Tuesday night – geek day

July 4, 2012 johncohn Leave a comment

Busy and geeky day.. I began by finishing up the LED hoop i started last night.. I still need to tweek the software, but I think it’s going to be sweet !

Then I met Herb at the haunted forest to get Project XrPumpkin robot ready for the Williston parade tomorrow. I’m not really sure what they are trying to do. I believe they are trying to get the giant pumpkin robot to look like Trey A. from Phish.. not sure how that’s going to happen. I spent the afternoon getting the thing to run on bottled CO2 instead of a compresser.. not as easy as it sounded..

Then I headed to the north end to visit freind scott. His family is out of the country for a couple of weeks, so he’s transformed his kitchen into a chemistry lab.. Here he is with some re-preprocessed KNO3 .. looks suspicious.. but it’s relativity safe..

.. well.. at least it wsa safer than the rest of the stuff he has in there .. 🙂

We fired up Scotts new marx generator as well.. I’ll try to get a movie in here of it firing.. good spark off of 12 folts in.. nice !

Then around 7 we showed up at Echo for the Fireworks.. it was nice watching from there.. first up was the same great stunt flyer from last year.. amazing !

I got out the hoop to test on people.. Jackie was there with the other light up hoop I’d made here.. Here’s my freind Julie with the new hoop

and the old one

and here’s Jackie giveing it a spin.. I need to make it more stroby

finally it was time for fireworks. they were really amazing.. a long show tonight..

ok.. it’s very late now.. gotta sleep.. more on the 4th
nite all, nite sam
-me

Monday eveining – off time

July 2, 2012 johncohn Leave a comment

Today was to have been the first day of my vacation, but it didn’t end up working like that.. due to one thing or another, I ended up having several meetings today. and several things I needed to get turned in. . none of them alone were so bad.. but the overall effect was like a normal workday.. ..What’s even stranger is that I ended up spending some of the remaining time today trying to arrange my calendar for the upcoming two months. nothing gets my stomach in a not like a calendar..

so.. I just spent one of my very few days off not being off in any real sense.. and i’m trying to figure out how I let it happen. .. i’m committing to myself to ease up over the rest of the break.. I have so much relaxing I need to cram into such a small number of squares on the calendar.. hmmmmm

the good thing is, i have abunch of fun stuff noodling around in my head for the next couple of days..and I’m trying to managa my expectaitons in such a way that if I even get one of them done.. it will be a success.. I’ll keep you all posted..

but for now, I need to go do some homework before I can play.. more later..

nite all, nite sam

-me

Sunday night – deflowered

July 1, 2012 johncohn Leave a comment

Slow and beautiful day.. diane and I took a very fast walk up one side of Robins mountain.. until the bugs got so bad near the top that we decided to turn back.. spent the rest of the day working ’round the house. Like most vacations, I began by cleaning my shop.. nothing like getting ready to work..

ok.. so not spotless.. but much better.. found lots of unidentified pyrotechnics stuff while I was cleaning.. which I burned off tonight.. always a surprise what I’ll find when I clean..

worked on a couple of projects today.. We rebuilt Jackie’s light up hoola hoop for an upcoming festival.. and I started on a new one for here.. this one will be microcontroller controlled.. should be pretty cool.

while I worked, diane had the unfortunate task of having to pull up all of her impatiens. .. They had come from the nursury with a bad fungal infection that killed thme all off.. by color.. it was very strange.. unfortunetly, there’s no time to replant them for the season.. but the nursery has been very good about it, they’ve offered diane replacement plants of a different variety.. I believe we can’t replant impatiens there for 3 years because of the infestations… It’s too bad.. lots of work went into planting them.. then more work to pull them up. then even more work to plant whatever we replace them with.. looks pretty bare out there now..

it was a beautiful evening out there..

ok.. time for bed.. more tomorrow..

nite all, nite sam

-me
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Saturday night – feldenkrais

June 30, 2012 johncohn Leave a comment

Lovely day of doing nothing, not my strongest skill.s. but I’m adapting to it. I did just about nothing for most of the day.. Ran, cleaned up the house a little.. But other than that.. Just hung out and enjoyed the warm weather… We didn’t have anything planned until 4 pm.. At 4 folks started showing up for Diane’s feldenkrais party.. Feldenkrais is a body awareness system.. It reminds me of yoga.. But without the stretching… (is that like saying pizza without the crust ?) I always assumed that feldenkrais was some sort of mystical name.. A place shrouded in mystery.. An ancient order of monks… But no… It was named for its founder, one Moshe Feldenkrais, an Israeli engineer and Marshall arts specialist who developed it in the 50s .
Our friend Uwe is the only feldenkrais instructor we know in the state.. He sometimes uses our studio to teach classes.. Which is fun because we get to attend them.. I like the classes.. Even though I manage to sleep through about half of them.. Something about Uwes voice just puts me right out.. The practice is about body mechanics.. You position your body then pay attention to how it makes you feel supposedly your body ‘learns’ from these positions and develops new awareness of … Uh.. I don’t know what.. But something…important… Actually.. I find it pretty cool. Once we took a feldenkrais running class from uwe which taught us about contralateral movement.. Believe it or not.. It changed the running stride I’d been using for nearly 30 years..

Tonight we had about 12 folks there… There were two class sessions.. With a break in between for beer… Which made me doubly sleepy during the second session. Then we hung around for a potluck.. Peter brought his Oed, a middle eastern instrument he plays. It was a great evening.. An interesting collection of friends who didn’t know one another .. It was a fun mix..