Toothpicks Everywhere

 So, lots of shenanigans this semester... which is awesome. My roommate and I balanced this sled on the bathroom door while Sam was in taking a shower. We placed a cup of toothpicks on top of it so when he came out everything would fall down, scaring him and throwing toothpicks everywhere. 

Mission Accomplished. 

The next morning the toothpick cup was balanced on top of the door and they went everywhere again when I opened it the door..... so we did the same thing to Chris too.

Anyways, I've been blasting this inverter research stuff that I'm doing which is sweet. So far it has been, make a bunch of PCBs and rock out. I really like designing PCBs and I am getting very proficient with Alitum designer which is pretty rock solid design software. Here is the first board I laid out. I fabricated it on the PCB milling machine in our engineering hall, unfortunately it is having issues picking up the tool bits from the tool holder which causes more grief than it should because the software is so terrible. At one point during the milling process, the machine went to pickup a tool and essentially slammed down on the tool holder so hard that it wrecked the holder and failed to pickup the tool. I would not recommend buying of these. Luckily after some screwing around we were able to complete the process enough so that both sides were milled and all the holes were drilled. I actually had to cut out the board with a bandsaw because the power went out over night and I lost the process I was on. 

After a long struggle with the machine, the parts came in a couple days later and I threw it all together. The best part of the whole thing is that it worked first time. Yes. That is correct. Everything worked exactly how I intended, the first time. Maybe this four year degree thing is turning out to be useful after all? Anyways, the board looks complicate but it's just 8 triacs that are used to switch on and off AC loads. Put a 15V signal in and get two adjacent spade terminals to short essentially. This will be one building block for our inverter research. Next to come will be the current and voltage sensor boards, then the actual inverter. Because the PCB mill is shitting its self so hard, we are going to send our design for the sensor board to a board shop. The inverter is special and requires high current traces that we can't produce in house so that will also be sent out. 

.... And it even works!

In other electronics related news, I'll be buying one of these fancy rigs. It is an Arm Processor (like what all kinds of cellphones run) and is pretty badass especially for that price. Hoping to make our senior project way... wayyyyyyyy wayyyy better. We'll see how that goes. 

In other news, I tried playing hockey for the first time today. I am very sore now. I haven't been on skates in like 10 years. It was fun, but everyone I played with was pretty damn good so it was kind of hard to be much help. I found that I could setup screens and block stuff sometimes though which was good enough. I also had a couple pretty good falls. Hopefully I can get some more practice skating and give it another shot soon though. Owwww....

Launching T-shirts into the Future

So, I've got 9 credits this semester and I'm working for my prof doing undergrad research which was been pretty damn cool so far. Last Wednesday Dave and I didn't have a whole lot to do seeing as it was the first week of classes, so we made the trek out to Hermon Mountain for a little skiing. I haven't been skiing in 7 years so I wanted to get my ski-legs under me again. Essentially Hermon "Mountain" is the smallest ski area I've ever been to. It takes literally under a minute to get to the bottom of the hill and then it's back to the chair lift. I think their slogan should be "Come ride the lift at Hermon Hill!" I only ate it once and it was pretty hilarious. Hopefully we'll get some folks together and make a trip out to sugarloaf in the next few weeks.

My folks came up for the hockey game friday evening where we tied Merrimack 1-1. Umaine continued our heavy use of the two shots our offense has in its arsenal, the "one-timer" and shooting directly at the goalie. Anyways, we launched t-shirts at Friday and Saturday nights games. Since the changing of the guard in robotics club, I'm not really on the hook to do much of anything anymore. I helped a bunch of Friday getting the launcher setup and moving it, etc. Then at Saturday's game I checked up on the crew and then I said "You know, I've never seen this thing operate from the stands... I'm gonna go do that." So, I did. Everything worked great both nights and the crowd was lovin it. Feels good to know everything is in capable hands for next year.

Blast me a shirt dude!

Also, found out that Who Wants to be a Millionaire on the PS2 is wicked entertaining with a group of college kids on a Saturday night. I highly recommend it.

In case you were having a pleasant day...

Your just going to have to except it in principal, the first letter in Capital is a capitol.

Their going they're in there car.

Epic Boston Weekend

Went to Boston this weekend with copilot Emily (of course I didn't let her drive) for some shenanigans with the one and only Ryan Keating. Took the bus from Portland which is pretty economical, especially with the student discount. Stayed with Ryan in his dorm at MIT, where we met some very cool people and saw some very hilarious dorm murals. At MIT apparently it is totally cool to have a giant mural of pokemon literally having an orgy in the hallway of a dormitory. Jigga-whhhhaattt?

