So, have you ever had one of those “weird” hobbies, only to discover there are others like you? It’s a great feeling. Well if you are a pyro, here is a group for you.
One of my favorite newsletters is sent out by Skylighter. Skylighter is a company in Virginia who goes toe to toe with state and federal regulators to provide amateur firework makers with the things they need to enjoy their hobby.
Their latest newsletter was cool because it showed how to make pyrotechnic fireballs for use in firework displays with household stuff. It’s pretty cool.
Here is the web page the newsletter points to: http://www.skylighter.com/fireworks/how-to-make/cremora-fireballs.asp
Our dogs love to be in our un-fenced front yard. In the past, we had one of those auger dog leash anchors in the front yard. But it’s a pain because you have to mow around it, and it just doesn’t look good.
So, I had wanted to put an anchor in our concrete to secure our trailer to, so I decided to try it for our dogs first. I went to home depot and bought a recessed trailer tie down anchor (About $8). I also went to the concrete section, and asked the expert what the absolute best adhesive they had for gluing metal to concrete was and bought a tube. Then I went to harbor freight and purchased a cheap air hammer ($11?) that I needed to remove some tile in the bathroom for anyways.
I decided where I wanted to put the anchor. I put it about 18″ in from the edge of the concrete because chipping away the concrete to put the anchor in is going to weaken it, and I wanted to put it closer in where the stress is less. (Erosion and settling around the sides of a concrete slab cause stress that eventually leads to cracking).
I drew a rough area of what needed to be chisseled out, and set to work. The air hammer makes quick work of the concrete as long as the chisel is sharp. Unfortunately, harbor freight tools aren’t the highest quality, and the steel the chisel is made out of sucks (it is very soft)… I sharpened it four times while working, and each time, the chisel had worn down to the equivilant edge of a popsickle stick… The upside to soft metal is that it is VERY easy to sharpen, and this stuff was REALLY soft steel, so two passes on the bench grinder and it is sharp again.
After about 5 minutes I started test fitting the anchor, and working away at the areas where it didn’t quite fit. Once it fit flush, I spent a few minutes carving out just a little more so there was room for the adhesive.
I filled the hole with adhesive, put the anchor in the hole, and pushed down. It took about 2 daysfor the adhesive to fully cure, but now we have a recessed anchor in our driveway to clip the dogs to when we go outside. And the adhesive holds VERY well and is not going anywhere.
I’ve had several comments from people who thought it was pretty cool. So I thought I’d share it. Here is the finished product. When the anchor is flipped down, it only sticks up about 1/4 of an inch above the driveway.
And, here is the cheap Harbor Freight air hammer if you’ve never seen one before (A very awesome tool, and a good present for anyone you know who has an air compressor, they may never use it, but it’s cool, and they will like it, it makes an awesome sound too).
Ok, so go ahead, make fun of me… But I’ve wanted a spot welder for a long time… Seriously, since I was, oh, say 15 or so? They are just COOL!
I tried to make one about 4 years ago, but the cables I bought weren’t big enough so they would melt before the metal I was trying to spot weld would.
But! While I was cleaning up our shop yesterday, I came across the parts from my previous attempt and the desire to complete the project was renewed within me!
And here is the result….
It works great! A few improvements are needed though… Less surface area on the contacts, it needs a controlled way to start and stop the current so that it can have “pinch” time. (Time where the metal is being pressed together, but the current is off), and It needs to be re-configured so that you can spot weld tight spaces.
Or, I could just buy one…
Here is a quick video that shows the parts of the welder in more detail.
And if you want to see a real spot welder, in a skilled body shop technicians hands, watch this…
Locked in Syndrome is when a person looses almost all control of their body but is completely conscious of their suroundings. They can hear, smell, taste, and see but cannot talk, walk, use their hands, feed themselves, or even scratch their nose! See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-in_syndrome
I have a friend named Melinda who suffers from Locked In Syndrome. When I first noticed Melinda, I thought she was someone who suffered from a mental illness and was a vegetable. Than a friend of hers explained about Melinda’s condition and taught me how to communicate with Melinda.
Melinda can move her eyes up and down (not side to side). To communicate with her, you ask her yes or no questions. When she looks up, it means “Yes”. Down means “No”. If she wants to say something specific you can quickly spell it out by using an alphabet table like the one below.
