, I assume) simply punt and adjust the circuit so that the LC resonance simply matches the quarter-wave resonance and brush the whole argument under the carpet.

Theory, it seems, is not the place to start. What we do have, however, are a number of rules-of-thumb guides that define the working space of the average coiler, and a whole raft of electronics formulae that can be used to crunch out the details later.

There are many assumptions that I make right up front. Since I’m coiling to make pretty sparks for display purposes, I want to optimize for zap factor. Other choices could include stable high voltage for physics research, or a high-frequency plasma discharge with low noise characteristics to make a plasma speaker.

Given the purpose, you now get to choose a technology. I’m choosing the DRSSTC (dual-resonant solid-state Tesla coil pioneered by Jimmy Hynes, Steve Ward, and others, and kitted up by Daniel McCauley (which makes a really nice entry point to the field, thanks Dan!). Of course, you could also go with the traditional spark gap coil, vacuum-tube control, the so-called “online” configuration, and so on.

First Decision:

9 to 10 foot sparks using DRSSTC technology.

Okay, maybe I _am_ insane.

How much power will that take? D.C Cox of Resonant Research Labs has an extended mix version of John Freau’s spark-length-to-power formula [6]:

d = k’ * sqrt p

Where d is spark distance in inches, p is input power in watts (or VA as metered from the wall), and k’ is a “fudge factor” coefficient based on the secondary coil diameter:

Dia. k’
3-10” 0.85
11-16” 1.00
17-20” 1.30
21-36” 1.70
37-48” 2.0


But what should our secondary coil diameter be? In other guides, they say you can expect a spark length 2 to 3 times the height of the secondary coil (needs reference), and looking ahead a bit, we see that a diameter of about 1/4 the secondary height is reasonable.

Given a 9’ (108”) spark, that is 2 to 3 times longer than the secondary winding, we have a winding height of 36 to 54”, and with a height/diameter ratio of 4:1 that leaves us with a 9” to 12” diameter coil. Plugging that in to the k’ table, we can just pick something near 1.

p = (d/k’) ^ 2 = (108/1.0)^2 = about 12kVA

12kVA is a big chunk of power. From a 15A outlet running at about 115V RMS (though I’m not entirely sure my voltmeter is given me RMS here; a 125VAC peak-to-peak calculates out to about 90VAC RMS) for 1.7kVA (or 1.3kVA), we should be able to get 12kVA bursts from a capacitor bank if we only fire for 10% (giving some allowance for inefficiency). So it might be possible. Especially if I use a 20A circuit and not the lame 15A.

The RRL guide also indicates we need a toroid major diameter of 1.7 to 2.0 times the secondary’s diameter, with a minor to major diameter ratio of 3.8 to 5.0, which is eerily similar to the guidelines for the secondary coil aspect ratio.

For example, Daniel McCauley’s Eastern Voltage Research guide [7] gives aspect ratios for various smaller coil diameters:

Dia. h/d
<=4” 4.5:1 to 5:1
to 6” 4:1 to 4.5:1
>6” 3:1 to 4:1

Deep Fried Neon [8] gives similar advice, recommending secondary diameters for various powers, and then ratios from diameter:

Power Dia.
<500W 3” to 4”
to 1.5kW 4” to 6”
to 3kW 6” to 10”
>3kW 10”+

Dia. h/d
3” 6:1
4” 5:1
6” 4:1
8”+ 3:1 to 5:1

Given all this, where are we now?

9’ (108”) sparks
12kVA power
3:1 to 4:1 secondary aspect ratio
3’ to 4’ (36” to 48”) winding height
9” to 12” winding diameter

Various guides, such as Richard Quick’s archived discussion on Pupman [9] and TeslaMap’s guide [10], among others, indicate that 800 to 1,000 turns on the secondary are optimal (though when it comes down to actual coils in hand, I’ve seen winding counts of 2,000 and more). My Mini Brute has roughly 1,000 windings (I didn’t count; my next coiler is going to have a quadrature counter in it, that will be handy) and generally follows the guidelines for a 3:1 aspect ratio.

Picking a nice round number of n=1,000, we need a wire spacing of .036” to .048” (36 to 48 mils). This lands us right around 18gauge [19] (17..19ga; 18 is a common size though). 18ga is 40.3 mils, and Classic Tesla’s Turn Calculator [11] gives a single-layer enamel thickness of 1.5 mils. Taking into account some inefficiency in winding, and we have about a 43” heigh coil. At the aspect ratio chosen, we need about a 10” diameter form.

The easiest to find material to use for the form is PVC (polyvinyl chloride) or PE (polyethylene) water pipe. The _best_ material, electrically, is polystyrene or polypropylene; but we can make PVC or PE work, and coating it with epoxy or polyurethane helps improve its dielectric performance as well (or so say the guidelines).

Schedule 40 PVC is easily found in 3” and 4” diameters (with actual ODs of 3.5” and 4.5” due to obscure historical reasons). Harder to find is schedule 40 in 6”, 8”, 10”, and 12” trade diameters (OD of 6.625”, 8.625”, 10.75”, and 12.75”).

Whereas all ANSI “schedule” pipes are listed as having the same ODs [12], however I’ve discovered that “green” plumbing pipes are different (and, as best I can find, metric). This green-colored plumbing is apparently based on smooth-wall polyethylene, which is popular in Europe, but deeply confusing when purchased as (what I thought was) schedule 20 PVC, but which in fact did not conform to ANSI dimensions. So stay alert! It’s a jungle out there.

Assuming I can find it, I can use 10” trade PE sewer pipe, which has an actual outside diameter of 10.75”, a perfectly acceptable size according to all accounts. If I can’t find that, I might be able to modify a Sonotube, or start trolling the local plastics suppliers [13]. I’d love to use some of that transparent PVC, but the cost is a killer [14].

Of the many parameters that can be used to define the secondary coil, the guidelines in fact give us answers to most of them, and the rest can be easily calculated:

Form Diameter, Length, Wall thickness, Material, & Dielectric behavior
Wire Gauge / diameter, insulation thickness, and length
Coil Height, avg. Diameter, Winding count and spacing
Coil DC Resistance and AC Reactance, Inductance and Capacitance
Quarter-wave resonant frequency
Coil Q factor

Most of these values are constrained by the original desire for a 9’ spark, the availability of secondary form materials, and the rules of thumb listed above.

The design so far:

9’ (108”) sparks
12kVA power
4:1 secondary h/d aspect ratio
43” winding height
10.75” form diameter
18 gauge (0.0403” + 0.0015”) wire
1,000 windings

TeslaMap’s calculator [15] says that 43” of 18ga wire will give me 998 turns, using 2,800 feet of wire. Deep Fried Neon’s calculator [16] agrees, and gives me an inductance of 59.8mH and a self-capacitance of 18.3pF. Tesla Coil CAD 2.0 [17], with similar secondary values, gives me 950 turns, 2,670 feet of wire, 54.4mH, and 20.2pF, adding the interesting detail of a 92.11kHz quarter wave resonance (but did they take into account the slowdown of electricity in copper [5]?) and a need for a 34 to 35pF topload capacitor to make it resonate at this rate.

Note that 100kHz is a decent frequency to run at, well within IGBT limits when soft switched (though 50kHz would have been even more friendly, and the IGBTs do tend to be rated at 25kHz or less when hard switched).

The secondary circuit consists of a coil of wire, with a given inductance L and possibly quarter wave resonance lambda/4, plus a capacitor and discharge terminal, typically a sphere or toroid, with a capacitance C.

In theory, I want a topload toroid of approximately the same minor diameter as the secondary coil (10”), and with about the same aspect ratio to its major diameter (40”). Looking at what supplies are easy, and costs, that’s just not going to happen -- though it WOULD give me a nearly perfect effective topload capacitance of about 35pF according to the JavaTC calculator [18].

Instead of the $600 spun toroid of the correct dimensions, let’s try a simpler and cheaper one made from classic 4” trade diameter dryer vent (also about 4.5” actual OD).

A 40” toroid with 4.5” minor diameter gives (via JavaTC again) about 30pF effective capacitance on this coil; adding a second one below it with a 36” major diameter gives us the 33pF capacitance, which is close enough at this stage of design.

The tighter minor diameters will mean an easier breakout, with a lower potential maximum voltage, but it’s such an easy material to find it may be worth it. Anyway, toploads are the easiest part to swap out for experiments.

Secondary Design:

9’ (108”) sparks
12kVA power
4:1 secondary h/d aspect ratio
43” winding height on about a 48” form
10.75” form diameter
18 gauge (0.0403” + 0.0015”) wire
~1,000 windings
~54-55mH inductance
~20pF self capacitance
40” OD 4.5” aluminum duct toroid on top of another
36” OD 4.5” toroid
33-35pF topload capacitance
~92kHz quarter-wave and lump-model resonance

With this rough sketch in place, I could move on to the primary or bog myself down into mathematical and/or SPICE analysis... I’ve leaned on the various calculators pretty hard so far, and haven’t crunched the numbers myself yet... but right now... it’s dinner time!

References:

[1] http://www.ttr.com/corum/
[2] http://www.blazelabs.com/teslacoil.pdf
[3] http://www.pupman.com/listarchives/1999/October/msg00428.html
[4] http://www.tesla2006.org/presentations/other/The%20Analysis%20of%20Tesla%20Coil%20Apparatus.pdf
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refractive_index
[6] http://www.classictesla.com/download/resonance_tips.pdf
[7] http://www.easternvoltageresearch.com/designfiles/paper_howto.pdf
[8] http://deepfriedneon.com/tesla_guide.html
[9] http://www.pupman.com/listarchives/1995/january/msg00139.html
[10] http://www.teslamap.com/guide.html
[11] http://www.classictesla.com/java/cst.html
[12] http://www.crestwoodtubulars.com/pipe_schedule.html
[13] http://www.regalplastics.net/
[14] http://www.clearpvcpipe.com/
[15] http://www.teslamap.com/download.html
[16] http://deepfriedneon.com/tesla_frame6.html
[17] http://www.richardsplace.net/tesladownload.htm
[18] http://www.classictesla.com/java/javatc.html
[19] http://www.interfacebus.com/Copper_Wire_AWG_SIze.html
http://www.classictesla.com/FormulasForTeslaCoils.pdf
http://www.classictesla.com/download/tc99.pdf

(cross posted to www.4hv.org)

Foghorn!

You may or may not know, dear reader, that I've been poking at the problem of creating physical low-frequency resonance for some time now. I've tried a few things, including a subwoofer-driven Helmholtz resonator thrown together from Sono Tubes and Duct Tape (indeterminate results, some possibilities).

I fell back, during past haunts, on using bass-shakers bolted to the crawl tunnels and hand-tuning the frequency generator to get a good subsonic. When that works, it's an amazing and beautiful thing (people refused to go in on early tests, it "just felt weird"). Sadly, that system of open-loop resonance falls out of tune too easily. I should add a microphone or other sonic transducer to it and make it closed loop, and then I'll melt your brain in the tunnels! Bwahahahahahah!

::ahem::

Today, however, I finally succeeded in making an air-powered resonator out of about 32-feet of 4.5" diameter sewer pipe (and some duct tape, of course). It... resonated! First it squawks like a demon-tormented goose, and then if rumbles and shifts and then... tones! Not pure, but pretty nifty nonetheless.

An eight foot pipe produces a surprisingly high tone, and 32 feet of it isn't as low as I would like. However, there are a zillion things to tune -- airflow, back pressure (once I build a back-pressure chamber), elasticity of the membrane, sealing characteristics of the driving tube, and most important for good low frequency amplitude, diameter.

Yup yup yup... maybe a switchback of forty feet of 12" sono tube with tubable back pressure and a durable membrane... mmmmmmm yeah.

The horror! The horror!

My bathroom sink was draining slowly lately, and I finally remembered this during a time of day/week where I could _do_ something about it.

Normally I use a hooked wire and pull mats of hair and soap scum out, no big deal (we Wise mammals do shed a fair amount). But in _my_ sink, I find just a little bit of hair+scum and then a wall of... mycological FLESH, perhaps; a veritable _skin_ growing on my drain pipe. Horrible, horrible skin, with a curdling of hair and soap on its inner passage, like some demonic esophagus. ::shudder::

Speaking of horrific, thinking about water use and this foolish ad I saw for a lawn care service. In this ad, they said "you must water your lawn or it could die! And to resod could take $1,500! And your resale value is heavily tied to the green of your lawn!"

Forgetting for a moment the foolishness of the whole "lawn thing" in such an arid area as Texas, let's look at some assumptions.

We used 3,000 gallons of water in our last billing cycle. We don't water our outside unless things look really desperate.

We have some friends who used 15,000 gallons in their last cycle. Assuming that, for their larger household, they would normally use say 5,000 gallons indoors, that leaves 10,000 gallons of outdoors use.

The watering months, here, are perhaps from June through September -- four months. Lighter watering in other months, heaver perhaps in July and August, let's just average it out and say 10,000 gallons of lawn watering for four months.

The City of Austin rates are currently, for single-family residential customers, in dollars per thousand gallons:

0 - 2,000: $0.93 ($1.86 max)
2,001 - 9,000 $2.43 ($17.00)
9,001 - 15,000 $4.18 ($25.07)
15,001+ $7.63

So for this hypthotical household OF 15,000 gallons, the cost is (rounding up the thousand gallon deltas):

(0.93*2) + (2.43*7) + (4.18*6) = $43.95

Wastewater costs much more than water to process ($3.18 per 1,000 for the first 2,000, $7.18 per 1,000 thereafter), but these rates are calculated for the entire year given your winter water use, so they don't scale here.

Now, for a 5,000 gallon user (e.g. the sample family above without lawn watering) the numbers are:

(0.93*2) + (2.43*3) = $9.15

So, $34,80 per month for watering the lawn, times four months in the calculated period, is almost $140 a year. In eleven years, then, you will have saved enough to re-turf your lawn.

I know our water bill is in fact about nine dollars a month, for about three thousand gallons. Talking around, I'm hearing about water bills for $200 or more, though -- these must include the sewage fees and random fees that are tacked on throughout any given bill.

I was expecting the heavy lawn watering to cost more that $40 -- more like $100 -- which would give $300 to $400 a year in lawn watering costs, the saving of which would pay for a re-turfing in just four years or so (about the time it would take for the lawn to really die a lot).

Anyway, I still don't water my lawn. Instead, I'm aggressively converting it into non-grass coverings.

Coilin' Fool

Woot! I just coiled about 1,000 turns (12 inches of 30 gauge... or was it 32? I should check) in maybe 15 minutes coiling time.

That's some kind of new record. And, the coil is pretty good. Only had to stop twice for gaps (no overlaps); left one gap not fully closed, so it's not perfect yet, but pretty good. And, 15 minutes! That's like eight times faster than the first one.

Now to automate the tensioning/guide process that I currently do with my hand (oooo hand cramps); and THEN to make a ponoko pattern and rebuild it into a nice version. With a turn counter; I'm thinking embedded magnets and hall effect sensors in a quadrature format. Or maybe optical. The pedometers tend to bounce really badly (one step for the lift peg, one or two more steps when they fall off the lift peg, very sad).

Progress

The tin shed is up in the backyard; the doors worked a LOT better once I stuffed a rock under one corner of the foundation to torque it all into proper alignment. Bah! The big rain (previous to THIS big rain) made all my cinderblocks settle unevenly. Humbug!

I spread the lumps of dirt (most of 'em; Marla swears she'll move the rest this week or something; she wanted me to stop, 'cause I guess I looked liked was going to die out there in the humidity), and I laid most of the paving stones around it, and it's all kind of nice. It will be even prettier once the grapes grow back, or something, to fill in the stark nakedness of that corner. I'll post pics later.

Oh, the rain, I need to see how much water leaks in... may need to assault the whole thing with a caulk gun. Wheee! Or maybe glow-in-the-dark gluestick. That would be amusing

I just ordered from ABC fill-in-the-blank services a "full exclusion" rat service, for a tad over $500. Ouch. But then again, I just got a reimbursement on my property tax due to my finally getting off my ass and putting in for a homestead exemption, totalling a tad under $400. So that helps a lot.

July is ... tomorrow! Egads! And I have a lovely four-day weekend as part of it, during which I want to settle down a connect-the-dots design (and start the prototype implementation), and I want to get starting schematics and SPICE simulations on the new Tesla coil. And maybe some parts ordered.

I'm going to go wayyyy off into high-risk territory and put some International Rectifier IGBTs into parallel conduction -- a task fraught with negative feedback and runaway current loading, which can lead to some lovely pyrotechnics. However, with the soft-switching I have planned, and running them actually SLOWER than rated (for a complete turnabout from normal Tesla practice), I think it will be just fine.

Plus, these parts are (a) cheap and (b) accessible. The part I _wanted_ was (a) expensive, and (b) really hard to actually GET. In fact, I got a call from the corporate rep and I had to tell him my plan... to us IR's part. Because it's cheap. And I can buy it. He was all, "but it shows here that it's in stock in distribution!". I countered with the hard-to-refute knowledge that of the 2 (two!) distributors that claim stock, one doesn't have stock, and the other has a horrible and useless website without any ordering forms.

Sucks to be him.

Dear God, these are educated people, right?

What a week... trying to get a fix from my H/W guy so I can freakin' TEST the changes that have come down the pike, so I can get a decent update to the rest of the team so THEY can test, so we can be done with this damn project.

Of course, we have three revisions of the device and the newer images don't work right on the older hardware (e.g. Rev C firmware on Rev B device; not my fault, it's hard-wired that way; if my H/W guy had used reverse logic on the sleep line it would have worked, but noooo, probably not enough room for an inverter. Or the '!' sign in the VHDL. Who knows.)

So yesterday I send out an e-mail that includes the note that the modified image I was sending FIXES the Rev-B sleep issue, but MAY BREAK four specific modules due to creeping incompatibilities. This gives us a lot more devices we can use for testing, with the effect of just losing 4 of 36 modules... no big deal, big improvement overall.

I get a ping from one of the guys downstairs saying that the RevB sleep hack doesn't work, they can't use modules! Okay, so my H/W guy messed up (don't we all?) and the hack doesn't work. Bring one up and I'll verify the problem.

Umm. Guys. This works. I see the module, I see data...

Oh! It turns out it only fails on THIS module. And this second one as well.

Both of which were listed as possibly broken in my e-mail.

These are smart guys. Did they not read my e-mail at all? It wasn't even a long e-mail! I kept it short!

::headdesk::

Thank god it's Friday; I _may_ get through this day without killing someone.

Shedding

Finished the Shed structural elements last night; took over two hours, less than three. Marla was an excellent helper and spare hand, spare brain.

In retrospect, we should have left all of the screws slightly loose until all panels were in place -- getting the roof on was six flavors of annoying, trying to torque the shed walls into shape.

The instructions say "Measure diagonally to be sure the shed is square." We didn't bother with this because the instructions made no mention of what to do if the shed were NOT square, which fits in just about right with my experience with the Chinese approach to debugging -- which is to say, they don't. No error reporting, because that might indicate weakness. Bugs? We don't have any bugs! Our tests prove it, see that green light? If you measure your shed and it's not square, clearly you lived a poor life and should just go die now. Hah.

So the shed was not square, but leaving the screws loose until the end would have made it easier to finesse into position. That would have required more forethought than _I_ had going, and would have been something useful for the instructions.

Oh, and don't get me started about the highly accurate placement of holes in this metal shed thingy. Yup. Putting the hinges on, if you tighten two of the three screws, the third screw hole is over half a diameter out of place. That's some quality machining there Lou.

Needless to say, the doors don't hang right yet. Another task for the coming weekend.

I spent the rest of the evening trying to find an IGBT or other transistor shaped device that can (a) handle 600 amps, an arbitrary number I pulled out of my ear that is about ten times the IGBT I use now; and (b) can switch at 100kHz, another arbitrary number, but my current Tesla goes at 168kHz, so 100kHz frequencies seem reasonable.

I found one very nice 600A IGBT on eBay for $47, normally a $470 part, but it switches at 25kHz. In fact, most if not all high power IGBTs switch at the 20-25kHz range.

I do so want to build this massive Tesla in DRSSTC style, though, which means BIG SWITCH. Or, maybe, lots of little switches in parallel, except that IGBTs don't parallel gracefully, not like MOSFETs. But MOSFETs have issues with current dissipation at high voltages.

So the quest goes on.

Daystar

Curse you evil Day Star.

This weekend was spent melting under the relentless sun, shifting chunks of clay and sandstone matrix to create a (mostly, somewhat) level foundation for my 8' x 3' "garden" shed. Hehehehhe. "Garden". I have a "Fire Garden". Heheheh.

Yeah.

Well, six 12" square concrete deck footings, dug 5" to 8" deep or so depending where on the SLOPING DAMN HILL of my back yard they were at, means removing only 2 or 3 cubic feet of earth. Not so bad, eh? Shouldn't take too long, eh?

That's what I thought too. However, a million percent humidity (INFINITE HUMIDITY; rain + sun = miasma) and near-100-degree temps made it grueling and tiring work, even with the wonderful help I had (Thanks Matt, Michelle).

So, two days worth of mornings, several hours each (until we fell over, basically), and the foundation is set, the 2x4 framework (pressure treated with alkaline copper, I believe), the 3/4" plywood topper (which should be on the metal frame and not the 2x4 frame, ah well, I'll live), the shed base, the doors, and some bracings -- built.

But no shed yet. I'm a bit frustrated about that, really.

Might finish that Tuesday.

I also read a bunch of my materials for the Flame Effects Operator License, but without knowing what kind of material they will test for, I have severe doubts about what I need to try and memorize. And I both hate and am quite poor at memorizing random crap.

Work will probably be pure suck this week, but is bound to get better once/if/when we pound the last nail into its coffin.

For now, I just need to wake up.

Monday

Work is going pretty good -- the team that owns the modules realized they messed up on this family, fixed their registers, and when I incorporate their changes my stuff works too! Yay! That's the last four that need looking at... going green even as I write here.

Of course, one of eight channels fails on this OTHER family over HERE, but hey, I don't want to get bored.

Dunno yet about the other issues yet. Maybe they have crumpled before my might logic. Heh. HEHEHehhehehehhe. ::snerk:: Right.

On a different note, I've been have some existential moments again, and I really hate that.

I went in once for dental surgery (root canals) and got a full knockout for the trip. Edwin gone. Edwin back -- and the work was done. Nothing in between, nada, blank, black.

Certain head trauma, too, will cause complete loss of memory. It just doesn't make the trip from short term to long term.

Certain drugs, too, won't knock you out so much as wipe the experience from the slate.

Certain other drugs can be used to wipe memories during recall.

So, these existential moments always harken back to that loss of existence I experienced (in retrospect) during that surgery. Edwin gone. And not waking up. Gone gone gone.

Terrifying.

There is nothing, literally nothing, more terrifying. This is why we invented religion, after all, and why it sticks around so persistently in spite of evidence.

::sigh::

Oh yeah

And Chinese programmers? Yeah. Error handling? Yeah.

Been bugging them for 12 to 18 months about their need to, you know, catch and report errors. They started poking at that, I think, last week.

My head's gonna assplode.

And now they are giving me annoying attitude about MY error reporting, which has been in place, I dunno, for a year and a half now? Two years? They want "all clear" messages for events like pulling modules... all clear? WTF? All clear from what? When they tell me to reload the configuration, I do that, and I'm clear. What else would they like? Blood? Two weeks before drop-dead date? Give me a freakin' break!

Ouch

So, work is stressing on me pretty hard, but the drop-dead date is June 30, so it _will_ be done by then, one way or another.

Of course, my efforts are totally absorbed into supporting, debugging, and doing timing and even data-motion tests on these 35 or 36 devices that plug into mine... testing that SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE by the OTHER team, you know, the team that these devices belong to. Yeah. Them. They were all ready to release 'em without checking, you know, that they actually follow timing spec. "We got data, it's good!" Is it really? Do you know WHEN that data was captured? I do!

I've found bugs, and my cohort on that team has fixed bugs, and we are down to the last three or for, all of one family.

I had one marked green (as in good) and then I found a subtle problem in the timing. Goody. Now it's better.

Thursday had dance class again, that was fun! I'm a tad out of shape; East coast swing was hard work. But fun!

Skipped Bolero, my tendinitis was really giving me gyp; I gotta wear my muscle strap I guess.

Friday night, I had to clean up the garage a bit so the Make Magazine photographer could, you know, photograph. Hi Pam! Nice lady. During the arrangement, I dropped a dancing-flame tube pillar on my toe -- this is an 8" PVC pipe, an adapter, a subwoofer, and a 4-foot long board as a foot. My right big toe is funny colors and I limp now.

I skipped West coast swing Friday, due to funny-colored toe, and instead we had a lovely anniversary (Friday the 13 is our first-date anniversary) with my sweetie wifie.

Today, I moved about two tons of paving stone (wearing my muscle strap thing), with help from Marla, Tall Matt, and Paul (pretty much in sequence like that). The common factor was me limping around arranging stones, and the sun beating down on my (hatted) head. Reminded me of Flipside.

Now, soon, movie time! Or maybe more ibuprofen. That stuff really works.

Tomorrow am? The remaining 3/4 ton or so of paving stone. Whee!

Oooo a baby kitten is attacking my shorts. Want a kitten?

Weekend

Well, we managed to tame the back yard -- which was filled, hundreds of square feet of it, with four foot weeds and plants such as sunflowers, and I don't know what all.

But we tamed it. Hard work, done in the morning and evening to avoid the worst of the heat. In the progress, we created about a cubic yard of new compost pile!

The old compost pile is now in use as dirt, spread here and there to support the nutrient needs of other beds.

I'm a tad sore, but otherwise fine. My tendonitis is giving me a bit of an attitude, but the cider is helping counteract the ache ::grin::

If our idiot HOA approves, I'll be putting a shed over the old compost area on the weekend of the 21st.

NEXT weekend, I need to lay nearly three tons of rock in the back yard, which should be interesting.

Oh, and I got replacement parts for the crispy Tesla, so I'll probably revive it next week.

I've been doing housework too, but slowly... I'll see if I achieve my June goals of planning, housework, and yardwork soon enough.

Hyperactive thing of evil

cute, too. pics:

Bats McMurphy

Looking wicked

A bit blurry

Die thing of evil!

Die, thing of EVIL!

I'm sure that is what Papageno is saying. He's been really cranky, even hissing at Pico de Gato; it's like he is having flashbacks to 'Nam.

All because I let Marla bring a teeny tiny little female calico kitten into the house. A moment of weakness. Just a moment, but it was enough.

The Thing of Evil (Bats McMurphy, since she was found in a tree outside the mental hospital) is locked in a room upstairs, for the most part, and is temporary (hahahahahahhahahahahahahahaha! Fostering! Good one!). But Papageno is not amused regardless.

And Pico, poor Pico, being hissed at for no good reason.

Picked up wee Pico today, he's gotten heavy. Thick.

Outside of tiny fuzzy intruders, the weekend was nice. Did stuff, went places, bought some books, napped, shopped. I had a real weekend for the first time in, ohh, maybe forever! At least six months.

Work continues to be madness; my editor continues to evade me; and I'm organizing my one-time and ongoing projects for the coming year. My lists numbers 43 right now, and I think I forgot a few.

::sigh::

Anyway, Marla is cruising through the hundred or so pics I took of the tiny beast, so I'll link to them when they are up. Or something.

Oh, I think I'll focus more on Ballroom dancing than Taiji this year. Maybe.

Which is which?

I'm surprised I never noted in my recipe/note file which cap marking went with which cider; I guess I always figured it would be obvious ... but with my memory! Hah! I know better!

I'm PRETTY SURE I labeled them backwards, that the Mr. Blue Cider is the one I meant to label Ginger Bastard, and vice versa. Anyway, I really like the Mr. Blue Cider, but I'm not as keen on the Ginger Bastard -- and I think the heat was not necessarily kind to the Bastard.

However, Mr. Blue seems to have come through the ordeal just fine. I'm _thinking_ Mr. Blue is the spicy second batch, and Ginger Bastard the more mundane first. Hard to say. My notes, and journal posts, are not immediately forthcoming.

Yeah, my memory sucks. But I get compensation for it, via other skills and abilities.

Out campsite at Flipside was approximately 60 feet across, and a bit deeper than that. I need to decide if I want to design a toroidial shade structure for 50' or for the full 60'. With a 60' toroid, we get a 20' minor diameter, and a 20' center space. With a 50' toroid, we can slice it different ways:

20' minor with 10' center
15' minor with 20' center

Our shade tents were 10' by 20', to give a reference size (e.g. small carport size). Hmmmmm.

Things to ponder.

Technically, I'm doing nothing this week, this being limbo week. My house and yardwork and planning are supposed to start this weekend.

We'll see how that goes.

Flip out!

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.

What's done is done!

What's done is done, and what's undone will have to wait until next year... pushed through a full rollout of my equipment yesterday, ensured I had enough cables and jumpers and whatnot (I didn't, I bought more), and then I put it all away again ready for loading Wednesday.

My garage, though, appears to have multidimensional qualities... it's a garage, not a clown car! It's amazing how much stuff I have crammed in there.

Running a watt-meter test, I'm going to take in the vicinity of 500 watts in the audio gear. I didn't do a full burn test, that would have been more work. Hope it all works!

Of the four dancing-fire drivers (e.g. speaker columns), one of them has a short or a break or a loose wire -- it doesn't work reliably. I may either just not use it at the event, or I may tear it down and find the flaw (which will NOT be easy or fun). Or I may hook it up and just swear at it a lot. We'll see.

Then last night I printed and then Matt and I cut and pasted labels on, I dunno, 7 or 8 or 10 cases of beer and cider.

The first labels I laid out at work, and did some things that made our life much more difficult than necessary. However, I did the beer labels in a more reasonable manner. And in general, I learned a lot about what is easy and what is hard in drink labels, so next time will be super easy!

Now to find a source of lightweight colored paper, the lightest stuff that can run through a laser printer. Preferably with water-tight colors.

Today I'm mostly just enjoying the sense of relief at not having to assembly anything more for the event. Well, I had to run some errands, and we need to clean the coolers and the new water containers. This and that, easy stuff.

I investigated the attics and found definite sign of rodentia. Judging from the spoor, it's a small rat or a large mouse -- most likely, the lowly Roof Rat, according to bad pictures of rodent poop I find online. Also, there are... pathways trodden in the insulation in the attic, and tunnels leading down into it. And poops. Did I mention the poops?

So... poison. Probably a bromadialone anticoagulant ::shudder::. Nasty stuff. I also poked around for obvious openings (lots of cracks, but nothing big) and tree access (yes, not touching the house, but close). And nothing that's easy to address. I hate to kill the little bastards, but I'm not sure other plans will work.

If Sparky the spare cat were still here, I'd just leave the ladder propped up in the attic, and I bet there would soon be nothing more than one chubby cat left.

Stoopid cat.

Stuck in the Middle with You

Some of y'all may have been noticing I've been a bit stressed-looking lately... or maybe I've just come out and said "I'm really stressed right now, sorry" and then sat in the corner and, I dunno, emitted stress lines.

I feel a tad better this morning after fighting some stuff out in my dreams last night (oh yeah, my favorite way to spend the night), but yesterday I reached a fever pitch of cranky.

Okay, so I'm working on this program that runs on a board that controls stuff. Here is the context for this program.

The hardware it runs on is designed and managed by my other team member, and includes OTHER hardware designed by ANOTHER engineer, plus a communications interface from a German company. This hardware was designed well before I came on board, and in that design there was a good big chunk of memory I thought I could use. I thought wrong, because when I went to the H/W guy to option its use, I got shot down... so I had to spend a significant chunk of time doing unnecessary and complicated memory management and optimization. That cost a lot of time.

The German company also defines the protocol we are communicating with. So I'm writing to a German spec, and need to conform to it to be called "good". Our company and this German company are the ONLY people with usable software under this new spec, so to test and validate my work I need to compare it to the German stuff. However, the German program doesn't work right (yet) and we won't have a functional version until.... June? Maybe? These guys are notoriously slow and late, and it's because they go on vacation, I swear, two weeks out of three. Every time I write, they are on vacation and then get back to me one or two weeks later. So that's useless.

To verify that systems conform to their standard, the Germans are writing a conformance tool, of which we have a broken and mostly nonfunctional version. They say they will have the final version by end of June, two weeks or so after we are supposed to have been entirely done with the project. This tool WAS promised for Jan/Feb, but those dates are long past. So, July? Maybe. And I fully expect monkeys to fly out my ass too.

This is the same German company that changed the core, heart, critical aspect of the specification in radical and annoying ways during development. Twice. We still haven't entirely recovered from that chaos.

My device and software are controlled by a computer with its own big program, and our company of course is writing that, since we can't ship the German stuff with our label on it, that would just not work. Of course, the team writing OUR software is green, doesn't communicate well, and is primarily located in China. They do things "differently" there. If, by "different" you mean "badly". Not all of them, there's fine work coming out of some teams there I hear. No, it's just been our team. We won the crap lottery.

Certain critical aspects of this system that SHOULD have been working and tested six to nine months ago finally started working in shaky baby steps about one month ago. And things keep coming up from that team that surprise the hell out of me, things that have been in place in my side for, in some cases, a year or more, and in others, three to six months. Why am I getting feedback just now? What the hell are these guys doing? Writing a slave device in a vacuum is not a recipe for success. We are supposed to be bootstrapping, building this up together, and that requires lots of things that have not been happening until very very recently.

This project as a whole is part of a larger software and hardware platform, and a significant aspect of my system is that there are 35 or so modules that can plug into my device, in combinations of up to 8 at a time (you do the math). Which is tough, since my software has to manage all of these modules, and more in the future, with not enough memory (see above). But, with cleverness and hacks, I've made it work. Mostly. We're still testing to be sure.

These plug in devices have existed here for a while, and are nice little bricks of hardware, if a tad under-documented (don't TALK to be about internal deliverables and documentation, unless you want me to go off on a long and angry rant).

Our assumption, critical to our schedule, is that the wrinkles have been worked out in the controlling code for these modules, by the team that actually OWNS them (which, hint, is NOT US). This assumption is false, so now I'm finding serious flaws in the control code and parameters for this other team... because my team's testing is actually looking at the details and not giving it a quick eyeball from 10,000 feet up.

Of course, it doesn't help that the documentation and supporting details for these things is scattered all over hell and back, is inconsistent at times, and is sometimes just plain wrong. It doesn't give me the confidence I'm looking for when working on a project.

I'm not alone in working on these things, which is good, because this project is just too huge for one person. I've got a great testing resource who, what? Oh, some other team fucked up (again) and now the company is in a panic (again) and I'm losing my testing resource? Again? Thanks guys. Remember that internal deliverable and documentation rant? A lot of our recent panics can be traced back to our failures in that arena... do you still think that it takes too much time and resources to do the damned development correctly?

How about the guy writing our validation tests for manufacturing? Oh, right, he's on three other projects too.

My tech lead? I have a tech lead? Oh, there he is, yeah; he's a great guy, I honestly like him and he's bright and helpful, but he's also overloaded.

How about my resource for understanding and FIXING the interface code to the modules? She's great too! Very helpful, very supportive, when she's actually available. Too bad that everything else her manager owns is more important than this. Some of that is my fault; I think I had a brief window where I could have captured her attention on my project, but some panic or failure on my side took me away from modules for that...week. Nice big window there guys, thanks.

So -- yeah -- stress. Trying to squeeze success out of a project that is aimed about 30 degrees off target and is flying quickly and steadily into the weeds.

Let there be light!

The lights in our ceiling fixture in the living room have been quietly expiring, one by one, over the years. Slowly they fade and go out, until there is just one dimly lit bulb and four dusty globes hovering over our head. The living room is dim and grey.

I could get some kind of A-frame ladder to replace them, but ladders that tall are expensive, and the ladder I _do_ have is too short.

As it turns out, Matt and I were going shopping together at Lowes, for Flipside supplies (of which I still have a number of odds and ends to pick up) and I mentioned I wanted to get a light-bulb grabber stick thingie for this. And he already had one! That he doesn't use!

Bonus.

So I retrieve it from the depths of his garage (well, Matt did the actual retrieving) and used it to extract the old bulbs. It did this quite nicely.

Then fiddled a bit but it would not put in the spiral fluorescents that I had. Sure, I could buy flourescent bulbs that were in an incandescent envelope (I think), but where's the fun in that?

So a little bit of hemming and hawing, and some fiddling about, and I was able to modify the bulb grippy thingy to work on spiral fluorescents.

Double bonus!

And now there is light. And it is bright, and nicely spectrumized!

Status update

Well, Saturday was the final art welding class! I got MOST of the welds on the steel donut done, and it's not a bad piece of work. Impressed some class-mates with my ability to weld the thin sheet metal without blowing big nasty holes in.

After that, an LoTV board meeting (I'm secretary for TWO boards of director, more fool I). Got those minutes on the wiki, got the Scare minutes on the wiki... I don't remember if I sent my scare notes or not from that last meeting but I think I did.

Sunday, finished the construction work on the second dancing fire tube, and even painted the stands! I removed the old coupling from the old stands and put in a new, sturdier one as well. Only cut one finger and scraped another.

Was going to do a full test burn, but by then I was getting pretty tired, and has to move on to household chores.

Did some yardwork, did a MINIMAl amount of indoor work (e.g. fixed Marla's sink). Set up the tent in the living room (hooboy that was interesting) and then realized that I couldn't remember where I put the seam sealer. Hopefully I find it before flip and then I can seal up the rain fly seams on setup Wednesday. Keep your fingers crossed for dry weather the 21st!

Next weekend is ALL MINE! Bwahahahahahaha! No Saturday lost to class!
I intend to do a full system setup/test, including color tests, and watt testing, over the weekend.

Oh, this week, before then, need to get the Honda EU1000 generator working. It needs some maintenance. Going to work with Matt on that Tuesday.

Wed is the makeup dance class, for when I skipped due to having put my eye out. The eye, by the way, is fine now; dusted it off, popped it back in, took a few painkillers, and I'm good to go.

(kidding! Read back for the real details)

Okay, work beckons. But damn, it's Monday. And I am not enjoying Mondays like I used to.

Updates

Quick update while food is cooling....mmmm... King Ranch Casserole. Yum!

My eye is doing fine now, my work is being worky, and things are all generally moving in a forward direction.

Two weeks from RIGHT NOW I will be sitting under a tent, setting up.. equipment. Art. Science. Fire.

I have all of my propane hoses and harnesses and manifolds hooked together now. Three of my six POL fittings, it turns out, have check valves built in! Neat! Internally, the tanks also have overfill prevention valves, so generally, things should work out okay wiring the tanks together. We are looking at #300 of propane here, to burn off in a few evenings. I'll do a full test this weekend and have next weekend free to do full panic in.

I wired up my new 3,000VA variac to a nice 12ga extension cord (which required some cutting and fiddling). It's a lethal device, with 110VAC hanging out where it could conceivably be touched (mostly shrouded, but I'm paranoid) -- I need to get a nice high-voltage-danger sign for the console table.

Right now I'm putting some salt through a... ball mill... of sorts (it has balls in it! stainless steel balls, and some conical abrasive media)... in an attempt to make sodium chloride powder (vs. crystals) to act as a chlorine donor for my copper oxide and/or barium carbonate, to make a better green flame. I hear boric acid works too for green; I have some! I will have to try it.

I wonder where I can get some potassium iodide cheap and locally... hmmmmm...

Anyway, I aint'nt dead yet, and rumbling towards some grand finale soon.

Eyeball of DOOOOOM: Followup

So, yeah, ummm... hydrocodone will be kicking in soon, nice to have those leftovers from an unrelated problem I had late last year.

Saturday I was in a mist of grinder grit and steel dust as I converted large quantities of sheet steel into sharp buoyant satellites, most of which were absorbed into the ventilation system at ACC. Most. Not all.

A little bit of eye irritation occurred during my two hours of grinding, but I though little of it. Dust in the eyes, big deal, been there done that, familiar territory. The annoyance passed and I went on with my day.

Sunday evening, though, my eye got a bit more irritated. Annoyingly so, but also easily dismissed as tiredness and a residual scratch from the previous day. During our shopping trip Sunday night I picked up some red-eye eye-drops.

As it turns out, red-eye soothing eye drops do very little good when you have a golf-ball-sized chunk of grit/steel/whatever embedded in your eye.

I managed to get to sleep Sunday night, but my eye was kicking up a fuss, and throughout today's fun at work (Monday, my favorite) it get more and more irritated. As did the rest of me. So I called my eye doctor, Lester Kitchen (a great guy), and made an appointment for 4:45 today.

I soldiered through the day with no joy and lots of squinting. People averted their gaze, or stared horrified as I wandered through my tasks, my red rimmed eye aflood in tears.

Leaving work, I discover that bright light makes my eye hurt even more, as the pupil contracts. Ouch.

The always friendly Dr. Kitchen set me up in his machine, made my eye fluorescent, and then proceeded to use bright lights and various filters to highlight exactly what was up in my optic center. That is when he took the picture of the golf ball previous mentioned; a sizable chunk embedded in the lower-medial octant midway between the pupil and sclera.

It would have to go. Imagine my excitment, for a moment. Sure, my eye hurt. But now I would have the doctor doing who-knows-what to it to remove this vile intruder.

That "who-knows-what" began with a soothing (well, stinging, but it self-correctly quickly) application of numbing eye drops. Two or three times, in fact; the Dr. was quite good about the pain management.

Once I was good and painless, he propped my head back in his infernal machine, had me fixate on a distant point, and then he started golfing in my eyeball with what he called his sand wedge. To no effect, the particle was too deep (into the second layer, it seems).

Next up was a device he says he's had little chance to use, just a few times in recent memory; it looked roughly like an 8-gauge syringe needle mounted in a noise-hair trimmer, and made roughly the same sound (once he replaced the dying battery).

It took a few minutes, and quite a few jabs with the spinning needle of DOOM, before he managed to dig down to the particle and send it packing. Or flying. Or whatever it did.

It is now gone, with nothing more than a sizeable crater (I assume) to mark its passing.

I am now the proud wearer of a contact-lens "bandage" which I get to irrigate regularly with antibiotics and, between those doses, lubricating eye drops, as my poor abused cornea heals.

On the bright side, he said I had the steadiest eye he's worked on in a long time... and the third he has worked on today!

It's a busy season for eye cruds, apparently.

Monday

My litany of grief or, as we affectionaly call it, "Monday".

Saturday I spent a couple of hours grinding my toroid piece edges so they fit correctly and made the correct diameter, and as part of that process some grind crud flittered into my left eye, a minor annoyance. Except I think I scratched something, and it still irritates me today, it's annoying, especially since my left eye is the one that can actually read (my right eye has a weird distortion in the lens). Red-eye drops do nothing much, the constant tearing makes my glasses spotty, and it's impossible not to run it... so the lid is bitching at me now too.

My tendinitis is really getting on my tits, up my nose, and torquing my twinkies.

I wanted some comfort tea but I lost my beautiful mug at work and I need to search other break rooms for foam mugs for crappy work coffee because...

... I left my go-pills at home, the ones that keep me from going into a coma after I eat lunch, so coffee instead to wind me up and harass my stomach.

And to top it all off I forgot to bring chocolate. I bet if I go to the cafe to buy a bar, they will be all out.

Working in the shop Sunday, I made good progress doing a test setup, running all my tubes and wires and careful notes, and antiquated notions... need a few more brass Tees and a couple of 3/8" MPT to 1/4" FPT adapters, but overall, it's going to be lovely. But working Sunday, especially after lunch, was a slog through random free-floating anxiety, and that takes a lot of the fun out of it. It was better when mongo was there, though by the end of the day I was pretty worn out anyway.

If I survive this day (which is a dubious notion at this rate) I have dance lessons tonight... which will either be a lovely joy or very very difficult. At least Richard is used to my brain coming up broken at these things, and I don't get as cranky and bitchy as I used to.

Lots of nothing

Nothing really to say here ... everything is in progress... nothing new is done.

Had my blood drawn this morning for my physical, which is early next week. No coffee today, a condition that left me less than fresh by mid-day... my head still aches from the lack, though dosing myself with chocolate after work helped for a time.

I turn 44 tomorrow.

I want to complain about all of the external factors that made/are making my project at work horribly over schedule. But there's not much point to that! I mean, I can't really go into the fun details -- and the generics aren't interesting. Not enough RAM from an early decision (that I fought against), costing me time via implementation complexity and debugging. Core spec changes... twice! Poor spec to begin with, underspecified. Poor communication between the two teams, poor and late integration, and on and on...

My body is tired and sore, I need to do more Taichi, but I'm spending that time in projects until June. After that, we'll see.

Tonight's Festivities

Tonights festivities mostly consisted of shaving the cat's ass-fur.

The cat did not approve. We spent a short time attacking his hind quarters with a comb, scissors, and the electric nippers, and got a good double-handful of cat fur off his his nether parts. We quit when he started hissing at us... but made good progress! Our style has improved over last year.

Looking at the cat, you can't tell we did anything at all. That cat is, I swear, entirely composed of fur.

Forgot to mention that I bottled the final sweet cherry cider the other night. I'm also working on tidying some labels up too, just started though.

Did more wiring on the control console. Note to self: don't buy crimp connectors locally; The 3M crimps from Mouser are superior in every way, including price.

Work is aggravating, but I can't really talk about work because everything I do is a secret. Ah well.

Movin' right along

Goodness, is it Tuesday night already? And bedtime even.

Well, the weekend was full, as usual, though much of the fullness was welding class. Cut that short to do a market survey thingy, earned some spare cash so that's good. In class, got to play with a TIG, and that was very cool! Now I want one.

A bunch of pictures and videos of my projects (in progress) can be found below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j8empHrUVc

http://www.simreal.com/content/FlamePillar

http://www.simreal.com/content/TeslaCoil

http://www.simreal.com/content/RadioTower

Help!

I need somebody! Or a couple of bodies...

The great and compassionate Oliana0 mentioned that my community of friends would be a good resource to tap, to help out with Flipside.

There is one thing that I would like some help with (most of what I do, it would be hard to delegate).

I need a covered space in my back/side yard to store my propane tanks.

I have four #20 tanks at about 12" diameter (and short, and stackable), and will have two #100 tanks at about 16" diameter (and tall, and not stackable).

You are not supposed to store propane tanks in an enclosed space, and since I installed that cat door in my garage I've taken to closing the big door all the way... making that enclosed.

You also aren't supposed to store these things out in the open (though I suppose you CAN, since people DO), since overpressure from high temperatures and direct exposure to sunlight can be bad.. plus, UV and Rain conspire to age things faster than desired.

So a leaky garden shed, a roofed enclosure, something... where I can store my dangerous tanks.

Spark, no Sparky...

My untuned Tesla (how the HECK do I tune it? Adjust and pray? Voodoo?) will throw about two feet of spark in its current configuration.

My variac claims to be a 5-Amp device but I'm running it at, through a clever change in fuse, at 10-Amps. Hey, it's short pulses!

And still, I blow the fuse solid if I ramp the coil up too much. Not just melt, but BLOW, like, vaporized copper all inside the fuse tube.

Which is kinda neat.

I also saw a spark in the volt meter on the variac once, so I'm thinking I'm getting hella noise back up the line. I need to test and/or filter that.

As for Sparky the Spare Cat... he's gone. Haven't seem him at all in over a week, maybe two now. I miss him. A long hair grey cat with white toes (called "Frenchy" for his/her French manicure) is eating the cat food, slowly, timidly.

I'm about to put in an order for propane fittings and hoses, valves, and to pick up a propane tank... and to top up all my other tanks. This all is going to cost me a chunk of change! Sure, a nine dollar connecting hose is no big deal, but when you need nine of them...

Ah well, such is the price of mad science.

Bwahahahahahahahaaa! It's ALIVE!

Yayyy! An hour of futzing around with the Tesla, checking various thises and thatses, and I get a POWERFUL suspicion that my feedback is working against me.

So, I swap the feedback wires.

Bzap! Yayyy! A tiny little spark! I turn a know and... bzap! A spark with a different tone!

Oh yeah.

Mmmhmm.

Yeah, it's from a kit. Yeah, it's not so complex. But I am still very excited to be making high voltage.

Oh yeah. Heheheh.

It is, I think, resonating at about twice the frequency I expected (I'll tap the feedback and find out for sure), so I'll have to futz around with this.

With proper tuning, I should be able to get some good sparks, though!

And with bad tuning, hell, I still get sparks.

This is great! I needed a success right about now.

Ten Times Over!

There's a thought out there that I do ten times as much stuff as most people do... and there may be some merit to that. Though, in my own head, I seem to do about half as much as I think I should be able to.

This weekend I started up, in welding class, the steel donut project (13" outer diameter, 4" minor diameter). It should be... interesting!

After that, I burned a half hour in napping, and at four or so went on to do... something? Well dang, now I don't remember. I was going to talk about what I _actually_ did this weekend and now my mind is a blank over the sequence!

Sunday, I know I mowed and edges the front and side lawns, but those are pretty small tasks, just taking an hour. Did some shopping for parts and with Marla, ate out, a couple nice hours in the world.

I cut the parts for the radio tower, and rolled the brackets into nice round shapes. Next up I have to heat-bend the tabs, and weld on the uprights. Easy!

I assembled the Tesla and carried it to the shop. I also put away a raft of crap that had tumbled out into the living room, and packaged up a bunch of boxes. Before THAT, I did measurements on the primary and secondary LC networks in the Tesla, and came up with an approximate resonant frequency of 190kHz, which corresponds roughly with expectations. However, my signal generator has a horrible blind spot above 175 and below about 50 on its dial... meaning, the 190kHz range is really really hard to work in.

Plugging in the Tesla on Saturday... nothing. Not a glimmer of life. So I'll have to open it up some and debug it further.

That's the story of my life right now... debugging things that should be working.

The new Variac I bought didn't work, for example, when I tested it Saturday. I took it apart... no, I TRIED to take it apart, but a critical set screw was broken. Cheap Chinese crap, you know? So, got a screw removing device, drilled out the knob around the setscrew (that was in crooked, so hard to access), drilled a small hole in the setscrew, and then cranked it out. Tada! A 5-minute task expanded into an hour!

Then, take apart the variac to discover that whomever built it had weird ideas about lubrication. The thick, sticky grease you find covering Chinese import tools? Yeah? Well, it doesn't work very well when used to lubricate a moving part (the contact in the variac that must drift up and down to track the coil).

Cleaned, lubricated with REAL oil, re-assembled, and it's better than new. Literally.

I watched a Luc Besson movie on Saturday, burning a couple of hours there, and it was fun! "District B13" -- a good action movie with some fun Parkour, and a buddy-antibuddy-buddy thing going on, in a dystopian future France. It was also transparently political/social, but I forgave it that clumsiness because it was also very pretty.

I did sketch up the pneumo/propane networks I need for my Flipside shows, and started hunting down parts for those. Parts! I swear, it's like pulling toenails, finding the right parts sometimes.

What I _hoped_ to do was get a working Tesla (and WOULD HAVE if it had worked; this guy made a few design decisions I feel were ill-chosen, and I'm sure one of those is causing the grief). I hoped to assemble at least part of my second Ruben's Tube (got parts, no assembly). I hoped to do a fire test of the Fire Pillar (which really isn't a pillar, but more of a tripod). Hoped to finish a bracelet with lights for Marla (got parts, though). Had a vague hope of experimenting with an interesting sound resonator, but not even!

So, ten times? No. Maybe twice. And yet still half or less of what I had hoped for.

I think that, overall, I am pushing forward on too many projects this year, with deadlines that are too aggressive (I wanted to have a big splash at Flipside), and as a result, am just getting bogged down. That, and five hours of class, plus an hour of travel, on Saturdays is a huge hit.

So overall, this Jan-May experiment, not a success. I'll reset in June.

Oh My

Yesterday I popped open on of my ginger ciders, the mild one, it's not bad...

Tonight, the spicy cider, oh yeah! That's an AWESOME ginger cider, I'm tempted to not even bring it and hord it for myself. Mmmm mm mm tasty.

And.

Alcoholic. Gotta be worth, maybe, 2-3 beers of buzz in one of those.

BOTH ciders have fizz now! It took a month or more, but they carbonated. Not too heavy, but definite. Very very nice.

Maybe tomorrow I'll try the sahara cherry.

The new cherry cider is doing... absolutely nothing in the secondary. It fermenged with a bang, and the stopped.

Maybe I'll bottle it next week. I hope it turns out good.

Cherry Revealed

Okay, I dragged my tired, abused body off of the couch to siphon the new cherry cider over to the secondary. The siphoning doesn't take long, but before I can do that I have to mix up a boatload (er, bucketload) of sanitizer, clean my tools, clean the destination carboy, and continuously float and wipe all the cat hair off of everything... that has been in the closet all this time. Man. Cat hair. Fluffy, fluffy cats. And after, once I've siphoned cider all over the floor, there is MORE cleaning.

Anyway, I thiefed (thieved?) a sample out while it was siphoning, to check the gravity. Dang it, someone glued the hydrometer to the bottom of its tube again. Thief. Thief. Thief, float! Aha!

Unreadable, and WAY off the charts again (well below 1.000). The cider is really opaque this time and I can't see through it to the scale.

As I wander around exclaiming to Marla how opaque and bizarre this batch is, the secondary overflows. Oops!

I dribble some of the thieved cider into my shiny new vinometer (which needs a protective case, I fear for its safety) and read... 12%. Wowza! Oh, no, I read that backwards, that's probably 8%. Did it again and it emptied ENTIRELY. That's not right. Did it a third time to get 6%. Also, the particulates in the cider are probably messing up the reading.

I'll have to do some math and get a sanity check.

The final test -- a drink of it. Yes! It's alcoholic and reasonably sweet! Just like I wanted.

Hopefully, it will settle and do nice things in the secondary, and then off to the bottles.

Between now and then I need to formulate my carbonation strategy.

Cherry-flavored suspense

The cherry cider stopped bubbling sometime over the weekend, but with classes, scare cleanup, and taxes I haven't had time to move it to the secondary.

I'm dying to see how it tests and tastes! Maybe tomorrow. Or Thursday. Or something.

Work has been work, and projects have been stalled by Taxes.

Ugh.

But, because I spent OUT THE WAZOO on equipment for Simreal, I'm up for a decent refund (less than a grand, more than five hundred). So, good job, Edwin!

I just hope my weird spending spree in '07 doesn't spring an audit. Bah. I don't want to have to tap-dance my way through my crappy accounting.

Next up: clean up my Quicken so that account happens auto-magically.

Oh, and file the '07 simreal "no, I sold nothing in Texas" report.

Shiny new incompetence

Well, saw my Sunday Night Movie last night (it being Sunday Night), and while the movie was probably good but I couldn't really tell.

The audio synch was off. Not like bad-dubbing off ( I was watching it in the "original language" anyway, which was a mix of Mandarin and English it turns out, with English subtitles), but really really off.

I mean, the lips will move or a door will slam open; the scene will cut, and cut again, and maybe a second OR TWO later, the sounds play.

I mean, wtf?

What is funny is that this is from Tartan Asia Extreme which, in earlier videos, had fairly rough DVD programming. This DVD, though, was more slick, had blocked more of the control keys so you couldn't avoid the advertising, had more special features and stuff... really top-notch programming in there. And the movie itself was damaged beyond any repair internally. I guess they got a great programmer at the expense of, I dunno, an audio guy or any kind of quality control!

Suck.

I tried all three audio tracks (2.0, 5.1, and 5.2 DTS) to no effect.

So I'm a bit grumpy about the lack of a decent movie on my Sunday.

Extra Crispy

Five hours of class again, Saturday, while I did the final assembly (welding) and cleanup (grinding and sanding) on my thingy (the topper for the fire pillar).

It's very shiny now! But the teacher had me go outside to do this work... it's noisy and messy! And, as a consequence, I'm sunburned here and there. back of my neck and the backs of my arms. Very annoying! But I'm putting aloe stuff on it, and hopefully it will be better soon.

Right after class, we went to the lodge (Scare for a Cure's location) and threw an old room away. This wasn't built buy us, but was donated after some movie was done with it. A beautiful room! But heavy, and really just useful for a one-shot thing... so to the dump with it!

This took two trips and the rest of the day, and I discovered this evening that I hurt my right shoulder too. Did this, probably, because I was compensating form other pain in my connecting tissues... sucks getting old.

So, today, Sunday, was spent almost entirely in financial updating. Now, all three of my accounts are shiny and reconciled, and my taxes have been started. I'll finish them up during the week.

Had a brief interlude today for a Flipside meeting, and that was good.

Right now, I am trying to decide if/what size of amplifier I want to fill out my audio rack.

TFIM

Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster, it's Friday... and even better, Even Friday is being held at Ruby. Oh man, a quiet evening of just hanging out with some of the best people in the universe is just what I need...

An interesting surprise last night... I had two "short" bottles of cider, one of the mild and one of the hot ginger, in the 'fridge from back when I tested the various ciders. You know, the other day.

Pop, fizz! Strong fizz in both. Was it because they were bottled last? Because of the ludicrous amount of head space in the bottles? Because of the extra month in the 'fridge?

Who knows!

The new cherry is still bubbling madly, and it smells lovely.

Now, back to the grind.

Grind, grind, grind...

Blowing bubbles!

Last night I mixed up a batch of what I hope will be sweet cherry cider. By morning, it seemed to not be bubbling, so I gave the lid a little poke and it exploded in bubbles! Blooboobobobobobobobobobobobooob..

... and settled down to a decent rate of bubble.

Tonight after work, it's bubbling it's little heart out! Oh yeah, them are some happy yeasty beasties.

Mmmmmm.

Once it slows, to the secondary with it! And then come bottling time? I think I'll have to add champagne yeast to this and all the others if I want fizz. I'm thinking that none of my ciders petered out due to lack of sugar, but instead just hit their maximum alcohol concentration.

My only concern is if I give it a much too robust of a yeast on bottling... will my bottles explode?

Sweet Cherry Dreams

Okay, I _finally_ put together the last cider for this Flip season, with some changes from the previous recipe. I've had the parts sitting here for, I dunno, a week or two, but it's been hectic; or I've been slow; or something.

Stayed home from TaiChi tonight, felt puny (yeah yeah, it makes me feel better to go) but then later I was glad I held back because I got a good half hour of feeling downright sick; and then that faded.

Weird.

Anyway, for the new recipe, I doubled the sugars (up to 16 oz honey, 16 oz turbinado sugar, and 4 lbs of white cane), and swapped out a gallone of the cider for an additional half-gallon of black cherry and an additional half gallon of the raspberry-cranberry blend.

Upon tasting, it's SWEET. Dayum. Sweet sweet sweet, but with a complexity too.

Upon measuring, it's in the 1.070 gravity range... the same as the original! Apparently the cider I use is heavy, without having the same benefit of sugar as... sugar.

Grind, grind, screech

Grinding through the projects at home, I feel like I'm moving through a weird time distortion, everything going at half speed. I put my head down at 5:00 to do some soldering and look up to find it's 7:30. Damn!

So I did accounting in short order (much faster than expected, for a switch) and more this and that. Turns out one of my switches is the wrong kind, so I ordered more. I can still go back to debugging the tesla, though, just without that mode switch; only I have to do taxes, the LoTV board meeting, the Flipside meeting, and welding class. I'm thinking... not this weekend.

Yesterday at work, I had an interaction with a manger-type person who has authority over my project, but who in fact is only very peripherally involved in my aspect of it. And who makes decisions using a completely different criteria than I use, as best I can tell, and who I absolutely can not talk to -- it is like talking to an alien, a bug, a cockroach. Whenever he touches my project, I feel like he makes it suck more; and in no wise have I ever felt like what I was saying makes any difference at all. He asks me only for the form of it, but has already made up his mind; I always feel ambushed and abused afterwards, though he is unfailingly polite. It's like he walks into the project randomly, jerking the steering wheel and aiming me in a direction that feels wrong.

I hate it, and I get far too upset when trying to talk with him.

No Zap for Me!

Weird, I posted this in LJ, and not in MT -- this was definitely meant as an MT post! Ah well, you get a duplicate. Whee!

No spark for me. I'm trundling through the bring-up instructions, interspersed by crimp connectors, hole drilling, tapping, soldering, and various other cleanups (everything works fine! No, that's not true, see below) and then I see "power up the advanced modulator." Crap. I forgot about that. Oh well, time to solder that board together! Should be a breeze, but it means I won't get through the rest today... so no sparks for me.

During my tests, for the display board, I heard a "crick, crick, crick" sound... like... heat expansion! Crap! Click off and feel around, my 15-volt regulator is TOASTY. And putting out about 2 volts. That means... dead short. Somewhere.

Maybe I did something stupid with the jumper cable, like connected 15-volts to ground. I futz around with that some, and no, even though the topology of IDC ribbon cables hurts my brain, it's all good.

Test the power board, and it's powerful. No problems there.

Test the display board and yup, 15-volts is shorted to ground! But where? Out comes the jeweler's loupe, for a detailed inspection. While I don't approve of many of the things Daniel did with this layout (e.g. soldering directly to power planes SUCKS and is avoidable; needs larger dead spaces around pads in the middle of power planes; weird connector placement, etc etc), it's all good under magnification.

So, resistors. Nope, they are resisting. Diodes? Diode-rific! The IC? Pull it! Nope. The capacitors. Well, I can't really test those, they read as shorts anyway, since they bridge 15v and ground (being there to give the system that old stiff upper lip, what what).

Fortunately, there are only two caps, a 10uF and a 0.1uF, so I pull them and whaddya know! No short. It was the 10uF cap that was the problem, dead short through the device. Bastards.

I find another 0.1 and drop it in, and I'm clean out of 10s so I get one an order of magnitude smaller (whatever, it will be fine) and put it in. All is good, and the display works now, with no burning sensations coming from the power supply.

The next sphincter moment is when I calibrate the current feedback display, which is a bar-chart showing 0 to 1,000 Amps in 100A increments. 1,000 Amps is represented by 12 volts at a particular place in the system, so I bring out my variable power supply and wire it up to that sensor point.

Twiddle twiddle, peg! The supply pegs at 1A (it's limit) at just about a volt. I can get it it twitch up to maybe two volts before it clamps. Hmmmm.

I get out the HEFTY power supply, see what 10 amps does heheheheheh (yes, I realize I'm not thinking clearly here, it was my afternoon brain slump, clearly). What it _does_ it get fiendishly hot, I can tell by the smell. Oh look, here's a 1.6 ohm, 3-watt resistor! Taking 12 volts across it, that what, 7 amps or so, around 90 watts of dissipation? Yeah, that's not good -- and to make it even MORE embarassing, I read about some OTHER guy frying his resistor in the forums. Derrrr.

So I attach the signal generator and get NEARLY 8 volts peak to peak out of it when loaded, zapping pulses into the sensor. This works pretty darned good and I get it rough-tuned with that.

To fine tune, I dial the monster power up to 12 volts (again) and just TAP the sensor with it; 90 watts in short bursts is fine. Tuned up and happy, now I can indicate 1,000 amps of fancy tesla goodness during operation. Yayy! Overcurrent is set to about a third of that for startup, but we can change this in time.

In other news, I remembered that I don't _do_ finances on Sunday, but on Monday -- since Mondays already suck, I just throw more suck into it and I don't really notice. I still have to do taxes next weekend, either that, or get hit by a truck or something. People keep going, "Oh, I just hand it off to the accountant..." well yeah, but doing the actual tax stuff isn't my hassle (I love Turbo Tax, even if I do enter the data manually and not via Quickbooks)... no, it's the polishing and buffing (or, perhaps. nine months of data entry) on the biz account that is looming like dark clouds on my horizon.

Ah well. Maybe THIS year I'll keep that account up to date. I haven't been SO FAR but hey, the year is young.

Ugh.

Being a responsible adult really runs against my grain. I should go out and be an artist in the woods or something.

And I would too! Except then I couldn't afford parts. Tesla coils can be spendy.

Mad Cackles

I love crimp connectors; lug ends and spade ends and slip fittings and all kinds of stuff. Much nicer than frayed wire. Mmmm, crimps.

I've avoided all kinds of distraction this week as I bulled ahead on my daily work, trying to catch up. I would be in sight of parity now, if it weren't for NI Tech or Week or whatever the hell it is... internal tech conference, fun stuff, but it will eat a day or two of my catch-up time.

That focused effort, though, cost me; I was even crabby at the poor Shanghai guy. Next week should be better, unless random people decide we have to support fancy features that they said we would not support this release (the root of my crabbiness). Make up your minds, guys; we ship pretty damn soon.

This weekend, I did stuff in welding class, and now I'm going through the "bring-up" checklist for the Tesla coil. Later, I'll solder up the "advanced modulator" circuit to drive it. I've got most of the other electronic and/or mechanical aspects well in hand, so I may even see sparks tomorrow.

Tomorrow also has me doing some house finances (I've been putting it off), some laundry (out of undies!), and starting a new cherry cider (I hope! Gotta mix me some booze!).

Next weekend, salvaging my business accounts (neglected through most of last year) and taxes. Whee.

Hot Finger

Oh, and working the yard, I stabbed a finger and a thumb with hidden prickly pear cactus, the bastards.

The finger I stabbed is warm... all the other fingers were cold from the workshop, but the stabbed one was not!

Weird.

Winding, winding away...

So welding class was good Saturday, started what will probably be an ill-fated "topper" for one of my fire effects. I also plan on making a hammered-steel toroid for a Tesla top-load (4" minor by 13" major diameter toroid). The teacher clearly thought I was insane once he realized what I wanted to do...

Then, after class, a brief nap (I was all worn out) and then working on the Tesla stuff. Mostly mechanical stuff with the box and supports and stuff, though I wound the primary coil out of 1/4" copper pipe, and a strike-rail out of 3/8" copper pipe. The primary was hard work! The copper pipe kept binding in the supports. But I eventually beat it into submission, though I was also totally beat by the end.

This morning, yardwork for a couple hours! I used the leaf blower that I bought for the fire effect (since I haven't hacked it yet) to blow leaves and acorns. Yeah yeah, using a tool for its stated purpose, boring! But it worked really well, and it was very quiet! Neat stuff! Once I got the leaves a little bit airborn, our strong morning winds carried most of 'em off down the street. Ah well.

If anyone wants acorns, we have about ten thousand or so...

This evening, more layout, drilling, tapping, random Tesla stuff, and I wound the primary. This is a thousand turns or so of 30 gauge (very fine) wire, on the new winding jig.

My ad-hoc pulleys couldn't cope with the resistance I was giving them while winding, so I ended up turning the jig by hand... so now my left hand/arm/muscle/tendon system is pretty much fed up with me, between holding stuff in metal class and turning the primary jig all evening.

On the bright side, the primary coil is beautiful! Very nice. And I'm just about ready to wire everything together and begin testing. Next weekend I should see sparks... hopefully the GOOD kind.

Before long I need to spend one of my weekends in doing taxes. I am so avoiding that. Ugh. My business account is a mess and I need to tidy it up first, it will take all day.

