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.

deposit slips

I received some new checks today. The deposit slips that are supplied with the checks only have space for about 6 checks - the rest taken up by an itemized cash deposit section. You know, sometimes I have to deposit more than 6 checks at once! So I just wrote down the other check in a glaringly large blank space on the deposit slip. Now you say "You could get some more deposit slips from the bank", but they treat you like you're some sort of identity criminal everytime you ask for any forms, and rarely want to give you more than one at a time.
Bah.
People whinge about how medicine has become impersonal, but I am much more concerned about impersonal banking.

Max is still not sleeping. He is teething though, as evidenced by the full drool-bucket we keep around his neck.

Fran and Joe (Felice's parents) are visiting. Henry keeps calling her "Grandma June", because it's hard to understand that he has two grandmas, although when pressed he admits it.

Lazy Blogger

Yes, it's been a while. I lost a bit of steam with the whole comment fracas and then parenting Max kicked into high gear. I think posts will come more frequently now. Felice and I haven't been getting much sleep lately (any sleep) and that seems to effect my creativity/humour. But enough about me.

Nope, not enough. I'm 39 now and no one sent me any of the swell presents I asked for. Shame on you all. I did decide to buy myself a new computer (from Dell) that hasn't arrived yet. It should make my life more streamlined although I'm dreading migrating everything over from this machine. One thing to note, if you are shopping for a Dell (or anything else) look online for coupon/promo codes, I was able to cut about 35% from the price by using a code I found here.

I just switched over from Outlook Express to Thunderbird. OE was losing track of some of the larger email folders I have (the most used ones, for my business) and I decided to try out TB. It is much better in my opinion, although we'll see what happens when I switch to using XP on the new computer. Like Firefox you have to look all over the web for little widgets that make the program work the way you want, I found a preview pane button after a bit of searching.
TB does seem a bit safer than OE and the junk mail settings are useful.

Fran and Joe (Felice's parents) are coming for a week visit tomorrow. I think that means I'll be able to get more stuff done....

Oh and here's a paper crafts blog that has links to many new fun projects I'll never do...

The utility of Google maps

I just received an email from a customer who was awaiting a package in Metairie Lousiana
UPS tracking showed that it was signed for on the friday before Katrina (he had it delivered to a business), but the customer had intelligently decided to bug out to relatives in Austin that day (where he just emailed me from) and didn't know if the package had been delivered or not. By using Google maps "Katrina" button I was able to see that the business is above water, which is probably an insignificant bit of good news to the customer. This is as far as I know the first natural disaster that has recent publicly accessable satellite footage searcheable through the internet by address.

Are you prepared?

I've been too busy to blog lately what with both boys having colds and Max teething (which means not very much sleep, or rather none at all...) Anyway I just thought I'd mention that if you aren't prepared for something like Katrina (or the equivalent earthquake, fire, icestorm, etc) then nows a good time to get together some emergency supplies in the hope you'll never need them. Here's a good post from Winds of Change on what might be a good starting point. I wish everyone in NO had a water purifier on hand, but clearly they didn't. But you should have one, I do. Anyway, time to make dinner in what seems a comparitive luxury (kitchen, electricity, fridge, food, water).

Safe to post?

Ok, I'll just pretend nothing ever happened.

How much sleep did I get last night? Not enough. Why the heck don't babies get born with all their teeth? Having them burst through one at a time really seems to be a design error. We had Nome and Darrell over in the afternoon yesterday. Darrell brought Henry two toy motorcycles. Whenever Henry sees a motorcycle he says "Darrell" because Darrell has given Henry about 6 motorcycles over the past two years.

Later that evening Cassie, Jim, Michelle and Alexi brought dinner, which was lovely. I showed the women my St. Marks yearbook and they noticed that Storm Large went to school with me. They told me she is now up in Portland and has a band. Yet another old friend who leads a more exciting life than I do.

I'm probably going to go out tonight to hang with my shop buddies, which will be a nice break from the constant baby wrangling. I just hope I don't fall asleep driving over there and crash into a ditch.

Do you know enough about pumps?
What about planar machines and topology?

The Easy Off people sent me a $3.00 and a $1.50 coupon for any of their fine family of products to make up for my disappointment with the Stovetop Cleanser. I think I probably do qualify as a crank.

Tired of plain old square holes, how about some odd shaped cutouts?

Let's start again

I had to disable comments for a while. Some people have taken umbrage at the last few posts I wrote and rather than subject my friends to both my histrionic anger and the obscenity laden comments that followed I decided I would just erase the whole thing.
The internet is a wild beast, you never know when something you say will get transported around the world, raising ire. Ah well. I'll have to think first and post after counting to 10.

Yesterday was a great day. I was able to effectively parent both boys in spite of the onset of Max's teething. Lifting weights has helped prepare for the inevitable need to hold both boys in my arms at the same time. Eric came over with Marcel in the morning which was a great help until the ensuing meltdown. I did let Henry nap, which meant that he was up late again. Oh well.
Today is just a lazy day at home.

Not too tired...

