Peaceful day.. spent a good part of it out on a hike with our friend James.. We went up Shaker mountain behind his house in Huntington . First stop was James house.. which is something of a museum. he has TV sets placed up on poles in his back yard..
he has a Horseshoe crab collection.. !
The hike was more than 3 hours.. it was .. step in parts, wet in parts. but beautiful throughout . James had marked it well.. he showed us all the places he stops when he hikes through here multiple times a week . He had several weather stations like this one spread through the woods.
he also showed us four smartness he’d placed. james also has placed smartness for us all up and down the atlantic coast..
it was surprsingly warm today. but we did see some small patches of snow at the top
Hard to see here.. but at the top we looked over the lake. the whole valley was full of fog.. very cool looking
I thought this looked like a snake !=\
Got home happy and tired to find out it was the first night of chanukah !..
Had a quiet day mostly on my own. I use the time to finish buttening up the new Tesla coil that Scott. Rebuilt for me. It’s the second incarnation of the solid-state coil I built before but Scott has redone it to make it more robust (hopefully)… or as he says it cohn proof. Most of what I had to do today was mechanical… Moving components around so that I could put in a bigger supply capacitor. I hope was to get a bigger fatter spark with more current. I have to do some more testing but it looks like it really helped. The sparks are scary even at half Power
I also finished up some mechanical components to make it easier to toss in the car. I put grounded hardware cloth around it in case it tries to zap itself and made it easier to take on and off the secondary . I also got the midi controller working much better. I can now play midi songs from my phone and get them to control the spark. It’s still a little sensitive. Things like phones don’t like to be near things like tesla coils 🙂
Pretty hard day today.. Friend, family,colleagues all working past their comfort level. Was great to unwind to ight at a sessions americana show at signal kitchen.
Nice work at home day .. cold and rainy.. worked in sweatpants and sweatshirt all day.. Not much to report on that.. This evening had a nice dinner meeting with the Champlain Makerfaire folks to review and celebrate the events success this year.. mostly we ate and drank beer 🙂
then a short meeting at Generator with my friend Seth… That gave me a chance to meet our new addition
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