Friday night – camping

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Greetings from the back of our car. Diane and I are in Brooklyn in the middle of a very short down and back to NYC to return Max to the boat . The boat is full tonight so Diane and I are sleeping in the car. It should work out well because we want to be on the road by 5am.
Its been an interesting day . We got a late start leaving so we had to make good time on the trip down. I say we but Diane drove nearly the entire way. Max, maxs friend meredith and I slept most of the way down. Max had been up all might working.. And Id gotten about 4 hours sleep. In the end we made it down in time. We parked at the boat, unloaded then Diane and I took the subway into town. I had a short meeting with my friend Jeff at a hotel hes rented for a party tomorrow night . We did
Nt get much time to talk work… But it was mice seeing him and g.f.
Michelle for a bit Theyre good folks . While I met with Jeff, Diane met with her yoga buddy sho . It was my first time meeting him. He is a wonderfully warm and funny guy . It was great getting to hang out with him . Diane, sho, max , jac, Meredith and I just got back from a great Thai dinner . Great way to end our visit.
Ok.. Gotta sleep now . More tomorrow from new years eve
Nite all, nite Sam
-me

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Thursday night – let it slide

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Coming to the end of a makerfest vacation week. I culminated last night with a near all night marathon build session with Max and our friend Jeremy. Our goal was to get his new computer controlled robotic camera slider working by the end of the night.. .and I’m psyched to say that we were successful.. After a long couple of days of brainstorming, trial and error, and restarts the beast was humming along prettily by about 3:30 AM .  The trick was to choose the right approaches to a bunch of decisions  including  (final decisions in bold) : kind of motor (stepper, modified servo or geared brush-less ). the right kind of drive (cogged belt, string.) idler set up ( erector set home brew, old motor, vcr rotation encoder) motor mounting (top vs bottom), stepper mode (single, double, interleaved, or microstepping).

 

The devil as always was in th details.. pulleys had to be recentered, heights had to be adjusted, code re-written.. and rewritten and rewritten……  but by about 3.. everything was working solidly…

 

I’ll post a video from max’s camera as soon asI can.. so you can see what this thing does…

It’s a thing of beauty.. able to move max’s camera down the track smoothly in a few seconds or a few hours.. depending on the shot..

 

My desk… on the other hand.. was less a thing of beauty this morning.. I spent an hour cleaning it for the 3rd time this week…   but it was so worth it. I get so much pleasure working with my ids like this… I’m blessed…

OK.. now I ned to sleep.. more tomorrow…

-nite all, nite sam

-me

Wednesday night – D.I.Y.

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Another great day working with my hands. The big project today was installing a new  stereo in Gabe’s car.. it had a circa 1998 cassette deck.,,and none of the music gab listens to was even imagined in final decades of the cassette era. When I got the stereo the guy at the store told me that they would happily install it for only $150…  What !?!?!    the guy told me that installing them was only for experts. One should only attempt such a thing if you were extremely handy.. That almost scared me off.. the fact that the guy doubted my mechanical abilities was enough to convince me that I have no mechanical ability… Hmmmm

Anyway.. Gabe and I decided to go for it ourselves.. it wasn’t a matter of money.. it was a matter of pride..

less  than an hour later it was in and working.

so…i guess the message for the day was supposed to be ‘beleive in yourself’.. or ‘just go for it’…

but actually the message I came away with is ‘there are always many more screw than necessary in the world…

something to think about !

 

nite all, nite sam

-me

Tuesday night – project day

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Perfect vacation day.. I spent most of the day working in the lab with the boys.. Gabe is making a movie for a school project. He needed me to act like a crazy mad scientist.. which was a stretch, I know..

the bulk of the day i spent working with Max on his slider project.. It’s so much fun working together on this. It’s a cool combination of electronics, programing and mechanical design. Hopefully we’ll get in some long hours tonight to get it assembled.. Our goal is to have it working before max takes off for Brooklyn on Thursday.. a tall order..

Not much else happened today.. which is so very nice..
more tomorrow !

nite all, nites sam
-me