Power Electrizzletronics

Was searching through some photos today for those awesome pictures I took of Cheney posing as Suzi from those hilarious facebook pictures. Eventually I found them and it was hilarious, they are easily twice as good as I remember. While I was browsing I found a couple pictures of a typical night in A103. One of which was that nerf dart with the tack in it that landed on my laptop, stuck in but didn't damage anything. Also found this fun picture of Tyler.

Ain't he cunnin'?! 

It's funny looking at old pictures and how young everyone looks... it's actually scary. AHHH. Speaking of that I am definitely feeling like life decisions are starting to kind of come down on me. My inability to make a decision on what the heck I'm doing after May is starting to interfere with my everything. Basically, I am kind of obsessed with power electronics (and motors/generators too) and I don't know what I'm going to do about that.
The reason this has been on my mind is for two reasons, one being that I need to sign up for the GRE or decide that I am legitimately not going to grad school. The other reason is that the new professor in our department who specializes in power electronics wants me to do this undergrad research thing that sounds awesome. Also jobs and stuff. Yeah. I also think that going to grad school is kind of not what I imagine it being, which is me hanging out in a lab building awesome stuff. Grad school is probably a lot of hard bitchy work and some of hanging out in a lab being a boss. Also, the power electronics lab is all new stuff and really good stuff too. I could basically become Umaine's Charles Guan which could be potentially awesome. Of course, I could also do other things and be pretty awesome too. DECISIONS. HELP.

Tomorrow I have a very packed day full of cool stuff. We're taking the t-shirt launcher down the USM in Gorham to the 4-H robotics expo, basically a touchy-feely robotics thing where there is no winner. 4-H is cool though, I was actually in it when I was a youngin' and it's a good organization. I guess the kids can basically build anything (potentially including windmills!) so that could be awesome. Looking forward to inspiring kidos by blasting them with t-shirts, should be a good time. After that I drive back to Orono for our awesome Halloween party. We're having a bunch of people over and supposedly people are getting dressed up but I haven't settled on a costume yet.... so we'll see if that happens or not. Should be a very fun filled day and I will probably require some caffeine at some point late in the day/evening to sustain me. Costume suggestions anyone?

Also, I heard there are entry level positions available at Tesla. I am going to apply, just to try.

Buy Thai

Currently TAing a non calculus based Physics I lab. They are rolling hot wheels down a track and calculating the height to drop them from so it will go round the loop de loop. Very solid physics type lab thing.

Been getting really bored as most groups are done and am now dealing with the two straggler groups that always seem to take an hour longer than the majority. So I've been testing the build quality on the hot wheels cars based on country of origin. My results have shown that the malaysian cars are crap, all of them have wobbly wheels and honestly are just poorly designed. China is only minimally better. You want that hot wheels car to beat all, bitches gotta buy thai. Thailand is producing hot wheels cars with the sturdy axels and the high quality build. Go science!

Oh dear, team "makes things more complicated than they are" just rebuilt their entire track to answer a basic conceptual question, I should not look away like that. Until next time gents.

Quantum Exam Tomorrow (This is studying right?)

Tomorrow I have a fairly important quantum exam to prep for, so I have been for days. Learning all kinds of shit about wave functions and commutators and dirac delta functions and shit. Schrodingers cat may or may not know what hit it after tomorrows exam.

Not much happening of import in Alfred. I may have mentioned last week that I went to see Doug Stanhope live. This man is arguably my favorite comedian I watch, he's got a lot of piss and anger and anyone who has watched Louis Black know how funny that is. Throw in a massive helping of irreverence and alcoholism and you got Doug. Also a fairly substantial batch of libertarianism.

Well anyway he is throwing a national Celebrity Death Pool and me and all my friends are starting a local gambling pool. The Celebrity Death Pool is just like fantasy football, except you pick a team of 20 celebrities and if any of them die you get 100 points minus their age. You can also get bonus points for things like being the only one in your pool to pick the person or if the person dies of breast cancer in breast cancer awareness month. Stuff like that. It's pretty fucking twisted, but I'd be lying if I wasn't excited to get my roster together and put my $5 down. If your friends are nearly as fucked up as mine, I highly recommend getting in on this shit. Unless we want an Athena A death pool? Hehehehehe.

I'm kind of excited. Not gonna lie.

