April 2016

sat apr 1-2
I got the motorcycle running. That’s pretty good, but I was left feeling disappointed because it didn’t run perfectly right off the bat. It smoked and backfired for awhile, it leaked gas, and one exhaust pipe seems to be cooler than the other 3. But it runs, and Mary says it sounded better after I ran it for awhile. Not bad. I’d give it a 5.
I’m grinding out details in c3pr. Assigning priorities to the various ball recognition algorithms. Some work better than others, and it’s not easy finding the combination that’s both fast and absolutely, positively bulletproof.
Mary made cookies and is feeling pretty good about how much she can use her arm.
Final Four on TV.

mon apr 3-4
We’re having a cold spell and, although I worked next door all winter long in freezing weather, I’m done with it. I’ll just wait a few days.
Mary went to Woodstock with Charon on a mission of Moral Support for Lisa. By 10am, she had muffins and a quiche all ready to go. Wonders never cease.
I am almost done with this year’s taxes. Not fun.
The motorcycle won’t start, and I’m blaming it on the cold weather. I hope.
I am psyched: I was resigned to getting CAD running on Windows, but a final, desperate web search turned up Varicad, which runs on Linux. So I downloaded it and I’ve got 30 days to see if it’s promising. It can’t be any worse than Turbocad.
I’m closing in on a turning point with c3pr. Ball detection is working reasonably well, and I spend a lot of time making tiny incremental changes which make it work a tiny bit better each time I fix it. I need to move on to the next big problem, and I’m not sure exactly what it is. (there are plenty of choices).
I’ve got exactly 1 key for the motorcycle, and it doesn’t appear to match any of the blanks at the hardware store. So I bought a couple similar ones and machined them down to the right thickness. Shaving off .0045″ is not as easy as you might think.

tue apr 5
This morning, I decided to mill some wood for the Beam project. (You’ll be hearing more about the beam project)  I needed to hog out a section of some planks, and decided to do it by dado-ing it. Before I could put the dado blade on, I had to take the rip blade off, and I fumbled the nut as it backed off the shaft, and dropped it into the sawdust hopper under the saw. The vacuum was going, and it sucked up about half the sawdust before I decided the nut wasn’t in the pile after all. It must have rolled down the pile and into the suction hole, and it had to be somewhere in the hose. Hey, the thing is solid steel and weighs a ton. How far can it go? Well I finally found it exactly midway between the ends of the hose, and the hose was buried in a pile of offcuts, so I had to snag it with a long stick and a flashlight. Eventually, I got my dadoing done, but honest to god…

fri apr 8
My motorcycle won’t start, because the battery is dead and my battery charger is not working. This is not the motorcycle’s day.
For all the wood I’ve been handling, I don’t have a lot of splinters in my hands. There are going to be 27 pieces of wood in this beam project, and I’ve got 16 of them done.  It is an honor and a privilege to be able to work with boards of this quality. This wood is the real thing.
If it had said “ngpus=1,” it would have made my day, but it didn’t.
Opencv is not recognizing my gpu, and that’s a big problem, and I’ve got to fix it, and I have no idea how. They say I’ve got to re-compile opencv from source, and to tell cmake that CUDA=ON, with the cuda5.5 toolkit, and then to run make. (Are you following me here?) So I downloaded 1300 Meg of code and did all of that. And it still doesn’t work. Big sigh.
There’s a new restaurant in town. A Thai restaurant. So we went. And now, 4 hours later, it kind of makes me sad that food can be so bad. Everything about it. Wow. It was too cold to take our coats off, and there were only canned drinks. A bad choice for a friday night.

sat apr 9
Finally, it says ngpus=1. Hallelueja. Turns out I’d forgotten to move my libs from the build directory to /usr/lib. So I’m happy, but a little scared, too, because now I can play with the gpu, and get myself into even more trouble. I guess the goal is to get a reliable vision component that craps out gracefully and goes as fast as the camera can.
Today I notched the posts that are going to hold up the beams, and Mary finished the batch of boards I gave her. They look good.

mon apr 11
We went to the Hardwick Diner for breakfast and looked at cars on the way home. We’re looking to downsize from the Tahoe and, whatever else we do, it’s apparently got to have heated seats and remote start. We do love our little luxuries.
I sanded the posts, cleared a little brush on the property line,  fixed the garage door, and bought a better battery charger for the motorcycle.
I charged the battery and cranked it over and it still won’t start. It sounds like it’s not getting any fuel, and it sort of makes sense, because I’ve got the air cleaner off, so the vacuum is perhaps a little less than it needs to pull fuel thru the jets. You gotta love these spring-and-lever contraptions.
I panicked and ordered some apple trees because the suppliers I browsed are mostly sold out for the season, and the ones I bought were mostly the last ones they had in stock. I don’t know what it is about trees, but I just like the concept of having a big fruit orchard.
I decided that I really ought to paint the steel beam before I put the wood on it. Clear the room, tarp, ladder, wire brush, vacuum, and paint. And be careful that you don’t track paint all over the house. What a fucking job that was!