Flat, like Texas

Opened the other cider, marked '1', last night... flat flat flat, like Texas. Or Kansas. Or one of those other flat places. So, definitely, in the ciders, I have to change yeasts to carbonate, or bottle before the secondary fermentation is done. This one was also quite dry, but without the dry mouthfeel you get in a wine; sort of a smooth wet dryness. No sugar! But no tannins, of course. And no hint of ginger, at least not compared to the cider marked '0' which was actually the second one bottled that night.

I'm not sure which is which, but I think '1' is the difficult cider and '0' is the second batch, just based on the ginger-factors. I'll have to review my notes to be sure.

Not bad, still, but the other one was much better!

I'll have to whip up a new cherry version this weekend, I think, too.

Mmmmmmmm. Cider.

Still Life with Ginger

Okay, yesterday I chilled two full (and two half, 'cause I could) bottles of the batch-0 and batch-1 ginger ciders.

Today, I popped a batch-0 cider to find it... completely still. No fizz! Argh! Of course, this was a difficult cider to begin with, so I guess I'm not surprised. I'll now about batch-1 when I open it... tomorrow? Tonight? We'll see.

It's still quite tasty, and the ginger (in this MILD version) gives it a bit of the bite that carbonation would have added.

I still haven't decided to re-inoculate the cherry cider or this batch now, to make fizz. It would be a pain to do so, but I -like- fizz. But I like these still, too, in spite of not liking other still ciders.

We'll see.

Nik, my son, has been playing with labels for me. Here is a preview of the cherry label that is awesome, though in color (needs conversion to B&W for easier use in my limited world):

http://www.simreal.com/sahara_cherry.jpg

He is working on some ginger ideas too, and has something for the Odd Brewery Collective (I told him he was a fallback in case our primary artist comes up blank). I'm liking it so far! I hope he scans the new works soon.

Zipping with that roto thang...

So, the rotozip on the jigsaw base does respectable work, even though it's 1 7/16" from the edge to the "blade"... just a TINY LITTLE MORE EFFORT and it could have been 1 1/2" instead. Lame!

Also, a beveled edge on the jigsaw base means a THIN straight edge slips under the bevel by 1/32" or so, while a thick edge doesn't. Annoying, but survivable.

I finished cutting out my Tesla base parts tonight, and they look pretty good.

Work was also less brutal today, thank goodness, and I made progress and _everything_.

Here's to hoping that tomorrow is good!

Color Change

So, spent four hours outside today, in the fine Texas cloudshine, moving an improbable quantity of flats, pallets, and various other wood-shaped things. So I'm a bit sore now, but not crippled. That will come tomorrow. As a result of this fine fresh air, I changed color a bit on all my exposed bits.

Yesterday I finished the soldering on the Tesla boards. Might even work! For a change of pace, I put a picture up on Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11447071@N04/2338718661/

Yesterday and this morning I built up a nice coil-winding jig with a few neat features:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11447071@N04/2338718647/

The chucks that will hold the tube are Longworth Chucks, made poorly with my brand-new rotozip and it's truly craptastic circle jig. A fix for the circle jig that helped SOME was to give it some friction in its joint by super-gluing 100-grit sandpaper into it. That seemed to help, but the flimsy plastic parts still flexed too much. Anyway, here's a closeup:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11447071@N04/2338718635/

I also rigged a pedometer as a counter, so it will (I hope) count each revolution of the coil form. Automatic winding counter!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11447071@N04/2338718625/

And, with that same rotozip, I made four sticks out of 1" PVC sheet. I started with a truly ineffective edge guide on the 'zip, but then moved over to the jigsaw attachment (which is pretty solid) and a solid bar clamped over the work.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11447071@N04/2338718657/

And finally, the oil lamp thingy (which may or may not dangerously leak oil, I should find out...) from welding class:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11447071@N04/2338730425/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11447071@N04/2338730419/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11447071@N04/2338718651/

Recovery

Been slacking off these last few nights, trying to regain my sanity and or energy...

Work is still being fairly brutal, but I hope to be out of this particular crunch at the end of the week, or at least early next week.

Then I can transition into the next crunch! But I'm hoping it will be less draining.

Looks like I won't have the plastics in for the Tesla base this weekend, which is unfortunate (slow, slow people. Sigh). But the electronics and the coil should be good to go.

Been looking for cheap, 3-jaw lathe scroll-chucks to make a coil winder, and apparently there is no such thing, let along such a thing in Austin. Right now I'm dithering between making a Longworth Chuck (I need a router and a circle-cutting swing arm to do that), or slapping together a 4-jaw independent chuck out of allthread and bits of metal.

I hope to decide during today's suffering.

Mmmmm Good

Went to Sampaio tonight with Matt and Susan (and Marla, of course), mmmm good! Oh yeah. And had a truly lovely Malbec wine too, gonna have to find that one in the store.

Prior to that, I slept in as noted before, making a short day. Spent a few hours in the garage while the weather was beautiful -- put a finish on my dished metal project, making it into what should be an oil lamp (if it doesn't leak, gotta test that still). Pictures are in the camera, I'll put 'em up later.

Also fiddled with some metal poles wrt: tensegrity tower. And did a special fitting for Matt for the butane tank -- the brass ones totally didn't cooperate today so I fabricated one from scratch from a length of steel bar. The hole is a bit off-center, but for the most part it turned out well!

Weird, I must have just been putzing around out there, I don't really know _what_ I did. Never did poke at the fire thingy or the blower.

Then, came inside and cut the circuit boards apart for the Tesla -- THAT was annoying. And I soldered a few parts on 'em too, that was fun. Also, I ordered some new parts to avoid the annoying hack, and ordered some things for Marla for a glowing bracelet thingy.

This coming week I'll buy some plastic and this and that for the Tesla mechanics. And probably do Taxes (ominous "dun dun DUN" music here). Perhaps some house cleaning.

Last night, getting ready for the Dorkbot/SxSW etc show, I stubbed the living bejesus out of one of my toes -- and during the night, it got more and more sore. Upon taking my shoe off last night, my toe had turned interesting colors, mostly in shades of red and black, and I was pretty much crippled. Which kind of puts the kabosh on dancing tomorrow. I have pictures of THAT, too, but I'll probably spare you those.

And now, sleep. It feels like Saturday though. I need another weekend day. Ah well.

Daylight Stealing Time

Ugh, a combination of tiredness and a time shift (Spring Forward!) have conspired to have me sleep in until 10:00 am today. So there's a chunk of day behind me!

No welding class next Saturday, so I plan on making a winding jig and winding my big Tesla Coil primary next weekend! I'll have to buy parts during the week, but I got a royalty check and a check for an article last week, so Simreal has cash. Yay!

Today, a little monkeying around in the shop with fire, maybe fiddle with my new blower for the fire tripod, and the bulk of the day assigned to soldering up those tesla driver boards.

I have one horrible HACK that I need to rectify already, I have one chip in surface mount that should be through-hole (they were out of stock). But we are using sockets. My plan was to solder wires to the SMT for now. I've waited long enough, though, that the proper part is probably in stock so I should order that instead!

We'll see.

Butterflies

I always get nervous before a show, no matter how minor my role in it is.

Saturday March 8th, I'll have a small corner of Brush Square Park near the convention center, a table at the SxSW/Dorkbot/Make Magazine/Amaze/IGDA party with some of my newest creations and some old ones as well to pad it out.

It should be fun! Or something.

So tonight I'll be getting ready for that, making (hopefully) a box to keep my dust in place for the Chladni, and selecting the various bits and pieces I'll need to fill out a table. Oh, and I must remember the hanging rack for Albert's Brain. And a power cord and firestarter (er. plug expander). And stuff. No burning here, it would make people too nervous.

Speaking of burning, I need to study for my Fire Effects license. Grrrr.

And work. Gotta work hard today. Deadlines approaching.

The Wall

Oh man, last night I so did not want to go to Tai Chi. It was all I could do to drag myself there, and then all I could do to STAY and not leave before it started. I didn't even stretch, just sat there.

Once it had started, though, as usual, the mood passed and I felt much better by the end.

No project time yet, but tonight, we may or may not go dancing (mambo, meh; and bolero, one we haven't spent much time in)... so maybe shop time.

It would be handy to make an acrylic case for my Chladni, so that I am wind-proofed and it would dampen its annoying sound some. We'll see.

Or, soldering on Tesla.

Or, my vacuum chamber!

Or, there are a bunch of pictures I've been meaning to take for the last year or so.

Or, or, or...

Oh, right

I'm for Obama. I don't like the tone of the Hillary's campaign... and here's an interesting video from Lawrence Lessig that explores some of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdDzvmY1XPo

Responsible Adult

Yeah, spent last night being a responsible adult -- did a bunch of accounting and financial stuff. Things are in decent shape...

No Tai Chi... I've been using Mondays instead to catch up on my house responsibilities.

Tonight, voting and, if I really want to piss away the evening, caucusing. Probably go to a movie instead. The Texas primary system is retarded.

Also, tonight, tooth cleanings. Yay.

I need more project time. The real world is annoying.

Solid Weekend

Good, solid weekend. Marla is driving home from the airport as I type this, and should be here any second now. Yesterday I was so busy, so tired, but I definitely missed her at night.

Today, missed her more, but still, kept active. Had a very nice, productive day in the lab.

Did NOT do any Tesla circuit work (laggard!) but I did hit milestones on several other projects. Significant points, as in, the projects are now showing fruit.

Linked here is the evidence...

This vibrating plate thingy is what I finished the article on Friday. It's a brilliant little design, if I must say so myself (and it's Plan B, since my first build failed). Good results, easy to make:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=bvnyot6T-QQ

You can't see it in this video very well, but the fire changes color from, ummm, fire colored to a bright shiny red (will ultimately have three colors or effect changes). Look at the reflections in the truck to see it. Some weird stuff in the audio - I think the current iMovie is a bit twitchy:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZNg0_sO9lDY

I just finished this today, too. The pointy metal cage is from the art welding class. The brain and electrics are my "found objects". Hey! I found 'em! (in my garage):

http://www.youtube.com/v/eSaQBp7m-Lk

Oh, and here's an old one... smoke rings! I don't remember linking it:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=eX4-lI0B3SE

Fall and Spring

I love Fall/Spring weather -- the cool wind, the overcast, the sense of change.

I went out this morning to get some Diatomaceous Earth to act as a carrier for color chemicals in the fire tripod, and the weather outside could not have been more perfect (for me, at least).

Slow start this morning, and it's nice. Had coffee today (missed it yesterday), hung around online, went to the store, now I'm back.

Later tonight I'll fire up the fire thingy if it's not raining.

This afternoon, puts in the shop some, tidy some, do some soldering hopefully. Laundry. Accounting perhaps. We'll see. I should work on my winding jig, too, but I may put that off for next week.

Feeling pretty mellow, so that's nice.

Oh, and that cherry cider? Had a short glass of it last night, dang, that stuff carries a big punch. And so very drinkable. Yum!

Finish line!

Made it to Friday! I was ready to be done with this week well before today, but I made it, and I kept the pace up as well, grinding through the work. I made all my significant milestones, and even got more in that I hadn't planned for, at work.

Came home today feeling like my psyche had been beaten with pointy sticks, had a brief nap, and then wrote my Chladni article. It came out at 1,900 words (out of a thousand) so then I cut it viciously down to 1,200 words. Make will just have to cope!

The article is pretty bare bones, however, the project is really cool (I think) and the results are better than I had hoped for. So, all is good!

While writing the article, I chilled four 20-oz Grolsch bottles of the Sahara Cherry cider. Once done, I tested one ... not much carbonation; if I want fizz I'll have to add a few grains of champagne yeast. But tasty. I brought the other three bottles to Odd Friday and have a marvelous time sipping on it and sharing, and just hanging out with friends.

I miss Marla - she is with family this weekend - but my friends are delightful even in her absence. I feel much better now, in fact.

Tomorrow -- class, then a trip out to Dripping Springs to get a new tool, then home, then... stuff!

Should solder on the Tesla, should work on the class project, should do this and that. I'll end up doing _something_ I'm sure.

Noisy Success!

Alright! It was never a sure thing, in fact, I didn't know if it would work until a little less than three hours ago...

Had to miss dance class (again! Sorry Richard!) -- but I promised the article to be in tomorrow... which means I have to write it tomorrow!

But tonight I painted the disk and square, mounted it all on the little plastic cup (really) which is my new speaker coil, and drove the things at various frequencies to get... awesome Chladni patterns!

I'll have YouTube of it up this weekend and a nice hires Flash variation off of Simreal too probably.

Oh yeah, that's a relief. I didn't even melt the new coils, though they got pretty warm at the lower frequencies / higher powers.

Very very awesome. This all goes into Make 14 or something, dunno what yet.

Oh, and at work? I was behind at the start and caught up by the end.

Tomorrow should go well.

And next week? Keep your fingers crossed!

Roller Coaster

Ferris Wheel
Hem Lengths
Sun
Moon
Edwin's Energy Levels

(list of things that go up and down regularly)

So, my plan for today at work was to tidy up the flash checksum stuff; to update my cartridge management to match current desires (oh look, I need to send an emergency message here too), and to then start on the dummy modules and startup validations.

Unfortunately, it turns out that while I can successfully send an emergency in response to some request, when I'm just idling there minding my own business the emergency broadcast system seems to get all introspective and lost in navel lint.

Or maybe the master is just ignoring my shouts for help.

Dunno. Lost the afternoon trying to find out. Will lose more of tomorrow doing the same.

Went to Tai Chi today after skipping last week. Feels like it's been months, and not just 14 days. Body likes the exercise, but I get all stressed about remembering the form and stuff.

My mind doesn't DO memory of stupid random shit. It just doesn't. Yeah yeah I know the mnemonic tricks. It's all crap. Sorry.

Anyway, I'm tired and cranky, and need to make drinks and eat dinner.

Grind grind grind

OH my goodness but yesterday was a grinding slog through tedium, but I got it all working by the end of day. Today, tidy up and formalize it for actual use.

Last night I had to re-cut a couple of PVC bits, cut a few new PVC bits, and then I assembled the frame for my Chladni. It's almost exactly right!

Tonight I hope to test it, which means tomorrow and Friday to write the article. If it works. Which isn't guaranteed. Cutting it damn fine here.

Started a spirited technical discussion yesterday at lunch with a couple of fine fellows who have interesting ideas on internal representations for Connect the Dots.

Did some dishes.

Watched some Anime.

Slept.

Perk!

Woke up just ahead of the alarms, quite awake and full of energy.

There is no rhyme or rheason to this! Bah! I remember one year, my mood/energy swings followed very tightly with the weather, with the onset of stormy weather EVERY TIME bringing on a crash.

Hmph I say. Hmph.

Still Dragging

Well, did some real work today at work; made a minor fuss at how I've been unable to do real work during much of Feb because of distractions (support, meetings, stuff). Manager guy will give me fewer meetings for a bit I think.

After lunch, dragged through some hacking-style explorations, trying to see if a feature would pop out for free. No such luck. Gonna have to spend a bunch of tomorrow doing it right.

After work, napped some -- I'm just in the low cycle again, I hate that. I've spent way too much time down this year, not enough up.

Tried to put some dancing stuff into Google Documents, discovered their 500K size limit by exceeding it with the Foxtrot notes. Damn. Gonnna have to use the Wiki format after, even if it is ugly. Maybe I can tune the style sheets some. Later.

Did some ChaCha at dance lesson -- poked at my Paseo, got the Circles into my notes (if not entirely into my brain; but I can do it; just my brain is broken).

Was going to work on the Make article tonight afters but I just can't arse myself to do anything at all. Gonna veg, watch a movie, eat food, sleep. Try again tomorrow.

Ugh.

Is it Friday yet?

Mmmmm, pie

I'm at M's right now... downloading a version of XCode, 'cause the one I installed just now off of DVD fails to run. Hmph. That's so un-Mac.

I came here at 1:30 or so, and ate pie. And more pie. Meat pie. Egg pie (er, quiche). Sweet pie. Less sweet pie. More sweet pie.

I can't move.

But there's more pie to eat!

Ugh.

I'm making good progress on my article project. I think my home-wound speaker coil is going to work! And I can mount it to the plate too! Maybe!

Mmm, pie.

I should go work more. But there's still pie.

It's Friday! Wait, what?

It's almost Sunday now... midnight is creeping up.

Class. Flipside meeting. Played dominoes with friends. Spent about two hours total at home today.

Tomorrow is Pie Day -- but I also need to get this project for Make in. Oh, I'm in Make 13, major project, photo even of me! My favorite photo... no photo credit in Make, though, but it's taken by Sandy Carson. I need to use it more often so her credit gets spread around more!

Oooo, there is a web renderer in the new Trolltech Qt beta 4.4! I am going to have to prototype the Connect the Dots application as an app, that would be useful.

In my copious free time.

Yah know.

I did stuff!

Yeah! Actual work that actually involved me programming and solving bugs! It was awesome. Yup. I roxored.

Anyway, hellofa week, glad it's at the tail end.

Did a little shop time tonight, fixed up a new end-cap for the flaming tripod. I can test the color injectors this weekend maybe -- and I want to make a nice top-cap for it too, a cone or something; there are some neat effects around the sheet metal one I tested with.

The DigiKey parts came in for the Tesla! That was the bulk of the order. I think I'm missing a ferrite toroid, and that's about it. Ummm, maybe one other thing. I need to check my e-mails. But anyway, I doubt I'll have time to do much, MAYBE solder some stuff into the boards Sunday, MAYBE. Probably not; gotta do some housework, gotta do some accounting.

Oh, also did some shoptime around the Make article; testing out a plan-B, winding a new coil around the busted former on my busted subwoofer. I think I can make a new coil&former that will work! Right now, there is a layer of silicon on the wires drying -- that will have to be covered with something w/o much friction. I am thinking of using aluminum tape on the inside and outside to bond the wires and create a new former. I don't know if I can make that an un-shorted winding or if it will end up a shorted winding. We'll see. A high-power metal coil form has a slot in it, so it doesn't turn into a single turn in a nasty transformer. Without the slot, it's a "shorted winding" and can generate a lot of hassle.

I want to wrap up this article Sunday... Monday at worst? Tuesday? And not run it out to March 1st or 3rd. We'll see.

Also have games (might miss), also have Pie Day (can't miss!). Also have sick Marla, but she's getting better.

Almost Friday, I can make it...

Oh man, a busy week -- or month... or something.

Supporting something like three or four people using our product now -- the guy writing tests, the guy working up the manufacturing validation, the guy hooking it up to the motion module, some random guy I don't know who, our tech sometimes, the manager.... okay, that's like six.

Doing support work for calculations and feasibility for our product use in BIG SCIENCE (millions of dollars of opportunity) and in AUTOMOTIVE (I can't even count this high, in terms of profit potential).

Meetings! We are meeting more now, and hashing out detailed tricky issues, which I take it upon myself to clarify as best I can on paper, so everyone is working with the same brain.

And work itself, you know, finishing this product so we can make our bazillions of dollars in it. That's suffering a tad, but it's moving.

This Make article, dammit, I was really running under a wrong theory of how I wanted to do part of it -- I'm going to have to cop out and use a speaker to drive it (I really wanted to wind my own driver, but it's truly astonishing how much heat a speaker coil has to dissipate! Not to mention I have the wrong magnetic environment; my theory was bad).

So, umm, and my Saturday is GONE; class, flipside planning, game playing. I could theoretically buy a few hours and skip games at seven, and just do "pie day" Sunday.

I dunno.

Tomorrow is Friday.

I'll do more experiments then and see. Mark wants this article soon; he seemed stressed. Of course, he always seems stressed!

Dammit

The human mind is an annoying mush of crap.

I'm fighting depression and despair to day, far too hard -- no good reason.

I long ago gave up any illusion of "free will" or "consistency" or "stability" with regards to the human state. I've seen how a person can go from sane to raving looney, just from some internal chemical imbalance.

Bah.

Whew

Work blew by fast; bought my tesla components during lunch (four suppliers! rare discontinued parts!), put in my IFTF receipts at the last second, did stuff, damn, where did the day go?

Spent a few hours with Silona and Rob, laying some foundational notes for a proposal that is due end of day TOMORROW. Dang. No time! No strong direction, so I mostly tried to form ideas that could be condensed in into bullets or expanded into details as needed. Building a narrative, it's what I do.

Marla is sick, so swung by the HEB to get some sick person palliatives, plus a quickie meal for me, came home and ate it while poking more notes for Silona and Rob.

Hope they have something for me to poke at more tomorrow morning.

Right now, thinking about early sleep. Tomorrow, work! More work! Will it never end? And then Taiji. But I have to do the Make project, too... hot coil! Cool copper! Aaaaaaaa!

Stay tuned -- will Edwin go insane? Will he drop out of society and become a hermit? Or will lightning strike and he'll finally get hooked into the hot topic on the information uber highway? Or is high voltage electrocution on his looming horizion?

Opportunity, if I have time...

Held late at work a bit, just a half hour over, then home, a light snack, and experimenting with the chladni drivers.

Tested the resistance of the coils I made this weekend at work, they vary from 0.5 to about 6.5 ohms. Made a few more coils today, too, playing around.

The amplifier puts out up to 100 volts! That's some POWERFUL big current, even at 70V RMS, through a tiny little coil. Seriously hot, like 300 degrees F hot.

I ganked a voice coil out of a "real" speaker and ran it at half volume for a while, and it got up to 140 degrees or so itself, even though it had mighty fine wire on an aluminum former.

I think I'll end up with a single layer (double tops) of very fine wire-wrap wire (30ga) on a copper pipe "nipple" (short length). This will dissipate enough heat, hopefully, to keep it all good. I may even add heat fins! Stylin'.

After that, a light dinner, shopping, and them home to bottle the two batches of ginger cider. Batch one was very dry, showing something like 0.970 on the hydrometer; batch two was less dry at 0.985 or so. Very nice, both of them, but the second was much tastier, and had a much bolder ginger ambiance.

Hope they carbonate! I'm dying to break into the cherry to see if it got fiz yet, but I'm waiting more.

Then, after all that, an hour or two about working on the Connect the Dots proposal... Silona is hitting pay dirt on this, it seems, and needs to float a more formal definition of the project out this Wednesday.

Damn. I got no time! I'll smack it around some during lunch tomorrow (and in dead moments at work, but it's been very very busy there lately so that may be small), and we are meeting at 4:30 after work to try to put it into shape. And Rob, too, I hear.

I'm dying to get resources on CtD; and my visit to Palo Alto only reinforced my belief in this project.

Wish us luck!

Frustrated

I had a pleasant couple of hours with Derek today, exploring the world of inductivity and stuff.

Late start in the morning; slept in till 9, but then, I needed it.

A few hours, then, of coffee and of trying to wind some stinking solenoid coils. Dang, that's hard, without a decent jig. I had two indecent jigs -- I modified the rotating spark gap prop to try a really SLOW wind, too slow -- and I clamped some stuff into my drill press for a really FAST wind.

I went with fast and crappy. A 1" long and a 2" long; 30ga (I think; leftover from the firefly project) and 24ga wire, respectively.

After Derek, some tests on the coils. NOT doing what I wanted them to, and most specifically heating wayyyyyy too hot. They will work, in a different configuration than I planned (but a better one, a cleaner one; physics is conspiring to help for once!), but only once I solve the heat problem.

I could do some more testing and thinking on that one, except I can't find my multimeter. I've got a BIG multimeter that I've fried the heck out of (hmmm, they don't like 15kV? who knew!), and a small one that is gone.

Lost.

No resistance testing for me.

So, after fiddling with hot, smoking coils a bit more, went to bottle beer. Cooked up some priming sugar, started setting up for the sanitizing and.... no bottle capper.

I know I have it, I _saw_ it. But it's gone too.

Look, you stupid gnomes, I know it looks like my house and shop are a mess, but I do have an underlying system. I can usually find things, even though it sometimes takes some looking. I know where I put things, where things of a given type go. So just because it looks chaotic, doesn't mean it really IS (except in certain cases, but those are specialized and isolated)... you can't be stealin' my stuff and thinking I won't notice.

But I'm on to you. Next stop, Gnome Poison. I mean it.

Unless you return my tools.

Right now, though, I'm annoyed and frustrated, blocked from doing things that need doing. I can't even borrow a capper, 'cause Matt is out it seems.

Anyway, the fire thing is kinda pretty, and I may even get my Chladni thing done in time (IF and ONLY IF I can solve my heat problem). I really really don't want to use a speaker for the driver; I really really do want to coil my own.

I guess I'll have a beer, and sleep or something. I don't have any books I want to read even right now.

I really just don't have enough time to do the things on my lists. And I don't know what I'm willing to drop off of it.

Zzzzzzz

Okay, so Thursday I put together the technical aspects of a proposal at work that could bring in, I dunno, millions of dollars. So that's neat.

After work I flew to San Francisco and took the most amazingly expensive taxi ride to Palo Alto. Went to bed, slept, woke up every two hours or so until it was time to get up and go be smart for a day.

THAT was interesting! A couple wired guys, a couple O'Reilly (Make) guys. Some makers of different levels. A total of a dozen folks about, and we got paid for brainstorming! Well, -will- get paid.

I went in with very definite ideas about "the future of making" (our topic) and I pounded that drum a fair amount during the show. I definitely was _not_ playing the role of wallflower. More like "annoying guy who won't shut up", but hey, they wanted my ideas. They got 'em. Can I help it I have connections, ideas, and experience with damn near everything?

What it _did_ do was reinforce in my own mind what is changing right now, even as we sit reading the 'net. It's not human nature. It's not, on a ten-year horizon, the tools we are using (tools run on a 20 year horizon typically). What it is, is the nature of the connections between people, and how we are communicating.

The social networks, yeah, I hate 'em for the most part and am not interested (but yet, here I am in LJ and my own journal, writing and reading; I'm mostly annoyed at the proliferation of profiles and logins, sick of 'em).

But things like Make, Instructables, Wikipedia -- it's easier and easier to find information. And the social stuff, well, it's easier and easier to stay "in touch". We are a distributed world; we fractured the atomic family with the industrial revolution and that is not going to reverse short of global catastrophe. And it took a hundred years (A HUNDRED YEARS!) to find the new tools to re-create community.

Not perfect yet, but we see light.

Anyway, my vision for the LoTV's "Connect the Dots" tool is pegging my internal future-meter. This _will_ happen, it _has_ to happen; if I'm part of _making_ it happen, it will be good. If I'm not? Who knows? It could be better, or it could be worse! But dang, the next layer of the 'net needs to happen.

The 'net guys KNOW this too. They have been working on the semantic layer for the web for over 10 years now! Yeah, really. But, sadly, they are doing it entirely wrong, totally shooting at the wrong target.

It's almost embarrassing, really.

Anyway, spent Friday there talking future stuff. By the way, just in case you wanted to know, Ikea embodies many of the characteristics of the future. Who knew? Not me!

So, flew out of San Fran (went to the wrong airport, talking to Bunny of Chumby Labs, nice guy; then found the RIGHT damn airport) then ended up in Las Vegas. Weird place. Made my connection, then SAT in the damn connection for an hour and a half with this totally gonzo flight attendant guy. But it was okay. Napped fitfully, but the tiny airplane seats make my joints hurt.

Landed in Austin again at 5am, drove home, slept for I dunno, two hours, got up, made coffee, did welding class, and then did some exploratory shopping for my Make article project. Mark F. was all, "when can you be done?" He always seems so worried. It may be a New York thing, or a Mark F. thing, or maybe just working for media gives a person ulcers. I'd believe that.

Anyway, did the exploratory shopping (is there ANYTHING plumbing products CAN'T DO?) and then finished the work on my fire pillar thingy. EVEN FIRED IT UP! Oooooo fire.

Not as tall a flame as I want, but it is quite variable in its character and it does in fact color gracefully. I'm pretty happy, 75% happy at least. Not bad.

Tomorrow, Make project, Derek and Tesla; invoicing expenses to IFTF; maybe even tidy house some! Rack my ciders to bottles. Ummm... and probably something else.

Wish me luck.

Busy, more than usual

Now I'm getting about 50% of my tasks addressed at work as well as at home! Though maybe home is down to 30% now. Dunno.

Last night, Marla and I had a pleasant sushi dinner at Koreana; didn't eat too much, and went home pleasantly full.

I printed some stuff out for my trip today. Had a hassle with the printer on the network but it finally came to life. However, this morning I woke up to the network being down. Dang. Marla's machine backed up at 10:15 or so successfully; mine failed to backup at 10:45 or so -- so it died around 10:30.

My computer didn't Time Machine backup for 10 days or so; found out it was because the cat had unplugged our central server. Dang cat.

Right after work today, I fly out to San Francisco, then taxi or van to Palo Alto, to participate in a workshop for the Institute for the Future. Neat!

Hit ground on Saturday about 3am, then a 9:30am class. Then a nap, then work!

Gotta do stuff for the snake, gotta rotate the catbox litter; want to fire up my fire pillar (it's essentially together now); need to test the chladni plate coil design I have; probably more stuff I don't remember right now. Tesla parts order. Ummm. Yeah.

At work, I'm working on a technical proposal that could result in our selling some millions of dollars of this product I've been working on, so that's cool too.

Wish me luck!

Tesla Dudes

Spent an hour and a half last night hanging out with Oliver and Joe, of Austin singing Tesla coil fame; that was fun.

Oliver made for good conversation, and Joe dropped in a word or two now and than (and the words were good ones, worth remembering; I'm afraid I was mostly incoherent, as I often am in person as opposed to writing; my brain is wired funny, what can I say). And they gave mad props to Steve Ward, one of the inventors/perfectors of the dual-resonant solid state tesla coil (DRSSTC).

I'm sure out paths will continue to cross over time.

My first coil, though, will be a Dan McCauley miniBrute, just because I have to start _somewhere_ and this looks like a good enough place as any. Then I'll move up to something massive!

Heh.

Add one, Subtract one

Well, I _think_ I'm on a "gentleman's contrace" (e.g. oral agreement) to do a major Make article for March 4th (though I meant the 3rd, and they asked for the 1st -- it's all the same more or less). So this weekend I was going to do the first bits of the project.

Oops!

I didn't; so subtract one goal from the weekend. So, I'll have to work extra hard on it during this week, so I can get a full weekend on it next week.

Except I'll be a bit dead next weekend. Flying out to Palo Alto (they are paying me to be smart!) for a day; leave Thursday night, fly back Friday night, don't get in until 3am. And then I have class at 9:30 Saturday! Fortunately, Matt has been driving us, so I don't have to be too conscious.

This weekend -- class. The art welding class sucks down a lot of time! However, my project is turning out pretty neat. I tack-welded (so far) a flat-stellated (Stellated, but the points don't protrude) Icosohedron, and I made hinges and clasps for the bottom pentamid (pyramid, but with five sides) so it can open and close.

Inside of this platonic iron cage, I am going to suspend one of my large silicon brains, and I'm going to wrap _that_ in fine bell wire, and I will attach _that_ to ... a stun gun! Or the guts thereof.

I did some testing today on the concept, and I can get good sparks around the brain, and with the right spacing, there can be several discharge points that move around the wiring.

All I have to do now is finish the welding, mount the brain, and find a way to trigger the electronics so it doesn't run all the time.

So I did that. After that, I worked on the Tesla schematics some (learning MultiSim still, and entering the McCauley schematics). I think I will just buy his circuit boards, but I wanted the circuits too, to play with and to modify for later work. I was hoping to get the rest of the circuits in and verified against the part list, and then sent to my partner in crime (Derek), but no, didn't happen.

Then, Saturday evening, we had "old school" gaming. I pretty much played Mexican Train Dominoes all night -- did really really well for about the first four hands, and then did pretty meh for the rest. Ah well, we had fun, drank beer, and hung out. It was good.

Sunday - some running around to buy cat furniture supplies and new pens, and an accordion file for this year's receipts. I also wanted to get new grid pads, but they are really hard to find! The Office Whatevertheheckitwas that I had a coupon for didn't have any reasonable grid pads. I'll foray out again to the Ofice Otherplace and get some later.

Then, I worked a bit on the fire pillar thingy, and then spend a few hours building the cat bed - slash - scratching post (it looks really good; this is the add one) and then I finished the legs for the fire pillar. They also look really good!

Didn't get the legs mounted (drill three holes, tap three holes, bolt into place) but that will be easy enough later. Didn't fire it up either. Dang. Things are going too slowly. I hope I get _something_ done before flipside!

Between classes and social commitments, my project time has been pretty reduced. I'll still get stuff done, I always do, but it won't be as much as I would like.

But then again, what else is new?

Boom... ARGH!

Stoopid software crashes too much.

Been using MultiSim instead of Eagle right now. Yeah, I have a license for an old Eagle, and could use the free one, but I find the MultiSim interface is actually nicer than Eagle (I think, after going back and forth a half dozen times exploring) and has a differently-abled library of parts (less connectors, more odd inductors and transformers I think).

Also, it's NI software, so I get access to the full meal deal, including PCB layout, SPICE simulations, and other fancy value-added stuff.

But it crashes too much.

Like, about once an hour.

I just set it up to auto-save every 5 minutes so I won't lose 45 minutes of work... again. I find when I'm doing mouse work (e.g. circuits) I don't Ctrl-S that much; no hands on the keyboard! When I'm coding or writing, it's like a twitch, I save constantly. But when my MultiSim crashed, I was dismayed to find I hadn't saved even once.

Now it's bedtime.

Stoopid software.

Grind grind grind...

Ugh, the last couple of days I've been totally ground down by work, but the worst of it appears to be behind me now.

Mon, Tue, Wed -- I did about a half day of real work, a half day or more of just meetings, and then a bunch of side-issues dropped onto me that yeah, needed doing, but really wasn't what I wanted to do. Part of that was over half a day wasted trying to get the master stack to work, but there was other stuff too.

I fixed my fragmented protocol issue, yay! It should have tested clean on Tuesday but I don't know why it didn't. It tested clean yesterday when I poked it, which means it works.

Now I'm actually moving on to what I expected to be doing Tuesday -- validating protocol and conformance stuff.

Next week, the Shanghai guys reappear, so more soul-sucking is in store I'm afraid.

Last night, though tired, I went to Taiji and it was good. Need to do more, though; a bit out of shape. Tonight, dancing the Hustle! Fun! Aerobic!

This coming weekend I want to get the legs and fire onto the fire thingy and see how it behaves. I think I need a bigger blower. Also, metal class. Also, maybe, a visit with the tesla guy -- I may have to actually use the phone, ick. Also, game playing Sat night.

Tomorrow, a birthday party!

Oh, and I've committed to another major Make Magazine article, 'cause I'm insane and love doing that stuff. It's a project I wanted to build anyway, so it's all good. Except it is due March 1 or 4 or something. I said I'd do it for a due date March 4, giving me an extra weekend; I meant March 3, but whatever.

::sigh::

This day job sure slows me down. I need a sponsor! Win the lottery! Something!

Say WHAT?

Ummmm.... who is Cengage Learning and why do they distribute my books now? Oh, they have Delmar! But Thomson Learning used to have Delmar.

Goodness.

The things you learn from 1099-Misc forms.

I guess I changed publishers? Nice of 'em to tell me.

Sucktastic

Another sucktastic day at work... well, the first half went well, got my computers settled in, but the last half was a complete and frustrating waste of time, as the "procedure" to install the Master Stack (actually, several "procedures", some bits of which include various installers, other aspects of which involve manual operations and animal sacrifices; Shanghai, go figure) completely failed to get me a working install.

Instead, and for several hours, we got the same cryptic, unusual, and useless error message, much to the bafflement of my entire group.

Of course, China is on vacation all week.

Also sucktastic, craptastic, and generally full of shititude (since I'm in a mood to bitch) is SPAM.

Unsolicited garbage on blogs is a particular pet peeve -- that nonsense is the internet equivalent of spraypainting graffiti on your house or business. It is NOT TO BE TOLERATED.

E-mail SPAM is, at least with the advent of Google (may they forever remain un-evil), pretty much a thing of the past. Of the 300 to 400 spams I get a month on this one account, maybe 4 get through. And as far as I can tell, I lose very few (if any) valid e-mails.

Even paper SPAM is evil. Electronic SPAM steals my time, wastes the Internet, and so forth. Paper spam inures me to valid mail. When you get a number of stupid, useless envelopes from credit card companies every week, each disguised or generally mutated to "trick" you into "oh my goodness, I accidentally signed up for a credit card" (which is just retarded)... then when you get a REAL letter from a USEFUL credit card company holding, ohhhhhh, for example, your new PIN number or your new credit card for the new year... it's really really easy to toss it out with the rest of the dreck.

Almost did that just now. That would have sucked. It looked like garbage, but I dug deeply enough to find the plastic card (another bullshit fake card, right?) and then discovered... dang. This is my new Visa! Harumph.

Then there is the Domain Registry of America (may they forever rot in hell) who, regular as clockwork, send out a "OMG your DOMAIN IS EXPIRING RENEW NOW" mail to me whenever I have a domain expiring. Sure. At TWICE what I pay now, and to leave a domain company that I love and respect (DirectNIC)? Annoying. How many people fall for this fake renewal notice, I wonder? Especially as smaller domain companies shift and melt away with time.

Evil, lying, useless, filthy bastards. All of 'em.

Go learn a skill you retards, and provide some value to the world. Or go suck on a car exhaust. I'm easy either way.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh

Spent the day in the workshop today. From 9:30 am to 7:30 pm with a brief break to eat a bagel, and to zip by Lowes to get a few parts. I actually got my fill of workshop time this weekend, a lovely blissful relief from previous weekends where I got almost no workshop time. Ahhhh.

Didn't sit in the house and play with inductors like I planned, but that's okay. I'll fiddle with my Tesla plans tonight as I'm watching Zatoichi 18, where he gets caught up in rival gangs and/or is harassed by Yakuza, and he has to kill twenty or so people to get out of the hassle. Also, he'll meet and develop strong feelings for a girl or child and leave them so they don't get caught up in his horrible lifestyle. And he'll eat messily at least once. Yup. All 17 so far have been this story line. But I love 'em anyway!

Lesse, in my last post I think I forgot to mention I did some minor repairs on Marla's spinning wheel. Bought a cap nut for one part, and threaded another part to take the cap nut I bought for it.

My progress in my own project was excellent.

I made four rings (it took some trial and error to get the material length right for ring making) for supports in the fire pillar. I have two more "ring" starts that are scraps now really. These rings were loving welded into continuous circles, with decent size variation seeing as how they are 1/4" steel strap on a 4.5" inside diameter.

Making the rings, I used my roller-bender. I forgot, though, that when the wood storage (melamine-coated shelves that I use for various purposes) shifts behind the roller, the wood is JUST IN PLACE to cheese-grate the skin off my knuckle. My right index finger center phalange is now... skinless. Well, it didn't slice down to bleeding layers, but it still stings 'cause the nerve endings are all exposed. I wore gloves for the rest of the ring making.

Each ring also has three holes in it, equally spaced (more or less) for bolting onto the pillar.

The pillar itself has four pivoting doors on friction pins (one of which snapped off, as I mentioned earlier I think) and four narrow upright supports. I tack-welded the supports in today.

Fitting the bottom ring on the bottom of the pillar, I decided I would prefer to have it "C" shaped and not a welded circle, so I cut a 1/2" gap out of it, around the weld. Ah well. The welds were decent, but I'm not up to excellent welds in 1/4" material yet.

I drilled and tapped three holes for the bottom ring, and I have yet to actually fit it and clamp it on. Hope it fits. Oh, four holes. The first one I tapped as coarse threads, before noticing that all my bolts are fine threaded. Ah well.

I also cut the 4.5" holes in the top and bottom of my air chamber (e.g. a small metal trash can with lid) and rolled the edges to a tight fit on the pillar. Nice work, if I do say so myself (though not beautiful. Just nice). Also, cut and epoxied the air inlet (a lovely shopvac nozzle) into the side of the air chamber. It's ready for use!

The inlet cap is a 4" (trade size, really 4.5" ID) PVC cap which I cut about 1/2" off the end to give me more slack (what a pain! I may not want to do that on future ones). I then drilled a hole in the center of this and fastened a complex series of fittings into it, the end result is a 1/2" pipe rising up from the center of the cap and a propane quick-release fitting descending from the bottom. Once I figure how to make it less of a tight fit (file the cap, or sand the pipe? Decisions, decisions) I can drill and tap the locking holes for THAT.

What is left, is to drill and tap the holes for the top ring; to spin a (solid, certainly) ring as a leg support; cut three legs; weld the leg assembly together; and the assemble!

Hmmmm. I may want to make the leg ring separate from the air-chamber closing ring. Which means three rings per pillar and not two, which means I would need to make two more rings (for the second pillar). Hmmmm.

I'm about a half-day of work away from firing up a test pillar. That will be very cool.

Soon.

But now, Tesla notes and dinner!

Busy, tired, done.

End of day here. Busy! Long. Did stuff.

Woke up, made coffee, drank it, read my onlines, got dressed, went to welding class. That was fun! We have to use 25' of round material in a project. Mine is going to make sparks, I think.

Coming home, I ran into a few obstacles. My last few days have been all about obstacles -- the wrong documentation from Germany on the communication protocol (so much thanks there guys, mmhmm, let's get it right next time m'kay?); the Ethernet card blew up at the end of day Friday just as I had to do stuff for people, costing me two hours overtime; the wrong bandsaw blade size (64.5" 24 tpi, 64.5" 18tpi, 93" 14tpi yeah, I didn't notice the 93 the first time, good layout guys); my drill press has a 13" throat and I needed to drill a 16" piece of material.

That last one was actually kinda fun. I looked at the problem at first and said to myself, "oh dang, the drill press won't fit this piece of material."

Then I thought again and realized I had mis-stated the problem. The correct statement was "... drill won't fit this material as it is currently designed."

I took the drill press apart a bit, put it back together a bit differently, and I could drill my tall part! yay!

All of the pieces are cut now for the main fire pillar pipe, and all drilled, and even assembled. I snapped one of the friction fittings off (it wouldn't go in the hole; I _did_ drill all the holes, right? Mmmmmmaybe), but that's not a big deal. The mobility of the vanes is temporary anyway.

Tomorrow I can weld it all together! Maybe even make the tripod stand and air chamber. We can only hope!

I moved my ginger cider to secondary tonight. Tasty! Very very ginger. Had some vapor-lock problems siphoning -- kinda fizzy I think. Wasted a wee bit, but got most of it across. It tested out as about 1.000 gravity, and 10% alcohol on the vinometer. The taste test was "yum". Gonna be very very nice, and lightly sweet.

No Tesla work today, maybe tomorrow. Also, need to do accounting and maybe some more kitchen cleaning.

There's a Pendark meeting tomorrow night at 8pm, for a show he is putting together. I think I'll have to defer on that -- wayyyyyyyyyyyyyy too busy right now.

Less than four months to flipside!

But now, I sleep. Mmmm, sleep.

Dancin' Foo

Hustle! Fun music! Fun dancing! Just an hour, with standing around for lecture and demo, but still...

Got my computer together, the OS running, and the intertubes working on my new work PC. Now the long grind of putting my applications and data onto it.

Reading the new Tesla books. Good stuff. Between them and other references I can put together a plan this weekend. I may go with some of their circuits as-is (I can buy the PCBs!) or I may try to make my own. We'll see.

Ah well, more reading, some Halvah, and then bed.

Neat Toys

Last night I was fairly well zombified, so I didn't have the energy to move the ginger to secondary. Ah well, maybe tonight? We'll see. It sucks to not have limitless energy all the time.

When I moved the Sahara Cherry Cider to bottles the other day, I used a few neat toys borrowed from the Mattster. One was a vinometer, which uses the surface tension characteristics of the fluid, and an insanely small yet still calibrated capillary tube, to determine alcohol content (made less accurate by bubbles, sugars, etc in the fluid). Hard to read at first, subtle... but nifty.

My calculations going into secondary said I had 12%. When I hydrometerized the stuff going to bottles, it looked even LOWER than the 0.980 I got before (how is that even possible?) and the vine meter said 13%... matching expectations. Dang.

The bottling itself was aided by a bottling bucket -- a big plastic bucket with a spigot near the bottom. I think I want a bottling wand to attach still, though; the fat hose left too much head space, and I drained the hose on each bottle to control spillage and stuff, but then I had more air contact than I liked, restarting the flow from scratch each time.

The final toy, er, tool I borrowed was a sanitizer spritzer thingy, very nice, made it very easy to sanitize the insides of the bottles.

I broke a different toy last night -- the blade on my bandsaw. Dangit. Gonna swing by Harbor Fright tonight to buy a few more, this time with reasonable tooth sizes.

Can't do much construction tonight, Taiji classes. Sigh.

I want to build the fire pillar, darn it! Got some great ideas with Matt, an awesome plan in mind, and the hours just slip by.

Sahara Cherry Cider

Transferred the dry dry dry cherry-berry flavored cider to 24 Grolsch bottles that Tall Matt was kind enough to lend me. Hope they hold their seals tight, 'cause I added priming sugar to set about 4 volumes of CO2! Teh Fizzy!

Didn't get around to moving the ginger into secondary, though. Ran out of night-time.

Approaching the end-game of setting up my new PC at work. Just a note in case you haven't noticed yet: I hate MS Windows. Ugh. What a pain.

Oh, it looks like I neglected to mention I met one of the local singing tesla coil makers Sunday at the town hall! He's willing, as best I can tell so far, to help me out and share his knowledge! Nice guy, Oliver. Yup. He hasn't responded to my e-mail yet, but I'll pester him until he does!

My final Tesla reference should appear Wednesday. I'm looking forward to putting together my first design.

Whoosh! ummm, what?

Another weekend by in a flash! Saturday morning welding class, Saturday afternoon talking to a friend about Tesla building, Saturday evening game playing and social time, thats the first day!

Sunday morning, ummm, I think I had a Sunday morning; Sunday afternoon Scare meeting, Sunday after Scare made some fittings with Matt for his gas cylinders and we put in the cat door! Sunday evening, the town hall for Maker Faire Austin 2008. Whoosh! Gone.

Today, I will probably bottle the berry cider that is sooooo dry and tidy. Then I'll try to make a sweet berry cider! I will also secondary the other ginger, and then dance lessons later.

At work, trying to get my new computer up and will be doing... stuff. Work stuff. Yeah.

Bought a ticket this weekend to fly to San Francisco Feb 14 to go to a Palo Alto workshop on Feb 15, then fly back to Austin that same day landing at 3 am. Whoosh! Launch tired into the weekend, but richer and in search of a better o-scope!

Holy Cow!

Oh yeah, the cherry/raspberry cider is POW! BAM! YOWZA! About 12% baby, using White Labs Sweet Mead Yeast after just a week in primary, a hint of fruity flavor, not sweet at all, and the alcohol skips past your stomach to go right for your head. A week maybe TOPS in the secondary and then priming sugar (4 ounces for a fizzy 3.5 liters of CO2) and bottling. Oh yeah. Fizzy fruity doom. Yum.

I _was_ hoping for a sweeter version, though. I was shocked, SHOCKED I say, when I saw the hydrometer sink well past the scale, sitting at maybe 0.980 by estimate. My starting gravity was 1.072 about (both measurements at 70ºF). Ninety points down!

This White Labs sweet mead yeast (WLP720) is good to 15% alcohol or so, but I expected it to stay sweeter. Ah well.

The ginger ciders are both ticking along at a much slower rate (the fruity cider ZOOMED through its sugars), and will be awesome, I'm sure, once they pass on to the next stages. I'll put the last one into secondary in a few days probably; it's slowing down.

On the work front, I started putting together a new computer (2.whatever GHz quadcore Intel, dual 300GB HD for RAID-1, new monitor, shiny this, fast that) to replace the marginal one I have now... which become my new test machine replacing the POS I have now. Just in time, because the Ethernet capture program, Wireshark, TOTALLY refuses to capture jack over shit on my EtherCAT project and I have a powerful need to see these packets right about now.

Next up: Putting together a toolbox for welding class tomorrow. Yay!

Pet Peeve

It bugs me how the explanation for electromagnetic (and other) fields and waves are so ... abstract. I _get_ electricity; electrons, protons, electron "holes" where electrons aren't. All very nice, very physical.

But what about the electrostatic field around the electron, that repels other electrons? The magnetic field density and flux lines and on and on, extending out to _infinity_, interacting with other electrons, shifting them. And let's not even talk about the close-range atomic forces, or the pseudo-particles that are illustrated squiggling out away from things as sub-atomic communication... wtf?

At least with gravity, the mass of the partical is proposed to distort "space time" causing "dents" in the very fabric of reality, causing other masses (and their dents) to drift closer (shifting to a lower energy point by "falling" down the "dent").

But flux lines? Electromagnetic waves? Equipotential surfaces? They don't even PRETEND to have any meaning, it's just book-keeping.

I want to know more. What exactly is a flux line? What is it acting in, transmitting through, represented by?

Madness, I say! Madness! Our physics with its pretty words and fancy maths is all well and good, but we really have no clue.

Or if we do, it's in a book I haven't read yet, and I've read a _lot_ of books.

Burn, baby burn!

Oh yeah, the flame thrower worked pretty good. Looks even better on video than in person!

Article:

http://originalalamo.blogspot.com/2008/01/rambo-is-coming-and-were-burning-babies.html

Video straight to YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSxLqcJMCNI

Warm, toasty DOOM

Well, now I've done it, I've supplied a propane-fed flamethrower to Lars. I'm sure this will end well.

It's actually a moderately "safe" device, for certain definitions of safe, and the flame isn't too huge (probably smaller than it could be last night, 'cause it was two goosebumps above a freeze out there, brrrr), and the thing looks pretty neat.

I never did get action shots of it, and now it's out of my hands. The Alamo peeps took video, so if I ever stumble across that I'll link it.

On the "dangerous project" front, hope to do some welding and maybe even TESTING on the pillar of flame soon, and I'll be starting up the actual planning on the tesla coil and high-voltage supplies this weekend too.

Yay! Danger!

Brain Glitch

Amazing. I even remembered confirming my appointment tonight at Alamo Village, I even could feel myself typing "Village". But no, Lars was not at Village, he was at South.

It turns out that yes, I was supposed to go to South tonight, and Village tomorrow, and I actually even confirmed South! My damned brain crossed wires completely. Very embarrassing.

On the bright side, Lars likes the flame thrower (wants a bigger flame, though, so I'll increase the nozzle size some), and will pay me extra to KEEP it. I'll even throw in a pressure valve for the tank and the quick-release hose. And I'll still make a profit!

Tomorrow, by end of work, I need to make a decision about my lungs. Ugh.

And, I can't get Lulu.com to !@#$% process my shopping cart, it refuses to transition out of step 2 (of 4). I talked to their live chat support guy for half an hour today, but I think he was stationed on Mars, what with the five minute round trip communication delay we seemed to be having. Completely useless.

I'll try again tomorrow.

Oh yeah... life!

Video of my ciders bubbling. The sound in the background is the dishwasher.

http://www.simreal.com/make_apps/bubbles.avi

It's in whatever horrid AVI format my camera uses, so good luck!

Weekend? What weekend?

Dang, today went fast. I expected yesterday to go fast, but I had a lot of trouble finding the right parts today and that seemed to make it fly by way too quickly.

But first, a link to my famous eyeball scarf (knitted by Marla, eyeball yarn from insubordiknit.com):

http://www.simreal.com/make_apps/scarf.jpg

Yayy!

The result of all my running around is this flame thrower, which will be throwing flames on Tuesday if I can plug all of the leaks in it. By the way? Compression fittings on 1/4" copper? Leaky as all hell.

http://www.simreal.com/make_apps/flame_1.jpg
http://www.simreal.com/make_apps/flame_2.jpg

I'm using a combination of some random glue I have and epoxy putty to put the Seal of Doom on the three compression fittings. The rest of it seems to be tight enough for outdoor use.

This work, though, DOES lead to advances in both the dancing fire tube and in the pillar of flame (in progress, or would be in progress if I WOULD EVER WORK ON IT).

Next up on my ever-growing list of things to do: A cat door for Sparky in the garage door, so I can reduce the humidity in the shop. I'm still spraying everything with grease to reduce corrosion, but that's sub-optimal.

Also, buying two more books on modern tesla coil construction; the LAST two books, I think, on the subject that I don't own.

Finally, I'm tracking down humans in town who do tesla building, to get advice and to leach on their experiences. Hopefully.

Post-finally, all my cough meds of the afternoon have worn off and I haven't taken the night med yet. My lungs still feel icky. I've got just a day and a half to make significant progress (I don't think I've made "significant" progress yet) or it's lung x-ray time, so says my doctor.

It's Alive!

Busy busy! Friday, yesterday, after work I went to the Dr and got some antibiotics for my cough, and some powerful meds to kill the symptoms while the germ killers did their business. Nice antibiotic, too; just 5 days of dosing.

While I'm removing the unwanted life from my lungs, I mixed up two more three-gallon cider batches (another ginger, and a cherry to replace the one that never took hold) and pitched yeast to those. Now I have the original ginger in secondary bubbling it's little heart out (I swapped bubblers today and found the cork was loose) and the two primaries glugging away happily.

Ahhhh, the pitter patter of little feet.

Oh, no, that's the cats fighting. Anyway.

This morning was day one (videos and lectures, freezing our butts off) of the 15-week art welding class. It will be fun! Though it only covers oxy-gas welding (I had hoped for a bit more exotic, but hey) it will give me a chance to play and relearn my fundamentals.

After that, a quick bite to eat (I was dying!) and then off to Richard's to play games. Primodial Soup (Urrsuppe, in the German) is FUN! fun fun fun. Well, I won, so I'm biased.

And now night.

Tomorrow -- Lowes and the Despot, metal plumbing parts, and I build a flamethrower and some fire pillars. Maybe.

The flamethrower, while a BAD IDEA, I'm sure, is for a show where he was going to try an even worse idea -- fire starter in a super soaker. Egads, YouTube is inspiring all the wrong ideas, I swear.

Propane has _got_ to be safer than that.

Hustle

Went to dance class last night, first time in _ages_; it turns out that the Demand class most demanded was Hustle! Fun, hustle is a blast and the music is all kinds of cheerful. The '80s was a time of cheerful music, definitely. Disco was embarrassing in many ways, but you just can't beat it for perkiness.

I poked around my garage last night trying to find a flyback transformer that I know I should have, but it's gone. Must have vanished in the massive cleanup of '07.

I then fired up one of my Neon transformers; it makes a pleasant, quiet spark, and seems to arc and Jacob nicely even at 1/3 power in. I'm sure it will make a fine electrical effect, an improved spark wheel and/or Jacob's ladder.

I did some rough tests on a new effect I wanted to try, but no success yet. I still have options, though; however, I think the winning option will be "massive high voltage".

Still doing researching, learning about Tesla coils. Found a guy locally who wants to make one, and he has found OTHER guys locally who HAVE done builds, so it would be prudent for me to call him and work with that group.

There are conflicts in what I want in a device, so I may have to make several. An optimal Tesla coil is running at a specific frequency, at resonance, which is how it amplifies its output.

A musical Tesla has to vary its output, though, to make music; however, if resonance is high enough it won't contribute to the tone really, so then you just do modulation over the resonant frequency; that is, a slower musical waveform to gate the higher frequency driving signal.

Then again, different effects entirely can be had by changing the frequency and duty cycle of the driving signal, but then you aren't running in resonance -- so those effects are better done using a more standard high voltage transformer (e.g. the flyback I couldn't find).

So I'll have to build a variety of things.

I also want to play with electrifying fire, and the manipulating that with magnetism. This won't require Tesla, might even be do-able with just the Neons. We'll see.

Fun fun!

And speaking of which, this weekend I have an art welding class, a games night, work on the fire pillar, and I promised Alamo I'd make a flame thrower for them as well. Busy!

Cough.

Still coughing. My intercostals hurt. Silona gave me some nifty cough drops from Australia, though, so that's nice. I sometimes take honey, too. Apparently honey is good for the lung cough, too, and not just throat (sorry M for doubting you). I should probably see a doctor, but I don't want to... it does seem to be getting microscopically better each day.

This is Employee Appreciation Week at work, and there have been things like breakfast tacos Monday morning (yum), and some career fair/seminar/talk thingies yesterday. There will be games and parties and whatnots through the week, all good stuff.

I'm working up test procedures in the test database, and working on documentation of the test process -- not thrilling, but necessary. However, it puts off even further my completing the cleanup of the communication protocol, and the module support work too.

Didn't do any project work last night 'cause I worked with Silona on a webcast video talking about the LoTV Illuminated Budget project. That went well, and we were even fairly efficient, getting done faster than she expected. Next up, Rob will edit it together (probably) and I'll post a link... someday.

Bloop. Bloop.

This morning, the ginger cider was blooping in its neat little two-bubble airlock. Makes a GREAT sound. Bloop.

The cherry cider, not so much.

This friday/saturday I'll make a quality decision -- toss anything that isn't blooping (or hasn't changed gravity; sometimes they convert w/o bloop?), or if the ginger smells or tastes funny it goes too. I don't know if it's yeast yeasting, or ginger decaying in that tub.

Saturday, I remake and repitch anything that got tossed. I could repitch these existing batches, but I don't want to. It's embarassing enough that they didn't take very well, I don't want to beat a dead horse and get weird flavors; I can afford the hit.

Next time - no campden tablets, I'll just boil the honey and sugars and let the pasteurized juices stand on their own. I'll also be more careful about sanitizer residues, temperatures, yeast wake-up times, and so forth. Usually, even if you do a dozen things a little wrong (I pitched into 90ºF wort once, no problem) you still get LIFE. I've never had a dead batch before... so I blame campden.

Who needs sulfates anyway?

On the front of alive or dead, had the first private dance lesson of the year, went back over some Cha figures; it was nice to be dancing again! Also, got some actual work done at work yesterday, the brain is functioning again.

Yeasty beasties

Yesterday I had a bit more energy so I got a bit more done -- in the morning, cleaned the garage a little bit before going to the SCARE business meeting (at which I became Secretary on the BoD during the transitional government; gotta enter my hand-written notes in today).

After that, more garage cleaning and then I realized I had to pitch (pour) the yeast into my ciders... I used a bubbler aerator to oxygenate the worts (new toy!) for 15 minutes each and then I stirred the yeast in with much splashing and foaming as well. I only let the yeast stabilize for about an hour out of the fridge, instead of doing the puff-up-the-smack-pack wait of three hours, mostly because I forgot about it until it was 6 and I didn't want to wait until 9.

Twelve hours later, no significant bubbler activity, I'm disappointed. Did my campden tablets not dissipate and instead killed my yeast? Was there too much cleanitizer residue? Did the pitch from 50ºF (guessing) to 70ºF shock the yeast too much? Am I just too impatient and this is a normal "waiting period" before it takes off? I seem to recall that almost all of my cider brews take a while before activity appears, but that may be wishful remembering too.

We'll see. I've had decent luck with brewing in the past, so I expect this will work too, though there are a few new things I've done in this batch.

I also made two cuts in the vortex fire pillar device, and I have a plan for the legs and assembly of it all. Two cuts takes a while, this is 4.5" steel pipe with a wall thickness of about a quarter inch. Hefty stuff.

Sleep, precious sleep

Been spending a lot of my weekend time asleep these last few weeks, not getting started on my day until 10 or so. This really cuts into my projecting and/or housekeeping time! On the other hand, I've been healing my poor body... so I guess that's time well spent.

Yesterday I spent a few hours cooking up six gallons of cider (two recipes of three gallons each). Before that, did some kitchen cleaning. Then spent the evening at M's playing games and hanging out with friends which is always nice.

See, a quiet Saturday!

Today, some garage cleaning, some work on a project or two, a SCARE meeting at 2pm I think maybe, and then more of something or other. We'll see how it goes.

Saturn's Day

But not a day for Saturnalia I'm thinking, my head hurts... though coffee may fix that soon. The French press is steeping.

I made it through the WHOLE NIGHT last night without waking up in the middle to cough out a lung! And this morning, I only coughed out half a lung upon waking, and not a full two-lung emission. So, that's progress.

Yesterday at work I was useless; almost fell over from dizzyness once (well, off Bob's desk) and was just unable to focus. Yesterday at home I spent one of my happy shiny Border's gift cards, courtesy of my credit card company (the lube they offer me in return for the abuse they give me on my interest). Got the new Walking Dead, and a book on electromagnetism.

Beermeadwineciderstuff

There are names for all manner of brewing concoctions, from fermented apple (cider), pear (perry), honey (mead), and all manner of bizarre mixes of the above have their own names too.

I blew through one of my new brewing books (good book) and hit some highlights on various websites, my old Papazian, this and that, and put together two recipes for ciders to try and brew this weekend.

Tried to get the accounting up to date, but Quicken was refusing to talk to my bank tonight. Very frustrating.

(Speaking of which, this cough is driving me mad)

Anyway, I have the recipe lists and equipment lists worked out. Tomorrow I'll get my brew equipment put back together (most of it at least) and this weekend I'll make a pair of 3-gallon brews! Yay!

I'm going for 3 gallons instead of the traditional 5 because I don't drink too much, I can get faster turnarounds on experiments, I can try more flavors, and so forth. Variety over quantity.

Today, I couldn't focus at work very well. I drank some extra coffee (nasty work stuff, yuck) but it didn't help much. I did some light paperwork. Thought about a few problems. Went to the bank and deposited a small check, and got a money order for Flipside. MUST get the flipside order in the mail and postmarked TOMORROW if it is to be accepted!

And now... some reading and sleep.

Tired

Tired this morning... completely forgot to blog last night, too.

Went to TaiChi last night, first time in over three months! It didn't hurt or suck as much as I feared it would. Still had a decent amount of flexibility and I didn't cramp up or anything though my legs did get a bit shaky (I always go low, can't resist). Legs are a bit wobbly today too.

The first-stripers are looking to start practicing for their second-strip test already... and some are looking to me to help lead that effort (since I'm a third year first striper; most of the rest of my class went on to second).

Maybe I'll propose blending some second-stripe practice with the push-hands in the park I've been wanting to join... we'll see.

I need to buy some equipment and supplies like NOW. I'm a tad frustrated, though; I have several thousand dollars on my credit card that I shouldn't have -- vacation, extra equipment I picked up, more gift buying than perhaps was wise, this and that, it adds up damned fast.

Argh. And stuff.

Anyway, I think I'm done with the base-level research on tesla coils and high voltage transformers and stuff and I'm ready to put together a trial design or three. So that's cool. But that also means I need to order some parts soon!

R&R

No no no, not what you think... more along the lines of "Research and more Research". Finished the Transformer book, didn't have a section on Flybacks but did talk about autotransformers and other interesting things. Nothing about resonance. Ah well.

I dragged the neon sign transformers into the house and poked and prodded on one of them a bit. Passed some modest 5 to 12-volt signals at various frequencies and shapes into it and looked at what came out. Fascinating! Running a sweep into it, I could definitely see how it was tuned for a particular frequency, and then another peak at the harmonic up the scale, and then tapering off to horrible efficiency.

In ordinary transformer mode, I was seeing about 3mA on the secondary (output), with 200 to 250 volts given a fairly tiny input. Nowhere near the rated step up I think, but I was just giving it a trickle of power.

Sine waves were fun, square waves were similar, but pulses were fascinating, giving completely different output characteristics. Then I wired it up with the primary and secondary having a common ground (like a flyback, more or less kinda) and pulsed it there -- and got HUGE spikes off the secondary. Where before there was barely a tingle, in this mode I got painful zaps.

Fascinating.

Can't wait to start pulsing higher voltages/currents through it.

Long Dark Monday of the Soul

Ahhh Monday, that archetypical solar period wherein we each transition from days of relaxation to days of busy effort.

A long Monday today, but I finished up that draft of the testing plan at work (all 32 pages of it, fortunately most of it machine generated swill), and I submitted my Vortex Cannon article (and invoice!) to Make. Yayy me!

Spent my evening... napping. Okay, only an hour nap, but I crashed hard. I'm recovering from this cold, but not recoverED. Yet.

Read about a third of the way through my book on Transformers. Who knew how many fascinating types of transformer there are? I surely did not!

Found several fascinating (I hope) reference websites on double-resonant tesla coils for research on that front.

Read around the Austin Homebrew site on tools and supplies. They sell a Sake kit! Koji mold! Yayyy!

Just a handful of months before flipside... ramping up the mighty Edwin Powerhouse, I'll engage the clutch soon and launch out into projects in a flurry of motion.

Right after this nap.

PS: Got my bite guard delivered at the Dentist a few days ago; I even mostly remember to wear it! Not a bad fit. Good dentist I have.

Inductance...

Ugh, still trying to ramp up my brain, but my energy has been low still mostly. Like trying to pass a high-frequency pulse through a big inductor...

Yeah, equating cycles of depression with, ummm, one of the three reactance parameters, activity levels with frequency, and umm, yeah no. Maybe mental health doesn't map to Ohm's law particularly well; no Thevanin equivalent. Though my ability to do work is definitely limited by my cycles of (albeit mild) depression and various nebulous other factors I've not entirely quantified.

So instead of leaping about finishing putting the house together, or sequestering myself performing arcane experiments on my shiny new high voltage transformers (what DOES happen when I take a feed-forward transform around what is certainly a laminar, gap-free core optimized for line frequency and run a 1kHz waveform through it, hmmm?), I've been studying my analog electronics some, writing my last contracted Make article (Vortex Cannon! See it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX4-lI0B3SE), and trying to get my strength back.

Still to plan/do (in four overlapping threads: Flipside, Haunt Workshops, Maker Faire, and the SCARE haunt)

* Write a show for Flipside (who wants to be in a 15-minute Mad Science melodrama surrounded by lethal special effects? Silona? Beuller?). Ooo, tickets go on sale tomorrow. My money supplies are weak, but schedule dicates...

* Study for and take tests to get, and apply, and GET, my flame effects operator license

* High voltage, flame, and audio experiments for Flipside and the show above mentioned. All of this to be repeated (at a higher level of refinement) at Maker Faire in October.

* Implement devices based on above experiments

* Design a micro-haunt and break out a number of effects/techniques used in it to parallel past Make articles and propose a few new Make articles to fill the gaps.

* Propose and re-propose a raft of Make articles

* Write Make articles

* Implement the micro haunt (and probably some articles). I'll have help.

* Prepare ideas and notes for workshops in haunt skills to do over this summer

* Write the lecture notes for the haunt workshops

* Perform the haunt workshops

* Work on LoTV technology and architecture, especially those aspects that tie in to Maker Brain

* Experiment in prosthetics for the Haunt. Do the haunt! Haunt haunt haunt. We will kick ectoplasmic butt!

* Get the dance steps online finally, and try to fill the dang things out so they are complete. I missed my goal of end of year on this

* And, of course, the day job that pays for it all, the Taiji that keeps me destressed and healthy, and the ballroom dancing that helps keep me and my sparky wife happy.

Ummmmmm....

Yeah.

Wish me luck.

Oh No!

Ooo it's tomorrow! But I haven't slept yet, so it's still "today", right?

It's stupid warm today, mid 70's and it's freaking January. Of course, it was 29 the other night, inspiring us to buy a heating pad for the spare (outdoor) cat. Lucky little guy.