Here's the official site. Death goes live November 23.

Tyler the Workaholic: A Paradox of Epic Proportions

Well after working all day yesterday I actually finished all my work the day before it was due. No rushing prior to class to finish problems. Though that did mean staying up until 4 AM. Time management, getting better, but still needs work. Well got more to do tonight, though a break is scheduled for the Presidential Debate. Will be live tweeting, hopefully with booze.

Also reading this book:

Nuclear Machine Guns in Space: The Book

It costs a fortune on Amazon, so thank goodness for the inter-library loan program. Though that does mean I have only another month to finish it. Should work out though. Five chapters in, very happy so far.

Also Elliot is very sick with like Strep or something and I think he may have just died at his desk, poor little guy.

He's snoring now! Not dead!

That reminds me, time to take more Vitamin C. Talk to you later.

Sunday

Aight Tony.  For serious, that looks crazy awesome.  I have a weakness for human powered things...

Also, I'm not sure if I told you guys about my coworker/potential new roommate Brian.  Brian is super cool. He and his college roommate tricked Chile into giving them a bunch of money to go make a vertical axis windymill.  That didn't really take off (he blames solar panels). Now he's sending Arduinos to space! Talked to the guy who owns the awesome apartment we are looking into.  The pictures of it before the current tenant are very nice, but it sounds like the guy who he is forcing out is pretty awful... so hopefully it looks okay when we take a look next month.

One of my mentors at work gave me a bunch of stuff to read by John McMasters.  I would recommend reading this about him. Most specifically, his comment about his interests: "... professional and avocational interests run together over a wide range of topics, most of which have to do with things that fly or are very old, or both."

Went sailing today, wasn't that windy and then it started pouring.

Other than that, went grocery shopping today.  Next weekend going to Troy... should be fun!

Cider Weekend!

I marked my calendar for the annual cider weekend hosted by the head cool guy of Pika Energy Ben Polito. Cider weekend is just what it sounds like, a weekend of cider making with employees of Pika, friends and family members. This event has been going on for a number of years now and I will say they've got it down to a pretty good process that makes it fun for everyone. Ben and some of the other guys built human powered Cider making equipment that encourages everyone to have a role in the cider making process. They bought about 2000lbs of apples from nearby orchards and got to work.

The process starts with washing the apples and sorting out the rotten ones, some of them are salvageable and get the nasty bits cut off of them before they're thrown in the apple grinder. The apple grinder is powered by two bicyclists that spin a cutting wheel. One person chucks apples into this hopper and other person forces the apples down into the cutting wheel where they are basically turned into mush and spat into a bucket. I grabbed a video of this process in action. I found the bicycling surprisingly leisurely, especially with two people pedaling. The cutting wheel can get going pretty fast (almost too fast) but it makes you feel like you're doing something physical and making delicious cider at the same time.

After the bucket is filled with obliterated apple mush, it is brought to the human powered cider press. They take huge scoops of the apple mush and wrap it in fabric (bedsheets basically) and use a wooden form to get it all square. Stacking many of these sheets and putting wooden grates between them allows you to press a whole bunch of apple mush at one time. Of course then you need a sizable press to get the juice out. Someone did some math or something and figured out that a bicycle with a flywheel could spin up a hydraulic pump enough to create sufficient pressure to support this kind of activity. It looks something like this.

10 Year old kids love manual labor!

Note the stream of cider gushing out of the press and into a metal pot. We had a small crew of folks collecting cider in pots and funneling it into smaller containers. You can actually drink the cider right out of the press which is pretty badass. They keep a good portion of the cider for fermenting into hard cider for next year. All said and down we produced about 187 gallons of cider and were struggling to find containers to it all in. Here is a picture of the small containers, this doesn't include the 6 carboys and maybe 5 plastic equally sized containers. This is a lot of liquid!

One of these was an empty Moxie bottle... how much more Maine can you get?!

Bottled hard cider, not all is pictured here. Total of about 6 dozen bottles.

Folks brought potluck food which was amazing and paled in comparison to my crackers and cheese, hey I'm a college kid. After the cider making we paddled around on the ocean in some kayaks and canoes for a little while. Met a bunch of MIT alum and one current student who is going to work at Makani power after he graduates this year. Needless to say, we had a lot to talk about and got along very well. He actually interned at Pika the summer before I did, which was cool. We had a strong connection for being hardcore about windmills. 

