       | moo.com, in affinity with Flickr, provides a unique photo printing twist. They let you print sleek, tiny, glossy, little cards (about half a biz card) from your flickr photostream. The genius part is you get 100 cards for ~$20 and its the same price whether you have them print 1 image 100 times or 100 images 1 time each. As many imgs as you like (2006 Rally X Cards - a photoset on Flickr |
I finished 5 pummers as gifts for co-workers and friends this xmas. Definately an evolution from the first to the last. I learned a lot and my soldering skills improved quite a bit. The first were done on printed circuit boards and then I managed to create a couple in the air and then the final one uses no wires connecting the IC but rod to bridge the pins. Very clean!
People seemed to appreciate them and they were plenty fun to build and give away. The nest is empty now, time to make some more.
More photos on flickr!
A co-worker turned me onto the nifty distributed rendering project called Electric Sheep which turns out really nice mpegs of wiggly screen savers.
Idle cycles on machines with the saver installed are used to render frames from submitted work. Renderings are stitched into mpegs and sent out to client machines.
Users can vote their favor which feeds back into the gene pool for alteration and future renders.
Very nifty stuff. It would be nice to see an infrastructure like this to do more useful computation of any time problems...like atmospheric modeling, attaching proteins to cancer cells, etc....but eye candy is good too.
Been playing around with making some BEAM robots as xmas trinkets for the few friends and family that would appreciate such things. I was inspired by a nice article in Make magazine about these kind of non-ambulatory bots.
Made plenty of mistakes and still have some tweaking to do but it turned out ok. The pic here is a bit old and doesnt show the final LED placement on the stalk. Have some other aesthetic things to add still.
It's been may years since I played with electronics and I have to say, I'm glad Im in software where things are easy to change without the risk of burnt fingers or the acrid smell of burning plastic. A found a good electronics reference by Tim Surtell at Electronics in Meccano that helped me know what was heat sensitive and how to orient some of the components.
I have enough parts to make 2 more and have seen some really amazing pummers others have done here. Ho Ho Ho!
machine project » Edible Estates. Great diatribe somewhat akin to reclaiming a kind of Victory garden.
I always thought cactus was a sensible and eco-responsible front lawn/easement design. Fried cactus anyone?
Good idea and I'm going to have to check out this Machine Project space.
I think I took a Mac toolkit programming class from this guy around 1993 or so? Solid guy...I had tons of fun in that class. Nice to see what he's been up to.
About KrazyDad
I think he may live near me as well, judging by the density of pics taken in my neighborhood!
(courtesy of fabulous geotagging feature @ flicker)
I volunteered as a timing control worker at the Treeline Rally - Treeline 2006 this past weekend. It was viciously hot but I was lucky to get an assignment on stage 1/6 which was mostly shaded and near a stream. The heat wasn’t so bad but the bugs sure were aggressive. Bug spray seemed to incite them more than repel them.
Worked with some cool people and got some great tips on co-driving and how to go about getting into that. I may try to take the training and get licensed sometime next year with a goal to do some co-driving by 2008.
Next rally cross race is July 29th at Glen Helen and then Volunteering again at the Gorman Ridge rally sometime in August.
Some minor press coverage of the Glen Helen Rally Cross Event including some quotes from yours truly here PE.com | Inland Southern California | Sports | Recreation
Also some video coverage here
Wooo Hoo! The Glen Helen rally cross event this past weekend was a fantastic time for me. I had put a lot of effort into preparring and made it out to some lake beds the weekends before to get some more seat time. It paid off nicely....3rd place finish in street stock class and 16th of 56 cars overall.
Good enough to earn me 100 points toward the California Rally Series championship in street stock and bump me up to first place in the standings.
One glitch in the organization at this event is that we never got to see our times until the next day. Four runs and no way to know if you were improving or how you were doing compared to the other drivers. Oddly, my morning runs were both the same time and my evening runs also the same, but 10+ secs better than the morning runs. Complete times for all classes are here: http://www.socalrallyx.com/
Next event is July 11th at Thunderhill in Willows. Going to be a loooong drive but I hear it's one of the best venues.
More photos up on my flickr site here http://www.flickr.com/photos/mjmeyer/
I volunteered to work the Rim of the World Rally this past weekend in Antelope valley, CA. I worked the Service and Fueling areas, keeping cars on tarps, chasing fuel out of the public areas, and generally trying to do whatever I could to be helpful to the various ametuer and professional rally teams there to compete.
On sat I got to start cars on the Del Sur North stage and then man the stopwatch for the return run on the Del Sur south stage. We had 43 cars to start with 1 minute intervals and what a hoot it was to see them up close and be part of such a well organized event.
Excellent article on JavaRanch Journal about Evil Unit Tests: clarifying some similar thoughts we've been having about functional vs. unit tests.
Ran the Ridgecrest Rallycross this weekend. Being the first points event of the season the competition was a bit stiffer than the San Diego rallycross. Still, I ended up 4th and was very happy with my improvement in times.
I still need to push harder, left foot braking has improved quite a bit but I need to stay in the throttle more, look further down the track, and hang it out more.
Points standing for the California Rally Series Rallycross championship are here. I'm third right now and plan to stay in the street stock class for the season.
More pics
Final Results, 1st annual - Del Mar Rally Cross - January 20, 2006
I did go...and decided to run...and met some really cool and vastly more experienced drivers who helped me a ton.
First run was pretty scary on street tires but I got the feel for it and the track got quite a bit faster by the last run of the day.
I didnt think I hit a cone on the last run, but must have missed that info at the gate. An experienced driver told me "if you dont hit at least 1 cone today, youre not pushing hard enough".
Judging by the results, it seems that not hitting cones was key to my success.
Ended up with a 2nd place finish in the street stock class!!! Recouped my entry fee and had enough left over for a coffee!
Some shots from the event on flickr by Christopher Keach
...and a slideshow which has some actual pics of my runs here!
Next event is the CRS rally school and competition Feb 11 & 12 in Ridgecrest. Going to need to get some better tires before hand. Word was the BFG KDWS are a good way to stay street.
Four Star Motorsports: "2002 Subaru group N Impreza STi Rally Car" for only $85K CDN...heh...only.
I think the build out is pretty reasonable. Not sure how the USDM 6 speed in the STi stacks up against the Spec "C" dogbox...but build vs. buy is an interesting puzzle.
Considering scrambling out to the San Diego Rally Cross event this weekend...might just spectate...limiting factors include:
- My helmet is expired! :-{
- rules seem to call for a 32mm restrictor on the STi!
- The RE070s are really going to suck in the dirt and even chasing some snow tires here in So Cal seems dicey.
Hmmm...maybe just grab a digicam and go spectate? Might go grab a helmet in case they have room for any fun runs!
Been planning to make a trestle table for my dining room. Rockler seems to have some slides specifically designed to allow extention leaves to be used at the ends of a trestle table.
See also pdf spec sheet
Other design ideas:
