Experimenting with pneumatic shock-cannons... like potato guns without the potato. As a noisemaking device. For... reasons.
Make a simple one with an (off-label) valve and a pressure chamber and a resonating outlet. No boom, or bang, more of a loud fart. Not impressive. I've used an industrial quick-release valve before too, for similar results. A LARGER quick release valve costs too much... but there are other ways.
Did a test with a piston-valve (specialy built into the device) in a simple configuration that looked iffy to me, but the inter-tubes swears it works. It didn't. Work for me at least. That time. But there are several configurations, and a variety of different design decisions to make.
I manually forced a few things and the piston-valve direction is definitely very promising... got a decent bang-ish result.
Now, though, I want to use a design that incorporates o-rings. Large o-rings, but I don't know WHICH SIZE I need yet, so I can't BUY one from Grainger.
So I need an o-ring splice or creation kit. These cost about $30 and can be provided by Grainger or Austin Seal on Monday or so. Very sad. I want one now! I have experiments to conduct this weekend! Money to spend! Things to not blow up!
Does anyone I know have an O-Ring splice kit with 0.270" cord? In town? Before Monday?
Friday was fun; tango and then west coast swing (both at easy levels, so I could focus on subtleties and not remembering the darned steps).
There was this one poor woman I danced with early on, who I _think_ missed the first couple of days (makes it harder to start, that's for darned sure) and was wearing open toed shoes (a definite mistake if you aren't very sure you can follow safely). Apparently she was even warned by friends about open-toed shoes, but wore 'em anyway.
So, to get to the ugly bit, I paired up, we closed the partnership, and I took of with a bold lead right to where she had planted her foot. Oops. That was not a happy toe. So, after a couple of timid false starts, I moved us to a calm corner and went over some vital basics of following for her survival. I really didn't want to cripple her further.
Seems she was told a wrongness about how to step back... she was stepping, with a definite foot plant, and not gliding or sliding the foot back. As I was trying to help, the teacher wanders over, noticing our little pow-wow and offers a nice word of encouragement. I was then able to keep dancing without actually crippling her! It was very encouraging!
We left a tad early from West Coast Swing to get to the airport in time to pick up my son Nik, who is 18 this year, by the way. An actual adult! It's neat and weird... it doesn't seem like so long. Definitely raises issues of my own mortality, and my father's for that matter, that I'm not really keen on addressing. It's good to have him here, though.
Saturday was absorbed in the Taiji Classic tournament, a dojo-only event still (in this, its second year), but it may expand as we get used to it. It started at 9 and I got home about 3:30pm. I spent a chunk of the time experimenting with this program I was designing, but I finally decided I didn't like the direction I was going and so I re-vectored my efforts. Ultimately, later in the weekend, I decided I didn't need to write it at all -- I could do what I needed to do without writing code, even though I wanted to write the code. It would be a side-track on a project that needed more direct action... not distractions. I'll still write it! But... later.
I did help judge one round of push-hands, and that was kind of fun, but otherwise the event cut a large chunk out of a day I would have rather spent doing something else.
I was a competitor, though, too, in the black-sash push-hands, which was done... last. Of course. In the class, in practice, I'm good; I am up there with the best in the class, and I enjoy performing the art of push-hands. But in a tournament setting, I get all wound up and I also lose faith in my ability to use softness to overcome hardness... instead, I reflect the intensity of my opponent.
My first opponent was a nice, friendly, but also very aggressive and motivated kung-fu student (who, I'm pretty sure, has done training before; he's skilled and enthusiastic). I lost by two points, but I should have won. But I don't regret losing to him; he did well, and I responded incorrectly to his style. It was educational.
But, by the format we had, with only four competitors in a double elimination, that meant by losing my first match I would then compete for third place. I was very unhappy about this.
MG, a wonderful fellow student, and a dedicated practitioner, fought HC, another co-student, but one without the same strength in push-hands. MG won his first round by, I don't remember exactly, 6 or 9 points or so. So he would be vying for first or second place.