thu apr 14
Went to burlington and looked at cars.
Cleared out brush along south property line until I could see from stake to stake with the transit. Lost the transit lens cover.  Turns out we own a good portion of the meadow where they mow.
Filed our taxes. Could have been worse.
We’re getting some kind of fungus or mildew on the seedlings, and we’re thinking it’s from too much moisture, so I backed off on watering and the eggplants dried out and died. Sorry about that.

sat apr 16
I got the motorcycle running again. That probably sounds familiar. All it took was a piece of wood to ‘almost’ cover the carb inputs, so the vacuum went up, and the jets drew more fuel and – bang – it ran.
I’d made hollowed-out bolts so I could test the intake manifold vacuum by measuring the column of oil it drew. Mr S&S warned me it was going to suck the oil right into the cylinder, and that’s exactly what it did. The problem is that it’s a pulsed – not steady – vacuum, and the spikes are really high, so the oil spurted right up the tube before I could react. The exhaust burned smoky for 15 minutes.
I swapped two thermocouples, and cylinder 3 is definitely running about 400deg colder than the others. When I defeated the vacuum in #4, the exhaust temp dropped way down, because the jets didn’t draw, so I’m guessing I need more vacuum in #3 to pull more fuel and equalize the exhaust temps.
Everyone but me balances the vacuums, while I’m balancing the exhausts. Am I a different drummer? Or just another idiot who can’t follow directions?

It’s been a miserable couple days on c3pr.
I tried to figure out gpu acceleration. And while I suppose you’d have to say I figured it out,  I sure can’t say I enjoyed it. It turns out to be about 5-9x faster for backgroundSubtraction, once it gets started. But it takes as long as a minute to initialize. Sucks.
Then I tried to figure out eclipse. And while I suppose you’d have to say I made good progress, it sure was unpleasant. I did the C tutorials and even managed to get pydev installed. THAT was hard.
So good job, I suppose. Keep up the good work! Because it’s only going to get worse.

All the in-laws are coming tomorrow, so Mary made potato salad and iced tea.
I worked on the motorcycle all morning and came in for lunch, and the sink was full of dirty water from the potato skins, so I dumped it out and washed the pot. It turned out I’d dumped out her fresh batch of tea, and I was in the dog house. I deserved it.

sun apr 17
The in-laws came. The in-laws went. We had a good meal and a sad talk.

mon apr 18
I wasn’t looking forward to installing all that wood, because I knew it was going to be a lot of work.  And it was, but I got it done. Ten vertical holes overhead through 5/8″ steel. Twelve more horizontal holes at eye level, with countersinks. Clamping twisted planks into flatness. Moving furniture. Trying not to track swarf everywheere, and cleaning up afterwards. I ran out of screws on the second-to-last board and, when I was throwing away the box, 2 more screws fell out of the cardboard on the bottom, so I managed to get the whole thing done without an extra trip to the store. A first for me! The bad news is that, while I was super careful about swarf on my shoes, a few pieces embedded themselves into the leg of the ladder, and it scratched the floor every time I climbed it. I’m in the dog house again, and I feel like only sort of deserve it this time.

wed apr 20
I’ve been working on the beams. Six of them. 19 feet long. Two hundred years old. Hand-hewn. They’re not making beams like this any more.
There’s a lot of white plaster and paint that’s got to be scraped off, and I gathered all the tools I thought I might need to get the job done. I tried them all and, in the end, the tool that did it best was — a drum roll, please — a scraper. It took 2 days, but they’re all scraped and brushed, and my back is killing me.  So far, so good.

I made chile. Beef green chile, with beans.  I started the wrong burner and scorched a pan instead of boiling my water, smoking up the house. I used chipotle chiles, which are smoked jalapenos. Then I roasted poblanos and anchos on the broiler, which smoked up the house some more. Then I left the pan on low while I worked downstairs on the beams, and burned the bottom of the pot.
It was OK, but it had this pervasively smoky taste.
Next time, buy a better cut of meat, and don’t burn it.

I’m trying to get c3pr to run under eclipse. So far, I’ve gotten it to make and to run. Now if I can just get it to debug…

thu apr 21
Measure twice, cut once. Heck, measure 3 or 4 times, but cut once. That’s what I did today, and I got half the beams done without screwing up any of them. Steady as she goes…

I staked out an apple orchard. They’re shipping 6 trees next week, and I want to be ready for them. 4×5 spots on a 25′, diamond-shaped grid. I’ve got a feeling that this is going to be more work and more money than I think it is. What the heck.

fri apr 22
I finished dimensioning the beams. All 6 of them, and I didn’t ruin a single one. Good job!

I put the brush hog on the tractor. It could have used some grease, but I didn’t have any on me, so I just backed the tractor up close and kicked it in the connectors until it hooked up. Nowadays, I make it a point to find a way to let the tractor do the work, because I’m just not up to lifting it any more. I’m finally too old for that.

