I’m embarrassed to say I’d stopped following the madcap adventures of our two robots on Mars!
Spirit seems to be stuck.
What you’re looking at is the underside of the Spirit Rover.
You should be ashamed of looking at this, you perv! Give the lady a bit of privacy, won’t you! She’s stuck on that pointy outcrop, apparently.
The whole story is at the NASA site. Opportunity’s odometer just turned over 10 miles! Woot! Not bad for a pair of rovers who were designed for 90 day missions (IIRC).
Meanwhile, the TV stand is finished. It’ll do.
June 15, 2009 at 4:53 am
Holy sheep shit. I just realized my camera clock is off. It’s an hour slow. Gee – I wonder what I forgot to do? It’s fixed now.
Today I have to finish mowing the lawn, and do grocery shopping, and go to Home Depot for some Roundup and to look for some little suction cup mounts for the glass top for a glass-topped (well, duh!) end table I want to use.
What I need to do is unpack all my parts drawer bins and take ‘em out in the garage and get them mounted on the wall. I went batshit trying to find screws for the TV stand and ended up just buying them. I know I have plenty of 10-24 screws – but in which packing box?
Some day I will unpack the last box.
Update: I forgot: I need a power strip to mount in the TV stand, too. Gotta remember to get it at the Depot.
June 15, 2009 at 6:37 am
Wow! Looks sharp McGoo!
I may have to hire you to build me a slot machine stand for my man cave.
http://woody.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/01/my-man-cave.html
It’s one of those little details I’ve been neglecting. In fact, not much work has gotten done since the arcade got finished.
Sitting on the floor to play kinda sucks, so the slot doesn’t get much action unless little kids are over. And frankly I’m not sure if they are actually playing, or just stealing all my quarters!
June 15, 2009 at 12:20 pm
C’mon, in the interwebs age, how bad is it that I snuck a peek at Spirit’s naughty bits?
June 15, 2009 at 1:24 pm
It is one of the immuntable laws of the universe that no matter how many of the correct screws or nails you have for a given project, you will not be able to find them. You always have to go to the store for more.
But, once the task is completed, and you move on to idleness–they will appear as if by magic.
June 15, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Nice stand McGoo!
Kudos to the over-engineering from the whiz-kids at NASA. Those two rovers were a great investment!
June 15, 2009 at 7:51 pm
Good job! Looks great. But … is that a VCR under the TV? Yikes!
And you do realize you’re going to get extra boomy bass, with the set stuck in the corner like that, right? Which might actually work out Ok, given the typical TV set speakers.
June 16, 2009 at 7:49 am
One of the other immutable laws of the universe is that no matter how many tools you gather beforehand for a project, you will always have to go to the garage (and maybe even the toolbox in the pickup) for more.
Yet another immutable law of the universe is that the best way to avoid cursing like a drunken sailor and smashing things in a rage while having difficulty switching out a garbage disposal is to have your 5-year-old daughter sitting next to you.
I’ll have to remember that when I change out the back French doors…and fix the kids’ bathroom sink…and repair the two cracked windows…all on my honey-do-this-before-you-do-me list.
June 16, 2009 at 12:20 pm
there were buzzards flying overhead and I wanted to see what they did
A likely story….
June 16, 2009 at 5:37 pm
The Odd Herald, eh? Does that refer to the publication of the publisher?
The original “The Haunting” is on AMC. 1963, Claire Bloom in her prime as a predatory dyke.
When I saw it as a child, I naturally missed that. When I saw it years later as a teen, it was like watching an entirely new movie.
June 16, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Check these out.
http://www.foundshit.com/twisted-balloon-dresses/
June 16, 2009 at 6:56 pm
Sorry about not posting or responding – my Innertubestower thingy was down all Monday and today!
I don’t know how long it’ll be up, so stand by….
June 16, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Woody – thanks! Please don’t judge my skill
level by that li’l TV stand; it a temporary thing made of nothing but particle board and honestly was mostly to test the shop. I’ll replace it (and the 27″ TV) in a year or two with something in Oak and my soon-to-be-retired 36″ Sony Vega TV.
