Silver Case

I’ve passed my third and final ATI Machinist exam.  ”General Workshop.”

I must confess, though, this was by-far the weakest module.  There were a few things I picked up which were useful (surface grinding for example) but there was mass amounts of chaff.

In particular I utterly skipped the section conducted by random guy on turning brake rotors!  I haven’t the slightest interest in working for Meineke Mufflers or wearing a mullet.

Anyway, that’s all my training for the time being.  I have many projects to get working on. First being an adapter plate to fit my new China-made 4-jaw chuck onto my lathe.  And I bought a woodruff cutter so that I can make tool-holders for my lathe.

Don’t know whether this qualifies as a ‘need’ or a ‘want”.  It is a one-off machine made for NASA to sew 3-inch thick insulation panels with glass thread.  Manufactured by Fernco, a leather-sewing specialist.  It includes a video camera to inspect the underside of the stitch.

Coincidentally, the same day I was reading  Just My Type, I see this amazing auction on Boing Boing of City of Boston’s entire print shop.  This collection could give five creative people a life time of projects to work on.

I have a 120kg+ steel plate approximately 1.14m X 0.75m.  I’m filling it with a 304 holes threaded through for M8 bolts, separated in a 5cm square grid. I’m going to use this as my fit-up and welding table, resting on top of my antique printer’s type cabinet.  That should take a +250lb load and giggle.

It’s proving to be a pain in the ass to do.  The bed and ways of the mill are just not big enough.  So I cannot lock down the plate and simply walk around from start to finish.  I have to slide the plate around.  And now that I’m getting close to the edges, I have to angle the plate to fit, which means I cannot use the numerical read-out to tell where I am located from XY (0,0).  Instead I have layout fluid painted down (stuff is amazing — displaces oil and dries in seconds) and 5cm grid lines scribed. Ugh.

And I haven’t even started tapping these things yet, merely drilling and counter-sinking them.

Inside-out

During the afternoon, I made further progress on my prototype messenger bag.  I finished building the pocket for the orange lining and am almost done the major surgery to seal up the bag on the sides.  Another couple hours of work in it for sure.  Then time to do Ling’s bag.

Almost have finished up the shell of the bag. Next will be to sew in the heavy lining.  My Juki is running hard, here it is trivially sewing through 4 layers of waxed canvas + leather.

Shame about the sewing machine oil on the lid.  Doubtful I can wash it out.  Oh well, it’s a machinist-themed bag anyway.  Narrowly averted another hook-timing incident today.  I’m getting better at clearing up the problem before it goes toxic.

First Half of the Day: T-fillets

Middle Part of the Day: Luke, Lee, Woei, Ling, Nini, Ling’s mom, Australian Cherries.

Last Half of the Day: Cordura Applique on waxed canvas

Telstar Logistics Reviews Restaurant Trucks.

Join us for a trip to Los Angeles, where we tour AA Cater Truck, which built San Francsico’s popular Chairman Bao food truck. We also explore Armenco, which built the innovative Le Truc “bustaurant.” It’s an interesting business that combines custom fabrication with killer cuisine — and the results are delicious.

I’m pretty smitten with Intaglio and Intaglio for iPhone.   It’s a (very) lightweight alternative to the almost-Microsoft-bloated Adobe Illustrator.  I often dash out simple wireframes on my iPhone when the muse strikes and then later flesh them out on the full pc client.

Facebook says, “suggest a profile picture.”

Hmmmm

I guess I have a few things in my files.

Perhaps  this one.  Oh but that’s a video.

Well, there’s one of her enjoying a fish’ eyeball.

But then maybe we should just go with the classic.

There is a rapidly accumulating body of evidence which suggests that prolonged sitting is very bad for our health, even for lean and otherwise physically active individuals. The good news? Animal research suggests that simply walking at a leisurely pace may be enough to rapidly undo the metabolic damage associated with prolonged sitting, a finding which is supported by epidemiological work in humans. So, while there are a lot of questions that remain unanswered (e.g. Is there a “safe” amount of daily sedentary time?), the evidence seems clear that we should strive to limit the amount of time we spend sitting. And when we do have to sit for extended periods of time (which, let’s face it, is pretty much every single day for many of us) we should take short breaks whenever possible.

Finally, if you take only one thing from this post, let it be this—sitting too much is not the same as exercising too little.

By any measure I sit too long each day.  Maybe this is enough reason for me to make a bicycle-saddle chair.

Since finishing Darrell Holland’s lathe course, I started the Vertical Mill course. We have quite a large vertical mill in the shop which I currently only use as a massively over-built drill press.    It might look dated or corny, but I tell you, these videos are good. Why?

