Wednesday night – D.I.Y.

December 28, 2011 johncohn Leave a comment

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

December 27, 2011 johncohn Leave a comment

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

Monday night – boxing day

December 26, 2011 johncohn Leave a comment

In some parts of the world December 26th is called Boxing Day .. When we lived in the UK I never quite understood what one was supposed to do on Boxing Day.. I seem to remember something about going and seeing your mother in law.. .Or.. is it about returning unwanted gifts in boxes ? The true meaning of the holiday came to me today as we escorted a mountain of dismantled cardboard boxes outside for recycling.

THe rest of the day passed very peacefully.. Max and I had a plan to work on the computerized camera slider we’re working on together. We started at about 2:30 this afternoon. the next time we looked up it was 7:30 at night. We made great progress. It’s so much fun working together. Max is a natural at the electronics and programing stuff.. which is pretty cool for an artist at heart. We made great progress today.. we got both a servo and stepper motor working and are comparing them as potential drives for the slider. Tomorrow we hope to tackle the mechanical parts of the drive..

While Max was programming, I made some more progress on my LED strips. I built a simple arduino shield to drive them.. They are very. very sexy.. this movie doesn’t really do them justice..

Rusty came buy and played some music.. Max chimed in on the Banjo.. sounded great ..

That’s it for boxing day 2011.. hope you all had a good one, too
nite all, nite sam

-me

Sunday evening – xmas day

December 25, 2011 johncohn Leave a comment

It was a good day.. a very good day.. we all slept until about 10 AM.. no .. let me correct.. everyone but Diane slept until 10.. Diane got up at 6:30.. the rest of us climbed out of bed, very well rested… at 10.. then went down stairs for Christmas morning.. The four of us hung out opening presents and just hanging out until about 2:30. It was really fun and uplifting..

Sam was with us in spirit. All day his lamp was with us.. Max an Gabe carried it downstairs with them..

Max gave us all presents that he’d made by ‘circuit bending’ old toys. Here’s a troll he’d modified complete with color changing blinking eye and fiber optic hairdo…