March Non-madness.

March Sanity doesn't sound as good. Max has been sleeping in his crib for the past few days, with very little waking. Not that I'm not still exhausted, but at least I don't feel as close to collapse.

Henry sick, Max demented, Daddy tired.

Henry is one cool dude.


I finally finished my 3D milling article It was picked up by the Make blog which doubled my daily bandwidth useage for a few days. They love little projects like this, those crazy Make people.

Market starts the 1st of April and going by Henry's tantrum today when Felice slipped out for a checkup, I'm pretty much in for trouble.

Watched the first two episodes of the new Dr. Who, pretty well done with a bit of Hitchhiker/Brazil added to the classic style. I also watched "Chan is Missing", Wayne Wang's first(?) film, which was a great little detective/identity film.

I cleaned out a Thomas Train yesterday (see the Brio train cleaning also)

Housing opened up (make a triangular screwdriver to remove the two screws)

Disgusting hair wrapped up in gear train.

Motor removed, take care not to break the wires.

Notice the gear units can just be popped out for cleaning...I used a dental pick and tweezers to clean out all the hair and dirt. It now works fine.

Other than that, just work and children...

Links:
elonka.com (cryptology...)
Sandbaggers fan site.
Siris, my latest favorite blog...
Milling machine maintenance.
The John Street Roundhouse (Toronto)
Internet Acronym Server

Adrenaline Rush

I narrowly avoided an annoying fender bender today in the post office parking lot. I started to pull out and the woman in the space oppposite started to pull out. I was looking behind me, she was not. She kept coming towards our car which was just out of the space, so I slammed the car into drive and actually burned rubber (not just metaphorically, I was burning rubber!) back into my space. The woman didn't even notice and just pulled out of the parking lot.


Henry recreates the woman's abandon in pulling out.

Henry and Max, a calm microsecond...
We had Max's adoption papers notarized today at the bank. Only a few more hoops to jump through and unless we win the lottery we are done with this whole adoption michegas.

Henry was cleaning the bathroom mirror (which made more of a mess...), I went in to check on him and he was cleaning the electrical outlet with a wet rag. We do have GFCI, so it probably wasn't that dangerous, but I gave him a stern lecture on electricity...

I have been working on a little article for my webpage about 3D milling, here is a sneek preview:

3D model in Rhino, 1.125"x1.125"x.25"

Roughing pass on the CNC mill, coarse stepover.

Finishing pass, .002" stepover.

Finished wax.

Not much of a preview, that is pretty much the whole thing, but I'll flesh it out...

Links:
I need a Minisort. Ok, I probably don't need one, given what is probably an astronomical cost, but it would be handy...

Wooden Ship Modelling for Dummies (Mom, it's a Canadian site!)

This is the lake where I went to summer camp.

I like Potato Chips

I'm eating Kettle brand Salt and Pepper chips. I couldn't be more satisfied.
First, some pictures of the boys:

Hi Max!

Henry can fit into very small spaces. I should have him start training with David Blaine, or a ring of jewel thieves. I think I could mail him anywhere in a Priority Mail flat rate box.

Notice how white teeth are when you are young, and how dingy they are when you are old and decrepit.

Henry deploys his hair.


So, as I said I am eating Kettle brand Salt and Pepper chips. While I would have more black pepper taste, they are possibly the best chip flavour ever.

I almost had to serve jury on what promised to be a three day medical malpractice trial last tuesday but I was again cut from the team. I am beginning to think I am not the ideal juror in either the state's or the public's eye. I met a machinist (who is a friend of my friend Kent) who also was not selected and I went back to his shop to look at the work he is engaged in. He is lapping 2mm ruby spheres, after grinding 75% of them away, into little lenses. Fascinating, and taking place only a few miles from my house.

The previous saturday (Felice's birthday!) we went to a housewarming party, and that sunday we had an unbelieveably perfect and gut busting meal of Injera at our friend Yodit's house. The boys played with her boys and we ate, if I recall, at least 6 different dishes.

