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Joey’s Blog Thoughts on Life, Work, Technology, and Society
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This SHORT video presents some interesting concepts in making technology more “real” or “physical”. I wouldn’t have bought in on the value of this a year ago, but since purchasing an iPhone, where EVERYTHING is touch, and a wii, where motion is a big part of the game I find these devices more enjoyable than their traditional counterparts.
I watched this TED talk today, it’s AWESOME! The speaker shows the importance of putting things in relative terms. It is extremely insightful and visually interesting.
Last night, I attened our local BSA Venture Forum meeting. Thee was a guest speaker, talking about what we can do to help our young men achieve their goals. His presentation was educational, thought provoking, and filled with good principles.
One skill he taught, is how to discover the real reasons people make choices. Everyone has two reasons for doing something. The one they tell their friends, and the real one.
When you are trying to help someone, and you ask them why they did or didn’t do something. The first answer will not be the real answer it will be their “social answer”. The next time you are trying to understand someones choice, after you ask why and they respond DO NOT try to solve the problem yet instead ignore their first answer and say “Besides that?”; prepare yourself for a long pause and wait until they respond.
If they don’t respond, prepare for the next time they need help by building your relationship of trust with them.
It isn’t very often that I see a new technology that I get really really excited about. There are LOTS of things that are cool! Like the iPhone, iPad, etc…
But THIS, is the most useful, innovative, simple, awesome thing I’ve seen in a long time. I want one, not because it’s “cool” or the newest flashiest thing, but because it IS the future of recording thoughts during meetings, and studying.
It’s awesome.
Get one!
I usually don’t post failblog videos, because unless you go to failblog’s g-rated section, there is some bad stuff there.
But this one is AWESOME!
A JATO (Jet Assisted Take Off) is a rocket system that helps airplanes take off and land on shorter runways. It’s pretty AWESOME.
Here is a cool video (with background music) Of a few different ways to use the rockets. One of which is a takeoff in under 300 ft.
And… The Blue Angels “Fat Albert” jet. The impresive thing here isn’t the short take off, it’s the insane climb angle…
A C-130 with Ski’s performs a JATO on snow.
And, while we are at it. Here are some funny C-130 Air Drop Mishaps…
And… The most awesome amusement ride EVER! The fulton sky hook recovery system…
UPDATE: This was a fun project, but it didn’t turn out as well as I had hoped. It was very difficult to build a door that seals well. We ended up buying a large dog door from Home Depot and putting it in instead. The Ikea Bag Door did get us by for a few months, but I would recommend just biting the bullet and buying a proper dog door. And, cutting through your door with a saw… Very empowering… (END UPDATE)
So… We got our latest bill from SRP (our electric utility company), and it was $460… An increase of $300 over last month. Needless to say, we were a little shocked.
One thing we have been doing, is leaving the pool room open to the house, and the outside door to the pool room open to the backyard, this way the dogs can move in and out. But it really hasn’t been very good. Insects fly inside, and cool air definitly escapes. I thought the pool room was acting kind of as a buffer… And it is, but not enough.
Enter the dog door… Do you know how expensive dog doors are? Not cheap. Especially for big dogs. They are fairly simple, so we decided to build one. Step 1, cut a hole in the door. We measured from about 6″ off the ground, 1″ wider then our biggest dogs max width, and about 4″ taller that the largest dogs back. This will allow them to easily move in and out. I first tried to cut the hole with the door in place, but it just wasn’t working out. So we removed the door, placed it on some lawn furniture and finished the cutting. After using the skill saw on both sides, we used a jig saw to quickly square the corners and finish up.
After some brief coaxing, our dogs quickly began using the dog door, and now move in and out at their own will without us keeping the pool room open. Yay!
My wife and I have an in-ground pool in a large Arizona Room. (An Indoor pool). While having an indoor pool is nice, we haven’t gotten to use it yet, because IT IS COLD! Being indoors it receives almost no sunlight, and so it doesn’t warm. Enter the solar water heater.
We did something similar to this:
Total cost was about $50.
The final result is great! The flow isn’t very much (it has less than 10psi of pressure). The pool water enters the filter at about 80 degrees (the top layer of water in the pool is warm, but once you go down about 6″ it drops to below 60). And the water leaving the heater is 95 degrees when the heater is in the sunlight. If there is no sunlight, the heater effectively stops working, even though the ambient temperature is 90+.
We placed the output of the heater into the bottom of the pool so that the hot water goes into the bottom where the cold water is, we are hoping this helps to mix the water some.
Pictures:
We want to make this a permanent part of the pool, and mount it on the roof instead of just placing it on the grass. We aren’t sure yet how to do it in a way that looks professional yet. We’re still working on it. We have a few ideas, but we aren’t set on anything yet. Fortunately, in a few more weeks, the pool should be warm enough, and we can pack the heater away until winter.
I saw this today, and thought it was AWESOME!
After over 3 years (2 of which were in storage), the SHO Truck is finally ready for testing!!!
I finished up the basic electrical today, so that you can start and stop the engine using the truck’s ignition. I also finished the throttle linkage, and adjusted the stop block on the gas pedal so there wasn’t any stress on the cable when you are at WOT.
My buddy Austin was over and he filmed the first voyage…
And here it is!!!
The truck has bad gas in it at the moment, so the engine doesn’t respond very well, but it will! It wasn’t really terrible though, it drove great, but the engine performance is terrible with the bad gas. Stay tuned… Wheelie’s here I come!