First order of business was the Maine vs. Northeastern Hockey "game" which was more like watching the two lowest ranked teams in Hockey East shoot at each other's skates.... Oh, wait... Well we tied. That was uneventful. Still glad I went to see the game and got to hangout with Mikey B and the rest of the Boston NU crew for the game. Mike always comes up for the Northeastern game in Orono, so I was glad to finally go down. Had some good times meeting Keatings friends and hanging out at MIT.

The next day, I went to the MIT press bookstore. It was awesome, there were really sweet books basically everywhere you looked. I ended up buying three before we left, one on the history of Electronics, another on energy stuff and a book about successful kickstarters. Then the girls hit the mall while Keating and I hit the MIT campus. The MIT museum is sweet and everyone should go there. If you need further convincing, check out this video of this sweet kinetic sculpture. Basically, there were like 50 more things that was nearly as satisfying as this.

There was this awesome gearbox, the final gear will take something like 11 billion years to complete one revolution. You can see the first 3-4 gears actually spinning but beyond that they all look stationary.

This picture doesn't do this kinetic sculpture justice, there is so much going on with it that you really just have to see for yourself. Basically, just loads of simple mechanisms made of wire just flicking, rotating, oscillating and looking cool as hell.

Then, Ryan and I made our way through the Edegerton Center where we met Ed doing the "Saturday thing". Ed is an instructor at the center and organizes some sort of open ended workshop type thing every saturday for whoever might be around. A small group of neighborhood kids come every week, as well as some current MIT students and anyone who happens to walk by. Ryan and I walked by and ended up spending nearly two hours hanging out. I spoke with a freshman who was building an electric skateboard and harvesting the batteries from a previous build that I've seen posted on the internet (I saw a lot of stuff from the internet actually). I also taught a middle schooler about electricity. The whole time we were there was actually pretty magical and it's hard to convey just how cool it was. I wish there was a "Saturday thing" around here, Ed actually even offered to come up to Maine for a weekend and have one. 

After that, we went to the Media lab and checked out the cool stuff there. Played pingpong on this table that projects fish onto it, the fish respond to the sound the ball makes. There are a bunch of microphones mounting underneath the table that triangulate the sound. It's not super accurate but it is fun to watch the fish all dart back and forth as you play a game. 

A laser harp Ed made

Ping-pong fishes

Had a delayed voyage home due to some Emily mis-adventures but made it back late Sunday night. Oh, I also went to MITERs and was very surprised at how small it is. 

FIRST Rowboatics

Another year, another Rowboatics competition.  There is a team from a local high school that I am helping out.  This year's game is cool/hard, as we've never had Frisbees as game pieces.

Pretty hard to mentor and work.  Go to work for 8 hours... then robotics for 5 more.  I'll have some more pictures/videos/comments later.  Nap.  Just wanted to post something because I know I've been slacking.

Grad School

I have 58 tabs open, just so all the info I need to fill out these apps is readily available.

I've done all the dirty work now, all thats really left is the essays and financial aid. Then I can go back to Civilization V, I miss it so.

Heading back to Alfred next week. Either heading down Thursday or Friday. Planning on going to NYC next weekend with Elliot to catch a comedy show at the Comedy Cellar. Then hell starts up right where it left off, though this time with a few fluff classes to keep insanity at bay. Got things to look forward to though. Boffer is organizing a large scale campus civil war, we have an army from Alfred State invading, factions with generals running about wreaking havoc and hopefully some archery if I have a say. Speaking of bows:

That's the youth recurve bow I made from PVC pipe. The string is threaded fishing line served with some brown nylon thread. The arrows have duct tape fletchings and are sharpened with a pencil sharpener to shoot at the cardboard target I have out back. This one is my proof of concept. The next one I make is going to be a horsebow with tapered ends and a faux wood finish (shoe polish!).

Also my Uncle got me a late Christmas present:

Only cost $12.50 and has everything to make 2 gallons of American Light. Excited to try it out and then head over to Beers of the World in Rochester and get some more adventurous ingredients.

Thanks for distracting me.

Break Update

On my way home I went to visit Tony. There we resolved to post as often as possible this break. I now look back on this memory with a certain fondness. Some shit I said at Tony's:

1. Going to post daily on this blog.
2. Going to apply to grad school next week.
3. Going to look into summer jobs.
4. Going to work on the Jeep sitting out in the yard.
5. Going to work on Grandma's house.

Let's analyze this bullshit that came out of my mouth.

Going to post daily on this blog.

Hehe, I'm funny.

Going to apply to grad school next week.

