More Pictures By The Artist In Residence

Here's another round of pictures taken by Henry, with his comments and my translations where needed...

"It's Stanley, he's sitting down. "

"Max sitting down, too. I liked that prize." (translation: I liked his surprise)

"Mommy, she's putting garbage in the garbage can. "

"It's the clouds and the sheep." (translation: horses and cows)

"Kent, not working!"


"Different." (Henry was moving a bit fast)

"Kentses hook! Because it was great. "

"Coal."

Almost Halloween

That seemed an appropriate title, for the first two pictures.

Henry tries his new costume, "Crazy guy with a pull-up on his head, now give me some candy, man"

Max scares us by eating yoghurt.

Max plays a tune.

Henry rides his bike at the base of Bald Hill.

So as you can see, we keep having fun. Henry has taken some more pictures, but we haven't taken them off his camera next - that will be in the next blog post.


My new (to me) South Bend 10K lathe. Felice helped me drag it into the shop today. Not many women would do that for a man. I need to bolt it down, wire up the motor, retrieve one part that got left at Kent's, and start making chips.

The almost perfect ways, notice that the factory scraping is still almost intact. I've been wanting a lathe that didn't have much wear for a while. My Atlas 10" had a huge gouge in the ways and always turned a taper...as well as just being worn out generally. The lathe belonged to Kent's ex-father-in-law, who bought it new in 1977. He only used the lathe to make parts for his perpetual motion machines. By the way, such a device is not generally though of as possible, and his EFL did not actually make anything that worked.

Pulitzer Prize Winning Photographs

Henry was having a "bad day" (his words) on Friday so I decided to cheer him up by digging out our old digital camera and letting him loose upon the world. Here are the results, with his dictated captions after the fact (a good reminder that children give unreliable testimony in court):

"Max!!! Maxi-mouse was playing"

"He's playing!"

"Going home...go-ing... "

"Skeleton, he didn't do anything. "

"I wanted to print pictures, it is green soda, you can't eat it"

"A garbage can, I wanted to take a picture of it because I love it. "

"Daddy, he's doing some work. "

"Kitty cat, he's sitting! "

"Me! Happy."

Sometimes all it takes to cheer a kid up is to give him new and exciting capabilities. Henry now loves to take pictures and already can turn the camera on and off. He's working on not getting a finger in front of the lens. What I find most interesting is the physical perspective - this is Henry's world, about 3 feet off the ground. The pictures also tell us that he can see dirt we don't see.

Here are some links:
Dave Watkins's Live Steam Page

This Lego robot (PDF) report by a 9th grader who will probably be a millionaire when he grows up. I was blown away by it, it is better than most adult work.

An excellent video Mindstorms NXT tutorial.

Mock-tober

Henry started pre-school last week. He enjoys it. Tempus Fugit, blah, blah.

Max says "I can wear a soup bowl as a hat!"

"See! I don't care that it has soup in it, it still works!"

"I am one stylish dude in my soup hat!"

Henry shows a collage he made in pre-school

"I was cleverly hiding this stick behind my collage"

So life continues.

Felice started a much better blog last month, she writes more and is much funnier than I am.
It's part of her "build a buzz about me on Etsy" campaign and has paid off in two pairs of earrings being sold...

I finally spent some of the money lavished on my for my birthday. I bought the Lego Mindstorms NXT. I could lie and say I bought it for Henry and Max, but you would see right through that gossamer excuse.

The plan for today is to build the "Start Here" robot, so called because there is a box labelled "Start Here" that contains the parts for the fist simple robot. We'll see whether Henry can focus enough on it to withstand the boredom of a complex assembly.
Here is the boring Mindstorms official blog and here is another robot blog.

I spent some time last week perusing Corvallis blogs, here's one with lovely nature pictures from around the area.

Here are "Gary's Clocks", PDF downloads of wooden clock plans. Looks like another fun to build project to add to my list.

Lest you think the Continostat is no longer on my mind, I was sent a link to an Ebay auction of a Nupubest, which is a similar contraivance from the same era. I may bid on it...but not too much.

The previous week has been spent milling parts of the secret device, let's just say that 100 arrayed 1.25mm holes would be difficult to drill without a CNC mill. I have again learned a lot through practice. I'm getting closer to being happy with a "Nick will model parts in Rhino for you" page, but I plan on changing many things before I put a link from my main site. Any comments about this first draft of a site would be appreciated. I think the whisk model is terrible. I'm working on an animation of the steam engine model that will be posted as well, if I ever finish it.

Finally, has anyone visited an Ikea store and checked out this chair? It looks good, but I am loath to buy a chair without some sort of review/feedback, and our local Ikea is about 300 miles away.

That's all for now...

Well here are some more pictures from my parents visit.

I express an emotion while opening a card.

Max shows us where his nose is.

Here's a cake picture for James, even if Felice hates it.

Total chaos while arranging a family picture. I like this better anyway.

Henry says, "No More Pictures!"

Max explores the fascinating world of geometry with a pair of tongs.

Henry peels and cores an apple. For pie. Mmmm. pie....

I added a bunch more pictures to the (insane) Continostat page. Not much left to do other than organize, muse and track down a couple of journal articles at the OSU library.

I have been looking for a better computer chair, since it seems that all I do is sit all day. Any recommendations? I could use a good chair at a cheap price. While surfing I found this anti-Aeron page.

Via Boing-Boing, comes this list of exclaimations used by Captain Haddock.

Here is a French model engineering site.

The Sightseer's guide to Engineering.

Solid Edge now has a free 2D drafting program.

Another great timewaster from Google. (via a Chequer Board of Nights and Days)

Did You Forget My Birthday?

It is my birthday today, I'm 40. Felice is working and my folks are visiting, they're out picking up some food and a cake right now.

Max isn't sure about Tofu.

Henry sticks something on my mom's nose.

It's great for the kids to have the grandparent visits back to back.
Other than my parents visit, nothing much else is happening.

I do have a beginning to my Continostat page up now. Researching an obscure instrument is fun. Once I go through the patents I'll revamp the page and make it more coherent.

McGill University's Biomedical Engineering Dept. has an online guide to their machine shop (McGill didn't accept me as a student way back in 1984, which was probably a good decision on their part)

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...