mon feb 1
Heat wave! It’s fifty degrees out and the top inch of the dirt road has melted, leaving an inch of mud on top of a frozen roadbed, and a very slippery road indeed. It made for some exciting driving when I drove into town!
I decided it’s time to start working next door again, so I went over there and put up strapping until I ran out of wood. Let’s be generous and call it “half done.” When I got back from town, Charon was here, and she’d made me another batch of cookies. Bless her heart. Then she left and Maggie showed up with plans to bake cookies and cook us dinner. Mary should be hurting more often!
tue feb 2
Mary’s got PT today, so the that took half the day. I stayed home and strung beads, and got about 10 strands done. What a lot of work!
I played with c3pr for awhile, not so much to fix anything as to see how it feels.
We watched the Downtown Abbey pilot. It’s OK … maybe it’ll grow on me.
wed feb 3
Another heat wave, and I went next door to do the other half of the strapping, and I framed a crawl-hole into the attic.
I gave c3pr a half-hearted effort, ruined my appetite on nuts before a big dish of spaghetti and meatballs, and watched 3 episodes of Downtown Abbey.
thu feb 4
Mary’s PT. c3pr. green house. c3pr. downtown abbey. c3pr.
struggling with c3pr triggering…
sat feb 5-6
It turns out that some of the blocking I put in next door made it hard for the spray foam guys to fill some gaps and, as a result, there is a long, thin crack, about 40 feet long x 1″ tall, where the cold leaks in. I used a variety of saws on it and got the whole thing good and exposed so I can fill it with canned foam and then went to the store and bought 10 XL cans of it, along with a bunch of insulation. Mary tagged along, and we had lunch at Lost Nation.
I’m having a rough time stringing beads, because they keep coming out crooked and I keep having to re-string them. So today, I mounted the thing at eye level so I can see what is and what isn’t lining up, and fix it right away.
I worked on the motorcycle and got the cylinder head bolted down and the cam shafts and timing chain installed. It took me 3 tries, because I made a couple of the same mistakes I made last summer, but I finally got it together.
Remember how I was getting so close to getting the c3pr gui working? That last 2% is killing me, and now it’s missing triggers worse than ever. I tried changing the camera file to 1920 columns, but it didn’t work, and now I’m shit out of ideas. Again.
In the military, they make you take your rifle apart and put it together over and over until you can do it in the dark.
That’s how I felt when I found I’d left this out.
If you’re going to string beads, string them at eye level. Your neck will thank you.
sun feb 7
This morning I made oatmeal and I put too much salt in the water. It was salty.
Yesterday I bought insulation, and today I put it in. It’s only about 1/4 of what I need, but it wasn’t as unpleasant as I expected. Just do it. Get it over with.
I’m in a tight spot with c3pr. I gotta solve this latest problem and I have no idea how to do it. Trigger seems to to work, but capture seems to be sporadic. It’s hard to duplicate and sometimes it goes away completely. Don’t worry: I’ll figure it out. (I keep telling myself)
It was super bowl sunday. We made wings and snacks and pounded down 2 beers apiece. I thought there was too much defense and the commercials sucked.
A tapered batt
mon feb 8
I think I figured it out. It seems that the stepping works just fine, but that drawContours() is being called 38414 times on the first frame, 21000 times the second frame, and down to about a dozen as the background gets filled in. I can fix that!
Dave put up a FPF post that pissed me off and I almost posted a reply. Hold your tongue!
I went to town and bought another truckload of insulation, but all I did was unload them. I figure I worked yesterday, so I deserve a day off.
So I strung beads. Or, should I say, re-strung beads, because it seems that I’m tearing out a lot of old work and re-doing it. This time, I think, I’ve got it right.
And I worked on the motorcycle. I replaced the intake pipes and it took me awhile to figure out how to use gasket shellac. Truth be told, the pipes weren’t as bad as I thought, and I probably needn’t have replaced them.
Munchiladas and Downtown Abbey.
