Sunday night – goreagle

October 16, 2011 johncohn Leave a comment

End of a very nice weekend.. fished painting the belltower.. then headed to the Haunted Forest to finish rebuilding the project-x pumpkin robot.. This is year 3 (or 4 ?) of the 21 foot tall beast. ( bidi rheumatic pistons. a 20 foot pneumatic sheet rock jack, 4 bidi pneumatic solenoid valves, 3 arduinos,2 monster servos (for the mouth) , leds, a bunch of switching electronics, a ton of urethane goo) an it’s an adventure every year to reassemble the creature an get it working. You can see it working here. The big change this year is that I made a radio control setup to control his arms.. that and some other changes reduce the wiring harness the creature lifts by about 15 wires.. .. As always.. it’s a big adventure tying to install, debug and test electronics in the woods.. this year my freind John S is helping. john actually worked on the creature about 3 years ago when he was an intern at IBM.. now he’s been hired.. and is helping me on a this project.. and I hope many more to come.. Homer met us a few hours later and together we integrated the electronics and pneumatics.. i love working with these guys…

As always.. we underestimated the time we needed.. so we ended up swapping air hoses and wires in the dark.. lots of cursing.. but it was worth it.. it seems to be working… (cross your fingers. )

got home around 7:30 .. to find a big bowl of dianes homemade borscht.. yummmmmmmmm

Gabe gave me a great lesson in photoshop today.. I’ve never mastered’ ‘layers’ before .. gabe taught me to use them to mix animals.. like this gorilla-eagle (goreagle ?) we made.. fun !

ok.. time for sleep. big and interesting week coming up.. wish me luck on that..
more as it happens..

nite all, nite sam
-me

Saturday night – past peak

October 15, 2011 johncohn 3 Comments

I got 10 hours of sleep last night.. which is about the same amount of sleep I’d gotten in the previous 4 days combined.. it was wonderful. I awoke refresh and empty headed.. thinking of nothing.. with nothing to do for the day.. I can’t even remember the last time that happened. It isn’t like I don’t have a ‘todo’ list.. it was just that I didn’t wake up thinking about it.. a minor breakthrough.. I guess..
I did have one major goal today.. aside from relaxing.. and that was to finish paining the bell tower.. the tiny room at the top of our house that I use as an office. It’s a small space.. but a tricky one to paint.. i think the ceiling is about 18 feet tall at the peak.. Diane did a fantastic job finishing up the walls and ceiling trim.. all that remained was the final trim on the ceiling.> So I spent most of the day on a tiny platform about 10 feet in the air with a tiny artist’s brush filling in all the tiny nooks and cranys of where the beaded ceiling meets the arched supports that support the cupola .. It was painstakingly mindless work.. just the thing to decelerate after a whirlwind week..
One treat was the view from the tower windows as I painted.. The fall colors are past peak.. .. but then.. so am I ..

nite all.. nite sam
-me

Friday night – jet lead

October 14, 2011 johncohn 2 Comments

home again, home again.. after about 20 hours of travel.. I left the hotel this morning at 5:30 AM Prague time.. and got home at 7:30 PM on the same day.. I always find a travel day like this helpful for catching up on work.. Even the three hour delay getting out of JFK was OK.. my email inbox is caught up, i wrote notes from my trip, caught up with some work thinking and even got a little sleep on the plane.. I needed it.. I think I got less than 3 hours of sleep last night after my walk and then working before going to sleep at 2 . Actually I feel pretty good.all things considered.. I have that funny jet lag feeling.. I guess. this is more ‘jet lead’.. my body thinks it’s later.. so as long as I can stay awake unitl a respectable hour (it’s almost 10PM now) I shoudl be able to get back on rythm.

Travel like this week is hard work.. but I find it so valuable. It’s so recharging for me to meet other folks in our company.. and see what they’re working on. I really enjoyed meeting all the folks from central europe.. (russia, poland, croatia, slovenia, czech republic, slovakia, bulgaria, hungary, turkie, romania, serbia) .. all such different cultures. I had so many great technical and personal talks.. I also handed out many samstones. I appreciate everyone’s help in spreading them through central Europe.

I alo really loved our host country of Czech Republic.. the folks there were so kind and helpful

right now.. all i can think about though is sleeping.. more tomorrow !

ntite all, nite sam

-me

Thursday night – Prague at night

October 13, 2011 johncohn Leave a comment

Folks.. it’s 1AM.. and I need to be up for a plane in 4 hours.. but I wanted to post some pics of this beautiful city. i had a really, really busy and productive day.. I gave a talk in the morning and got to spend more time talking to the fine IBM folks from Central Europe. It’s such a great group of people.. smart and motivated.. .. After meetings with them, I gave a talk at the University of West Bohemia.in Pilsen. . . I got to talk to a bunch of students there.. again.. really smart and fun people. I was really impressed with the university.. From there we headed back to Prague.. after a quick dinner we headed to the Czech TV station. I had a 50 minute (!) interview on prime time Czech TV. it was a cool format.. folks could ask questions b phone. Facebook, twitter, sms or chat.. Interesting questions about IBM.. about engineering careers.. even religion.. te time passed so quickly.. Around 10 I met up with my friends the Young for a beer. After saying goodbye to them.. I grabbed a cab to my hotel. Even though it was about 11:30.. it was my one night in Prague.. I just had to see this city after hearing so much about it.. I took a 2 mile or so walk by myself through the old town and back along the river.. it was well worth it.. it’s such a beautiful place..

Now I need to sleep.. more explanations tomorrow

my freind tony