Just a Lazy Summer & A Mystery Object

Henry and Max wash the car.

"I think you missed a spot, Max."

Henry's new bike (yikes!)

Max goes through his blue period.

Fran and Joe left, and now Nick and June (my parents, odd to write their names) are coming for a few weeks tomorrow. It's great for the kids to see their grandparents! Nothing new to report, things just continue along.


This is Gottschalk's Continostat. I bought it for $45.00 yesterday at the local university surplus sale. I thought it was a drafting instrument, but it is used in Large Displacement Spline Modelling, for Structural Analysis...In other words I have no idea what it is. This page mentions it, and this book would be good to find...but the only copy seems to be at MIT. Only two pages on the whole internet even mention it! So it's rare...and I am again showing how nuts I am.

In other news, Oregon has banned wired glass. So many of my school memories feature this stuff, in doors and windows.

Here is some free gear software

Pictures of a Chinese machine tool trade show and technical school.

A french Brio train blog.

Shop Class as Soulcraft (via Siris)

Fran and Joe

Grandma Fran yucks it up with the boys.

Henry and Joe compare teeth.

Henry and his Grandparents

Fran and Joe (Mr. Grandpa) are visiting for the week. Today we went for a short walk at Findlay (Preserve, Park, I don't know what it's called, there is absolutely no information about it on the internet). Yesterday Joe stayed home with me and the boys. We went out for a short trip to the thrift stores (I bought a bunch of old engineering texts!). On the way back I stopped at an estate sale and Joe volunteered to stay in the car with the kids. I went insane and bought a rhinestone "IKE" campaign pin. I also bought a few old Life magazines, I'm happy because one has a Shell Oil ad drawn by Artzybasheff that I'll cut out and frame at some point.

I made a keyring for the Etsycraft contest. It's very heavy. I milled the letters and the profile on the Taig CNC mill, then used a unitized wheel to put a soft polish on it and break all the sharp edges.

Last week we watched "Kamikaze Girls" which was hilarious and hip. It was a wonderful escape from our normal life. I also watched "Orde Wingate", which was a well done tele-play about, well, Orde Wingate. Because it was a play the production values were terrible. There was a bonus roundtable discussion (from the BBC in 1976) with a few of the actual persons portrayed in the play.

Felice and I had a short argument about the proper spelling of "Dalmatian", which led me to this wonderful blog.

Very lazy, I am.

What can I say, I've been busy...

Max enjoys fresh plums.

Henry fends off axe wielding Max.

Henry brushes a stuffed dog.

Henry thinks we need to mow the lawn.

I have been somewhat busy lately, nothing exciting but some more Rhino modelling, and a little side-blogging at Toolmonger, where I have been blogging about tool-centric TV.
Our old friends (not that they are old...) Beth and Kevin stopped by last night, Kevin just had a book published. They brought a bunch of old kids toys, but I managed to give them an electronics project kit that was surplus to our needs. Kent helped clear out his ex-father-in-law's estate last week, which meant that Henry received a vintage 1968 Hoppity-Hop.

I stayed up too late last night watching the first half of "Pretty Maids All in a Row" on TCM. I finally turned it off halfway through, thinking it would be available on Netflix, but it isn't...It was a perfectly odd movie.

I worked today on a bracelet for the Etsy-Craft contest and through a series of events was recommended this "What the Font" page...stay tuned for the bracelet link (I mean that obviously the bracelet has links, but there will be a link to the bracelet on Etsy soon)
Update: Here's the bracelet...