The manifolds were a little brittle, but they’ll clean up nice.
tue feb 9
PT for Mary today. We’ve got it down to a drill. Directly home and some lunch.
Since we’re at the end of a warm spell, I wanted to get as much insulating done as possible, so I suited up: long underwear, pants, 2 shirts, a sweatshirt and a vest, and everything was all tucked in and tidy. Then I realized I had to poop before heading next door, and had to take it all apart and put it all back together. It was quite the production! In a couple hours, I ‘finished’ the perimeter and started on the second layer.
I’m reading The Inheritance. Very hard to follow, with alien-sounding names and places.
Flank steak salad, Downton Abbey, and strung another 4 strands of beads.
Checking out and cleaning up from my c3pr fix.
wed feb 10
Mary wants to work today, so I ferried her to the Mill for her first half-day since her surgery.
Since it’s still warm, I spent the afternoon working on the insulation next door. It was 42 in the cellar and 35 in the kitchen, and I was sweating from exertion in the attic. The hard part is done, but half the ceiling is still empty, and the heat continues to flow out.
Leftovers and Downtown Abbey. It’s pretty engaging, but I had to ask Mary to dial it back to just 2 episodes per night. Too much TV for me.
I strung another couple strands of beads and it’s not turning out like I’d expected. But as long as that’s how it’s turning out: “I like it a lot.”
The first row of the second layer just about did me in.
Dreadlocks. They look like dreadlocks.
thu feb 11
Thursday is PT day, so we went. And on the way back, I treated us to fresh bread and cookies and some fresh fish. Live a little!
It’s 10 degrees out, 21 degrees in the kitchen, and 35 degrees in the cellar. I wish I had the attic insulation done, but I don’t, and I bought another load of it and, when Too Late rolls around, I’ll probably get around to putting it in. But not today: It’s too damned cold out.
sat feb 12-13
It’s 18 degrees out. 18 below, in fact. I wonder how the little heater in the basement next door is doing? I basically blew it on the insulation – again – based on the onset of the cold. Even though Nature spotted me a couple of weeks. The basic problem is that I’m not working hard enough over there but, you know what? Fuck it. Let it freeze. I got better things to do.
Like work on the motorcycle. Months ago, I’d ordered the valve shims I knew I’d need. If the clearance was too high, I got a smaller shim, so I ordered what I needed. Fast forward to today and – ahem – it turns out the right rule is “if the clearance is too high, get a bigger shim.” Which meand I didn’t have the shims I needed to finish the job. I need to buy 3 more shims. But hey, I have an impressive collection of spare, thin shims, in case I wear out the engine.
In c3pr, I got Canny and contours working, and it’s doing a pretty good job of tracking the ball. This is a big deal. Nice job!
I’m getting tired of stringing beads. I thought this was going to go fast. Be an afterthought, compared to making the beads. I’ve been doing it about a letter a night, every night this week, and I’m still not done. To make it worse, I need a total of 20 big beads for the top, so I bought a package of 20, but it turns out there were only 18 in the package, so now I’m almost done and I’m 2 beads short. Sort of like the valve shims.
Colder than a witch’s tit on Halloween.
mon feb 14-15
Valentines day. Chocolate for her, a card for me.
I worked on the motorcycle, and it was 1 step back and 2 steps forward. With the valve shims sort of adjusted, I tested the compression, and came up with really bad numbers: 45-75 psi vs a low spec of 100psi. This is a disaster! What am I doing wrong? I locked the crankshaft, pressurized the cylinders, and used my lapel microphone to listen to each valve and the crankcase baffle, and it turns out most of the air was going thru the piston rings. Shit! I thought I fixed that! And if I didn’t, then I’m out of ideas. Again. Then I had an idea: there’s no oil in the bike. Maybe the piston rings seal better when the rings re lubed? I oiled it, measured it, and – fist pump – 118psi! What a fucking relief!
No work next door for the last couple of days, due to the cold weather, but I’ve chipped away at c3pr, and I decided I really need to get the calibration routines working again. I made a good start on making this happen.
We watched half of the Grammys. This they call music?