My second round was then against HC and I won by 20 points, with HC not scoring. I felt bad about that, but I was annoyed, so I just... did it. And I did my push-hands correctly then, too; because I was reflecting my opponent.
MG the lost to kung-fu guy, so the ranking was 1, 2, 3=me. I was pissed. I got wound up for the event, and I should have taken 2nd or 1st but I didn't because of the ordering (I did better by points, though, but that doesn't count). I'm still annoyed by it.
If I'm going to compete, I want to win. If I'm going to win in a tournament setting, I need to practice that style of push-hands (which is significantly different than what we do in class). Or I need to compete a lot more often, preferably in cases where I'm not desiring to win, so I can learn to use the correct softness in competition instead of getting all wound up and reflecting the hardness of my opponents. I know in my head that is the right way, but my body doesn't want to do it. Or, I need to compete not at all.
Damn it.
The rest of Saturday was mostly a waste; I was pissed off, and my left hand hurt; it was almost crippled Sunday morning even, with the big joint of the middle finger almost frozen up. It's better now.
Ended Saturday by watching City of Lost Children with Nik, who hadn't seen it before. Wonderful, surreal, beautiful movie. French movies tend to be absolutely horrible, but this one (and others by the director) are lovely.
Sunday was a tad better, though I hadn't gotten quite over my annoyance at the tournament. I'm going to have to speak up in class monday about it. I have things I need to learn still.
Did some planning for a shockwave cannon bang-making device, went to the store, stared at supplies, realized I had made mistakes in my list-making, went home, redrew stuff, rethought a couple of bits, went to the store again, bought PVC, and did some fitting and preparing of that PVC. Tomorrow Nik and I will glue some stuff together, and Tuesday we'll either build more or test... with the final testing to be done before next weekend so I can do another build and document it as well.
In the middle of the day, I spent an hour and some with a nice friend (LJ user tia_tarina), making a mould of a Tardis Key; a fairly simple flat thing really. Decided to do a two-part mould out of body-double; the purple, slow-setting version, because it's thinner and flows a bit better. While the first half was setting (of a two-part block mould, cast in a bit of spare PVC), she bought Nik and I lunch (Sparkylibrarian wasn't up for food right then and took a nap instead). After, we put in the second half and, once it had gelled sufficiently, she took it home. It was really nice talking with her! I hadn't spent much 1on1 time before (none, really) though I'd been to her property and helped make a zombie movie there, and she's friends of friends, and so forth. So that was a nice interlude in my weekend.
To wrap up Sunday, I did the minimum necessary yard work for the week; did another test shave on the cat with a new clipper (cuts good, the noise is a bit more annoying to the cat), watched Zatoichi 3 with Nik and M2 (er, Sparkylibrarian), and now I'm typing this though I should be reading and getting ready to sleep.
So, good night all.
Mmmm, I mentioned Abbott Ale the other day; yeah, my lovely wife (M2, also known as SparkyLibrariann on LJ) got me a dozen of them (Central Market, on clearance). This post is under that influence. Yum.
Lessee, I got the actual-sized Pachinko balls in the mail just the other day and then, with the proper load of balls in the device, discovered that the reward mechanism was sticky; it just didn't want to do it's thing when you dropped a ball into one of the little flowers or other thingies on the playing field (such as the Red White and Orange USA drop. Orange? Yeah).
Soooooo.... I took this little access panel off and found that one of the teeter-totters was quite sticky. Most of the mechanisms inside the machine are a miracle of easy travel, but this thing was downright stiff. Definitely not right. Unfortunately, to GET to it I had to remove a large back panel, and to get THAT off I had to remove a couple of other smaller bits, too.
It turns out that the screws in this 1970's era Pachinko machine are... crap. Random lengths, badly cut, really really cheap self-tapping screws. But fortunately not too hard to get out, just a bit tricky getting them back IN again.