Also met a couple of folks who work at Keystone Tower Systems which sounds awesome. They essentially are building equipment to manufacture huge wind turbine tower (larger than 14 ft in diameter at the base) on site so they do not have to be shipped. Moving tower components is a huge problem and is limited by how wide the roads are, typically anything over 14 feet wide can't be transported on the road for any appreciable distance. We're talking spirally welded humungous towers. These guys are eventually going to be building manufacturing equipment that will weld three inch thick steel piece by piece into an enormous structure. Pretty mind blowing stuff really. All of these guys work out of  Greentown Labs which seems to be where a bunch of the cool kids in Boston hang around. One of Pika's employees has a desk there too. 

Anyways, I got a couple jugs of cider (both hard and not so hard) to take up to Milford with me. Got some words of wisdom on my senior project from a co-worker too. Also, stole my mothers car and left the two-door caddy home because the ABS light is on and the engine is skipping and has been for several weeks. I have convinced my folks that it is time for a new ride, so we started car shopping a bit today. Checked out a 2005 subaru forester with 105k miles for $6500, pretty clean car too. Loads of room in those things but they aren't the most stylish car ever built, definitely practical though. Let the car shopping begin! 

I leave you with a scene of myself in 30 years....

Boffer Weekend

Not too much going on this weekend in Alfred, NY. Yesterday I met for the regular two hour Boffer meeting and then headed over to Alfred State where there is another Boffer Club with slightly different rules. A lot of them come over here for Boffer but we usually don't follow them back over to their side. So I got four hours of Boffer in. Satisfied.

Got a lot of work to do tonight so trying to keep this brief. Actually got a letter yesterday telling me to bring my grades up or don't bother coming back next semester. So senioritis needs to take a serious back seat.

But on the bright side, Elliot got me a SpaceX hat, so it all balances out.

Only Elon can get me to put on a baseball cap. Only Elon.

If I don't seem to be posting to often, it's because I'm trying to keep my graduation date locked on May 2013. See you around boys.

Two Streams

I just peed with two streams.

I just felt that certain life moments need to be shared.

Break Is Over

This break is going so fucking well, what time is it, FUCK. It is now Wednesday. Fuck me up the ass, I need at least another month.

So after quite possibly the worst week I have had academically since Joseph Siddiqui told me to take Statistics, I have got to enjoy a lovely 4 day weekend. Elliot was literally the only person I know who went home for break, it's just too short for it to be worth most peoples time. I've never stayed here for break since I always visited Ashley, so I did not realize how awesome 4 days of no homework in Alfred, NY can be with everyone else you know. We made it more fun by dedicating ourselves to doing all the things that Elliot would have enjoyed if he had been here so we could rub in his face with a Powerpoint presentation.

First of all I got Boffer Club to meet three times. Also we have a snazzy new website that I slapped together on Google Sites this weekend. The club remains on a constant accelerating popularity as people tell their friends and those friends tell their friends and I am getting very bad with names as there are suddenly several to remember. I'm also enjoying the fact that as President, my word seems to be the immutable word of the Lord. All I say is truth, even when I lie or joke people seem to believe me. It's quite amusing. Several people now believe that one of my friends has to drop a shield with a keyhole design on it if it is hit with a foam key blade. This is not in the rules and is borderline LARP but I watched the bitch drop his shield.

Then Josh and I went on several random adventures to Jenkin's Farm, Salvation Army and a long pipeline that runs under the University. We did a 2 AM trip to the local grocery store with several people in the car being forced to tell the Aristocrats joke. On Sunday I had bbq pulled pork smoked for over 7 hours while watching the Red Bull jump.

Sorry I disappeared for so long, I know you can't tell but I took a two day break in writing this. Sorry.

So anyway, on Monday we went to Sprague's Maple Restaurant, which is essentially Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory for maple syrup. You walk into the place through a glass hallway in the middle of their factory floor and arrive at the restaurant, a big log cabin dining room complete with animatronic animals and moose antler chandeliers. We sat down at a table under a painting of three bears taking a canoe through white water rapids. Then all nine of us ordered the Big Run breakfast, 2 strips bacon, 2 eggs, homefries and all you can eat pancakes in either buttermilk, buckwheat, apple cinnamon or pumpkin spice varieties. Those would then be slathered in the standard, apricot, blueberry or strawberry flavored maple syrups available at the table. We cleared three full bottles of syrup in our stay. Ron Swanson would have been proud. A lot of people even got bacon to go (that shit is the thickest cut bacon I ever done seened).