Last weekend was the annual used book sale given by the "Friends of the Library". I didn't buy that many books, probably only about 30 or so. I did buy a 2 volume mechanical engineering text, in swedish, that looks interesting. I say "looks" because I don't understand swedish. Other picks were a book on Piano tuning and repair, a Lao-english dictionary, and a book on electric furnaces.
Henry also bought a lot of books, guaranteeing that he will catch the dread disease of book acquisition.

Some links for you...
Some excellent mechanical crackpottery
How to forge (blacksmith) locks
Quality Gaging Tips articles from Modern Machine Shop

Delayed by cuteness

Yes, the kids are too cute, so I haven't been posting as I'm dazzled by them continously.

Well, I did photoshop out the coxsackie blisters on his hand and the nasal sheen...

This shows the great cooperation between Henry and Max as they work together to control us.

Yes, Max had some virus, probably coxsackie, which resulted in disgusting blisters on his hands. It must be fun to live in a town that has a virus named after it. I am getting skilled at removing disfigurements and mucus using a combination of clone stamp and blur tools in photoshop.

I showed up for Jury duty and was selected to serve on a jury, but they only needed 6 out of the 12 selected so I was sent home. I have to call in every friday night for the next two months in case they need me. We got to watch a film called "The Jury, Cornerstone of Democracy" or some combination of those words - it was so boring that I was unable to avert my eyes from the potential juror next to me, and her Sudoku puzzle.

Our neighbor sold our old van, which is kind of sad. He traded it in on a pickup, and then went to the auction to see if he could buy it back for less than the trade in value, but it went for a whopping $750.00. I had told him I'd buy it back for $200. I'll have to scan an old picture of the econoline sometime. Felice and I lived in it for 2-1/2 years...

My cousin Allan, who I often refer to as my genetic half-brother (by virtue of our mothers being twins), has started a blog. I hope it is lamer than mine.

Watched "The Aristocrats" last night (after the kids were asleep). Felice and I were unable to think of anyone we could recommend it to. I loved it, but I love the anthropology of comedy and I am hard to offend. It was a profoundly offensive movie if you have any sort of moral compass.

Yup, still alive...

So I have Jury duty for the next two months (or rather I am available for jury duty for the next 2 months). I checked the website for my orientation date and time and have to report next monday at 7:30AM.... 7:30AM! The only upside is that I'll drag myself in, haggard and ashen, gasping like a lungfish and they'll get the actual jury assignment out of the way. Why 7:30? I know that justice never sleeps, but given that the only people who can do jury duty are those with flexible schedules, why not a more civilized hour?
Do lungfish gasp?

We haven't been taking a lot of pictures lately. Henry was being creative and stuck an alkaline battery in our charger, which is a bad thing, so the camera was uncharged for a while.
I would have taken a picture of the charger, but...

I bought an abacus last week. It is a Tomoe brand soroban (japanese abacus), i figured for $3.00 I couldn't go wrong and now I have a backup for my slide rule, which itself is a backup for my calculator.

Our friend Lori's son was featured in the local paper in a story about his podcasting. I find it humourous because they are somewhat luddite orientated, yet their son is on the bleeding edge of electronic self-publishing.

One of my milling machine customers, sent us a personalized piece of his jewelry, which was thoughtful. I wish more customers would shower gifts upon us.

These clock kits look fun, although I wish they sold the plans in electronic form so I could just mill my own parts on the CNC...I guess I should email them and ask.

Finally, here is a bibliography of Korean History, in case you need some reading material...

Still Alive!

Why is a lazy guy like me so busy? It's a curse I tell you. But really not much has been going on besides the work and the joy of parenting.

Here's the latest mundane project I did.

How to tell if Felice and Nick can drive to town

How to make polar panoramas
I just bought his book, Digital Lighting & Rendering, an excellent text on the subject.

Ancient history.

Less ancient history.

New Year

Max loves his balloon.