I finally dug my way down to this teeter-totter and pulled it off of its pivot. Very sticky. A little oil didn't help either. So, looking at it under the magnifying lens, as well as probing it with a metal rod, I discovered two things. One was that the metal-to-plastic interface was cracking badly, though it was still holding firm. The other was that the metal inside the plastic had apparently shifted, so that it was slightly occluding the pivot hole. Which made it stick.
Using the flexshaft (my industrial-grade dremel-esque tool), I was able to grind the metal back a tiny bit, but it wasn't quite good enough. So I dug through my extensive collection of drill bits to find one that was a snug fit, and which STUCK when it hit the metal occlusion. Using this I was able to ream the hole out slightly, which returned the teeter-totter to perfect action.
A bit of re-assembly later and ... tada! A perfectly working Pachinko machine! Next up, re-wire it for LEDs so we can see the "bonus" and "needs-more-balls" light-up action.
Ooo, on a different note (remember, bits and pieces here) -- I got paid for my three articles! Yay! Simreal has money again! Of course, that won't last long. But it's nice.
And as an extention to THAT note, I'm contracted for two more -- they musta liked me. I hope the readers don't hate me; that's always my concern. I do things _my_ way; I have a philosophy of tech writing, and a sometimes odd approach to projects, and, well, I'm just still insecure about it all. Ah well. It does lead me to understand better why so many celebrities are crazy though.
I have some good lead time on these particular articles, so I spent last week doing research on the first article (a thing that goes "bang"; no details until it hits print, sorry). Then the weekend staring at parts at the various home improvement super stores in my area (dammit, but copper is _expensive_. Beautiful, but out of my price range; maybe with the earnings). And then home for research. And then out for staring. And then home for research. And then out for buying.. and buying. Lotsa parts! Next weekend... experimentation!
Also on Saturday, house cleaning! Shop cleaning! My son flies in this Friday for a month (of five weekends), so I figured it would be polite to find the darned floor. Such mundane matters often escape my notice. The kitchen, too, is almost ready, and his bedroom MAY have sheets by then.
Of course, I go through great effort to plan his vacation time so it does not overlap the July Taiji competition in Dallas (which I'm probably not going to go to _anyway_, though I ought to. I might. Just to do push-hands.) Well after I book the flight and so forth, my dojo schedules their own competition... for this Saturday, the day after he comes in. So I'll be at that event from 9 in the morning to 3 in the afternoon (dammit; I have an article to write; fire to burn; things to explode; a son to visit).
Tonight at Taiji, we did a bunch of push-hands to warm up and I did very well. So well that Sifu saw fit to push with me and put me in my place, and then instruct everyone on how to better beat me. So I guess that's good, right?
I expect to win. But I hate competitions; I can get all bent out of shape wanting to win, and that makes it less fun... so then I slack and do badly, and feel crappy about it. I just want to play, and to exercise! Ah well.
Push-hands is great though; it's my favorite part, and we don't do it nearly enough. I wonder if I can find other practitioners in town to play with. Let me know if you know any, or want to play.
Hmm, last night, driving home from Sushi (with our massage therapist and his lady, very nice folks; he used to do massage for Cirque de Soleil, and she was travelling with them, too! Some interesting stories) we saw a turtle in our street. We live very close to a creek, so that's not too surprising I guess, but this was one very lost, very large, turtle, bumping into the curb and looking all kinds of out of place in the roadway.
The wife puts on the breaks, firmly, just as I snap my belt undone (bonk goes the head on the down-slope of the roof), and I pop out and pick the fellow up. Ingrate, it hisses at me! Tries to swim in air a bit and, getting no traction, it pulls its feet in a bit. It alternates between pulling its head in and poking it out, mouth wide, so it might eat me. Poor turtle.
We drive around to the bushy bits by the mailbox (which is much closer to its home than where it was) and I drop it off in the tall grass. During all this, it completely fails to consume my flesh or instill any kind of fear at all. It's going to have to work harder next time.