To post a short entry...
Last night wasn't that bad - Max had one long screaming wakeup but the rest of the night was just some very short sleep interruptions. Henry didn't go to sleep until late and at one point I almost broke my collarbone when I had to intercept him en route to takling Max. Today was fine too, Henry is a tad jealous and a bit needy, but I can't say as I blame him. Max sleeps, eats and spends time being cute and awake. So far each episode of crying is solved with either food or a diaper change. I was surprised at how much I had forgotten of Henry's baby behaviour, but it is all coming back to me, especially how moist you get when holding a 4 month old. I'll probably go to sleep a bit early (like in 15 minutes) than I normally do. Work was light today which certainly helped. Last evening Ann and Eric brought food and today Ann and Siri (a different Ann, pretty common name in that generation) brought some dinner for us. We have been eating a diet high in carbohydrates. I put a small amount of pictures of max up. Although I know it can all go sideways any minute (like one of the kids gets a cold, or I do), so far it seems easier than when we were parental novices. I bet I get a colossal cosmic smackdown for my hubris.

Here is the best blog ever (via Althouse/Instapundit)

This gives you a sense of perspective when you think work is hard.

How to make a rope knurling tool, and a rope knurl. This blog is, if anything, all about knurling.

That New Baby Smell

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves, here is Maxwell Aaron Yang Carter in all his glory:

Spam Filtering, redux

Peak has finally figured out how to completely eliminate spam. Their new Barracuda spam filter is filtering all email on their system. I'm all for clever names for products, and "Barracuda" sounds really efficient in killing spam. Let's face it though, no one has domesticated a real barracuda completely: "Hand-feeding of barracuda at this wreck has domesticated and emboldened the fish significantly. Never dive with flashy jewelry. Keep your hands clenched and close to your body, as the barracuda are known to snap at fingers (thinking they're being fed again)."

I called tech support and asked the guy if I would ever have email again, to which he replied "no, probably not" in the weary voice of a boy who has had his finger in a dike for several years, the city fathers having decided it's cheaper to employ a small boy's finger than repair a leak.

All of this reminds me that I wanted to provide a useful link for all who deal with situations that loosen the bowels, the Toilet Paper Encyclopedia.

Two days until we have our new son amongst us, many preparations going on, I have to reassemble the crib without the benefit of instructions. The camcorder batteries are charged. Henry is largely clueless in spite of our constant prattling about his new baby brother. Felice and I hope to avoid having aneurisms from the stress, at least until we get back from the airport.
The lack of email is certainly compounding the stress as I do need email to make money, and money to raise a family. I'm lucky in that I'm an optomist and confident that ill will all work out.

I was going to talk about "The Machinist" and "Steamboy" which we watched today, but I won't except to say that both are good movies with some flaws. Maybe I'll write more tomorrow about them as they marinate in my brain.

And here is a paper cut steam engine (via Make blog)

Baby coming! Stovetop cleaning and paper folding.

We received the call that our new child will be flying into Eugene on tuesday afternoon. I'm trying not to become panicked, although I have completely forgotten how to care for a baby. I'm sure it will all come back to me.

In an attempt to defer lunacy I spent come time cleaning our stovetop. I tried using "EASY-OFF® ONE STEP™ Stovetop Cleaner", which is described thusly:

"EASY-OFF® ONE STEP™ Stovetop Cleaner is specially formulated to clean tough cooked-on food spills and splatters, yet is gentle to your stovetop surface. It's ideal for use on glass-ceramic, enamel, and stainless steel surfaces. Plus, when used regularly, EASY-OFF® ONE STEP™ Stovetop Cleaner helps prevent stains from setting, making future cleaning easier."

In reality is is a smelly blue goop that had absolutely no effect on the burnt on stains on our cooktop. The directions state:

"Shake well before using. For food spill and splatters apply EASY-OFF® ONE STEP™ Stovetop Cleaner directly to the stovetop surface. With a clean damp cloth or paper towel, wipe the stovetop surface until clean"

I wiped it off, got a razor blade and scraped the burnt-on grime off, it took about a half hour. So razor blade good, easy-off bad.

Other than that I'm pretty much boring today.
Here is a cool article on unfolding paper polyhedra
And here is some paper folding software.
There are tons of Japanese sies that have downloadable paper projects, like this site from Yamaha. Good projects when the kids get older, and cheap!

Finally, for those unwillimg to get me either the BB machine gun or the Emmert vise for my birthday, is another perfect present: the Curta calculator.

Earthworm Tractors

On Friday I caught the movie "Earthworm Tractors" on
TCM. You can search the TCM site (do a "library search") for it and see some (or all?) of it online. It's a comedy:
Earthworm Tractors (1936)
CAST: Joe E. Brown, June Travis, Guy Kibbee.
Director: Ray Enright.
At the urging of his ambitious girlfriend, a salesman starts hawking tractors.BW-69m

It's based on the Alexander Botts stories by William Hazlett Upson that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post back in the 20's-50's

Anyway it primed the pump for us to head out to the Brooks Steam up. Here's Henry and Me, sweating in the heat (Eric and Marcel to the right) That big flywheel is whizzing around behind us:


It was a fun day and Henry had a meltdown when we left all the trains, tractors and engines. We didn't take a lot of pics as it took all of our energy to manhandle Henry in the (high 90's) heat.

At the flea market I found a Whitworth thread gage, which I'll never use but love to have just in case. Joseph Whitworth is one of those men who had an incredible impact on human history yet remain largely unknown (outside of their field) due people's ignorance of engineering history.

There was a cool woodworking multimachine there, lathe, tablesaw, bandsaw and? all powered by a big old engine:



Later on when we got home Henry discovered some boxes:


So it was another fun weekend for all.

I've been communicating with a long lost relative, related through my Great-great-grandfather Aaron Carter (click link for larger)


So I had my dad send me a picture of him. I threaten Felice that I'm going to grow sideburns like that someday...

Now it's Monday and I have to work....