When life gives you lemons, make phone calls.


2 Dudes. With impeccable manners. Who never chew with their mouths full.


This a big saltine!

So it's a new year. Why didn't I blog about the last month of 2005? Because I was busy. Being busy is good. Too busy to talk about what is making me busy. So now I am slightly less busy, but still busy. But I'll try and be less busy so I can write more. Or something.

Henry is 3

Birthday!

Cranky!

Henry Turned 3 today. Yes i haven't posted in a while but apparently parenting two kids takes up a lot of your time. Go figure.

I have been saving up some thoughts:

Photoshop has a "red-eye" filter, but for us at least a "snot-nose" filter would be more useful.

I have, for the first time in my life, used up a whole box of paperclips. I also realized that if you have a big bottle of asprin (or tylenol, or whatever) and it is empty, you have a pretty good sense of how many headaches you have.

Here are a bunch of links:

World Atlatl Association

Microsoft has released all their "Express" programming languages for free this year. I'm trying again, when I have free time, to get Visual Basic under my belt.

We received a pamphlet from them with our new stove. I wasn't aware that it was a deadly enough problem to warrant an acronym.

Freda Utley.

Metalsmithing tutorials.

Look for more rapid posting after the new year, for now we're so busy I barely get time to breathe.

Jed Clampett

I had a bunch of funny stuff to write, I typically can't remember any of it...














Every time I deposit checks at the bank they take time, those dear souls, to remind me of the vast array of financial services the bank, my bank, is ready to fulfill for my benefit. I feel like Jed Clampett, with Mr. Drysdale breathing down his neck, yet ready to lay down his life, to keep his bank's hands on Jed's money.

I love America.

The picture above shows typical working conditions in my self imposed cubicle.

Sorry I haven't posted lately, the small human that is resting upon my hulk has not been sleeping well, and we have been working like dogs. Tired little dogs.



Henry has Teletubbie slippers.

Here are some tools I ought to have, ironically (iconically?)

Interesting stuff on micro-mechanical-machining...

Another Lego milling machine...

Mechanical stuff

Last night I went over to "Open Shop" at Kent's. He has been having problems with his Lagun mill for the last year or so, it wasn't cutting square. He had tried a bunch of things, cleaning the ways, adjusting the gibs, but still had a problem, and he couldn't afford to take the mill out of service completely and try a rebuild. What made things so hard to diagnose was that the mill seemed to be true in the x-axis, but when cutting along the y axis the cut wasn't square, out by about .001"/1" which is not precise enough for his work (or most work).

So last night we tried a bunch of measurements. Checking a cylindrical sqare butted against the z-ways showed that there was no error in either x or y. What could it be? I figured it was either the vise or the head. Checking the back jaw of the Kurt vise showed it was parallel to the x axis travel. Clamping a square down in the jaws of the Kurt also showed no error. But then we put the square up on some parallels so that it was gripped by the top 1/8" of the jaws (which is how he holds most work in the vise). The error then showed up. It was the vise all along, not the machine. Seems it was twisting the work, and while when unclamped it was true, under the pressure of clamping it was out.Kent put a different vise on and the machine cut perfectly square. What was odd is that the vise was one he bought when he got the mill, new, about 20 years ago. All the Kurt vises he has have a key retaining the back jaw, but this one didn't. Maybe they added one later just because of this sort of problem, or maybe it has nothing to do with it at all. But he's happy now.

George was there to keep us on the straight and narrow, he was a machinist at GE and knows just about everything, when he pronounced our different test setups correct we knew they were, and when he saw problems we eliminated them.

George related a tale about how for one job he had to put a slot in the face of a bar, with the slot centerline through the center of the face. About half of them would come out with the slot slightly off of center, and he couldn't figure out why. Each bar had the same diameter and the setup wasn't shifting, but on some of the pieces the slot would be above or below the center of the face. he then realised that the bars were actually pentagonally lobed, and although when measured they would show consistent diameter, when put in the vise some would be on a flat and some not, causing the height to be different.