I worked on the motorcycle. It’s been a long road, and It’s getting close to as good as it’s going to get. I balanced the carbs today. I thought it was going to be easy, but right off the bat, the vacuum ports wouldn’t come out, and I had to re-grind a stripped allen wrench. Throw in a non-metric lock nut and the bewildering fact that there seems to be no specific vacuum level I’m supposed to dial in, and it took me the rest of the afternoon to get it done.
Then I took it for a test drive, and I think I need to re-align the rear tire.

We went out to Gracies, which is closing tomorrow after being in business since time began. We had hamburgers, because that’s what you eat when you go to Gracies.

sun apr 24
I realized that, while I took copious notes, I forgot to take ‘after’ readings of the motorcycle exhaust temperatures the other day. So today, I warmed it up and measured them.
Instead of being 900 900 500 900 like it was yesterday, it was 900 500 900 900. WTF is going on? I must have turned a screw and forgotten to write it down. So much for copious notes.
Here’s my theory: For a given amount of fuel (ie pilot jet setting), the heat of combustion maxes out when there’s just enough air to burn all the fuel. And adding more air isn’t going to make it any hotter.  So it ought to look like this:

My plan is to use this to scientifically set the ‘right’ settings for the fuel and air pilot screws, because the accepted method of “turn the screws until it sounds good” is not working for me.

I worked on the beams most of the rest of the time. I’m pleased to report that I’m doing a good job, and they look great.

I spaded circles around all the stakes in the orchard. So when the time comes, I’ll have holes to put the trees in.

I finished another book, and it wasn’t about what I thought it was going to be about at all.
A young girl gets married off to a middle aged guy in 16th century Florence, while political turmoil rocks the city. Her husband turns out to be a sodomist whose lover is her brother. She falls in love with a painter and isn’t sure who’s her baby’s father. She becomes a nun  in a really permissive convent .
Really? Who reads this stuff, except by accident? Anybody got any book recommendations for me?

wed apr 27
Forget scientific modelling. I would settle for a crude understanding of WTF those little pilot screws on the carburetor actually do, because my measurements sure don’t correspond to my model.
I measured the exhaust temperature as a function of air pilot settings, and there was no cause or effect that I could detect. I know I’m over-thinking this, but I wonder what would happen if I tried it again: temperature vs the fuel pilot setting?

I worked on the beams. I mortised channels for hidden wires. I made steel base plates to hold the post levellers and made every possible mistake while hollowing out the first one. The rest of them were fine.

It’s been nice out and I’ve been working inside and feeling a little guilty about it. So today I collected a truck load of debris from the yard next door and headed for the dump. The dump had closed by the time I got there, and I turned around and drove back home.

I got c3pr running in the Eclipse CDT debugger. This is a really big deal. I can start and stop individual threads, step through them, change variables on the fly, and do stuff I don’t even know I can do yet. Years ago, I had to stop using debuggers because my job changed and the toolset changed ‘while I was away.’ So in the little bit of programming I DID do, I had to get by with doing my debugging the hard way. If I was doing this in a real workplace, like IBM or MIT, this would be no big deal, because all I’d have to do when I got confused would be to ask the guy in the next office. But as a 1-person team, working from home, there IS nobody else to ask, so I feel pretty good about getting it working.
Nice job! Don’t let anybody tell you different!

sat apr 30
Mary’s got the posts and beams stained, and they look great. But now, whenever I handle the pieces, I leave hand prints, because I’m always covered with sawdust (or worse).
I don’t want the post levellers to show after the whole thing is installed, so I made some ‘boots’ to fit on the posts, and they’re supposed to look like pedestals. Slick!

It’s been so nice out, I decided to do some cleaning up next door. Brian finished up the roof in the nick of time, between it being christmas eve, the day before his vacation, and the week before it got cold. But the yard never got picked up, and what’s left to do is small potatoes, and he’d rather work on bigger jobs, so I went and picked up his mess and took it to the dump. I can’t say I blame him, but I can’t say I’m happy about it, either, so if I ever need another contractor, I think I’ll probably look for another one.

My apple trees came, and I planted them, and I did a really good job of it. The soil is really good here, and I even followed the directions! And watered them every day.

I coded up the camshift() method of ball tracking and got it working good enough that I now know why it’s not doing what I want it to do. I’m not sure if that’s the hard part or not, but it’s certainly the thrilling part, where you plunge into the problem, with no idea whether this is going to work. And now that I know, there’s no suspense, and it’s simply a matter of grinding it out.

I put air in the motorcycle tires, and it handles a lot better now. (Now that I think about it, I think I let the air out while I was working on it this winter.) I installed the modified throttle control (new knob, shorter shaft, recessed bracket), and it looks great and works great, but it still binds when I turn it, and so the overall ‘feel’ is terrible. It’s too bad, but look at the bright side: The bike runs great!
So I think it’s time to claim victory and call it ‘done’ and quit tinkering with it and ride it somewhere.