Took it easy this morning, and my cough is sooooo going away. Mostly. Spent a few hours this afternoon poking at the Make Article (vortex cannon) and have the rough draft pretty much in the bag. I'll get to submit it Monday, more or less, so that's nice.

Spent the evening at M's having lovely food and desserts, and watching folks play the Wii (weeeeee!).

Will probably head home soon-ish. Tomorrow will be, ummm, stuff! Planning for future, starting projects. Oops, the network here is about to get cranky, gotta post!

One of 52

Ahhh Friday. Was at work the last few days, but not "at work" -- a bit woozy from the lung crud still still. But, not coughing much, mostly conscious, did lots of decent paperwork at work, and went to Friday tonight. My favorite place, I think, and I so look forward to everyone there.

Tomorrow, party at M's! That is also good times.

Tomorrow begins the first weekend of the new year (of so few weekends in a year), and this will be a day to wrap up any loose ends (e.g. the vortex article) and launch the projects for Flipside.

Flipside tickets go on sale next week with a tiny short window -- and I MUST be there! I have plans, vast grand exciting plans, that involve fire, plasma, electricity, and drama. Ahhhh... but you will see, you will see for yourself soon enough.

Missed one!

There was a dance seminar last night that I really wanted to go to that Richard was teaching, but I was feeling kinda woozy from the lung crud and I didn't think I'd hold up for the duration.

Instead, we did spend a moment out about town, getting a heated bed for the outdoors cat so he won't freeze his bits off!

Then, I snuggled in to read Alan Moore et.al.'s "Promethea", which is quite a rich and varied work, the middle few issues of which are a lavish tour through the Kabala / Tree of Life, from an FPS perspective (as it were). Got wrapped up enough in it to have forgotten to post!

I especially liked his contrast of the beauty and _nobility_ of the higher spheres with the blind malice of the agents on Malkuth. That's a contrast I want to create in my Lilli story, when I finally get down to actually writing it.

Cough, hack, wheeze

The hard part about blog-per-day will not be CONTENT but TITLES. Ah well, I may devolve to "stardate" before long.

Went back to work today, first _real_ day back since before the Germany trip at December 10 (GERM-any). Didn't cough on too many people, this chest cold (or whatever) reserves the truly bold action for nighttime, when I'm trying to sleep. Whee.

Another New Year resolution is to keep my accounting up to date. I haven't split off my Quicken files since 2005, and haven't entered personal receipts since mid-November. Tonight I get a bunch of back-entry done and then I'll have to keep up moving forward.

Because I'd MUCH rather work on projects than do accounting, and it's always easier when it's small and frequent.

Resolution 2008

It's a new year, and this year I will blog _something_ every day.

Yup.

I expect it will be a busy year (last year certainly was, and I have even bigger plans for this year), but I'll try not to talk your ears (eyes?) off here.

Wish me luck with that.

I would put in a big chatter retrospective and looking forward post here, but frankly, I'm tired and I've had a cold for two weeks and I don't have much wit left in me.

See you tomorrow!

Here, there, everywhere!

Goodness it has been a busy season.

Halloween, of course. Then recovery from Halloween, leading in to Turkey Day which was replete with Turkey, Pie, and laying in a bamboo floor along most of the lower half of our house.

After that a VERY brief period of recovery and then Germany for me for a week, well, five or six days.

Preparations for that trip were fairly intensive, and I really did NOT want to go -- I had a house to clean, a workshop to clean, an article due on January 15th to test projects for, and so on. But went I did, and I had a great time.

Met some engineers, spoke my six whole words of German repeatedly (danke! bitte!), and puzzled out signs and directions and stuff with my extremely rusty high-school German. It was neat.

Drank beer (bier! Weissbier rocks my world), ate food (sausage! schnitzel! saurkraut!), and did not have any access to the internet at ALL except for a kiosk in the hotel lobby with a weird European keyboard. Okay, it did, but it was a Euro an hour (about $1.30 or so) if I bought it in 12 hour chunks or larger, and even then it was severely bandwidth limited.

Some of the BEST food we had was at an Italian restaurant, with five courses of meal and some very fine food it was. The outside looked like a total dive, but inside, oh yeah. Food. That had to have cost a pretty penny (the host company paid to have the participants eat there).

The hotels, which were quite expensive, also had some VERY nice breakfasts; and breakfast to a German is quite a different prospect than our sugar-laden American monstrosities.

Yesterday I spent half the day recovering from the trip (it's a 7-time-zone transition, and I haven't slept properly in about a week now, except for last night), and today I worked on cleaning the workshop and working on the article projects.

Of course, I'm sick now. I always get sick after a timezone-shifting trip, when I can't sleep right. So far, it's just painful sinuses and a slight woozy feeling. Hopefully it passes, because Wednesday we have vacation until the 28th and dammit I don't want to be sick on my xmas vacation. Because that would suck.

Anyway, I must be off; should eat soon, and stuff. You know, things to do. People to be.

I'll try to log stuff here during vacation. Because, you know, Oregon has cheap or free wifi. Not like Germany.

Bastards.

New Floor!

Okay, it's in! The bamboo floor is laid -- got it done, in fact, by 6pm Saturday, well ahead of when I thought we would be done.

We shipped SparkyLibrarian's parents in for the turkey holiday and fed them well -- and put her dad to hard labor helping with the install, but I'm sure he enjoyed it. We also had other offers of help from friends, all appreciated, but we settled on Paul because I've worked with him a lot, and he had a tool we needed. Heh.

The hard work was clearing the room the previous week. And then the other hard work was cleaning the concrete. The final hard work was laying the bamboo, but now it is all beautiful! Or will be, as soon as we lift the remaining blue tape that was holding the boards together.

Mmmm, hardwood (er, hard grass, bamboo) floor. Lovely!

We'll have a party or something later to celebrate... probably January. November is mostly gone and December is crazy.

Oh dang. We should probably move the furniture back into place, too.

Christmas Brew

Mmmmm yum. Tis the season for holiday beers! Yay!

My fave so far is the Anchor Brewing Co. Holiday Ale -- it's pretty darned good in the bottle, but it's far far better after a long evening of blowing up watermelons and then quaffed from a pint after being served from the tap.

At the Alamo Ritz. Which pretty much cornered the market on the draft Holiday Ale for this area!

Which reminds me.. Josh! I want my comps!

Oh dear, Marla's quesadilla is burning! Back to work!

Cold Kitty

Sparky the Spare Cat has, with the onset of really cold weather (we had frost last night!), become more aggressive about dashing into the warm, warm house.

Putting in the wood floors, he found his way inside SEVERAL times, oh happy cat!

One of these ingressions (transgressions?) he came face to face with Pico (our giant, yet tiny in our hearts, cat) and Pico marched him RIGHT the heck right out the door. Yup.

Tonight, he dashed between the door and my feet as I staggered in with a handful of groceries, ran right up to Pico (his sworn nemesis; well, at least Pico swears a lot), and licked him on the head.

Pico was all kinds of confused. Ummm, hey, get out of here? Meow? Ummm... he licked my head!

By the time Pico came to his senses I had scooped sparky up and trundled him back to the cold, cold garage. Poor little guy. I put food down for him and scritched him a bit and then left him there in the cold and dark, to wait for the bandits to show up and steal the remains of his dinner.

No Country for Bamboo Floors

Okay, so a SUPER BUSY week and some, just when I should have been settling down and finishing the workshop cleanup and prep for new floors.

I have NOT YET put up pictures from Halloween, but it's tops on my TODO list. Really. Soon now!

Last week, instead of putting up Halloween pictures, I helped out the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz with a promotion for the new Coen Brothers film, "No Country for Old Men". It looks awesome! I'll be doing a roadtrip, perhaps next weekend after turkey day, or may be the week after, dunno, to see it on the comps I'm getting for the promo work. I got a GREAT photo out of it, too; a pic of me taken by the Chronicle photographer who was there. Look for me next Thursday, by the way, in the Chronicle. I should have also been on TV last week, perhaps, on Fox and KVUE. Dunno.

I also understand that they are using one of the brain-blowing-out-of-gourds tests we did for the press on Wednesday as a "please don't talk" bumper.. "don't talk, or else" is the theme.

Oh, the promo itself? We, Josh (the Alamo South manager) and I, were in front of the Ritz before showtime, using a modification of my BoomStick, blowing nasty brains (banana and blood) out of watermelons.

It was fun!

Then, this weekend, we prepped the house for laying floors.

Saturday was easy enough; after a late start to the day (we needed sleep!) we finished moving everything with the help of Matt and Susan, and it was nice.

Sunday started bright and early at 6:30 am just like a work day (not on purpose, we just happened to be awake) but with nice french press coffee. About 8:00 or so, we ripped up the carpet and padding in handy little squares with a lovely curved blade in my box-knife handle. It was easy, and only took a couple of hours to strip the floor and carpet tack strips from 400+ feet of complexly contoured floor.

Under the carpet were some significant concrete cracks, and an apparent severe discontinuity in the middle of the house; either a bulge or the house is slowly splitting into two halves and falling apart. I think it's a bulge, after inspecting the outside foundation walls.

So off to Lowes to get some epoxy and seal the crack, since we don't want humidity issues under the floor.

A quick wash and we would be ready to seal the concrete!

That "quick wash" turned into four hours of scrubbing on hands and knees as we stripped up the two quarts or so of !@#$% drywall mud that the lazy-ass builders had left under the carpet. I'm not kidding; we scrubbed with TSP water (harsh!) and, after that loosened up the mud, we used a scraper to peel up double-handfulls of mud. Used 20 gallons of water, dumping the saturated 5-gallon bucket several times, each time with an eight-inch of sludge on the bottom as well.

It was brutal.

But now it's done.

Almost. The sealer went on really easy -- a gallon covering the entire floor, when it should have been four gallons. I don't understand how that worked, so we'll paint it again tonight.

Dream

Last night I dreamed I was working in a halloween haunt...

... it's been a week since SCARE closed up, though less than a week since I participated in strike, and I guess I'm almost recovered.

Now if I could just stop dreaming about it.

SCARE for a Cure was good -- we had good turnout (great turnout for a first-year haunt, which this essentially was); we made our financial goals (I believe); we scared the bejesus out of a bunch of people; and we had a boatload of fun.

After, I pulled props and materials from the site and helped tear down a wee bit; and then I completely reset my garage, which had become unusable during the month of October. I still have to tidy up a few boxes of odds and ends, but the bulk of it is re-organized.

Now, of course, we are preparing to replace the carpet in most of our downstairs with bamboo flooring. This, too, is a lot of work! Cleaning, moving furniture, wondering where the HECK we are going to put stuff...

With any luck, we'll be ready to lay floor over Thanksgiving weekend, with the help of Marla's parents.

I'll be glad once the grunt work is behind me, because I have a _lot_ of interesting projects in queue: a computer-controlled (or audio-controlled) vortex (smoke-ring) gun; improvements on the annoying damn fog chillers; the pillar of fire; and, ummm, others that evade my memory at the moment.

Plus, I need to do writing! At the very least, the ballroom dance step notes, which I swore I'd do by 2008.

In the middle of it all is a week-long trip to Germany, plus another week vacation in Oregon.

Blue Ribbon Badass

Oh, yeah, my "Flaming Halloween" display at Maker Faire Austin 2007 got an Editor's Choice Blue Ribbon pinned to the sign sometime when I wasn't looking.

I rock!

(and, actually, my minions rocked way more -- I gotta say it again -- Matt and Marla were awesome, and Nik, my son, was way more awesome and incredible than words can even begin to describe, omg. And, like, he's my son! I was amazed and impressed and honored that he was my family.)

Maker Faire 2007

I did Maker Faire, was the Flaming Halloween booth in the Circle of Fire.

The circle didn't get as much traffic as it could have, but we still had a decent number of visitors, did some lifecasts with the wonderful Smooth-On products that Smooth-On donated, and talked to a bunch of nice people.

I also stumped around the Faire and looked at most everything, at least briefly.

My minions, Marla, Nikolas, and Tall Matt, were wonderful, and their help (with the addition of Susan) at strike made it go quickly and easily.

Right now I'm finding the energy to get vertical again so I can take a load of stuff over to Scare for a Cure -- this long run of activity isn't going to end until November 2! I'm already quite sore and tired... and there's a lot to do yet.

Pictures and videos up... in November probably.

Four O'Clock

Four O'Clock in the morning, officially "dark o'clock" and the time when even god is asleep in his palatial hovel...

So of course I was awake and fretting about the the hundred pounds of casting plaster (Hyrdocal 105, I believe) in the bed of my truck that I had forgotten about in the trauma of the failed mold making (the eyeballs were down to less than half material this morning, I was very disappointed in them). And the new table I bought. I forgot to fret about the guts-prosthetic that was on the hood of my truck, which was good, or I -might- have gotten up to put it all away.

Thank goodness it didn't rain.

On the bright side, I came up with a solution for the leaking-mold-frame problem; simple and obvious really. Pour a small dash of rubber into the mold to start with, maybe 1/4" on the bottom, too little to be able to leak effectively no matter what the substrate is. Let it harden. Pour the rest into the newly created, hermetically sealed container.

I hope it works, because that is what I'll be doing with the brain next week.

Nik flies in tonight. Maker Faire sets up tomorrow. I'm so not ready! Gonna take a half day off today if I can....

I looked

I looked.

I shouldn't have.

I lost maybe another 1/2" on the heart, and maybe half the depth of the eyeballs.

There is roughly $45 of on my garage floor. The spare cat is not amused. I'm mad and annoyed and generally wishing I had gone to bed under the happy delusion that the eyeballs were going to be okay.

I need to make new, heavy, mold boards. Then I'll maliciously melt this !@#$% aluminum flashing.

Dammit.

Sculpt, mold, oh crud!

I've been slowly learning how to sculpt and make molds and cast stuff into those molds.

Body casting, I'm pretty good at now. I've found the mix of (bloody expensive) materials that I like, and I get great results most of the time. I only pull all the hairs out of my fingers when I forget to use mold release... and I usually forget to use mold release on myself. I forget mold release a lot... but the hairs usually grow back, so I guess that's okay.

My sculpting has also gotten better, I'm quite pleased with the results I've achieved this year. I have some absolutely lovely wiggly eyeballs on optic nerves, with bits of muscle and bulging veins and the like... not really lifelike but quite evocative. They will be wonderful fun to terrorize people with!

I've got a very nice heart, too. My current heart mold isn't really to my liking; the heart is too small, the mold is a bit fussy to work with, and there aren't enough bulging veins and long wiggly bits. My new heart sculpture has a bit more extension on the veins and arteries, is a bit larger, and is quite pretty I think. It's not _lifelike_ because real hearts are boring, blobby things; but it looks a lot like an anatomical model, because that's what I used for reference. Drawings, an anatomical model, and yes, photographs of real hearts. I'll be doing work to the silicon cast to put on fat blobs and other life details, which will help.

Finally, I have a new brain sculpted, for the same reasons and with the same basic changes as the heart.

All very nice. My skills improve each time, and I'm almost confident enough to tray, I dunno, a face or something.

No matter how nice the models, the rubber really hits the road when making the molds. I've spent untold HOURS making these sculpts -- art is slow, painstaking, and ... slow. I could even use another several hours on the brain and heart, truth be told, but I just plain ran out of time.

I've made bunches of different types of molds over the years. Molds from alginate, silicon, from polyurethane, from plaster, and variations of all of the above. Molds with mother mold shells made of plastic or plaster, or plaster bandage. Good molds, bad molds, molds that I forgot to use release agent on. These last ones make great doorstops, by the way.

In the process, I've found a wild variety of ways that the process can go wrong. Not all of them, mind you, but many. If there is one talent that I am confident I have, it is in my ability to find new and interesting ways to do something wrong. I'm slowly making my way through every possible failure. Tonight, I found a new one.

I don't have my usual collection of mold-boards right now, something that escaped my notice going into this tonight. Apparently, I slowly scavenge materials from my workshop over time. So after I spent a couple of hours mounting the six eyeballs, the heart, and the brain on their little posts with vents and so forth, I had to improvise when it came to their mold frames.

I found a nice roll of aluminum flashing material in the corner, so I snipped out some strips of this, rolled them up to fit around the three individual molds I wanted to make, and taped them into place.

I then took zip-ties and reinforced the rings, so they wouldn't pop open (I've had this failure before).

I sprayed everything with copious amounts of mold release, hopefully enough, hopefully the right kind... argh! We'll see soon enough.

I took bits of foil tape and taped the aluminum rings to my work surface, around the models. I then took sculpey, which is my favorite material for doing temporary work because it is soft, handy, and I have a ton of it, and I used this sculpey to add a ring of sealing around the frames. Sculpey is great for this; I usually press it into the INSIDE of the mold to seal it, but I couldn't reach (the rings were deep and small), so I pressed it around the outside.

Experience has shown, however, that sealing OUTSIDE of something is far from optimal; the liquid pressure will displace almost anything (yes, yes, I've done this wrong in several interesting ways over the years). So I melted up some of my very stiff clay and poured it around the rings and over the sculpey. This would definitely seal things together! I was pleased with my foresight and prophylactic brilliance.

Okay, my pouring priority order was heart, eyes, and then brain. I mixed up 4kg of the translucent amber polyurethane (pretty much a full bucket) and poured it onto the heart. Not bad... just getting to the top, another inch or so.... aahhhhhhh! No! My mold frame popped up, floating up off the work surface. I squawk in outrage and press the frame down to cut off the flow. Marla was fortunately nearby and she helped me put a heavy thing onto the errant frame.

My fatal flaw was that I had wrapped my work surface in cling wrap. I've taken to doing this, for easy cleanup... so I had meticulously taped and clayed my mold frame to flimsy plastic wrap. Apparently the fluid pressure of 4kg of rather thin polyurethane in a featherweight mold frame was too much for it.

Last time I looked, I had lost maybe 1" or so of height in the mold. I'll need another 2kg to top it off, instead of the 1kg it would have needed. At least, though, it's sealed down to the work board! And the board is sealed to the table, and there are amusing puddles of rubber on my floor. I may find a few cables and tools embedded in it in the morning, like bugs in amber... maybe even a raccoon, or perhaps the spare cat. The Zeller Rubber Pits! I could be an attraction!

Anyway.

While the rubber around the heart battled it out between leaking and congealing (and, in the process, I hope it was not causing weird flow voids or distortions to the mold around the model; I've had THAT happen before, too), I mixed up the remaining rubber, some 2.5kg or so, and debated what to do with it.

I could finish the heart, and it might even stay in the mold. The bulk of what I had poured was already beginning to solidify. But I didn't want to risk it, so I poured it into the eyeballs and it was just about perfect. And no leaking, I think. I'm afraid to look.

So, 3/4 of a heart and a set of six eyeballs. I'll have eyes for Maker Faire, but no new heart. The heart and brain will have to wait for the haunt itself.

Tomorrow, I inspect the carnage in my workshop and then I order more rubber.

And I add another interesting failure mode to my distressingly long list.

Kids these days...

It's good to see 'em taking an interest in the more macabre arts:

http://xkimjoanne.deviantart.com/art/I-Got-Bored-64979192

Philosophy for life

A few days ago I heard an interview with this man, on NPR or somesuch, and he was such a nice guy, so positive and cheerful. His father told him, when he was a kid, to "be such a man, live such a life, so that if everyone lived like you this would be God's paradise" (more or less, from my faulty memory).

That seems to be a perfect statement of how to live. Of course, we'd soon get into interpretations of "God's Paradise" and trouble with fundamentalism, persecution of non-believers (If they JUST LIVED LIKE I DO life would be perfect; we must force them to do so!) and so on.

Because people are, in the bulk, idiots.

Still, a good restatement of the golden rule.

Fire! And Firemen!

Well, I did my first public performance of the new Fire Tube last night, at the Alamo Drafthouse South. For those not local, the Alamo is the best theater EVAR here in Austin; dinner, beer, and a movie! And comfy seats! And quiet, respectful audiences!

This was the opening party and first movies of their Fantastic Film Festival, and featured actors, directors, George Romero, all kinds of fun.

Not that I saw any of it; I was outside trying to burn the place down.

At least, that's what one patron thought. Apparently, someone contacted a manager, all concerned and worried, but did not receive enough hand-holding and/or ass-kissing from said manager... so they took it upon themselves to call the fire department.

That was fun.

And, I'm telling you, I don't know how they found a fireman tall enough too loom over me while asking me pertinent questions. I was not terribly amused, but "yes sir"'ed my way through it all and was left with one more good idea to improve my safety setup, and relief at not being shut down. I was inspected by a fire person and passed! Mostly. He even called me "son" once as I started thinking on a tangent about my wimpy fire extinguisher, as in "are you listening to me, son?".

So he got into his big flashing truck and, as I was about to return to making pretty fire for my adoring public (many of whom had cameras, yay!)... he got out again to leave me with that one good idea... a propane detector near the display.

There was extra concern from him, apparently, because there was a propane explosion just last week out of a beer truck. However, I run out in the open, lots of ventilation, very little chance of buildup, even if I did have a leak. But I'll add that detector anyway, because I said I would... and because it wouldn't hurt to have it in the garage anyway.

Anyway, back to the fire.

Ryan's and Seth's custom songs (oh, I got some good friends to write music for the fire tube) did wonderful and beautiful things with the flame. And I found a number of really really good commercial songs that danced the flame too!

I have a test video I'll put on streaming on simreal soon, and I'll have to make a nice long video later of the final custom tunes and stuff.

Now, on to the colored fire column...

... and burnt body parts! Lots to do this weekend, corpses to make, fingers to cast, metal to weld.

Fun!

Fire!

Ran the new fire tubes at Dorkbot last night -- they worked very well!

Paul was experimenting with propane flow; less flow gives a better effect; more responsive. I want max flow ultimately, so I may need to enlarge the holes to reduce back-pressure in the tubes.

Or... more powerful speakers.

The holes are easier.

A couple of cell-phone snaps on Flickr:

http://flickr.com/photos/11447071@N04/1380733274/

http://flickr.com/photos/11447071@N04/1380733266/

More pics and, ultimately, video, will appear on simreal eventually.

Big Machines

I like Big Machines. Giant, steel, complex, durable, powerful machines.

It's great when there is construction going on near a stoplight -- I'll sit there in my little truck and stare at the machines, only to pull ahead with a sigh when the light turns green again.

In a similar vein, I like working in metal. It's soothing (except when it's lacerating my fingers, or burning holes in my skin, or something). There's something to be said for projects where it's an appropriate response to BEAT IT WITH A HAMMER when something goes wrong.

Oh yeah.

In software development, my opportunities to hit things with hammers are severely limited.

SO CUTE!

Came home just now and wandered into the garage to feed the spare cat (his food had run critically low today) only to find four raccoons (that I saw!) milling around his food place.

Little juvenile raccoons! SOOOO CUUUUUTE! And disappointed, because, well, the food was empty.

Sparky made some pitiable meowing noises from his sleeping box high on the shelf and eventually made a showing, but wasn't interested in eating any dry food at the front porch. Mostly, he wanted the intruders to leave.

Now I have to go see if they've LEFT yet.

Cute!

And hungry. Not really good guests in the garage.

One sad, One icky

I was in my driveway welding little supports to my truck's headache rack (after unbending it, so it would stay unbent; so I could buy 100# of propane, yay!) when some guy wandered in and asked about the neighborhood and stuff. Nice guy, thinking of buying the house across the street. But he said something that just struck me as... mad.

"Yeah, I mostly sit around the house on the weekend, I'm almost 50, there's not much I can do."

Ummm. No?

And... today, preparing to put some holes into some 4" EMT elbows (yay!) I moved one and thought, "dang, there's a bit of raccoon poo. Ewwww, what's that smell?"

Then I noticed the icky spot was wiggling... and then I noticed the dead rodent stuck to the bottom of my tube. Ewww. It was very dead, in the sense that it had re-achieved life... of a sort. Eww.

Threw it away, before the maggots could escape too far, and tidied up, used some isopropyl to clean the area, all while Sparky, the instigator of this little scene, meowed curiously at me. "Whatcha doin? I wondered where that went! That's still good. Whatcha doin?"

Eww.

Hard Work!

Okay, on top of Maker Faire in October and the SCARE haunt the weekend after that... I may have a chance to DJ and do Flame Effects with my new, to-be-tested-this-weekend Fire Tube at... the launch party of the Alamo Drafthouse Film Festival mid September!

Maybe.

Yayyy!

For _this_ though I surely have to get my Flame Effects Operator License... and to do this I need to learn some sixty pages of regulatory goop, take a $45 test, and then get a $50 license to do the show. Ugh.

I'll have to decide if it's worth it soon.

Home Owners Abuse

So, my home-owner's association is being managed badly as of this spring -- at the last meeting, something happened, I'm not sure what. I'll have to go to future meetings and ... be difficult.

Anyway, the management person tasked with enforcement is either an idiot or malicious, possibly both.

We keep getting dinged by them for infractions... that aren't explained, against guidelines that are so vague as to be meaningless; it all boils down to "what Debra likes", as far as I can tell, and I've stated in no uncertain terms that this is unacceptable.

With SCARE, the LoTV stuff, Maker Faire, work of course, and all of the usual activities of life -- Taiji is being frustrating, and Ballroom Dancing takes some attention, though I'm slacking on the book for that -- this HOA nonsense just put me over the edge; I feel sick, frustrated, and angry.

I yelled at the poor president on the phone today, but e-mailed an apology later... and a very detailed letter to the entire HOA board detailing why they are idiots (okay, I was more politic than that).

We've been in this house several years now, and it was just this spring that the HOA turned into assholes.

It's not that the HOA is bad, just the management person, and the CC&R is too vague to be of any use. Is this even legal? HOAs in Texas are among the worst, I find...

... so I'll either become that evil neighbor that abuses the rules right up to the very edge, we will come to an agreement and they'll fix their idiocy, or maybe it's going to mean moving. And I don't want to move. And I hope they don't want me as an active enemy...

Almost forgot...

... to write that I'm up to my eyeballs in Silona's projects for League of Technical Voters, via the We Are All Actors 2007 event, which is spawning the Illuminated Federal Budget project (ne' Transparent Federal Budget).

::whew::

And this day job thing is really cutting into my project times.

August 2007

Goodness, has it been a month since I've posted? It's not that I've been slacking, but I've been busy... though not with much that is newsworthy.

My Make debut will still be the Halloween Issue (highlighted on the front page of simreal), but is two articles and not three (one is being held over for NEXT Halloween. Also, my BoomStick project should appear in Make 12, the next issue! PLUS I will have an article in Craft 6 or 7 (I'm not sure yet). The final article isn't due until Mid October, so it won't ship until.. who knows? Make 13? 14?

It's interesting -- the Craft people seem to be more organized and "official" than the Make folks; contracts and stuff even. Wacky. I guess knitters are a meticulous bunch?

As for OTHER work... I have all the parts for the final build of a Dancing Fire Tube (ne' Ruben's), one of two. I have most of the parts for the second one, too. I do need to order giant propane tanks, and probably a manifold to split the output...

This new Fire Tube will be at the September Dorkbot, where I will be using it to punctuate my DJ skills (which I will cobble together the night before, I'm sure).

It will _also_ be at Maker Faire (see the simreal front page!) -- where I will have a booth! Yay! I hope not to suck too much! I hope to have the fire tube, ANOTHER fire display (which Tall Matt and I and possibly Philip will poke at this weekend), a flying crank ghost, hot-glue cobwebs (and my compressor), silicon body parts, a revived Stewart (corpse in a barrel pop-up), life-casting of audience memebers (faces or hands; Smooth-On is helping sponsor this!), ummm... and stuff!

I need neat ideas for stuff to build for the SCARE haunt, that I can incorporate into the Faire. I hope to steal some walls from SCARE, too, to build up my booth. I'll find out more ... this weekend!

Fame! Fortune!

Okay, it can be said now... I've been slacking a bit the last week or two, but only because it's the rest after the burst. I've got three articles coming out in the Special Halloween Issue of Make Magazine (check out the cover on my front page at www.simreal.com, then click on it and pre-order yours!)

Nothing too strained in this; a blinky LED firefly; a hot-glue web gun; and the classic Flying Crank Ghost. Foundational stuff, but I was a late addition to the issue, so there. Maybe next year I'll do some wild projects!

Of course, those three are not the end... I've got two more logged for Make and one for Craft, and I don't intend on stopping. I'll keep y'all informed as they come into view!

Other than that, well, this weekend is going to be some quiet time with my sweetie which will doubtless include lots of house-cleaning.

Next weekend... projects again!

Dorkbot 9 - July

A note for folks wandering in from the Dorkbot link: the root of this website at www.simreal.com is me! Also, this journal is mirrored on LiveJournal as ewiserss, and I'm on LiveJournal as MadSpark. Just FYI. I'll see if I can't create a better entry point for the dorkbot link for the next one.

Well, the Sound and Vibration demo, dressed in a Steampunk cloak of disreputability and branching off of Marvin Niebur's Rogue Bio-Mechanics, was a moderate success.

Nik and I worked up a fun story line talking about discoveries of grey goo and how it was a self-organizing amorphous creature, as a wrapper to show the effects of sound vibration in a corn-starch solution, a thick fluid (paint, really), graphite powder, and at the end, salt on a lovely Chladni plate that Nik made for the demo! The demos pretty much worked correctly, according to rehearsal, but some of the tech we put in place did not, mostly due to cosmological considerations.

Basically, it was too bright out for the carefully constructed projected images (e.g. slide show and video of the vibration, plus the shadow-creating flashlight) to work. So folks gathered around the table, maybe saw the vibrations, maybe saw the slideshow...

It was fun to set up, fun to do, and folks seemed to enjoy it. So it's all good!

If you are interested in sound and vibration, I have a few videos of my early experiments (I'm totally going to put the Chladni plate stuff up soon too) on YouTube; just look for EdwinWiseOne there.

Also, Google and YouTube for Cymatics and Chladni. My stuff is downright weak compared to some of the things out there (but strong compared to others; such is life).

I do need to create a better high-frequency driver for the demos, though; the ancient butchered speakers I am using just aren't up to the task.

I'm actually thinking of making museum-style demos of some of it; custom driver, clear box, the works, to go with the Robot Group's Sisyphusian ball-rolling machine.

This is my...

BOOMSTICK! And other projects...

It's been a week and a half. First, the entertainment news: Went to Alamo Drafthouse (goodness I love that place) and saw "Live Free or Die Hard" -- lots of fun! Boom! Pow! Sifu was there too, and assistant instructor, and her daughter; plus my group of six or so (well, M's group; she started it). Great fun!

Now, in a similar vein, last weekend I did design and shopping for the new boomstick (which is what I'm calling it now). This is basically a potato cannon mechanism WITHOUT the barrel to launch the potato, and optimised for maximum... noise.

I have a double-barrel-sealing design with O-Rings (darn it all to heck) that is as far as I know, unique. Most designs do face-sealing or a combination of face and barrel sealing (e.g. the Supah Valve). Mine is different! Yay me! And it bangs something fierce, let me tell you.

THIS weekend, I re-shopped and am rebuilding it with massive quantities of photos, because it's going to end up as an article. MOST of my effort on the boomstick project was shopping. I had to end up using PVC, which is essentially a hollow bomb in this application, so the final device has to live in an armored box for safety. That's going to suck. However, ABS does not come pressure rated ANYWHERE that I can find (DWV use only; no pressure; no good). Pressure rated materials in this size (e.g. copper, Ipex Duratec or Duraplus) costs ten times as much. That is, a fitting that would be $3 in PVC is $30 or MORE in these materials. So a $100 project would cost $1,000 or more. Argh!

Also, in addition to the boomstick project, we did a bunch of experiments in outfitting my scrap speakers as Cymatic drivers (e.g. vibrating dust, water, glycerin, salt, and so forth) and creating magnet-snapped-in bowls and giant sheets of foam-core and plates and stuff, for optimal display. This is in prep for my demo and show at Dorkbot 9, on July 12th at Cafe Mundi (www.dorkbotaustin.org). It will be fun! Nik and I have tried a number of systems, and are putting together a script now; it will be silly, it will be entertaining. I hope.

My current pain in the neck for the Dorkbot is getting an external camera to work on my macbook pro, so I can broadcast the image on the screen, so people can see it. It's beginning to piss me off; I may have to use M2's laptop PC instead (I've got an Intel cam and a mac ally IceCAM, both of which work on XP and neither of which seem to work on Intel OS-X).

Finally, as if that wasn't enough, we cut the gas chamber off of one of the Fire Tubes (see: flipside, Ruben's tube), made a one-way valve out of scrap sheet tin, silicon caulk, and an overhead transparency, and finally did a burn test of it tonight. It was much improved! I was absolutely UNABLE to blow ANY of the fires out via sound (which, as people who watched me operate it at flip, is saying a heck of a lot).

Next up -- cut off the OTHER end, strap on another gas chamber, one-way valve, and speaker, and double-feed it with double sound drive (both in and out of phase). That will be next weekend, and I'll make video of that.

All in all, a good week vacation.

Oh, and I played games with Nik, napped, and stuff, too.

Things that go Bang!

Experimenting with pneumatic shock-cannons... like potato guns without the potato. As a noisemaking device. For... reasons.

Make a simple one with an (off-label) valve and a pressure chamber and a resonating outlet. No boom, or bang, more of a loud fart. Not impressive. I've used an industrial quick-release valve before too, for similar results. A LARGER quick release valve costs too much... but there are other ways.

Did a test with a piston-valve (specialy built into the device) in a simple configuration that looked iffy to me, but the inter-tubes swears it works. It didn't. Work for me at least. That time. But there are several configurations, and a variety of different design decisions to make.

I manually forced a few things and the piston-valve direction is definitely very promising... got a decent bang-ish result.

Now, though, I want to use a design that incorporates o-rings. Large o-rings, but I don't know WHICH SIZE I need yet, so I can't BUY one from Grainger.

So I need an o-ring splice or creation kit. These cost about $30 and can be provided by Grainger or Austin Seal on Monday or so. Very sad. I want one now! I have experiments to conduct this weekend! Money to spend! Things to not blow up!

Does anyone I know have an O-Ring splice kit with 0.270" cord? In town? Before Monday?

The good, the bad, and the annoying

Friday was fun; tango and then west coast swing (both at easy levels, so I could focus on subtleties and not remembering the darned steps).

There was this one poor woman I danced with early on, who I _think_ missed the first couple of days (makes it harder to start, that's for darned sure) and was wearing open toed shoes (a definite mistake if you aren't very sure you can follow safely). Apparently she was even warned by friends about open-toed shoes, but wore 'em anyway.

So, to get to the ugly bit, I paired up, we closed the partnership, and I took of with a bold lead right to where she had planted her foot. Oops. That was not a happy toe. So, after a couple of timid false starts, I moved us to a calm corner and went over some vital basics of following for her survival. I really didn't want to cripple her further.

Seems she was told a wrongness about how to step back... she was stepping, with a definite foot plant, and not gliding or sliding the foot back. As I was trying to help, the teacher wanders over, noticing our little pow-wow and offers a nice word of encouragement. I was then able to keep dancing without actually crippling her! It was very encouraging!

We left a tad early from West Coast Swing to get to the airport in time to pick up my son Nik, who is 18 this year, by the way. An actual adult! It's neat and weird... it doesn't seem like so long. Definitely raises issues of my own mortality, and my father's for that matter, that I'm not really keen on addressing. It's good to have him here, though.

Saturday was absorbed in the Taiji Classic tournament, a dojo-only event still (in this, its second year), but it may expand as we get used to it. It started at 9 and I got home about 3:30pm. I spent a chunk of the time experimenting with this program I was designing, but I finally decided I didn't like the direction I was going and so I re-vectored my efforts. Ultimately, later in the weekend, I decided I didn't need to write it at all -- I could do what I needed to do without writing code, even though I wanted to write the code. It would be a side-track on a project that needed more direct action... not distractions. I'll still write it! But... later.

I did help judge one round of push-hands, and that was kind of fun, but otherwise the event cut a large chunk out of a day I would have rather spent doing something else.

I was a competitor, though, too, in the black-sash push-hands, which was done... last. Of course. In the class, in practice, I'm good; I am up there with the best in the class, and I enjoy performing the art of push-hands. But in a tournament setting, I get all wound up and I also lose faith in my ability to use softness to overcome hardness... instead, I reflect the intensity of my opponent.

My first opponent was a nice, friendly, but also very aggressive and motivated kung-fu student (who, I'm pretty sure, has done training before; he's skilled and enthusiastic). I lost by two points, but I should have won. But I don't regret losing to him; he did well, and I responded incorrectly to his style. It was educational.

But, by the format we had, with only four competitors in a double elimination, that meant by losing my first match I would then compete for third place. I was very unhappy about this.

MG, a wonderful fellow student, and a dedicated practitioner, fought HC, another co-student, but one without the same strength in push-hands. MG won his first round by, I don't remember exactly, 6 or 9 points or so. So he would be vying for first or second place.

My second round was then against HC and I won by 20 points, with HC not scoring. I felt bad about that, but I was annoyed, so I just... did it. And I did my push-hands correctly then, too; because I was reflecting my opponent.

MG the lost to kung-fu guy, so the ranking was 1, 2, 3=me. I was pissed. I got wound up for the event, and I should have taken 2nd or 1st but I didn't because of the ordering (I did better by points, though, but that doesn't count). I'm still annoyed by it.

If I'm going to compete, I want to win. If I'm going to win in a tournament setting, I need to practice that style of push-hands (which is significantly different than what we do in class). Or I need to compete a lot more often, preferably in cases where I'm not desiring to win, so I can learn to use the correct softness in competition instead of getting all wound up and reflecting the hardness of my opponents. I know in my head that is the right way, but my body doesn't want to do it. Or, I need to compete not at all.

Damn it.

The rest of Saturday was mostly a waste; I was pissed off, and my left hand hurt; it was almost crippled Sunday morning even, with the big joint of the middle finger almost frozen up. It's better now.

Ended Saturday by watching City of Lost Children with Nik, who hadn't seen it before. Wonderful, surreal, beautiful movie. French movies tend to be absolutely horrible, but this one (and others by the director) are lovely.

Sunday was a tad better, though I hadn't gotten quite over my annoyance at the tournament. I'm going to have to speak up in class monday about it. I have things I need to learn still.

Did some planning for a shockwave cannon bang-making device, went to the store, stared at supplies, realized I had made mistakes in my list-making, went home, redrew stuff, rethought a couple of bits, went to the store again, bought PVC, and did some fitting and preparing of that PVC. Tomorrow Nik and I will glue some stuff together, and Tuesday we'll either build more or test... with the final testing to be done before next weekend so I can do another build and document it as well.

In the middle of the day, I spent an hour and some with a nice friend (LJ user tia_tarina), making a mould of a Tardis Key; a fairly simple flat thing really. Decided to do a two-part mould out of body-double; the purple, slow-setting version, because it's thinner and flows a bit better. While the first half was setting (of a two-part block mould, cast in a bit of spare PVC), she bought Nik and I lunch (Sparkylibrarian wasn't up for food right then and took a nap instead). After, we put in the second half and, once it had gelled sufficiently, she took it home. It was really nice talking with her! I hadn't spent much 1on1 time before (none, really) though I'd been to her property and helped make a zombie movie there, and she's friends of friends, and so forth. So that was a nice interlude in my weekend.

To wrap up Sunday, I did the minimum necessary yard work for the week; did another test shave on the cat with a new clipper (cuts good, the noise is a bit more annoying to the cat), watched Zatoichi 3 with Nik and M2 (er, Sparkylibrarian), and now I'm typing this though I should be reading and getting ready to sleep.

So, good night all.

Bits and Pieces

Mmmm, I mentioned Abbott Ale the other day; yeah, my lovely wife (M2, also known as SparkyLibrariann on LJ) got me a dozen of them (Central Market, on clearance). This post is under that influence. Yum.

Lessee, I got the actual-sized Pachinko balls in the mail just the other day and then, with the proper load of balls in the device, discovered that the reward mechanism was sticky; it just didn't want to do it's thing when you dropped a ball into one of the little flowers or other thingies on the playing field (such as the Red White and Orange USA drop. Orange? Yeah).

Soooooo.... I took this little access panel off and found that one of the teeter-totters was quite sticky. Most of the mechanisms inside the machine are a miracle of easy travel, but this thing was downright stiff. Definitely not right. Unfortunately, to GET to it I had to remove a large back panel, and to get THAT off I had to remove a couple of other smaller bits, too.

It turns out that the screws in this 1970's era Pachinko machine are... crap. Random lengths, badly cut, really really cheap self-tapping screws. But fortunately not too hard to get out, just a bit tricky getting them back IN again.

I finally dug my way down to this teeter-totter and pulled it off of its pivot. Very sticky. A little oil didn't help either. So, looking at it under the magnifying lens, as well as probing it with a metal rod, I discovered two things. One was that the metal-to-plastic interface was cracking badly, though it was still holding firm. The other was that the metal inside the plastic had apparently shifted, so that it was slightly occluding the pivot hole. Which made it stick.

Using the flexshaft (my industrial-grade dremel-esque tool), I was able to grind the metal back a tiny bit, but it wasn't quite good enough. So I dug through my extensive collection of drill bits to find one that was a snug fit, and which STUCK when it hit the metal occlusion. Using this I was able to ream the hole out slightly, which returned the teeter-totter to perfect action.

A bit of re-assembly later and ... tada! A perfectly working Pachinko machine! Next up, re-wire it for LEDs so we can see the "bonus" and "needs-more-balls" light-up action.

Ooo, on a different note (remember, bits and pieces here) -- I got paid for my three articles! Yay! Simreal has money again! Of course, that won't last long. But it's nice.

And as an extention to THAT note, I'm contracted for two more -- they musta liked me. I hope the readers don't hate me; that's always my concern. I do things _my_ way; I have a philosophy of tech writing, and a sometimes odd approach to projects, and, well, I'm just still insecure about it all. Ah well. It does lead me to understand better why so many celebrities are crazy though.

I have some good lead time on these particular articles, so I spent last week doing research on the first article (a thing that goes "bang"; no details until it hits print, sorry). Then the weekend staring at parts at the various home improvement super stores in my area (dammit, but copper is _expensive_. Beautiful, but out of my price range; maybe with the earnings). And then home for research. And then out for staring. And then home for research. And then out for buying.. and buying. Lotsa parts! Next weekend... experimentation!

Also on Saturday, house cleaning! Shop cleaning! My son flies in this Friday for a month (of five weekends), so I figured it would be polite to find the darned floor. Such mundane matters often escape my notice. The kitchen, too, is almost ready, and his bedroom MAY have sheets by then.

Of course, I go through great effort to plan his vacation time so it does not overlap the July Taiji competition in Dallas (which I'm probably not going to go to _anyway_, though I ought to. I might. Just to do push-hands.) Well after I book the flight and so forth, my dojo schedules their own competition... for this Saturday, the day after he comes in. So I'll be at that event from 9 in the morning to 3 in the afternoon (dammit; I have an article to write; fire to burn; things to explode; a son to visit).

Tonight at Taiji, we did a bunch of push-hands to warm up and I did very well. So well that Sifu saw fit to push with me and put me in my place, and then instruct everyone on how to better beat me. So I guess that's good, right?

I expect to win. But I hate competitions; I can get all bent out of shape wanting to win, and that makes it less fun... so then I slack and do badly, and feel crappy about it. I just want to play, and to exercise! Ah well.

Push-hands is great though; it's my favorite part, and we don't do it nearly enough. I wonder if I can find other practitioners in town to play with. Let me know if you know any, or want to play.

Hmm, last night, driving home from Sushi (with our massage therapist and his lady, very nice folks; he used to do massage for Cirque de Soleil, and she was travelling with them, too! Some interesting stories) we saw a turtle in our street. We live very close to a creek, so that's not too surprising I guess, but this was one very lost, very large, turtle, bumping into the curb and looking all kinds of out of place in the roadway.

The wife puts on the breaks, firmly, just as I snap my belt undone (bonk goes the head on the down-slope of the roof), and I pop out and pick the fellow up. Ingrate, it hisses at me! Tries to swim in air a bit and, getting no traction, it pulls its feet in a bit. It alternates between pulling its head in and poking it out, mouth wide, so it might eat me. Poor turtle.

We drive around to the bushy bits by the mailbox (which is much closer to its home than where it was) and I drop it off in the tall grass. During all this, it completely fails to consume my flesh or instill any kind of fear at all. It's going to have to work harder next time.

Hope it wasn't a lost pet... 'cause now it's gone!

turgle

Calipers of Confusion

I have two calipers -- one dial caliper and one nice digital one.

I measured a ball bearing the other day on the dial caliper; I couldn't remember where I had hidden my digital one. And, somehow, I read .43125 as .3125. Yeah. I totally dropped the first digit. My brain was probably fried from work, or play, or it being noon, or something.

Sooooooooooo .3125 translates into a tidy 8mm (and 5/16") and .43125 is darned close to 11mm, but not quite 7/16".

It turns out that our Pachinko machine does in fact use the industry standard 11mm ball; I just measured it wrong.

Dang it.

Anybody need any 5/16" ball bearings?

And now I need to go buy some 11mm bearings... eBay has 'em, as do specialty stores. They cost more than 5/16", though.

Dang it.

Phase 2 of 2007

I suppose I mentioned earlier (I _hope_ I did) that I finished my school effort in the end of June. Of course, my accursed teacher of that last class took four or five weeks to get around to GRADING it... so I didn't get my final grade until this last Monday (May 4), and THAT did propogate through the system until I nagged the admins Wednesday and Friday. So, I paid all the fees and so forth and so on and in a week or two, in theory (though probably without some additional hassle, all praise be to Murphy the farking bastard) I'll have a college degree. Finally. Worthless piece of paper that it is in every respect EXCEPT that it will lead directly to a promotion and new career path at work. Which was why I went there in the first place.

Actually, that AND the fact that I want to get my doctorate in a few years, after I recover. I think I want it in software engineering design / tools / systems. The state of "engineering" for software engineering is still mostly very poor. But that's a different story.

Mmm, Abbot Ale, imported from England, very tasty. Thanks Paul.

Today was pretty lazy... I really didn't do much, and I should have. The house is an amazing mess, needs vacuuming, picking up, etc. It's really quite a fright. But I just couldn't bring myself to care (my particular mental illness... I'm sure).

Annnnnd I didn't write anything. Nor practice Taiji. I didn't work on the dancing-notation software OR the notes. Nope, not a damn thing hardly.

DID go to a SCARE for a Cure meeting and somehow got on the script committee. Ahh well, I needed a Halloween Haunt project. This should be fun. Good people, good cause.

And we bought and installed a new ceiling fan in the master bedroom. A simple enough project, in theory, except that among all the many various extra pieces for all the many forms of mounting that were provided, the two microscopic screws that tied the light kit to the fan itself were... missing. I made it work out anyway, and it should hold together fine, but it was a nuisance. It's a nice Hunter fan, 52" blades, moves a BOATLOAD of air. Very nice, very quiet.

Yeah, that's the good part. Quiet. We _had_ a fan there, but it made noises; cheap nasty contractor-installed fan. We're moving it to the guest bedroom; my son can suffer the squeaks for a month when he visits!

Speaking of contractors... the retarded monkeys that built this house should be ashamed, and perhaps beaten with sticks. The wiring is retarded, and... retarded. I suppose I could go into great detail, but my battery is running low and I want to read some more panels of "Digger" by Ursula Vernon. Very nice webcomic.

With any luck, tomorrow will be more productive. We'll see. If not, then I claim... recovery time. From the last couple years of school, from flipside, from... life.

Spare cat meets...

Sparky the Spare Cat has made intrusions into the house from time to time, dashing in through the back door as we go out or come in to pet him, feed the birds, or whatever. So far, the indoor cats have been conveniently absent during these intrusions.

Of course, the indoor cats make abusive sounds at him as he sits, nonchalant and cool, on the ledge outside the windows.

To see him in this situations, you would think he was fearless, calm, collected.

Well, today he made in incursion, DASH! Into the dining room! To be faced with two very large, very upset, housecats. He looked immediately intimidated, as the two mighty defenders puffed up to their mightiest puff and pico yowled his fiersome siamese yowl.

Marla just had to open the door again, and he was off like a dash, as fast as he came in.

Success! The cats had defended the home against an intruder.

We're so proud.

Big Bad Bug

The MT thingy did something stupid to my link. Here it is:

http://www.simreal.com/blog_pics/big_bad_bug.jpg

Flipside 2007, a series of notes

I’ve written about T-Shirts and Ruben’s Tubes, my disaster of the power supply, the victory of the fire. Now for random thoughts, in no particular order... and with apologies to my non-livejournal readers for the LJ specific markups (which may turn to dust when exposed to the true ‘net)....

The event all begins at the greeter’s station, where you get grilled in etiquette, rules, and preparedness, amid a flurry of lovely smiles and warm hugs from the brightly adorned ladies (in my case) doing the greeting. A nicer introduction could not be had.

Once on the main loop, Pyropolis drive, I searched in vain for my camp or camp-mates. I parked my laden truck just a little bit past the Zone 1 sign, where my camp was said to be, and wandered into that area up to the first group I saw. Is this Zone 1, I asked? They were not sure, but they did know they were the Beer and Darts camp. After going back to my truck, I looked at my map and saw that yes, they were right at the edge of Zone 1. There was a theory of road signs at all the dirt roads, but the practice seemed to have been diluted by torrential rains earlier.

As fate would have it, Beer and Darts were our immediate neighbors, though I did not know that at the time! Our camp was not where it was marked, since the site was unsuitable and a generous neighbor had instead given up some of their land so we could move. Of course, I had no idea what I was looking for. But still I looked.

I did what I always do and started walking, but I didn’t go far. Maybe I would have better luck with Zone 4, where some old e-mail had said the radio was going to be. I drove the truck around the road to Zone 4 and parked again. And walked.

After some wandering, I saw a radio tower and made a bee-line towards it. A drunken bee-line. Perhaps with a hangover. But I got to it and there was a shiny silver radio tower and an RV parked next to it. Had our bamboo erection somehow been transformed? What was this? I asked... and learned that it was a repeater for the Rangers. They did not know where the Devo radio was.

So I walked more. I toured the hill where the effigy was being built. I asked the help desk. I wandered around near the lower zones some more. I wandered some more, like a pilgrim in the desert (if the desert was soggy and filled with mud and prickly bushes). Eventually I heard my name... and I saw a person talking to me. Who was this? I peered closer in my daze and recognized... Silona! SHE would know! And so I was reunited with my family. As it turns out, the radio tower had not been erected yet, nor even the camp it would be sited at, which was NOT zone 4, but a tidy spot on the main area, inside the inner loop. Most excellent.

From the very beginning, and continuing all through the event, I was struck by how similar this group was to the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA, a medieval recreation group I had spent something like 20 years in). The friendliness of everyone I met and spoke to, the supportive nature of the camps freely giving information, aid, smiles; a place to rest, food, fire. There was that same sense of everyone working together to create something outside of the normal fabric of daily life, spinning a new reality for a long weekend out of nothing more than dreams and work performed in the time stolen from the daily grind.

On the other hand, it was also quite unlike the SCA. Not being limited to a 400-year span of history, not being limited in any way at all, Flipside was a riot of ideas and creativity; the only binding element seeming to be a fondness for bright colors, gaudy dress, and blinking lights. And fire. Of course, fire; a topic close to this old pyro’s heart. It was clearly a mix of many cultures, none of them of the suit-wearing variety; punk, rave, metal, goth, BDSM, any alternative imaginable was represented. Perhaps a blend of SCA, Rocky Horror Picture Show, and a Rave Party.

There was a high level of skill and creativity at Flipside, more so than I had expected. In most after-hours groups, there is a mix of people; some with a high level of enthusiasm and energy, and others with great skill. This group came with higher levels of skill than most, buoyed by an enthusiasm for the event and for life that bordered on the manic.

Of course, there is also drama and politics around the event; I could sense them, smell them. My aunt was (and probably still is) the worlds foremost drama queen, and someday I may have to ferret out stories of her for the telling. But the result of it is, I can sense drama coming from far away. Of course, the SCA, or _any_ large group, has this. It can be managed, dealt with, passed by. It doesn’t bother me much.

I, myself, reverted to a watching, learning, more introverted form, as I always do when dipped into a new culture. I don’t leap into the pool with both feet, sinking up to my eyebrows in the experience, but instead put a toe in, a foot, wading around in it. I’m not shy anymore, not even the painful introvert I once was, but I still enter with caution. When I return, I will have internalized it, accepted myself as a Burner and a member of the community, and will explore with far more gusto. And yes, I’ll have to return; I already have a half-dozen plans and improvements floating around in my mind. This time, I have to bring (M2) with; I missed her.

=== Missing Pieces

I had left the SCA when I divorced my first wife; she got it in the settlement, as it were, not a conscious decision but it happened that way. And ever since, I had pangs of missing it. The long weekends, the escape, the alternative reality, the creativity. A place to let my energy flare and burn out until I could actually relax, an uncommon event for me.

Even here in Austin, I had the thought to return to the SCA. And then this! Flipside fills that niche perfectly, perhaps even better.

And with the escape came the same pain and wrenching of the return to daily life. However, this time it won’t be 15 years before I return again, but a mere 12 months, and there is still Halloween to tend to.

On a more physical level, I realized as I was driving well beyond the limits of Austin, cataloguing the equipment I had brought for the third or fourth time, that I realized that I had forgotten my sleeping bag and pillow. And a hat. Oops. I then eyed all of the stores along the way, as I drove through Dripping Springs and Henly, with nothing looking very promising.

I was able to call my wife, barely, by standing on the right spot, facing the right direction, and thinking only pure thoughts, and let her know of this error. It took a few goings-round, but I left off with her looking for a family that was coming out to the event that wasn’t here yet, to transfer the supplies to them. Alas, she missed them. And by that point, I was not able to receive cell phone anymore.

I was standing in camp, then, that evening; between doing one thing and another, I don’t recall what, and I heard my name. Someone from the camp replied that I wasn’t there, but it was only that they had not seen me... I popped up and announced myself. A lovely lady was there on a tricycle with a large metal basket, within which was... a sleeping bag! And an air mattress! And a hat! My wife had somehow, magically, gotten them delivered to me deep within a sealed, private event. She had bought the hat and mattress, and brought our own sleeping bag and pillow, and set them into the willing hands of another burner who was just coming in. I didn’t know that at the time, and I wish I had something more than overwhelming gratitude to offer this anonymous lady who helped us out.

And that was when I missed her the most, I think, knowing she had gone through such an effort so that I might be comfortable there, far away from her. I don’t know if I’d ever felt so touched, actually, silly as that may seem here in raw text.

=== The Radio Station

One of the pivotal areas in our split camp was the Devo Radio station, a 40-watt transmitter with an antennae attached to the top of a roughly 40-foot high tower made of Moso bamboo. Yeah, I didn’t know what that was either. What it is, is fat, heavy, strong bamboo; five or six inches diameter at the base and tapering gently to just a couple inches at the top. It was split into two segments, which were fastened together with lengths of metal (aluminum, it felt like to me, though Jim figured it was steel) and hose clamps.

While lifting it into the air, the tower bent frightfully at the join, even making a cracking noise, as the lifters and guy-rope people tried to coordinate. Miraculously, it survived and got guyed into place, lasting the entire event.

As we were setting up the two tents, a 10’ by 20’ car park with walls, a lovely thing, and a 10’ by 10’ shade structure _without_ walls, a storm struck with fury and force. We dashed for the larger building and waited it out, as water dripped from the unsealed seams and flowed along the floor under our feet. It was then that we decided that the radio booth, destined for the smaller tent, would live inside this larger tent. In fact, we would move the small tent INSIDE this one, to provide drip protection. And thus was our radio station born, a tent within a tent, protected from all elements.

Protected from most breezes, too. Next year, I bring a fan or two.

Radio is the passion of Jim; and he believes in the power of communication between people. Not the corporations to the people; not big media blasting their commercial and propaganda messages afar; but people to people. Small radios filling in where the large ones fail. He has been involved in dozens of countries, and across as many years, promoting radio and the good it can do. He has worked with the FCC to try to budge them, and may even be having success, a miraculous thing given their entrenched nature! He worked after Katrina, to provide vital and timely communication to the people there, and he fought for and with the other radio-heads doing the same.

It was a wonderful thing, to see a man with a vision, as it gripped him and moved him, as he connected with like minds and with synergistic technologies (Max Solar leaps to mind). I do not come from a world of vision, of mission, or a sense of doing good in the world, of working to change it. So it was fascinating to see such a thing, and to sense the power it can have on the people around it. (Silona) has this too, as do (apparently) all the natural and adopted E. clan.

As for my own role in the station, (Tall Matt) and I filled the roles of technicians and DJs, with fewer and fewer calls to the might Jim for support on keeping the balky radio on the air. By the end, we were pros! Radio masters! Or at least, capable of making it all work, even if it did pick up a nasty 60 cycle hum when it got too hot.

I enjoyed, far more than I thought I would, playing my music on the air and doing announcements; blather sometimes, and warning of storms others. We kept our spirits up, imagining that a handful of listeners out there were enjoying our work, and kept a part of the event that they otherwise might have missed, as we simulcast various shows and whatnot from our neighbors at Smash Camp with the Glory Hole Theatre.

It turns out we _did_ have listeners, too! The station wasn’t well advertised to the populace, as the greater organization had a (rightful) skepticism as to our ability to pull it off. But we did it, and we did it moderately well! So next year should be wonderful.

There was one bit of magic and miracle that occurred, related to my time in the radio station on Sunday evening, before the big burn. I had built up a playlist that had evolved into a theme... a weather song theme, with these songs:

Little Fluffy Clouds (The Orb)
Sunshine In A Bag (Simian)
Only Happy When It Rains (Garbage)
Goodbye Blue Sky (Pink Floyd)
The Fog (Kate Bush)
and Ederlezi (Goran Bregovik, a song that makes me think of snow).

As the next song was coming on (Creeping Death by Apocalyptica), the sky grew dark and wind started rustling around the tent. Matt muttered that I should not have tempted fate by playing those songs, and he was right since rain soon pattered against the walls.

Soon after came the storm warnings from the Rangers, and people frantically watching the internet weather on their cell phone wifi. I played Mr. Blue Sky (by ELO) and entreated my listeners to think shiny, sunny thoughts, to no obvious effect.

Looking at the weather underground on a neighbors laptop, I could see a small but fierce storm to the north, and a large and even more ferocious storm to the south. It was as if the storm had split around our hill, carrying weather and grief to all sides of us but missing us itself.

The rest of the evening was beautiful, and the party and the burn proceeded without any further abuse.

=== Fire and More Fire

Fire is the central them of the event, and fire is reflected in much of the art and activity, even down to the magical fire of LEDs tamed and put to use in costumes and props, the cool liquid fire of glow sticks, and the ghostly shimmer of electroluminescent wire. Again, the perfect event for me. Shiny!

Along with my fire tubes (detailed earlier), there were a number of nifty fire gadgets that I will surely eventually mutate and incorporate into my own works. There were propane burn-off jets, of course, with bursts of flame.

I saw a version of what we use in haunts to make loud bangs -- the air cannon -- modified to work with propane, so it blasts a ball of flame into the air. A lovely idea!

Even more wild was this one fellow whose path I crossed one evening. He was busily pumping air into a U-shaped contraption of 4” PVC pipe. I asked a fellow nearby what was up, and he replied “Fools and fire, what else?” So I watched. After a bit, the PVC was appropriately compressed, and a lady came near with a long (15 foot?) metal pole with a large wad of fire burning on one end. The pump man then poured what looked to be the better part of a liter of clear fluid into one end of the U-shaped device. The pole teetered up into the air, he took aim, and whoosh! An enormous donut of fire erupts near the end of the pole and roils up into the dark sky trailing wisps of black smoke. The best fire burst yet!

Before the big burn we had a troupe of fire performers come out and surround the effigy. And there they danced, and twirled, and blew flame. Some fabulous fire breathers; fire poi; fire sticks and ropes. Fire whips, that cracked and blew flame out in a billow. And the graceful and elegant fingers of fire, weaving around the lithe dancers.

The burn itself took forever to light; the massive soaking of earlier clearing away much of the accelerant that was applied that afternoon. But once it did take hold, it grew rapidly into a fierce maelstrom of flames, the heat crisping our eyebrows where we sat at the very border of the safe zone. Some of us leaned back after a bit, to relieve the radiation pressure, but then sat up again to better see.

As parts of the structure began to fall in to itself, it would release huge swarms of sparks and embers that danced to their own patterns in the sky as they drifted... directly over us, falling into the crowd. But we watched out for each other, and nobody burst into flame.

Burst after burst of embers shot into the sky, huge chunks even, carried high up by the intense heat. Eddies of current in the sky, invisible turbulence, made them dance like living creatures in tight spirals and looping, weaving circles; as thick and varied as the great schools of fish you see in documentaries of the sea, only glowing red and winking far overhead. That, for me, was the most beautiful part of the burn, not the fire itself, but the patterns of spark it made against the night sky.

=== Random Bits

Spin Camp, where they had thirty or forty (or more!) gallons of methanol, some of it soaked with metallic salts, dispersed into an array of squeeze containers. They had built elaborate patterns and structures out of porous fire brick, and soaked bits of it in the methanol as night fell. And then the lit it, creating a backdrop of fire, on and in front of which they poured out more liquid flame in many colors, weaving patterns on the road and painting graceful swaths of color along the bricks. Brilliant, beautiful. A pity I only caught a small part of one show.

Giant Scary Bug. One morning, bleary and staggering, we walked into the radio station only to find the ugliest bug I’ve ever seen. It looked at us threateningly and sat there, intimidating, unwilling to budge an inch. Jim picked it up on some cardboard we were using for a sign and, after being unable to get anyone who could identify it, went around and chased girls with it. Or something. Before that, though, he took a picture, which my brilliant resident librarian was able to use to identify it as a Dobsonfly. Harmless, but hideous. And huge.

Ish Tranquiloungers. I felt really crappy pretty much all day Saturday, which probably acted to dampen my outgoing tendencies. But during that day, I finally found my way into Ish, and laid down briefly upon one of their Tranquiloungers. Ahhhh, it was wonderful. A lazy fuzzy surface, long like a bench but shaped in the natural curves of a lazy-boy recliner, it supported and relaxed the body. To enhance this natural perfection, they were fitted with Bass Shakers, so they vibrated and thumped rhythmically in time with the ever-present music.

Smash Camp, Glory Hole Theater, and Max Solar. The radio was set up next to Smash Camp. Inside the Smash dome was the Glory Hole Theatre. To the other side of us was Max Solar. Max Solar provided the (solar-sourced, of course) power to drive the radio transmitter and equipment related to that. Smash provided the power for the fire tubes and their equipment, plus sound feeds of music during the evening. Glory Hole Theatre provided even more content for the radio, with concerts, Karaoke Puppet Theatre (which was a hoot!), and even a rock opera. I don’t know the associations of everyone that performed on that stage, but it was delightful.

The rock opera deserves special mention; it was indescribable, but very well done, and an example where there was more skill brought into play than I would have expected.

Recognizing folks. I recognized more people as I wandered the event than I would have expected. Sure, most of them were people I only knew distantly, via the Friday crowd, but still. It lent the event an air of comfort and familiarity.

And this, I think, is all that I have to say about this event.

Fire Tubes

I did three things for Flipside... I made fire tubes that dance to music, I made blinky lights patterned after fireflies, and I made some neat t-shirts. I already talked about the t-shirts. I'm not GOING to talk about the fireflies until that article comes out...

...so here is a look at the tubes!

Fire Tubes

I am going to assemble a lot of still pictures and how-to stuff on my website soon (ish) about the tubes. They are dead simple, but very pretty to watch. Improvements this coming year will make them even better, I hope!

The first two nights, I burned through four 20-pound propane tanks, slowly and frustratingly, as they froze up and lost pressure repeatedly. Short nights both, really, Friday and Saturday. But still, the tubes got a pretty good response, and people liked them. I used the quick-release junctions to good effect, rotating the half-full tanks into service every ten minutes or so.

Sunday night, K. offered up two 100-pound tanks, each of which was about 1/3 full (from what I could tell from the frost that soon formed on them). These tanks provided wonderful performance, and are in use in the video above.

I ran for _hours_ Sunday night. People watched the flames. I swear I heard cheering that coincided to particular flame actions, but I can't be sure since most of the audience was masked from my view.

People danced near the flames; one graceful lady (known to , it turns out; a fire dancer who I also saw before the big burn) was especially entrancing. The flames were used in ritual (one man offered up what looked like strips of mushroom to the flames before ingesting and moving on). People thawed out and dried off with the flames. People played in the flames. Nobody got hurt! Well, I did make the flames jump once and fried the arm hair off of one fellow, but he was okay.

All in all, it was wonderful, to be able to contribute to the experience of so many people. I love fire, and to play with fire for so many hours, and provide fire for other pyros, was a good thing.

Everything worked perfectly, too, with the tubes standing up to wind, rain, drunk people, bugs nesting in the stands, everything! I covered the speakers with plastic bags and taped over the holes (or rotated the tubes so the holes faced down) when it rained.

The HVAC metal, thin galvanized steel, held up to many hours of continuous burning. The top got hot, but the bottom never got too hot to touch; and the expansion chamber by the speaker was always cool (helped, no doubt, by the icy propane constantly flowing into it).

There was one moment of sheer panic Sunday night, maybe a half hour into the performance of the tubes. At one point I noticed that the cross-fader wasn't working on my mixing board; I would kick it over to tone to make the flame jump, just playing with it, and there would be a delay in the response. After a few times of this, it seemed like the signal wasn't getting to the tubes at all, in either music or tone positions!

My particular mixing board is known to have a weak point in the cross-fader; this part is easily replaceable for a few dollars, so not really a big problem. But if it had failed NOW, and me with no spare part... I was worried! I had a lot of propane to burn through that night, and if the flames just _stood_ their like ordinary fire... I would be mortified! Hundreds of people could walk by and see my failure!

As I was working up a good panic, my eye alighted on the dials of my lovely new power supply; the power supply that was feeding 12 volts to the car-audio amplifier. The voltage needle was pegged above the 15 volt mark. The amp needle was at zero. Fifteen volts! My amplifier! Had I killed it? Did someone bump the voltage knob? But no, amps were at zero...

I fiddled with the knob. I turned it on and off. I turned off the amplifier. Nothing changed.

Maybe the power supply just died, and everything else was okay. The lights on the amp looked good, after all. Now that I think of it, I don't know why there WERE lights on the amp. Eerie.

I leapt into action! Screwdriver in one hand, I took the power supply off the amp. I rifled through boxes, desperately looking for my battery, my charger, and something else that I couldn't find and now I don't remember what it was. But I found it. Sliding the battery under the table, I took the wires from the junction bar (you don't want to know the makeup of this frankenstein contraption, really) and screwed them into the power studs of the amp. Jumpering the battery to the charger, I click it on and heard a satisfied hum from its transformer.

All good. I turn on the amplifier again and... it worked!