As of this time I have succeeded in at least shrinking my list. This has been done in large part by having schools drop off the list as their deadline passes. On that note, Ian, I'm probably not coming to Seattle. Partially the early deadline, mostly didn't want to drop close to a hundred dollars to apply to a school I can't get into with my grades. Oh well. Now that I have a list I have 6 days to apply to most of them with the 15th deadline. Fuck me.

Going to look into summer jobs.

Hehe, I'm funny.

Going to work on the Jeep sitting out in the yard.

We actually did the first couple of nights. The engine turns over so we bought a battery for it and got it all hooked up. Next step was taking the bitch out of the ground. Then it hit below zero and the ground froze. See you in the spring truck. I'll go out and take a picture of it in the light at some point so you got an idea what we're working with.

Going to work on Grandma's house.

This is pretty much why I haven't done other things, I have done this in spades. We replaced her foundation, redid the plumbing, cleaned the house, redid the floors, installed a shower, other shit. There is still a lot more to be done. 

See here's the thing, my grandmother is addicted to home improvement. One year we took her Lowe's card away after she cut the cable to pay for more lumber, leaving my chair bound grandfather bored as hell. A man has to be able to watch his Steven Seagal films. Every time I go over I have to take time to figure out where everything is since she changes the wall configuration every week. The other thing is, she doesn't quite do it right. She does home improvement like I do reading, get about half way through and then go on to a different project. As a result her house is half put together all over the place. We tried to plug something in and pulled the socket out of the wall, it wasn't screwed in. Went down to the basement, hit my head on a pipe, everything fell apart. She didn't seal the joints on the pipes! Everything in the house, floor, appliances, the tv, everything is covered in paint. It's going to be a big job. The thing is, she hasn't stopped. Every night we've been there we go to eat supper and find saw dust and fresh accidental cuts on her dining room table from carpentry.

So things I've done in place of things I should do.

1. Civilization V
2. Caught up on The Office
3. Made a homemade Humpty Dumpty BBQ Chip clone.
4. Civilization V
5. Made a bow and arrow from PVC and wooden dowel. This time it even works!
6. CIVILIZATION V
7. CIVILIZATION V

In case you didnt' get the point by now.

I'm going to pretty up the bows and post some pics. Also might post some opinions about world events or something who knows. Anything that isn't applying to grad school. 

Merry Christmas Pika!

After reading my boss' (Ben) blog, I discovered that we now have our very own bridgeport milling machine at Pika! Merry Christmas to us! I am super pumped about that, you can read all about it on Ben's Blog. Quite the project, moving that thing into place.

I'm in VW mode at the moment, collecting and cleaning parts for the next phase of motor assembly. I've shared the latest progress on facebook and my Build Thread. Amazing how unorganized things get when you leave them sitting for a few months. Probably my initial unorganized method of take it apart, throw it in a bag and keep going didn't really help. I think I've got most of the parts I need though. I will be buying new pushrod tubes and carb rebuild kits (if the carbs are worth saving). I've got a surprising amount of engine tins ready for action, all the sandblasting and painting from two summers ago will pay off eventually.

The more I look at bay window bus stuff the cooler I think they look when they're lowered. I've found myself drooling over the stuff at Wagens West, which is the premier place for all your bay window bus lowering needs. I never understood why it is so expensive to lower a bus though, I've seen people take stock I beams and cut them up to convert them for air ride suspension and it doesn't look THAT impossible. I mean it can't be all the bad to narrow a beam and maybe adjust it for one height. The Wagen West beams are adjustable though, which is cool. I think fabricating your own "horseshoe plates" wouldn't be too bad though. Here is the kit for lowering a bus, and you see what I mean by expen$ive. I'll probably start with stock height and everything and maybe one day make some suspension modifications, but that is miles down the road. Probably nothing extreme, just useable... kind of like this...

To the untrained eye this may not even look lowered

While this guy is going to the extreme.

I like that single cab a lot but it would pain me to take it on a Maine road.

Picked up my alternators for the bus engine (one from each engine I scavenged) they both checked out alright. I'll go with the newer looking one that doesn't make a funny sound when I spin it. The guy who tested them was pretty cool. He was a fellow motor connoisseur and I ended up talking to him for a while about electrical engineering stuff. He went to the University of Rhode Island and has been fixing alternators and car problems his whole life. He didn't charge me for the alternator testing which I thought was awesome! There seems to be a lot of comradery in engineering disciplines and I felt like old pals with the guy before I left.

