March 2015

It must be spring time: it’s above zero.
I have mixed feelings about last month and it feels like not a lot happened, but when I go back to where I was on the 1st, it seems like an awfully long time ago. I got a lot done.
This month, the snow’s going to melt, taxes are going to get done, I’m going to detect the ball, and the cabinets are going to get fitted. Who knows: maybe I’ll put in the beam and fix the motorcycle !?! Ask me in a month.

Mar 1 sun
See Feb 29.
I welded some bike hangers for Celia and, aside from being heavy, clunky and ugly, I managed to get the wire brush cup on the grinder tangled up in my sweatshirt. Nothing like suddenly having a split lip, a very tight shirt, and a snarling, stalled grinder grabbing at your chest. Sudden. Very sudden.

mar 2 mon
This morning I burnished my brazing on the cabinet hinges. It went fast, once I got it set up, and they look good. Then I assembled a prototype to make sure it’s going to work, and it looks like it ought to. The lesson I took away was that I need to be careful about how deep I tap the holes, but you can drill them as deep as you want.
Then I struggled with blobs. Yes, they really call them blobs, and I need to understand how the OpenCVBlobsLib package works. It’s supposed to work with cmake, but that’s a bad thing. I got it partly compiled after a long struggle.

a brazed hinge awaits a wire brush

a brazed hinge awaits a wire brush

mar 6 fri
I hate it when I lose an entry. WordPress failed to save, and you’ll have to do without the last post.
I’ve got the doors sanded and the hinges fitted. I think I’m ready to epoxy them in place.
I’ve got the blobsLib downloaded, compiled, and tweaked to work with my includes. Who knows? it might be close to working, or it might not. Stay tuned.

mar 11 wed
BlobsLib core dumps. Fuck it. I commented it out and there’s plenty else to do. I’ve got a good handle now on the playback gui, and I shot some videos of a falling ball at 120fps. It is time, finally, to try to track the ball, and I feel like I’m lost. I really need to become comfortable with cv::Mat. More to the point, it’s becoming more and more awkward to cling to my out-dated ubuntu, and it’s time to buy a new computer.
I’ve got the cabinet hinge pins built, so theoretically, I could fit up the whole wall of cabinets tomorrow. I emptied out the sawdust collector and then started a new bag by vacuuming up the piles with cat shit in them. This worked pretty good, except that the urine smell mixed with the air and the air vented thru the filter bag and the whole shop smelled like a litter box.

mar 12 thu
this morning, I mounted the cabinet doors with the new hinge pins and marked and cut the top- and bottom edges so the whole thing will be perfectly smooth. It is really impressive.
I did some debugging of my averaging algorithm and even though it was basic stuff, you gotta know the basics, and I didn’t until today.
Mary needed to go to Sam’s in Burlington, and I came along. We did cat food, home depot, and starbucks, and then I talked her into the Waterworks, where we had the best seat in the house.

Looks like I lost interest in blogging for the rest of the month !!
Here are some photos from late March.

Cannons protected the fort in St Augustine.

Cannons protected the fort in St Augustine.

The cast iron staircase in the lighthouse

The cast iron staircase in the lighthouse

The grandstand at Daytona Int'l Speedway.  A very interesting tour, but I'm still not a fan.

The grandstand at Daytona Int’l Speedway.
A very interesting tour, but I’m still not a fan.

 

The space shuttle Atlantis. Nasa did a great job on their tourist facility.

The space shuttle Atlantis.
Nasa did a great job on their tourist facility.

A medium sized alligator in the everglades.

A medium sized alligator in the everglades.

The natives are friendly.

The natives are friendly.

Tung trees in Tallahassee

Tung trees in Tallahassee

 

 

 

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