As you can see from the picture at the top, Max is now able to pull himself up and "cruise", even though he is only 7 months (not even yet) old. Yikes. Henry can now catapult himself over the baby gates, and I am loath to top them with razor wire. Henry has an annoying tendency to crank the volume on his computer. I asked on the Make "Talk" forum, but the only reply I got suggested that I should break him of the habit, rather than suggesting a technical fix. Like a boy can resist twisting a potentiometer all the way to "11"...Anyone know how to limit computer volume, besides operator adjustment?

Virtual Mechanisms Animated by Java

The Dreadnought Project

A Finnish Live Steam Site (in english)

It's cold and rainy and Felice is probably going to play hooky from the market tomorrow. My dad sent a 4 volume DVD set of Warner Bros. cartoons, so I hope to watch some Bugs Bunny while supine. I have no idea why he sent it, but it's great.

Caught in some sort of act

I don't know what was going on but Max sure looks startled.

I went to an auction yesterday down in Springfield. It wasn't an amazing auction but I did get a few good deals, like two Tapmatic tapping heads for $80.00, and a KDK toolpost set for $25.00, which probably means nothing to most of the 5 readers of my blog. The auction was poorly attended which accounts for the low prices. Talking to the auctioneer afterwards about why there are so few auctions happening, he said that the business climate was good for machine shops right now, which is good news. As with most auctions there was a fair amount of BS-ing, typical whining from the auctioneer, and some meaningless conversation. As at most auctions the auctioneer figured out that I was the guy who bids $5.00 for almost anything, so I positioned myself close by and started a lot of the bidding. Auctioneers are optomistic - they'll start an item at say $200, then drop to $100, then $50, $25, then having not received a bid, they'll look to a cheap guy like me and say "$5.00?" in a pathetically plaintive way. They refer to this as "pulling teeth".

Kent's big purchase was typical for him, an insanely heavy shelf and all the items upon it for $40.00. I got to use an electric chain hoist when we loaded it on his truck. He also bought all the oil cans, as he is crazy-oil-can-collector man.

The only downside to the auction was that the auctioneers didn't get a lunchwagon (roach coach) to setup at the site, so Kent and I were completely famished by the end of the auction at 3:30PM. We found a restaurant on the way back in Juntion City, and I ate a huge bolus of cheese fries and about 4 cups of coffee.

Catching up

Nothing going on lately. Max is crawling all over the place. Henry is still cute.
I'm going to an auction tomorrow with Kent.

This is one of the last pictures of Henry with binky. He decided it was "broken" and hasn't used it for 4 days. He did look for it in his ear last night, as that's where daddy finds a lot of henry's stuff...

Here are a bunch of cool things:
Is this furniture too clever? (via Funfurde)

This book, reviewed in the New York Times, is probably not going to be a guide as we raise Henry and Max.

Check out the picture galleries, incredible photomicrography.

Everything you wanted to know about barcode. And here's a page that will generate barcode for your name (or any other word).

I should subscribe to this new robot magazine, but I'm too cheap.

Discipline

We are all about parental discipline. Henry always eats at the table, napkin on lap for every meal.

I just can't believe that some people will let their kids turn the living room upside down while shovelling mac & cheese into their gullet with a side dish of mindless TV. Philistines.

The folks at Freesteel emailed me back, they are working on an open source CAM module, not necessarily a high priced program as I thought, which is great in terms of potential pricing. I find that I use more open source software as my software budget goes down. You really don't have to pay for most types of software, if you don't mind some hoop jumping and problem skirting. That said, some software (like Rhino) is well worth the price.

I installed a 2nd hard drive in my new PC today. Nowhere in the Dell instructions did it mention that you have to go into BIOS and enable the 2nd SATA controller. Good thing I'm smarter than the average bear. I also bought a cheap USB drive, Cruizer Micro, it was only $15.00 after rebate at Staples and I thought I might need it someday.