And your house and craftsmanship is wonderful! I absolutely love the theater room! Exactly right! A rectangle with no windows, doors, or non-symmetries. Did you ratio the length/width/height to the Golden Mean?
Xbradtc – Um…I peeked too!
MC – yep – those NASA designers are second to none in the reliability & tougher’n nails department. Those rovers set new records and standards of excellence.
cb – I lost track of how many times I had to run into town to Busy Bee lumber & hardware for (for instance) one more fucking pack of screws!
…and I’ve already found some of the stuff I was looking for during construction! I opened a box today for something else and found a kit of assorted screws I bought 4 years ago and then never could find when I needed them. I fear they are destined to never be used.
Dr. Dave – normally I would have been swearing like a sailor – but I’ve found since I “officially” retired last year that my patience is waaaaaay bigger than it ever was when I worked. I’m almost always disgustingly happy, no matter what happens. Except when the news pisses me off.
BTW: with no innertubes yesterday and today, my productivity shot waaaay up – just like it did when I didn’t have the ‘net here the first two months I lived here last year.
I have gotta start limiting my ‘net time more.
June 16, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Sorry, Drew!!!!
You were stuck in the Filter for some reason!
Yes – that is a combination VCR & DVD/MP3/MPEG/JPEG/ whatever player. I bought it really cheap somewhere quite a while ago and never even opened the box til Sunday. I liked it because it uses composite video/audio I/O only – it has no TV tuner or Cable/RF section at all.
And it was really cheap.
Yeah – the audio won’t be the greatest. The TV is in a spare bedroom I am turning into a study/PC room/mini-library. Drew, I will probably turn the TV on about once a year.
Besides – I have a fancy ADC “Sound Shaper” 12-band stereo equalizer in another room sitting on a shelf gathering dust. I’ll insert it into the audio stream if I decide it’s not adequate for my modest needs.
One step at a time!
June 16, 2009 at 9:06 pm
Ratio the WHAT? No idea what you’re talking about McGoo. I just sketched it out, stared at the sketch off and on for five years, then started building. Maybe that will mean somehting someday when I can actually put real AV gear in their and make the oversized TV room into a genuine home theater.
The balloon dresses are f-ing AMAZING Cbullit! Great for a costume party. I’d go as a hedgehog of course.
“Pardon me ladies, would you like to dance?”
June 16, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Whoa! I missed that link, cb. Neat!
Woody, the Golden Mean (or Ratio) is a mathematical constant that occurs in nature an obscene number of times. It’s everywhere, Woody. It’s unbelievable.
Anyway, some audiophiles and designers feel that sound rooms and speaker enclosures should have LxWxH dimensions that conform to the Golden Mean.
The value is about : 1.618033989
June 17, 2009 at 1:19 am
Backing up a tad here (sorry) but re: the rovers… they may have been designed for 90 days but assuming something doesn’t outright fail due to Darwin in those first 30 days, the reliability testing for some of these things is so rigorous that I read about these long-lived contraptions and am simultaneously amazed and unfazed.
Call it over-engineering if you like but I remember being so paranoid about my design that I was popping Tums(tm) every 15 minutes. If you think about it, the need to survive *years* in the vacuum and heat/cold of space is pretty daunting, and that’s after a ride on a Delta II or whatever they used to get you there. If you have the possibility of being the proud owner of a single-point failure, it ages you quick.
“Golden ratio” sounds like it should be sexual fetish in nature, doesn’t it? Don’t leave “e” out in the cold, McGoo… it’s a pretty damned exciting number in it’s own right. Optically speaking it’s a panty-peeler.
Now, I’m off to bed before the pills wear off. Thanks for the update McGoo – 10 MILES is amazing.
June 17, 2009 at 3:10 am
You’re right on all counts, LK. I know the rover designs were no-doubt predicted to (and designed to) last waaaay longer.
But to last this long and still meet their design budget, weight, size, and cost is still significant. I’ve been through the high-rel design process myself a few times!
BTW: One of the coolest things about the missions is that they didn’t have time to write good software to run the rovers before they had to launch. So they wrote it while the hardware was in flight and uploaded it later!
