Got two wing segments temporarily mounted on the bird, upside down so I could support them from above using the clevis yokes. This let me attach a crane scale and measure the actual, empirical forces at various orientations that the cranks will have to lift, so I […] [Original post on clacks.link]

I'm listening to Bjork, which always reminds me of how I bought Post on CD the same day Netscape 2.0 was released. So I was listening to it while I was playing with the new features, including these "Java applet" things. At some point I noticed that the song being played had a weird, repetitive […]

Progress on Goose2 has been slower than I would like, but this morning I shuffled the outer shop so the crane could be extended up into the rafters with the test stand underneath. And tonight I got the clevis yokes welded onto the wing segments, and after […] [Original post on clacks.link]

I very much believe that if capitalism hadn't tried to turn large language models into infinite money and they were strictly in computer science land, people would find it really cool the idea that weighted sums can independently figure out relative meanings of words via context clues is […]

Blast, I finally got around to testing the LED running lights on the cargo bike wired into the central power system, and they draw so much power the headlights barely glow at all. I was afraid of that. I'll have to leave them on their separate battery packs for […] [Original post on clacks.link]

RE: https://werd.social/@ben/115595962340686337 "Because you can’t fix what you refuse to see."

My cheap little gantry crane had some problems, so in the spirit of No Effort November (questionable), I made some upgrades. https://youtu.be/SYfMLoiJ0Vw

Just finished rounding over the loaf of clevis yoke halves, and now they're being sliced in the horizontal bandsaw. These will be welded to the underside of the wing segments on the goose sculpture in pairs, to give a place for the spherical rod end bearings to […] [Original post on clacks.link]

More pixel art inspiration from The Art of Computer Programming (volume 4A). These are Gray Codes, different ways of changing a binary value such that every value is visited just once, while also ensuring that only one bit is changed at a time.

Got the hinges cut to length and the mounting holes all drilled in the bird parts for the kinetic sculpture project. Which seems like it should be a pretty minor task, just 53 holes, but that's through over 26 inches (66 cm) of steel, all together! Even just […] [Original post on clacks.link]

Look at these pants my partner made me 🤩 These are #retrocomputing selvedge jeans!! With floppies on the pockets!

I did another test run with the waterjet at the maker space for the stained glass hemisphere project (no, I haven't given up on it!), and just foiled them to learn what could be learned. Scaling up the islands was the right call, they're no longer disappearing […] [Original post on clacks.link]

I finally got my hands on a resonant reed tachometer, which works by having rows of tuned rods that resonate at specific frequencies, letting you measure RPMs by just touching it to the device. A mechanical, analog, solidstate tach! So cool! And it's a lot more […] [Original post on clacks.link]

Starbucks workers are on strike starting tomorrow, Nov 13th. Don't cross the picket line!

I wonder how long it will take before we get a religion with sacred multimedia files.

I'm working my way through The Art of Computer Programming vol 4A, and it mentioned this bitwise fractal-y thing. So I had to throw some code together to start playing with it. This is just a small section, staying much like this as X gets larger, but as Y gets […] [Original post on clacks.link]

My mobile client keeps boosting posts accidentally, even though I have confirmation turned on. I've taken to scrubbing my feed a couple times a day. Sorry for anything weird that slips through.

Imagine suffering some catastrophic medical emergency, and as you're loaded onto the ambulance, slipping in and out of consciousness, you see a "We're all mad here" sticker.

Every time I see this logo, I want to fill the box with SNMG carbide inserts.

Managed to set myself on fire, just a little bit. Been awhile since I've done that!

I spent some amount of hours* grinding in the curve on the gusset plates, using the same trick as last time with them on a rolling platform on the welding table, with the belt grinder set up horizontally. I'll be feeling it in my arms tomorrow, that's a lot of […] [Original post on clacks.link]

Testing the new centrally-powered tail lights while dropping off my ballot and also doing some light quaxing. (The steel will be part of the resurrected test stand for the goose2 kinetic sculpture. It still had all the other bits from the original, but that arm […] [Original post on clacks.link]

Nothing about these decorative holes in the gusset plates needed this level of precision, but I couldn't resist getting the telescoping bore gages out as I brought the second small hole to its final diameter. It's within about 0.02mm of the other one, which is […] [Original post on clacks.link]

I have completed stripping the millscale off of all the bird parts in the vinegar bath, and this has been by far the best experience I've had with this process. No leaks! Three important upgrades: * I have a magnetic clamp for the gantry crane now, so I can […] [Original post on clacks.link]

With the help of some new indexable boring bars, I finally got the large hole finished and one of the two small ones completely cleaned up tonight. I also figured out why the mill was jumping out of low gear so easily, which happily ended up being a really […] [Original post on clacks.link]

I've really got to get a Volstro rotary head for this shit.

