I remember a term from our time in the UK that was called ‘Bisman’s Holiday’.. It meant when someone used their vacation to do what they normally did for work. For example.. a guy hw drives busses for a living woudl take a bus vaction when he was off work..
I think I’m doign that now. I just looked up and realized it was 1:30 and I’d been programming for 6 hours.. not work.. or .. not exactly work. It uses software from work (Bluemix, MQTT) I’m adding some features to the Floorish light sculpture.. but I’m not sure that sitting and programming all night was what I meant to do. .. but even so.. I made good progress.. and it was fun..
The only other thing I did of note today was to show my good buddy scott how to use the laser cutter at Generator. Scott has helped me build high voltage demo equipment for more than 20 years. He’s now rebuilding my singing tesla coil that I kept blowing up. Hopefully his monster skills will make it more robust than I was able to do. Here are the end caps for the secondary and support standoffs for the driver transformers. I love this laser !!
ok.. time to sleep Big day tomorrow..
I’m truly grateful for all i have in my life. .. and that includes many of you out there.
1:45 AM and I’m just back from a great Dark Start Orchestra show at Higher Ground. DSO is a Grateful Dead cover band.. but so much more than that too. Honestly, I think they’re better than the Dead most times. I try to catch them every time they are here… and they usually come about now every year.
I remember seeing them shortly after Sam died. .. dancing and crying at the same time (Joni Mitchell says that laughing and crying are the same release)
as I sat there tonight I remmerb being there every year since.. it’s another good marker.. and reminds me of the healing power of good music
On the theme of ‘Long strange trips”, I opened a composition book today to begin writing soem notes and found soem cool artwork of Sam’s that I’d never seen
I had a busy day doing nothing today.. which is just what I needed. I’m doing my best to not think about work at all this week.. but got off to a rough start with hat. I actually ended up with a few work calls .. but they were pretty good ones.
The high point of my day was lunch with my good friend David. He’s been retired from IBM for several months now and is really enjoying himself.
He built himself a 3D printer and wrote a bunch of code that allows him to print out sections of topo maps.. It’s so cool..
Here’s Mt Mansfield
Here’s Mt Desert Island in Maine
And here’s soem strange figmant of Davids most amazing brain (he really is one of the smartest people I’v eever met )
OK.. not much else to report today.. more tomorrow
Reasonably peaceful day, just trying to get into vacation mode and struggling a bit to put work out of my mind.. which I really need to do.
I did have some good play time today dialing in the design and settings for the Reubens tube I finished yesterday. The rubens tube was invented in 1905 by German physicist Heinrich Rubens . I made mine with a 5 foot steel stove pipe, stuck a gas line on one end and a compression tweeter on the other. drilled 114 holes int he top .. lit it and played music into the speaker.. Sort of like this illustration.. but I didn't use a rubber diaphragm.. I sealed a speaker airtight to the tube… and I used an iphone as both a signal generator and music source.
Pretty cool !
Here's my fiery rendering of Thomas Dolby;s 'She blinded me with Science' .. (note this is still uploading at 10:48 PM)
And Here's what happens with Big gigantics 'sky high' ( I managed to blow out the speaker right after this one. Luckily, i had a spare replacement vice coil for it.. don't ask me why.. )
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