1
A
B
C
D
E
2
F
G
H
I
J
3
K
L
M
N
O
4
P
Q
R
S
T
5
U
V
W
X
Y
To use the chart you slowly count to 5 and watch Melinda’s eyes. When she looks up it means the letter she wants to use is on that row. You now slowly say the letters in the row again waiting for her eyes to go up. This is a little like playing Wheel of Fortune as you are constantly trying to figure out what she wants to say so she doesn’t have to finish spelling it out.
While this is a tedious process, I have found it to be well worth the time. Melinda has a LOT of time to think to herself, and never wastes a letter. Some of the funniest times I have had, have been talking with Melinda.
When I first learned that Melinda wasn’t a vegetable and there was a way to communicate with her; I realized that a computer program could allow Melinda to communicate with anyone without them knowing how to use the alphabet chart and watch her eyes.
I spent a few years playing with the idea in my spare time and ended up with a simple tool that will run on older hardware that works great that I call “Blink Speak”. Blink speak uses a cheap webcam and some special software to track a Locked In person’s eyes and emulate a person going through the rows and letters. It uses a modified grid that puts the most common letters closer to the top left corner, allowing a significant increase in communication speed.
How it works… The details…
The LIS sufferer wears a baseball cap with a cheap web-cam attached under the brim and focused on one of their eyes. This produces an image with the eye taking up over 20% of the total space. A program captures a frame from the camera using JMF and then uses a Naive Bayesian Classifier to decide if the wearer is looking up or down. From the camera’s perspective a person looking down looks like their eye is closed. This makes the images extremely easy to classify into either UP or DOWN images.
This video illustrates this:
The program speaks to the wearer using freetts and allows the wearer to compose sentences, and then through the addition of a 6th row on the alphabet chart interact with the program and speak what has been typed.
Blink Speak has a simple architecture that can easily be extended to do almost anything. Including use Twitter, Facebook, Email, SMS, and potentially any other software that is compatible with a Screen Reader.
Blink Speak is functional and ready for testing by LIS sufferers.
This is a mathematical challenge, and it’s been said that:
If you’re an engineer, you should be able to solve it in (under) three minutes,
if you’re an architect, in three hours;
if you’re a doctor, in six hours;
if you’re an accountant, in three months and
if you’re a lawyer, probably never.
What is the missing number in this logical series?
1, 2, 6, 42, 1806, ____???
The answer is the password to open the spreadsheet that is attached to this email. If you figure it out, open the spreadsheet, type your name in, save it and resend it to your friends.
Have you ever faced a situation where you need to guess a numeric code of somekind? Perhaps you’re delivery pizza in a gated community, or you need to make a copy at work, but it is protected with a code and you don’t know it?
I enjoy people watching. It’s fun to see what people do and don’t do. For instance, have you noticed no one every hides the keyboard when they enter a pin / password? It just doesn’t happen. I started a practice at Home Depot of looking when they enter the code to start those protected machines just for kicks. I was astonished to learn that they are almost always the same (even if different parts of the country). I bet you can guess it on your first try… Ready… That’s right, it’s 1234 (* or #).
I have another friend who always uses #1010 to get into gated communities, he said it almost never fails. If you add 1234, 1111, 0000, 4321, and a few other codes, I think you could enter 90%+ of the gated communities in the world.
Copy machines with codes… I once spent time in a work environment where all the copiers had codes, and you had to get your code from a supervisor to make a copy… This allowed them to keep track of who was making copies for what to control copy expenses. Well… A 4 digit code isn’t that difficult to discover. The same practice as gated communities usually works, and if not, you can enter about one code every two seconds if you are fast. It is likely the copier has 10+ codes in it, meaning that you only have to try about a thousand before you find it.
Anyways, I’m not writing this to encourage hacking copier codes, entering a community to rob it, or using dangerous equipment without a store associate. I just find it interesting, and helpful for that awkward situation where a friend gives you the wrong gate code or you forget it.
I’ve often wondered about how we can leverage the joy of gaming to education, and other activities in life. This video talks about the different ways games reward the brain. And the patterns they use to do so.
These are gas powered boots developed by a Russian in 1974. Unfortunatly, due to the lack of venture capital, and the government declaring them to be property of the Army when they were first invented in the USSR. They were never able to commercialize them.
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