Then yesterday I went to class, saw Doug Stanhope and talked to you lovely bitches. Now I have work to do, again. So good to be back?

Adam Savage Should be the World's Role Model

(Before we begin I would like to point out that Honeycrisp Apples are amazing.  It's like a cross between a Macintosh and a Gala and comically oversized. I have never seen them on the East Coast, but damn you guys are missing out.)

The "Edge of Space" jump: A corresponding fall to a schoolroom globe begins 1 millimeter above its surface. I'm just saying. -Neil deGrasse Tyson

I honestly lost a lot of respect for him at that instant in time.  I get that he's all about far off planets and galaxies.  I get that a lot of space people really hate it when the "lame-stream media" talk about vaguely high stuff in the atmosphere as being in space, when in fact what really matters about space is velocity.  But while he's been busy preaching off his high astronomy horse, I think he's missed his own message.

STEM encompasses a really large number of fields.  As much as Neil loves astronomy, he'd be well to remember that not every little kid that loves LEGOs or a telescope will grow up to be an astronomer.  I love old airplanes, and I love talking to people about them -- but I do not expect everyone to walk away an old airplane freak.  What I do hope people walk away with some small bit of inspiration.

In short, some crazy Austrian guy jumping out of a balloon at 125k feet is cool.  Really fucking cool.  So cool in fact, some little kid might get interested and start googling, and end up the next Tony Nuzzo, Tyler Beaulieu, or Ian Curtis. (yes, I dig the Oxford comma.  Interestingly enough, most British writing standards actually advise against its use)  And to diminish that with some offhanded mark is really counterproductive.

To end on a positive note, I think Adam Savage is the world's greatest role model.  He's just so passionate.  His pursuit of minute details on his prop replicas is something I really respect, and you get the feeling that he is one of those people that it is just interested in everything.  If I don't know about it, I might be interested.  And even if it's not my pressing concern at the moment, it might be useful down the road.

His TEDtalk does such a good job of summing up my world view.

tested.com has some really great videos of his workshop, but you've got to scroll through a bunch of pointless crap to get to.

A New Desk

Friday night me and few coworkers checked out Lazy Boy Brewing in Everett.  Beer was pretty good (mostly IPAs and Belgians).  Its basically just a bunch of tables scattered throughout their brewery, so they don't serve food yet.  Which is okay, because their is a pizza place down the street that delivers.  So we got delivery pizza.  That was also pretty good, even though it had olives. I have gone my entire life insisting that olives ruin any food they touch, but they were actually good on that pizza.  Feels like my life has been turned upside down.

Saturday I cleaned and made the dumb choice to head down to IKEA to get a new desk.  I figured people would've cleared out by 6PM on a Saturday, but apparently not.  I did get my desk, but it *barely* fit in my car.  When I rolled the IKEA wagon up next to my hatch it looked liked it was gonna be a no go.  But the Impreza came through, and now I've got this sick workstation. (Note Howard Hughes)

Sunday I went to this great local coffee shop down the street from my house called the Spotted Cow.  As a local Seattle coffee place it's expensive (although honestly only like 50 cents more than Starbucks).  However, the coffee is goddamn delicious.  I have no idea how they do it, but the coffee tastes like 90% as good as it smells.  I like coffee, but I think in general it tastes about 25% as good as it smells.  Their large is called a Brahma, which is apparently a Hindu cow god. TIL.

While I was there I hopped on my Kindle Paperwhite (SO GOOD!) and started reading Freakonomics.  It's pretty good, but last week I read The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, who writes the FiveThirtyEight blog for the NYT and I honestly liked that significantly more.  Nate does a much better job at explaining the math and logic behind is models, I feel like the Freakonomics guys just want me to take their word for stuff.

And this afternoon I got a call from the Evergreen Soaring people, and potentially as soon as this weekend I'll be flying up there.  Which will be super awesome.

Motors, motors, motors.

Been working on some senior project stuff this week but progress is slow gents. Two steps forward and one step back if you know what I mean... and in some cases just two steps back.