Now I just have to return this defective, broken, cheap, abused, power supply. It _should_ have been able to take the jumps in current draw! It never said to NOT pound it from 1A to 15A as the audio thumped away. Nope. Not that I saw.

But it killed it good.

And yet the show went on.

Easier T-Shirt Links

Are here:

http://www.simreal.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Art_and_Craft

For the record, the good comments were on the tie-dyed T-Shirts. I didn't wear the eyes much.

T-Shirts

I loved it this weekend when Tall Matt commented to a very drunk man that he (Matt) was a hippy (in his tie-dye) and I was, however, an anti-hippy. The drunk guy was all, "what?", peering at us cross-eyed. "Yes", Matt continued; "I put color into my clothes, and he took it out!".

At Flipside, brightness and color abound, and there are many wild and lovely costumes created by the many talented people who came there. In this throng of vivid display, I expected my black shorts and black bleached T-Shirts to pass through essentially unnoticed. Instead, I did in fact receive a few very nice compliments on them!

Here they are, in their final form (except for the Red Eye shirt; the bleached areas just seemed sad and lonely on that one, so I went over them with the metalic red ink stick after this picture was taken):

http://www.simreal.com/blog_pics/shirt_b1clr.jpg
http://www.simreal.com/blog_pics/shirt_b2clr.jpg
http://www.simreal.com/blog_pics/shirt_b3clr.jpg
http://www.simreal.com/blog_pics/shirt_b4clr.jpg
http://www.simreal.com/blog_pics/shirt_b5clr.jpg

Todo: Burning Flipside

Just got back ("just" meaning "two and a half hours ago") from Burning Flipside here in Austin (okay, near Dripping Springs, across from Pedernal(mumble) State Park) and I'm not gonna blog it now.

I did have a large role in both the radio station at the event and a large fire attraction attached to a major camp on the inner loop, though, and I have a lot to talk about.

Later. Maybe next week.

No pictures. Sorry.

Okay, some video of my fire tubes.

Multiplied Projects

I learned during the Boris project that, while creating ONE of something may not be a big deal, when you put a multiplier in front of the project it gets considerably harder. For Boris it was six -- six legs, six controllers, etc. Times six isn't so bad.

My project time in May has been dominated by the creation of electronic fireflies. They look like this:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=mTa98ezlkEA

A simple little project. One chip, on which is soldered three resistors, a capacitor, an LED, two jumpers, and two power leads.

I, of course, thought it would be neat to have fireflies in our camp! Fireflies are neat! More fireflies are NEATER! So I decided to make 100 of 'em. I'm actually making 105. What do 105 firefly circuits look like? Here you go:

http://www.simreal.com/blog_pics/firefly_bits.jpg

Each pile represens a patricular timing and LED color. I intend to wire them to batteries in bundles of 5 using 210 wires. Making 210 wires takes about two hours, by the way:

http://www.simreal.com/blog_pics/firefly_wires.jpg

But, once I solder the wires to the bits tonight, they will be very very cool. Assuming most of them work. And I don't run out of time. Tonight is ALSO the night I MUST video the working ruben's tubes, if I am to get documentation of that project at all.

Oooooooooo I'm also making T-Shirts using a new process. Dye release! I did a test using a chemical dye release a week or so ago, but I couldn't _see_ the action during the soaking of the material. The release occurs during steaming, a post process, so that experiment went very minimally.

Last weekend, though, I used bleach; pretty much straight up, so I could watch it work. To keep it from eating the fabric entirely, we use a bleach-stop deactivator soak once it reaches the desired intensity.

The two tie-dye shirts show both patterns; the lame dye release and teh somewhat better bleach process.

I did two tie-dye process shirts and three stencils of eyes that I made from images I stole from the intar-tubes. These are just backgrounds for additional color work that is in progress (and which promises to be extremely awesome; pictures to follow later):

http://www.simreal.com/blog_pics/shirt_b1.jpg
http://www.simreal.com/blog_pics/shirt_b2.jpg
http://www.simreal.com/blog_pics/shirt_b3.jpg
http://www.simreal.com/blog_pics/shirt_b4.jpg
http://www.simreal.com/blog_pics/shirt_b5.jpg

Okay, back to work for me.

Animal Magnetism

I've been doing a BUNCH of fiddly electronics circuit work with surface-mount components (e.g. itty bitty teeny tiny specks of circuit). To do the manipulations on these components, I use a pair of fine-tipped tweezers.

At one point, I found the resistors sticking to the tips of them. I figured, dang, the liquid flux is building up. So I cleaned them.

But it didn't get better.

In fact, over time, it's been getting worse.

Finally, I did some tests.

My tweezers are... magnetic!

They were most definitely NOT magnetic when I started. It seems that the more I am using these tweezers, the more magnetized they become.

I have absolutely no explanation for this, nor can I think of a mechanism that would cause this.

Except, of course, for influence of my own magnetic personality.

Mr Danger!

Oh yeah, I was gonna blog this, and I forgot :)

We have a rule around the house, "no hurting yourself." A broad rule, and apparently self-evident, but its very existence should tell you something.

It's not like I _try_ to hurt myself. Sometimes, though, things just happen...

Like Saturday evening, over at Tall Matt's place.

Mixed up some dye release to experiment with, a nasty smelly substance made with hot water. Mixed it up in a bottle, moved it to the workshop. After a while, we put the tight cap on it so it wouldn't spill if knocked over; usual stuff.

Later I opened it and spritz! A faceful (well, edge of face) of caustic chemicals! The temp should have peaked before we capped it, it should NOT have pressurized, but there you have it. My glasses protected my eye, but I spent a few moments rinsing the right side of my head off.

After doing the test thingy, I set it all aside to set. We decided to try to iron the chemicals because they need heat to activate, so Susan got her old iron out. I flick it on and poke it at the shirt, getting a nice sizzle out of it, but no obvious change yet. I rest my left hand on the ironing board and my fingers do the sixty cycle dance! This iron isn't grounded! It is, in fact, leaking electrons! We promptly throw it away.

Okayyy then. Plan B is we steam the shirts. After a bit of steaming time, I lift the lid off, but the silly thing is unbalanced, tips, and tries to burn my arm.

I survived it all, but you can see how the forces of evil try to defeat me around every corner. I must remain alert! The inanimate objects have it in for me!

I'm old now

Well, I'm no longer the answer to the universe -- 42 -- but I guess that's okay.

Had a decent birthday, did stuff, ate chocolate for a couple of days, it's all good.

I really need to get into the habit of posting again here! Trivia I suppose, random life events. I like reading the stuff other people post, just getting a sense that they are alive and doing stuff. Even trivial stuff.

Went to see Hot Fuzz a couple weekends back, and THAT was great fun! These folks do great work, and I'm looking forward to more of it in the future.

I haven't been able to play with my Poi hardly at all, so that's sad. Spent a bunch of time both weekends since my LAST post working on firefly circuits, and a dead-bug construction for an LED sequencer for Tall Matt. It's a very simple circuit -- 555 timer driving a counter driving a demultiplexer -- but the dead-bug construction technique (everything soldered together in space) makes it an intricate exercise in steady hands.

Next year -- circuit boards. More expensive, but dang, a lot easier to fab.

Dorkbot last week wasn't bad but a tad weak. Needed more fire. I was going to put together a cornstarch alien creature device, but didn't find time to perfect it; someone else did it instead it turns out! Mine would have been better, of course (hehehe, okay, maybe not). NEXT dorkbot, I will do a more involved cymatics/chladni/cornstarch demo I think, one-up him. Gotta find the time. Sofia's speakers will come in handy for that, too. Also, I will convert a hard drive voice coil to drive a chladni plate I think.

Fun fun fun!

Still no grade for my CS class. I'm beginning to get annoyed. Also, no word back from the tech mag for more article. I want to write more!

Time flies

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

I don't know WHAT I've done since the last few posts, but it's been a couple of weeks so I'll take a stab at it.

I finished the third of three articles for a geek tech magazine; simple stuff, nothing earth-shaking, but excellent exposure. And they have a very reasonable pay scale. I hope to become a reguler contributor, if they will have me. Never fear, I'll promote the heck out of my issue once it gets closer!

I finished my biology class and got a grade for it. The teacher wanted me to pad my essay with more bullshit (as best I could tell), but I refused to do this, tidied it up a bit (fixing the real issues), and re-submitted insisting I was done. I got an A in the class! Yay me!

Now if only the !@#$% CS instructor would GRADE MY ASSIGNMENT. I submitted it last Tuesday. It will have been a week as of tomorrow. I need that grade, and I don't even care if it's a B... but it's the last grade in this degree. I want to get done, bill the company, and get the stupid paperwork out of the way.

Alabama continues to be on my shit list. They want me to pay $800 in taxes on partnership money I made in 2001 or 2002 or whenever the hell it was; plus $200 in interest; plus a $300 penalty. Now that tax season is over and well behind us, I figured the partnership's accountant would be free and relaxed to see what we can do to minimize this damage. So I called Monday, and she was in the hospital getting tests... all day. Her daughter was worried. I hope she survives to untangle this stuff.

I'm making clusters of 5 fireflies per battery mount, to make a total of about 115 fireflies and blinky lights for flipside. I will use them as barter and decorations, and will wear several sets of 13,000 mcd white blinkies as a costume, over black t-shirts and jeans. Minimalist, but bright. You can see me coming!

On that theme, I bought a pair of white-light LED poi so I can start to learn poi spinning for flipside. It will be fun! That is, if I ever get started... today was my official first day to play with them, but they sat in my briefcase all day, sad and neglected.

We'll see what tomorrow brings. Other than my birthday that is. I'll be 43. Give me stuff. Or at least sympathy.

Dorkbot April

The Ruben's Tube worked wonderfully at the event last night! No glitches, perfect behavior -- though it did blow out twice. We had some wind, and I was pushing the bass for good effect.

All in all, it seemed to be popular, and I had a number of great conversations both before and after with technically minded people.

I also met the guys doing the effigy at Flipside, so that's good! Once school is behind me (just a few weeks... argh!) I'll spend some time with them at the warehouse and we can finalize the arrangements.

Of the various conversations (why are there small holes and big holes? {better re-ignition behavior and less pressure loss), Why the flare at this end {I couldn't find a smaller end plug so I adapted}, and so on... technical trivia) there was one audio enthusiast (or perhaps engineer) whose name I do not remember (actually I don't remember any names! sorry folks) had a very interesting idea.

Basically, a mechanical band-pass filter upstream of the gas injection, acting as a one-way valve to the tube. Simple to build; holes in a barrier, with flexible flaps over them that seal in response to backpressure; the size of the holes would need to be tuned, though, for optimal behavior at my preferred frequencies (whatever those end up being). Anyway, a pressure pulse would drive gas into the tube, but on the pull-back the valve would close up preventing me sucking air into the tube and blowing out the flame.

It would be difficult to add this now, with everything sealed up, so I may have to make a new tube sometime to test it. Or, after the show, I may try to tear down and re-build a tube to test the theory.

It was fun to be amongst fellow mad scientists and enthusiasts! I am so looking forward to being part of the geek community again.

Firey Fun

My tazers worked fine on the 12-volt wall-wart. But when I wired them to the 12-volt lead-acid battery.... sparks! Smoke! Broken.

I guess I needed that current-limiting resistor after all.

I have one functional tazer left, but I think I'll move to plan-B and build a high-voltage igniter some other way... from scratch, or maybe from a more durable (e.g. 12-volt) device. More research is needed.

Tomorrow, April 12th, I am doing a demo of my Ruben's Tube at the April DorkBot (7PM, Cafe Mundi@1704 east 5th)! Just one of the 4, to simplify setup. I did a test run last night at a friend's house, found a few wrinkles (the tazer burnout, forgot a power cord), but generally had success on a nearly-empty tank.

I'll do more tests tonight, and carefully bag up my cables and stuff so I'll have _everything_ tomorrow. I also need to note the more interesting frequencies on the signal generator, and test my new external mixer (feeding the signal generator into the Mac was not working well).

During last night's test, three of the four channels on the amplifier were working beautifully, but one was not giving me any signal. Then, after 5 or 10 minutes of operation, the dead channel came to life. Mysterious.

I'm going to buy some better cables today. I don't trust all of my cables.

Also, finished the article on the hot-glue web gun and sent the text to my editor (who still seems to be on vacation; come back Mark! I want feedback!).

Took Monday off to do homework... on the hard CS class; foolish me, took a "project" class; foolish me, chose an "interesting" project. Both translate into more work than I want to do.

Soon. Soon. Will be done soon.

Updated Update Updating

Well, just saw the Sawbones, and I'm now scheduled for a sleep study. I finally got sick of my inability to concentrate (I'm functioning at a very low level at work, compared to my usual) and I've been hearing the praise of my friends for their sleep apnea treatments, so I'll give it a whirl. If it's not that, it's allergies.. or diet.. or lifestyle.. or psychological factors.. such as overwork.. or.. or... We'll see.

Lessee, about 5 weeks of school left, max, unless things go wrong.

I've got a few articles to write for a leading magazine (non-fiction, but still). More on this once it hits the shelves!

I also want to write a custom story for a new steampunk magazine; a new magazine, maybe it's easier to get in? But I need a good steamy idea, and I need it polished by April 15! We'll see. With my trouble concentrating, it will be tough.

Theh Ruben's Tubes are moving along apace; I have the tubes mostly built now, and the electrical ignitors (repurposed tazers) are almost done, the wiring harnesses mostly assembled. Testing to occur this weekend, if anyone wants to drop by Saturday evening to see!

Okay, off to build some electronic fireflies and maybe do a run for the hot-glue web shooter...

Sparky the Spare cat

I finally uploaded a couple of pictures of Sparky here:

http://www.simreal.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=User:EdwinWise

Oooo, and in my online CS classes, the teacher said my work is among the best of any student who has taken this class so far. So that's good.

Only one more assignment!

Slow! Slow! Slow!

Argh! This weekend was SLOW.

Working on the algorithms homework on Saturday took nine hours to start, then I had a sanity break to visit friends, and then two more hours after that to finish. Eleven hours! Didn't get to bed before 1am. It _killed_ that day, dead. Argh.

Sunday, seven hours in finances (moving my Quicken to the Mac, balancing, budgeting; then taxes)... which was NOT helped by having every online resource (E*Trade, Quicken's site) being bogged down by the tax season. Argh argh!

I'm dying for the school nonsense to be over. I'm lagging in CS445 (independent project) due to the slowness of CS330. In all fairness, though, the 330 class has been condensed into 3 assignments and a final, rather than the usual 4 or 5 assignments. And I got off light in HIS125 -- there was no final! Except, of course, for the 200 pages to read every weekend.

After these CS, I have two more classes and then I'm done; completion targeted for May. CS445 will overlap some; probably take 8 weeks instead of 4 (12 is allotted). Now if only the teacher of that class would answer his e-mail. He's been sick. It will certainly slow things down a bit if he doesn't get better.

Frustrated here.

Crazy Steampunk Fun

I went to that party last night (EFF, steampunk, Make, etc) -- and had a great time! The entertainment was wonderful and creative and unusual; the costumes on many of the attendees were delightful (I _need_ a steampunk costume now); and many of my old friends from the Robot Group were there, plus new friends.

I got there just as they started at 7, and left just before they closed at midnight.

I hooked up with the editor of Make Magazine, and will hopefully do some articles for them. I also offered to present my Ruben's Tube at Dorkbot in April, so now I'll have to make Rev B for sure.

I've been suffering from my separation from geek community the last couple of years, mostly due to school commitments, but also due to ordinary old scheduling conflicts. I was wonderfully energized by being able to be geek-social last night.

I'm looking forward to Flipside, and getting hooked into more of the geek and creative communities in Austin, more than I can express!

A lot of thanks goes to Silona, who knows _everybody_.

Thanks, y'all.

Chugging, better URL

Try this for a better entry point:

http://wednesdaynightdinner.org/whats_new.html

Chugging along

I have all of the pieces in hand to build 4 new ruben's tubes, so that's good. I'm going to hold off doing all the work until we can call a group work day, tentatively April 7. I _do_ want to get them built and working, though, for the next Dorkbot, which appears to be scheduled for April 12.

It looks like, once I get done with school, I'll be in a good position to hang out with other crazy and creative people! That will be good. On that front, I finished the history class and this weekend started two CS classes. Completed the assignment (first of three) on CS330, algorithm design, and successfully procrastinated starting the independent project for CS445.

Tonight I am skipping Taiji to go to a Steampunk party in benefit of EFF, via SxSW, sponsored by Make and so forth... umm... here it is:

http://wednesdaynightdinner.org/

Four more classes! Two months! Give or take. I'm dying to be done.

Musical Fire Part 1

The Ruben's Tube Experiments are done for today -- and we developed a few good ideas for improvements on the next tube (or set of tubes; we are building four!)

Robin and Debbie made it over for a short time right at six tonight, and I ran the tube through its paces (not unlike the video I took of it later, see the link at the end of this post). While they were here, Michelle showed up too, but then they all left at 6:30, leaving me with a tub of square, organic marshmallows to roast in the flickering flames.

Michelle had the idea, to help counter the way high-frequencies blow out the flames nearest the speaker, to move the speaker out into an extension that would act as a buffer and diffuser of the sound waves. We later did a wee test, closing the holes near the speaker, to see if having a longer dead zone helped. It did seem to slow down the blowout a bit, but in the case of a steady-state tone, they still blew out. But for varied music, it might help a little bit.

Just about when they left, Randy showed up and we got down to poking the tube in ernest.

The first thing I did was record a video using the laptop's built in camera of the tube as it stood: small holes (1/16 or so) drilled every 1/2 inch on a 4" diameter 6' long ventilation tube. The speaker is mounted on an 8" adapter on the left side, and the gas inlet is on a 6" adapter on the right side.

The first tests involved using a signal generator to feed very low frequency waves into the tube ... 4 to 10 Hz, more or less. These pulses of sound provide very interesting "dancing fire" effects. Higher frequencies make a more frenzied flame, and tend to blow it out near the speaker.

Then we ran all kinds of music through it: Blue Man Group, who are heavy on percussion and base; some Enigma; some this, some that (I forget now what we used). Dance music is best, providing dramatic flame effects. Voices and a lot of wimpy instrumental don't do much at all.

We also drilled 5/32" holes every inch (expanding existing small holes), to test larger holes. These lowered the pressure in the tube a bit, giving a large more diffuse flame (I thought) but were also less inclined to blow out.

We used metal tape to block off holes on the edges, but this didn't change the behavior much. Randy used metal tape to block every other large hole and all the small holes, which hurt the tube's ability to relight itself and didn't help the blowout problem.

Ideas for the next tube include Michelle's buffer; Randy though that putting the gas pressure where the speaker was might help. On that one, I'll attach the gas hose on the extension where the speaker goes, and possible a second branch at the far end. This will put the gas pressure and speaker pressure on the same side, and might help. If I attach quick-releases on both sides, this can be configurable.

The hole pattern that we left with seems to be a good one; tiny holes every inch, and quarter inch holes between them.

All in all, a good experiment. Too bad Matt and Susan and Silona were busy, we missed them! But I'll show M&S the tube tomorrow morning, briefly, before Dim Sum. Yummmm.

See the video here:

Burning Down the House

Actually, so far, NOT burning down the house!

I sealed the speaker-end of the tube properly (ruben's tube; fire and sound; see previous posts) so it didn't leak; discovered that I was getting bad connections to my sound sources (using the laptop works fine); and did another test fire last Tuesday.

Oooo, the pivot joint thingies in the OTHER end of the tube leak under pressure, too. I sealed them on the inside, but clearly not boldly enough.

So I smeared the OUTSIDE of the joints with silicon on Saturday wrapped that in duct tape, and then wrapped THAT in electrical tape (to hold down the duct tape, which has terrible glue; what a horrid brand).

Sunday, then, I did a THIRD test-fire.. no leaks! And I have LOTS of compression on the speaker; I can blow the flame out with a slight twist of the volume knob.

NEXT Saturday, then, I'll have some interested parties over and we will experiment with it more....

Fun!

Fire!

This weekend I was able to add Fire to the Ruben's Tube!

It all started Saturday... but first, darn, I need to read about a zillion pages of World Civilizations. Interesting stuff, so it's hard to read fast.

By about 11:30pm Saturday, I decided I wasn't going to finish my chapters, so I put the book down and get ready to go to the Taiji graduation and new year's party... I promised, so I had to go.

That was fun, and I got the first food of the day into me. Home, and then I can go to the shop to assemble the Ruben's Tube. Oh, but first, we need to move that gravel.

So I shoveled and barrowed a cubic yard of gravel out into the back yard path, while Marla valiantly hacked the rose bushes down (er, trimmed them). Whew. And now I needed to finish the path with mulch -- so the pattern from the house to the fence is gravel, mulch, grass, mulch (and not gravel, gravel, grass, mulch). It's more artistic this way.

Oh goodness it's getting late now. NOW I get to assemble the Ruben's Tube. I test fit all the pieces, smear them with silicon, put them together again, and clamp. I assemble two four-inch clamps into an eight-inch clamp to hold the speaker assembly on.

And then I set it aside to dry.

Long day! We crash on the couch early and wake up on Sunday.

Ahh, I really have to finish that history reading. I still have 2/3 of a zillion pages to read.

Okay, by about 1 again, I have to stop. It's time to fire the tube up! Oh, but first, we need to move the rest of that mulch. I start forking up and barrowing mulch to the beds, while Marla valiantly weeds just ahead of me. That takes a few hours; all in all we moved nearly four cubic yards of material this weekend. There's just a tad more mulching to do for next weekend.

By about 3 I'm free to light things on fire! Fire! Oh, darn, there's this message -- fraud control on this unused credit card. Okay. Wiring harnesses, power, cables, soldering, come on already! A dry test of the power amplifier and speaker, oh, that's some powerful thumping coming from the tube there! Nice speaker.

Attach the propane, test the valves, blow the air out of everything. And. Fire! I can get a pretty satisfying high flame out of those teeny holes in the tube!

I wander over to the amplifier, once my fire seems stable, and notice flames licking around the speaker. Oh, that's not good. Turn off the tank, the flames die down. Hmm.

Re-test the speaker... nothing. The amplifier shows the "overload protection" light. Dammit. I cooked the speaker.

Oh and look at the time, have to go to Michelle's now!

And a few hours there, and then some very light shopping, and then home again. Tired, dispirited, and facing the ugly end of Monday soon.

But I have to know.

So I take the speaker off and am surprised that as soon as I loosened the clamp, the speaker assembly poppped right out. It seems that, while building the clamp, I had forgotten that I didn't add the silicon. That explains the leak, it wasn't sealed!

I look at the plastic barrier. Intact. The speaker looks fine. No visible heat damage. With the Ohmmeter, I test the coils... perfect, like new resistance. Okay, I have no idea why the amplifier was showing overload; maybe it was the weird mismatch between line-in and the headphone jack on the boombox I was using to power it.

A mystery for another time... I ended the weekend reading World Civilizations. And as of now, I still have 20 pages left to read. Tomorrow. Right after I test the audio system again.

Ruben's Tube Day 1

I have all the pieces for my Ruben's Tube now EXCEPT for the quick-release hose that goes between the propane tank (dang, forgot to buy that today, too) and the tube. Ahh well, I don't need the propane until I have the hose for it.

Today I made a speaker mount for the speaker; I took an 8" end cap, drilled holes around the edge (using the speaker as a direct template), cut a hole from the center, and rolled the cut edge back with pliers.

I also took silicon caulk (good to 400 degrees F) and sealed up the fittings and whatnots that I will be using.

The hard part, which I didn't expect to be hard, was making the tube itself. It's 4" HVAC ducting, which is NOT sold assembled but as a slightly curled, yet also flat, piece. It has a clever interlocking system at the edge. Simple! Not so simple. After squeezing silicon caulk along the "female" edge, I undertook to slide the "male" adge into it.

No such luck.

I ended up putting hose clamps at the ends and force the pipe together at the ends by using the mighty pressure of the spiral inclined plane (e.g. screw). The rest of the tube remained resolutely agape, and I only had the two hose clamps! Hmmm.

I found one of my many webbing truck tie-down clamps. Not going to be able use it as a clamp, but the webbing might do the trick

Standing on one end of the strong ribbon, I wrapped it once around the tube and lifted up... hard. Yup, it made a flexible, circular clamp! With some effort, I was able to get the tube to mate with itself, one 6" section at a time.

Later, I went back and used the hose clamps to tighten it further; loosing the clamp, sliding it up, and re-tightening it until it could be tightened no more. Rinse, repeat!

Finally, I drilled a series of tiny (ummm, 3/32? I don't recall) holes at 1" spacings along the tube. I may enlarge them later. I may add more so they are at 1/2" spacing. We'll see.

Next up, the !@#$% hose and a tank of propane! Oh, and wire. And maybe an inline fuse. And I do need to assemble the bits. And fasten the hose end thingy to the other end cap. Okay, so there's lots to do still.

Next weekend, Fire! Unless, of course, my hose doesn't come in. In which case I'll have some serious words with the place that sold it to me.

You don't want to read this

Cats are tidy creatures. They like to keep their fur clean and tidy. Licking and polishing, their specialized tongue hooks do an amazing job.

But sometimes the tongue just isn't enough.

So there was Papa, scritching around in the catbox like cats do, doing his...business. But he's got a hairy back-end, quite the fuzzy breaches on that cat, and today the business did not make a clean...exit. What's a cat to do in such a situation?

There's the toilet paper roll right there, but without opposable thumbs it might as well be on the moon. What's a neat cat to do?

Ahhh! Of course! Right outside the potty room is this LOVELY butt-cleaning surface. Just a little... skootching... and it will be all better. The napping humans won't even notice...

::skootch::

::skootch::

-----

So there I was, napping on the couch, and I hear an odd popping sound like claws in the carpet, but not like the usual popping sound (yeah; we're getting wood floors this year). I looked blearily over the arm of the couch to see what it was, only to find Papa in the booty-scoot position. If you have a pet you know what I mean. Okay, if your pet is a snake or iguana, you might not know. But the rest of you have seen this before!

There's a streak behind him, and he knows it, since once he's heard me stirring he dashes off into the other room. Cats and their guilty consciences.

Dear god, and now the smell comes... I poke the napping Marla and she awakens to the horror.

We sit there struck dumb by the stench for a moment, and then spring into action.

First, Marla locks the cat into the bathroom, sealing it away from what is still clean in the house. She then goes to clean up the briches... a joyous task, you might imagine.

I get the carpet spray and clean the new decorations away. I’m also hoping for a quick resolution to this… I have to leave for Taiji soon!

Once done, I visit them in the bathroom... no, the tissue isn’t doing the job. Marla cajoles him to clean himself... “lick your butt cat! Come on, do your job!” But to no avail. He goes to tidy up, but recoils from his own scent. It certainly does NOT smell of roses.

I hold the cat and the scissors come into play, snipping away at the unclean fur. Snip! Snip! Papa is not happy.

The smell nearly does us in; what has he been eating! Ugh! Cat! Snip! Wipe! Unhappy sounds leak out from the cat, along with smell that has flies spinning dizzily in the corners of the room.

It’s no use. I have to run the bath. Papa recognizes the sound and cowers in the corner as best he can. It’s been years since we’ve put him in water, but he’s not forgotten. He’s good, though, only hooking one claw in my arm when I get careless, but otherwise submitting the terrible humiliation of having his back end washed.

Wiped, trimmed, and bathed, dried, the Papacat is not happy... but he’s clean.

Now he licks himself.

And I just make it out to Taiji in time.

Sunday Morning

It's Sunday morning, late morning, and I'm here in my 'jammies cruising the 'net on Marla's 'puter. My laptop is in the shop... Big Shop, the Great Manufacturer's Place of All Fixing... because it has power issues.

It's not the battery. It's not the power plug. It's not the power control circuitry on the motherboard. So it must be the cabling? Which is integral to the laptop's case, and not a "part" that the local repair place has easy access to.

I hope I get it back next week, because school is starting again!

I ordered parts yesterday for the Ruben's Tube experiments, and shopped around Lowe's to see what was available locally for it (darned little, actually). I found a nice 4-channel amplifier, 500watts per channel, that will run on 12 volts (car audio, yayy!) for fairly cheap. I hope to run 4 tubes.

Then there is the car subwoofer, actually a mid-range woofer, with what looks like should be good Xmax throw, a high power and Db rating, and a lovely blue color! Plus, it was cheap.

That covers the audio side of things.

On the fire side, I ordered a valve and quick-release hose set from a cajun supply shop in LA, much cheaper than from the more technical stores.

Now, at home, I'll buy a tank, some tubes some fittings, some this and that, and assemble the tube itself. Today, I think, I'll start this. Once the other bits come in, maybe next weekend! I'll fit it together, fire it up, and see if I can keep my eyebrows.

There are only a few variables to explore in my experiment.

I want BIG DRAMATIC FLAMES -- not like the wimpy little flames in the standard physics experiment. This is, after all, to be a dancing-flame backdrop to dancers (or something) around the effigy burn at Flipside! To get these flames, and to keep them doing something with the music, without blowing themselves out, I need to experiment with the sound pressure (volume) of the feed (of which, I have a lot of upper end to work with); the frequency tuning, if any (I want to favor bass, for best effect); the gas pressure (as high as I can get it without totally damping the audio signal); and the spacing and diameter of the holes in the tube. Oh, and the diameter of the tube (a binary choice of 4" or 6").

The question of hole size has me puzzling the most... big holes for a lower pressure but higher volume? Or small holes for a higher pressure, but cutting back the volume?

I'm thinking that a higher pressure in the tube will provide for stronger coupling to the audio signal, as long as I can still create pressure waves in the gas with the speaker. Too much pressure and the speaker will "stall".

So I think I'll start with very tiny holes and I can increase their diameter as needed, during the experiment. Fortunately, the HVAC sheet-metal tubing is dirt cheap.

I think I'll also stick to 4" tubing. I have an 8" speaker and I will be funneling it down to a 4" tube. This will have the effect of decreasing the pressure of the sound-wave, but increasing the velocity in the tube; I'm thinking it will amplify the change in the flame height.

We'll see soon enough!

As for the rest of today... I think I need to do more writing. I've been slacking something terrible lately.

New Project!

This blog was supposed to be a place where I could talk about my projects, what I'm doing, this and that --

And for the last couple of years, I haven't had many projects of note (except for the movie), and I really haven't been all that chatty feeling. A lot of what I'm doing these days is school, taiji, and ballroom dancing -- none of which are that thrilling to write about.

Last year I wrote a handful of short stories and started pimping them out; no bites yet, though one feedback. These stories have their flaws, so this year I'm writing using a different approach; more analytical, paying more attention to character and theme. We'll see how that works.

But I also do have a mad science project now! In February, I will be experimenting with the Reuben's Tube, a device to make sound pressure waves visible in fire! Fire!

This will be to provide a display at Flipside, as part of our camp's contribution.

So, I may have exciting news of dangerous conflagrations here soon.

New Project!

This blog was supposed to be a place where I could talk about my projects, what I'm doing, this and that --

And for the last couple of years, I haven't had many projects of note (except for the movie), and I really haven't been all that chatty feeling. A lot of what I'm doing these days is school, taiji, and ballroom dancing -- none of which are that thrilling to write about.

Last year I wrote a handful of short stories and started pimping them out; no bites yet, though one feedback. These stories have their flaws, so this year I'm writing using a different approach; more analytical, paying more attention to character and theme. We'll see how that works.

But I also do have a mad science project now! In February, I will be experimenting with the Reuben's Tube, a device to make sound pressure waves visible in fire! Fire!

This will be to provide a display at Flipside, as part of our camp's contribution.

So, I may have exciting news of dangerous conflagrations here soon.

New Project!

This blog was supposed to be a place where I could talk about my projects, what I'm doing, this and that --

And for the last couple of years, I haven't had many projects of note (except for the movie), and I really haven't been all that chatty feeling. A lot of what I'm doing these days is school, taiji, and ballroom dancing -- none of which are that thrilling to write about.

Last year I wrote a handful of short stories and started pimping them out; no bites yet, though one feedback. These stories have their flaws, so this year I'm writing using a different approach; more analytical, paying more attention to character and theme. We'll see how that works.

But I also do have a mad science project now! In February, I will be experimenting with the Reuben's Tube, a device to make sound pressure waves visible in fire! Fire!

This will be to provide a display at Flipside, as part of our camp's contribution.

So, I may have exciting news of dangerous conflagrations here soon.

New Project!

This blog was supposed to be a place where I could talk about my projects, what I'm doing, this and that --

And for the last couple of years, I haven't had many projects of note (except for the movie), and I really haven't been all that chatty feeling. A lot of what I'm doing these days is school, taiji, and ballroom dancing -- none of which are that thrilling to write about.

Last year I wrote a handful of short stories and started pimping them out; no bites yet, though one feedback. These stories have their flaws, so this year I'm writing using a different approach; more analytical, paying more attention to character and theme. We'll see how that works.

But I also do have a mad science project now! In February, I will be experimenting with the Reuben's Tube, a device to make sound pressure waves visible in fire! Fire!

This will be to provide a display at Flipside, as part of our camp's contribution.

So, I may have exciting news of dangerous conflagrations here soon.

New Project!

This blog was supposed to be a place where I could talk about my projects, what I'm doing, this and that --

And for the last couple of years, I haven't had many projects of note (except for the movie), and I really haven't been all that chatty feeling. A lot of what I'm doing these days is school, taiji, and ballroom dancing -- none of which are that thrilling to write about.

Last year I wrote a handful of short stories and started pimping them out; no bites yet, though one feedback. These stories have their flaws, so this year I'm writing using a different approach; more analytical, paying more attention to character and theme. We'll see how that works.

But I also do have a mad science project now! In February, I will be experimenting with the Reuben's Tube, a device to make sound pressure waves visible in fire! Fire!

This will be to provide a display at Flipside, as part of our camp's contribution.

So, I may have exciting news of dangerous conflagrations here soon.

Spare Cat, returns!

A few days ago, we gave up on Sparky, the Spare Cat.

On the 5th of January, when we ran off the raccoon, Sparky ran off too, never to be seen again. After a week of no cat, we gave up, closed the garage, and felt bad about the loss of our spare cat.

Today, it is freezing, sleeting, snowing, growing icecycles, and generally being nasty outside. And who should appear? Sparky! Cold, fat, and insolent as always. So I popped open the door a bit, gave him a good scolding and scritching, and filled up his food bowl.

Stupid cat.

I wonder who else he has been eating with? Someone who lets him inside, but forgot today? Or maybe he's just been living high on the hog off of the rabbits. We'll probably never know.

Oh, and my website is all back up again. Nice!

Blue Virtual is Not My Friend

(I apologize for the repeat rant, but I wanted this archived in my main blog; for those who saw this in my LJ thread, please just ignore it)

I used to host this website on Blue Virtual servers.

I thought this was a good service. I even recommended it to people!

Though, to get a responsive machine, I did have to pay more than, it turns out, than I might otherwise have had to. Their cheap services were way too sluggish for my Wiki-based website.

But you know what really burned my biscuit with Blue Virtual? Why I'm extremely mad at them, why I've cancelled my service and considered LETTING them put my unpaid balance into collections just so they would lose money on it?

Because, at their core, they suck. They don't care about the user, and they don't patrol their resources in any reasonable or expected way.

In even the lowliest most basic account in school, you had disk limits. Every web host has, of course, disk limits and bandwidth limits.

Every webhost will be very interested in patrolling these limits; monitoring them. Blue Virtual is no different. They know exactly what you are using on any given day.

So they noticed when someone found a writable directory in Wiki (an icon directory, buried deep in the tree; these people have too much time on their hands) and wrote about five gigs of movies into it, putting me way over my limit.

Did Blue Virtual enforce their disk limit, preventing this explosion in my website? Did they send me e-mail telling me that my limit was being approached? No, they did not. And paying them $50 a month for their service, I expected... service. Wouldn't you?

Instead of enforcing the limit, or notifying me, or basically doing ANYTHING USEFUL AT ALL, they billed me $275 for the disk overage.

That's bogus. That's Bullshit.

I called around. Other services warn you, and cap you. They don't charge you unless you agree to go over and to be charged. They don't steal money from you without asking.

Blue Virtual is different. Apparently a lack of proper system administration is a profit center for them.

Now I am at a decent web host, that does what it's supposed to. It monitors, e-mails, and enforces a cap.

Like most web hosts do.

Except Blue Virtual.

I apologize if I ever recommended Blue Virtual to you -- and I suggest you leave them soon if you are with the now, before their lazy policy bites you in the ass, too.

Right now I'm at 8bucksamonth.com, which is not a name that inspired much confidence, and moving over from TWiki to MediaWiki. I've had dreamhost.com recommended to me, and they look very promising.

Test Post

I just moved my entire website, and I am doing this evil test post to make sure the RSS works still!

I'll have a big post soon, never fear. Ummm. If this works.

New Year, New Surprise!

Welcome to the new year everyone! Just spent a short (four day) week at work doing, I dunno, paperwork and research and stuff. Not a bad entry for the next 51 weeks.

I haven't decided yet if I'm going to be diligient about blog posts or not this year. I'm going to spend this weekend plotting my priorities, projects, and progress for this coming year. I've got fiction to (finally) finish editing; a novel I want to write (well, three or four, but I'll pick one); a ballroom dance guide to help create; ballroom dance to learn (this is a year to study and get good), and Taiji to learn (also will be a priority, since I go for my second degree black in December).

For the first time in... ever! Marla and I went on a real vacation this Christmas! It was keen! It was laid back but also nifty, and now we are going to have to do more recreational travelling.

On Saturday the 23rd we made the pilgrimage to Lafayette LA to spend Christmas proper with Marla's parents. And they bought crazy amounts of stuff for everyone, and it was all kind of relaxed and fun. I brought schoolwork with me and did two classes that Saturday.

On the 25th we drove home, because on the 26th we drove to Carlsbad New Mexico! Yayy! And, a side note, thank the deities for books on CD. Harry Potter Book 5 is 23 hours long and we heard the entire thing that week... and had to buy book 6 in Carlsbad to be sure to have listening fare on the way home too. These things make the drive so fast and simple and easy; far more distracting than music.

In Carlsbad, of course, we went into the Caverns! Duh! 750 feet under ground, enormous beautiful caverns. We walked all of the trail that could be walked without a guide, and had three more tours on top of that.

The Left Hand Tunnel tour was a jaunt through an unimproved (and in fact, rather beat up through use) side tunnel using nothing but candle lanterns. A nifty experience, and a nice warm up to the experience of the caves.

Then we did the Lower Cavern tour, which had us rapelling (hah! scrabbling, more like) down a 10' hill with a rope, and then climbing another 50' (or so, they didn't say) down these three slippery stainless steel ladders, into a beautiful and intimate unimproved (e.g. no path or railing) lower run of caverns. We even got to crawl a bit!

The last day we toured the Kings Palace, which is marvelously decorated, but had to be closed to unguided tours because the damned monkeys with poor impulse control (e.g. tourists) were destroying it, breaking off its bits. Something like 22,000 broken bits... and worsening.

And now of course, we have to do weekend trips to all of the many caves around Austin, and I expect we'll plan future long vacations to other interesting caves. It's a theme... a neat theme!

Oh, and for the surprise promised in the headline?

Drove home tonight just a bit ago, petted the spare cat (he's a good kitty; want a cat?) and then toodled into the garage to top off his food.

Coming through the laundry room I see him scamper in after me under the garage door. My mind is wandering, lalalala, dum-te-dumm, heyyy!

There's a HUGE GRAY FAT BLOB sitting on the stool, hunched over the catfood dish! Dang! Not another cat! Nope.

Raccoon.

Big, fat fat fat, raccoon.

The poor things legs could barely touch the ground after he launched himself over the trash can and splatted on the floor, scrabbling to escape.

Maybe it's time to make a skinny cat door in the garage... something he might have trouble squeezing through. It doesn't help, though, that Sparky himself is 13 lbs big.

Hi spare ca... hey!

Wandered out to the garage and saw motion, "hi spare cat!"

Heyyy! Holy crap! That's not sparky!

Okay, yeah, I thought the cat food was going a bit fast, even for a 13lb muscle-bound stray. I figured another cat was sneaking in. Perhaps a raccoon? Squirrel?

But nooooooo....

I wander out to get some gloves and to try and find a mixing container (casting a foam head, another story), and see a small, black, LARGE-TAILED critter scurry away in a panic. A skunk!

In my garage!

Okay, it was cute, I think, but still.

Lost week

Oooh, I didn't write anything last week. Wellll, here goes!

The weeks themselves are completely non-descript... work work work, Taiji Taiji Taij, Ballroom Ballroom Ballroom. Dancing that is, not, umm. You know.

Last Saturday was almost entirely absorbed by five or six hours of Taiji graduation preparation and ceremony. I was involved in a demo for this, seen on Youtube here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQapzu5Pw9M

I'm the head in the back left corner, invisible. Sigh. If a better video appears, I'll link it.

Sunday was then lost in feeling yucky, both Marla and I, until we wandered off to Michelle's and played a rousing game of Order of the Stick, which is kinda fun.

In my copious free time, I've done a little story editing (my goal is to re-send the two rejects, and send a new story out Monday) and prepping my brain and Mac for Mac development.

In this quest, I've discovered Qt -- which rox my sox! This is good stuff!

Cross-platform development, expensive unless you use it for Open Source dev, with GUI designers and an extended Object Model that makes object oriented programming even MORE object oriented. I'm reading a book now, and fiddling with examples on my Mac, and it's really sweet.

The big task this weekend is house cleaning. The place is a wreck, but we'll put it right. Got to -- we are going on vacation at the end of the month, and don't want to traumatize our pet sitters.

More Sweat and Bunnies

Dang, if I thought we worked hard _last_ weekend, well, THIS weekend was a killer!

I darn near beat my weed whacker to death ripping up large quantities of grass in the back yard... really. I need to take it apart to see if it broke inside or is just loose. The poor thing has a wicked backlash-rattle now. Just a week, and it may be going in for warranty service.

Speaking of grass, did you know that clusters of grass make stumps? Gnarly! And in each stump, there seemed to be a large white grub nestled, happy and fat. Ugh.

So, the yards. We chopped off a lobe of the Yucca plant by the driveway, surrounded it with limestone, and gravelled it within an inch of its life. Looks good!

Then, more limestone blocks to line the beds all around the back yard fence. Leaving... way too much limestone left over.

So, from the gate in the fence at one side of the house, all around the house, and to the fence at the other side, we cut and lined a path.

And STILL we have two courses of limestone left on the pallette! We'll have to get creative now to figure what to DO with it all. Jeez.

As it is, I need about 2 more cubic yards of gravel to fill the path we made (way ahead of schedule) and a few yards of mulch for all the beds we made (also ahead of schedule).

Our spare (outdoor) cat, Sparky, loves all of this yardwork. He rolls in the ditches we cut for the blocks. He pounces on the bright orange electrical-cord snake. He rabbit kicks the landscape cloth. He gets lots of attention and dusty scritches from the tired humans.

So, is it because of the fun weekend he just had -- or is it because of the coming cold weather? -- that he left a rabbit head on my doorstep at lunch today? I think he's trying to buy entrance to the house; a bribe, as it were. Slip a twenty to the doorman and go in to where the food is tasty and the company is good.

Welllll it didn't work. Marla says it will take more than just the head; she wants the entire rabbit, dressed and roasted. And since he can't get in to use the oven, the poor fellow is caught in the classical catch-22.

Such a good cat.

Busy Busy

Ooo a busy and productive weekend... of course, I'm still neglecging my writing, but I'll get back to it, I promise.

This weekend was a very social one -- Odd Friday to start; Julia's 3rd birthday party; Richard's 3rd Saturday gathering, where we watched some juggle video and hung out a bit; Michelle's Gaming Night. Oh, and schoolwork -- finished two classes; finals next weekend or the one after, when I feel like it.

The sweaty work filled in the rest -- prepping the lawn (more on that later), moving most of the rest of the first palette of 4" limestone blocks, and just now, moving most of the rest of the first cubic yard of gravel.

The yard will look very nice when we are done, and there won't be much grass to mow!

Mmmm, gravel.

Okay, this last year was the Year of Yard NoCare. I didn't mow the back yard all summer, I think, and probably not most of the year at all. It's interesting, grass -- it doesn't just grow longer, but it changes _character_ as it ages and matures. Gets thick. And clumpy. And a lot unlike lawn grass.

It's like this: suppose you have a nice housecat and you, like a good owner, trim it's claws every couple months (or however often you are supposed to trim their claws; Marla does ours). But say you get busy one year and forget to trim the claws _all year_. Oops. And then you wake up one November to discover that your nice little house cat has become.. a saber tooth tiger!

Yeah. Just like that.

So on Saturday morning I went out and bought a heavy-duty weed whacker; dual 0.080" line, 5amp electric motor, mmm, nice. I call it my Electric Scythe. And with this mighty device, I "mowed" the back yard.

It took a while, but it worked!

7,000 Lbs

Actually, 7,280 pounds of 4" rough-cut limestone blocks (two palettes) and two (two!) cubic yards of 5/8" gravel.

Ummm, two cubic yards of gravel is more than I expected.

I moved almost half of one of the palettes of limestone into place after work today... 1,500 to 1,800 lbs worth... and it looks kinda neat. Also, a few wheelbarrows of gravel.

Hardly made a dent.

Guess what we're doing this weekend? Moving rock!

For want of a nail...

Look! A post! And it's been far less than a month!

So, Saturday late afternoon, four-ish I think, I was nearing the end of my VB homework. Yes, Visual Basic .NET 2003. Whee.

Anyway, they wanted, in the last couple of programming pieces, for me to create a user component thingy. Easy!

Well, okay, except that I had installed VB Express and it did not have a compilation template for components. Argh! After fiddling and fussing and Googling a bit, I decided I would have to install VB proper after all.

No sweat, I have licenses for it. Just not... disks. An advantage of working where I do; my MSDN subscription!

So... 40 minutes of download later (from MS's truly heinous website), I have what turns out to be a CD ISO. Dang, not a proper install at all... gotta burn a CD.

Oooh, there is no power to my CD player. My power supply blew out a few months ago, toasting my mobo with it (the pain! the pain!). So I stole, er, umm, borrowed, Marla's supply. Which was wimpy and short on cables, but just sufficient to drive my box... without the CD.

Okay, I could run VB on the Parallels VM on my Mac... or not! Heh. I don't mind SOME suffering, but that would be harsh.

So off to Fry's to buy a nice new power supply. The ones these days are quite nice, with modular cable configurations and stuff.

Into the box, burn the CD, install VB, and... by about 10pm that night... finish most of the assignment. And a coupla hours this Sunday morning too.

::sigh:: That burned a lot more time than I had hoped for.

I'm behind on re-submitting my bounced stories, and I'm behind on editing my written stories, and I'm getting _darned_ annoyed at not being able to write until I clear all this _other_ stuff out of my queue. School is a boulder in my road, but I'm down to 1 assignment each in two classes, and then finals... two weeks out. Then seven more classes to the end! Three of which I can take this year, it seems. Maybe. The scheduling at the online school changed late this year, for the worse.

On the home front, we didn't clean or wash much around the house, but we did cut a path in the front yard, and trenches around the front yard's garden beds, which will receive limestone blocks and gravel after this is all delivered on Tuesday by the Stone and Gravel Faeries. Over three tons of rock! Maybe 4 tons... it will be awesome.

If I think I'm sore NOW from all that digging, just wait 'till we move that stone around a few times.

Oh, and Marla made some really neat bread today, and cut the hell out of her finger.

Vacation!

I think we are going to drive to Carlsbad Caverns for Christmas and take a bunch of underground tours.

That should be fun!

Lose some, turn some into zombies...

I think I'll start writing more here soon... and then pester my family and distant friends to make sure they start reading.

Grr.

Lessee, on the writing front, "Eternity" and "Winter" have their first rejections! Eternity is a nice one; I like it; gotta figure who to send it to next. Winter is a bit Emo, but I suppose I should send it around more anyway.

I'm supposed to be editing "June Bug" and "Summer" but Halloween put a couple weeks crimp in the whole thing.

Ummmm, "Delrin Jannis" and "First Love" and "Night" are all still out there, sweating bullets.

"Family" is simply waiting to pop up in the rotation.

These are all kind of experimental, each written a tad different. They probably all share a weakness when it comes to character-driven storylines... so that's the next thing I want to do; exercise my character muscle.

I'm anxious to do that! I have ideas! I have plans on how to organize the writing!

But I need to clear my task list first.

Sigh.

Had some fun with and as zombies this halloween. There was a brief writeup of zombies around town, including the one I worked in with Richard and a variety of dancers! Yayy us!

Here are links to the article and to my pictures:

Zombies in Austin Article

Dancing Zombies

Me, as the Undead

On the school front, things are going well... I continue to blast through and, for the most part, ace the classes. They lost one of my exam requests, so I missed my clear spot for taking that one; I'll take it next weekend. And it took them about two months to get my a grade on a previous final... but I have that now and can submit for reimbursement.

I'm in the middle of 2 easy classes (all 100s so far); after these, in just a few weeks, there will just be six more. Assuming the school's stupid new scheduling will float them into accessibility on a reasonable timeline, I'll be done soon.

Blood Texture

I'm doing a zombie rampage this Saturday, and as part of that, I want blood, in case any of the zombies want to have that freshly-had-dinner look.

Now, for Deadbacks, I experimented with sugar bloods, including cooking more sugar into corn syrup, to get a thick paste-like blood that would stay put. I also played with guar gum, but mostly just got nasty clots.

Note, using too much guar gum, and adding hot water to it, you get nasty clots. This is sometimes a good thing! Think lumpy gravy.

For this event, I don't want the blood to flow around much; I want a paste. Maybe even a solid.

My blood powder, though, does not dissolve in my silicons; so it won't work as a silicon tint and I'm too lazy to mix up silicon colors this week. And, well, silicon will NOT come out of clothes.

So, it's back to the drawing board.

I noticed a blood gel, or may I say, jello, on the shelves this year, so I decided to play with my (huge) bucket of gelatin, too.

Mmmm, blood gelatin.

Soooo, here are a few recipe tests I've made:

1tsp guar gum in 1 cup water (mixed with 1/2 cold, then add 1/2 hot, then nuke to a boil to cook). A thick fluid that glops rather than flows. Not solid. Has a bit of texture to it, not too smooth.

1/2 tsp guar gum in 1 cup water; almost slimy, a thick fluid. Would make a good... slime? Still a bit of a texture.

1 tsp gelatin in 1 cup water; almost sets, kind of runny/chunky gelatin.

2 tsp gelatin 1 cup water; definitely sets, into a fairly soft gel.

For a solid blood, I could go whole hog and do something like 1/8 cup gelatin in 1 cup water... woohoo!

Instead, I'm going to test a combination tonight -- 1 tsp guar gum + 2 tsp gelatin. I wonder what that will do?

For any of the gelatin-based bloods, you heat it so it flows, apply, and as it cools it sets.

I'm still not sure what texture I actually want tomorrow.

I'll let you know, though!

Haunt Fun

Tonight was (still is, for another 45 minutes or so) Friday the 13th ... in October!

My very first date with Marla was Friday the 13th in October, so these are special days for us. That first night, we went to a haunt, and that is what we did again tonight.

Tonight we stood in line at the House of Torment for a while, and then went through the haunt with a nice group of kids, the girls of which were quite satisfactory screamers.

We, of course, are _terrible_ haunt patrons... boooorrring for the actors! Poor things. We like to look at the props, the costumes, the makeup, the set decorations, everything; the technical stuff.

This is what comes from working haunts for many years.

I won't say it sucks the fun out of it, but it does swap the traditional scare fun for a more cerebral enjoyment.

Anyway, House of Torment is very nicely decorated, and they put a lot of effort into their costumes and makeup.

It's a traditional haunt, where you walk through and there are a bunch of startles (boo!)... but they also have some creepy places too. It's not all startle.

No story, and not over-arching theme, but internally, the haunt has several themed sections.

More use of pneumatics this year. Saw at least two trash can traumas (or variants), and there was a nice little dancing doll thingy.

A _lot_ of Bucky's (skeletons), some not modified hardly at all... but there was a _lot_ of nicely modified and redecorated stuff, too.

The space it is in was an old paintball arena, so it's multi-level, with high places, low places, and an amazing twisting path through it all. It takes a good 20 minutes to walk through, and longer if you get trapped by the boo-scares, I'm sure.

All in all, a very well made haunt.

And a fun date.

Mambo Update

I wasn't going to let Mambo beat me... I'm far to stubborn for that.

So, risking brain damage, I downloaded (legally!) some 27 tracks of mambo and mambo-esque music (mostly Tito Puente) and spent about ten hours Thursday and Friday pumping it into my brain during work.

By the end of that, I was getting so I could kinda-sorta follow along with the music, and some of my mambo-hating nerves were numbed by the assault.

This paid off on Friday when we had Mambo 1, first week: I didn't totally suck!

I'll have to keep up with the Mambo innoculations, I think, and eventually I may even come to enjoy this thing.

Richard said this was the only way... listen to lots and lots of Mambo.

Mambo

Mambo.

I've tried four times.

It seems that mambo music makes me angry... Hulk Smash! Grrrrr!

I really really don't like mambo music. It grates against my soul, it bludgeons my mind, and destroys my good humour. I might as well try to dance to the screetching of fingernails on a chalkboard.

Mambo music was discovered by a man who fell down the stairs with an armload of percussion instruments... after which, he went, "that was interesting! Let's make a dance out of it!"

I will NOT be dancing mambo this year.

Or perhaps ever.

My time would be better spent sanding off my fingerprints. Or perhaps chewing glass.

Experience the Sloth

I remember, a year or three ago, when we were visiting the exotic pet store -- the Zoo Keeper, I think. In their window they had a big stick and some decorative this and that, making a lovely display. In this display, hanging from the branch, was a large stuffed animal, looking like it could be some representation of a big sloth. That was neat! Though it was kind of curled up into a ball.

Watching it long enough, though, and you would find it... moved!

So cool! A real sloth! And I tell you, they are slothful; soparific beasts who move at a leasurely, almost invisible pace.

I don't know if they have that sloth there still, but I know where you can get a similar experience.

I went to the Radio Shack today, to buy a phone, and was reminded of the sloth as I watched the Radio Shack Person (You have questions? We have blank stares!) box up the nice little phone I had just bought. It was the display model, so he had to put a few pieces into bags, and put the battery in the phone, and this and that.

And he did it so slowly, it was an amazing thing to see. I think it took him fifteen minutes to put it all into the box, I swear! Marla will swear with me, too, because she was there... in fact, once we left the store, there was a variety of swearing going on.

I had never seen a (presumably) living, breathing human work so slowly before. It was an experience I hope not to suffer through again.

Formulas of Doom

My ant poisons have been about 40% borax or boric acid (I'm moving to boric acid now), and 60% bait.

It looks like 10% boric acid is fine. Here is the formula from Patent 5939061:

2% to 5% Pectin by weight (to make this a gel)
.01% to 0.5% calcium salt (e.g. calcium carbonate, calcium chloride)
.001% to 10% toxicant (e.g. boric acid)

Dry attractant (20% to 40%) consisting of:

0.01% to 10% cellulose
1% to 10% sugar
0.5% to 5% plant starch (e.g. corn starch)
30% to 60% instant nonfat dry milk
20% to 60% dried egg yolk (where do I get THAT?)
0.0001% to 0.010% sterol compound
0.1% to 1% uric acid (makes ants think it is safe)
2% to 15% vegetable oil

Ultimately, about 20-40% protein, 20-40% fat, and 20-40% carb, with water to round it out (40% to 70%)

Personally, I think his use of percentages is totally wacky... but whatever makes him happy.

Apparently, different ants like different foods at different times of year, switching between carbs and proteins.

Ghost in the Garage

I've been spending more time in the "real world" lately -- cleaning house, organizing my makeup, sealing and sanding and finishing the lovely cherry wood entertainment center that Marla's father made for us last :cough: Christmas :cough:, and previously of course, researching magazines and now also editing stories and sending them out.

Eternity is out pending, but I think it needs more edits... First Love has gone through a rigorous editing process, including review by Marla who found some more rough spots that I am smoothing. I'll send that in Monday.

Yesterday was a road trip day... a two and a half hour drive to Houston to buy dance shoes! $400! Three pairs! Heal condoms! A new wire brush! Ron and Lonnie, two very nice guys, very enthusiastic. I'm glad we went.

On the trip up, we decided to take a different route than 290 home... there was a tanker truck upside down in a ditch on the Northbound lane, and several miles of parked and unhappy drivers behind it.

Of course, this real world activity has been crimping my writing time... but it's been good too.

Amidst this grounding in physical activity, I was met with a spooky thing this morning.

Yesterday morning I spent two hours sanding (technically, steel-wooling) the entertainment center. Ugh. It was not bad, to do _once_, but it reminds me also why I don't work in wood. Then Houston. Then, upon return, I put the second coat of plastic on the wood.

This morning, on one of the drawers, I saw two little dusty footprints.

The drawers are standing vertically on the ground, their shiny faces staring up at the ceiling. The garage itself is sealed, of course, and we were asleep.

But there they were, two little, human, footprints, in dust, on the face of one drawer. I almost didn't see them, but I was inspecting the finish against the light, looking across it for dry spots.

And there they were. A left print right on the edge, just a big toe, a little toe, a bit of the ball of the foot. And to the right of it, in the middle of the wood, a right foot print, the big toe, a few little toes, and the front of the foot. I could even see fingerprint in the print. And these toes and feet were.. smaller, rounder, then our feet. We have long monkey toes, these were cute little round prints.

Soooo..... I'm writing ghost stories? It seems I also have a ghost.

Dead Brain Cells

Sooooo Monday we put a nice sealer on the entertainment center that the dad-in-law built for us last Christmas... verrrrry pretty cherry wood. A bit stinky, the sealer.

So today I polyurethaned everything, even moving the big bits outside so the stinky wouldn't invade our home.

Good plan. Verrrrry stinky polyurethane. I think I killed a few brain cells and annoyed my lungs. This is, mind you, in a full-open garage... I hate to think what it would have been like indoors.

Next weekend -- buffing and coat #2!

I almost feel normal, doing stuff connected to the real world these days.

Now, to see if my staggering brain, what's left of it, is up to editing some more of story #2, "First Love". On page about 6 of 28 so far (double spaced, so not as scary as it might sound).

The Master..

Okay, the drought is making them bold, so the time has come to reduce the ant population some. So today, I, the Bait Master, mixed up a special blend of catfood, sugar, and borax (hoping to lure ants with both meaty tendencies and a sweet tooth). We'll see how well this one works. Usually I use one mix of sugar, water, and borax in one pile, and peanut butter and borax in another. This is more efficient, if it appeals to the little monsters. I want to try it on red ants, too, sometime.

So we'll see if they start trails to the yummy yummy food or not, and in a couple days, all activity should cease... or at least, seriously diminish.

Baited one outside (the outdoor orange cat, Sparky, was eager to eat this instead, but I cage it under a bowl and he was unable to get access, one in the kitchen at their favorite trail spot, one in the bathroom, and one in the front hall.

Did I mention the ants had been busy lately?

On another note... who wants a friendly, frisky, orange, male cat? We have a spare.

Doin' Stuff

Yup, I actually went out into the world and DID STUFF today! Woo!

Just got back from a "Make and Take", where people get together, make stuff, and take the results back home. Only one guy brought parts, though, but he had almost enough bits for three of these things, and I had the rest, so I set him up right proper! Oh, I was the instructor.

And the topic, right, it was Hot Glue Gun Webbers. Neat stuff! He had five or six glue guns, the guy clearly was a maniac, but a nice fellow nonetheless. We discovered some new things, too, about hot-glue webbing in the process.

One is that zip ties make for a pretty shoddy machine; the air-feed tube slips around too much. Metal hose clamps are better, but we didn't have any of those on hand. I used duct tape and more zip ties to hold stuff kind of temporarily sort of stable.

Then we tried the various guns out in the the haunted houes (Mansion of Terror, I believe) that lent us the space for the gathering.

The 100 watt gun was not bad; the same as I have, but he got his for a fraction of normal cost off of eBay. Part of some carpet-glueing system.

He had a 225 watt gun that looked wimpy but heated up right quick and held temperature pretty good too is seemed.

The one that I liked was a 125 watt gun with a 410 degree temperature -- normal glue guns are about 385 I think. This made the glue more liquid, and even foamed it some if you let it heat enough, so the web was whiter and puffier, more cobwebby (but less stretchy, weaker). And it was continuous duty -- this kid webbed his dark little heart out there, and would have gone all night except he burned himself and decided he had enough.

Anyway, it was fun. I'm not working on a formal haunt this year, so it was nice to be in a construction zone, even if it wasn't my own.

My writing time, lately, has been absorbed with the business aspects of writing -- researching the magazines that might publish me, reading the writer's guide for short stories, web searches; printing out submission guidelines; and finally developing a spreadsheet of all that I had learned. I have forty-some magazines, now, in my list, four of which I could actually find in the bookstores. Heh.

Anyway, I'm just about to the point where I can submit stories... I need to decide which magazine or set thereof to send Eternity too, and now I can also finish editing the other seven stories. And start writing new ones! Yayy!

My goal is to get enough "brownie points" to get a proper membership in the Horror Writer's of America organization, and then an agent, and then do some novels and/or short story collections.

Fame and fortune here I come! Or at least, frustration and poverty, but heck, it should be interesting either way.

Sprain...

I just went and read Cute Overload's Rules of Cuteness:

http://mfrost.typepad.com/cute_overload/the_rules_of_cuteness/index.html

I think I hurt myself. Is it possible to sprain your sense of cute?

Magazines

Okay, if I'm going to get published, I need places to send my work, so I've been reading the writer's guide and cruising the 'net and now I have 31 different writers guidelines for 31 different magazines that might want to publish some new dark fiction (e.g. horror).

I have a spreadsheet in excel that I run in a virtual machine on my macbook pro, but it doesn't want to print to my USB printer. I see the printer, but it no speaky through the little tubes.

My iWork suite is crap when it comes to spreadsheets -- can't make a table wider than the paper, can't nest tables in tables, just not gonna make my life easy there.

So I'm diddling around looking for a format or application or SOMETHING to help me keep track of magazines and stories and stuff.

And then I remembered that Google can do spreadsheets now! A quick jaunt over to spreadsheet.google.com and yup, I can import my XLS file. If I can print it, I could still muck about with data in excel and then print it from Google if I get desperate (or from work, or from my PC, but hey, the google thing is just cool). Or I could manage it in Google, wherever.

When I first heard about network computer, running the application on a server and just log in to it from a terminal, I though it was the most retarded thing I had heard in decades. Why would we want to do that!?!? That's why PCs were invented, to break the chains of the server and the priesthood of sysops!

But now I use Google mail like it were an addictive drug, and this spreadsheet thing looks darned handy. Google Earth, the maps, this, that... they are working on a word processor. They have a database. It alsmost seems reasonable to use this stuff. I find it handy as I move around to be able to work on stuff in a central, public, area.

I use TWiki for the same reason, in that I can fiddle with my website anywhere, any time, from any computer.

So maybe served applications over the web isn't such a bad thing. I could get used to it.

Oh, and I'll be submitting Eternity to magazines soon. Cross your fingers for me! And now to edit the next one...

That time again

Okay, it's time for my monthly post again. I need to see about cranking this back up to weekly, and then maybe even more! We'll see.

I spent a four day weekend in Lodi watching the wife's sister get married. Actually, I watched from a prime viewing location, at the front of the crowd, as I performed the ceremony (in a role I don't get to use often, though I might want to do more):

http://www.simreal.com/fr_edwin.jpg

And yes, I am ordained in a Gnostic church, with an ordination pedigree from the catholic lines... it's.... complicated.

I haven't written any new story words since early June and that's killing me -- but things have been hectic, and I have been tired. Very tired. Right now I'm about to begin skipping tonight's Taichi, which will put me further behind, which will make Monday all that much harder. To justify it, I will have to study the form some, try to catch up, to balance the cost. Maybe even get ahead.

I'm on the fast track to finishing my CS degree -- a task I've been putting off for decades. I'm blowing through classes right now at a rate that justifies my tiredness, but it's destroying my weekends.

I miss having project time. Is it time for my schedule recap? I think I'll skip that today.

I want to... to... build a vision-guided robot arm; write a CAD package; do some web/text-based agent AI; compete in robot combat (I've been talking to a guy online who does, and it reminds me of how fun it sounds); write more; edit more; send my stories in to magazines; but first organize my list of magazines; and it goes on.

This is on top of the usual stuff; not cleaning the house; not doing the dishes; not cooking; not working on the yard; not maintaining the house. Hey, not doing chores is hard work!

The day job is in a design phase, just about to transition through reviews and into implementation. I'll have prototype hardware in my hot little hands in three weeks or a bit less... so that's fun! Or will be. I hope. Unless I get pulled off onto one of three other high priority projects that also need attention.

Don't you just hate those people who use their journals as a forum to gripe? Yeah, me too.

I'll try to be more cheerful next time.

Until then,

I remain,

Cranky.

Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana

The month of July has just flown by! But this Saturday I took the finals for the two classes that were kicking my ass and stealing my time. Well, it was CS320 that was being cruel to me, CS410 was a breeze. Pumping Lemmas -- all of the descriptions of this little evil were written by mathematicians, and I don't share their particular peculiar brain damage.

Anyway, I was able to relax a bit Saturday, and spent a little time with my son before he flew off back to his home planet. It was a short month, this month's visit, and we really didn't do too much, at least not compared to previous years. Next year I hope to be more mentally present, and have a few things in the queue for activities.

Saturday evening we went to M's birthday party and I actually drank actual drinks with actual alcohol... about five of 'em! My tolerance for alcohol is higher than I would have expected, and I suffered no ill effects or even any noticeable wobbliness. I should have drunk more.

Sunday was a slow starter, as I oozed out of bed late and puttered about the house and on the internet. About 11 I woke up the sleeping teenager, about 12:30 we drove him to the airport. I checked him in, hugged him, and off he went... return again in 11 months, an adult. He will be 18 in February! Amazing.

Then, upon returning (after a not-so-brief detour by the yarn store) and with a huge mug of tea in front of me, I addressed the short story "Eternity" -- edited it into shape, fixed it so it was in one tense (as I write, I jump between past and present tenses, it drives me crazy), and generally tidied it up. I then sent it off to three people who had previously expressed an interest in reading my stuff and giving me feedback.

Now I'll have to spend the next couple of weeks flipping through the writer's guide and working up a list of who might want to publish such a thing.

Each week, I'll edit and send off another short story (I have seven more in queue), and I should start writing new ones as well, so my queue never runs entirely dry.

To help drown some of the writer's angst and sooth my spasming muscles (okay, I also just felt lazy) I decided to sit and watch a movie and have a couple of drinks Sunday night. So I'm sipping on my shot of tequila, watching Fargo (such a fun movie), and between the slouchy chair I'm in and the oddness of my sore muscles, I manage to inhale some of the tequila.

