On Spinning Magnets and Washington DC

Kicked off my fall break with a minor success as Dave and I got our brushless motor spinning last Friday. As you can see, it makes a lot of noise and is basically sketchy as all hell but it does spin and it is more or less just one of many stepping stones to meeting our project specifications. The motor makes a lot of noise because the PWM frequency we are currently using is in the audible human hearing range. To get out of this range we'll have to install an external oscillator for the microcontroller, which allows us to bump up this frequency so it doesn't sound like a bad rendition of an Electric Six song when we spin it up. Anyways, it was cool.

Took off for Washington DC to visit my sister and meet up with my mom and grandmother (age 89) who made the trip down earlier in the week. I've basically done a huge amount the DC tourist stuff before and this trip was more about helping my grandma get around and do a few things she might like to do, etc. However, I still got to take care of some unfinished tourism that has gone on for far too long. A trip to the DC Tesla showroom was definitely in order.

God, I've wanted that picture for so long. 

I basically rolled into the Tesla showroom and became unaware of anything else happening around me. My sister's boyfriend, Chris, just sat in the corner and let me do my thing. For about 45 minutes or so I quizzed the Tesla sales person on everything about the Model S. She was actually a college student and knew her stuff pretty well, I definitely had questions she couldn't answer but honestly I wasn't really expecting her to. They also had a used Roadster there for sale but I couldn't get into that. The saleslady said that the roadster was the most uncomfortable car she'd ever sat in and that you can feel every bump in the road. Glad they're not making them anymore I guess? Anyways it was awesome and I was basically on cloud 9. The Model S is a damn sexy car and I was surprised at the quality of the construction and how ballin' the control panel application is too. I want one.

We also hit up the National Arboretum because Gram wanted to checkout some trees and stuff. I thought it would be kind of lame and I would be done with it in about 5 minutes but it ended up being pretty cool. The coolest thing was the bonsai trees they have on display, some of which are over 100 years old or even of unknown age. I never really stopped to think about Bonsai trees or how they're made but after seeing some of these I wanted to learn more about it. Some of the trees we saw on display are pictured in the wikipedia article Bonsai. Below is a close-up of one of my favorite ones, checkout how ballin' those roots are. The roots completely engulf this rock and the tree its self is supposed to resemble a dragon (if you could see the whole thing, it kind of does).

Anyways, jury is out on if I'll ever have a badass bonsai tree shaped like a windmill or something but I'd certainly dig that. Apparently it takes a while to do this so maybe I should get on that and by the time I retire maybe I'll have something that looks vaguely like a windmill. 

Other tourist activities included eating a whole lot of food, drinking some excellent beer and farting in a very large church. Oh and special note to Ian, I didn't fly on a boeing plane at all. Embraer planes almost entirely and maybe a Bombardier.