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...

Steaming, steam up.

The mess on my bench - I need to clean my shop...

Henry vacuums the couch.

Henry imitates daddy.

Large numbers of children and parents seeking air conditioned relief in our house last week.

Max at the Steam Up.

Henry and Daddy and a big caterpillar.

Madonna, child, stationary engine.

Driving a fire truck. See all the Steam Up pictures here.

Earlier in the week Kent and I went to an auction. It wasn't that interesting but on the way back we had a nice view of Mount Adams as we took the scenic route. All I bought were a few vises and some Pomalux.

Links:
Museum of Retro Technology

A German Watchmakers Shop

A mobile machine shop

Pickle Lickers

Henry and Max engage in some pickle licking. Max ate his pickle, but Henry just licked the juice off of his, and then asked for another.

Patty cake?

Halloween in July. Henry likes to dress up sometimes, especially in his halloween costumes.

Frankenmax.

Very little going on in the doldrums. Felice is trying to decide whether to sell at the market this weekend, the temperature is forecast to be 103...

I received the August/September issue of "Machinist's Workshop" (Vol 19, #4), which has my article "1-2-3...Nuts!" inside. Yay. For those who read this and subscribe, let me know what you think.

We managed to watch 2 DVDs this week, "The Matador" and "Shopgirl".
The Matador was a good, quirky little conversation movie about a washed up assassin. I would recommend it, and the characters seemed realistic, I found the amorality of the Pierce Brosnan character on the mark (his language was terrible!) and Greg Kinnear was (intentionally) boring without being condescendingly written as such.
I liked Shopgirl better when it was called "Lost in Translation". Ok, it was pretty well done, but I had little interest in the vapid characters. Do people in LA not have hobbies or interests? Beyond "art" or whatever. Here's a tip for scriptwriters - give your characters some depth beyond being "rich" or "artists", sometimes they might have budgeregars, or collect spoons or something. People talk about things, they don't just sort of stammer and immediately talk about their relationships...

Some links:
Images, Artwork and Historical Objects at the US Naval Observatory

3D Anaglyph Maker I have been making some anaglyphs from my Rhino renders.
And Stereomoviemaker for 3D animations...fun.

Rockler Woodworking Blog

The NIST Rotating-Wheel Based Refreshable Braille Display
And Choosing a Refreshable Braille Display

The 1871 US Korea conflict.

Storm Large is now on the CBS show Rockstar

Time to post some more cute!

I have time to post some more cute pictures.

Gardening with Max.

I'm not really sure what he's trying to express here.

Max & daddy before bedtime.

Henry shows off his cool dance moves.

Henry painting a picture for his new cousin Harold. Like all good artists he has an assistant in Max, to do the filler.

Henry says it's a painting of a rainstorm.

We are off to a potluck adoptive families picnic this late afternoon. The week was uneventful.
For the potluck I am going to make Gye ran mal ee, or rolled egg. I found a few different recipes:
Gye ran mal ee #1
Gye ran mal ee #2
Gye ran mal ee #3
A also tried out Google's translate this page, and while this recipe makes great surrealist poetry in the translated version, I was not able to understand it enough to follow the recipe.

While searching I also came across a new english language Korean food blog.

My other discovery this week was an intriguing tape I bought for 25 cents at the local thrift store. I am too lazy and poor to follow music much, or to buy many CDs, so when I see something cheap and odd I do buy it on the off chance it will lead me into something I like. The tape is "Systeme D" by Les Rita Mitsouko. As is the case with most odd french artists, I love the music and now want to buy all of their CD's (when I can find them used & cheap). The tape is unfortunately decomposing with each play, so I will need to replace it.

Finally, this is the kind of story I find fascinating. I do hope they make a movie of it.

A Henry-fest

Here are some pictures of Henry from the past week...

Fallen asleep at the computer.

Swimming at the Philomath pool

Playing with real Legos, for the first time

Pitting cherries

This is the cherry crisp I made last night from the cherries Henry pitted. All of our cherry trees are covered in fruit this year, which is great. There are few desserts better than a warm cherry crisp with vanilla ice cream. Speaking of cherries, check out the taiwanese ad from the link...

As for the rest of us, not much going on, we had a boring 4th (except for the cherry crisp) as it rained most of the day.

Here are some links:
180 wrapped tubes

The Rothschild Petersen Patent Model Museum
(you can buy some models on Ebay)

An engineering challenge

An interesting lathe follow rest

The local organic farm, about a mile away.

Mainichi News has Manglish - Manga in English

What Canadians think about everything - quiz

Summer is here, send ice.

Some of the latest cute pictures.

Max enjoys his hummus.

Henry relaxing and reading a Thomas catalog.

Max contemplates the plastic friend chicken drumstick

Henry paints his 1st model airplane. I put it together (superglue and 3 year olds don't mix) but he was very patient and watched carefully. He painted it blue.

Henry works! He helped Felice put earrings on cards so she could take them to a local gallery. He did an incredible job, pushing the ear wire end through a tiny hole in the card.

What can I say, the kids are good, it is very hot (it was 100+ on Monday) and summer is here...

Links:
Crosley Icyball

Horn & Whistle Magazine

Machine Shop Instructional Videos

"An American Cruiser in the East" from this site:
Korean Traditional Archery

DraftIt free CAD software

Peter and Victoria's Waiting for the baby blog

Wipe your hard drive

Push Me, Pull You.

Well another week or so has passed....

Henry and Max play together well now.

Judging by the drool stain on Max's shirt, I would hazard a guess that he may not...
The shirts were a gift from an old high school chum of Felice's, who sells children's wear.

Every child should have at least one emotional scar from a teddy bear.

Max offers a green apple to Shel Silverstein.

A few weeks ago Henry rode a horse.

My little equestrian.

Not much to report, Henry is taking swimming lessons and enjoying them. Max can now walk. I guess that's something to report.

I was feeling a bit vague last week, one of the joys of self employment, but had an old lathe customer hire me to do some Rhino modelling work for him. This is my first paying job as a draftsman (or the 21st century equivalent) so it swelled my ego up into a right bit of puffery. It is the sort of thing I hope to do for money more often. Unfortunately the work is top secret so I can't divulge anything here.

I did pick up a terrible virus/trojan/spyware somehow (I am very careful, but Norton, etc did not save me from it) which was killing my computer, but this piece of software completely destroyed it.

Some links:

An Introduction to Buffing and Polishing

I Love My Chapman Screwdrivers

A French Metalworking Forum

The Gauge Block Handbook (pdf)
(I use the "Gage" myself...)

TECHNICAL TIP #47; THREADING: H LIMITS vs. D LIMITS
This is becoming more and more important.

INSULTINGLY STUPID MOVIE PHYSICS

Why the Future is in South Korea

Aimee's Blog

Puritan Quote of the Week

This to That

A couple of small projects

Well the forklift car from Henry's "Culdee's Apple Train" set snapped in two.

A lovely clean break.

A 1/8" thick aluminum plate that screws into and is screwed into to repair the two halves.

You hardly notice the repair from on top...just those two countersunk screw heads.

A Williams peep sight I picked up cheap at the local gun shop, held in the vise on the Taig mill.

One of the mounting holes elongated into a slot so I could mount it to a Sheridan air rifle. I bought the rifle 2nd hand and the sight was missing.

The peep sight in place. Now I can hit the cans I'm aiming at.