It's amazing how even top-shelf tequila burns when presented to the wrong passageways. The tender passages in my throat can clamped completely shut, like a slammed door. Not a molecule of air, let alone more of the offending liquid, was going to pass through there, no sir. I spit the tequila that was still in my mouth into the cup and stood up, with the thought of staggering into the bathroom for water or something, before I passed out, I'm not sure... but I propped myself against the doorway and eventually managed to gasp a little air...

I don't finish the shot.

And that was my weekend.

My Big Fat Greek... trip.

I went to Athens, Greece for a week.

I took some pictures.

I ended up destroying the pictures' folder on my Mac, because I expected XP behavior and got OS-X behavior. Ooops.

I recovered them.

But they got a little bit scrambled.

Here they are:

www.simreal.com/greece_web/index.html

Engineers and food...

Engineers will eat anything.

But first, a project update: Haven't done diddly over squat. There, that was easy. Of coures, I _will_ edit at least one story and send it out to my second-readers this month. And I _hope_ I write something more, too.

This month, my son Nik is in town, so that's cool. We are working on zombie sculptures that we hope to finish today, mold next weekend, and cast the one after... hope it goes well! Between work and school this year, our time is abbreviated... which sucks. But still, he's here, and that's nice.

Back to engineers and food now.

My wife Marla was doing some pickup shopping in the store the other day and, while wandering down the Asian Food Aisle (a favorite place to gawk), she did a double take near the creme wafer cookies. What kind of fruit is _that_!? Durian! What an amazing find.

She came home and told me about it, a fun curiosity found amongst the strange food. I, of course, exclaimed, "what, and you didn't buy one!?"

I then proceded to run out and buy one.

Dinner passed, and the evening wore on, the package of cookies sitting there tempting me. Mmmmm, exotic cookies.

Now, on the off chance that you haven't heard of Durian fruit, it's a fruit that is so smelly that it has been banned from many public places and is almost universally reviled for its odour. It is, however, supposed to taste much better than it smells!

This eveningm, Nik and I sat down to watch a nice movie after dinner. A few minutes into the movie and I felt I had digested enough dinner to approach dessert. Mmmm, exotic cookies!

So I opened the package and, a brief moment later, yelped out an exclamation of disgust (something like, "Good god, that's awful!") and set the package on the table behind me to "mellow".

It took a few moments for the stench to dissipate a bit, and a minute or two more for me to work up my courage again. I picked up the package, inhaled a reserve of oxygen, carefully slid the package open, removed a very ordinary looking wafer, and ... pausing just a moment... took a bite from the wafer and chewed.

And handed it to Nik. The moment his teeth hit the cookie I mentioned, offhand, that no, these do NOT taste better than they smell.

Apparently, in the moment that I chewed my piece of wafer, Marla caught an amazing expression on my face that Nik must have missed, else he would NOT have bitten into the cookie.

The task done, I choked down my bite and Nik went to the back door to spit out his, while I popped open a beer and flushed the bulk of the evil from my mouth.

Whomever tells you that Durian fruit tastes much better than it smells... lies. It smells like something that came the wrong way out of a dog and tastes much the same. It's horrible.

There is a teeny, tiny, off chance that the artificial Durian flavor used in the cookie is significantly different than real Durian. Or that fresh Durian is remarkably tasty while cookie-shaped Durian is not. But do I want to take that risk? No.

But now I had an entire package of Durian fruit creme wafers. What to do with them? Why, the only sensible thing!

I took them to work and left them in the breakroom on my floor.

Through most of the morning, the breakroom smelled distinctly like... Durian. But in spite of that, by the end of the day about half of the wafers were gone. Eaten, I assume.

Coming home that night, there is a pervasive smell of... wintergreen! With an underlying hint of Durian. It took about 24 hours, all told, before the stench entirely left our house... and our houes is not one bereft of odors, either. But Durian stands out.

The next day at work, I put the package back into a prominent place in the breakroom (from where it had been tidied up to by the cleaning staff), and by the end of that day... it was empty.

Proving, indeed, that engineers will eat anything.

Alive Again, perhaps?

I have been slacking on this journal a lot this year... but for good reason. I haven't had much to report in my external world, and my internal world has been in some chaos with things that I prefer not to report.

First a status update. My "garage sale" was a success, and sparkylibrarian can now in fact get her car in the garage. Yayy me!

The ohmygodI'minmy40s angst continues, with ebbs and flows. I still have urges to get rid of all my stuff and join a monestary, but these have greatly lessened recently.

I have a doctor's appointment this Friday where he'll proabably tell me I can't drink coffee... but we'll see.

What have I been doing this last year? Writing. You can find the status of my writing projects at my Simreal Journal. Progress has been mostly steady, but with some fits and starts, and not nearly the productivity I want... but then, I've also had other distractions, plus the usual exercise events throughout the week.

And the big thing from last week is my trip to Greece, a trip that events conspired to bring to me... I won't go into the base details, really, because they were just the excuse, the annoying little technicality, that led me to some time away from _everything_.

A real escape from the ordinary.

Imagine that?

I spent my free time in the Athen's Plaka area, the old district, stomping along the quaint and crowded cobbled streets, wrestling with traffic that is just on this side of complete chaos, stepping around shops whose contents were not satisfied with their cramped inner quarters, but instead spilled across the sidewalks in an avalanche of consumer goods.

I ate real Greek food prepared by Greek hands in Greece.

I saw ruins, and marveled at the size and immensity of what remains.

I even went to a public concert and heard Greek rap, Greek cover songs of music I knew, traditional Greek music sung in falsetto (or something) on electric instruments, everything. It was amazing!

I elbowed through throngs of tourists and stared at the infinitely repeating collections of tourist shops. I even bought something to bring home, doing my part for the tourist economy of Athens.

Over the weekend, I took about 200 pictures. I may even put some up somday.

I was scammed, though not too badly, by a very nice Greek man. I had stopped in Syntagma square to look at my map, to orient myself to the Acropolis, for a visit. The nice fellow comes over, "Hi. You speak english?"

"Yeah."

"Are you looking for something?"

"Oh, I'm just at loose ends, going to head to the Acropolis and walk around some."

"Ahh! I have a shop near there, come I'll show you where it is!"

We walk a bit, and I interrupt his babble of relatives in the US and how his cafe is a cute little place called "New York"... "you don't have to walk all the way, just point me, I'm fine."

"No no, I'm going to my shop anyway."

So we walk and get there, a tiny little wedge of a tavern amongst many other little wedges of stores in a small street, like any other small street.

"Here we are! The Acropolis is just over there."

"Thank you."

"Oh, why don't you come in, have a beer!"

What a nice man! "Okay."

I sit in the cool, and the nice bar lady opens a beer for me, set in in front of me with an iced mug. Mmmmm, beer.

Next to the nice serving lady appeared another. "Hey, buy us a gin, we'll drink with you." Oooh, I know the answer to this one! I was delighted, I had never been in a scam before.

I stared at 'em a bit, smiled. "How much?"

The bar lady paused a moment, "20 euro."

"No, thanks though."

"Just while you drink your beer."

"That's an expensive way to pass the time."

"Not so much," the lady shrugged.

So I finished my beer quickly and paid... far too much.

What's truly funny is that same day, another guy approached me as I looked at the map. "My brother, he has a nice club, here I'll show you..."

And the next day, even while I wasn't looking at the map...

I guess I look like a sucker. Of course, the cats could have told me that ages ago.

Simplification

I've been doing a lot of thinking the last six months, a lot of life review and future planning and a wide variety of other things that seem to come around when a guy is in his forties.

Oh, I'm 42 today, which makes me the answer to the universe, thank you very much!

Anyway, I've often felt that you don't own things -- things own you. Each thing you have that requires maintenance, dusting, putting away, organizing, tripping over, or that throws up hairballs on your carpet or requires payment, takes a piece of your life away. So choose what things you keep carefully, make them worth the trade.

On that theme, I've before to reduce the load of stuff I have around me, but never gotten around to it. Over the next two weeks, though, I'll be putting it into action.

I'll be going through the garage, the office workshop, the storage closets, and pulling out all of the parts, extraneous tools, supplies, whatever, and set them aside to give away or sell for cheap to people in the robot group and haunt communities in town, and ultimately to freecycle or the garbage if need be.

I will be keeping the significant tools and, in some cases, some supplies for things I'm doing this year. But otherwise? Bye-bye!

Who knows, maybe M2 will even get to park her car in the garage again.

Okay, maybe I won't get that crazy.

I think the criteria will be... would I want to pay postage on this to move it to Australia in two years?

Not that I'm moving to Australia in two years, but I do want to keep my options open.

Bogus homework gunk.

So after my really cranky Thursday, made me read some Yatsubo&! which, in spite of my trying to stay grumpy, it cheered me up. That manga is pure, distilled perky cheerfullness. I ended up reading all three of 'em that we had over the weekend.

The weekend was killed by homework... I'm finding the software engineering class to be _really_ annoying; partly because it's stuff I've known for decades, and partly because the sample project in it is retarded.

Got feedback (finally) on my homework assignment from last week and I did good, well enough at least. I had factored their object list down to a simpler form of primary object and variations, and they wanted me to keep them long and complicated, so I'm thinking they may not like what I'm doing with the implementation.

I'm really not enjoying this project as much as I have past ones. Thank god, it will be over soon.

I hope the next classes are less stupid. This one is making me crazing, with my bullshit alarms going off constantly. Makes me cranky.

Dancing Frustration

There are days when I'm a terrible dance student. I don't remember stuff, things I know I can do just won't re-appear in my brain at all. It's terribly frustrating and I get visibly frustrated...

The smooth dances are the worst for me -- waltz and foxtrot, bolero, sometimes even tango (though I loved tango in theory).

I've been dancing ballroom about three years now, but the first year I was doing just two lessons a month and wasn't actually _dancing_ anywhere. So I don't really count that as a proper year at all...

The last two years plus a few months, I've been doing group lessons on Friday (two styles each Friday) and trying to go to Saturday dances to actually _dance_ (though a bit inconsistent there). The last year, I have also been doing higher-level classes Thursday night. Plus the same 2 private lessons a month on top of it all.

These 3rd level classes are the classes that kill me. Level 2 is now not bad -- which makes sense, since they are designed for people who have been dancing about 2 years. Level 3 classes, like tonight's Foxtrot 3, are still a terrible struggle.

I got through almost all 5 weeks of Foxtrot 3 though! But it was hard, and I had a hell of a time remembering stuff from week to week -- since the moment I leave the room I don't think about it again until the moment I re-enter the room the next week.

Because I do school and social stuff weekends, and I'm usually too tired to go to Saturday dancing. And Mon/Wed is Taichi -- no practice then! Learning Chen form, which is also hard. Tuesday is usually house oriented stuff, bills, whatnot. And that's it. All the week there is.

Work, Taichi, dance lessons, weekends for school and life and housework...

So dancing level 3 smooth is hard and frustrating and I'm a terrible cranky angry frustrated student.

Sigh.

More screaming death

Awww, the little red ants carried all of the corpses out of the nest and made piles of them, heaps even, around the entrances.

This will never do. A much bigger soak on that nest, as best I can tell, killed them all this time. I'll keep my eye on 'em, though.

The nest by the driveway -- a big soak, but I still saw activity today. Same thing with the one by the garage. It's hard to soak 'em down to the queen.

Maybe, though, I will have annoyed them enough to make 'em migrate.

Oooh, I sprayed weeds in my driveway cracks with some high-octane vinegar (plus orange oil, plus a surfactant; purchased from the organic gardening store) and they turned brown! Cool! All-natural death. Of course, the driveway smells like salad now, but that's okay.

Spent a long weekend moving slowly -- did some schoolwork (not enough), some housework (not enough), some yardwork (not enough), some recreational reading, played games with friends (too much), and wrote some (not enough).

Ahh well. If I get those school chapters read this week, I can do the assigments Saturday again and still be on track. This last Saturday, though, the discrete math assignment took _way_ too much time. Darn it. And several questions in the assignment had nothing to do with the book, so that was confusing.

I'm kinda between projects at work right now, but that's changing quickly I'm sure.

Doing a little bit of jewelry repair and fiddling in the shop, so that's fun.

And I've been pestering Richard about his American Ballroom Dance book... to ghost it for him, because I think it needs to be published. At least, I want a copy.

Experiments in Screaming Death

While Marla was deflowering the yard (dandelions count as flowers, right???) I decided to test something I had heard about.

We had some fire ant nests -- one under the driveway by the garage door, and one by the street in that useless damn strip of grass there.

I had heard that orange oil annoys and/or kills ants. I have orange oil, mmmm, good stuff! So I threw a handful of ounces (unmeasured) into a couple gallons of water (unmeasured) (theory is 2oz per gallon) and then got the pump spraying thingy and hosed it into their little holes.

Woo-hoo, some activity! When I knocked over the mound in the yard, fire ants boiled out and man did they look mad. So I spritzed all over the top of those to start and then poked around for some direct entrances to their evil underground lair. And then sprayed about a gallon of orange-impregnated water into it. Heheheh.

It wasn't too long before I didn't see more than just a couple surface ants. Hopefully they were packing the babies and moving to the neighbors yard.

Same thing for the garage.

I hear that a light orange spray all over will keep the little bugger away, too -- or orange peels diced up and sprinkled around the yard.

For the curious, I also have another very effective control for any kind of ant. Simply mix borax or boric acid with whatever substance the ant in mind will eat, and place it on or near their trails. They take it back home and in about 2 days, everyone is dead.

It has worked for me every time.

The insect people use borax mixtures for all kind of bug control, too. They sprayed it on my floor beams in Oregon to keep termites out, for example.

The bonuses are that orange oil smells really nice, and borax is pretty innocuous, though bunches of it are bad for your landscaping. I mean, you have to eat spoonfulls of the stuff before you even get sick...

http://www.msdsvault.org//GENERALPDF/33850-USBorax-Borax.pdf

Warming up the blog again

Okay, I think I'll start writing in here again. Had a big break, transitioning from one mode of existence to another as it were.

Smooth-on, my silicon supplier of choice, has a bunch of new products I will play with this year. The two I have on hand are their new food-safe silicon mold making material, good to baking up to 350'F! Woo! I can make edible body parts of any kind! Or, hmmm, anything! Mmmm, lady-fingers.

We are having a party to play with this stuff -- a group purchase -- but it keeps getting delayed. The first time because the shipment came in late, the second delay because Silona (one of the key players in this party) was too bruised to make it. So maybe after next weekend we'll have a fun progress report!

I spent a few minutes with silver clay this Sunday, too -- working to fix a broken piece, and dabbling with a couple of other experiments. Nothing too thrilling, but it's nice to be in the shop. And the weather is beautiful these days! Spring in Austin... except for the pollen raping my delicate membranes, it's beautiful.

At this point in the writing front, I've got four short stories (from 3,000 to 6,000 words per) and about 11,000 words in a long story that I'm scraping out of my brain one paragraph at a time.

All of it will need some serious rewrites to pull them together, but that's expected.

The first three are obsessive love stories of different flavors, the fourth short (the 3,000 word one) is more stream-of-consciousness, but still a kind of predatory story. Later this year I'll do editing and think about marketing them...

If I had the energy, I could easily do a short story each week -- the ideas appear just about as fast as I implement them, and I've also got several novels queued in my brain. When I'm writing, it's not too hard to do a decent 1,000 words an hour... but hard to do more than a couple hours in a sitting! My brain gets all overheated, and starts skimping.

It's funny how so many people I know are professional writers, aspiring writers, recreational writers -- I would almost feel like a "me-to" if writing hasn't been something in my background most of my life. I'm simply moving it up to the fore now.

And I forget that I do happen to have five books published. Heheheh. But they are light technical, they don't count.

Mmm, fiction. While I'm at it, I could try ramming bamboo slivers under my nails, or pounding my head against a brick wall.

But ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

Crickets Chirping

Oooh, I can hear the crickets chirping... I haven't updated this in months, and I'm sure I've lost all of my readers.

For anyone new to the show, this journal is mirrored in Live Journal as ewiserss, which makes it a painless way to watch this and other journals at the same time.

If you are one of the rare folks that come to the journal by way of the Simreal front page you will have noticed a new feature there -- word count progress status bars!

(which will be updated to be faster, this week)

This is my year of writing and sculpture... so my Journal front page shows the progress on my writing projects.

My general theory is to write (as much as I can, given my stupid work schedule, health, and whatnot) rough drafts and put them aside for a few months. Then, once I've reasonably forgotten the writing, to go back and edit them. Once edited, I'll get them read (I have a few readers on hand, probably want to get a few more) for feedback, re-edit, and then submit.

With any luck, I'll get published!

I'm doing short stories and novels, as the whim strikes (I have lots of both in my brain), hopefully improving with practice until I reach some semblance of "good". Or at least "publishable" which is not always the same thing.

My genre is horror -- though sometimes it may be erotic horror, though I may tone that down in editing.

Oh, and sculpting. I'll start that sometime after this accursed product releases.

Profundity

One way of living in the world, one goal at least for some, is to be fully alive in each moment, to be entirely aware and awake and noticing. Each tick of time steps past your notice, each action is conscious, each breath a choice that is made.

Another way is to numb yourself to the passing of time, to skip past the dull intervening moments to reach the goal on the horizon, the pot of gold.

As in all things, I am of both minds about this. I find the press and clutter of daily tasks and housecleaning tedium to be too jard sometimes, and at the same time to be so painfully uninteresting that I can't bear to fix the mess around me, so it is easier to simply skip through time and let it flow past unnoticed.

And still I want to make each moment count, to be useful, though I find this level of connection is only easily achieved by me when I am focusing on some creative task.

And when I am creating, I can squeeze some tedious effort out of me as a side effect sometimes.

It is still, though, as if I am waiting for something. There is something missing, something coming on the horizon, something that I want to skip ahead to great and bypass the many tedious seconds that lie between now and then.

What that something is I cannot say.

So I get this amusing struggle inside my own head.

Speaking of amusing, one project that I hope to invent and build in the next few months is a giant earthquake-based subwoofer. To couple multiple vibrating devices to the earth and drive them through amplifiers to make the earth sing in its basso profundo voice for me, the rumblings of god or the devil at my feet.

If you have any ideas or interesting in this project, let me know... I would welcome colloborators.

Ramping up the new year

In Taiji we are learning Chen style. This is very different from Yang! It should be fun, once we get past feeling hopeless.

A number of projects are looming up in the queue, some scheduled some in the process of finding dates:

A welding weekend for fun and friends; a lifecasting session, at least; game playing! And, of course, dancing begins again this week.

Tattoo

It's a big file, sorry:

Dragon Tattoo

The New Year

Ahhh, the holidays are past, and I'm back at work and heading in to the new year.

There are no single major projects queued up for 2006, though I do have a theme in mind for the year. This will be the year I work on my sculpting skills -- and to this end I have purchased a number of good and mediocre books on the subject.

Also notable for this year will be that detail that I will _not_ be working on Haunted Trails... but will be applying myself to some other Halloween project or other.

Banging off the old year come two notable events, one of which is only notable for being extremely annoying. Some asshole Chinese person went and edited all of my user pages in the simreal TWiki, putting lots of crap and spam in them. Tonight I'll hand-edit all of the user pages and lock them down so they can only be edited by their owners. Jeez, those asshole spammers, they really should all just drop dead.

The other notable event was that I got a dragon tattoo on my back! Over six hours under the needle, doing a full back piece in one sitting. Note for the curious, shading hurts like hell when done over fresh outlining.

The dragons are custom designs by Geoff Massey, the tattoo guy I used at HPP Ink in Eugene, Oregon. He went all out for me, and created serpent-like dragons (kind of like seahorses) in a Giger-esque style. Excellent work, unique, and well executed.

I'll post a picture eventually.

Like Sunshine

Like sunshine, this morning dawned clear and happy in my life. It's the little things, really...

Oh My God dragging I was this weekend. Thursday and Friday spent in torpid luxury at Michelle's, eating pie and eating more pie. Oh, and turkey.

I even watched the Texas vs. A&M football game more than I read my Mac OsX book, which is unreal. A good game... don't tell Michelle, but I was rooting for A&M because it was more exciting that way...

Texas won, though, even though they played badly.

Saturday I declined to go to Nick's game playing afternoon (Sorry Nick!) so I could do stuff that had to be done... so I did lots of laundry, did a little bit of this and that... moving...very... slowly....

Sunday, practice for Taiji... and another 1/4 of the algebra class.

I'm so much faster than that.

Started two or three times to write this short story, a simple piece, but was clogged and derailed by angst and frustration each time.

Argh!

Even this morning I got two lines in before I ground to a halt... do I tell it as a conversation between roommates, or as entries in his journal?!

But soon after... my mood shifted and the gray lifted and I'm all happy and cheerful again, and even focusing on work.

Well, except for now, when I'm writing here.

And now, with coffee too, I think I'll be able to get my brain back into gear and my wheels on the track and start moving again.

(so much more I could put here, but work calls, and not all things need to be logged in the journal)

Balloon Twisting

Oooh, I spent about 2.5 hours on Saturday twisting skinny balloons into figures at the Harvest Festival at a local high school.

I'm kinda rusty at the whole balloon thing, and I went pretty low-profile (no costume, no colorful hat, nothing really except me and some balloons)... but Anna managed to attract a bunch of kids for me to twist for.

It was fun! But I was rusty -- lots of stuff I didn't remember how to do. Oooh, and twisting uses weird muscles in your hands. I had to stop a bit early when I could no longer do the ear-twist.

From there, we went to Richards for some play, and then to the Haunted Trails wrap-up dinner, where I twisted more balloons to the amusement of the people around me.

It was fun! Fun! I forgot how festive balloon twisting is, how magic it seems to the people watching it.

I should buy another thousand balloons or so and get my skills back up into order. And I could expand on my reference work, too -- put in some stuff for 160's, troll the lists and sites and books for new figures, so on and so forth. Oooh, and flowers. And hats! And sculptures...

... which is why I stopped. It's so easy to get totally absorbed in it!

Anyway, my twisting reference (an arcane piece of work if ever there was one) is here: Twist Reference The twists themselves are described in the back...

Reality

What is real?

This is not a straighforward question, it would seem, with a simple answer.

Of course, in some areas, you would _expect_ this to be a hard question to answer. In terms of your personal experience, there are so many things that can affect your perceptions.

When I'm under the foggy blanket of depression, I live in a different world than when I am clear and energetic -- it is a different reality, where I seem to have entirely different skill sets, and my understanding of what is easy and hard, what work is good and what work is poor, all of these things can change.

That kind of personal reality is by nature hard to nail down. It changes with time and mood and attention.

On the other end of the spectrum, some forms of reality are hard to dispute. This pad of sticky notes on my desk is pretty clearly a pad of sticky notes.

But it's possible for a person to perceive it as something more... perhaps you feel that 3M has put nano-probes in the glue of the notes and are secretly monitoring you through them. I knew someone who felt that the red light on a building in the distance was watching her -- seriously felt this to be true.

We laugh at these perceptions, call them crazy, say that these people need to adjust their tinfoil hats. Because to us, these ideas are silly, unreal. But to them these perceptions are as real as anything else.

And there are the conspiracy people, who like to talk about things that seem crazy (unreal) to many people. One, for example, is the inclusion of the All Seeing Eye on the Great Seal of the USA (the eye in the pyramid; look at your money http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/NWO/All_Seeing_Eye.htm).

Is this true or just imagination? Perhaps it used to be true and isn't now, or was not true but is because people thought it should be. We can't go back into time and ask the players, so we get to make up whatever stories fit the evidence we see.

That's what people do.

And once we have a story in our head that seems to fit the evidence, we act upon it as if it were real. To my mind, a wise person also adjusts their story when new evidence appears. But I suspect that most people find so much comfort in their mental stories that they will discount and adjust evidence so it fits instead, no matter what.

Now, if your imagined reality does not mesh with the accepted "true" reality, you are considered to be a nut, a deviant, crazy, in need of help. Or at the very least, unwell.

That's the thing, though. Is the accepted true reality the real reality?

I live in Texas. My reality is not the same as the majority reality here.

The bulk of the citizens of this fine state are Christians, and conservative ones at that.

They believe that the set of old, edited, and politically motivated stories in their bible are true stories, reflecting a true reality. In many cases, a literally true reality. In fact, our nation as a whole tends to believe some pretty wild things that lack any kind of real evidence: http://www.pollingreport.com/science.htm

How they can be sure that a "day" in Genesis corresponds to 7.94e+14 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom (the diurnal period of this planet around our sun) before God had even bothered to invent light or dark yet, is a mind-bogglind proposition. But I digress.

For these people, the reality of the universe is such that good (them) and evil (everyone else) are locked in an epic battle that, while possibly fore-ordained that good will win, requires efforts on their part to make it happen.

To these people, anything I say that is not in line with their teachings from church is most likely motivated by a personal demon of mine, that is feeding me clever lies to confuse them and test their faith.

For them, to give the appearance of sanctioning the evils of homosexuality, would be to lose a battle in this war. So when they vote to define marriage according to their religion's preference, they are striking a blow for goodness and godliness.

This is real for them. Their reality. They are living their lives according to, what to me is, a misunderstood fairy tale. And to be honest, they aren't even doing that correctly. But again, digression threatens.

These same people celebrate when Target supports their "right" to not sell you Plan B if they choose not to. And they would feel that our complaints and points of view are simply ignorant, or influenced by evil powers that we are not aware of. And that we should pray to Jesus and turn our hearts to him to find happiness and clarity.

When we talk of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, do they understand what we mean? To them, the FSM is just a silly story, a political tool. Nothing at all like their stories, which are the true words of God and the one correct guide to life, the universe, and everything.

Nothing at all in common.

This is their reality.

But then, to other people, the stories in the bible and the precepts of the FSM are all too similar.

So the accepted true reality in my world appears to actually be a form of insanity. My personal beliefs are such that my reality is not in step with the majority reality around me. Does that make _me_ insane?

I don't think the blinky red light is watching me, and I have no fear of my Post-it notes, but neither do I think that God hates homosexuality, the world was created in 6 days with one day of rest, that Sunday is holy, that Jesus learned to bypass the fermentation process, and so forth.

To my point of view, if you think that the sun stopped in the heavens (literally) because God said so, you are probably insane... that is, holding a view that is out of touch with what is real.

But I'm in something of a minority.

Does that make me crazy?

Because I feel like a sane person in a world of crazy people. And, even worse, the inmates are running this asylum, not just inhabiting it.

Our country was founded by sane, intelligent people. Every time I read something by, for example, Thomas Jefforson, I am impressed by his insight.

On the contrary, some of the things I hear from George W. Bush makes me ashamed not only of my country but, sometimes, of my very species.

I think part of the problem is that the really crazy people are very, very sure of themselves. Their reality is more real than ours. And, as long as this reality is not immediately destructive to their survival, this certainty of theirs turns them into effective leaders.

People like certainty. It feels like safety.

Sometimes it seems hopeless. These fairy tales are compelling, so they collect converts quite easily. Are they true? Who knows! But they have a psychological benefit -- they are a form of mental parasite. They gain life, and we gain... peace of mind. At the expense of living our lives with a mental model that does not, as far as I can tell, reflect a true reality.

And on top of this, many of these lifestyles promote breeding, so these communities grow from within as well as from without.

What does the future hold for people who live in my reality? We don't offer the same comfort, we don't breed as fast, we aren't often charismatic leaders. Are we trapped? Destined for extinction? Or will there always be a thin film of us to help moderate, to leaven if you will, the fermenting majority that are not like us?

I like our planet. I love the beauty and power and ferocity of it. I love people (as individuals, though as often as not I dislike people groups or categories). I wish I could have a thousand lifetimes, so I could love more people, to have more friends, to do more things (except for those days where I'm too burnt out to care anymore and all I can do is sleep; but those days always pass).

So I feel a real dismay at what sometimes looks like the inevitable destruction of what I feel is good and beautiful about humanity.

Cultures have been overrrun and destroyed before, by the violent or stupid or corrupt. They usually come back again, too, some hundreds or thousands of years later.

But is that recovery guaranteed? Or would it be possible to be caught in a cultural revolution, a new Dark Ages, a spasm of fundamentalism, that could go on for a thousand years or more, or forever?

There are people, many people, who are actively working to do this. Fundamentals of several stripes, Muslim or Christian, or whatever, would love to see their fairy tales overrun the consensual reality so hard that we never recover.

For us, this is madness, a short-sighted foolishness that boggles the imagination.

For them it is reality, it is their holy battle, it is their very reason for existence.

Wedged

Take a plain, thick, athletic tube sock with that thick toe-seam, you know the kind. Put it on kind of crooked, so the seam kind of interferes with your toes. Don't pull it all the way up, so the tip is a bit floppy. Now put on the shoe.

When I was younger, that feeling of the seam-wad-lump-wrinkle of the sock in the shoe drove me crazy. I hated it! Argh!

Some days my whole body feels like that, like my spirit has been stuffed crooked and rumpled into a too-small container.

And on days like that, when I do Taiji, it's even worse since the exercise and the focus increases my energy far beyond normal. And then when the focus ends, it's all loose energy rattling around in a defective container.

This sense of malaise peaked for me yesterday and now this morning I feel clean are refreshed, alert and well.

It's part of a long cycle that feels like a week-long seizure. Since I was sick last week a bit, I didn't notice the headache Tuesday as being part of it, but there is usually a headache involved near the end of the "event", corresponding to increasing tension and bad mood. I thought Tuesday was a relapse, or that all the water I was drinking was flushing toxins, or because I hadn't had coffee, or... and it may have been those, too.

You know how, when you drift off to sleep, your body might twitch or spasm? Sometimes it's big enough to wake you up again. I have the joy of getting those spasms at odd intervals, pretty much any time.

Usually, they are associated with a mental fugue -- where I'll catch on a particular thought, often involving an intense physical image (e.g. cutting off a finger, any violent thing to myself or to another, but sometimes just anything) that escalates and then releases with a spasm. It's really weird.

At the peak of these long, slow, uncomfortable "events" my body can be on the edge of these for a long time, just tense, and anything, a touch or a thought, can trigger one. Like a coil of sissal twine wound too tight, where the strands are breaking one at a time...

There's also an emotional component to the "event", often just an escalating (ummm, sinking?) depression, but also anger, frustration.

And then the creeping headache, that's especially fun.

And it peaks, and it's gone, and everything is good again.

Sometimes it's a few days to cycle, sometimes longer. And there is no noticable schedule to the events, no apparent trigger to start them.

It's been years since I've taken my sanity for granted, really. And you notice things when you don't assume that what you are feeling is "valid" (that is, connected to events around you), odd cycles of mood, or correlations of physical and mental state.

Sometimes it's like the "me" who I feel that I am has been stuffed into a defective robot, whose mechanics force upon me alien feelings or moods, whose electronics affect my clarity of thought, my memory. Sometimes the noise is so great it almost obscures who I am entirely, so my actions and presentation to the world is a lie, doesn't represent who I feel I am on the inside.

Is it any wonder that people have developed the notion of a body/spirit separation? That we would not think of ourselves as our bodies, but as some entity parked in this flesh?

Because some days this impression is very vivid; it's the only thing that makes sense, that feels true.

I just wish I could upgrade the motherboard on this thing. And maybe get a flashier case. And some neon. Definitely some neon, and move from those clunky flat cables to all-new SATA wires. Or something.

Halloween

Ahhh, if I weren't sick right now, I would be recovered from my Halloween experiences.

As it is, the sore throat (and, now, cough and general malaise) have been making me sleep more, which has helped with my recovery. Or something.

It's weird, when I get 8 hours of sleep, I actually feel refreshed and alert! I should try that someday when I'm not sick.

Haunted Trails was reasonably fun this year -- I was a guide again, as I usually am, and I made some this and that. I didn't go all out this year, though, taking a bit of a break.

As it turns out, there was not nearly enough hands on deck to build the show, or even run it except for the last night. Through superhuman efforts by Tall Matt and Paul (and Chip, and Andy...), and some skilled CSR workers I believe, the major mechanical room effects got built. Falling ceiling, sinking floor -- good stuff.

With Halloween falling on a Monday, well after the Saturday final run of Trails, I had enough time and energy to actually _do_ something for Halloween! Woo!

The week before, I submitted a unique pumpkin to the pumpkin "carving" contest: I made a foam-gelatin face from a lifecast mold I had laying around and deck-screwed it to the pumpkin.

On the inside, I made a foam-gelatin brain and covered it with bloody slyme. I named my pumpkin "Gloria". It was good. I'll put up pictures in the Haunt section soon.

Ooh, it wasn't until Marla asked me why I named it Gloria that I realized (remembered) that I name all of my female heads a 'G' name: Gladys, Grace, and now Gloria.

For my costume, I went as "the guy who made the Gloria pumpkin", in a homicidal-maniac theme. I sculpted a large-ish cut and cast it in foam-gelatin. For the first time, I got a good result from a gelatin prosthetic! The edges were thin and stretchy; the witch-hazel dissolved them into my skin; the spirit gum held it all down (though next time I'm trying prosthetic adhesive).

My only challenges was getting the makeup to blend, to be consistent across the prosthetic and my face. But it's easier with gelatin than with latex, and if I didn't have spirit gum residue on my skin, it probably would have been easier still.

Using some clever tweezers and a steady hand (hah!), I ran three safety pins through the wound and then decoreated it all in a bruised and bleeding fashion.

Then I liberally decorated myself with fake blood (on a white shirt, lovely and bright) and went on to win the scariest costume contest at work.

Sadly, the pictures I took at home don't show the face very well -- the safety pins are not very visible. I'm hoping I can find/get the picture they took at work of it. The bozos haven't posted anything to the web, though! I need to find a name and ask...

Monday I went to bed with a sore throat, which has persisted through to today; the sore throat bit has diminished but the germs have expanded into a cough, too. Whee.

I'm looking at doing a project referred to me by Wittlock Engineering - what may be a simple re-targetting of a program from old DOS to new DOS (plus possible enhancements; we'll see).

Outside of that, my only project this month is getting ready for Black Sash.

Oh, and school. I need to mail that contract in.

~bleh~

Ding-Dong!

Trick or Treat!

(A little girl, maybe six, in a beautiful princess or fairy costume, complete with fuzzy pink wings)

"You're messy!"

Yes, I am. (I'll post pictures later, but let's say my theme this year is homicidal maniac)

"You should clean up!"

I will clean up before bed.

"Ooh! Is that a skeleton!", looking at Stewart.

Yes, it is!

"Is it scary?"

No, it's not scary anymore.

"Bye! Thank you!"

I love Halloween.

The Season of Death

Wow, it's been a long time since my last entry. I've been in my October Funk, though, going into hibernation with the advent of cool weather and haunt-disrupted sleep schedules.

I was able to make a much larger nasty dog, which makes the guests get more up-close and personal with the nastiness, so that's fun. Otherwise, the recent couple of real run nights were much the same as first couple.

The Trail is simple this year -- a straight-forward scavenger hunt (which is what the Trail stories and most adventure games reduce to anyway), with some yuckiness and some solid scares tossed in here and there, plus a few festive "rides".

People really seem to be enjoying it, and we have good strong ticket sales as well.

October holds Halloween, my favorite holiday, and it is also the gateway to the holiday season, a special block of time where we take time for family and friends.

Fall is the time when the world begins to die. In most places, the air gets cold, the plants stop growing or actively die back, the leaves fall from the trees leaving only bare branches. Birds fly away, insects burrow out of site.

We have the harvest festivals, where the last of the planted foods are pulled in and stored. Often this is a time of harvesting the livestock as well; there is less food for the animals, so the animals become food themselves what is not not eaten is smoked, jerked, sausaged, and otherwise stored.

Of course, for almost all of us, "harvest season" means absolutely nothing. HEB still stocks all the food we need.

October is the gateway to the season of death, which is perversely also a season of celebrating life. Halloween itself can be seen as a time for acknowledging the dying of the world around us, taking part in it. In some traditions, it was a time when the ancestors were said to be visiting, ghosts walking the earth again, checking in on the families. A time to respect the past. As the world dies, we are closer to those who are already dead.

I think that perhaps Halloween would be a good time to go through personal deaths in preparation for rebirth -- a time to set aside bad habits, or to make peace with enemies. To clear the psyche, to let the leaves fall from our mental trees.

Passing through the Harvest, finding ourselves still alive though everything around us has ground to a stop, we celebrate our own life. In America, November's Thanksgiving is a time to recognize and be thankful for what we have. In my own structure of holidays, it is a time for adopted family; our closest friends.

December brings Christmas, a time for blood lineages. And, of course, gifts. It is also the dead of winter, a time when the cycle starts to edge back towards life. There are still hard months of cold ahead, but there will soon be signs of return.

January marks the European new year and is explicitly a time where we draw a line in the sand and look to how we want to live the next year.

I always feel better about my year when it has a sense of beginning, movement, and the ending and idling implicit in the last quarter of the year. And it is October, with Halloween, that connects me back to the cycle of nature, where I actually feel a part of the world again, if only for a brief moment.

Dress and Press 2005

Dress rehearsal, press night, and the free friends-and-family run was last night.

The trail assembled itself with great fuss and bustle and was quite presentable for the first run. We could certainly use more volunteers to fill out the experience, though -- really. Come play with us.

I only made a few new things this year. Squishy blobs for the spider eggs, these were cool. We put 'em in a bag of stretchy cloth, where they sat nestled in a solution of stringy slyme (www.fxsupply.com) thinned with glycerin.

Stringy Slyme is awesome. Really really nasty. And awesome. Buy a small tub to play with, you won't be disappointed.

Mmm, the mummified arm was mostly invisible last night, but may come to more prominence later. The hand, though, was popular.

The dead dogs were a bit too small to make the guests get yucky rummaging around inside them... we'll work on making them a bit yuckier though. And we may even get larger dogs to make it more challenging, but I'm not at all sure about that.

Hmmm... I built a water fountain, of sorts. I cobbled it together from several doors and some 3" PVC pipe I had laying around. Bought a nice water pump (for garde ponds, a largish pump I'll use next year in a water feature in my yard) and did some interesting painting on it, and it looks pretty cool. I'm popping chunks of dry-ice in the tube so the water runs over it before exiting, and I get a very nice continuous stream of fog out of it that pools in the catch basin. I will, of course, take pictures.

Some of my old work is making a re-appearance there, too. Mostly a pile of skeletons and yucky things. A few of the foam tombstones.

Anyway, my contributions to this trail are smaller than usual. Next year, though, I hope to hook up with something interesting... or maybe start something at home. We'll see.

Squishy Blobs

Ahh, I have 80 glow in the dark squishy spider egg blobs! Woo. I did the hot-pour PVC differently this time.

When I did the first batches, I made a full pot of the stuff and left it on while I poured... but through a sequence of events it did get kinda chunky... and it started to "cook" and get a bit brown... and the resulting blobs were a bit more firm.

So when I went to make blobs Saturday I did two things differently. First, I only filled the pot up part-way, enough to make 11 blobs (the number of molds slots I have) with not much left over.

And the other is I decided to actually heat the stuff up to the full temperature. I normally use it at 250' -- it's cooked, but still a little bit thick. This is a good temp. for corpsing, but it doesn't pour into molds very well.

The instructions say to pour at 350 or so, so I did! Well, I hotted it up to about 325 to pour. This made the stuff very thin and easy to pour, and the resultin blobs seemed to be even softer than usual.

I "borrowed" a nice metal measuring cup from the kitchen to use. I stuck this in the squish when it reached about 300' so the cup would be hot... so I didn't get lumps.

The downside to all of this was two-fold. One, I needed to chill the molds after a pour, so the stupid squish would cool enough to remove. The center blobs in the mold cooled very slowly, too.

And the second problem was the water itself. It would not all shake out, and the remnants would boil and steam when I poured the next set of blobs.

So a bunch of the blobs have weird steamed texture on one side. But heck, it will be dark, and the guests aren't going to be really looking at these. They are more of a... tactile... treat. And the glow is actually there to help us _find_ them when they are dropped on the trail. Heh.

It takes about an hour round-trip to heat and cast a set of blobs, which isn't so bad since it takes at least that long for them to cool in their bath of ice-water.

While I was doing this I modified two adorable stuffed dogs to make them less adorable. I took the top four ribs (and vertebras) of two of my Bucky skeletons, cut them short, heated them with a heat gun, and formed them into a smaller ribcage.

These went into the dogs.

Then, on the other burner, I heated a bunch of squish that I then cast into sausage casings. The casings deep-fried to a crunchy texture so I crumbled it off... and had PVC intestines! Woo! These I then put into the dogs and squished 'em into place.

Adding some stage blood and tada! Dead dogs.

They are fairly creepy. I'll take picturs once I'm sure I'm done dressing them.

On site Sunday I built a big blue box that will be the ice-water fountain. It's not terribly clever or pretty, but it should do. I'm hoping the silicon I used to seal the pipes together will stay waterproof.

Just in case it doesn't work, I'm going out Tuesday (if at all possible) and check for leaks and to heavily re-caulk if needed. Oh, and to paint my box.

The press night is Thursday.

First run is Saturday.

There is some small chance we'll be ready and have the manpower to do this.

Getting a hand

Oooh, I put up more pictures in the Haunt section:

http://www.simreal.com/twiki/bin/view.pl/Simreal/HandOfSomeone

At the very bottom. I made another cast of the hand, this one to give to the actor whose hand it is (well, give for the material cost). He hasn't written back yet, so I assume he's busy... I hope I sent the e-mail to the right Robert.. hmmm.

Though the hand still looks a bit dusty from the powdering (which removes the plasticy gloss the silicon overcoat gives it), I love the coloring and details in this model.

Okay, there are mold flaws -- some bubbles, a seam line where the mold had torn from the previous castings... and the overcoat is a bit darker than I wanted (the black silicon tint is powerful)... but it's still a beautiful job, I think.

Of course, once I get to buy that vacuum de-bubbler... my molds will be PERFECT! Perfect! Bwa-ha-haaa! And they said I was mad!

Sorry.

Now I need to find new excuses to make these things... new venues for my art. Maybe I could be a mad artist as well as a mad scientist...

I really love making stuff. Too bad I'm so busy that I don't get into the lab much these days.... work interferes so...

But at least Haunted Trails is forcing me back into the lab to make fun stuff!

More pictures and news later.

Go!

Played a game of 13-spot Go with Nik the other night and he whumped me rather soundly. I blame the beer, but he played well either way. I need to brush up on my game! He's been playing friends and improving.

I got the silicon for Robert's hand in the mail Monday, and I'm hoping to cast it soon. Tonight? Tomorrow? Before the weekend, because I want to do the finishing work on it then and get it to him next week.

I will also be getting the mold rubber and gram scale in the post today and tomorrow. This weekend, then, I will begin to cast the squish eggs -- not a moment too soon! Dress and press begins very damn soon.

Oh yeah, school

And Saturday I took the final for CS-121. It was embarassingly easy, which means if I bombed on some of the questions, I'll be pretty darned embarassed.

That wrapped up those 18 credits -- so now I have to finish paying for them, and pony up for the next 18. I'm probably four months behind where I want to be right now.

This school thing just drags on and on. I suppose it's slower since I'm not actually very interested in it; the purpose is for advancement at work (though I would also like to get past it so I could do more advanced work later).

Sigh.

Haunted Trails 2005

Well, I've been slowly (too slowly, but I think it will work out) ramping up projects for this year's Haunted Trails.

I'm mostly taking the trail off this year, due to residual tiredness from directing *last* year. Just making a half-dozen special props and guiding. Hardly anything at all. Oh, and I may be doing some makeup during runs. Just a token effort, really.

So far I've cast ten plaster cores for the spider egg item. The next step is to cast a one-piece mold for these and then cast the actual eggs in glow-in-the-dark "squish" (e.g. hot-pour PVC).

I went to pour the mold and - tra-la! - my polyurethane Part-A had congealed. I guess I was just lucky to have been able to create the core mold itself. Though it was probably the exposure to our evil humidity when I opened the bucket that caused the congealing (and I even sprayed the protective gas blanket on it). Oh well, it was well past it's use-by date.

So I ordered more, but this time a nice silicon mold material because, frankly, polyurethanes are nasty and poisonous, unless you _like_ cyanide. And I ordered a nice gram-accurate scale that goes to 7kg (13 lbs) so I can mix it properly.

I had a choice between buying a $135 set of mix-by-volume silicon or $85 of mix-by-weight and a $65 scale. I went for the scale. Of course, the cost-per-unit is about the same, I think, for the two types of silicon. The by-volume has two equal parts, both about a gallon. The by-weight has a 10:1 ratio, so I expect to get a lot less of the final product out of it. But the initial outlay is less. And I can use the scale for many other products, increasing the range of materials I can now use.

Now to get a vacuum degassing chamber. Heh.

I built up the mummified arm and hand, doing some decent work defining some musculature, knuckles, and stuff. This will look better than past dessicated parts, though the fingers are still a bit more tattered than I want. It's tricky working with sticky wet latex and cotton in those tight quarters. I think I want to give it fingernails, too... gotta work that out soon.

The latex itself is several years old and very chunky. It's getting close to the time to throw it all away and start fresh.

Now to paint it so make it look proper. The dark grey latex makes a decent base color, but I'm looking at more browns and blacks for the final.

I went to cast the silicon hand for Robert (from Deadbacks, damn I am late on this project), but after much searching, realized that this silicon hadn't been delivered yet. I could have sworn it had, but UPS claims it is due today so I couldn't have gotten it already.

The two projects I haven't started yet are the dead dog thing (which will contain an item, so I'll make it very disgusting on the inside) and the ice-cold water station. That needs to be built on location, so I'll need to go to the Basin soon and supervise that.

I should check to see if there are projects not listed here, that I am neglecting. Hmmm.

Oregon Vacation

Okay, I've booked round-trip tickets and a car rental for the week between Christmas and New years for our vacation in Oregon.

Woo!

We will be leaving on December 24th, so I expect the airport to resemble the foyer of hell, but it was the cheapest day to leave.

Coming back on a Monday, the 2nd, so that may be a bit better.

I had some pain in the wallet, though, accepting the $900 price tag. For that, I could get a computer and a nice LCD monitor! Or two REALLY nice LCDs!

I don't know how the airlines do their pricing, but I do know that it fluctuates wildly within a defined range. My preferred prices for the tickets was $250, but that was just a pipe dream. I got $300 tickets.

I've been watching the prices over the last couple of months, and the do get down to the $250 range... if you don't mind 6:00am departure times, three-hour layovers, or travelling overnight.

Mostly I mind the 6:00am departures. We did in fact get a three and a hour-hour layover. At least we are unlikely to miss our connecting flights. I'm bringing books. And maybe a pillow.

Ooh, and I can see if I have any friends in LA still, who can visit us in the airport.

I spent an hour or so selecting my options, picking a car (the cheapest one), dithering over whether to buy now or see if it gets better later (it won't), and talking to Marla to soothe my fears.

In that time, the price of my flight selection went up $60.

If I waited another hour, would that flight disappear? Go down $100?

I probably just pissed $60 down the rat-hole, but I didn't want to go through the entire process again, in the hopes of finding a better price. The selected trip had rational departure times, and that counts for a lot. Most of the flights I could find did not.

Now I get to worry whether I read it all correctly. So many words for my poor, overheated brain.

I guess I'll check it again tonight when I can see straight.

Web Update

I finally did it. It took months of hard procrastination and delay, but yesterday I uploaded my scattering of Deadbacks pictures to the Haunt section of Simreal.com and added some brief commentary.

I was aggravated to discover that some photos that I distinctly remember taking were nowhere to be found in my Deadbacks folder. Detailed pictures of the fake rocks. Photos of the final leg. Gone.

What could have happened to them? Everything that came out of that digital camera over the last four months went into a dated folder in Deadbacks.

Perhaps they went to the same place where a dozen ripped CDs went -- into bit heaven. Or hell. Where they will be tormented for all eternity, their limited binary nature mocked by the multi-state quantum demons that reside there.

We'll be getting the universal DVD of all pictures Deadbacks soon, so maybe I can get permission from the various photographes and fill in some gaps.

Mmmm, pictures.

Lagard! Slugard! Layabout! Goldbricker! Slacker!

It's beginning to really bug me that I haven't updated my various project areas in, oh, a year or so.

This might mean I'll actually do something about it soon.

Dreams

I was just reading in the excellent magazine Invention and Technology about the huge assembly building of NASA,and how it represents the dreams they had of shooting lots of stuff into space... dreams that never came true.

After the Apollo programs, NASA had plans for a space station, a moon base, and a visit to mars. All this was to have occured by 1980 or so... which probably meant 2000 or so.

I remember the time when we were in space, when the excitement was growing, the potential and possibilities unlimited, when a nation dreamed of something more than their daily toil.

Dreams that were crushed under the heels of a short-sighted government, people with no dreams themselves outside of immediate profit, who didn't want to spend the (admittedly huge) fortune needed to do this.

To this day I get angry and sad and betrayed when I think about it. These were *my* dreams.

At least I can take comfort in the fact that they used this money for good -- solving the problems of hunger and poverty in this country. A fair trade for a generation's dreams, don't you think?

Ramping up

For the last month or so, I've been unable to get myself to care about any of the various side projects I have -- Robert's hand, the electric shelf, *school*... my mind simply refused to focus.

I think I went through a reboot yesterday. I woke up at 4:30am and wasn't able to get back to sleep. So I went upstairs and did some school stuff, wrote some e-mail. Then I had the joy of feeling logy and unwell all day, even with naps at lunch and after work. That evening I felt like I had been sick but was recovering, that quiet and spacy feeling you get.

Today I feel like weight has been lifted, I feel much better. And I have a sense that I'll be able to work again, too.

I have a couple of intricate programs to write for class -- nothing hard, but they will require actual thought, unlike most of this stuff. So that's annoying -- I had hoped to be done with this class by now.

The whole school thing is going much slower than it was supposed to do; the three month break for the movie certainly didn't help. Ah well.

Travel

I've been keeping my eye on flying costs for a vacation this winter, going home to Oregon for the week between Christmas and New Years.

They have been hovering atou $300 per person (round trip, of course) for a while now. If I want to fly out on Saturday the 24th, I can get them for $275! But, ummm, it may be worth it to me to pay extrat to NOT fly on the day before Christmas.

I've been writing some... bits and snippets... trying to get my writing muscle flexed into shape so I can assemble an actual, interesting, readable story.

I have an interesting plan in place, actually. It's top secret... I just mention it here to drive you mad with curiosity.

I'm thinking that this weekend I will start doing stuff in the workshop again. A test on Robert's hand maybe. Another look at Sandra's electric shelf thingy. And between those tasks, the usual housework (our home is a disaster again... we really need to adjust our living habits so it doesn't get this way) and yardwork (the backyard was tamed last weekend, the front yard needs attention).

And of course, I may be able to finish my current class this weekend... depending on whether the final assignment has programming in it or not.

I've been plotting ways to get some time away from everything for just me... Edwin Time, you might say. Don't know how I'm going to manage it yet, but who knows. I'm a clever guy, I'll crowbar it somehow. Usually I use shop time for that, so that might work still. I'm poking around the edges of my psyche to see what I need.

Warning: Bad Language within.

LiveJournal only prints the first few lines of my entries, so here are those lines... heh.

I have a pet peeve. There is, in fact, a short list of things that make me actually angry. Hypocrisy, for example (which covers most of politics). Even some things that I myself do, make me angry, at myself, for doing them... but that's a different topic.

Today I talk about spam.

First, there's the fucking assholes who send spam to my mailbox -- who the hell do they think they are, stuffing their crap into my mailbox? Out of more than a hundred (non-mailing-list) e-mails I get a day, maybe three of them are real mail.

But my filters deal with this, for the most part. I only have manually delete a few.

But what the fuck is up with those dog-fucking assholes who think it's okay to spray their filthy graffiti on my weblog? How deeply do you have to shove your head up your ass before this shit smells sweet?

What the holy hell is a "Trackback Ping" and why in the name of god and all the demons of fucking hell would a T-e-x-a-s poker viagra ad do this to my blog?

Show me a spammer. Just show me one in person. And I'll rip him a new asshole, in person, to his face. And don't think I can't. You haven't seen me really mad. I have. I even took meds for it for a bunch of years.

I don't take those meds any more.

Fuck them. Fuck them all.

Leaving the zone of quiet

I've had a few relatively lazy weekends, but I think things are picking up now.

Saturday is going to be busy... a Taiji push-hands workshop with Master Solomon, which promises to be AWESOME. And which I remembered to tell Marla about, umm, yesterday... heh. Oops.

Then that evening, the kick-off of Haunted Trails.

But Sunday is free. Except for housework. And schoolwork. And yardwork. The backyard is a jungle, and the front yard looks like a man with fresh hair implants. Little bursts of grass reaching up above the turf...

I should also do a couple of projects that I picked up during the movie... Robert's hand (poor Robert, I said it would be done ages ago), and Sandra's electric shelf. . Maybe next weekend...

(Listening to Portishead... good stuff)

Slacking

Yes, me, slacking.

Now don't look so shocked there! It's been known to happen.

Anyway, I think I blew a circuit during the movie.

I blew through the first 1/4 of my CS121 class in a few hours two weeks ago.

I intended to blow through the second 1/4 last weekend, but they wanted me to write a program, the bastards. And, strangely, I was unable to think in code. So I put it off to Thursday.

Where I continued to be unable to think in code.

What the hell? I can program at WORK, so why does it stop at home? It could be this nasty case of "ooh shiny" I have right now. Or maybe because I'm having a hell of a time getting myself to care. But it's getting better.

I got the program in last Sunday (Saturday we slacked at Richard's), so I'm only about a week behind. I guess 1/2 of a comp.sci. class in three weeks still isn't bad. With some focus, I may be able to blow through the other half in 2 or 3 more.

Focus.

Right.

I can do it. I've done it in the past. I'll do it again in the future.

Ooh, and maybe once I get caught up on www.egscomics.com it will be better.

Though there is this OTHER comic that I started reading when Nik was here, that I forgot what it's called, but now that he's back from Vegas and online again I can ask him.

Ooh, shiny!

Umm. I'm supposed to be working right now. I'd better go.

Kisses to all who I'm allowed to kiss! And hugs to the rest of you.

The clamoring in my mind

Ahhh, in the quiet of this season I can hear the voices in my head all the clearer again. Clamoring for attention.

There are stories in my head, stories that I had never been able to tell because, frankly, I didn't know how. I think I might have enough tools to try now, though I don't have a good sense of my chance of success.

I went to bed at a rational time Sunday night, I don't know, about 10:30pm or so.

And then was wide awake, alert, at 11. I tried to breath, to relax back to sleep (a veteran of many years of insomnia as a child, I have skills). But at each try my body was spasm, all over... a familiar spasm, to someone with a touch of Tourrettes. Just a touch, just enough to make my life interesting.

This is the all body spasm I get when my mind is overstimulated for some reason -- stress is one activator, for example, but there are others. Any time my imagination gets too active, develops a picture that is too strong, it is like a static discharge blowing across parts of my brain, and then the image fades.

When I'm doing creative work, the challenge is to keep the imagination working, but not running wild.

No matter. There was a scene stuck in my brain and it had to be let out.

I went to the kitchen and grabbed the remains of a bottle of Zinfandel and carried up and my glass upstairs.

Leaving the lights off I turned on the monitor and sat in the blue glow.

And typed. A paragraph.

I poured a glass of wine.

Two more paragraphs, and I sip.

I only ended up with two pages, I think, and not well written -- but they served their purpose. I had a glass and a half of wine in me then, which made me loopy but did not beckon in sleep like it usually does.

So I spent time online. I talked to some folks and watched others in their rooms. A friend came online and I talked there for a while too.

3:00am came eventually and, while I wasn't feeling sleepy yet, I was feeling sick from three glasses of wine and weary enough from the late hour to attempt to go to bed.

And I did sleep, thankfully. But 6:30 am saw me awake again and heading to the shower.

I felt fine, if a bit queasy. I took special care riding the elevators that day, my inner ear protesting at the vertical motions.

It only took a few hours at work before the weariness struck me like a mallet. I got stuff done that day, but not much.

Once home again, I collapsed on the couch with the intent of getting two hours of nap before I had Taiji and dancing classes.

The fates were not with me when, a half hour later, the accursed insurance company called me. I got no happiness talking to them, but I did lose my inclination to nap.

Munchies and some water set the stage for my evening, and both classes went by surprisingly well. I showed surprising energy and good cheer.

And today... I'm doing well. I'm a happy camper. Things are good. Very good.

Except for the air conditioning, which isn't quite happy.

And the little detail that I had better start writing soon, before my head explodes.

I think some of those stories are getting a bit too agressive for my taste. I hope I can do them justice.

Pending Projects

Okay, this weekend it's time to put the workshop into order.

I need to make a hand for Robert, from Deadbacks, so he can have a lifelike copy of his own hand to amuse and terrify his friends with.

And I have a list of things to do for Haunted Trails.... um... around here somewhere.

Oooh, and we get a new roof in a couple of days! That shouldn't be disruptive, should it?

And fun fun fun... starting next week, we get a cycle of Tango lessons! Woohoo!

I feel odd, though, sitting around the house or cruising on my computer in the evening. It's odd not to have pressing, important things to do. I'm hoping I get used to it soon...

Just another boring update

Well, I put out the e-mail announcing the first Even Saturday game night in a long time... doubled up with a house warming! If any of you readers might want to come play games with us, give me a ring and I can clue you in.

One of my first acts as a homeowner was to have my air conditioning units serviced, you know, preventative care and all that. The ARS maintenance guy, however, says he found leaks in both coils! Not good! Expensive!

So I put in a call to the Home Shield folks and they had ARS put in a service call. Well, this guy comes and says the coils are fine, but a valve is whacked -- so he fixes the valve. But hey, what was with the $3,000 repair they twigged on yesterday? Are they just jerking my chain, or what?

I'm waiting for my answer now... we'll see.

Actually the FIRST thing we did, last weekend, was breeze through some yard work. Now we need to find, beg, borrow, or rent a chipper to reduce some of our ex-trees to a compostable form...Death to Pyrocanthus! And, umm, that dying poisonous tree in the other corner... and trumpet vine! Who in their right mind plants trumpet vine?!

Ooh, I did pre-testing yesterday for 1st brown (pre-black, doberman sash, whatever). Tomorrow I do the long form for testing. Hope I stay calm... I hate it when I get nervous, it messes with my form.

Since they only test for black in December, and I don't have enough time to make it this December, I guess I'll go black sash in 2006. There are six folks who may test this year, though...

Oh, and I started school again with CS121 -- a continuation of CS111, it seems. The first quarter of the class was trivial beyond compare. I may finish this one in four weeks, a new record.

Hear the Crickets...

Ahhh.... sweet quiet time.

Monday, cleaned the house a bit and skipped Taiji and dance (I was tired and really not up for them).

Some more Taiji here and there. Marla's mom visiting. Basic work stuff at work.

No chaos, no pressure.

Just a nice, quiet week.

Ahhhhh.....

16 hour Sunday

Okay! This should be the last post about the movie for some time. And any future posts will be about smaller, less painful movie experiences, I'm sure.

Of course, this probably only means I'll transition to posts about Haunted Trails, but oh well.

Saturday we started shooting at a quarry -- I think it was a small gravel pit area. The sun was brutal -- and the UV and heat were poundind down on our heads and bouncing off of the walls, and even streaming up at us from the puddles and floors. We were in a solar oven and we cooked.

I burned through my shirt, even.

We did get to go home early, though, since Melissa missed her plane and got stuck in Denver. So that was good! I got to go to part of Michelle's birthday party, and see Mark and Kuovonne who I hadn't seen in a couple of years.

Sunday, then, we did everything possible to do in one 16 hour day.

So today I'm a bit tired.

Tomorrow I'll be chipper again! And then Marla's mom is here for a visit!

I think it's to celebrate our buying our house, which we closed on last Friday. So now we are home-owners.

So that's cool.

Lurching ahead...

Paid bills finally on, ummm... Tuesday?

A few things had slipped through the cracks the last few months, but I think I got it all tidied up.

Thinking about money, I called my bank to check the funds...Ahhhhh! Grief! Woe! Panic! My stock transfer didn't happen! I have to have that cash *tomorrow* to close the house...

(several frantic phone calls later)

Okay, it's being wired to the bank now. I can get it tommorrow...

Where was I?

Oh yeah. I got the recommendation to advance from 2nd brown to 1st brown (also known as pre-black, or "doberman" because it's a split black/brown sash).

So that's cool.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to test for Black in December. I need 60 classes (minimum) to do that, and I only have time for about 30. Bleh.

So I'm looking at my black sash on December 2006, unless they do a test mid-year or something.

Did I mention we close on the house tomorrow?

There was a spot of fun yesterday. The door knob on the house-to-garage door stopped working. Frozen solid.

I took the knob off this morning, but the OTHER side of the knob wouldn't pull through (and I bent the latch a bit trying... heh).

So I sawzall'ed off the knob. I love power tools.

Of course, I'll STILL need to take the door off of its hinges to replace the knob mechanism.

There are actually a number of maintenance jobs I have to do on the house, that have been lagging due to other business....

The doorknob (dammit).

We want to make the front door more secure.

There are some trouble areas the inspection noticed around the garage framing that I would like to fix.

I need to re-work the tiles in the master bath shower -- the caulk is coming out and there is a concern of water damage behind it.

The roof really ought to have gutters and spouts.

There are probably a few more, too...

And on an aesthetic level, we want to get rid of the bulk of the carpet and replace it with wood. Carpet and cat-yack really doesn't mix well. And wood is nicer in other ways, too.

Also I want to replace the lame-oid plastic bed trim with concrete. And the yard and garden needs not end of work...

... sigh.

This weekend SHOULD be the last weekend for principle shooting, but then we thought that last weekend, too.

Next week I restart classes and, hopefully, settle back into a rational, life-sustaining routine again.

On competition and Periodontists

Friday morning, bright and ugly, we bundled up our things and drove the long, cheerless drive to Plano Texas (just a bit North of Dallas). It only took about 3 and a half hours, which is less than I expected.

Once there I took a few workshops, which were awesome.

Saturday I performed my bare-hand form and my sabre form marginally... I was spectacularly mediocre! In my experience category the score range is 7.5 to 8.5, and I scored 8.03 in both events, taking the silver and bronze respectively.

So I came in 2nd and 3rd out of about five competitors in each of these.

I deserved the uninspired score for the bare-hand form -- I wasn't all that great. I get nervous when being judged and that's really bad for an art that must be performed while relaxed and calm.

I thought I did well in the sabre, though, and my fellow students thought so too -- so I don't understand the weak score there. Another competitor got the same score and was not nearly as good (I thought) as I thought I was... I think. So that made me mad.

The next day, Sunday, I was spectactularly not good in push hands. No medals there.

All in all, I loved meeting other students and sharing ideas and information. I loved the workshops. And I really didn't like competing.

So of course now I want to work hard and kick ass next year... while trying to do well in any and all Austin competitions between now and then. Apparently, my competitive reflex was triggered.

I'm hoping it dies down soon enough. I don't need the grief.

Coming back home Sunday evening I had a little bit of time to relax and unwind in preparation for the periodontist on Monday.

A handful of Halcyon in the morning and I'm more than ready to dissolve into the torture chair. A nice swish of something that made my mouth dry up (thank the goddes) and a few nearly painless shots later and the dentist got to work.

This guy was good. He was quick, efficient, and did clean work. No swelling, essentially no pain, and he followed up that same evening to make sure everything was good.

Considering what he did, the "no pain, no swelling" is a big deal.

First, he separated the gum from my left eyetooth, where it had been receding for the last couple of decades. Then he made a cut in the roof of my mouth and went in under the skin to extract a sliver of gum. This he shoved up under the gum by the tooth. He then sutured everything closed and in place and went on to step two.

For this, he cut the gums away where I lost a tooth last year and then drilled a nice hole in the bone. Into this, he screwed a titanium socket. A quick temporary cap and a few stitches later and I'm done.

Of course, I'm still tired and feeling a bit unwell from all the abuse and chemicals, but my face is in amazingly good shape.

Dr. Stevan Flores. Tell your friends.

http://www.periohealthaustin.com/

Music

I like music. A lot. But most of my collection is old... I haven't bought music in ages!

I have a bunch of stuff on my MyMusic wishlist, mind you, but again most of it is old.

Since I don't listen to the radio, I don't get much new input, so I rely on recommendations from friends.

One such (new) friend (Hi! If you are reading this!) sent me some tracks, and I have to say I'm blown away.

I didn't even know this music existed. What style is it? How do I find more artists in this style, if they even exist? So now I anxiously await my next budget cycle (and the closing of the house) to put in my order.

Check them out if you get a chance:

Apocalyptica, "Inquisition Symphony" album.

In a different vein, and still good:

Dirty Three, "Ocean Songs" album.
Goldfrapp, "Felt Mountain" album.
PJ Harvey, "Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea".

There are more...

I am enriched by the friends that I have found. I am a most fortunate man.

In Training

I am in training this week for the TaiJi Legacy .

If you can count three days as training...

I've run the short competition form our school is using a few times and I'm exactly in time. I've run the saber a few times and come in at about 2 minutes, which is fine.

I'm almost happy with my forms, though I will have to work to stay relaxed when the time comes to perform them in public.

Now, the third category I will be in is limited-step push-hands. I was not going to compete in this, but then Sifu mentioned something about "overcoming fear" so I had to sign up. Now that we are practicing fast again in class, in preparation for the tournament, I find that I've improved a lot this year. So I'm not nearly as concerned as I was about making a fool of myself, so that's nice.

I'm re-reading Girl Genius and delighting in the Foglio's work once again.

We are heading into hurricane season, so the fun storms are upon us! Lightning! Rain! Thunder! Wind!

I especially love the wind. I stand out in it and feel my physical boundaries disappear, my senses carried out the the horizon on its power...

... but I digress.

I've started spending some time on the Internet again, poking my nose in here and there, and having fun.

And free. Free! I feel the happiness as the pressures fade from me...

Oh, and we are buying our house. We close on the 29th, if things continue to go well.

Woo!

Maybe we will have a house-warming party in August, even though we've been there for two years already. But I desperately need to clean, and that would be a good excuse.

Not. Quite. Yet

So, the big weekend is behind me! The last big shoot weekend in the movie, an effects-laden extravaganza of work and fun and food...

... and rain. Torrential downpours, monstrous flooding drops of doom beating down on our heads, flooding the fields, washing cows down the road...

And when not rain, humidity. Nothing like working with water-based makeup in a tropical rain forest.

Today, I'm a bit muddled. I apologize if this entry is awkward and confused.

In between downpours, we did manage to eat the leg.

Thursday I slaved to make the skin. This is a long process, since it takes an hour or more between silicon layers for things to stiffen up.

The first layer of skin was semi-translucent, to give the leg healthy subsurface scattering (not that it matters). The next layer is an opaque flesh-tone. Under that another thick layer (or was it two?) in icky yellow-white.

During one of the passes, I embedded cheesecloth into the skin, so it would be easy to attach to the actor.