Here's another great birthday gift to get me.

And for the true geeks: Lego machine tools that actually cut toast.

POVray

I played around with POVray today...

We also went to the local farm and picked pumpkins with the attendant hayrides, etc.

Good night...

Wonder of Nature solved.

I received the following email from the local (OSU) university:

The beetle is a burying beetle, family Silphidae, genus Nicrophorus. I can't tell what species it is because ID is largely based on color patterns, which are obscured (totally!) by the parasitic mites on it. The orange antennal club suggests it could be N. investigator, a very common species in Oregon. Burying beetles feed their young on carrion, making a nest in the ground below the corpse, and feeding the young with liquified carrion. The mites belong to the Mesostigmata. They use the beetles for transport between beetle nests, where they feed on carrion, fly eggs, and sometimes beetle eggs. By reducing fly infestations, which would compete with the beetle larvae for the carrion, the mites are believed to have an overall beneficial effect on burying beetle reproductive success. Although I could find no literature stating that the mites feed on the adult beetles, carrying such a heavy load of mites is probably deleterious to the beetle carrying them.

Here is a website with a picture of another happy beetle, and another one in german.

On to other subjects, here is a site about the computer I first used to get onto the pre-internet "The Source"

Here is a blog about developing CAM software, which is fascinating if you have an interest in both programming and CNC. The blog doesn't care about interaction though, and seems mainly to be a way for them to let off steam. They need to be a little more outgoing as they state that they wish to be found on Google more easily. I will never be able to afford their software.

I need to clean the bathroom

This is what I found in my sink today. Any entomologists out there? It looks like a beetle being consumed by tiny spiders to me...
The beetle was sluggishly trying to climb the sink (it came from the drain? eek). I scooped it up and put it and the 100 spider babies outside for nature, or perverse abomination thereof, to take its course.
The beetle is roughly 1.25" long or so.

No worries about overeating at lunch for me!

Internet boy

Henry now knows to hit the "Back" button in IE to navigate a site. He doesn't know "Forward" though. We'll work on that next.

Felice managed to spill a glass of seltzer water on her head today. I heard a noise, then laughing from the kitchen. She has some sort of logical story about getting the baby sling stuck and pulling too hard, but I suspect her brain was overheating.

(For the TV addicted)
"Lost" is now on at the same time as "Veronica Mars". Must suck to be Veronica Mars, although I suspect that program times mean less in the age of Tivo than they once did. Yes, I enjoy both shows.

I forgot to mention yesterday that I finally did a massive site update. Nothing like editing pictures for hours with a headcold.

I have tons of Henry & Max pics but I need a better way of uploading and showing them I suspect I'll start using the blog, but I have been unable to utilize Picasa to put anything up but the tiniest pictures. I'll keep working on it... Well look at that, I added a pic to this post...Joe and Henry having a drink.

So my latest frustration with the Dell is that the 1GB of memory is divided up into 4 256MB chunks, so if I add, say 1GB (two matched 512 GB, for no reason I can acertain, but that's how it's done), I would only be upgrading to 1.5GB, not 2GB...Good thing I don't have any money for an upgrade...

short little entry

I hate colds.

Henry can play the tambourine.

Here's a great blog about riding the steam trains of China (via BoingBoing)

Here is the web page of my latest customer.

Geodesic design software.

I haven't used it yet, and it was annoying to jump through all the hoops, but Acrylic is free and from the 5 minutes I've spent with it looks pretty cool...Oh, it's a vector/raster drawing program...Free is a heck of a lot cheaper than buying Illustrator or CorelDraw.


Night Night.

How my mind works

Henry and were just watching TV. On screen they were counting, 1,2, and then asked what comes next. Henry said "six", which is wrong, as the answer was three.
But if we take Henry's answer to be true, we get:
0,1,1,2,6,48,2592,6842880....