And – yeah – e is a cool number. But you can’t generate it by doing the following on almost any hand-held calculator:
1) pick ANY number.
2) invert the number (hit 1/x)
3) hit +1=
4) go back to step (2) and repeat steps 2,3,4 infinitely.
The Golden Shower…er….I mean Ratio obeys the equation:
X = 1+1/X
June 17, 2009 at 8:57 am
Word Press has been flaky this morning, so if you have a comment missing, don’t blame me! It diisappeared one of mine this morning here, and over at LKs too.
But I remembered the LK one and re-submitted it later. Here – I forgot.
June 17, 2009 at 9:10 am
Speaking of flaky, and spacey things. check out my response to your comment when you get a chance. I inserted a lost classic–with Richard Jaekel no less.
June 17, 2009 at 10:22 am
Just read it (your comment). I left another one too.
I should be working out in the garage – attending to a thousand things! But it’s too fucking humid out there. It rained again this morning.
The corn, soybean, and rice plants around here are growing so fast you can hear ‘em creak!
God! The rice fields are beautiful! I think I’ll go out and see if I can get some photos that do it justice without getting shot for trespassing.
Over the last week I have watched the corn grow to block a two-story house in the distance – one floor at a time. Now it cannot be seen from the vantage point I was using as a reference.
June 17, 2009 at 9:23 pm
Okay McGoo. You turned me on to something new. Thanks.
I pulled up my original floorplan and performed the Golden Ratio test on it.
http://woody.typepad.com/Pictures/woody_theater_golden_triangle.jpg
If you look at just the theater seating area I’m close, but if you include the back of the room with the table and media shelving I’m way long.
June 17, 2009 at 9:59 pm
Now you’re talkin’, Woody!
This is what we need more of. Design with a deeper intent. Flair. Pizzaz.
Damn. Now you got me thinking. Be back after I chew on a few physics issues blended with the golden ratio.
If you haven’t read Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle books, it’s a real treat. Alchemy, physics, economics, theology, and the coining of money – all in the 1500’s and 1600’s. And mixed throughout with the travels of Jack “L’Emmerdeur” Shaftoe.
June 17, 2009 at 10:40 pm
oh yes – had to go look it up… e = 1/1! + 1/2! + 1/3! + … + 1/n! (ad infinitum, ad nauseum)
Darn. I was hoping it was as coolly straightforward as your golden show… errr… ratio on a calculator. Maybe on an HP with a good stack it’d have more “oomph”.
June 18, 2009 at 3:48 pm
With the HP you could do a little loop and calculate it to N significant figs, LK.
But I like the calculator method. You just keep hitting the same sequence of keys over and over and you’ll get there automatically.
Woody, I forget the reason the GR is “good” for sound enclosures, but I think it had something to do with minimizing harmonic resonances – or sumpin.
June 18, 2009 at 9:27 pm
Looping is cheating, ‘Goo.
Back in school days there were the Uber-Geeks who took themselves to climax at the end of the day with their HP-48SX calculators and would program them, add games, talk to one another… and they’d spend more time figuring out how to program in solutions to (for example) a particular permutation of a Thevenin’s equivalent circuit rather than just understand the damn theory. Drove me nuts.
Whups. Ranted there. Sorry.
June 18, 2009 at 9:36 pm
Ha! If they needed a pgm’d solution to thevenin equivalence, they ain’t gonna be no cutting-edge design engineer. They should know that so instinctively they don’t even need to think about it. Like the ABC’s, or counting to 10….
June 18, 2009 at 9:45 pm
Funny thing, that. I decided early on I didn’t believe in electrons in spite of getting bit by a 6uF cap and intentionally focused on photons only, which is good for electro-optics, I guess. But some of them got real hot-n-steamy over phasors and other arcane things. Only ‘lectronics I liked was programming machine language.
I’m going to wander around see if you posted something new…
June 18, 2009 at 10:25 pm
Well, yeah, I’ve posted a few since this one.
I like exitons – but they’re a bitch to clean and cook!