In the last pass, I took the nasty halloween spider web material and embedded tufts of it into the fatty silicon layer. This was to make the skin bond to the gelatin interior. Once the skin was all dry (the next day), I trimmed this fluff layer so it wasn't too crazy.

Friday I had a sequence of events that required long delays for the gelatin to cool.

First I mixed up a batch of meat-red gelatin and poured it into the muscle mold to get the three muscles. I clamp a stretch of cheesecloth in both ends of the mold, so the muscles terminate in cheesecloth tendons.

Then I poured the remnants into the heart mold, all of which promptly leaked out onto the floor. Okaaaaay, that wasn't desired.

While the muscles are quietly cooling in the corner, I hope the heart has self-sealed and I melt and pour more. Man, this floor is getting messy... blood-colored gelatin in the grout. That can't be good.

After a bunch of screwing around, I reject the heart mold as it stands. I come back to it later...

.. but first, now that the muscles have begun to set, I tip the mold flat on its side and place a pan of ice on it, to speed the cooling.

Now I can take apart the heart mold to see that the problem is in a patch I made in the edge of the mold where I broke it. After grinding down the patch, making a fresh batch of gell, coloring it, etc... I pour a perfect heart.

Of course, the first thing our medic says on seeing it is, "a heart? That's too small!" Yeah, okay, so medical models are based on 5'5" tall Indian women, what can I do about it? I guess I need to sculpt a larger heart from scratch someday...

Hmm, where was I?
Oh, yeah! I took the leftover heart gel, added some more, nuked it, and then foamed it (equal parts tartaric acid and baking soda). This got spread along the fluffy stuff in the skin, to make an icky gelatin layer to work against.

While everything continues to cool, I wander off and make some more powder squibs for killing dead people with.

Later, I crack open the muscle molds and am happy. I cut appart the muscles and lay them out around the thighbone. The cloth tendons make it easy to manipulate and bind the muscles into place.

I then take this assembly and fit it into place in the skin shell.

Cut, heat, color, stir, foam... and then pour a big batch of bloody foam into and around the muscles.

And then play with it as it all tries to pour out onto the floor... but eventually I tame it and can walk away while it sets.

The one thing that I never did get figured out was how to supply blood to the skin as it is being cut. I made some blood channels under the skin, but I actualy never used them. I need to do this again, or several times, to work out more details... blood supply primary among them.

When we acted out the gag, I stripped the actor and then wrapped his delicate leg flesh with aluminum screening -- with four layers where the knife was going to approach him, for safety.

Then the leg strapped into place beautifully, and the magic gaffed pants that I made Thursday slipped on perfectly. I rock!

Then we stuck his right ass-cheek into a hole in the ground (which I persisted in calling the "ass hole") and made him... really uncomfortable, I'm sure.

And then we spent far too much time trying to work out the blood supply problems.

And then, ten thousand little niggling delays later, we filmed the scene.

I think that, when finally edited together, it will be awesome! And there are is a "moment" with Rafaella and her victim that is amazing...

Sunday was easier, if longer. Mostly I did some light makeup work and shot holes in a door and a dead guy. It all went off pretty smoothly.

All the rain, of course, transformed this final weekend into a semi-final weekend. Two weeks out we have to shoot the stuff that got rained out. Woo.

But then... post production!

Until then, I intend to sleep a bunch.

Except this afternoon, where I have to visit the dentist so he can do stuff in preparation to putting in my implant stud next week.

Woot.

The other side

Curry, my lead makeup person and the only one who really can do the leading lady's hair and makeup, got a job!

Which is excellent! She started today. And will probably have to work through the weekend.

This huge, intensive, leading-lady-ful weekend. With many of the dead. And a big effect I need to focus on.

Do you think this addes to my stress level?

Well, I'm still not eating like I should (down to 167lbs and counting), but I think I've passed through the stress to the other side.

I am reminded of the Litany of Fear:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will allow my fear to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone I will turn my inner eye to see its path.
And where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain

Pre-Stressed

This Saturday, first thing, is the BIG EFFECT, the cutting the leg apart in detail and on camera.

Right now, I'm definitely pre-stressed about it.

By friday I should be stressed good and proper. It will go well, though.

This, and the heat, has turned into quite the diet. I've lost about 15lbs doing the movie... weight I can scarcely afford to lose.

In lieu of an update, here are some random pictures. The kid in that one is Nik, my son, as an extra. (Note that I lightened the lip lines a bit after this was taken).

http://www.simreal.com/deadbacks/index.html

Coherence

I would post a coherent status update here today, er, now, but I'm way too tired.

But the incoherent version is mummble, mmm, ...

Bad starts both Sat and Sun, turned into good days through long hours and hard work.

My squibs have mostly worked, though not always or not always the way I wanted. The hand was good.

Next weekend is the hardest of my effect pieces, so wish me luck.

Nice, relaxing 4-day weekend...

... not.

Saturday and Sunday we did some shooting on the movie, attendance optional. But I went because, frankly, I was needed.

Did a buttload of dead makeup, did some effects (I think we shot a car and made gas pour out of the tank). And, ummm, maybe we shot Tall Matt. I don't remember -- it all runs together after a while. I suppose I could consult my notes, but they are at home.

Anyway.

I did get home by 6:00pm on Sunday. So that's something.

Monday, no shooting! So I stayed home with Nik and we experimented with brain cannon squibs.

It took hours of experimentation, but we did finally converge on a good brain cannon design. We also rejected many other designs, some of which really showed good promise in theory.

I love theory.

We used the same triangular packets, folded from vinyl gloves, as used in the dry hits. For this application, we duct-taped a short PVC tube over the blowout window, pack it with some cooked oatmeal lightly stirred with blood, and then seal the opening of THIS with the thumb of another glove.

Looks pretty darned good. Shoots a chunk of brain up to ten feet or so (at 5' altitude) and gives a spurt of blood with it.

Marla proclaimed our bloody brain chunks in the lawn to be truly disgusting. Which they were.

Hmmmm. I also laid up, and cast half of, the stomach. And then I ran out of plaster.

Tuesday was a bit more of the same. More brain cannon tests. A run to a bunch of stores to pick up supplies, including plaster. I laid up the heart, which was a huge pain since it's a very complicated model.

I have three blocks to cast still, but that's almost trivial. I may do that tonight.

Ooh! I did some tests, starting last Thursday and continuing into Tuesday, on the Eating Jim leg. Had a few failures. Was NOT happy with the final successful cast, it was flawed in many ways.

But, fiddling with it, I think I came up with a good way to do the gag. These pictures just hint at it, because frankly, I was just screwing around here (and the muscles have already been cut out, and so forth):

(warning, big pictures)
www.simreal.com/deadbacks/index.html

And I got to do housework Tuesday, too! Woo! Laundry and catboxes and I don't know what all! So exciting.

One thing I didn't get to do was relax. Okay, Monday we went to Michelle's and played Ninja Burger for a few hours, so that was actually fun and relaxing.

So, three hours of real downtime across a four day weekend. That's good, right?

(I know I sound like I'm complaining, and in a way I am because I'm tired, but I also love the work... it's fun!)

Fun For the Fourth...

I started with a simple pneumatic squib, way back when.

But that doesn't work for powder.

So I upgraded to a triangular packet (originally designed for larger loads) which is beautiful for powder and probably my new preference for blood, too. (note to self: test inverted configuration).

Today I graduated to the brain cannon, with design help from my son Nik.

Awesome.

There are chunks of bloody brain all over my front yard.

The quiet...

... before the storm.

M/Tu/W are my quiet days this week. I'm taking tonight back from the movie, since I really need to spend some time in the Nei Kung class before the competition. I'm getting stiff. And, umm, while I didn't much like Nei Kung when I started (and I still can't bring myself to do it at home), I miss it now when I don't go.

Last night I played a game of 9x9 Go with Nik, so that was cool. He picked up on it quickly, so I suspect I'll have to stay on my toes to keep him from whumping me regularly by the time he goes home.

Ummm. And I'm working. At work. Work work work. Or should be.

Oooh, the inspector inspected our house and his inspection came up good. I feel so... inspected.

Long long long long weekend

I'm not sure I can even remember what we did, but we did a bunch of it. I know a lot of what we did was wait for things to get set up... as is normal.

Saturday we lost several hours due to an unpleasant situation. Everyone was ready to shoot (I think) pretty much on time, but at 9:00 our leading man called in to say he was running a bit behind and was driving slower because of all the cops.

He has a horrific drive for our little project, since he is in Louisiana during the week for an actual paying project.

Apparently, the cops got him anyway. So that's something like four tickets in the last six weeks or so... but the real kicker was the warrant for the unpaid parking ticket. So he spent the weekend in jail.

Of course, we didn't know this on Saturday (though it was the leading theory), so we waited longer than we should have for him to appear. Not so good. Eventually, we dropped the scenes with him in it (or used a body double, which we conveniently have on hand) and went on. Behind schedule.

On the upside, a couple of the cast wrote an amazingly funny song about it and sang it for us during lunch Sunday. It was awesome; they will have to sing it at the cast party if we ever finish this thing.

We had something like 13 dead people to paint, so we did. My makeup team is great! They do most of the work, so I can manage and work up the FX and generally lounge around napping.

Michelle was doing arms and torsos again this week and she came up with a great advance in our arm and torso technique. Using the paintbrush and bodymakeup (with extra water or sealer), we get only mediocre results. Hard to get rid of streaks and beading, even with stringent Witch Hazel application.

So she patted over the wet makeup with a nifty makeup sponge to smooth it out, just like we do with faces, but using more sponge so it's faster. Or something. Anyway, this seems abvious enough after the fact. It's not as FAST as it could be, but it's fast enough and she was able to keep up with the faces, which is what counts.

And it looks good. So that's great. All of our work is, overall, looking better. Of course, some days the actors' skin just doesn't take the makeup... or has spots where it takes far too well. It's aggravating! I can see why the industry wants digital actors...

Anyway, we shot Victoria in the back Saturday, blowing ghost-dust out her front.

I did a quick test on a squib tube (very) full of powder and it failed to blow. Powder just doesn't flow in a tube; it compresses and blocks the air flow.

Last week or so, fortunately, I had worked up a nice squib design using some simple origami on a vinyl glove, duct taped into a triangle, with the air tube zip-tied in a hole in the thumb and a blowout window exposed near the bottom of the whole thing. Ummm, I'll post pictures someday.

THIS was invented for head hits. The normal tubes feed air from above. I needed a packet to feed from below without spilling all the fluid out. So the tube sticks up to the top of the packet and the fluid collects in the bottom instead of spilling out.

These, then, are what I use for all of my powder hits. They are beautiful.

I also was to do a wet hit on Mr. Clark, the kindly old neighbor. This was a reasonably subtle effect to soak through his shirt to show the gun hit on the entry.

This failed to work, which was REALLY ANNOYING, since my wet hits ALWAYS work in the lab.

Doing some debugging, I discovered that the end of the tube that connects to the squib was cut at too severe an angle and it didn't make a seal. I had cut this off in the field after the tube was routed through his clothing, and I didn't think the angle was bad enough to fix. I was wrong.

So I got a high-speed leak instead of a blowout, and it just wasn't right.

We'll fix it in post.

Sunday, we had a mob of dead charge the last two living in the house, and they blow holes in two of 'em (Rafaella, played by Melissa, who is very intense). The dust hits looked great, there, too.

Then they ate the two living folks. I couldn't get crazy with blood, sadly, since they wanted to preserve the carpet and walls for later shoots. Too bad! I was ready for a bloodbath!

Instead, almost all of the blood was delivered by mouth, so it was tricky getting ENOUGH blood in the mouth to (a) look good, but (b) not make 'em gag or leak before we were ready to show. We ended up increasing the mouth load with each shot, so the scenes did get bloodier as we went along.

Oh, and there was some chewing of "meat", too, using the test cast I did of the leg I sculpted last week. So that was cool.

Unfortunately, with all this cool stuff Sunday, we ran late. Which comes after running very late on Saturday because we filmed after dark, on purpose. The actors were getting pretty cranky by the time we were done.

So I'm kinda tired, but I'm getting used to that.

Muscular Fun

Okay, it did in fact take about four hours to do the leg muscles last night. I note that I forgot to factor in dinner and random visits by ex-wives, but that's okay.

Using numerous sculpting and medical references, I laid in the three major muscles in the front of the leg. I kinda split the difference in their shape between the flat all-mushed-together look that muscles get when they are wrapped in skin, and the free-standing-round look that muscles can take when separated from their natural surroundings.

I'm hoping that the naturally squishy-yet-firm nature of gelatin will make it all work out.

Anyway, once sculpted together on the skeleton (with reference to the negative leg mold plus the positive core) I pulled 'em off and cleaned 'em up separately.

Then of course came the tedium of laying a floor of contrasting white clay around them and pouring the plaster slab on that. I'm not sure if I'll be happy with the seam line or not, since I'm trying harder to blend the clays together (so I don't get leaks), but still trying not to mar the model.

In this case, I don't actually care if I mar the model, but I still take care to see if I *can*.

Today after work I can pour the other side of the mold, mix up some gelatin, pour muscles, make blood, organize and pack, do some administrative work and print new photos, pre-assemble some head-hit packets, and pick up my son at the airport

/inhale

Or something.

Ready...set...panic!

Ooooh, I was thinking that I would have just a bunch of bullet hits to do this weekend. That and about 13 undead to paint...

It seems that we are also filming an eating scene. Mostly implied eating, mind you, but I need to make up some muscle! Egads!

So tonight I plan on making molds (maybe block, I may try for shell) for the heart and stomach, and while those are setting, I want to sculpt my leg muscle(s) and then make a shell mold for those.

Or something.

Lessee, prepping a mold takes about an hour, so that's two hours for the organs. Casting the first half is included in that. Say another half hour for the second half, so that's 2.5 hours.

Sculpting could take, oh, two hours? And then prepping (+1) and then the shell (+.5) and then the back (+1), giving 4.5 hours plus 2.5, is seven hours.

Hmmm, starting at 5:00 puts me done at midnight.

Could be worse.

Then Friday I can do administrative stuff, clean and organize the makeup stuff, pack the rest of the stuff, cast the organs/muscles, make more sticky/pasty blood, and other stuff.

Oh, and pick up Nik at the airport. All of which puts me to bed by midnight Friday.

To get up at 6 for Saturday...

Maybe I need to trim things back a bit. Technically, I don't need organs and can do just the muscle... hmmm... I'll do muscle first then, and organs if I get ahead of schedule (hah!)

Get a Life!

I think I miss my life... you know, in that "get a life" kind of way?

I look forward to having weekends again. To some actual time with Marla where I'm not tired or busy or distracted. To movies and cooking dinner and cleaning the house and paying bills on time and visiting the zoo and just sitting around on Sunday doing nothing but reading on the couch together.

Yeah, I miss that.

Soon. Soon....

Brain Squib

I've long past given up on trying to make Chunky Stuff come out of the head hit squib, mostly because it's hard to load through a 3/8" OD tube.

These head squibs are a bit of a pain, so far. I get a fine mist or squirt out of them, not unlike what I get from the regular hit tubes, but last night at least it was spraying in the wrong direction! Argh!

The head load squib pouch packet thing is an interesting origami of a vinyl glove. I cut the tip off the thumb and zip-tie it to the load-and-pressure tube, and the blood sits in a triangle of glove that has been ducted taped to within an inch of its life.

The tube sticks up above the level of the blood, so it won't flow back out when put into place. There is a small spot in the bottom of the triangle at the tip where the glove is not duct taped. When pressurized, this window bursts and the blood comes out.

It's a very clever design, if only it would work right.

I'm going to try a different window and see if I can get more of a "blort" than a "mist". I'm hoping to get it perfect before I need to use it.

Oh, I may need to use it with powder this weekend, for an undead head hit! The powder version works great...

Last Thursday we (meaning Marty, the owner) had a person come out to give an estimate on a new roof (not bad, actually, and easily incorporated into the sales price of the house when we buy it this month).

She knocked on the door and, when Marla answered, she asked if everything was all right. It turns out that the blood splashed on the sidewalk (and bushes, and driveway; it looked like a massacre!) had here worried that someone had an accident here!

Marla assured her that the only accident was that I volunteered to do FX for a movie...

Last night I washed some of the blood away. Well, I made it wet; there are still red marks all over but they are lighter.

Oooh, I get more blood powder in the mail Friday, so I can experiment more with really sticky blood and scabs! I'm so excited!

And this coming weekend, we get to shoot people. A lot. Poof! Bang! Spew!

No Brains for Me

Well, the pulling-Jim-through-the-window scene went pretty good, so kudos to construction guys Matt and Paul for the breakaway boards, and everyone else for getting it in 1.25 takes (don't ask).

However, the setup and fiddling with this scene took several hours! So blowing Mitchell's brains out got deferred. Ah well, that gives me more time to improve the brain squib.

Next weekend it looks like I get to shoot Mr. Clark (living) as well as several dead. This means I can test my new, improved easy-load squib setup! I hope it works!

I haven't analyzed the shot list yet, so I don't know exactly what I have to do yet, nor if I need my larger makeup crew or not. We do have a number of undead extras, it looks like, so I may get to call in more of the troops.

Nik, my son, is flying in on Friday (Hi Nik!) to stay for the usual month of summer. I'm hoping to get him smuggled into the crew in some capacity so he doesn't get booted from the indoors shooting, so he isn't totally bored out of his mind this visit. Next weekend is mostly outdoors shooting, though, so he can demonstrate his usefullness and maturity then and weasel his way into the director's graces...

Slacking Off

I've been slacking off on the Journal thing this week... bad Edwin! And you know, the rest of y'all on LJ haven't been keeping me entertained enough. I think y'all need to write more...

It's 6:20AM as I write this, on a Saturday. What human in their right mind is awake at 6:20AM on a Saturday, I ask?

I'll be driving out to Lockhart in a half hour or so. This morning we have two girls to put into makeup (thanks, Curry!), one dead guy that I palm off onto Curry as well, and I get to give Matt a head wound until later today when we clean it up a bunch.

Oooh, today we get to beat up Hank! He's such a dick, so he deserves it. But I'll need to figure out what he needs to look like... should be fun. Or something. I find this stuff is a bit LESS fun when the entire crew is waiting for you to do something. My mantra is "I shall not be the bottleneck... I shall not be the bottleneck..."

Tomorrow we get to blow Mitchell's brains out. I'm still not satisfied with my head squib, so I may play a bit on site or something.

Ahh well, time to hunt down and kill the mighty Coffee Beast.

Emo Phillips

Is brilliant.

When I was a kid, I used to pray every night for a new bicycle.
Then I realized that the Lord, in his wisdom, didn't work that way.
So I just stole one and asked him to forgive me.

----------------

From fark: This was found on rec.humor and was allegedly taken from an Emo Phillips skit:

I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge, about to jump off. I immediately ran over and said "Stop! Don't do it!"

"Why shouldn't I?" he said.

I said, "Well, there's so much to live for!"

"Like what?"

"Well ... are you religious or atheist?"

"Religious."

"Me too! Are you Christian or Jewish?"

"Christian."

"Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant?"

"Protestant."

"Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?"

"Baptist."

"Wow! Me too! Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?"

"Baptist Church of God."

"Me too! Are you Original Baptist Church of God, or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?"

"Reformed Baptist Church of God."

"Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915?"

"Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915!"

To which I said, "Die, heretic scum!" and pushed him off.

Reprieve

Okay, the Eating Jim sequence has been split. We were all under the impression that the inside and outside sequences were to be filmed this weekend, but we were wrong. The outside (effects-laden) version has been moved! I have more time!

Of course, I have more work... we are blowing Mitchell's brains out this weekend. I forgot about that.

Time to make a Brain Bladder and test it. Mmmm, brains.

Mold Making

I'm only so-so when it comes to making molds, and I still have real problems with plaster. Making giant heavy molds in plaster has a whole stack of extra problems relating, mostly, to the weight of the plaster.

Meaning it bursts through and pours all over my floor. I must have lost 25lbs of plaster to leaks when I made the core mold for my leg. And I don't even think I'll be USING this core after all.

I really prefer to use advanced and expensive rubbers and plastics to make my molds, but plaster is soooo cheeeap. And for some molds, I find that a block of plaster is necessary to make it work right. But for big molds, it's way better to make a (plastic) shell mold instead.

I'm making a detailed leg that will be dissected (alive) and eaten (alive) by the dead. It will have skin, a fatty layer, muscle, and squidgy viscera holding it all together.

I originaly thought to cast the skin in a tube, which requires a negative outer mold and a positive inner core mold. But upon further reflection, I fear that this approach will cause more problems than it solves, as well as wasting my precious (and darned expensive) silicon skin material.

So I think I'll go back to the method I used making the arm for HT last year, where I paint the skin into the mold in layers and then cast the guts into place. Though time consuming and harder to repeat, I feel more comfortable with it.

I still need to sculpt muscles onto the bone, cast gelatin muscles, paint the skin, and cast the whole thing together with, I think, foam gelatin.

Twice.

Maybe three times.

And I need to make the (plaster, block) molds for the stomach and heart. And do a test for intestines. And work up the blood system for the leg. And a few other things I'm blocking from memory right now, I'm sure.

By Saturday at 7:00 am.

I think I officially get to panic now.

Does anyone here have experience (and I mean it, not just an interest) in laying up molds? I would farm out the mold-making for the heart and stomach in a... heartbeat.

Shooting Dead People

Oh, we did have some fun on Sunday, shooting dead-guy Stephen (played by Paul) in the arm.

Hank asks, "What are you?" and he answers, "Episcopalian" so Hank shoots him in the arm for being a smart-ass. When he does this, dead-guy arm dust blows out the back.

Pretty simple, actually.

I'm using my new trademark patented extra-special pneumatic "squib" technology that I invented for this movie (as seen on TV, offer good while supplies last, void where prohibited).

There were some issues. The first take was perfect. The second take the timing was WAY off (very slow bullet, it seems). Third take didn't fire (the squib tube wasn't seated firmly so blew out). Fourth worked, I think... or was there a fourth at that angle? My head hurt so I don't quite remember.

We then repositioned the camera for a different angle and had a couple of them not working right... the wouldn't blow when I hit the switch. So I refilled the tank to get back up to pressure and started again.

One blew after I *released* the switch... so I did a bench test and discovered that they were blowing after about a 1/2 second delay (don't know WHY the first few went fast). We changed our timing on the count to adjust for this. The first time through it blew too soon. The second time my timing was perfect but the actor forgot to react. The third and, I think, fourth time worked out well.

So I think we got it. Hope it looks good! A cloud of baby powder might be a weird thing to get from shooting a dead guy in the arm.

One high point of the baby-powder squibs is that the scent overpowered the stench of sulfur coming form the sink. The tap water out there comes from hell, apparently, stinking of the sulphurous depths and resounding with the cries of the damned. Or perhaps just the cries of the crew when the tap gets turned on accidently...

Run to ground

There is a scene in Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's book "Good Omens" (ISBN 0441003257, required reading, very funny) where the demon's car is speeding along on fire, held together by sheer willpower, until he comes grinding to a halt at his destination, whereupon the entire thing collapses into a pile of parts.

That was me Sunday afternoon.

I escaped the shoot at about 2:30, a few hours after I had hoped to get home, and fought my way home through a grinding headache. By propping my head up on the headrest I could just stand to remain conscious to do this.

I came home, hit the couch, and slept a fitful sleep for two and a half hours, ate dinner, and then blew off the thousand and one tasks crying for attention and watched a movie ("The Village" by M. Night Shyamalan, beautiful cinematography, lame start with wooden dialog, got really good by the end) and went to bed.

I feel, again, almost human. This almost-human state seems to come come in fits and starts.

In my extended absence from domestic normality, our front yard as frayed into a sight that is bringing complaints from the neighborhood mafia, er, association. Fair enough. We'll deal with it over the next few days.

Next weekend, though, is a large and difficult effect that I have yet to create, so I'm pretty much panicked right now. I hope I can get it done.

On the bright side, once I get through this one I'm done with all of the really hard stuff and mostly get to repeat existing gags. So that's cool.

And, I guess, I'll be doing stuff for work to justify my pay. Which I should be doing now...

Rock on!

It took a couple of nights of 8-hour sleep to do it, but I feel almost human again today. When I don't get enough sleep I start accumulating symptoms of depression, which is less than fun.

Hey, I notice that I've been neglecting my log of projects!

Lessee... I may not have mentioned the life-cast of an actor's hand I did a couple of Tuesdays ago. Or maybe I did.

Last week I spent making a variety of nifty things!

With the help of Tall Matt, we made a dozen or so pneumatic gunshot hit simulation reservoir tubes, though the scene they were for dropped off the end of the weekend's shoot.

I made several liters of fake blood using moulage (trauma simulation) blood powder, water, and corn syrup. This appears to be thin in the jar, but comes out vaguely clotted. Which is vaguely disturbing. I'll try to make some un-clotted yet thick blood using straight corn syrup. And I want to modify some of the thin clotty stuff into thick clotty stuff, for jollies.

I used my tombstone trick to make a couple of house signs. Take your text or graphic and print it out really big and reversed (thanks Photoshop!) on your HP laser printer (other brands of toner may or may not work). Place the sheet toner-down on your board or whatever and you can transfer the toner by rubbing the back of the paper with acetone.

Ooh, and the big project was the rocks.

Nice rocks. In fact, these rocks were essentially indistinguishable from real rocks until you touched them.

I started with a collection of rocks from the site, so I could match their structure and coloring. They appeared to have a background color (yellow in some, reddish in others) overlaid with darker greys and browns to make a complex rock-colored pattern.

To get the shapes, I broke up and pressed together rough chunks of Sculpy (of which I had a zillion pounds of left over from previous projects) into rough rock shapes. Roughly speaking. There was no care involved, only breaking and combining.

Then I took plaster bandages, like you use to make a cast for a broken appendage, and put about 1.5 layers of this around the clay. Not too much, because I wanted these to be light and non-damaging to the house when they were thrown at it.

Once that hardened, I used an abrasive cutoff wheel to split the shell. Note it's better to cut the line the long way around the rock and not the short way, so it is easier to get the clay out. And they actually fit back together better when you can place a top on a bottom, rather than trying to bond two sides together. If that makes any sense, which it probably doesn't.

I added another 1.5 layers of plaster bandage to bind the shell halves together, taking care to lay it in random directions so there wasn't an obvious seam line.

The rock has shape now, but has a bad texture. I fixed that by mixing up a thick mixture of hydrostone (a hard plaster that doesn't set too fast) and spackled a thin layer of that over the bandage. The drying the rock shell, the faster the plaster would stiffen up over it! This was handy, since I could smooth the plaster easily with a wet finger once it got stiff (but not hard).

Once that layer did harden, the trusty airbrush laid two layers of smooth color onto the shell, giving the interior color of the rock. I used a browny-golden-yellow that I drifted over to a pinkish-red-brown-gold by adding color as I went along.

Then I took a dark brown paint and spattered the rocks with speckles using a brush and my thumb to riffle the bristles.

By now the rocks are looking pretty good, and in fact some of them would be usable as-is with a light glaze over them to smooth the colors. But I took one more step.

Taking two colors of brown (medium and darker) plus a dirty grey, I painted these on my hand and then smeared this thin, almost dry, layer of paint onto the rock. This darkened the highlights in a rough pattern and turned the rocks into... rocks!

I'll eventually put pictures up on one of the areas of the site, but not today. Or this month. The whole movie will get a section once it is done.

I think that was about it that weekend.

Oh! No, Matt put together some screen frames and I cast some Smash! Plastic into 'em, to poor effect. The humidity (or something, I have a tech call in to the manufacturer) caused the plastic to foam and bubble. This stuff is beginning to piss me off, but I keep trying because, once it is right, it has great characteristics (as I can tell from the good fragments I'm typically left with).

I'm also going to try sugar glass (3.5C sugar, 2C water, 1C corn syrup, heat to 300 degrees). Dammit.

No downtime

While the movie project has its good points, it has eliminated pretty much all of my downtime and I'm feeling the strain. Today I feel distinctly unwell, a general stressful malaise and a pain in my brain.

This weekend is fairly light on FX, though I think we'll be shooting people so that should be interesting. Next weekend is the Big Weekend and should be crazy. It's also, last I checked, the weekend of the big Leg Eating Scene, so I need to make that prop.

I hope I can hold out to the end of my duties in the shooting. I'm pretty tired.

Six Thousand Lines of Tedium

I'm tired a lot lately from, you know, lack of weekends. There is still a slim chance that the movie will complete on schedule, so we are fighting for that. In that case, we have about six weeks left.

There is an even more slim chance that I'll be able to do all of my FX work in that time with my weekends consumed by the movie.

So I'm sitting here today working. Trying to work. I'm converting a bunch of code from the original C++ on the PC to C on the microcontroller. Search and Replace did most of the work, but I need to walk through it all to make sure it's good and to do minor adjustments.

This code consists of about six functions between ten and twenty lines each... repeated endlessly. Six thousands lines of code, more or less. Staying awake for this work is a true challenge.

Maybe I'll go play Kingdom of Loathing instead... someone is working in my "nap spot" in the oasis.

In the Jungle

We had a good weekend on the movie... got everything done that needed doing, except for one scene on Saturday. But we got MORE done on Sunday, kind of making up for it.

I'm pretty much braindead by now. Had a good half day yesterday sitting by the pool hanging out at Michelle's, but then I came home and spent a couple of hours making fake rocks (17 so far, unspackled and unpainted).

Sunday we spent filming by the pond. It was a JUNGLE out there! The tweeting birds, spastic june-bugs (it's MAY dammit), mating dragonflies, frogs freaking out, fish in the background, airplanes circling over the goddamned set all day, a freaking PARADE of trains hooting their horns in the background, and the usual assholes drag-racing at 5:00pm, regular as clockwork.

Anyway, the post-production crew is going to have fun converting these day shots to night, and the sound crew will have a great thrill coping with the background sounds. I'm sure.

Other than nature, though, the scenes were great. Our actors rock.

Next weekend we have a handful of dead extras, we are throwing rocks at the house (See above), and we are SHOOTING PEOPLE! Woot! First camera test of the pneumatic squibs. Oh, and we are breaking out a window. If I can get the mold release. Which I should have had Friday. But I didn't. Ooh, it's 9 -- I can call them and see where my mold release is.

And I need to sculpt the leg for the climactic eating scene. And mold the organs that have been sitting there for the last few weeks. And...and....

/whoomp.

Sorry, my head just exploded. Gotta go now.

AWESOME!

A delightful blend of humour and trauma.

It's hard to know quite what to say. On the one hand, I'm tempted to make comparisons -- the adventure and rebellious nature of the first Star Wars (but with a good script, good acting, good directing, and decades of special effects progress behind it) plus the tension and drama of the first Alien (but with dialog, humour, and complex characters). The people in this movie have depth unlike any science fiction movie I've seen, except maybe Blade Runner.

But comparisons do not do this movie justice. Joss Whedon excels at character and dialog. And, apparently, at plot, pacing, action, and drama. And his direction is intense. And, umm...

Words fail me here. I guess I make a terrible movie reviewer. Where are the details I don't like? The failures of plot or character? I'm sure they are there... this is a human endeavor made by humans (however talented). None of us have achieved perfection.

But I place this movie in my pantheon of great movies. I will own it and display it proudly in my collection.

The next step is for _you_ to beg, borrow, or steal (kidding!) the Firefly DVDs. Watch the show. Revel in the characters. Cry out in despair to discover that Fox (the drooling idiots that they and their viewers are) cancelled it after one season.

And then buy tickets early for Serenity, due out September 30, 2005. I got to see it in a sneak peek. You should have been so lucky!

It's the best movie I've seen in years. Many years.

http://www.serenitymovie.com/

Stress Levels

Stress comes from many things and in many forms. Good things cause stress, sometimes, like a move, a new job, getting married. Bad things, of course, bring stress, like losing a job, getting divorced, losing your home. And some things are just stressful even if they are just emotionally neutral; not having enough time, doing too many things at once, that kind of thing.

Right now I'm in the "doing too many things at once and I'm not sure if I have time to do them correctly and I'm beginning to forget things" phase. The "forget things" part I try to compensate for with my pocket brain (my PDA) and external brain support (Marla).

But I'm otherwise still more time-challenged than usual.

Stress levels, I think, can be named. There is the "slightly overworked". There is simply "stressed", meaning you are tense and concerned. But eventually we get up into "anxiety attack" and "panic attack" levels.

A few years back in Halloween, I reached "anxiety attack" levels because of some work that wasn't going as well as I liked, that I was getting well PAID for, for a local haunt. It mostly turned out okay.

But now I'm drifting in and out of "anxiety attack" levels of stress, simply from overwork and schedule concerns.

I'm hoping I don't pass through "anxiety" and reach "panic". That would suck.

Progress on all fronts...

I thought that I had put up an entry Monday! But then, I was so tired Monday...

Saturday was the first big day of makeup for my crew, with about a dozen dead to paint. At 1.5 hours for primary dead, and not enough less for extras, that's a lot of work for a half-dozen workers. Most of whom are pretty new to this particular task.

Hmmm. You know, I *did* put in an entry this week. But it's not there. I must have submitted it wrong or something. Argh!

Saturday I got lost on the way to the site. I took a different route, driving off of my mental map, and ended up in Elgin instead of Lockhart. That started my day pre-stressed. By the time I was done, I could have been used as construction material. Ugh.

Go ahead and laugh. It may happen to you one day, too.

Actually, there is a character in Ranma 1/2 that could have been modelled on me. Hibiki Ryouga. Look him up.

Also on Saturday were some bullet-hit effects. I used a tube, compressed air, and dust in gelatin pill capsules to good effect. In one case, I carved off a chunk of bark and the director and I worked on the underlying wood to make it look like he wanted. Stick the bark back on and then shoot it off with the capsule. Puff of dust! Hole appears! Very keen.

Sunday went a bit smoother with the makeup, but the shoot in general has been a bit slow. We are working on that.

The combination of sun and stress and physical activity left me about three-quarters dead on Monday. I even got food and sleep!

At work I have pretty much all of my critical stuff done now, so we are trying to get it to work with all of the other critical stuff. It doesn't yet, but it will.

Marla has her school loan consolidation information now, so that will be in place soon. And this week I need to talk house loan. Our landlord is getting itchy. I don't know when we'll find the time, though.

I think that after the movie, I really will take some slowdown time. I say that at each project, but this time I may actually mean it.

Nobody had better offer me another movie job between now and then.

Breather

The last unit of time (days? weeks? I lose track) have been heads-down focused effort at work. This tends to shut other considerations out of my brain, as well as reducing me to a limp (yet tense, go figure) assembly of meat at home. Which impairs other projects, like the movie, my TaiChi practice, dance, etc... but so be it.

Right now, I have a bit of a breather, a slight break in the rush. But only for another hour at best -- until my co-worker comes in and I discover he hasn't done the bit of work that he was working on that we need for today.

To help drive my own work effort I've started drinking more coffee. It is magic juice for my brain, improving my concentration and generally helping me stay awake and focused.

But it makes a mess of my muscles. It makes my breathing shallower (through tension, I assume), which makes doing TaiChi properly MUCH harder. The pacing of the form is tied to the breathing (or, perhaps, breathing is tied to your pace), but if I can't breath slowly and deeply, I can't move slowly. And we are now entering a phase of doing the form reallllyyy slooowwwlllyyyy, and exiting the fast-paced saber unit.

So I need to fix that.

Oh, and I suck at staying vertical, too. Yang style is upright. When I work low, I tend to tip over to protect my knees. Gotta keep the center of gravity right or my knees hurt. I don't yet know how to stay vertical, operate low, and not screw up my knees. I think that the lowness and verticality are tradeoffs; I get one but not both. I need to ask Sifu about that.

It's all a bit frustrating. Other than the above issues, though, I'm beginning to feel my grounding, and my hip-tucking is actually beginning to work, too. So I think I'm about to be doing the form at the next level of competence, which is great! So of course, right as I'm moving past my current plateua into a new level of goodness, my limitations become glaringly obvious.

It never ends.

But then, that's the beauty of it. One never perfects the your form, only improves it.

Oh, and this weekend is a really busy shoot for Deadbacks. Busy busy busy, and a bit panicked with over a dozen people to make up with a fresh and mostly inexperienced crew.

In the Groove

Have you ever been in the groove while working on something? You, the project... working together as one. The Zen, the Tao... a connection to the work that transcends mere skill. Some days the work is joy.

This was not one of those days.

I suppose the mold pouring was a success. I tidied up the backside of the model, I sealed the edges and corners. I poured over fifty pounds of plaster dust plus water into the mold. That went well.

If you ignore, somehow, the half gallon (or more) of plaster that burst through the edge and leaked all over my table.

I'm trying to ignore it. Later, I'll be trying to chip if off the mold basebord, the table, the floor...

Dammit.

However, the airbrush makeup and final-seal tests went well. That's something.

Anxiety

Woke up today with a hazy cloud of anxiety filling my brain. Ick. I still feel vaguely depressed and anxious. Maybe with more coffee... the panic, paranoia, and palpitation so of coffee overdose are slightly preferably to my current sense of floating doom.

Maybe.

My hand hurts today from all of the clay work yesterday. It's throwing my typing off a bit. And I worry about arthritis and other joint ailments. This is really the first undeniable indication of my encroaching age. Joint pain. It's frightening. I use my hands a lot. I make things, you know. And I want to start doing more sculpture...

Next weekend is a big one on the movie. Seven undead, four living, and a stack of undead extras. That's a lot of bodies to paint! I need to test the airbrush and the liquid makeup. I hope my helpers are up to this.

Heck, I hope that I am up to this.

Little Nubbins

My little piddies are worn to little nubbins... I can barely type... but I have the first half of the plaster block mold poured onto the leg.

I also did a bunch of finish work on the knives... the paint I got, though, sucks badly. They are going to need some different finish. But the trick knife is tricky. I didn't mess with the stuck-on knife yet, but I intend to still. I don't know when this effect is scheduled yet, so I don't know what rush I'm in.

Leafing through next week's scene list I got a little shocker... they scheduled a severed hand appearance without mentioning it to me. And I didn't even HAVE the schedule in hand until the evening of the 11th. That is not much heads-up... so I complained.

They really need to keep me in the loop if they want stuff to get done on schedule. I'm actually beginning to get rather cranky about this.

My time log only shows nine hours for yesterday's work and eight for today's... a pittance compared to the 12 and 14 hours logged on site last weekend! But a busy pittance, wrapped around shopping and some of the other realities of life that are getting harder and harder to schedule.

Most of yesterday was spent heating up clay to cast. Two batches. That stuff takes *forever* to melt, since I really don't want to burn it.

In between stirs, I did cleanup and prep work on the knives.

That was pretty much Saturday. Much less than I had hoped for.

Today I extended the sculpture, cleaned away the bad texture (damn hair, made a mess of things), gave it new texture (who knew that water coolers have such cool texture?), set it in a mold box, laid in backing clay, and cast about 50lbs of plaster over it.

I also painted the knives, inhaled fumes, ate lunch, went shopping, and wrapped the handle of my Saber so it won't fly out of my weakened grip tomorrow during practice.

Oh, and I e-mailed Robert to get his hand molded on Tuesday, so I can cast it Thursday/Friday to use on Saturday. Or was it Sunday? Not that it matters...

I also need to flip the leg and cast the back half, prep the capsule gun (did I mention I made a pneumatic gelatin capsule gun? It's cool...), and do god knows what else for call on Saturday AM.

I'm almost but not quite regretting doing this. It would be okay if only the scheduling was prepared in advance. Or, if Sandra is correct and they HAD the hand schedule for over a week, if they would JUST GIVE ME THE DAMN SCHEDULE earlier.

Okay... chatted with Sandra a bit. Sounds like I'm getting info pretty close to real time. It's just that "real time" is kinda last minute still. We'll survive.

Experiments

I'm experimenting with the comment settings... I'm going to try to close comments on older entries to minimize the footprint for the comment spam to hit.

Maybe I could track 'em down and sue them for defacing private property, or something. Bob Apthorpe could do it...

I'll be off to brew some coffee soon, and then it's work work work. Some finances (gotta see how much I spent and prove it to Aaron), the knife, the leg.

Right now I hear the grumbling of an evil thunderstorm off to the North. I really hope the rain is minimal so they get a lot of shooting done today.

Last weekend I was espousing my theory that the movie industry settled in California because it never rains there. There might be something to that.

Friday! Ahhh, friday...

I should spell-check or, at least, re-read my posts. I find dropped letters and stuff when I review 'em... but then again, I'm not sure how much I care.

I bet this thing has a spell-check option. Maybe I'll look for it later.

Hey, it's Friday! I don't think I have enough to do this weekend...

(kidding)

Yesterday I cleaned up the (a) real, (b) trick, and (c) spare knife blades for Deadbacks. The person who designed the trick knife, and who I took the knives from because I can't help medling, started disguise work on them by filling in some blade details. After all, we don't want them to be obviously one brand or another of knife on screen -- apparently people are picky about product placement.

Anyway, there was a sizable application of JB Weld to fill these holes. So I filed the bulk of THAT off and then used a course polishing wheel on the flexshaft to clean up the rest. I then laid a thin layer of metalic epoxy (I seemed to be out of JB weld; how could I let that happen!?) over it to fill in some bubbles and level the fill.

Today I get to gently file it flat (so it's not wobbly) and then polish and paint it all. With any luck, we'll have three identical blades that aren't brand-specific in their shape.

Then I re-assemble the "real" one.

I may re-mount the "fixed" one, that is supposed to be stabbed into Victoria's chest... the mounting it already has is good, but the metal is a bit thick and long for easy of hiding. But it may be fine.

Then I make the "trick" sliding one. The trick originator joined two pieces of acrylic into a sheath for this that I may use... but I think I need to reshape them so this is actually the same basic shape as the orignal knife. My hope, however, is to use my nifty workshop full of tools to make the knife blade actually slide in the actual knife body. This should be possible...

I'm thinking of milling one (or maybe two) tracks in each handle half and then putting matching protrusions on the blade that fit into these tracks. Then it's just like a sliding door in a track.

There are complications, of course, but I'll burn those bridges when I get to them.

I'm not sure why I have a third blade, but I'm not going to complain. It's handy... and it comes with the spare handle I need for my attempt at the trick knife.

Hmmm... Oh, and I will be making the bulk of the prosthetic leg molds this weekend. I'll be wearing my sculpting hat a lot.

Casting a Thigh

Last tuesday I spent my evening molding a thigh. Not the entire leg. Not the calf. But a thigh. I'll be creating skin and muscles based on this mold, to be wrapped around a skeleton, to be used as a vivisection of our poor actor.

This is the first time I cast a thigh, and the results are very good. Though there are quite a few "bubbles" in the mold (I used the thick silicon, applied in a bit of a hurry) I will sculpt these out of the clay positive I'm making this weekend.

I made the cast from just below the actor's knee to up into the short hairs at his hip.

Think about it carefully. Notice the delicate hairs on the inner thigh.

Sure, we lubed up his fur with the approved materials; he did an excellent job of that, far above average I thought.

Sure, silicon doesn't *stick* to anything. Sure.

It does get a good, firm, mechanical hold, though. I know this from personal experience. I have thick hair arm and I did test patches on myself when I got the stuff. It tugs a fair bit, but the hairs pull
free of the silicon.

For my thick, coarse hairs at least.

Mat, the actor, has fine hair.

Had.

There are apparently several factors involved in how much a mold sticks to the model's hair.

There is, of course, the fact of lubrication or lack thereof. I used petroleum jelly for the areas where plaster was applied, and a silicon release for the other spots.

There is the mold material. Alginate binds hairs, but it is weak and lets go easily enough. Silicon binds hairs and is stronger -- so a good greasing is necessary. Plaster really sticks good, and is totally inflexible, so you better be diligent there.

I'm thinking that a soft silicon detail layer (like a thinned slow-set Body Double) will release hairs better then the fairly hard and thick fast-set Body Double. I didn't do that this time.

All of the above factors I kept in mind. There was one more, however, that I didn't think about.

The type of hair itself.

Thick straight hair release easily.

Thin, fine, and (probably) curly hair is more likely to bind in the mold. In this case, you may be safest using alginate or a very soft silicon in a detail layer.

The problem with any hair in a mold is that it creates flaws in the mold. Your best bet may be to just shave the darn model and be done with it.

PS: I enabled comments, disabled comments, and just no re-enabled comments. I keep vacillating on this point -- user comments versus the annoyance of blog spam.

The scale has tipped, at least for now, towards allowing comments.

However, I also put a pox on all those who would put spam into personal blogs. May the fleas of a thousand camels infest their armpits; may all of their beverages be salty; may all of the dogs in their neighborhood crap on their lawn; may goats invade their yard and eat all of their bushes. So say I.

LiveJournal

Okay, I exist on LiveJournal two different ways now.

Matt (mhat) created the RSS feed I mentioned the other day. It is called "ewiserss". I have my own page, too, which I may or may not visit to see what my friends are doing... on LJ I'm known as "MadSpark".

Just FYI.

Rogue Brain

Sometimes my brain works fine -- I can be clear, coherent, clever. My spoken words make sense and are relevant to the topic at hand. My plans and internal dialogs progress along rational paths to reasonable conclusions.

Other times, though, I speak deep thoughts that turn out to have no relevance whatsoever because my brain jumped the wrong associative gap ("It is better to remain quiet and be thought a fool, than to speak up and remove all doubt"... a test I often fail).

Or I try to ask a question and my words come out in random order, making no sense or using terms and references that are just plain wrong. My thinking gets muddied, my plans become irrelevant, my conclusions are marred by confusion.

I hate this rogue brain. It whines, it's sullen, confused. The people around it probably don't like it much, either, and that bothers me. I mean, I grew up with the damn thing and I'm kind of used to it, but I really don't want to inflict it on the greater populace.

I want to people understand that this... other... isn't my brain. My brain is the bright, witty brain that solves problems and is diligent in its work. My brain is likeable. It's this *other* brain that is so unpleasant. Not mine.

But I doubt I could explain it to people. I would say that I have two brains - my good brain and my bad brain, evil twins in my head - and I would lose them. Their foreheads would wrinkle in thought, but my words would be the words of the evil brain, confused, unclear... and mis-understood.

Anyone need a brain? I have two...

Loathing

So, Matt and Paul have sucked me into playing a silly little online adventure called Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com). It's goofy, and it limits your play each do to 40 "adventures", though you can boost this number through various means. It's fairly fun...

I still haven't looked at mirroring this in Live Journal, and as busy as I am, I don't know when I will.

This weekend was our first official shoot for Deadbacks (www.deadbacks.com). It was tiring and we only got about half of the footage in the can that we wanted (if that), but it was still good.

Saturday call was for 9:00am, but most folks didn't drag their sorry butts out there until 10:00 or 10:30. There was some fiddling around and setting up and then lunch at 11:00, which put a big pause in the festivities.

After lunch, I made up Kodie (the lovely female lead, pictured on the Haunt section off of the main page here), which took an hour and half easily... the face took an hour since I'm getting the feel for this, and then there was costuming, some hair work, and I had to do her hands.

So we started shooting about 2:30 or so. Then we wrapped at 6:30 or so... having put about three pages of script to bed.

Sunday was going to be an *early* start, with myself and Kodi getting to the site at 8:00am so the makeup could go on early, and the rest of the crew targetting 9:00 again.

Of course, the thunderstorms put a bit of a kink into that. There was some conferring and analyzing of weather data, and we decided to trust that the weather would blow over by 10:00 or 11:00 and we could get another scene filmed.

THAT didn't happen. But my makeup on Kodie is getting better. We found a base to put down on her eyelids to lock the eye shadow into place, and the powder went down over it very smoothly. I was quite happy.

Instead of filming by the pond, we set up in the "studio" (located in a giant quanset hut on the property) and prepared to film indoor scenes. Those actors were slated to show up at 3:00, and they made it on time.

The set wasn't quite ready, though... but everything converged to filming by about 4:30 and we got a couple scenes into the can by 9:00 or 9:30 or so. We didn't break for dinner, but ate on the run as we filmed...

Marla was doing fill-in cooking while our primary craft services person was out, and though she approached this job with great trepidation she did beautifully.

Our new camera person (actually, director of photography, or DP) is an experienced and capable guy who looks like he will do the movie with us. Which is amazing, since he is paid to fly all over the country to film stuff... he brings a welcome touch of experience and professionalism to the crew.

The actors continue to be great, too. I'm anxious to see some dailies to see how this all looks on film. It plays great on set at least.

Standing around all day is wearing, so there is a bunch of goofing off and joking on set between shots as we set up. But the moment the DP calls "ready" everyone clams up quickly, the actors drop into their character, and by "action" it all becomes very real. You can feel the tensions, the fears, the anxieties in the air... it's like flashbacks to my first divorce. It's amazing.

Then, "cut", and the joking and noise returns.

It's a good group. I bet we make a good film.

Go!

Marla got me some books on the game "go" for my birthday... okay, I bought some and she filled in the collection, but it counts.

Reading them has been fun, but now we need to play games! For now, it will be Marla, myself, and our trusty computers filling in the void. Too busy to go to game groups and stuff...

Fun.

I got Nikolas a ticket to visit, so that will be coming up in about six weeks. That's cool.

I need to hook up to the Taiji Legacy competition soon, too. Saber has been a lot of fun, and I look forward to kicking some competition butt with my saber form.

For a while now, my Journal has been mirrored through RSS on Live Journal through mhat's journal. I've avoided Live Journal for a while now, but everyone is on it. I guess I should make a shell account and RSS my journal into it, so I can get replies and stuff and interact with people.

Maybe I'll research that in the next week or so.

Pretty Dead Girl

Well, I just couldn't get up the enthusiasm to practice my makeup application, so Saturday was my first day putting the pretty dead girl makeup on someone. It turned out pretty good, and everyone appeard to be happy! You can see the results under the Haunt section of this website...

Now I even have a street-makeup person, a licensed cosmetologist, to work with me on set, so that fills a gaping void we had.

Thursday and Friday of last week I was putting in a new motherboard (ASUS 8KN-E or something similar), CPU (Sempron 3100+), and nifty 80GB Seagate SATA HD.

My computer now zips along beautifully. Everthing is faster... booting, processing, shutting down, the Internet even. It's awesome. I think that the espresso machine even runs faster.

It even hibernates and comes out as cleanly as can be, which is a first for any of my machines.

I'm happy.

Electric Personality

Some of the guys at work have used white-board markers to scribe a rough sundial on their window. As the sun rises, it casts a shadow onto the window sill. They are using a seam line in the middle of the sill as their marker. It's pretty cool!

Yesterday I discovered that I have an electric personality... or something. Every time I would get out of my chair or, in some cases, get into my chair within about a foot of a prototype board I'm programming, it would reset.

The first two times we thought it was a fluke. After nine sequential tries we decided it was definitely me. Other people don't do it, either. I even reset this board in someone else's cube...

Yesterday I was wearing silk, so I was probably building up a HECK of a charge. Today I'm wearing linen... and it did it again.

Pretty neat, eh?

Saturday is our first day at Dragonwood and we will be filming a few scenes with Victoria, our pretty dead girl. I may or may not have a makeup person capable of doing her, so I may (or may not) get to do the makeup myself.

I'm thinking I need to practice on Friday.

Stealth Role Expansion

When I volunteered for the makeup management position in the Deadbacks project, I was working under the assumption that it would be mostly an organizational task, using a number of skilled volunteers that we had on hand plus some more we would find.... after all, I'm not an experienced makeup person. I figured I could push papers and work schedules, and one or more senior makeup people could take the techincal lead.

Well, I couldn't find anyone to take the lead for this, but I kept hoping. I'm just now beginning to internalize my role as makeup manager, which is a lot like my role as physical FX manager... e.g., I own it, including creative aspects.

It should turn out okay. Maybe even better than okay!

As we approach the final weeks before shooting, the panic level is rising, as well as the chaos. But it looks like things will come together, assuming we actually get a cinematographer. And we finish the sets. And I both find and train sufficient quantities of makeup people. And find time to sculpt and cast the props. Let alone make molds from our actors.

Ummmm.... the next two weeks sees me doing a lot of work with makeup people and actors, squeezed into many of my "free" moments.

Yeah.

On the happy bright note, I'm getting my combat-steel saber tonight at TaiChi, and I find I'm inordinately excited about the prospect. This enthusiasm has also probably been fueled by my recent reading of the first 20 "Lone Wolf and Cub" manga (just now being reprinted by Dark Horse comics, so I have to now buy these).

Last night I had a chance to work on my heart sculpture a bit, and I found that my choice of clay for this project was perfect. This Chavant NSP Medium is great stuff! Rubbery enough to not crumble in handling, hard enough to hold up to handling and take details, enough tack so I can add clay as needed, heat-softenable with a heat gun to enhance MANY working aspects, and so on. Great stuff!

Rehearsals

I took the evening off from TaiChi to go to a rehearsal of Deadbacks.

That was kinda cool. Our actors are really pretty good, some of 'em are excellent.

I may even have just enough makeup people to not have a complete disasater on that front, too. Tonight I'll tump all of my makeup volunteer names into a bucket and e-mail 'em... Saturday is Makeup Day, and I want to test both my makeup peoples and the actors getting into makeup.

It should be interesting.

Right now at work I'm stuck... I'm working on a piece of code that is stuck on two fronts. Any second now I expect a phone call from my tech guy at the company that makes my compiler and development environment. With any luck we'll figure out how to make his system do what I need..

... which is to compile my code for ROM (flash, actually) and on boot, copy bits of it to RAM and then run THAT to re-program the flash... tricky stuff that supposedly works easily with their linker and loader.

Hah.

The beginnings of madness

Oooh, my brain is all sleepy and blurry this morning.

I don't even remember what I did Thursday and Friday, though I'm sure I went dancing Friday and visited odd Friday (www.oddfriday.com).

This weekend was a blur of activity, the beginning of the madness that is this movie production. Though I can only imagine what Aaron is going through -- not enough budget, barely enough actors, no cinematographer yet, not enough makeup crew, and so forth. On second thought, I know exactly what he is going through; this sounds a lot like Haunted Trails 2004... only the movie is more complex and has slightly higher stakes (I think).

I was able to do a variety of interesting things over the weekend, other than planning the work out in great detail (mmm, dependency graphs) and shopping for tools and supplies.

For the first time, I cast clay into molds for re-sculpting. That was cool. The clay I found (NSP Plasteline Medium) is awesome! From an awesome company (www.chavant.com). They sent me a comprehensive sampler pack of clays for only $10 S&H... very nice. Then I bought 50lbs of clay. A good deal for them, I'm sure.

I did discover, to my regret, that Armadillo Clay is a distributor of Chavant, even though they are not listed on the website. Visiting Armadillo to get hydrostone (a hard plaster) I saw they carried the NSP -- a no-sulfur variety that I expected to be kinda obscure. I told Armadillo they weren't listed, so maybe they will get on Chavant's case.

Lessee... I tested several blood bases, all of which had interesting characteristics, though I really don't like the strawberry syrup blood. Ick, fake strawberry, and the seeds clogged my syringe.

I built up a valve manifold and "nail board" to manage up to six bullet hits in sequence.

Hmmm... my original bullet hit mechanism used a 260 balloon (www.tmeyers.com) to seal the tube and provide a blowout. I found that for large loads, the blood accumulated in the expanded balloon and, on rupture, just fell to the ground. So I used cling wrap around the load tube hole instead; it blew out just fine under the pressure I'm using and it didn't stretch to create a blood-blister.

I did have to seal the wrap with petroleum jelly, though, so it wouldn't leak. No big deal. I also found that if I reduced the air pressure to 20psi or so, I get more of a "squirt" than a blast, so that's useful information. Unfortunately, the pneumatic valves I use require at least 30psi to operate. But if I need a squirt, I can always use the manual valve again.

We need a way to get bullet hits on boards and trees, and the best way to do that is to shoot "dust" at the target. One way to do THAT is to get a paintball gun and some black-shell / white-paint balls for it. Then, using a syringe, suck the paint out and then replace it with... something else.

Instead, however, I hooked the compressor up to a 28" tube and loaded it with a large gelatine capsule from the health store, which was in turn loaded with blood, graphite, petroleum jelly, and a variety of other materials I wanted to test.

A shot of air and out if flies! Either rupturing or, more often, opening on contact. Poof of dust! Splash of blood! So that worked okay.

I'm sure there was more, but I don't remember anymore.

Zillions of Dollars

No, I don't mean our ridiculous US budget deficit

(Oooh, Republicans are the party of fiscal responsibility; Oooh, they don't tax us; Ooooh, BULLSHIT. If they are so responsible, why are we spending so much more money than we make? Sure they aren't taxing us... they are taxing our future. But that's a different rant.)

I've got zillions of dollars of STUFF hitting my doorstep between the 14th and the 18th. Gelatin, glycering, silicon molding materials, more makeup, sausage casings (don't ask), and I don't even remember what all else. Not to mention the errands I'll be running to get plaster, cotton puffs, sunscreen, pneumatic fittings (on order), and an endless list of other trivial bits.

I just hope to hell that I got what I needed and not too much that I don't need.

Mmm, movies. What a way to spend money.

Big Move at Work

Thursday afternoon I broke down my computer and finished putting all of my various worldly goods into the designated conference room.

Thursday and Friday, we amused ourselves at the annual NI Tech conference, wherein we all give presentations to each other about what we are working on, where we are going, new ideas, old traings, whatever.

Over the weekend, magically, all of our cubes were broken down and re-assembled differently.

Today I am back online in a bigger, better cube! Whee!

Saturday I took my management final and probably didn't bomb it entirely. There's actually a good chance I got a B, which is entirely sufficient for my needs.

I really didn't enjoy the class and I'm glad it's over.

Next weekend I do the CS-111 final, but except for all of the writing a computer science final entails, it will be a breeze. So that's all essentially done with.

I have CS-121 on my plate now, and I don't even know what that is. I'll buy books for it soon or something.

The BIG priority right now is the Deadbacks movie. We start shooting April 30 and I need (desperately) a makeup crew to apply the appropriate pigments and paints to the faces of the actors. It should be interesting.

Not to mention all of the FX work -- sculpting, casting, testing, assembling, you know -- I have to do. Seeing as how I'll be onsite at the shoot on the weekends, my actual FX building time is VERY limited.

Should be interesting.

Is it time to panic?

The first filming day is three and a half weeks away... that's three weekends.

There is a LOT TO DO between now and then! Of course, the shooting continues through June, so TECHNICALLY I have time DURING the shoot to make stuff... but I want to be on the site when they are shooting, which takes a bunch of time away.

Gah!

This weekend I have my management final, which I need to study for but haven't been, so I doubt I'll do very well... and I will be hanging with our storyboard artist working on scenes I care about... and I hope to talk with Aaron some too, about various FX and makeup decisions...

I'm a bit worried. I guess I'll be cutting my extra-curricular activities to the bone for a while.

Edible Body Parts

Last Halloween I did work on making body parts that could stand up to handling -- that would feel real. While my first tries were decent, I also learned things along the way that will make my next set of realistic parts even better.

For example, there is a newer form of dragon skin that is MUCH softer than what I used, which will give future parts a more flesh-like feeling.

And I understand that you can burn or melt away silicon flashings (if you avoid the toxic fumes, at least). Gotta try that. I hate flashing seams.

But for the movie I need to go one better. I need body parts that can be eaten.

Maybe not *swallowed*, but at least chewed.

Needless to say, I'll be using gelatin for these. I'm thinking a tough gelatin skin followed by foamed gelatin that will, at the last minute, be impregnated with blood. Another option is to include blood-tubes in the part and fill those with blood... I'm still experimenting. For blood tubes I would use some form of sausage casing, so I need to find a local supplier of those.

Ahhhh... we're gonna have fun on this.

I've also found some *awesome* and reasonably priced clays for model making... much better in every way than the sculpey I used last year. The sculpy will retain its role as barrier walls and stuff, but I don't think I want to sculpt with it anymore.

I Want My Two Hours!

I reached critical levels of frustration last night working on the last bits of my CS11 work.

Because of Microsoft's idiocy and incompetence, I lost the better part of two hours of my life last night in frustration and annoyance.

I want my !@#$% two hours back. No, I want ALL of the time I spent waste in frustration because of Microsoft's bullshit software back. That should account for an extra year. And for that kind of pain, I want $100 an hour. Lessee, at 2,080 hours a year, that's $208,000 they owe me. Bastards.

I should probably have found the problem in only an hour, but I really wasn't expecting the level of idiocy the problem was a symptom of. I mean really.

Their BUILT IN !@#$% showed the file just fine. The code was just fine. If I stripped everything out things worked. I discovered, after some suffering, that a single comment in the file broke things.

It took a while to get to that point, though, because the error messages had nothing to do with ANYTHING.

Which is what was so !@#$% annoying and mysterious about it. The error messages would change around a bit, but never seemed relevant to anything.

The code that was !@#$%ing with me was downloaded as part of the class, so I got suspicious about garbage invisible characters in it. So I loaded it up under a DECENT editor (Scite... find it, get it, love it) and discovered that the offending file was terminated in CR (carriage return).

Native termination for windows is the bullshit CR/LF (carriage return and linefeed pairs).

The compiler or, more likely, the pre-processor couldn't cope. Even though everthing showed the file as being just fine (the editor, the post-processed expanded listings, EVERYTHING), it was actually puking deep inside the system where nobody could see it. And it wasn't giving rational errors.

So I wasted two hours of my life chasing down a termination incompatability.

It isn't like it's HARD to make a parser cope with CR and/or CR/LF terminators. It's easy. Their IDE did it. I've done it before. Diseased monkeys could probably write code that would do it.

So I want my two hours back.

Bastards.

New Code, take 2

Well, there was a problem in my new code... a weirdness in the hardware that, for some reason, I didn't think applied to my case. I was wrong. Now it's all re-written and, since it compiles and no bugs have been found, it's perfect!

I suppose I need to test it now.

Sunday morning is the first audition for Deadbacks. I think I'll go and watch. Should be interesting.

Most of the rehearsals and stuff are on weekday nights, which makes it hard for me to be there.

This weekend I also need to get my plans for the FX in place. I'll make notes and then merge them with the storyboard when I have a chance to talk to Denis.

Trepidation and New Code

Well, Friday and Monday I worked out most of the details for this subsytem I'm writing (with a little help from Tuesday), and at this very moment it is sketched in and it compiles.

Now I need to test it.

This is the perfect moment in software, right now. I was just productive, which always feels good, writing a decent chunk of reasonably clever yet still straightforward software. It compiles, so all of the basic typing errors are fixed. But I don't know what all of its logical errors are -- so I can still pretend that it is perfect code.

Once I run it, my illusions will be shattered. My pristine vision will be sullied by the harsh textures of reality, the bumps and slashes, the oozing wounds and scabbed abrasions.

So I will draw out this moment just a little bit longer... ahhhh....

I ordered a stack of makeup supplies on Monday and I expect them to show up on my doorstep before too long. Makeup! What am I doing with matte cake foundations and creme colors and eyeshadow and rouge? Good grief. And this stuff is *expensive*, too.

The sacrifices I make to be part of the independent movie scene.

Of course, I'll be working on the gore and guts aspect, too, so that's cool. I have some books and videos coming at the same time so I can finish my various plans before we start shooting in... ummm... very darn soon now.

Good God! April 30! AAAAAAaggghhhhh!

I've got some things to do. Soon. I still don't know (for sure) how I'm going to do, oh, HALF of the stuff I need to do.

Mind Games

Whee! Spent a few hours last night with Alain, Ronn, and Brad while they filmed a sequence in Austin on South Congress.

This time, Marla got to be in the audience, so SHE may be on TV in May. Fun for the entire family!

We finally have a schedule for the first two episodes. They will be aired during a Magic Week on TLC, along with four David Blain specials. The remaining two Alain Nu specials will be airing in May but I don't see those dates on TLC yet.

Check it out:

http://tinyurl.com/4nu3r

Sproing!

The elevator tells me that next weekend we Spring Ahead. Er, time change. The MENU in the elevator. Umm. Yeah.

A bit dazed today, only got about six hours sleep. Maybe five. Or five and a half. Yeah, I know, I'm a wimp, but I like my sleep!

Drove down to San Antonio last night to visit with Ronn and Alain, hung out with them and Brad Henderson (www.bradhenderson.com/). So that was cool.

I'm hoping to hook up with them this evening again when they do a shoot on South Congress, but we'll see. My weekday schedules are a bit constrained.

This weekend I played (briefly) with makeup (some borrowed cake and creme) and batched up a bit of foamy gelatin.

The cake makeup can be made very light so it's good for subtle bases. The creme is a bit easier to apply, I think, and blends well, but goes on heavier. I'll put in an order for a mix of products today so I'll get to play more later. Heck, I may even put up pictures!

The foamed gelatin was interesting. I used gelatin from the hombrew shop and it seemed to work find. I used 100 grams of gelatin powder in 450 grams of glycerin and this makes a good, firm base. It cooks up a golden tan color, though, which made me think it was burnt! So I steamed up some water and made a dollop of water-based, and did a dollop of half water and half glycerin... the water was pale golden and the glycerin mix was a midway between the dark and the pale gold.

So apparently glycerin makes it darker.

I took 100g of the base (still hot and fluid), hotted it up a bit more, and stirred in 1tsp of baking soda. Actually, it started foaming right then! I may have to start with the acid in the mixture first, though I would rather have it base than acid, I think, for application to the body. Oh, and I added 2tsp of a fairly heavy acrylic medium too.

Stirring in the acid it foamed WAY the heck up, talking 8x or 10x here. I was prepared for about 4x, since the foaming squish performed so badly. Heh. Like the squish, I wasn't able to refine (stir) it very much to break down the bubbles, but I did some.

Poured a blob into a polyurethane mold I had laying around (which had silicon ick in it from a previous use, which had some setting issues) and left bits in the cups I used.

While still fairly fresh the gelatin foam is *really* sticky so I had my doubts about its usability! Of course, years (if not decades) of use indicate that it is quite usable, somehow.

This morning it had set nicely, though the blob in the mold had collapsed a fair amount. I may need to add more medium, I may need to refine it more, and the nature of the mold may have affected it too. I'm going to buy some information with my makeup order to improve my process. Right now I have more money than time for this.

The foamed gelatin takes makeup a LOT like skin, so with a base stipple to redden it up to match skin, it should makeup quite nicely. The foamed squish doesn't take makeup the same, though it takes it okay. I couldn't find my cold-foamed rubber to test, but I know that solid latex takes makeup badly (you actually need to use a different kind of makeup for latex). And I think foamed latex is similar -- you need a grease-based makeup.

The foamed gelatin was very squishy, amazingly thin edges with good strength, and nicely flexible. Small cell structure overall. On squishing it, it took a bit of time to pop back out, but at least it didn't collapse.

Foamed squish is firmer (but can probably be softened with additives), makes thicker edges that aren't as stong, and doesn't makeup... but then, it is for props and not prosthetics. It will be decent for props due to its weight and flexibility.

The cold foam was definitely firmer than the gelatin, but then this wasn't prosthetic cold foam. I had a chance to handle some Kryolan cold foam when I was picking up the makeups, and it's fairly soft and has a nice texture, an extremely fine cell size too. But I bet if I refine the gelatin more, I'll get small bubbles, too.