Hope it wasn't a lost pet... 'cause now it's gone!
turgle
I have two calipers -- one dial caliper and one nice digital one.
I measured a ball bearing the other day on the dial caliper; I couldn't remember where I had hidden my digital one. And, somehow, I read .43125 as .3125. Yeah. I totally dropped the first digit. My brain was probably fried from work, or play, or it being noon, or something.
Sooooooooooo .3125 translates into a tidy 8mm (and 5/16") and .43125 is darned close to 11mm, but not quite 7/16".
It turns out that our Pachinko machine does in fact use the industry standard 11mm ball; I just measured it wrong.
Dang it.
Anybody need any 5/16" ball bearings?
And now I need to go buy some 11mm bearings... eBay has 'em, as do specialty stores. They cost more than 5/16", though.
Dang it.
I suppose I mentioned earlier (I _hope_ I did) that I finished my school effort in the end of June. Of course, my accursed teacher of that last class took four or five weeks to get around to GRADING it... so I didn't get my final grade until this last Monday (May 4), and THAT did propogate through the system until I nagged the admins Wednesday and Friday. So, I paid all the fees and so forth and so on and in a week or two, in theory (though probably without some additional hassle, all praise be to Murphy the farking bastard) I'll have a college degree. Finally. Worthless piece of paper that it is in every respect EXCEPT that it will lead directly to a promotion and new career path at work. Which was why I went there in the first place.
Actually, that AND the fact that I want to get my doctorate in a few years, after I recover. I think I want it in software engineering design / tools / systems. The state of "engineering" for software engineering is still mostly very poor. But that's a different story.
Mmm, Abbot Ale, imported from England, very tasty. Thanks Paul.
Today was pretty lazy... I really didn't do much, and I should have. The house is an amazing mess, needs vacuuming, picking up, etc. It's really quite a fright. But I just couldn't bring myself to care (my particular mental illness... I'm sure).
Annnnnd I didn't write anything. Nor practice Taiji. I didn't work on the dancing-notation software OR the notes. Nope, not a damn thing hardly.
DID go to a SCARE for a Cure meeting and somehow got on the script committee. Ahh well, I needed a Halloween Haunt project. This should be fun. Good people, good cause.
And we bought and installed a new ceiling fan in the master bedroom. A simple enough project, in theory, except that among all the many various extra pieces for all the many forms of mounting that were provided, the two microscopic screws that tied the light kit to the fan itself were... missing. I made it work out anyway, and it should hold together fine, but it was a nuisance. It's a nice Hunter fan, 52" blades, moves a BOATLOAD of air. Very nice, very quiet.
Yeah, that's the good part. Quiet. We _had_ a fan there, but it made noises; cheap nasty contractor-installed fan. We're moving it to the guest bedroom; my son can suffer the squeaks for a month when he visits!
Speaking of contractors... the retarded monkeys that built this house should be ashamed, and perhaps beaten with sticks. The wiring is retarded, and... retarded. I suppose I could go into great detail, but my battery is running low and I want to read some more panels of "Digger" by Ursula Vernon. Very nice webcomic.
With any luck, tomorrow will be more productive. We'll see. If not, then I claim... recovery time. From the last couple years of school, from flipside, from... life.
Sparky the Spare Cat has made intrusions into the house from time to time, dashing in through the back door as we go out or come in to pet him, feed the birds, or whatever. So far, the indoor cats have been conveniently absent during these intrusions.
Of course, the indoor cats make abusive sounds at him as he sits, nonchalant and cool, on the ledge outside the windows.
To see him in this situations, you would think he was fearless, calm, collected.
Well, today he made in incursion, DASH! Into the dining room! To be faced with two very large, very upset, housecats. He looked immediately intimidated, as the two mighty defenders puffed up to their mightiest puff and pico yowled his fiersome siamese yowl.
Marla just had to open the door again, and he was off like a dash, as fast as he came in.
Success! The cats had defended the home against an intruder.
We're so proud.