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.