The gelatin was a bit cold and clammy, but warms up quickly.

Overall, I think I like it. I'll be doing wounds with it in the show, I think, which shouldn't be too hard.

I may make the arm and leg attacks from it, too, but I'm undecided there.

As for foamed silicon... haven't tried it. I'll see what I can do later.

I did other stuff this weekend, too, but not so interesting as to take up space here.

FX Materials

So I'm going over a list of materials that I've either worked with or will be testing (soon, like this weekend) for making prosthetic makeup and lifelike props. And for me, "lifelike" not only includes "looking good" but often "feels good" and "moves realistically"... which rules out most foams for most props.

Cold Foam, played with it a bit, might be good for static props that don't get handled, or that are viewed from a distance. Hot foam is softer with better characteristics, but too complex to work with for this poor soul.

Liquid Latex, I've used for built-up wounds and stuff but I've never been happy with its stiffness and the difficulty in applying makeup to it. Of course, I've never had the RIGHT makeup, which is changing soon, so I need to re-visit liquid latex.

Silicon, lovely handling characteristics and can be made hard to really really squishy. A pain to paint but has lovely translucency, and should be able to hold punched-in hair nicely. Easy to work with and not very noxious. Expensive.

Foamed Silicon, which I've not tried but sounds interesting. The foaming should give it a softer feel and improve its compression characteristics, which might improve its use as facial prosthetics. Anything that makes a product move with the face helps. Foaming, however, makes materials opaque.

Gelatin, I've used this a bit in the dim, distant past. I'm going to try it again for wounds. Cheap, but melts in heat and with sweat. Sweat you can block with chemicals, but heat... in Texas... yeah. We'll see. Translucent. Cheap!

Foamed Gelatin, like Gelatin but softer, lighter, and will lose its translucency. But still neat!

Squish, or as it's formally called, hot-pour PVC. Cheaper than silicon, translucent, and has good handling characteristics. And it can be made harder or softer, though I've not used those additives. Noxious to work with, since it is worked at 250-300 degress F and smells bad (I wear a breathing filter). Also, has poor stretch and tear characteristics compared to silicon. I don't think it will be very good for prosthetics since it's slightly oily and may be icky for the skin. And it's hard to apply makeup to.

Foamed Squish, just to be cool. I do want to do a test of it as a wound prosthetic. It won't melt like gelatin and has similar cost and feel characteristics. Except the oiliness and the difficutly in sticking anything to it! But it should hold punched-in hair and I'm thinking gelatin won't.

Polyurethane, which I use for molds and the occasionl body part. Can also be made squishy with additives, and while still expensive, is cheaper than silicon.

As for mold-making materials, I've used polyurethane, body-safe silicon, alginate, and the usual varieties of plaster.

I like working with new materials... it's fun! I'll have to write a book or something, someday.

Hotflesh... more thoughts

Looking at the Scorpius makeup from Farscape (the first use of Hotflesh), it is definitely NOT foamed anything. Foaming introduces all those tiny bubbles which in turn make the material more-or-less opaque.

I wonder what the HECK he is using? I still bet on a variation of hot pour pvc, but at this point I haven't got a good clue at all.

I still think that foamed hot-pour will make an interesting material, though. I wonder, though, how the oils will react with skin? I don't think I want to use it on the face, but as stand-alone body parts. This way I get some weight to them, they wobble nicely, and they are cheap.

Foam latex doesn't have the right wobbly feel for these things and silicon is too darned expensive.

Hmmm... foamed silicon?

Wheee!

Hotflesh

Do you have any idea how hard it is to get good results when googling the term "hotflesh" ?? I suppose I would get better results if I turned on safe search...

Anyway, following up on some half-articulated thoughts I found on the web (1) I'm trying to foam hot-pour PVC.

A quick test last night had fair results, but wasn't giving me a very light foam. The result was squishy but heavy, and since I didn't have much time the results weren't very refined so there were some large-ish bubbles damaging the finish.

More news and recipes as they develop.

I'll also be playing with foamed gelatin (2)

Mmmmm, new materials.

(1)
http://missykat.com/pygram/interview17.html
http://www.imagecreative.net/press_articles_art05.html

(2)
http://www.sapsema.org/gelatin1.html
http://www.sapsema.org/gelatin2.html

Electric Personality

Woo! I generate quite a charge. Even when I'm NOT wearing a silk or rayon shirt, when I'm sitting in plain vanilla cotton, I arc and spark and discharge all day long.

It seems to be worse in the mornings, but I guess that depends on the weather conditions.

I fear for my hardware. But so far nothing has fried.

The real fun is when I'm wearing my headphones and shift in my chair. Zap! Through the ears!

Today I *finally* (and about damn time) started my drum practices. So that's cool. And the nice thing about drumming is you don't have to play Twinkle Twinkle Little !@#$% Star, or Mary had a !@#$% Little Lamb.

And even the boring early rhythms aren't THAT boring, since you're tuning in your coordination. And even a basic 4-4 rock beat with no ornamentation is still drumming. Which, no matter what, sounds better than We Three !@#$% Kings.

Pushing

Pushing pushing... I'm pushing the big rock of code at work. Updating the journal isn't working at work since I got busy. I'm not complaining. I'd rather be busy.

Code reviews beget changes beget more reviews beget trunk checkins.

And now we have a proper trunk of code (the "gold standard" that we touch only carefully), though it doesn't quite work yet.

Next week, more pushing. Parsers, interpreters, message packers, debugging, supporting the test guy (thank God we have a test guy!), and more reviews and check-ins.

This project is critical path for a dozen products or more, so we have to keep moving.

Tai Chi has settled back into routine for now, though I have lost my home-practice habit (again). Dammit. Had a GREAT workshop in push-hands last Sunday with Christophe Clark. Good stuff. Made sense. Our sifu, Tom, is great at teaching many things but he is still learning how to teach push hands. Fortunately, he and Christophe seemed to hit it off famously. We'll see Christophe again.

School is cranking along. I scheduled a final for CS110 for the 26th (yeah, it's Easter weekend, what of it?), and that's a week later than it should have been except the person I talked to on the library had their facts a bit off.

A couple weeks later I'll have another, and the third the week after -- at the rate I'm going. Then on to the next round! 9 credit hours in four months, not too bad. I actually started work in the February timeframe, so 3 months of actual work.

This weekend, among doing taxes (Refund! Score!) and finances and schoolwork and stuff, we are watching Penn and Teller's Bullshit on DVD. Great stuff! Lots of fun. Good to fume along with them at the intelligent design (e.g. creationism) people, and so forth.

Anyway, I'm off to do dishes or dinner or laundry or the Deadbacks FX and makeup script breakdown or...

... well, you get the idea.

I Suck

Well, I don't update the journal so much right now. Which sucks, I guess.

I need to get back into the daily update thing.

My code at work is functioning correctly, finally. We'll have a big code review tomorrow or Friday, which will surely highlight problems to be fixed... or something.

I want it to go well, of course, since the quality of my code determines my worth as a human being.

I've been enjoying the lack of major projects recently, though I guess the Deadbacks project will become major very soon.

Stuff

I haven't forgotten about you, really! I'm still here...

I'm still coughing, too. Damn it. But it's fading. Slowly. Maybe I'll OD on expectorants this weekend in an attempt to clear the last of the crap out.

Now that I've advanced into Brown sash, sifu has changed the requirements to get into brown... making it much easier! And everyone ELSE will have easier requirements to first brown, too, but not us existing browns.

Not that it actually matters. We all learn the same stuff by the end, just shifted around a bit.

I've worked up some tests for an effect for Alain yesterday. I'll hopefully make a nicer version and put video up by Saturday AM. THIS is a cheap one -- not like the $1,500 worth of effort the other two had. I'll charge a pittance.

Work has been madness this week, which is why the journal has been stagnent.

At the beginning of the week, I had a decently working chunk of code... but it wouldn't do a particular thing.

So I restructured stuff to make it nicer than the hacky version I had, and tried to get the certain thing to work.

Everything broke.

I just now got the nicely structured code so it works again! Yay me!

I'm afraid to test the certain thing, though, because I'm sure it won't work.

I can't actually do stuff yet, since I upgraded a stack of calls to match a protocol that hasn't been checked in yet... I'm waiting for it.

So now I type in the journal.

Hmmm...

I recently read a REALLY good book on screenwriting called, ummm, I don't recall. But it was really good!

With the new information, I feel better prepared to attack my fiction writing again... and I know better the terrible mistakes I was making in my story.

Of course, movies and TV aren't novels, but many of the concepts apply... and I've never found a decent book about writing novels. Screenplays, however... that's a well-analyzed craft.

Aching Lungs

Damn, my lungs grow weary of this coughing. They ache.

If I had narcotics, e.g. Vicodin, the problem would magically go away. Or maybe if the DAMN MUCUS would leave me alone.

So, the Dr said that yup, I had the flu. And that it would get better soon enough. But if it doesn't, like I get a sympathetic infection, I also got a scrip for germ killer.

Bleh.

I tested last night and did well enough. Friday I become a Brown Sash. Most TaiChi, and many other martial art styles, don't do colored belts. But I like it, since it gives a sense of progress.

The big, significant one will be Black Sash. That will be December 2006.

Lungs

My lungs continue to give me grief. I see a doctor at 2:15 today, who will either give me antibiotics (which I hate), or tell me it will all be better soon. So I'm not really looking forward to it.

The device I made for the show worked well and the effect ran without a hitch. So that's good.

I'm still trying to get PAID for the previous one. I'm out about $2,000 in physical costs for all this so far, so they damn well better pay me.

Today I test for my brown sash, which could be interesting. Due to being sick I haven't practiced much the last few days... and due to being sick, I may be a bit wobbly tonight doing the saber form.

I know it, or at least I know it at home. I just hope I know it *right*. I learned it mostly from other students.

Crikey! Creeping Crud Creates Catastrophic Coughing

Wednesday I was feeling a bit... off. Head a little throbby, kinda "woogy".

1:45 am on Thursday I wake up, feeling like I've been in bed for many hours... like I had been dragging myself through sleep uphill and against the gale. But it was only 1:45. My head hurt.

I slept the rest of the night in 10 and 15 minute chunks.

Thursday I went to work anyway, but of course I felt progressively worse and left at 3:00 while I still could.

Ever since I've been pretty much coughing up my lungs. I haven't actually eaten much since Wednesday so I'm kinda weak and dizzy, but I did manage to get a little this and that into me, so I'm not dead yet.

It's Sunday now and I'm still coughing my brains out. Thank god, however, that the headache portion only lasted a day or two. And it's also amazing that I haven't destroyed my throat coughing, but I've been careful about my coughing posture to minimize the impact.

Of course, the muscles around my diaphram, back, and rib cage are not happy with me. Oh not, not happy at at all.

All of this has put a monkey wrench into almost everything -- I missed the twisting convention I took the vacation for in the first place, heck, I don't even remember what I was going to do anymore. Whatever.

I do seem to be progressing towards health a little bit, at least. I should be back at work by, oh, Tuesday.

Crazy Week

The Crazy Week continues.

Yesterday during lunch, I ordered a zillion dollars worth of stuff for the current Alain effect. I also thought back and noticed that I continue to put spoilers into this journal! I'm not entirely sure if I will get into trouble for that or not... okay, Alain called (15 May 2005) and he is a bit miffed so I'm stripping more stuff out. I'm afraid some of it will live on in Google archives, though. I'll see what I can do.

The interesting part of these effects is not the effect itself, but the way the live audience reacts to it. To them, it *is* magic, and seeing them see magic is interesting.

Each person creates their own reality, their own explanations as to what is "really" happening during an effect.

Anyway...

I don't know how much homework I'll get done this weekend, and I'm even contemplating NOT going to the twisting convention Fri/Sat, just to get everything that needs to be done, done.

Which sucks.

But I have to prioritize.

Remote Control Lights

Okay, I'm pretty darn sure they actually want and need the remote control lights... but they don't know if they want four or seven, or something in between.

So I'm making six. Of course, I had to buy about $700 worth of stuff to do this.

Most of the money went on the biz, because I transferred cash to cover it... but this is costing more than I thought (since they want 6 and not 4), so some of the cost went on the Amazon card. I'll need to pay that off when *I* get paid.

Now to build the little buggers and get them to the site... soon!

One of the harder parts, it turns out, was finding a way to mount the lightbulb in the damn reflector.

Maglites are focusable, which means that the light is not attached to the reflector and is, in fact, in a special little socket that is attached to the body of the flashlight. Held in place with a clip. A clip that drops into a groove in the floor AND the wall, so it can't be removed.

Okay.

So a cheap-ass flashlight from HEB has the bulb attached to the reflector, but there is no graceful way to wire to the bulb without soldering onto it.

That's too gross.

So today, while buying most of the high intensity Maglite bulbs from Fry's, I found ANOTHER cheap flashlight. Disassembling it in the store, I find that it actually has a decent socket for the bulb. Tonight, I test.

Now, I don't know HOW the hell I'm going to build all of this stuff on time.

I think Thursday, instead of reading management crap, I assemble.

I think Friday and Saturday I may also be doing work on it, in between trips to the twisting convention.

Too damn much going on this week!

Magic Effects take 2

So, got the call today from the Alain show, and they want me to manufacture a new effect -- which I'm not going to describe here.

I had the heads-up on this last week, so I'm a bit prepared.

Today I need to put together a proposal and e-mail it to the producer.

This will be fun!

A year ago or so, my truck (a Ford Ranger) had the MOST ANNOYING problem EVER... when I closed the door, the dome light and door ajar indicator would not turn off. The dealer said it would be a pain to fix and a Google search didn't turn up anything of use. A browse through the truck repair manual didn't help, either.

It went away.

Two weeks ago, it came back.

THIS time a Google search came up with a low-tech fix -- hose the latches in the doors down with WD-40 to fix a sticking sensor. Turns out this is a very common problem with Fords, and not just their trucks.

Not having any WD-40, I hosed all four door latches down with Liquid Wrench. I then cycled the doors a few times and then added some more lube.

A miracle! It all works perfectly now.

Of course, the cab smells like solvent... but it's a small price to pay for working door sensors.

Good Work

No memories for you! Maybe next week...

Doing good work these last two days or so. Actual work with actual challenges that are amenable to actual solutions.

Today one fix was pretty blind -- I wasn't seeing it, so I called Daniel over. We reversed two calls that shouldn't have been reversed (I thought) and it worked. The MCU was being weird inside. Dan thinks it was to save a few gates in the FPGA... cheap bastards.

I still don't have the saber form entirely memorized, but I got a good chunk of it into my brain today at lunch. I'll work on it more tonight, between sessions in the textbooks. Tomorrow I need to make a good showing at the make-up class, so Connie doesn't lose faith in my greatness.

I've been putting off some of the work on Alain's effect... my Mon/Tue/Wednesdays are completely shot in February.

The effect is on the 20'th... so close! The twisting convention is next week! Tai Chi testing the week after!

AAAAAA!

Time Flies

They say that time flies like an arrow. And, umm, fruit flies like a banana...

It's been a week since I've written here! Egads!

Friday we got the stuff we had been waiting for, and all this week we've been trying to make things work.

The big thing on my plate is hooking the interrupt for the USB setup request. First, I couldn't get the interrupt to fire. Now I can't get it to stop!

Tomorrow I'll have to drag the hardware guys back in and we can analyze what is going on. Grrr....

Tomorrow morning (since I'll be here for a coupld of hours before the H/W guys), I'll re-organize the test code, make it obvious what is happening, and generally do sanity checks.

I've been working myself too hard after work, trying to get ready to advance to Brown sash in a couple of weeks.

On top of that, Alain wants me to work up some gimmicks for another effect... for the 20th! That's Sunday, right after the twisting convention.

We'll see how that works out.

Oooh, my son Nikolas is turning 16 on the 19th! Woot! I'm planning on getting him /gift spoiler censored/. I think he'll like that.

Pathetic Lamers

So my group buys a two-license product costing over $20,000 (yes, COUNT THOSE ZEROS) that we've been trying to get for the better part of two weeks and... wait for it... they mail it... by... Fedex "I'm a cheap bastard" Saver class.

What the fuck?

It took DAYS to get the vendor into our accounting system, DAYS to get the massive PO approved, DAYS MORE to get it processed on their side and now... I have to wait DAYS for Fedex to deliver it?

And if they had paid an additional $15 or $20 I would have it in my hands NOW and not next monday or so.

Un-fucking-believable.

So I sit here essentially playing with myself waiting for it.

Tomorrow I'll have some programming I can do on the project, once some of Daniel's stuff gets checkpointed... you know, hooking up to his API, fixing up the main(), adding interrupt vectors. That should keep me busy for about two hours.

Ah well, on the bright side, I have official permission for a "10%" project that has huge potential to (a) be really interesting and (b) open up a new set of markets for our system.

So that's good.

I Rock

Well, I may get called in to do another effect for Alain's show... that would be cool.

Some of my work here at NI is stalled while I wait for a development tool to be delivered. This bad boy was expensive -- so expensive, it took about a week to get approved at the highest level. Now I've sat twiddling my thumbs for two days waiting to get it delivered.

Blah.

Last week I sold my electronic drums on eBay. The buyer should be receiving them tomorrow and, if all things survived the transit, I'll be closing out the transaction in a couple of days. Then I'm going to run out and pick up some acoustic drums so I can torment my neighbors, and an electronic keyboard for Marla! Yeah, I'll be spending a lot more than I made, but it should be cool.

Also, this Friday we get the other half of our performance bonus, so that's cool. Then I add up my monies and look at buying the house.

School has cranked my Visa balance up a bit, so I'm paying interested on the stupid thing until I pass all of the classes and get reimbursed. I suppose it could be worse.

I've been spotty on my blogging lately, so for that I apologize. I've got more memories listed that I need to type in, too... but not today.

Saber Form

I've got just five days to learn saber form so I can make it to my next sash level next graduation.

Okay, those five days just happen to be this and the next four fridays, so I can just possibly take a few of the days in between to practice...

Which is good, because I find it takes a certain chunk of effort to learn a new routine! The doing isn't hard, but the sequencing is. That's the way my brain works (or doesn't work, as the case may be).

Lucky for me, I have a video camera! What a useful device -- and to have gotten one for Christmas, how great is that? Connie, who is showing me the ropes on Fridays, has agreed to let me videotape her. Instant training on non-Fridays.

My brain is a bit blurry today... the last couple of days have been fuzzy as I come down from the big push of the previous week. Time to start focusing on schoolwork again, at the same time as I warm up my 3l337 balloon twisting skillz, restart my game research and, due to the mad enthusiasm generated by Monday, try to learn magic effects again.

Do you smell smoke? Is that smoke coming out of my ears? Nurse!

Oops, I'm an idiot

Well, for about three hours my journal showed what could be considered spoilers for the Alain Nu show, which would be in very bad form.

I posted an edited version of an e-mail I sent my dad and son, which described the effects in some detail (how they looked, not how they worked, mind you)... but driving home I realized that more people than just my family read this journal!

So I quickly took down any possibly offending details.

If you want to know how it went... come to Even Saturday and ask me in person!

My Brush with Greatness

I've been neglecting this journal lately, but for good cause.

Some time ago, my friend Ronn Brashear (he directed Haunted Trails in 2000 then moved to California, and he's a magician and magical thinker, also known as Sam Haine) contacted me and let me know of a need they had, to make televisions wig out as part of a magical effect. I thought, sure! I can do that! And said I would do it.

Time passed.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, they said, yes, we need it, can you do it by the end of January? Sure! I started my research and quoted 'em $2,000... they choked a bit (they had budgeted $500), but said they might be able to do that.

So then I did MORE research and lowered my cost to $1500. And they were good with that. Then I learned that it wasn't the end of January, but the 22nd or so. I had not much more than a week to invent the damn thing.

Thus began my struggle with hardware.

So Sunday night at about 6:00pm I drive south to SA, just an hour and a half away. Get to the hotel. Not long later, I meet up with Ronn (who is a consultant on the show) and we go out to eat and I learn about the effect they are doing (my first introduction to the actual trick).

Oh, some background.

TLC/Discover is doing four shows (in a series) of magic featuring "Man of Mystery" Alain Nu... and each show will have something like 20 or 30 effects in it, so Alain is totally working his ass off, and he's actually pretty stressed out by it all. But he also has good consultants helping him, like Ronn and also, for this shoot at least, Bob Fitch. The show should air between April and June, accounts vary.

So Alain calls up about 9:00pm and we go to his room in the hotel. Magic detritus littered the space, and it was cool. And from there they started hashing out the scripts for the next day... really. They are writing this thing as they go along, no rehearsal, nothing. Just a list of tricks, times, and locations and an outline. The poor bastards are really behind the 8-ball. I threw in my 2-cents worth here and there, for what it was worth.

This goes on until 2:30 in the morning and I stagger off to my room. Where I spend ANOTHER half hour making sure it works, and doing some re-writing of the effect to match the current script. Then I sleep until about 8:00 am Monday.

Here are the players in this fun day:

Ronn Brashear
http://www.samhaine.com/

Alain Nu
http://www.nu-magic.com/

Robert Fitch
http://fitchmagic.com/Fitchbio.htm
http://www.ibdb.com/person.asp?ID=88537

Read Bob's pages. He was AMAZING to work with, AMAZING to watch him work with Alain... it was AMAZING to even be in the same room with him. Damn! I mean, the man's a living legend, a god among magicians and performers... dude!

So, I had an interesting day Monday.

New capture device

I've been talking to the various people involved with this project, which is LOTS. Ronn Brashear is, apparently, the magician I'll be working with... which is cool, because he's a friend. Then Alain Nu is... umm.. beats hell out of me. His wife Tanya is great, too. Then there is James the money guy with the production company and the camera dude Ron.

Rehearsal with Ronn (not Ron) will be Sunday, assuming I can get ahold of him. The shoot is apparently at a Circuit City in San Antonio on Monday.

I think.

Dude, TV out

So, like, I'm trying to get a TV signal out of my new graphics card and, like, you know, it's not working because computers are totally crap and all, so I'm plugging and unplugging stuff and reading the documentation (I'm SO SURE) and getting nowhere, when I find that one of my plugs isn't (plugged, you know), so I plug it, but then remember that I have to boot with it in so the card can, like, autodetect the TV because it TOTALLY won't send to it if it's not there, so I power down, plug, and then poke the power button.

Nothing happens. The computer won't start.

BEAT IT TO DEATH WITH A HAMMER!

I struggle against my first instinct, unplug and replug a few random connectors on the mobo and it, like, totally boots and sends to the TV and, like, tubular dude! I'm going to be on TV!

Gainful Employment

Work has been good, which is why I'm late on this update. Busy busy busy! And cheerfully so.

I just stuffed lunch into my face and I'm taking the next fifteen minutes or so to digest it. Mmmm...

On an unrelated topic, I think the building maintenance people switched our toilet paper supplier or brand or something, downgrading to a cheaper (if that's even possible) form. Bastards.

A month ago or so I was given a heads-up about an interesting project to put static/distortion into a bank of televisions as part of a live performance of a mentalism trick (to be recorded in front of a live audience, that is). Last week I was contacted by the production company and asked for a quote! Woot!

So I spent four or five days exploring possibilities, quickly honing into the tools used by VJs (rave style) to do live effects at dances. Nifty stuff! A whole new world.

Anyway, I submitted my information yesterday to the guy doing the performance (I don't have his production company's e-mail) and now I'm sitting here hoping they go for it. My cost is about three times what they wanted to pay, but then I'll be doing some custom software development to get everything just right, plus I'll be manning the effect during the performance.

I hope they go for it, not just to earn my $1,500, but because I get to buy some nifty hardware to make it all work better. I'm looking at the ATI AIW 9600 something-or-other XT. I was hoping to go with nVidia, but (sadly, annoyingly) the Radeon-based ATI was better. Bastards.

Oooh, and a MIDI over USB control surface. Mmmmm, new toys.

So keep your fingers crossed!

Now to finish fiddling with that balloon-animal reference and put it online with a donations button.

I swear, I have at least three too many projects going on, and I'm neglecting 2/3 of them.

But I enjoy it that way. I hate having free time, for some reason.

Keeping the pipe full

I keep clearing my task pipe -- finishing tasks before I get new ones, creating dead time.

Today I sketched in the bulk of the code needed to handle the USB startup handshaking, I think. There are pieces missing, mind you, not to mention unknowns to deal with, but these are out of my hands.

It's POSSIBLE I'll get boards sometime tomorrow... but still no word on when I'll get licenses for the software needed to develop for them. Just because our purchasing guy gets pneumonia for a week or so, everything is behind. Bah!

Because I'm insane and seem to be unable to say "no" to interesting, lucrative projects, I agreed to create a magician's effect to be filmed at the end of January in San Antonio. If they agree to pay me the two grand (which is $1,500 more than they budgeted), I'll then be forced to actually DO this.

Like I keep saying, sleep is overrated.

Monday Sleepies

It's so easy to just succumb to the drowsy Monday afternoon and do nothing... to skip out on my journaling, to avoid finding productive work to do, to just sit there and zone out into space.

Mmmm, Mondays.

Daniel came back to work today, but we don't have a license for the software I'm supposed to use, the hardware won't show up until Wednesday or so, and I've read just about everything that can be read on the subject.

What I want to do is to write "Hello World" on the target device and watch it output on the debugger.

Can't do that yet.

I guess that once Daniel settles in again (he moved cubicles just before he left on vacation) we'll work up the task schedule for the next two weeks.

Whee.

Books Galore

It's so great to be working on something that makes sense. Mmmm, work.

Earlier this week I ordered books. Lots of books. Books on MMORPG development, books on game design, books on language processing. The first of these should show up on my doorstep today, with more coming over the next few days.

Sadly, I also had to spend a stack of money on textbooks for my current three classes. One management class and two programming classes... the programming should be pretty easy to breeeze through.

This does mean that I need to schedule my time to support the schoolwork.

I also need to beat my computer into submission. Right now I'm experimenting with system rollbacks to see if its a driver messing me up. I think the problems begain when I installed the color printer... though they certainly intensified with the failed visual studio install!

To complicate things, I stuck a second stick of RAM into the box, a move that traditionally makes this stupid computer unstable.

I may have to buy a new motherboard... but that adds its OWN huge can of worms.

Damned machines.

Generative Work

Awesome, I have been turned loose on the GOOD project! Woot! I get to write code! The hardware I'm writing for doesn't appear until next Monday the 10th, but I have a lot of USB stuff to learn and plan for this week.

Excellent. What a great new year's gift... Gus is a prince among managers.

I'm also plotting a new project for this year. I of course have the UnDead story that I MUST get started back on... and the movie project somewhere between March and May... and school, of course, will fill my time with pointless reading...

But the fun one is the online gaming AI stuff that I put off from decade to decade. I mean, I've been wanting to do some AI for NPCs for AGES. Of course, I doubt I'll be actually doing anything THIS year either.. you know, prior comittments and all that... but I can continue the dream another step.

Oooh, talking about dreams, the game/graphics engines these days are unbelievable. Catch the demos on THIS bad boy for some heart-stopping gametime rendering:

http://www.artificialstudios.com/

New Year!

Damn, can you believe it is 2005?

Have a happy and safe new year.

Doug's Shadow

Since I wasn't having much luck yesterday, I chose to hang out in Doug's cube today and kibitz over his shoulder.

We found a LOT of stuff out, building on what I found yesterday and what he found yesterday morning, but of course no real resolution to the problems.

I'm compiling a test now, though, to see if a meddling monitor thread is foolishly and dangerously resetting something it shouldn't be.

This system was definitely not designed with debugging in mind. I think I see now why the designer of it all was having problems getting it to work right.

Oh, right. I doesn't work right.

We will be burning about two man-weeks of time on this, wasted time I add. It may be work, but it's not work that I feel good about.

But working with Douglas, who is cheerfully whacking away at this thing, does make it more pleasant. It's not just me and my brooding thoughts.

My Handle on Crap

Okay, today I decided that the way NI handles data visibility during execution is crap. So I'm implementing my own form of dump code, which isn't crap.

I've got a handle on this.

I'm also FINALLY getting a grip (slight as it may be) on some code I'm trying to analyse. And with my crap-free data dumps, I may even learn something today.

So that's not so bad.

Unfortunately, the unfinished code I'm supposed to be improving is all sorts of broken.

So that's not so good.

I'd smack the author, but he is on vacation... which is why I'm mucking about in the stuff.

Maybe if I finally get a grasp of some system here, I'll hate things less.

Ruby?

So I'm compiling... I hade the makefiles pared down to a minimum, but the stupid things weren't making the kernel file. Poking around, it wasn't obvious why not, even with my expanded targets, so I opened back up to full build and am re-making.

I need to determine what the optimal make configuration is and document it. I had it earlier, but I didn't write the damn thing down.

Of course, there is no pre-existing documentation. That would be too easy.

Compiling my ass numb, I'm also reading up on Ruby. My brother in law, Jhared, pulled a nice book off of my wishlist. Sadly, it's making my eyes cross, too.

At this rate of fun, I'll be looking for a new job (internal or external) to shift to once my two-year committment to MIO ends. Next year I'm going to talk to Michael and see what can be done. I'm not having any fun here. I really should stop complaining, though. I just sound whiney.

There is more news, stuff we are doing, but I'm just too annoyed with work to care.

Holidays are now behind us

Ahhh, we are done with the Holidays. I don't count New Year's day. The REAL heavy lifting occurs between Halloween and Christmas. Christmas to New Year is for recuperation, so you can start the new year with a burst of enthusiastic energy.

As per usual, Marla and I went to her parent's house in Lafayette Louisiannanannanaa. The drive is a tedious six hours or so, though on the way in we apparently missed a couple inches of snow in Houston. For that, I am thankful. When we were there, it was just a tiny sprinkling of frozen mist swirling around the roadway.

Marla's parents went a bit overboard on presents this year -- I feel like such a slacker! But now I am the happy owner of a photo printer (so I can make hard copies of valuable pictures, so they won't get lost in the bit bucket) and, amazingly, a digital video camera.

I have a use for that video cam, by the way. I will be doing some test shots for the movie project. Later, as I build new props and stuff, I can use it to document either the process or their operation... videos that will ultimately find their way onto the web.

Right now I'm avoiding work... the usual. I need to find enough footholds in our codebase to do something useful, and as per usual the code is not cooperating.

Brain Pain

Yesterday afternoon and pretty much most of today finds me with brain pain... stupid headaches. I should go home and sleep.

Instead, I'm waiting for a piece of hardware so I can complete two tests I have scheduled.

Thursday the vacation begins... four days of non-working goodness.

There is so much I need to do. I'm going to let most of it slide until the new year.

Crunchy Hard-Drive Goodness

It's all back up! It took the required ten hours or whatever to do it, but my boot disk is booting, has most of the relevent software on it, and more importantly, has a ghost snapshot on the data RAID. Woo.

Oh, and the new Ghost 9.0? Easy to use, just a snap. I recommend it.

Of course, the RAID isn't protection from catastrophic machine failure (e.g. it burns down or the power supply explodes due to lightning strike, eating all drives simultaneously), but for now that's a risk I need to live with.

Thought Ghost will backup to CD (or DVD, if I had a DVD burner, which I don't) across multiple disks. Woo^2.

Danger! Danger! Fry's Zone!

Oooh, Fry's.... Mmmmmmmm.....

So my boot disk is completely fried. Gotta get a new boot disk. My data disks are both just fine, so that's a huge relief.

I go to Fry's during lunch to get a nice 40G hard drive. I ask the seemingly innocent question of the sales dude, "Which of the Maxtor, Hitachi, or Western Digital drives will be the most reliable?" He answers "Seagate". Okay, but that's not on my list.

It turns out there is a nice Seagate 120G for $100. A huge pile of them. So I pick one up and head for the checkout.

"You know, it's stupid to use a 120G as my boot drive. I only use 10G or so on that disk, everything lives on the data RAID."

So I did the logical thing and bought two of them! They are now my data RAID, and one of the old 40G data disks is now my boot drive. Whee!

Last night I spent hours and hours installing software and junk. I'm currently (in absentia) copying the data files form the other data drive to the new array. It was giving me some attitude last night, so I actually expect to see it stuck when I get home.

Once everything is settled, I'm going to Ghost the boot drive onto the RAID. Then, when it pukes again in a year or two I can get the base install back easily.

There are still a few programs that refuse to store their data on a drive of my choosing. For example, Firefox and my PDA synchronizer.

I *might* be able to beat Firefox into submission... dunno about the PDA. All applications should, as a matter of principle, allow you to specify your data destinations

Fall down go Boom

Last night I was cleaning up my computer's boot drive because, well, it had accumulated a smattering of spyware and other rogue shit. Hey! If you want to run those key generators to crack software, you gotta pay the price.

Umm, not that I would do such a thing. I pay for my software. Yeah.

Sometimes, though, my paid-for software ends up getting re-installed. Normally I keep all of my keys in my e-mail archives, but for some older packages I didn't do that. You know, before my habits got ingrained. Yeah. That's right.

Anyway, I run Spybot Search and Destroy (http://www.safer-networking.org/), which is a great package, and cleaned most of it up.

But there was still a damaged system file, mshta.exe or somesuch. Technically, I suppose I could have deleted it (it is non-essential, from what I could tell). But, being a good computer user, I decided to follow Microsofts instructions and use the system file cleaner to make it all good.

Big mistake.

The sfc POS ran for a while and then stoppped... at about halfway. Nothing.

I wander downstairs and futz around a bit. Upstairs, no progress. Check the task manager and it's not using any CPU or anything.

Screw this. I turned off the computer (second big mistake).

Power up and, zowie! Can't read the HD! Damaged. Something (e.g. sfc) ate my drive format. Bastards.

This isn't the first time that some MS utility, in conjunction with my impatience, has destroyed my system.

So I guess I finally put on XP. I've been meaning to do that for months now, anyway, but didn't want to go through the hassle of re-installing all of my software.

At least all of my data is kept on the RAID-1 array. I learned my lesson the LAST time.

Oh, except for the one DRM license key I have. Because Microshit doesn't let me specify the location of my keys. Theoretically, though, I have a backup of it on my data drive... so we'll see if MS can cope.

Bastards.

Fat Rat, Dirty Rat

For a variety of reasons that will probably come to light later, I was a passive child. I didn't fight, I didn't even stand up for myself. All I wanted to do was disappear, to not be seen, to be invisible.

This, as you can imagine, painted a bullseye on me, achieveing the opposite of my intent. But that's neither here nor there.

There was one horrible little child, this rat-faced little prat, that I interacted with once. I still hate him, as stupid and useless as it may be to store that dislike even today, some thirty years later.

My grandmother and my aunt were antique dealers, so they often went around to find old things to buy. We were at one of their friend's or associate's homes this afternoon, a pleasant cluttered place, looking at god only knows what.

At some point I'm standing in the driveway outside and there is this smaller kid there too. All he can do is recite "fat rat, dirty rat" at me, using the words as some demented verbal assault. Following me, harassing, over and over, "fat rat, dirty rat, fat rat, dirty rat, fat rat dirty rat..."

I try to ignore home. So he increases his harassment, if I recall correctly, pushing at me while chanting "fat rat, dirty rat" over and over. I assume this did not go on forever, nor even for long. But it touched a nerve. I couldn't, or wouldn't, pound him into silence, though that is what I wanted to do. And I couldn't really endure the little shit, either. I don't know what I did... but whatever it was didn't work. I still carry this bit of anger inside, because of this brat... "fat rat, dirty rat".

At one point growing up I realized that this kid probably had a shitty childhood, too, and took his response to it in a different direction than I did. I realized that instead of hating him, I should probably feel sorry for him and his circumstances.

This realization did nothing for me. He was still an obnoxious little shit. If I had been someone else, I would have hit him. I probably should have.

I would now, given the chance. I don't put up with crap anymore. I don't have any more room to store it.

Aggravation

Work continues to be aggravating and tedious... not painfully frustrating like it was at the start, but still numbing and boring. I still don't feel like I'm being useful on this stupid project. I suppose I am, but damn...

The tedium makes me hungry, which makes me fat. Well, it will eventually.

The tedium also drains me, leaves me un-enthused for other activities.

And the tedium makes me cranky. I like to be doing, to have my brain chugging along at a fair clip. This slow crawl stuff bugs me.

Heavy

For a while, during the Halloween season and beyond, I was losing weight. My naked weight fell under 170lbs!

Now it's crawling upwards, so I'm checking in at 176.5 with my hair wet. I need to stop this movement at or before 180, I think.

Time to spend more time practicing TaiChi, eat a bit less, and try to occupy my brain during work. Maybe I'll be able to crank up the architecture project again as this horrid thing I'm working on now fades away.

In theory, I registered for classes at ACCIS on Thursday, but I haven't heard from them nor has the money been withdrawn. I'm not looking forward to doing schoolwork, but it needs doing I guess. Maybe it will help me stabilize my weight...

Another darned title

Okay, so I get tired of naming these posts!

The plans for a jewelry-making party are firming up nicely -- a get together with maybe a dozen people all told, to play with precious metal clay, glass, and beading. Schedule for the 1st and 2nd of January.

I re-arranged and re-structured the front page a bit. Reduced the icon size, condensed the animatronics and robotics pages into one, the new machines page. Added the "link of the day" type list for the Mad Science links.

Not much going on right now. Did a bunch of cleaning on Saturday, tidied places that haven't seen tidying for ages.

Three Steps Forward

Three steps forward and two steps back...

Damn it all. I got the accursed system I've been working on to behave itself on Thursday. But then, the codebase shifted and I spent pretty much all of today getting that built, adjusting it for my needs, fixing new bugs relating to my use of the system (which is different than Chris, the other developer), and so forth.

So now I'm back to errors I fixed days ago -- reborn! Woo! Something regressed, or got changed, or whatever.

So now I dredge through the crap again and see why.

Can I break something yet?

Ahhh, I see the problem. Okay, so I can fix that one.

School

Procrastination was the magic word for November and, apparently, December.

I need to enroll in classes today. That means giving them money, committing to a program of study and testing, and generally making my life difficult for the next two years.

Whee.

But I gotta.

TaiChi went nicely yesterday... not as beautifully as last week, but not as badly as Monday. So it was okay. I made an effort to relax, drink water during the day, and all that.

I've also made progress at work. Instead of trudging blindly through a morass of fiddling, almost pointless, work... I see a light at the end of the tunnel! My moral has improved measurably.

I've found that I can't do diddly after work on Monday through Wednesday, so the Balloon twisting reference is languishing. I added a few more figures today at lunch, and I'm almost done with the first pass at the one-balloon figures.

Then I hope to get back to UnDead. Dammit.

I think I'll ask Marla to help me practice magic tricks. I'll be stealing the magic from her by telling the secrets, but I bet she will give good feedback. The mirror is a pain, since it's hard to watch the trick AND the mirror at the same time. I'm not adroit enough to do it blind yet.

If I could just settle on ONE hobby my life would be so much simpler. At this point, I'm setting up projects for the kiln and precious metal clay, working on magic tricks (a little bit), working on balloon twisting to revamp my skills there, working on the twisting reference (which I'm doing using the twister font I put together last week), learning TaiChi, and learning Ballroom dancing. Oh, and working during the day. I sleep too.

This doesn't include the hobbies I'm neglecting. Such as UnDead, the animatronics, the robotic AI, and others.

I must be insane.

Tense

Yesterday I was sleepy so I drank extra coffee. Then I was tense and "alert"... which made it easier to wade through the day, but sucked for TaiChi and dance lesson.

Doing push hands you must be relaxed, loose. Especially in the waist. Any resistance and you go over. So while I did reasonably well, I was too tense to be really on like I was last week. Bleh.

And then my brain wasn't getting into the groove for dancing after. All in all, the night was a bit annoying.

Today I have some muscles that aren't happy with me. It's their own damn fault for being tense. If they would relax when I ASK them to, the little bastards would be fine today. Stupid body.

Deeper Meaning

I keep thinking that I should give my little posts some kind of deeper thought... some philosophical bent or a point or something.

Nah. This is a simple ego-dump where I just chat at the computer. I pretend it is my friend, or maybe a relative, that I'm catching up on my days.

Hi! Good to see you. Have a good weekend? I did. Busy, though, and there were several chores that I avoided.

I've been really distracted by balloon figures the last few days or so. I'm going through my reference book and transfering the figures into the new twister font I built... argh! I did, at least, find a nice font-building tool that's free for 30 days, at www.high-logic.com.

Oooh, and I fired Marla's thingy this weekend. It fired nicely and polished to a bright sheen.

It doesn't look like my target -- I was going for smooth, shiny, almost liquid silver. What I got was something that looks sculpted. But I'm happy overall with the shape and feel.

I may try to do more like it, or maybe I'll just play with the materials now.

I'm also looking to have a fun Jewelry Party, maybe even a sleepover so we can sculpt one day and fire and finish the next. I'm thinking at Sofia's, but Michelle has offered up space, too.

It's funny how I am either reading, writing, or making stuff. These activities are WAY more fun and enriching than, say, cleaning, tidying, washing dishes, folding laundry. Marla is the same -- though reading is higher on her list than mine, and I write and make more stuff than she does.

So, as you would expect, my house and office spaces are untidy at best.

I get frustrated with the clutter sometimes. I really do like a clean house.

But it's about priorities and where I want to put my energy.

What's Next?

I'm between serious projects.

Schoolwork will be starting up again soon, I expect. Those gears are in motion. Ugh.

However, I'm not writing any books (under contract -- UnDead gets sporadic activity).

I'm dabbling in jewelry again with my nifty kiln. I have a notebook with a number of designs I may finally be able to try. Of couse, now I want a vacuum chamber and a spin caster... crazy.

But without a focus for my energies, and with the slow pace of work at work, I find myself casting around for ideas.

I'm doing more balloon animal work -- and may even have a silly gig on the 11th of Febuary. But more annoying, reading the Penn&Tell site (www.pennandteller.com) has me interested in magic again. It's one of my recurring interests. I've got a nice stack of books, but I've never gotten good at anything. I have a hard time settling down to practice just one trick until it's good. I can't decide!

That's pretty much my theme song. So much I want to do, so little time to do it. I'm restless. I want to do *everything*.

Oooh, I've really been neglecting my drums. TaiChi and ballroom just take up so much time.

Maybe I can eBay the drumset and get a spin caster...

Kirby!

So I get home from TaiChi last night at about 9:00 to find a strange man standing in my (messy) living room talking on my phone. Odd.

Being quick of eye and mind, I immediately notice the cardboard boxes stacked around him with the word "Kirby" blazoned on them.

"Hi Marla. Kirby. You let them in!"

Yup, our sweet (though messy) home had been invaded by Kirby salesmen!

It's my own damn fault. I expressed interest in their vacuum -- I wanted to see how it was put together, check out the craftsmanship.

It's a very nice machine. Very powerful, good suction, decent features, good access to the airways.

Can't say I like their sales tactics, though. It's the classic "shame you into buying their machine" system. The suck endless dust out of your carpet and scatter the little dust-covered filter pads around to illustrate how DIRTY you are.

They use your vacuum to suck an area of carpet as clean as it will get, and then use their vacuum to illustrate how DIRTY it still is! Dirty carpets, oh my god. Actually, I hope to remove the carpet entirely and go to wood.

They suck skin cells and dust mites out of your mattress, to show how you are wallowing in DIRT all of your life! I'm replying that I don't mind -- it keeps my immune system happy and excercised.

How can you live in such filth?

They try to get you to agree to their definitions. "How do you tell if your current vacuum is broken? When it stops removing the dirt from your carpet? Look! It's not removing all of your dirt! You must buy a real vacuum that actually works!"

I, of course, just wanted to look at their machine. Professional interest. My definition of broken was "when it makes ugly noises or no longer removes the cat fluff." My Dyson, which I think is the best consumer-quality vacuum you can find, works like a charm for my needs.

They were all like, "our vacuum works so much better than yours!" My reply was, damn, I hope so. It costs $2,000. It's a professional grade machine (really) and mine's a $300 (well, $500 with all the attachments and stuff) consumer device.

Love the machine, hate the sales pitch.

For $2,000, though, I would rather live with dirt and buy a build-your-own Gorilla kit:

http://www.boneclones.com/SC-028S-D.htm

Or perhaps a vacuum de-bubbler and spin caster from Rio Grande, plus a bunch of other jewelery-making supplies.

Or perhaps that metal lathe I want. Or a new NC mill! Ooooh... tools and toys. Cleanliness is overated, anyway.

Back to Work

The four day weekend is past. Normally, on a Monday after a long break, it's hard to go to work.

At least, that's what I remember. Working at home for as long as I did, every day was pretty much like any other.

Today, though, it was a pretty smooth ride in, emotionally speaking. I knew pretty much what fiddling I would have to do, and that helps. I like having a plan, having work to do.

I got in early (7:05 am) but couldn't really start DOING much until 7:45 -- that lockout from last week extended to all of my logins. Bastards. So I had to wait until I could get through to tech support to get it released.

I logged my hours and got caught up on this and that, so it was okay.

I've been working on the PMC item. After the rough form hardened, I did some cleanup on it. I found that I could scrape areas smooth and do some shaping with my favorite curved sculpting tool. I could burnish the clay to make it look silver, which was cool. I could lay new clay into rough spots from the syringe. I could use water to make a slip from the block of clay and paint it on with a moist brush to make it even smoother.

I hope to fire it this week sometime, this weekend at worst. It should be neat!

Then I'll do more work. I wonder what to make next?

The weekend was filled with food and games and quiet company. It was nice.

We went to Matt and Susan's Sunday to add priming sugar to a flat batch of cider. It turns out that, in all of our delays, it carbonated on the sly! Adding a 1/4 teaspoon of fine sugar to a carbonated beverage is a slick way of creating a fountain of foam.

Oh, and carbonated, this cherry cider is darned tasty. Mmmmm....

Sculpting Jewelry

I dared to start working with the precious metal clay today.

It's interesting. Entirely unlike working with sculpey. I may have to play with sculpting with water clay someday, on a larger scale.

The rough form looks pretty good, though whether I will be able to make the finished form elegant remains to be seen. Also, it's flat on one side and I want to round that out in a second step. Plus add the finding.

Turkey day was pleasant yesterday. We went to Michelle's, which is a fine tradition. Also there were Bob and Mo, and Sophie and her daughter whose name I ought to remember.

Kathy dropped by late to say hi and share some yummy cookies.

Today, we go back and Marla will make Gumbo out of the turkey remains. It will be pleasant again!

Tomorrow, I hope to do more work on the sculpture.

Humility

Just as I was thinking that my work this Halloween was pretty neat, I spent some time wandering through some SFX websites.

Yeah, my stuff was neat, but I've got a LONG way to go...

I've got a decent grasp of the technical aspects (though there are still a few painting tricks I want to try), so now I need to learn how to sculpt and paint.

Nothing like a hobby to keep you busy! And humble.

Finally

I went home a bit early today... what a wasted day!

Not just because it was the day before Turkey Holiday, either.

I finally got away from fixing bugs and whatnot from the test days and got back to the USB project that I'm fiddling with. Not the fun USB project, the other one.

So I put a clean snapshot back onto the test machine and put on the usb code. It self-tests! Woot! Device reset... black screen reboot. Hmmm.

Reboot, turn on soft-ice, and try again. Aha! Accessing a null address or something. Oddly, the offending code on my side looks fine. A couple of runs through to get a feel for what is going on and I discover I need to install a debug version of a system library.

So, turn off the drivers and... hey! Damn it. When I try to turn off the driver, it crashes (makes sense, given the position of the problem) but won't let go of the code I'm trying to re-install.

I try the install anyway, but it won't do it.

So I go to push another clean snapshot onto the box, to find that my hard drive lost its mind. Wouldn't boot -- said it couldn't find the OS.

Screw that. I plugged in the other drive. It came up fine, so I pushed the snapshot onto it, a super clean one. One that didn't have the current passwords, because our IT department is on a security kick and everything got reset Tuesday.

So it boots, tries to access the drive and fails and my computer gets locked out. Normally, it takes two tries to lockout, and the drive setup steals two of them, but I must have had a third sitting from a previous boot. Sensitive little devils.

So I gave up. I'll rebuild my ghosts and all that on Monday.

To make matters more annoying, I think I found the problem flipping through the code while waiting for the ghost to push. But I couldn't test it.

Overall, the NI work has got to be the least interesting stuff I've ever done. I've written as much code these last nine months as I would normally do in one, and most of the rest of my time is spent in compiling, ghosting, fiddling, waiting, whatever. Argh!

I see potential for actual work in the future, but damn, so far it's just been fiddling. Except for the work I took on around architecture and documentation, but I don't really have free cycles for that right now, in spite of the boredom. The timing doesn't work well. I'm on a "hurry-up-and-wait" system, not a "put it down for a few hours and do something useful" system.

I'll give it until my one year anniversary and then I'll complain. There has got to be something that involves actual thinking to do here.

Michael or Whit, if you are reading this, I love National Instruments, the people I work with, the regular paycheck. But damn, the work is boring right now. I'll get over it, probably by getting work that isn't so tedious.

Broken!

At 7:32 this morning, someone wiped my website.

I was not happy.

Thankfully, Blue Virtual (the best webhost in the known universe) tracked down the offending information in their log (so I could fix the vulnerability) and put the data back. And they didn't even charge me the usual $75! That was very nice.

Needless to say, I applied the necessary patch. And I've put a recurring task on my calendar to check for security updates for MT and TWiki, the two packages I use to manage the site.

Other than that, work continues to work, my second wedding anniversary went without incident (I bought prezzies! and got some too), and I'm SOOOOO looking forward to the Holidays.

Moving into the Holidays

The Holidays are coming! The Holidays are coming!

While Halloween is a sort of Holiday, it's mostly a time and energy sink.

Turkey Day and Present Day, however, are relaxing and a good time to catch up with friends and family.

I was able to clean the garage over the weekend. THAT took some work. The kiln is set up, and I got a new extension cord that can handle the amperage. That sucker is going to pull 12 amps out of what should be a 15 amp circuit. I'll have to turn the Halogens off during kiln time!

I poked and prodded the Precious Metal Clay a bit, too -- it's fairly soft and quite sticky. But you can use vegetable oil to lubricate your fingers and tools during use, and that works pretty good.

I also did some test sculpturing in Sculpey. I suck! Well, it actually went okay. It would be easier if the media was stiffer, to make smaller details easier to work.

I'm thinking I'll do the basic form with soft PMC then let it dry. It's supposed to dry "leathery". Then I can use additional PMC to round it out, and then dry that. Finally, I can do smoothing and details in the "hard" piece, then fire it.

We have some PMC paper, too, which is REALLY neat. A bit thick for origami work, not to mention darned small, but neat. I have some ideas for that stuff.

I'm looking forward to the first firing.

During the weekend, I also finished updating the Haunt section of this website, so drop in there and look at the pretty pictures!

Rio Rocks!

Rio Grande totally rocks. It probably helps that they are just around the corner in New Mexico, but regardless -- the Kiln and supplies showed up on the doorstep yesterday.

Nice little kiln, and it is even ventilated on top for burnout. This little detail does not show up on the product photos or even the descriptions on the site, so it's totally a bonus.

Now, of course, I have to put my skills where my mouth is and sculpt that little piece I want to do. I hope it turns out well.

I actually have several ideas of how I want to do it, but I'll have to decide soon.

And even worse, I need to tidy up the workshop so I can place the kiln. I'll probably do the sculpture work at my desk, transplanting the magnifying light to upstairs.

Still not working on UnDead... much. Now I'm second-guessing my writing style in it. I'm thinking it's. Too. Choppy. Maybe.

Okay, not so bad, but I've shied away from long complex sentences and I think that might be a mistake. Now I have to re-read bits to see how they flow...

This will probably turn out to be a horrid, overworked story because of all this fiddling. But it will also work out a bunch of the kinks in my writing, so the next one should be better.

Maybe not "sucked"

I was being a bit hard on myself yesterday. The script itself was pretty neat -- it just didn't play well with the audience and our format, as written.

But we recovered it fairly well after the test run. Next year, though, we should be running a traditional HT script. A tried and true formula; mess with it at your own risk!

Today is company meeting day, so I don't expect to get heaps of work done. Or maybe I will -- my best work is done in the morning.

Nice weather we're having, eh? Rain!

Updating the Website

This weekend was my first "free" weekend since, I dunno, 2003 or so.

So, of course, it was filled with important tasks to do.

Saturday morning we spent cleaning the house -- we can actually see the bedroom floor again! It's really nice. In the afternoon we shopped for some goofy presents for that evening, which was the Haunted Trails wrapup party and awards ceremony.

Between the shopping and the party, various managers got together to do a "lessons learned" meeting. Whereupon we decided my script sucked, but everything else was surprisingly smooth.

Sunday I spent a bunch of time adding all of the 2003 project pictures in the Haunt section of this website. Check it out!

I also stubbed in 2004, but there are a million photos to sort through for this so it may have to wait till next weekend.

I've been busy at work and at home, so I haven't made much recent progress on the UnDead story... hope to get back to it soon.

And, finally, I started reading the TaiChi book I was supposed to read last year... it's really good!

Kiln!

Okay, I put in the order.

The Sierra 360F has been sold-out from Rio Grande and then discontinued... I wonder if this is because of their legendarily poor customer service and user manuals?

Anyway, I ordered the SC-2, which was $55 cheaper anyway. I got away with, kiln plus materials, less than $700! It will even ship out today, ground, so I'll probably see it by next weekend. Woot!

Now to visit the local clay store and see about additional sculpting tools... though I probably already have what I need.

Kiln

Oooh, it's hard to decide on a kiln... I would like to spend the money and get a Paragon SC-3, but that is more than I want to spend. And for the type of work I'm likely to do, the Paragon SC-2 is more than fine.

http://www.riogrande.com/PMC/703-077.htm

The other kiln is a Sierra 360F, at about the same price (a bit more expensive), about the same size, and about the same capabilities.

http://www.riogrande.com/PMC/703-060.htm

Apparently, the Sierra was built by a designer who left Paragon, and it has some subtle design improvements that make it "better". It seems to be recommended more often than the Paragon, at least.

Both of them are sold by Rio Grande, my preferred supplier (see links above).

At lunch today, I hope to put together an order from the notes I currently have.... kiln, tools, materials...

Expensive!

And I don't have the cash on hand until the 15th, so I'll put it on the Visa and schedule a payment on the 15th to cover (almost all of) it.

I hope we find enough uses for it, to justify the expense! You can do all manner of activities in it -- precious metal clay, glass slumping, enameling, and probably even heat-treating. Small stuff. It's only 6" tall inside!

We have some friends who might be able to use it, too, so we can spread the joy around.

. Spending money.

Christmas

Okay, I give up! I confessed to Marla part of what I wanted to get for Christmas for her... to see if she would be willing to forgo presents for me, so we can actually afford this thing. Because, you know, it's at least as much a prezzie for my as it is for her.

It is an electric jewelry kiln, such as the Paragon SC-2 or Sierra 360F. About $500 to $600... expensive, but if split two ways, less than $300 each!

Of course, I won't show her what I intend to MAKE in the kiln until Christmas. And this way, I also get to keep up the tradition of making her gifts. We can buy books and videos any time, so I like to do something special for her for the Holidays.

Park University

A few days ago I got a letter from Park that really pissed me off... so I waited a few days to write this.

First off -- Park University, a school that originally provided education for people associated with the military, is a poor choice of a school. Use it only if you have to.

Here is why.

My experience with Park is that they are inflexible, rule-bound, and not open to working with their students to achieve their education. Bureaucracy is the order of the day and education is just a side effect of that.

So if you want to actually learn something, or if you desire some cooperation from your institution of learning, do NOT go to Park.

At the start, they were pretty anal about how they wanted to get my transcripts. A sealed envelope from the school, delivered by me, was not good enough. I balked and they took 'em anyway, but it caused them unhappiness.

Taking my class (speech), the teacher was okay but the class was not all that enlightening. However, the teacher lived in fear (okay, concern) about the class schedule and how the bean counting administration would view any early class dismissals. Twice, I think, during the class one of the admins would sit in to make sure things were going okay. I didn't think much of this at the time, but it does seem a bit excessive in the larger context of my experience.

Then I wanted to move on and take a math course. The prereq class was something I had in High School, so it didn't show on my transcript, and I've been using similar math for, oh, twenty years in my job. The teacher was fine with me taking the class.

When I asked the teacher, we CC'ed the admin as well. Normally, she never answers her e-mail when I have questions, but this one she snapped up within minutes. Motivated, apparently, by the horror of my actually asking a teacher if I could take his class. Apparently, the correct (and undocumented, as far as I can tell) process is to grovel before the administration and get their blessing.

Needless to say, they didn't. Have to jump through the prereq hoops to get in. Their thinking was that they are trying to ensure my success in the class. My thinking is that they can't cope with anything out of the ordinary. It's on MY head if I fail the class, and I am the one, as an ADULT STUDENT with EXPERIENCE, who can make that assessment best.

So onward.

I enrolled in Park early -- because I had a tidal wave of deadlines and work coming in (the book, Haunted Trails) and I wanted to get the paperwork done and out of the way. It turns out, my enrollment occured in the last week of the term. This, apparently, started a clock ticking. Then the next term I didn't take a class. THEN I took a class...

During my enrollment, I was told there was an August 1 deadline to get some validate learning experience credits in (prior learning). My thought was that schools are cyclic and school deadlines are equally cyclic. If I missed this deadline, I would have to submit to a later evaluation deadline... no big deal.

Turns out that was a drop-dead date, beyond which I forfit my VLE hopes.

I don't know what the purpose of that deadline was (they never explained that part), but those "two terms" where I was enrolled but not active in the school were ridiculous. I asked for an exception. I was refused.

At no point in my interaction with Park was there any flexibility, proper explanation of their inflexibility, or any support for me, the student and client, towards getting my degree.

So. Park Sucks. Don't go there. Tell your friends.

Muscular Suffering

Woo, I went to a martial arts application workshop this Saturday... 10:15 to 5:00 with an hour lunch break.

At the time, it was just fun -- Master Bryant is awesome, funny, and a good teacher. He tried to compress a six week self defense course into just a day -- with some success.

As a wrap up, we explored how different styles of martial art deal with one situation -- TaiChi (yes, TaiChi has application, it's not just "dancing") and bunch of others I don't know how to spell off the top of my head. There are some funky styles out there.

It really increased my enthusiasm for it all!

But on the downside, I had sore muscles in the DARNDEST places. I found muscles I didn't even know I had, let alone how to stretch them out.

I spent Sunday afternoon helping with the Haunted Trails strike (not entirely done yet, but the Basin can cope with the last bit of cleaning), and then most of the D&D game trying to get the kinks out of my suffering body.

Now I'm back at work, doing stuff... nothing exciting today. Most of today, in fact, appears to be absorbed in meetings.

Ooh, and I decided what I want to give Marla for Christmas, but I don't know if I'll be able to. Can't say more here, though. Maybe in January I'll clue y'all in.

Next weekend, I hope to put up the last two year's worth of Halloween photos.

Pause for the Holidays

Ahhh, the cold crisp air is here, signalling the Holiday season!

I love the mental quiet that comes between Halloween and the New Year... I don't do anything strenuous these two months. I don't start any books under contract, for example.

We can putz around the house and clean up after the Halloween whirlwind. We can read books. We can snuggle up in the warmth of the comforter against the crisp air. Mmmmm.

Well, I *am* working on the UnDead story again. I'm cleaning up the 27,000 words I have, trying to make it tidy and get back into the story. And then, I guess, I'll try to write another 75,000 words or so to make it a complete novel. Woot!

And there is my day job, of course. And TaiChi, dancing... this and that. But that's all background stuff.

Oooh, I do need to work up a nice prezzie or three for Marla, for Christmas. Gotta put on my thinking cap.

Politics and Morality

So he won, finally -- an actual win it would appear. Yes, Chimpy McFlightsuit beat out ol' Coffin Face for the highest office in America.

It would appear that he won because of his morality and his fear mongering (as understood by those polled). From the CNN polls:

MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE
Taxes (5%) - Bush 57%, Kerry 43%
Education (4%) - Bush 26%, Kerry 73%
Iraq (15%) - Bush 26%, Kerry 73%
Terrorism (19%) - Bush 86%, Kerry 14%
Economy/Jobs (20%) - Bush 18%, Kerry 80%
Moral Values (22%) - Bush 80%, Kerry 18%
Health Care (8%) - Bush 23%, Kerry 77%

Strangely, people who cared most about Iraq voted for Kerry. Also strangely, during Bush's reign, acts of terror have INCREASED. And I've always felt that his "morality" was highly questionable. He talks a good talk, I admit, but his actions tend to invalidate his words. Sorry guys. You voted for hypocrisy, not morality.

Likewise, the qualities people saw in Bush have an Alice in Wonderland kind of dissonance:

MOST IMPORTANT QUALITY
Cares About People (9%) - Busy 24%, Kerry 75%
Religious Faith (8%) - Bush 91%, Kerry 8%
Honest/Trustworthy (11%) - Bush 70%, Kerry 29%
Strong Leader (17%) - Bush 87%, Kerry 12%
Intelligent (7%) - Bush 9%, Kerry 91%
Will Bring Change (24%) - Bush 5%, Kerry 95%
Clear Stand on Issue (17%) - Bush 79%, Kerry 20%

I actually agree on one point. Bush is a strong leader. I just feel that he's also an ignorant leader, unable to manage the subtleties of world politics, and more than likely to strongly lead us in the wrong direction.

I am happy to be proven wrong, but until then I will nurture my sense of dread.

One thing at least is good from this. If their policies backfire, the Republicans have no-one to blame. They control all branches of government right now. I hope they make honorable use of their position... unlike, for example, those mouth-breathing bastards who redistricted Texas! Geez.

On the down side, if things go well, we will have to give credit to them. The sword swings both ways.

November 2

VOTE! DO IT NOW!

And may the correct candidate win.

Damned Tired

So... tired...

Went to sleep about midnight last night. I knew better, especially after the previous three days, but I wanted to finish the book.

Darned Liaden stories. Darned Whit, who gave them to Richard, who gave them to Marla, who gave them to me...

At least that was the final book in the main storyline, so far. It is, of course, open ended and amenable to continuation.

So today I'm a sleepy zombie person. Bleh.

My toes apparently survived the Haunted Trails. Taping them up helped.

Saturday's run went well, and we only ended up 45 minutes behind schedule at the end. Which was not our fault. We had a TERRIBLE bus driver.

The drive from the parking/start area to the Basin proper has to take 15 minutes or less per round trip, or we fall behind schedule. It SHOULD be possible in about 12 minutes -- but this fine person was taking an average of 18 minutes (16 to 20, so they said).

So I asked Michelle, Georganne, Susan, and EVERYONE who interacted with him talk to him, to speed him up. Georganne swears that every time she talked to him, he slowed down.

Needless to say, I was NOT going to have my 5-hour haunt fall 100 minutes behind schedule because of this toad.

So I actually got on his bus and I actually unloaded on him. I made it extremely, pointeded clear that he had to make the run in 15 minutes otherwise we could fall two hours behind schedule (I rounded up) and that the guests would be screaming, the actors would be screaming, and I would be screaming. That this would make the Trail fail this year, and that this would be on my head, and that this was categorically unacceptable.

I wasn't screaming, but I was far from nice. I'm not sure that I could even SEE "nice" from where I was. In fact, I really would not have wanted to be in his position. I probably would have made myself cry.

Strangely enough, I never felt bad about it, not during or after. It was, all in all, a very odd experience.

We didn't fall much further behind after that -- and our later delays could be blamed on factors outside of his control.

I imagine that he didn't want to see me again that night. Or ever.

So, other than this little trauma, everything went well!

Yesterday we pulled the lights and electronics, Paul is returning the rentals today, and we tidied up a bunch of the personal items.

Strike continues through this week and into next weekend... and we'll be entirely done!

The wrap party is on the 13th, where we will learn how much we made and how much we spent.

Yay!

Then I desperately need to update my website.

Aching toes

My toes hurt... the tips have blisters under the callouses. Okay, that's probably more information than you wanted...

The restart run went very well! We had some tense moments near the end when we weren't sure if our 11:00 (incorrectly sold) tickets would show at 10:00 like we asked 'em to or not! They did, and the last group started 15 minutes late at 10:15.

The crew was great, the show was apparently fun, and things are in swing for the last half of the run.

Now to run down to Target and pick up a second set of toes for tonight...

UnDead, DeMystified

Hey, I should read back and see if I mentioned it already... it's been crazy lately! But anyway, I got my box of Robotics DeMystifed books the other day... I need to send samples to my family, etc.

So far, only one word on the cover is a lie! Better than usual.

Also, apparently Dean Kamen expressed an interest in it, and will be getting a comp copy from the publisher. That's scary. What if he hates it? It's not like I actually talk about robots in it (I talk about electronics, mechanics, and control... the pieces that make up robots).

I've started outlining the complete plot for the UnDead story. I'll start the re-write after Halloween, and the outline will help me stay focused.

I need to work on developing and writing characters. Time to dredge up my people skills and see if they apply in reverse.

And I need to get a tour of a morgue, firestation, and funeral home. Research. Details. I should visit New Orleans for the vodou research!

What to say?

I would put in a journal entry here, if I had anything to say.

This is the limbo time -- the Trail construction is finished, the first run weekend has been run, wrinkles have been smoothed, problems adjusted.

And then we wait... and recover.

Work continues to be work, but it's not that interesting. TaiChi continues to move forward -- we are learning the long form now, which is neat.

But mostly it's waiting and resting.

The run begins again tomorrow. I hope I don't have to fix much before hand.

And I hope there is no significant Evil from the Sky during the runs.

Halfway

It seems like a lifetime since we began Haunted Trails this year. And this weekend stretched out to heroic lengths. Of course, my weekend was four days long, three of which ran long into the night...

Thursday was pretty weak, but we were also just getting our feet into the new plot. Friday wasn't too bad. Both days, however, suffered from weak ticket sales... long gaps bore the guides and the actors, so the show loses its luster.

Friday night we had a MONSTER storm that failed to blow anything over. Yay us! But it did waterlog the crawl tunnel a bit. We made it dry for the guests, but there is deep moisture in the padding/carpeting that will likely mildew. If it does, I'm in for a job of resetting the tunnel Thursday before the run.

Saturday was great! Lots of guests, some of the usual bobbles, good recoveries... good show, the story worked, and we had a lot of happy victims. Not everyone, mind you, but many.

Saturday had a hard startup, though. Several of my KEY ACTORS failed to appear... so I had to recast several roles at the last second, using in some cases people I've never seen before in my life. Ouch!

In one case, I put a newcomer (who I liked the looks of, etc) into a critical timing spot. Sadly, he failed to excel there and was replaced. Fortunately, we only had about four groups go through at the wrong times. Unfortunately, the ripple effect of that timing bobble lasted rather a bit longer.

But we survived, and that timing bobble was FAR less severe than ones we have had in the past.