Anyways, last night we got all festive at our place and carved pumpkins. We retrieved a butt load of pumpkin seeds that we are going to bake today too. Also one of the women folk made pumpkin pie and I've been drinking apple cider so I'm feeling pretty into the whole Fall thing right now. Anyways, without further ado.....

Pumpkins!

So..... which one is mine? No.... no it's not a peace sign guys, its supposed to be a windmill. Also making an appearance is the Subaru logo, a freaky looking cat and one that is eating a gourd (second from the right). Carving pumpkins was actually pretty damn fun and made the kitchen smell like pumpkin which was cool. It was a fun night for sure with just a small group of people at the house. Apparently we'll be having a halloween bash on the 27th and we're going all out on this shit. Bobbing for apples, doughnuts on a string, candy, etc. It's going to be a pretty ridiculous scene really.

Today I've got to study up for my electric drives test and chip away at a few more things. Heavily considering buying the PCBs up for sale on etotheipi guy's website...... $10 for the lot.... I should just bite.

Opportunity!

Hello World!

After a ""fun"" time in Maine, I've been pretty busy.  There is a ton of stuff to do at work, and doing lots of overtime to get it done and make more money.

I got an email today and I got invited to start flying gliders!!! Whoooo!  So that's going to be a thing.

Also there is a GREAT opportunity on the horizon.  My RPI friends are going to a cruise the week of March 11th next year and have asked me if I want to come along.  I have consulted the webernets, and both of you are ALSO on spring break that week.  My friends said tickets were like $450 for the week.

Super Hell Week: From Hell

MSSM, move the fuck over, Hell Week 5000 is currently in progress at Alfred University. I have not slept, sleep is for the week and failing. With the potent mixture of papers, homework, take home midterms and regular midterms this is what the seventh layer of super hell that Hitler undoubtedly occupies must look like. I feel drunk right now, though that is just sleep deprivation. I haven't gone to half my classes this week because they just get in the way of the homework. Break is this weekend, just a little fucking further, god god damnit damnit. I hallucinated spiders crawling on my damn Modern Algebra homework last night and took that as a cue to take my deserved two hour nap. I'm about out of money due to the ridiculous investments made in the Monster Energy Drink company, they are out of several brands now at the Unimart. Decided to take 5 minutes and type all this, probably cost me a letter grade in something. Fuck the mother fuckers.

Break is this weekend. A man under this much pressure is bound to eventually collapse into a lower energy level, violating the Pauli Exclusion Principle and going Supernova. Even my jokes are relevant to this shit!

Tonight it lets off a lot, good thing too. Elliots 21st, I will not be feeling feelings later.

I demand a Google Hangout this weekend. I'm spending break just in my dorm room so I'll actually be bored for once. Sounds nice.

See you then.

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. 

Science!

Monday. Well that says it all now doesn't it.

Started the day in Philosophy, where we are discussing the philosophy of science. Hence I've actually have been waking up for the class as I have to defend science against the mob. There is a person in my class who has been arguing that science is illegitimate because its just a book written by a few guys thousands of years ago which we blindly follow. You really can't make that kind of shit up. I want to read this Book of Science, might need some peer review.

So as tends to happen in these classes, we had to go over how the scientific method works. So the teacher drew a dead flower in a pot and asked us to come up with a hypothesis for why it died and an experiment to verify it.

Science!

He actually encouraged us to come up with ridiculous answers. Here is a list of my responses.

Hypothesis: The plant exists in a house with small children who honestly thought they were being helpful when they peed on the plant.

Test: See if the soil smells like urine.

Hypothesis: The plant exists in a house with inebriated adults who honestly thought they were being helpful when they peed on the plant.

Test: Similar.

Hypothesis: The plant was suffering from extreme loneliness in solitary confinement after it was torn from it's home land, thrown into it's cold lifeless terra cotta cell to live its life for the entertainment of its captures. After years of this mental anguish, the plant decided to exit early.

Test: Check for a note.

Hypothesis: You know the movie Weekend at Bernies. The events were very similar to the 1989 film Weekend at Bernies.

Test: Watch surveillance footage while simultaneously viewing the 1989 comedy classic Weekend at Bernies. Note similarities in your copy books.

Science!

Anyway, have a good week Gents.