Dropped some more parts off at the machine shop including the fuel pump, carbs, oil pump, oil cleaner, etc. Apparently I need a thermostat unit, mine was broken. That will be hard to find. I've got some more brackets and parts I need to sandblast and paint now too. Also, apparently my motor is in high demand at the machine shop and several customers have asked if I am interested in selling it. One guy asked me while we were assembling it the other day and he was dead serious. I told him "no way" because he knows how long it takes to get the point I am and how difficult it is to find all the parts to get there. Handing over some cash is much, much easier.

Planning on heading North tomorrow at some point and leaving Litchfield behind. Time to start making some more PCBs and get set for the new semester.

Winter Breakin'

In an effort to reduce winter break boredom, improve my writing skills and increase the amount of interesting this blog contains (minus one writing skills point) here goes nothing. 

Met up with Dean, Sam and Ian the day after Christmas and strutted about the Maine Mall. Always a pleasure to see these gents but our time is always cut short. While milling about Best Buy, I discovered this spent nip of Black Velvet.... is it a thing to drink in Best Buy now? Is this what we are coming to?

But now you'll be even more susceptible than ever to purchasing warranty plans you simply do NOT need! 

Anyways, I also read Endurance as per Ian's recommendation which was awesome. Simply mind blowing that those guys survived 17 months in such terrible conditions and were able to sail hundreds of miles to eventual safety only using a sextant and compass for navigation. Those guys make Bear Grylls and Les Stroud look like pansies. 

We have my sister's cat, Charlie living at home now and he has acclimated very well here. After he fell from a tree a day or so after he arrived, he has been very calm and seems satisfied. Here is a picture of him guarding my door.

The price is one minute of petting. 

Here is Charlie helping put away the Christmas tree....

Why do cats love boxes? You would too, if you were cat sized. 

Sorry. I don't think I've ever posted a cat picture to the internet... just had to get that out of my system.

Anyways, I made a pilgrimage to Worcester with Cheney to meetup with the Lynch, Dougie, Corey crew for New Years. It was a small crew almost entirely of dudes (go figure) but it was a blast. Always good to catch up with some old chums and ring in the new year. I will say Doug and I went rogue for a little adventure of our own which involved a couple of very interesting bars. For the full account I'll have to tell the story in person though, it just can't be done justice in a blog post.

Today I dropped off my skis at the ski shop for a little clean up, hoping to hit the slopes this semester after a 7 year hiatus. I always enjoyed skiing but never found the time or enough interested people to participate. I have a couple of friends from Orono who are planning to frequent the slopes this season, so there should be ample opportunity to tag along.

This is the longest I've been home without working (in one capacity or another) since.... maybe sometime during MSSM. Even during MSSM it seems like the breaks were filled with something like rescuing a video project or just.... something. It has been a little bland and I have been sleeping an enormous amount. I think I went to bed at 11:30 last night and woke up at 12:30PM today..... I thought I died.

If all goes well, I should be beginning to assemble the lower end of my VW bus engine this coming Saturday. Pretty pumped about that and I plan on taking making pictures. Another thing I did this break was finally work through a tutorial on FEMM which is a free finite elements software package that allows you to 2D simulations for magnetics, heat and stress. Pretty sweet really. Also, extremely relevant for my line of work. Here is a pretty picture of some neodymium magnets in some very poor electrical steel.

You know that looks cool.

 I think I will be returning to the Orono area a little bit early this break so I can start research for inverter stuff. I'm doing a research fellowship through CUGR (I know right... cougar... get it) this semester with Professor Weise. We're doing some inverter research that coordinates with some fellows in the mechanical department who are making a wave energy converter. Apparently there should be a prototype for us to play with pretty soon. I'll be making some PCBs and stuff initially and then putting together some inverter stuff for us to actually use. Should be really cool and I'm really looking forward to it. Additionally it should be a good way for me to learn some tricks of the trade that may be useful when I start work.

Made a christmas gift to myself and bought this AWESOME flash drive. Is it overpriced? Slightly. Is it blazing fast and completely badass? Shit yes. Pretty pumped to save oscilloscope screen shots to this bad boy, talk about overkill.

I am currently trying to rid my dad's computer of an enormous amount of spyware. I installed google chrome and it wouldn't let me sign into gmail. It said the cookie settings were wrong. They aren't. Basically there is some spyware on there that redirects you to a bunch of stuff and is in someway interfering with the cookies on Chrome. For some reason it works on IE but does show an AWESOME tool bar which is infinitely useful and not inconvenient at ALL. Spybot didn't pick up on the issue either.... oh bother. It's pretty bad too, if I search for anti-spyware stuff it will redirect the links I click from google. Spyware has gone to a whole new level since I bought a mac. Maybe I should just nuke it and start fresh.

Also, this may be of interest to you guys: etotheipi guy's awesome guide to building stuff

Onward with winter break excursions!