To figure out where the pressure was going, I pressurized each cylinder and listened to the valves and baffles. That was the first time I’ve ever solved a problem by listening to it.
Yahoo!! This is as good as it gets.
thu feb 16-18
It’s been a couple days since I had anything to say. Sorry, but it’s been kind of boring.
The motorcycle is waiting for parts: I need 3 2.65mm shims.
The window screen is waiting for rocks: I need 21.
I chauffeur Mary around. I work next door. I work on c3pr.
More of the same.
I got the first layer of insulation in – I’ve still got to staple it up.
I wired the attic electrical – I already wish I’d done it a little differently.
I’ve got a lot of time into c3pr – more to come.
Been re-working the camera calibration routine, using the C++ interface this time. It’s “that” close, but the last 10% is killing me. It always does.
fri feb 19
I stapled and trimmed the first layer of insulation. What a fucking job! My arm is killing me. I knew this was going to happen, and I’d decided to invest in an electric stapler, but I couldn’t find one I liked. Now that the job is mostly done, I ought to go buy one and not even take it out of the box. Just to spite myself.
With all this insulation, you’d think it would start feeling warmer inside.
That hotplate in the cellar is still going gangbusters.
sat feb 20
We went to the dump on the way to burlington and I got my coat all dirty unloading the truck. It cost me $18 bucks.
We went to Winooski, to visit Vermont Homebrew Supply. I wanted to see what kind of stuff they have, and I bought a pH kit and a hydrometer. Maybe I’ll make some cider.
Twenty bucks. Look out, world.
We went to Home Depot and picked out a tub. Pretty basic, but at least we got it done. $414.
Since my bead project is “one bead short of a curtain,” we went to the bead store and I bought a new kind of bead. Six bucks, and this time, I bought enough of them.
Starbucks. Another 25 bucks.
We went to see Star Wars. I’ll bet it would have been twice as good if I could hear it. Explain this to me: 2 tickets at $7.50 each rang up as $16. And then they wanted $4.95 for a soda.
The cat food place was closed, so we just drove back, and ate at the Cactus Cafe. Now that my enchiladas are famous, I’m always comparing My mexican food with Theirs.
Call it a tie, except that Theirs cost 65 bucks.
Home safe. Priceless
tue feb 21-23
It’s been cold out and I took a couple days off from working next door. Today, I finished the attic electrical and fitted ‘the big half’ of the second layer of fiberglass batts.
I finally finished my butternut bead curtain for the bathroom and intalled it. I like it a lot. The subliminal message I wove into it is a little like the white dress / blue dress picture that went viral. You can stare right at it for ever and not see it, but once you see it, you’ll never miss it again. Just for the record, it’s got 615 butternut beads, 113 home-made steel beads, 123 store-bought beads, and 85 feet of cording. It weighs/ about 15 pounds.
I figure: if I’m going to do something crazy, then I’m going to give it my best shot.
Diamond bits cost 40 cents apiece. Drill as many beads as you want.
From the inside, it looks primitive and random. Just like I like it.
From the outside, it’s a warning
thu feb 24-25
I’ve been working on the camera calibration routines. Corrections for sensor placement, fisheye distortion and the Camera To Table TRansform (which I call C3TR). This is either really hard stuff or I’ve gotten too old too early. In either event, I managed to make it mostly work. Now for that last 10%.
Today was 53 degrees out, so I went next door and finished laying in the attic insulation. I got it done enough that I thought to myself, as I closed up the access hole, “theoretically, I should never have to go back up here again.” There is a gap between the additions that I wanted to fill with canned foam, and while I was spraying into the ceiling, a big blob of it fell onto my head. And once this stuff touches you, Nothing will take it off. Nothing. I stopped what I was doing and went home. Mary watched me walking up the driveway, thinking I’d wrapped a bandage on a head wound. When I explained the problem, she suggested that I soak my head in acetone. I let it cure for 15 minutes and she cut out the big chunks with scissors. Nice one, jerk!