• He has no annoying vocal ticks, accents, or distracting behaviors. I’ve watched some MIT online lectures and they’re absolutely painful to endure even though the underlying material is world-class.  Don’t underestimate how much a weirdo can get on your nerves when you’re trying to concentrate on something hard and difficult.
• His topic coverage gives a thorough base. I feel well-bootstrapped on the lathe following his instruction. There is acres I don’t know yet, but I have the base to figure it out or find the answer somewhere without seeming an idiot.
• He doesn’t teach to the stupidest common denominator. He explains things. Important things he’ll cover multiple times, but there are no painfully long stretches where i wish there was a fast forward because it’s all tautology or embarrassingly stupid explanations for dumb people.  Ok, there was a two minute section on the decimal system, but it was only two minutes….
• He’s efficient.  We hustle along, theory demonstration, refined demonstration, project. Rinse, repeat.

• Thorough. He explains e
• Clear and articulate.
• No annoying ticks or accent
• No condescendingly pedantic, not even pedantic
• Gives a good base to work from

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I went cycling to celebrate 1/1/11 yesterday.  The route includes Lim Chu Kang road.  This road runs around Tengah Airbase, a tank training camp, the UAV command, and other military areas.  At one point the road becomes extremely wide and extremely flat and extremely straight.  That’s where Lim Chu Kang road is designated as an emergency alternate runway.  At night, particularly, I’ve seen all sorts of weird things on this road, included tracked armoured personnel carriers.

So yesterday I could see far off in the distance (the road is kilometers long and straight — you can see a long way ahead) some shimmering lights on the shoulder of the road. It was hard to judge what owned them.  They seemed to be shimmering a lot, so at first I thought they were emergency lights.  Then I realized they were just ugly-colored incandescent lights. So I figured they must be headlights of a jeep bouncing down the road.

Finally I got close enough to comprehend what it was — some amazingly awful looking three-wheeled motorcycle designed with two wheels in front.  It’s called a Can-Am Spyder.  Apparently it’s an approved ride in Singapore.  Whatever goober was driving it, though, should forget it.  The thing already looks dorky, and when this guy is driving it at 40kmh down a, literally, runway, looking gripped, he makes it look even dorkier.  TT — Total Turd.

…I still have two more modules to complete.

I subscribed to an online machinist course.  I’ve heard from enough people that the videos are very good.  Currently I’m going through the lathe series.  The era looks dated, but we’re talking about manual machining. Its glory days were in the 1950′s. So a 1980′s video is cutting edge.

So tonight I’m eating my dinner and drinking Carlsberg watching more installments.  Dave(?) Holland is discussing proper use of precision measuring instruments. (micrometers to 1/10,000 inch). He makes the (shown below) remark about his depth micrometer and I immediately started snort-laughing like I was back in 7th grade woodshop with Mr. Berreta the molester/shop teacher.  So I figure this is a very authentic shop-class video.

And I am not making this up. Watch the series yourself if you don’t believe me.

This mess of shit is the picture you see when you look up “dangerous”, “dead”, or “electrocution” in the dictionary. No isolation from the A.C. line = DEAD

As per our traditional alpine Christmas practices,  Krampus has been tormenting Luke for the previous two weeks.  Tonight, of course, St Nicholas tracks Luke down to Sydney to give him his goodies.

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Yesterday enjoyed a long lunch of Mom’s favorite seasonal fish sashimi…

Unlike the normal preperation for fugu, paper thin translucent slices, this was cut into thicker chunks.  Since it’s a relatively bland fish, thicker slices help, giving more texture when there’s not as much flavor.

Woei bought me a new and unique bicycle helmet for Christmas.

There was a small problem, though.  The helmet underneath is a typical skateboarder-style shelled helmet.  Like every helmet of that variety I”ve ever tried, it didn’t fit comfortably.  The length is too short, so it pinches onto my forehead.

So can you guess how I sorted out that problem?

That’s right…a slice of 120 grit emery cloth from my workshop.  Ten minutes of sanding and the helmet is fitting great.

One interesting thing…My spatial awareness behind my head is horrible.  I would reach around and press fingernail marks into the helmet where I needed to sand.  It was always inches away from where I visualized it should be.

Casino Security networks are a favorite of Discovery Channel cable TV technology programs. They make Big Sister look like Deputy Barney Fife from Mayberry.

Last night at 3:00AM an armed man ripped off a craps table at the Bellagio for $1.5mn. Understandably the guards let the guy out of the casino without molesting him. (Ironic when you think of all those CCTV footages you see on cable of Kwik-E-Marts clerks engaging in Close Quarters Combat with their robbers)

What is not understandable is the Bellagio security cameras. This is the best they can do??? I would have thought they’d have something more like a Predator UAV camera than a 1998 Logitech WebCam….