I sure do wish I had a bigger mill some days. Just another 150mm of travel, please!

Minor peeve: when you've dictated a text response in Android Auto, and it asks, "Do you want to send it?", it won't accept "full send" as a valid response.

Seattle is solidly back into the dark season now, and I'll be doing a lot of late night rides for the next few months for all the shop work. So it was time to get all the lighting systems up and running again on the cargo bike. Still needs more towards the rear, though.

I finally got the vinegar bath going to strip the millscale off the bird parts. This was delayed because I had forgotten the tarps I used to use had all started to leak. So I invested a bit in a much thicker pond liner. This had the benefit of being clearly […] [Original post on clacks.link]

Last year I finished working my way through all the Best Picture winners. Since then I've been idly working on some other lists, and keeping current on the IMDb Top 250, but now I'm starting a new project in earnest: Palm d'Or winners. I'm at a shockingly low 30% for that, but with only 54 to […]

I wonder what UIs would be like if we had based them on pipe organ consoles instead of office desks as their central metaphor. Stops, instead of checkboxes. Keys, instead of buttons. Manuals, instead of tabs?

Making the video about it turned out to be almost as hard as the original hike, but the video covering my San Francisco Bay circumnavigation is finally up! https://youtu.be/1MUSqkcd7n8

Making the video about it turned out to be almost as hard as the original hike, but the video covering my San Francisco Bay circumnavigation is finally up! https://youtu.be/1MUSqkcd7n8

I've got the hinged edges of all the goose wing segments milled true. Tomorrow I'll set up the tarp bathtub and get them soaking in acetic acid to strip the millscale. Last time I did that with diamond wire wheels, which were faster and left a great finish, but […] [Original post on clacks.link]

Okay, all the 1/2" plate pieces have been cut for Goose2. This took longer than expected because covid seems to have left my lungs WAY more sensitive to particulates. Luckily, upgrading to a PAPR was already in the project budget, but even pulling it up while I […] [Original post on clacks.link]

I finally got some replacement tips for the plasma cutter, and I just did more in an hour than I had managed over the previous week.

every 3-4 years when they are cleaning it the authorities allow visitors into the #lodz waterworks. They are pretty fussy about security (I guess rightly so) but they do allow pictures. #pictures #water

I am beginning to suspect that coffee was not, in fact, decaffeinated.

I had forgotten what a pain it is cutting 1/2" plate with my plasma cutter.

Actually, its _proper_ name is the GNU Torment Nexus Initiative

I picked up the 1/2" plate for the goose 2 kinetic sculpture project today. The crane mods weren't quite as convenient as I had hoped, since the flatbed had a lift gate with stanchions too tall to get into the shop. So I still had to roll the crane outside. But […] [Original post on clacks.link]

We can all agree that the orb is the funniest bit of regalia, right?

I've been thinking about what happens to a compass rose in the limit as it moves onto one of the poles. (North, for following examples.) And I think the only reasonable conclusion is that east and west are like matter and antimatter. They swing up and get closer and closer to the north axis as […]

If you mash the audio example buttons on the wikipedia page for the IPA vowel sounds you can create a choir of mildly disgusted men

Since I can't do much else, I'm taking this opportunity to work my way through some of the more intimidating movies on my lists. Last night and today was Best of Youth (2003), which was so, so good. And I don't even usually like sprawling, multi-generational epics! Rare for a 6 hour movie to […]

Welp, it finally happened, I've tested positive for covid. I lasted 5.5 years but my luck ran out on the hiking trip. I just couldn't keep up my normal precautions when needing to eat out multiple times a day. But we've managed to prevent intra-household transmissions before, so hopefully those […]

*thinks he'd like to make a video about the hike, but isn't sure if he'll remember to film enough stuff* *comes back with 841 clips, including 61 separate GoPro shots of the non-POV kind where you set up the camera, walk by it, then walk back and collect it, tripling the distance walked*

Working from my Timeline data to refresh my memory (...which meant having to write a conversion script since Google Earth somehow can't import Google Timeline data...), I've worked up a reasonably accurate reconstruction of the route I took hiking around SF Bay […] [Original post on clacks.link]

Ta-Nehasi Coates is doing a lot of things with this essay, but one of the most important is fearlessly using examples of anti-trans hate to describe Charlie Kirk's politics. The contrast between his choices and those of other writers for major legacy outlets is revealing.