When Mary’s on the back of the motorcycle and I hit a bump, it bottoms out and it hurts, so I’m going to try to re-furbish the shock absorbers. It took me awhile to get it apart.
Canned foam … a little dab will do ya!
Usually, Mary’s haircuts are a lot better than this one.
fri feb 26
I’m trying to make a powder dispenser for Devin so he doesn’t have to breathe it at work. He described it as a hand-cranked, auger-driven thingy, so I bought some PVC pipe and and a tent stake and I spent the morning bending it into a useful shape. Stay tuned.
My motorcycle has 4 cylinders, and I’m trying to figure out how to balance the power that comes out of each of them. Everyone knows how to balance the air intakes, but nobody seems to know how to set the fuel pilot screws. I know that, as long as each cylinder is getting equal air, they they should all get equal fuel, but how do you know which way to turn the pilot screw, and which cylinders need work? I decided the way to do this is to measure the temperature of the exhaust gasses as close as possible to the exhaust valves. I just happened to have a 100′ roll of high-temp thermocouple wire in a drawer, so I welded up 4 thermocouples and mounted them in hollow screws with high-temperature cement, and they’re downstairs drying.
Well at least something is high-temperature. Today was cold again, and windy, and I couldn’t get motivated to work next door. I’m going to need to get the new bathtub upstairs next week, so I rummaged thru Chuck and found my 1-ton hoist, hauled it across the yard and up to the second floor, and then screwed some wood to the ceiling to hang it from. I laid some planks over the abyss, and set up a ladder on the planks, and the plan was to hoist the hoist to my shoulder, walk the plank, climb the ladder, and then hang the hoist on the chain on the ceiling. In the end, I wasn’t quite strong enough to ‘snatch’ the hoist onto my shoulder, so I gave up. Which is probably a good thing, because I would have killed myself.
I made a batch of enchiladas and it was pretty easy.
Jon came by to borrow my shop for an hour and made 3 race cars for the cub scout derby.
Both He and Mary figured out the subliminal message in my bead curtain. Next time, I won’t make it so easy, and I won’t tell anyone about it.
Thermocouple wire before welding.
After welding. This is harder than it looks.
Four home-brewed high-temp exhaust probes
sun feb 27-28
A pretty dull weekend. c3pr calibration and some wiring next door.
We started composting with worms at around Thanksgiving and it took us 3 months to fill up all 5 bins in the worm factory downstairs. That means the bottom bin had better be done, because I need to empty it out and cycle it up to the top of the stack. It’s pretty good dirt, but a lot of the egg shells, avocado seeds and flower stems still need time to break down, and it’s just a little bit stinky because, back then, I wasn’t adding enough paper.
I’ve never been good at composting, and Worms seem to be The Answer.
A bucket of warm work poop. We’ll use it to start veggie seedlings.
mon feb 29
This morning we left early to get Mary to her 6-week visit to the shoulder guy. He gave her the thumbs up and she’s cleared to drive. Halleluja! We picked up cat food and coffee and headed for Home Depot to pick up the tub for the green house. We gave them the paperwork and they said they’d bring it right out. We shopped a little and waited a little and eventually asked how the tub was doing. “What tub?” they said. Apparently the warehouse never got the memo. So they called it in again and this time they brought out the wrong tub. So they called it in again and this time they brought it out. By then, they’d lost my paperwork, and I wasn’t leaving without it. Finally, everything was in order and we loaded it in the truck and took the slow road home. We stopped, with our new tub, at the new brew-pub in Stowe for lunch, where we chowed down 2 sandwiches and 8 beer samples. And then drove home.
I changed clothes and unloaded the tub next door and hoisted it up to the 2nd floor and then dragged it into the bathroom and then sat back and admired my own work.
I made a few tweaks to c3pr and almost everything that’s supposed to work — seems to work. I recorded some new videos and put it thru its paces. I do good work!
I never did get my electric hoist hooked up, but the hand hoist was a huge help hoisting the tub upstairs
A snowball hopped, skipped, and jumped in the wind and then got stuck.