Computer Love

Yes, I'm blogging, stop holding the gun to my head. I have also re-enabled comments, please be nice.
I bought a new computer. Yes, dude, I got a dell. The price seemed low enough and my old Dell (750mhz PIII, Win 98se) just wasn't pulling its weight anymore. I figured out what I wanted and found a coupon code by searching for "Dell Coupon Codes" on Google. This resulted in a 35% off coupon code that saved a bit of money (but not 35% since they usually give you 10-20% off anyway). Dell also threw in a 19" flatscreen (analog) monitor.
Here's what I got:
Dell Dimension 5100 Series
Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 630 w/HT Technology (3.0GHz,800FSB)
Memory 1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 400MHz (4x256M)
Keyboard Dell USB Keyboard
Monitors FREE UPGRADE! 19 inch E193FP Analog Flat Panel
Video Cards 256MB PCI Express™ x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) ATI Radeon X600 SE HyperMemory
Hard Drives 80GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM)
Operating System Microsoft® Windows® XP Media Center 2005 Edition
Mouse Dell Optical USB Mouse
Network Interface Integrated Intel® PRO 10/100 Ethernet
Modem 56K PCI Data Fax Modem
CD or DVD Drive Dual Drives: 16x DVD-ROM Drive + 16x DVD+/-RW w/dbl layer write capability
Sound Card Integrated Audio with Dolby Digital 7.1 capability
Total $791.20 (would have been closer to $1000 without the coupon code)

Annoyances:No recovery discs were shipped with the PC. They say you don't need them anymore as the hard drive has a hidden partition with the recovery software. This is fine unless your hard drive dies, in which case you are completely screwed (and it has happened to me in the past). So I asked Dell to send me some recovery discs and they did. I recommend asking the same if you order one.

The machine doesn't have a parallel/printer port. So my old printer didn't hook up. I could have bought an adapter but decided instead to buy a cheap HP 3 in 1 machine. It lacks the elegance of my old HP printer (still connected on the network), but is fast (it fairly vomits the pages in an orgy of violent clattering) and takes up less space. My old scanner connected fine but there was no way to turn it off (manufacturer wanted $$ for a disc that allowed me to run it on XP). I also hated my old scanner.

When getting the new computer up and running I had to restart it no less than 6 times during all the software registration, installation and updates. If you don't have high speed internet (I do)don't buy a new computer because you will never be able to update windows.
All told it took me 2 days to get it running to my satisfaction and with all my old preferences, etc.
The fonts seemed pixelated on the new screen. After some hunting I found I had to turn on "Clear Type"
I still am not 100% happy with my contrast and brightness levels on the new monitor. But it is big!
Other than those issues, I love the new machine. The 19" flat panel has much more real estate than a 19" CRT. The new machine isn't beige either. All my old peripherals were beige. The only beige left is the speakers from the old dell I'm using on this machine. It is incredibly quiet. XP is really cool. (yes, I'm late to the party) I'll probably never use all the media center features though. It is much faster on the graphics intensive programs I use.

I still need to get another gig of ram, Dell charges more than Crucial.com. I also want to install a 2nd hard drive for daily backups. Weekly backups get burned to DVD (4.7 gigs! amazing), and distributed to the network.

On to other matters.
Max has been sleeping better the past week, He is crawling (at 6 months!). Henry has been picking out which shoes he wants to wear for the past half hour.I am monumentally behind in my work. I have a book review to write, have to set up my new Taig CNC mill, make some new index plates and generally spiff up my web pages.

Henry has a knock-knock joke, his first:"Knock-Knock, who's there"
It peters out after that. He also can now boot up his PC, which is now in his room, start his games and play(learn). I never thought I would live in a world where a toddler has his own networked computer, but I do.

Here are some links I have been collecting:

I recently switched over to Thunderbird for my email, here is a good guide.
Here is a rather interesting surplus tool store, read the history.
This is the "Gallery of Transport Loss", wonderful pictures and stories of transport loss.
Kid's Web Japan has some good japanese lessons for kids (older kids)
Korea for Kids isn't quite as spiffy, but is useful.