A friend of mine, Ron Brashear, came through with group 31, about 9:45 -- it was great to see him again (Hi Ron!). He got me into the Trails insanity in 2000, and I've been suffering with it ever since.

I'll be darned glad when it's over. Halloween, essentially, ends for me as soon as the Haunted Trails system is functioning. So, ummm, Saturday. The rest of it is just keeping the machine moving so we can clean up and then REST.

Blessed rest. November -- sleep and housework.

First Weekend

Tonight starts the first weekend of Haunted Trails -- the official run, with paying customers.

We've adjusted the story, fixed up one of the sets, and generally done what we could to make it better.

I have today and tomorrow off from work to prepare for the run and, to be honest, to recover from it as well.

In just two weeks, I get some more bits of my life back -- it's been interesting directing this thing, but I'll be thrilled when its done.

Rubber hits the Road

Friday was a flurry of mad activity... as was Saturday, as we finished the various props, sets, and installations needed for the show.

Technically, the dress & press (dress rehearsal and press night, D&P) went perfectly. Timing, systems, actors, guides -- very well done.

Many pieces of the show itself were also excellent, though (sadly) my attempt at a lofty plot fell flat.

Too lofty for the medium.

Yesterday and today I reworked the story line, to take the fine lines and fill them in with crayon, and it will work very well now if I do say so myself.

Of course, the mailing list server is taking the opportunity to puke its guts out all over the server room (I assume... not my server).

Which makes it damned hard to distribute the script changes to the group.

ARgh! ARrgh!

Rainstorm

Had some rain yesterday... a little moisture got into the crawl tunnel.

I'm hoping that someone took this hint and protected the tunnel with plastic! We were careful to tarp the tunnel for a while there... and then folks slacked off.

We had an angry storm stomp through town last night, and if the tunnel was unprotected it's going to cost us hours of work. Pulling soaked carpet out, putting fresh in... and hoping the wood (OSB, not too water tight) wasn't very damaged.

Damn it.

I finished making five fingers last night, and I think they are pretty nice. I don't much like the plastic finger nail goo I've been using; it tends to make lumpy nails. The problem is that I'm applying it directly, according to the directions, but I SHOULD be using a brush and smoothing on thin layers at a time. Except the stuff is essentially superglue and it would destroy my brush.

Time to invent a good way to make clear fingernails (press-on nails tend to be colored).

I decorated the dissected leg -- it's not everything I hoped for it to be, but it will do.

Tomorrow I have off to finish doing stuff at the Trail... and to freak out in private.

Except for the rain/tunnel problem, everything seems to be going well.

Tedium

Wednesday... the build is going well without me.

I'm trying to get some traction on some reverse engineering, but it's boring the crap out of me. I'm as likely to fall asleep on the desk as I am to get this thing all tidy. Bleh.

I have a final in the speech class tomorrow -- pretty much a bullshit class. I'm doing okay, but it seems to be following the rule of "form over function"... a trend I'm beginning to see in several school interactions.

I'm a big "function" kind of guy myself.

But with the tedium of work these days, I feel like a dimwit... I need some crunchy program creation work to get my interest levels back up.

Monday at the Haunt

Went directly from work yesterday (even left a bit early) to go to the Wild Basin and work on the haunt.

Coming in, I'm all worried and stressed. Coming out, I have new hope for the whole thing.

Most of the special effects tested so far are exceeding expectations, the sounds are good, the shakers in the crawl tunnel are unbelievable, 750 watts of strobe at night is amazing, and it goes on.

Most of the heavy construction is done, most of the big room is set up. Now we spend the week decorating and finalizing.

Only I don't get to go back until Friday (but on Friday I'm taking the day off... just got permission).

Tonight I give a speech in class. Whee.
Tomorrow I'm going to TaiChi (skipped TaiChi and Dance yesterday). Thursday I have a final. Bleh.

I still need to paint the leg (tonight, some) and make fingers (tonight? tomorrow?). I probably should prep for the speech sometime, too...

Addiction

E-mail addiction. I need my e-mail. I check it all the time. I'm disappointed when I don't have fresh mail to me. Sad and pathetic.

Suffering

Can I just crawl into a hole and hide until November? Too much stress, not enough volunteers.

Saturday and Sunday actually had decent volunteer turnout, though we didn't get enough useful hands in the main room to set up the walls. Only about half of 'em got up. I thought Matt had helpers, but apparently they kept wandering off.

Pretty much everything else is built, though. Except for TC, who decided he wanted to build a station for his character instead of using a tent.

TC rocks. And he's a scary dude. If he can't make the guests freak, nobody can.

The faces for the room are awesome -- I have pictures, and will take more once they are installed. I have a gory arm that is totally amazing, and the lifelike arm is good too.

I need to make fingers and paint up the dissection leg.

I have a speech to give tomorrow (which I still have to prepare for) and a final Thursday. I can barely concentrate, though, with trail hanging over my head.

I still have about five or six roles to fill (dress rehearsal and MEDIA NIGHT on the 16th... today is the 11th). More for the second weekend (some of my folks can only come the first weekend, because of a HUGE SCA anniversary event).

One of my actors (awesome guy) got cast for a movie and had to bow out. One experienced guide is being sent to Shanghai -- he'll be gone both weekends. Good timing, guys. It's not like his company didn't know about this, and he had the time set aside for guiding.

It's almost like the universe is conspiring against me.

The lighting and sound is starting to go in tonight, if we can find our tub-O'-extension cords. My sound guy has come up with some great background sounds, too. Ryan is awesome. All of my people are awesome, the ones that are coming. The best.

5 days, 9 hours, 47 minutes, and 7 seconds until First Run.

More Faces

Yesterday's faces are lovely! Good translucency, a delicate nature.

Once I do the final "glazing" the details should stand out and the "greasiness" will be great. Then the scabrous edge and we are set!

I was going to make two more faces today at lunch, but I remembered that I have a massage... which is good.

Tonight before class I can make three, maybe four, more.

Friday at lunch I can make the final face or two, and then that evening I can glaze and detail them. And prep the leg. And cast the leg.

Saturday morning is more detail work and preparing for the build.

I think I just need to make another heart to test that mold, maybe a brain (I'm not happy with my brain mold), some fingers... but all that stuff can go next week.

Oooh, I need to track down some Plant Gel.

Faces

Made two faces yesterday... not entirely happy with them. Not quite translucent enough to be creepy.

I laid the base for two more faces at lunch. Gotta stop doing that, it takes a bit over an hour to do two layers on two faces. I'm hoping these are better.

The leg is scraped but needs to be completely cleaned still.

Hmmm... we are shorthanded on all aspects of the Haunt so far, and lots of tickets are being sold (it seems). Scary. Very scary.

Fall

It finally feels like fall... Halloween is nigh upon us.

Fall comes later in Texas than Oregon.

Panic yet?

Do I get to panic yet?

I'm actually getting noises from all over the place from people who might be part of the Haunted Trails.

At the last second.

Argh! Argh! Argh!

I finished scraping the leg mold last night... had TaiChi off, school closed for the night. Now I have to clean the rest out with orange oil.

I didn't do much else, just some speech homework. I was really tired yesterday.

Today I hope to, ummm... hmmm, what do I want to do today?

I think I'll probably make some faces. I'm waiting for a Smooth-On order that has the material to cast the leg, as well as some new silicon colors. But I only want the "flesh" color for one face, the freshest.

I might also start cleaning the leg mold.

Only 11 days to dress rehearsal!

Long Weekend

Yow, that was a long weekend.

Saturday I was running around directing stuff... "director", apparently, is slang for "errand boy", but lots of stuff got done.

Sunday was more of the same, though I built a station myself too. It went up quickly with the help of Dan, who mostly got to stand there holding stuff.

At one point on Sunday we got a gaggle of teenage girls, 15 and 16 years old. My first thought was "oh God, they'll be useless", but they were actually very useful. They worked together well as a group, were tidy with the paint, and got stuff done quickly. And then asked for more.

Once we ran out of real work, I then grabbed some stuff from the car and took molds off of two of them, so they can be faces in the Trophy Room. They thought that was pretty cool, snapping pictures of the process with their cell phones and threatening to put them in the yearbook.

On the molding front, I was also able to wrestle apart the leg mold and started cleaning the clay out of it. Since I forgot to release the clay, I need to scrape most of it out (mostly done) and then I'll use solvent (orange oil) to clean the residue. A pain, but just a few hours work total.

Still up -- make final faces (I have seven molds, and a process that creates a really nice, nasty face), make some more organs, and make the leg.

I've still got a little bit of time.

You know how I keep promising pictures soon? I lied. Or maybe I just meant "soon" on the geological timescale.

Since Tuesday...

Hmmm, since Tuesday... hmmm...

I made two test faces Wednesday. Put down a thin white layer, a thicker gray layer, and a final dark green layer. Then I edged them with a scabrous detailing and pulled them from the molds.

The white was a bit too white -- there isn't the depth and translucency I wanted from the silicon. But you can see the details. The ragged scabby edge was nice, but not necessarily the surgical removal look I wanted.

I made another face yesterday. This time, I put a nearly translucent layer of white, and then a thicker layer of a slightly darker, more opaque gray. I then pulled it from the mold and trimmed it.

The color is a lot more translucent and "greasy" looking, just about right, but it's hard to see the texture and details since the surface layer is essentially transparent. I trimmed it to give it clean edges, so it has a different character from the other tests.

Today, before work, I edged this new face with the scabrous silicon. For detail work, I've been using silicon caulk that I color to suit. Less of a hassle than mixing up the good stuff.

Yesterday also saw me buying the remaining materials to cast the leg and some more organs. A large unit of Dragon Skin and, from the new catalog, a large unit of super-squishy silicon that should be fun for tactile stuff. Expensive as all get-out, this stuff...

Dress rehearsal is October 16... tonight I need to put the shell on the leg and, once that is hard, pull it all apart and prep it for casting. I should cast the leg over the weekend... sometime.

We have an acting class AND a build on Sunday... in addition to the build on Saturday. I need about three of me, I think.

Sick, TIred...

Saturday was a joy! We had a dozen people show up for hte improv class (which was a lot of fun), and a couple more folks doing construction.

The Basin constructed an artificial crisis for us, which I refused to play along with. They all of a sudden HAD to have our storage corner cleared of our stuff! Now! Or soon!

That was OUR storage corner. They said so.

I didn't have the muscle available to do it, and I wasn't going to disrupt the improv class... so Chris, our liason, did it all himself. He wasn't happy.

In addition to that fun, we got word back from our parking area that we can NOT use that space for stations. So now we cut the whole first chunk out of the storyline and condense it into the van ride to the site. Bastards.

About a quarter of the tunnel section was assembled on Saturday. There were challenges and difficulties, as expected, but it's going together well enough. Strong!

I did a walkthrough with a group, including someone writing an article on Haunted Houses for the local newspaper. I'm beginning to see the potential in our plot... I always knew it was there, but I could feel the buildup better this time.

Sunday, I spent the whole day finishing the leg sculpture (yeah, I know, pictures...). It's not bad, maybe a bit overdone, or underdone, or something. I've never sculpted anything before, so I'm pretty happy with it.

But Saturday cooked my goose... I was all crispy by Sunday. So I took Monday off and rested. Mostly. Between resting, I slopped rubber all over the leg, making the mold. Today at lunch I may start the shell. Or I'll make some faces. Something.

Of course, in my hazy daze, I forgot to put on mold release... how the hell I keep forgetting this is beyond me. It's an important step. It shouldn't matter to the bits over the clay, since if worst comes to worst I can dissolve that out with solvent. It will, however, be a pain separating the mold rubber from the table and the bones supporting the sculpture.

Oh well.

I got a paper catalog from Smooth On. It's neat, and it appears to have a product or two that I never noticed on the website. A super-soft silicon, that I'm just going to have to try out. I'm going to look extra hard on the website to find it now.

The countdown clock says 18 days, 10 hours, 59 minutes, and 38 seconds until First Run.

It will be a miracle if we get it all together by then.

Moving right along

Peeling the arm from the back of the mold uncovered a qualified success. There appears to be one major bubble under a fingernail, and a minor bubble in the wrist under the skin. But overall, it's lovely! Better than any bone-filled cast I've done before.

Trimming the flashing was a bit nerve wracking. And there was a problem with alignment at the finger tips, less than I normally get, but more than I expected. I guess some material got trapped between the mold halves, fiddling with the closure.

In the future, I need to plan appendages without the included bones... they would be so much easier!

Anyway, trimmed and tidy, the arm is perfect in dim light. Up close and in the glare you can see the seams and the flaws in the finger tips. But since when do you get good lighting in a haunt?

I'll post pictures, really I will. Soon.

I made the stump a bloody, scabby mess, and the protruding bone got a disgusting patina of read, black, and yellow... people will think twice before grabbing it.

Next, and final, I will create acrylic fingernails and make sure they get glued into place firmly... somehow.

For final placement, dose in blood and stand back!

Now I need to work on more of the more mundane organs.

And I must finish the leg sculpture, so I can start putting the mold on it this Sunday.

So much to do! At least I'm getting some nice successes.

Astounding Success! So far...

I was restless at work today, couldn't sit and focus, so I went home to an early lunch. I needed to see how my arm casting went.

Last night I decided that, even if it was horrible, even if the skin didn't stick and the fingers were full of bubbles and flaws, I could use this arm.

Paint red and white under the skin, turning the flaps into scalded blisters. Inject holes and bubbles with read or pus-yellow silicon, turning defects into purposeful wounds. All failings could be converted into gore... and these are things I'll be doing with the previously horribly failed version.

When I got home, I was instead overwhelmed with the urge to nap. So I did. Then I ate. I was about to go back to work, the time being late, when I decided that I had to pry open the mold.

I lugged the dusty, heavy mold into the living room and photographed it for posterity.

I laid it flat and pried on it a bit. No budge. I flipped and turned it a bit, no success. Ooooh... I really don't want to break this mold.

So I turned it on edge and my gently yet firm attempts at prying were rewarded with motion. Ahh! By not fighting gravity, everything got easier.

The mold slowly separated smoothly.

I laid the top down. Looking at the inside of the arm; the palm, the crook of the elbow... it was beautiful. Perfect. The vein colorings were just what I wanted. The translucent white skin. The flesh coloring tending toward purple at the stump. Everything.

I poked the fingers a bit; I think I found one air bubble. There is a flaw in the mold where the halves didn't separate right, so I'll have to cut that bump off a finger. But mostly... perfect.

I didn't remove the arm from the back of the mold, since I didn't want to disturb my joy. Will the bones be too close to the skin? Will there be bubbles and flaws? I'll know tonight...

In speech class last night, I gave my pointless speech. I was not brilliant at first, boring even, but it picked up. I hope to make the next version come on fire, though.

I wish we actualy did more *speaking* in speech class. That would make sense, somehow.

New Arm, School

During lunch, I tried a new experiment in casting bones in the arm.

Like the previous one, I made up a silicon paste to set the bones into. But I did this in two passes, hoping to get a better skin depth above the bone. I put in a layer in the mold and then, while this firmed up, a second layer on the bones and then set those into the mold. We'll see if it helped.

Then I made a batch of fluid silicon, to try and fill in gaps around the bones.

Then I made another paste to fill to the top of the mold, on both sides! Then a final fluid silicon which I poured into the palm area and around a bit.

A quick flick of the wrist and the top of the mold is in place, and I'm duct-taping them together. My handy tie-down straps for the truck ratchet the mold together tight.

Later, such as tomorrow, I'll make more silicon and fill up the rest of the arm. Then I'll see how good/bad the result is.

If this one sucks, I'll make a solid silicon arm without bones and paint the outside. I *know* that will work; it just won't be as nice.

As for the school, I just learned that there was mis-communication between me and Park University, that may cost me 30 credits (ten terms, over a year) of time in my degree... mostly because they have a drop-dead deadline (one time only) that I thought was a cyclic deadline (like all OTHER deadlines, e.g. testing and registration, at the school).

So I'm a bit pissed off right now.

Abysmal Failure

So the first arm casting was a total failure... the skin in the mold, which sets the basic coloring of the arm, didn't set! I think there is a problem with the Dragon Skin silicon sitting in a Brush-On polyurethane mold for a week. The exact same skin in the plaster mold seems firm and strong...

The disastrous results actually look kind of cool, so I'll color *those* from the outside and try to stabilize the tattered skin chunks.

In addition to the possible chemical problems, the two-piece poly molds have a nasty tendency to curl their edges in, making a horribly seam line. The one mold I have that is one-piece but split up one side, however, works beautifully. I'm learning. It's damned expensive, but I'm learning.

I'll be casting the next arm, in plaster, soon. Maybe today.

I'll have pictures of everything, which I may or may not post here. I do promise to put it all on the website when I'm done, plus last year's photos (what few I have).

I've done some airbrushing with colored silicon thinned with orange oil, and that seems to work mostly. It takes several days, though, for it to set up properly. Calling Smooth-On, they recommend Toluene as a thinner, which is an evil evil chemical that will blow my ass to kingdom come if I use it wrong (as mentioned in my previous post).

So I'll pick up some of that evil soon soon at a store. And test it, probably on the nasty arm.

Finger nail polish also seems to stick to silicon, but of course it cracks when flexed.

The leg sculpture got started in earnest yesterday, all of the muscles have been roughed in. It actually looks pretty good! If I can get the textures and veins and fascia and stuff finished this week, I'll make the mold next Sunday.

I'm running out of time on these projects! Just shy of four weeks to run, which is a long time unless you consider all of the !@#$% classes I'm taking.

Popping and Snapping!

Today I was on the radio! Woo! The Dudley and Bob show, or something, 8:40am, talking up Haunted Trails with co-conspirator Jeff J.

We, Andy and I, have also had a couple of ideas to punch-up the script some. Make it more intense, more scary. Hopefully we (all of us) will continue to refine things until the end, and achieve maximum fear on our guests.

This weekend we may be able to do significant amounts of work -- even putting together some of the crawl tunnels, if we are lucky! Sunday, I'll have help (I hope!) on the dissected leg, and I'll be casting two disembodied arms (one each of two mold styles).

I never get e-mail back from Smooth-On, so I called 'em just now. They say that Toluene is a good solvent to make their silicon Dragon Skin into a paint... but it's as volatile as gasoline and will blow me to hell and back if misused. I'm going to try orange oil again first, I think.

Woot!

Pioneer Farms

Someone (who shall remain nameless, to protect the guilty) had the intriguing idea of doing a haunt next year for Pioneer Farms instead of Wild Basin... less restrictions, more freedom, a new environment. If Basin doesn't want us, move to greener pastures.

Heh. An intriguing idea. Next year, though, I need a break... not a new challenge!

Mmm, coffee

I apparently need coffee to maintain a positive mental attitude at work... otherwise depression sets in, and that's just no fun. Time to talk to the shrink about upping the meds, I guess.

Tuesday and Wednesday were good work nights at the Trails, it would seem. Got a few doors built, got some stuff painted, got some stuff fastened together... if things go well, the significant construction will be DONE soon and we can get on to the important things, such as decoration and ACTING.

I'm about a Sunday behind in my prop making, but I may be able to catch up this Sunday because I found a co-conspirator in sculpting... let's hope she can make it over and we can build the leg!

I've also done some good work on the disembodied arm. I had painted on a skin of translucent white/gray silicon and then I airbrushed in some coloring and veins and stuff. Now I need to seal this coloring (perhaps with a thin layer of clear silicon, I have e-mail in to the company), lay the bones in (I fastened the bones together yesterday), and do the final cast. And pray the seamlines don't show up too much.

I'm almost finished with John Taylor Gatto's online book (www.johntaylorgatto.com). And while he *is* a bit of a kook, he also provides a detailed and well-documented look at why our school system is the way it is, and what it's purpose is. Note that the purpose of the school system is NOT education, but "schooling"... a different beast. Anyway, I may rant more on this later. Or go read the book, there is a lot of information in there.

The Dance of Compromise

Ever since coming into NI, I've been raising a stink over design and architecture, long term interests of mine. I won't say what aspects or why, but I saw room for improvement.

So finally, tired of hearing me complain, the powers that be asked me to work up a proposal. So I did! A huge proposal, too, ambitious, grand, impractical.

A first step in the negotiating process, so I wasn't surprised when I was asked to tone it down a bit. But, in the process, I have the go-ahead to work up the details some more.

And so the dance of compromise begins. As long as it keeps me in the game, though, I'm happy.

Grand dreams are not going to get approved at the get go, and I never expected them to. We now have motion on the project, and I'm happy.

Managing

This job of managing Haunted Trails isn't doing my health much good ... I keep waking up at 3:00 or 4:00 am with my stomach churning, worrying about how we are going to make it all work.

I've got about four people capable of doing construction and another ten who can do other types of work like painting.

I not only need more builders, I need builders with tools!

And most importantly, I need actors. We only have a fraction (a SMALL fraction) of the warm bodies needed to make the trail run.

Of course, people stream into the show as time goes on -- and it always seems to work out in the end -- but I want to train my actors this year. I want to put on a good show.

And, umm, I still need to be able to build the sets.

I hope it all works out. But my stomach fears that it won't.

Freedom and Democracy

There is a lot of rhetoric floating around about America, our fabled freedom, and bringing that freedom and democracy to the poor, beleaguered souls of the miserable desert countries.

But are we really all that free? We have the appearance of freedom, sure, and a voice in government and the direction of our lives. True.

But freedom begins in the mind, is guided by our early experiences and our expectations of life. Do you think that the average American thinks about things? Does Joe Sixpack contemplate the impact of environmental or deficit-spending policies on his children's future?

I have the knee-jerk response, more often than not, that the average American is an idiot -- only really interested in life at an animal level of intellect. Food. Sex. Money. What affects them now, or tomorrow, but with little mind to next year or a hundred years from now.

After all, just look at the level of discourse in politics to see the level people are expected to think at. Issues? What's an issue? Instead, let's rant about irrelevencies! Let's lie and distort and deceive! And not nearly enough people seem to notice, or to care.

I also know that this sells people short. Are we the pathetic, self-centered, shallow-minded creatures that we are because of inherent biological structure? I don't think so. People are amazing creations, and all of us start out with huge potentials.

It is just possible that everyone has a lot more potential, a lot more ability, than I think. Than even they think. But for some reason, by some means, most of us have been convinced that we are much less than we are.

We have been shackled in our minds.

One man, John Gatto, lays the blame for our sheeplike behavior, and our internal rebellion and frustration with this behavior, firmly on the doorstep of the school system.

He has a book, published on paper but also free online, discussing his ideas. Sure, he has a huge axe to grind (and after thirty years teaching in New York, who wouldn't?). Sure, his rhetoric is pretty heavy. But he also references a bunch of documentation -- it would be interesting to do the research and see how close to reality his perception is.

Check it out yourself at:

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm

Aggravating

Two aggravating incidents yesterday.

On my side, my speech class teacher is very scattered... not organized, not providing a very clear direction. For the first few days, we were travelling under the direction of creating a major speech for the end of class.

It turns out, yesterday, she realized that we were supposed to be doing TWO major speeches, one for next week, and another for the end of class.

Thanks, Miss Teacher. That sure helped my time management.

On the Haunted Trails front, the Wild Basin people have been messing with our storage area, making a mess, and costing us time. And then Marla broke a key of in the gate lock, causing her no end of unhappiness.

The Basin needs to get their story straight within their ranks, of what we can and can not use for our build. As it is, we don't have enough room to do it right... and if they start messing with that, we are pretty much screwed. I have to wonder how committed they actually are to this project.

The Hard Way

I make progress the hard way. The hard way is the way you take when you do everything wrong, which provides lots of interesting opportunities to learn... which way not to do it.

Strangely enough, there seem to be more wrong ways than right ways.

Finished splitting the arm/hand at lunch. The split is nice, and the two halves fit nicely into the mother mold. However, while the mold is plenty thick at the fingers, it is too thing at the arm. And, because the hand is in a difficult semi-closed position, the two halves really don't want to mesh together.

So I'm going to glue the rubber parts into the mother mold, probably using a polyurethane rubber (since that stuff grips so amazingly well).

I think, as a backup plan, I'm also going to make another stab at a plaster mold... so tomorrow at lunch I zip out and pick up another 100lbs of hydrostone. I'm betting that my wonderful, special liquid sculpy release will work for this. Of course, this means another hour or two of setting up the clay barrier, carefully modeling the difficult undercut area in the grip of the hand.

Anyway, the slow and difficult progress in my mold-making skills has been frustrating. I sometimes wonder if I'll EVER get it down right.

Oooh, and I need to order mold release now, too. Heck, I would make a solid rubber mold instead of plaster (rubber is SO much more durable), but it takes something like five gallons for this large mold. Way too spendy.

Long, Productive Weekend

Three day weekends are good -- I get to catch up a bit on projects.

Saturday, of course, was a Trail build day... and we got a handful of newcomers, which is good. I gave a nice speech and we got some construction and painting accomplished.

Tonight is a weeknight build, and Marla and Jazz will be overseeing it. I hope it goes smoothly for them!

On Sunday and Monday (mostly Monday) I was making mother molds and experimenting with mold releases. I now have mother molds for the heart, brain, and the big arm. I've also split the heart and brain, using differrnt approaches, and am in the process of splitting the arm.

Sunday was divided up by a party at noon, followed by my putting the edit notes into my manuscript and sending it to England via electronic means.

There are two alternative mold releases that have been working for the plasti-paste to polyurethane interface. One is a clear acrylic spray followed by a layer of graphite, sealed in place with a second layer of acrylic. Topped off by silicon release for good luck. This works okay.

The really AWESOME release is made out of sculpey dissolved in orange oil. This gets painted on in a thing layer, and is only good if you don't care to keep the surface texture. But it releases amazingly well. Definitely a keeper.

Today I'll be ordering some more of the proper release agent, so when I cast poly into the poly molds, they will pop out again.

As to the cutting of the molds, the brain was cut transverse to the mother mold, to see how that works. I think it will work, but just barely. The heart I cut in a more traditional manner, parallel to the mother mold seam, but offset by about a quarter inch. This looks like it will work better.

Both the brain and heart mold could have been a bit thicker in places. I fear they won't hold their shape as well as I would like in the thin bits. I thought I had put on five layers, but I only count four. Ah well.

Today I need to whip up an outline and locate some references for my class's speech assignment. Ugh.

Now to find some more coffee.

Release Agents

There are two things you MUST do when creating molds and castings. The first is to mix your two-part product thoroughly... really really mix it a lot, while at the same time trying not to introduce bubbles.

The second thing is to use the correct release agent. Liberaly, and according to instructions.

Yesterday I tested a plastic mother-mold material (a plastic paste) on my poly mold... using a silicon release agent (it's what I have) instead of a general-purpose release.

Needless to say, it stuck. Doesn't matter in this mold.

I have one more mold where I can allow stickage... so I'm going to try acrylic fixative to see what it does. I really want a local supply of release agent! I don't want to order more of the "official" stuff, because I don't want to pay shipping...

So, at lunch, I'll try experiment #2.

Failing that... I guess I'll be making an order.

At work, I've actually been productive lately. My stress goes way down when work is going well. Which is good, because a number of things are going down the crapper for the Haunted Trails -- all outside events, of course, so now we get to see how well we can adjust and adapt to a hostile universe bent on our destruction.

Time grows Short

Ooh, I just today realized that six weeks is NOT VERY MUCH FREAKIN TIME!

That is, I need to get off my ass and finish my props before something bad happens and we have to run without them.

So I scheduled may activities. I should have a week or more to spare!

The faces and organs are easy. The leg sculpting has me worried, but I'm sure I can do something in a long day if I put my mind to it... unless I can find a real sculptor to take it off my hands.

The face casts have the most uncertainty -- need to get people over, do the molding, then make the faces. Too many external dependencies.

Tired

Today I am tired... I just want to curl up under my desk and sleep.

I wish all the work would just go away for a week. I think I need a vacation.

Free Form Testing

Today we are, in theory at least, doing some free-form testing.

Now, every person needs to know their strengths and weaknesses. In the realm of programming, my greatest weakness is in testing -- especially "free-form" testing.

White-box coverage testing, not so bad. But give me a device or feature category and say "test it" and I'm nearly useless.

So today may not be much fun.

Tonight I need to declare the topic for my big speech in speech class. I was originally thinking about doing "The Private Life of the Electron", but I think instead I'll be doing an informational speech on "Halloween". Focusing on the halloween haunt, I suppose, but also giving historical background.

I'm itching to put the mother molds on my rubber in the garage -- but I've been editing my book instead. The "editor" who laid it out didn't do a good job of editing -- about every ten pages there is some fundamental lexical error. Grrr.

It will all be over soon, though. And the first 147 pages actually read pretty good, too! I'm sure it degenerates to incoherent babbling by the end, though...

And then his brain exploded...

Yup, that's going to be my epitaph.

This weekend went well, though I didn't get QUITE as much done as desired -- but then, when do I?

Saturday I ran around in the morning and got wood and stuff for the build. In the afternoon I supervised a slim pair of work parties. The one, two very enthusiastic girls, painted stuff (boring, but necessary work).

Then three of the guys went off and cut wood and screwed it... er, fastened it together. So now we have examples of some of the structures we need to make.

Oh, and Michelle went and designed the door flat, of which we need to build three.

So that's cool.

Sunday I spent most of the day working on editing my manuscript and painting polyurethane mold material on a heart, brain, two faces, and an arm. Soon I'll be putting on the plaster mother mold and cutting the rubber off. Hope it turns out good!

Today, work. And the news that the offsite location that we were DEPENDING ON THOSE BASTARDS is looking to back out of the agreement where we use their parking lot and some of their empty space in return for thousands of people streaming through their complex.

If they don't WANT three thousand people, each of who spent $35 on a ticket, to learn more about their stinking little complex, well, then, who am I to force popularity on them.

Bastards.

And then my head exploded.

Deferred fun...

Ahh, stayed at work for lunch. So now I have to leave early, go home, work up the list, etc and so forth.

Hope it works!

Busy Busy Friday

At lunch I need to develop a hardware/lumber shopping list, and then after work I do the shopping so I have enough supplies for my crew tomorrow. An actual build day, with actual building! Woo!

I haven't been able to start the mold on the arm, because each layer of rubber needs to be applied about 45 minutes after the previous layer... and there are four or five layers to apply. So I haven't had the time.

My speech class looks like it will be pretty easy, so that's a good thing. One week down, seven to go.

Saturday I'll be lost at the Basin, wandering the wilderness overseeing the labors of somewhere between two and twenty volunteers. With uncertainty like that, no wonder directors lose their minds!

Sunday I will be working on the arm, the alien pins, making more organs, and in the afternoon, out capturing sounds with my sound guy.

That, and I hope to shake this cough that's been bugging me for a couple of weeks.

Maybe if I slept more...

Better Mold Test

Yesterday's test of a poly mold material on the poly arm worked pretty good -- the stuff released, no problem!

There was a sticky patch, though. I didn't take enough care in mixing the goo; it was just a quicky test. But it's an object lesson in the necessity of EXCELLENT mixing technique. Any slack gives you poor results.

Though... it would be another interesting effect, for "skin rot". Heh.

Now I have to decide whether to paint the poly mold on in two sections, or do a one-piece mold I later cut in half. Decisions! Argh!

I'm leaning towards one-piece with cutting... I think I'll get a cleaner edge, and a better overall fit in the mother mold that way.

The fingers have me a bit worried, though. I'm thinking they will be tricky to split.

Trials, Tests, and Tribulations

At lunch today I did three things.

First, I slapped a quick patch of polyurethane mold-making material on one of my lesser-quality polyurethane arm lifecasts. With a layer of mold release in between, of course.

We'll see how badly it sticks soon.

Second, I downloaded the proofs for Robotics Demysitified and printed them out. 327 pages is a fair chunk of printing!

This is the first time I've had to print my own proofs. Usually they Fedex them to me. But then, it's expensive to Fedex from England.

Tonight I go to the first installation of my Speech class. It should be interesting. It looks like there are only 7 people signed up for it.

Oooh, almost time to go home! See ya!

I Hate Plaster

Okay, so apparently PVA mold release doesn't WORK for HYDROSTONE. Sure, it worked for Ultracal (I think I used PVA)... but I had to beat my three-part mold into little bits with a hammer to get my arm out.

Okay, not quite. Lots of little bits and a few big ones.

And the arm isn't out yet.

I had about a 30% "stick" rate, it seems...

!@@#$%@##@ plaster.

I'm going to either try again with (a) a different mold release, (b) a different plaster, or (c) screw the hard stuff entirely and use a firm polyurethane rubber mold.

Dammit.

Trepidation

I cast the third section of my three-part mold yesterday.

It's all sitting in the living room now...waiting.

I fear trying to pry the pieces apart. I sealed the ever-loving crap out of the plaster facing pieces, and then sprayed 'em heavily with a release agent. It should be fine.

But I'm always breaking the danged plaster.

I guess I can live with extra seams...heck, I could incorporate them as surgical scars.

And I can use my nifty new airbrush to paint the arms (from the outside) to help camouflage stuff. I will also be using it on the INSIDE to make the subtle tones and discolorations that look so awesome in silicon.

I figure that a properly thinned (I bought a silicon thinning agent, which also retards the setting) silicon will both flow through my gravity feed airbrush, and have a long enough gelling time to do useful painting with.

I would be excited about this, if I weren't nervous about screwing it up.

As director, I also have to figure out what we need to do next, and where to store the damned projects once they are in play. We don't have any room to put ANYTHING right now. I'm going to have to harass the Basin and work something out.

Body Part Progress

Wow, it's been a long time since my last update. Sorry!

Most of last week was all about NI Week, a big conference/sales show that National does in the middle of August.

Outside of that, I had all the usual stuff to do... you know the drill. Though at work I've been making a pest of myself and am now being funneled into starting some difficult (and necessary) work towards improving the design environment there. But that's a long, proprietary story.

Saturday was the first build day at Haunted Trails. And by "build" I mean "moving shit around". We did, however, stack (mostly neatly) about fifty "flats" (which are just flimsy walls).

I've been putting together the plaster mold for Marla's arm too. I poured the first half on... umm... Saturday? I forget. It all blends together these days.

I decided to make it a three-part mold (which I've never done before), even though it gives me an extra seam that I don't want. Because I don't think a two-part mold would come apart. There appears to be a structural undercut that I just can't avoid, due to the curvature of her fingers.

So I just poured the third part about an hour ago.

I've been making these nifty little plastic pins, in the shape of the alien logo, for use by the aliens in the show. I got my shipment of cool casting supplies on Friday (woot!) so I tried to make a bronze pin. It's pretty nice.

The humidity is killer, though. I tried a second pin yesterday and it swelled up all nasty like. I cast one indoors, and it swelled up more than I like. I then made a third one, outside, and it FOAMED.

Extreme humidity, which has been hovering at around 112% these days (supersaturated, hot, wet... more wet than standing in a shower), is really really bad for polyurethane I think.

I'll try again later, when water droplets stop condensing out of the air into my plastics.

Likewise, I'm going to hold off on making more polyurethane rubber molds, too.

Finally, Marla is back in work and getting paid again! Much better. She bought me some dance sneakers today. They are nice.

Marla's New Arm

A couple of days ago I poured over a half-gallon of polyurethane rubber into the silicon mold of Marla's arm.

Last night, we removed it from the mold.

Getting the silicon off was HARD! Once I got the mold inverted off of the upper arm, Marla got a firm grip with both hands on the arm. I grabbed the edge of the mold, put my feet on Marla's legs, and pulled. And pulled. Pulled some more.

Eventually, we got the wrist to stretch around the palm and the arm came out.

There was one bubble in one finger. I poured the rubber with the mold at a sub-opt angle, and my efforts at de-bubbling were not sufficient. The surface finish around the hand is a bit off, too -- I think there was still some moisture there from when I measured the volume of the arm.

Despite the extreme effort involved in removing the mold, the silicon survived! I was planning on doing a second pour with the mother mold in place, to get a "bloated" arm and hand.

I think I'm going to do another regular pour instead, with a different angle to avoid the bubble problem. It will be a tricky pour angle, but I should be able to make it work.

I don't think I'll have enough poly left after this to do the bloated arm... but if I do, and the mold survives this second pull, I'll do the bloated one next.

I'm expecting stacks of stuff from UPS this week, too. Next week will be an orgy of SFX development! Wheee!

Holy Crap!

I dropped my brain!

Ouch!

Actually, I dropped my PDA... on a soft floor! No damage done.

But it jarred the battery. And lost *everything* on the device. Thank the fates that I had sync'ed it to my PC just minutes before hand!

Of course, I didn't notice that it had reset until I had an idea I wanted to jot down at a stoplight. Argh!

I'm down to my backup brain! And it's all squishy...

I don't think that the iPaq is supposed to reset with momentary power loss. In fact, you should be able to remove the primary battery for up to ten minutes and still keep the RAM alive. You know, with the internal backup battery thing.

Apparently, that doesn't work.

I'll have to smack around HP now, I guess. I left the device in the truck (in the shade! And I left a bowl of water for it in the back, too, so it wouldn't overheat), so I can't go to customer support RIGHT NOW and harass them.

My poor brain.

T.G.I.F

I'm so ready for the weekend. Work continues to be boring and frustrating by turns... I'm about ready to bring in my 2x4 clue-stick and give some lessons in how to organized design and development around here.

Classes start in a couple of weeks (less!)... I'm taking Speech for this term, because I figure it will be easy. When I say that out loud, however, people give me the oddest looks. I suspect it's because MOST people don't like talking up in front of a group. I could care less; it's easy anymore. As long as there isn't too much boring homework to read, I'll be fine.

Boredom is the one thing that will drive me crazy. Though I'm not keen on frustration either.

Argh.

Money!

Well, yesterday I got the rest of the advance for Robotics DeMystified. Woot! My biz account was down to $3.

Now I can upgrade a couple of tools and get some supplies.

I still need to modify the LLC charter... I've been avoiding addressing the business details for years now.

Speaking of $3, Marla found me a credit union that actually takes BUSINESS accounts! I can stop being raped by Chase now. Double Woot!

Politics

You want to make a difference? You want to help get rid of Bush? Politics takes money... and you have money, if only a little bit.

Put your money where your idealism is and go to:

http://www.democrats.org

Tourette's Disorder

Okay, so I have a mild case of Tourette's disorder and it's been with me since I don't know when. The worst of it was during my school years... it got a bit better after High School.

My case currently involves mostly just simple motor tics, though an occasional vocal tic. It's worse when I'm stressed, better when I'm relaxed.

Back when it was bad, though, I had additional related symptoms, such as OCD.

I've also always had a case of "ooh, shiny!" -- which is probably ADD.

It's interesting stuff. You can find out more at http://www.tourettes.com/.

What's weird is being inside of it. My study of neurons and neural networks gives me some models to represent it.

A neuron collects stimulous and, once the inputs exceed a threshold level, the neuron fires. The tics feel like there is a background noise that is saturating a neuron... it's slowly charging and and I can feel it getting ready to fire. When it does, I twitch.

If I decide I'm not going to let it go, I can consciously inhibit it... but that's temporary. If I'm relaxed, the background noise goes down. If I'm focused on another task, that also seems to focus the noise into that task and everything calms down.

That's not what is happening, of course -- it's just a model.

I think that my mood swings are related. Emotions, muscles, whatever -- tics. I don't know, though.

They say that Tourette's people are not only jumpy, but have faster reflexes and and mentally pretty sharp. Maybe it's because our nerves are always pre-charged .

Like I say, I have a minor case. You wouldn't hardly even notice it. I can't imagine having one of the extreme forms.

Scary stuff...

I'm exporting some changes from my development branch, through the trunk (the One True Source), and out into the actual release area... where it will be seen and used by the rest of the copmany.

Fortunately, I am only responsible for export a tiny bit of what is in there. But it's still pretty intimidating.

After a few of these, I'll be a pro, but it's unfortunate that I have to go through the scary bits first.

Cough, , sniffle...

Bleh. Started getting a cold about last Wednesday... which got progressively more annoying through Friday and then faded a bit before going into a holding pattern over the weekend.

Today, though, I woke up too dizy to get up... when I finally did, it wasn't much fun showering. An hour nap later, though, I was suitable for driving, so in to work I go!

Ugh.

Saturday we had our last planning meeting for the Haunted Trails. It went well enough, and I think we are all primed and ready to go.

Sunday we made a beautiful silicon mold of Marla's a right arm. It is darn near perfect, as best I can tell. Probably a few bubbles in the web of her fingers, but it's hard to say.

Maybe Tuesday I'll start the next step towards making the arm prop.

I have pictures, too. This will make a nice to-do document, eventually.

Real of Fake?

Here are two websites that I pray are fake, but fear might be real:

http://www.gunthernet.com/
http://objective.jesussave.us/

Scary scary stuff... though the objective site is thought to be "one of the longest-running and best parody sites on the web." I certainly hope so...

Yay!

My book is done with the initial editing. Those English dudes are quick; just about a week. I hope it's actually EDITED; that they made a positive contribution to the work. Now it's off to typesetting, or whatever. I get my editable copy end of August.

I'm trying to move my mailing lists and random websites off of the computers at home. I figure I'll just make subdomains on simreal.com -- it's bigger, faster, and more reliable. I just have to make sure Wittlock is off the server, first.

Oh, and I have to get the double-damned mailman server to work off of simreal; in theory it's there, in practice it's puking.

I have a service ticket, though. We'll fix it.

That's the nice part about having a real ISP. They do the work I don't want to. I figured it would be easier to move my mailman list than to fix it on my home server... which hasn't proven to be the case yet.

New Brain Extension

Yesterday my brain borg device showed up, you'll recall.

It's neat! Nifty! An iPaq 2210 -- which is actually bad. It's a Compaq-designed device, and it runs Windows. But then again, the price was right and it had the software I wanted. PhatWare CalliGrapher (and PhatNotes and PhatPad). Nice stuff.

I've been getting used to it today, putting a few notes in. Nothing to heavy duty yet.

Spare Brain!

Woo-hoo!

My spare brain came in today! I was driving to work after lunchy and Marla cell phoned me to let me know. I darn near turned around to pick it up!

Work continues to drag, but I'm sure I'll get fun stuff to do again soon. In fact, Michael Watson thinks I'll get a nice nifty project with Daniel (who is a neat guy himself) after this current one releases.

During lunch, I cast a couple of plastic pieces for haunted trails... if these work out, I'll be making plasic pins for some of the characters. Fun stuff!

This weekend, I hope to cast Marla's arm, in preparation for the big arm prop. I also hope to start sculpting the leg for the big leg prop. I doubt I'll do BOTH, but heck, gotta set big goals.

The poster for the recruiting party is done and should get printed up this week. Soon, the HT advertising machine will be under way.

Bah

Looks like I have a full day of sitting around with my thumb up my butt, compiling. Whee.

Not only did we do a massive integration into the "trunk" with our new work, in parallel to this we are upgrading to a different compiler version. Which means instability, which means lots and lots of compiling and re-compiling. Yay.

Slashdot is down, too, so I can't kill time there. Oh, no, wait! It's back up! Okay, so that's good now.

Orkut, however, continues to be so slow as to be unusable.

It's just gonna be one of those tedious Mondays, I guess.

On a more exciting front, we are finalizing the recruiting posters for Haunted Trails, and those will be going up soon. Exciting!

Back in Town

Howdy again! I'm back from Dallas (er, Arlington... as if there is a difference).

I scored a silver medal at the Tai Chi thang -- which sounds good, until you know there were only three fogies in my division (Executive Men Intermediate). However, my numeric score of 8.03 is very respectable, and BETTER than all other intermediate scores from my school... believe me, I was paying attention to that.

So I feel good about it. And, since I was very nervous, I was stiff and more awkward than I should have been. If I can do it *relaxed* next year, I'll rock!

It will still be a couple years before I qualify for advanced competition (need to be doing it 4 years or more).

I got some good feedback on the faces in the last post. Thanks!

Be sure, I'll be putting up how-to information for these and other projects. But not until the season passes. I have an accumulation of project information from the last year and a half that I need to collate and post.

I actually want to write another animatronics book, too -- not sure when -- with some advanced techniques. So I've been LEARNING the advanced techniques.

It's both time consuming and expensive, but it's moving along.

Face Pictures

Here are some faces I've made learning this process. The first three are of Marla, off of an old mold. The first two of these are a polyurethane, which has a bit of a blue tint to it so I made them green. The third is silicon, where I learned how badly it flows during setting.

The last one is the recent face from Nik. You can see the flaws from the mold, and the tearing from the silicon not setting.

The tearing, combined with the green inner layers, creates quite the interesting effect. It might be worthwhile to learn two things for future faces: (1) how to make sure ALL the silicon sets, and (2) how to force sections to NOT set, to induce damage.

I am still just an egg... but hope to grok the fullness of silicon in time.

TaiChi Tournament

Well, this morning we're off to Dallas... an annoying five hour drive. As part of my requirements to advance in my school, my evil teacher has us attend a competition. The only one available is the Taiji Legacy in Dallas... so off we go!

I'll be doing my thing sometime Saturday and then driving home. And then my son gets on a 2:40 plane back to Oregon. It's a weekend for travelling.

Yesterday I made a silicon mold of Nik's face -- we used a slightly different application technique this time, and are beginning to get good results with it. It's tough to not get bubbles, though. The Body Double is very thick, and it's hard to get that surface layer down tight.

I painted in a silicon mask yesterday, too. Many of the coloring effects I was going for worked perfectly!

The first layer, I painted in a very thin, translucent white. Then I mottled some pink here and there -- around the lips, around the face. Once that had set, I dropped in an icky grey layer. Immediately after that, I mottled in some icky green.

The next layer was thick, and was a putrescent flourescent green. Not actually the color I was looking for, but it isn't going to be seen anyway. The last layer was another translucent white.

Silicon flows like nobody's business... for ages. A half hour later and the stuff is still creeping into the low points. So for this last layer, I turned the mask open-side down. Most of the last layer dripped out. Oh well.

For the final works, I'm going to thin the silicon for the first layers to make it easier to lay in subtled shadings. Then I'm going to thicken the last layers so they won't run as easily.

I had some problems mixing the silicon. Since I was only using tiny amounts for some of the coloring, I eye-balled the mix. Bad. There are several spots where it never hardened and the face tore when I took it out.

Which is, actually, a pretty neat effect.

I'll be getting some measuring spoons so I can do fine mixes for the color layers, and still get a good mix.

Robot Project

Well, Haunted Trails is in the lull before the storm. Soon, I'll be so absorbed in it that I won't have time to blink!

But AFTER the trail, I'm thinking of starting up another robot project. Something that would be a combination of the many things I've been working on lately...

I'm thinking a fairly large dragon/demon figure with the main action powered by the pneumatics I have laying around. Welded aluminum frame would be nice. Facial expressions using large servos would probably work, too. Put cameras in the eyes so you get the POV -- heck, put processing in it so it can focus on people by itself.

Yeah, that could be fun.

Materials...

Haunted House stuff is beginning to trickle in.

I got some plaster bandages Friday. I'm hoping to get some mold making materials before Wednesday, so I can do Nik's face again and send him home with a cast of it.

We have jigs built for the crawl tubes, and now I need to bug Georganne to see if we have discounts on lumber yet, or if we have to buy the stuff at full cost.

Oooh, damn, we need to make posters, too, so we can start posting them soon. The volunteer party is... SOON!

Agh!

I really need a supplemental brain. I'm having a hard time keeping the tasks organized, even WITH the TWiki scheduling. I'm thinking some kind of handheld computer to keep the schedule and TODO lists.

I could just carry around a binder with paper in it, but I know i won't.

Wholesome Zombie Fun

Saturday night was a blast! Actually, the day was pretty fun, too.

At noon, we toodled over to Michelle's and Nick (not Nik, but Nick) ran a Call of Cthulhu game that featured, essentially, zombies. Actually, a bit more like invasion of the body snatchers than true zombies, but what the heck.

Then that evening we (Marla, Nik, myself, Tall Matt, and Susan) went out to Pioneer Farm to settle in for a George Romero marathon.

The farm itself is only about ten minutes from our house, which was a blessing. The original venue was to be half hour drive or more.

By 6:30 we were sitting under out umbrellas avoiding the sun, while playing the classic version of "Give Me the Brain". George Romero was there signing stuff, and he kept signing stuff until midnight, at least! Lots of enthusiasm for the man, lots of people in a long line.

At about 9:30 (or maybe 10:00), George did some Q&A with the audience. That was fun. And then we watched some GODAWFUL '70s movie trailers.

Finally, we got Night of the Living Dead on the screen. Then The Crazies. Then Creepshow.

Nik and I left then, at about 3:00am, missing the Day of the Dead showing.

This was an outdoor event, part of the Alamo Drafthouse Roadshows. They have an enormous (30' high?) inflatable movie screen. Yup. Inflatable. Movie screen. It's cool!

The long and short of it, though, is that I'm a bit woozy today. Not exactly focused on work.

Upgrade

Well, I upgraded my Movable Type... and comments should be turned back on now, too. I just hope this upgrade fixes the !@#$% blog spam crap I've been getting.

Once I get the rest of my advance, I'm going to give MT money. They deserve it.

Not so bad... yet

Okay, the good Dr. says to leave it alone... no fiddling, no pressure, just simple mellow quiet. It will deflate on its own and go into its hibernation mode.

Then, six weeks after it's all firm and settled, we sneak it over to an ENT (Ear Nose and Throat) doctor and brutally CUT IT OUT!

Bye-bye evil, demented sebaceous gland. When you are sleeping, we will remove you from this life, turn you into only so much biological waste.

Bwa-ha-haahahaaaaa!

Cheesy cheesy creamy creamy

Argh! Online flash --- eeeeevilllll... illwillpress.com has some goth oddness.

But the title also indicates what I suspect the doctor will be removing from the boil/bump/cyst/whatever behind my ear. Slice! Stab! Squeeze! Ooze!

I can't say I'm looking forward to it. I hate it when my protective skin barrier is violated.

Am I ever on schedule?

Then answer, by the way, is "no".

I have a LOT of stuff to do for Haunted Trails... and four weeks before I become "director" full time.

So it's not going to happen. This Saturday we have a meeting, so I'm pawning off as many tasks as I can to other people.

It sucks having to be gone all day when Nik is here! I don't hardly get to see him... of course, he's also a teenager, sequestered in his room all day. Heh.

This weekend we will be doing some stuff. I'm taking a life cast of his face with the new silicon stuff. I hope he's not claustrophobic! It takes about a half hour, what with the application of goo and then the construction of the plaster mother mold.

The removal should be fun, too. This silicon grips more than alginate, so it pulls the hairs a bit. Well lubricated hairs DO pull free (I tried this on my excessively furry arm), but for a claustrophobic person it could be disturbing. And I don't even want to think how weird it will feel having it pull on the eyelashes.

I hate to subject anyone else to this process before I've done it to myself, but I have limited supplies and time right now...

In addition to capturing his face and the HT meeting, I want to create the pin jewelry mold (if not the pins themselves) and start on the leg sculpture. And, umm, maybe some plans.

But the station and construction plans are primary on my list for foisting.

Wish me luck!

Book

I'm not happy with my current book.

It's beautiful. It's well written. It's interesting. But I really don't know that it's meeting the goal of the publisher. I'm just all kinds of disturbed right now.

They love it, but I don't think they've really read it yet. They love the way I submitted it, the quality of my pictures. Damn.

I really hope it doesn't suck.

Map vs. Territory

"Most Americans are familiar with the Food Guide Pyramid-- but a lot of people don't understand how to use it. The government says the proof is that two out of three Americans are fat."

I bet people do know how to use it, but don't. There is a difference between knowing something and using that knowledge to change the way you live your life.

This is a problem in may areas, especially (to my mind), religion.

HT Budgeting

I spent my Sunday nursing a tiredness (due to dancing till all hours on Saturday [well, okay, until 11:00] and then eating a huge plate of corned beef and cabbage...yum!) and working on the HT budget.

I have a very SPECIFIC amount of money I get to spend... and 2/3rds of that is in overhead that doesn't actually improve the look of the show. That's annoying, but that's also the way it goes. Insurance, Security, this, that... it adds up fast.

About a quarter of what is left is actually open for interpretation... the other three-quarters are pretty much assigned to known materials for known stations.

Since this is for a charity, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that our executive type person was able to wrangle discounts or freebies for us today! Because Wednesday, we start buying.

I would HATE to run out of money.

Call of the Zombie

And out of the darkness the zombie did call,
true pain and suffering he brought to them all.
Away ran the children to hide in their beds
for fear that the devil would chop off their heads.

-- Rob Zombie

Scheduling

Well, it's Friday!

And, last night I noticed a greivous scheduling conflict.

I need a portable brain to keep track of such details for me... paper works, but is a pain to lug around. Electronic solutions are bright and shiny, but expensive. I'm thinking laptop computer... heh... or not.

Michelle was going to have a nifty party on the 31st of this month, be we are all in Dallas that weekend. So no go.

For us, she re-scheduled to the 24th on my recommendation. I forgot, however, that I had the George Romero expedition planned that night. Argh.

So, she moves her party because of me and I screwed up and can't go anyway.

I suck.

It was easier when I worked from home -- one calendar was on hand all the time. Now, I have two offices and don't want to lug a day planner everywhere. Last time I carried paper with me I left it at Bob's house...

Friday?

For a brief moment, I thought it was Friday.

Argh!

I only have six more weekends before I need to focus on directing haunted trails... six more Tuesdays, six more Thursdays. I need to make the best of tonight!

I will try to make the plaster negative mold for the hand. If I'm REALLY good, I'll prep the bones to go into it.

This weekend, I can then do a trial silicon cast and see how that works.

If it works good, Monday I'll put in a huge-ass order for casting supplies.

Then -- ummm -- I need to take more faces, create faces, sculpt the dissection -- mold and cast the dissection -- make more hearts -- make a brain -- make the pins -- make the plans for the trail -- and more I've probably forgotten.

Okay, this is nuts.

Free Time?

The publisher should be getting the book today. In a few months, I'll get the galley proofs to do a final review...

... whatever will I do without a book to work on? All that free time!

Oh. Yeah. Ummm, Haunted Trails. Right.

Maybe in November I'll be bored... then I can clean my office!

Done

Done, done, DONE, Done, donE, DONE!

Dammit. Done.

I burned the book onto CD and would have shipped it out today except that Fedex is closed. It goes out at lunch tomorrow.

Done.

Now I can focus on my UnDead story and, more importantly, Haunted Trails. Oh, yeah, and, ummm, housecleaning and yardwork and stuff...

Almost....done...

Last night I finished the edits on paper.

Now, I put them into the computer.

Almost...done...

Halloween

18 weekends to Halloween!

Less than two months to Haunted Trails build start!

I need to meet the new director of fund raising and see if we can actually start on the scheduled date, and what our limitations will be this year.

Rubber and Silicon

Remember way back when I did a silicon mold of Marla's hand and forearm?

That mold was thing, but seemed okay. The plaster shell on it was very nice, though.

Yesterday I poured two pounds of Evergreen polyurethane rubber into it. This is a thin rubber, with good flow, and a light fruity odour. Hardens up to Shore-A 40, firm yet still flexible.

It seems that I filled the arm up beyond a split in the mold silicon, so a fair amount of rubber leaked into the plaster shell.

Did I mention that polyurethane rubber has intense adhesive properties when applied to anything except silicon? No? Well, it does.

After destroying the plaster shell (sob!) I proceeded to peel the silicon off the rubber. It release very nicely.

However, rolling the wrist back off of the hand proved troublesome. Ultimately, the silicon mold broke taking it off the poly hand...

Further experiments show that the body double silicon has maybe 50% to 75% useful stretch, but needs probably 100% to open the wrist up around the hand.

This strain was further exacerbated by the spotty mold itself. It had many thin spots. It turns out that there were also flaws in the silicon, following two trends.

One is the everpresent bubble, which I can get rid of by more careful application of the silicon.

The other was wet/dry seams. Adding new silicon to a section that has already cured created a number of seams, where the blending was imperfect. To fix this, I'll need to take more care in my application pattern, and to be SURE to have someone manage the material gun so I can focus on application.

The detail, on the non-bubbly or seamed parts, is excellent in both the silicon mold and the poly hand. My next step in this lengthy experiment is to make a solid plaster negative in two parts, a clamshell mold for the hand.

Once I have this, the final, ultimate goal is to cast a silicon Dragon Skin hand/forearm around a set of modified Bucky bones.

This will reproduce last year's experiments with this technique, using these new, better materials and methods.

I'm not getting perfect results yet, but I hope to get at least excellent results on the second pass through... when I make the final props.

Rain, Snake

Not, not a "rain snake"! Silly...

We have rain to day... thunder, lightning, power outages, the works. Of course, our spring and summer rain ALWAYS comes with all of the special effects. There seems to be more of it this year, though.

We have the dumbest snake in the world. It's some flavor of kingsnake, supposedly a great hunter and mighty in the snake world. Though it is smallish in diameter (thumb) it is quite long (about five or six feet? You ever try to measue a snake?).

We feed it dead, frozen, re-warmed mice with vitamins on them. Magical mice from the sky.

When he's hungry, he looks to the roof of his cage for dinner. He probably also performs some snakey good-luck ritual, a slithery version of a cargo cult.

Sometimes he gets a bit over-eager and misses the mouse on the first strike. Once he does get it, though, he thoroughly squeezes the life out of it (hah!) and swallows it whole. It's all quite interesting.

Once he missed and instead hit the edge of a small square of green covering... a kind of stiff felt. Then he proceeded to try and squeeze his carpet to death so he could swallow it. We figured he would figure out his mistake (mouse... carpet... mouse... carpet... how hard can it be?). But no. We had to pry him off.

He has done that twice. We no longer feed him a mouse on a platform.

Yesterday he one-upped this event. He had the mouse and was valiantly squeezing the life out of it, when he lost track of where it was. He does that a lot. Sometimes we have to re-dangle the mouse to re-orient him.

THIS time, searching for the mouse, he pretty much tied himself into a knot and then... get this... started to eat his own midsection. You know. Chewing on his abdomen.

Ummmm.

And he didn't stop on his own.

It turns out that if you squirt a snake with water, they let go of whatever they are doing and try to run away. So we saved him from himself, quite literaly.

He eventually un-knotted and ate the mouse.

We have a really dumb snake.

Values

I've been doing a lot of reading lately. There seem to be two distinct sets of values that people ascribe too, and have honored in the past.

On the one hand, there is the warrior value of power and glory -- our mighty leader will enter your city wading through rivers of the blood of your sons, accompanied by the wailing of your women. Yeah! That's the ticket!

You see a lot of this in, for example, the old testament. And there is a lot of commentary in the new testament reflecting this type of strong-arm mentality by commentators who, apparently, are stupid and missed the whole point.

On the other hand, there is the way of peace and serenity. Be good to your neighbor, treat people with the respect and honor you would like to receive. This would appear to be the message of Jesus, though goodness knows you have to pick through the writings to find it. It is also the message of many other spiritual leaders.

So, does your culture honor Jesus, Buddha, or one of the other peacemakers? Or are your heroes bloody heroes, whose honor comes through violence?

There is a third way, of course, of justice and balance. This is like the way of peace, but allows for defense of life and some other warrior attributes... the peaceful warrior. I wonder if this way has been properly explored? I'm sure it must have been...

Space

Burt Rutan's Spaceship One made it to the edge of space today.

Damn.

Sure, it's not orbital (has to go higher and much much faster to make it to orbit), but it's the first step.

Sure, NASA did this forty years ago with the Mercury capsule.

But this is a guy, with $40,000,000, making a revolutionary craft to go to the edge of space. Private business. A business that will sell tickets. To space.

Anyone have $10,000 to spare for a ticket?

And it's a first step. NASA followed this same progression. Sub-orbital, orbital, moon.

If private business makes it to the moon, that would be the most amazing thing ever.

I grew up on Heinlein. Heinlein was all about colonizing space... all using believable technology (not this warp drive crap).

I lived and breathed space as a kid, and it looked like we were making great progress.

And then the space program essentially stalled for thirty years or so.

My whole damn life, it seems. Stuck. What progress they made, and they did make progress, just wasn't inspirational, wasn't the "right stuff".

I hope private industry is able to drive the space efforts forward into new territory. I have some dreams I want fulfilled before I die.

Short Weekend

The weekend, as usual, was way too short! But I got about 3/4 of the stuff planned done.

Editing the book now, I'm up to chapter 6 of 18 working on the paper. I'll put the edits into the computer once I'm done.

The first chapters are pretty darn good, though one of them (introduction to physical forces and stuff) still makes me a bit nervous. Oh well.

I have detailed reviews up through chapter 8 so far. I'm pretty sure my later chapters, since I started at National, are not so good. Hopefully I'm wrong, or can fix them up during this pass. I have a couple more weekends to make them good.

I didn't pour the rubber arm this weekend, so I'll do that tonight or something. It shouldn't take too long. I've been nervous about each new task with the new, and horribly expensive, materials. But it's going pretty good.

I'll be taking pictures of the processes when I go through them "for real" for the rest of the Trails props. Then, of course, they go online under the Halloween section. Ultimately, I want to do a sequel to the animatronics book

Maybe it would be nice to turn this blog into a project journal again... like Boris was. Dunno. I was also thinking of writing the UnDead story under a different topic here, but that might make it un-publishable due to the electronic distribution.

Speaking of which, I need to pester the publisher of Applied Robotics. That book has errors in it, and we really should fix them.

I'm excited about having Nik come to visit, just a couple weeks out now.

Other than that, I'm sleepy. Hard to sleep in on the weekends when the cats are fighting over the bed... and of course, we get to sleep late most weekend nights.

Red Sash

Hey, I passed the test yesterday. Really, the tests seem to be more a formality than anything -- if you have studied, at least.

I'm to be competing at the Tai Chi Legacy in Dallas at the end of July/early August... I thought for some reason that it was mid or end-august, not July! I have a schedule conflict... Nikolas gets shipped back home on August 1st.

I haven't started editing yet on the book -- I fear going back to its depths. But I must. It calls to me, a haunting cry across the moor... "Eeeeddwiiiiinn..... edit meeeeeee....".

I used some body-safe silicon to make a hand mold of Marla on Wednesday (was it Wednesday? It must have been). Neat stuff! Gets hard in 90 seconds... yow! You don't mix this stuff by hand, but pump it through a static mixing tube and it mixes like magic.

The mold is too thin for my taste; we used about 60% of the tube and should have used all of it. But the plaster support mold worked well.

I'm going to make a rubber hand, using the final material in my sample pack, to see how that works and feels. Then I can make a solid plaster negative off of that, which I can *then* use to cast the silicon version with bones in it.

I could do the silicon directly on this, I think, if I used a lot of mold release. But the silicon hand negative has walls too thin to keep their shape if split open, so I can't do the two-part casting needed to get the bones in place.

I'm really liking these new materials, the rubbers and silicons, by the way.

Braaiiinnssss...

I want to eat your brain. Please go here:

Zombie

Sleepy

Man, I usually get sleep around 2:00 or so, for an hour or so.

Today, I've been sleepy for the last three hours! Ugh.

Tonight, Pat should be calling with questions about Nesting, Jay may come by and drop off junk for Haunted Trails, ummm, I need to contact Teresa to tell her my big trailer guy isn't very available, I want to cast Marla's hand in the new silicon so I can test casting bones in it... ummm... and I need to print off all of the chapters in the book so I can start editing.

Did I mention I FINISHED the damn thing? I think I must have ... several times.

Of course, now I have extensive editing and polishing to do. But that's okay, 'cause I'm ALMOST DONE!

Nik, my son, visits in just a couple of weeks. That will be cool. And having him around will keep Marla from getting too bored during summer vacation.

Big Week!

Lots happening this week...

By the end of the week, I should have nailed down THREE, count 'em, THREE afternoons of acting lessons for the haunted trails core. That's THREE more lessons than we have had scheduled in the last, oh, five or ten years or so.

I finished the main writing on the book, of course, so now I get to print it all out and do the heavy-duty editing pass. Lots to do this time.

Today is pre-test for my red sash, Thursday is the test. Lot's of form and knowledge at my fingertips for that. I dare ya, just ask me... the five elements and their associated forms, the eight energies and their significance, the ten principles of Tai Chi or the eight principles of Nei Kung (annoying, that)... yup, it's all coming together.

I've made a face and a heart so far, using silicon and polyeurethane rubber. Still things I'm learning to use. Next up, the body-safe silicon to make an arm mold.. and then figuring out how to cast bones into it.

Yup, a busy week.

Owie

My head hurts today, which is really slowing me down on Chapter 18, Advanced Control.

This is more an AI chapter than a control chapter, but whatever. I am also merging chapters 18 and 19 here, so this is the LAST damned chapter I have to write. Bugger it all, I'm tired of writing. The NI job has sucked more of the life out of me than I had anticipated... not that I'm complaining, the people there continue to surprise me on how supportive they are and they also continue to pay me. So it's mostly good.

Finishing the writing early will give me MORE TIME to edit and improve it, time I really need. I'm pretty dissapointed in the depth of detail I was able to go into on the control aspects of the subject. Robotic control is the interesting stuff, but I only get to skip along the surface.

I just hope the book fulfills its purpose. And doesn't expose me to too much ridicule in the market.

BTW, if any of you have read my AI in Java book, please go to Amazon.com and give me a review. It doesn't have to be an awesome review, just four stars would be nice... heck, three isn't bad, really, but four and five make me happier (needless to say).

I really should be writing now. But my head still hurts.

And yes, I took Advil. And coffee. And a nice peach smoothie for nutrition. Soon to have more coffee, since extra coffee will either drive it away or make me sick enough to need to lie down -- either action will help in the long run.

Friday!

I wonder how many entries labelled "Friday!" I can rack up in one year?

Well, this week I've written a bunch of code ... now I have to figure out how to test it! My current compile is giving me an internal compiler error, which is never good.

I'm testing up to Red Sash next week... so I'll be spending this weekend making sure I have the knowledge bits down. Tom keeps adapting and adjusting his curriculum, so we tend to get tested on things that we actually haven't learned. Keeps us on our toes!

More people should keep journals like this... for the (very) few postings that Marla has made, I found them interesting reading. It doesn't matter that the log is full of banal daily life. Its a way to keep in touch, to know that the person is still alive.

I have some friends who keep "Live Journal" accounts. I suppose I should visit those!

Lots of journals or blogs try to be political or artsy or guides to the 'web... and actually, I don't like those. Mostly it is interesting to read about people you know, see what they are up to.

Strangers reading this would probably be bored to tears (and heck, for all I know, so is my family!)... sometimes I wonder why even do this?

I've tried off and on over my whole life to keep some kind of journal... I don't know why, maybe just to have a record of my thoughts and what has happened to me over my life. You know, so my heirs can sit down and have a good chuckle over what an idiot I was...

During the Boris project, the Journal was there to keep me on track, and to make the project public enough so that I would have external pressure to finish it. And it worked!

Hmmm... actually, I'm ending this book and will be ramping up my work for Haunted Trails. Maybe I should hook up pictures and discussion of the job of creating the special effects and directing trails this year. That could be fun.