Hard electrons
On Sunday I nearly got the electric motorbike working.
The problem is that it's sort of hard to tell how close I got. Everything was plugged in and in place, but nothing actually turned on, went beep or spun round. It's that sort of 'back to the drawing board' feel that I imagine makes scientific research so depressing - what bit of the large supply of things isn't working, and how do I deduce which one it is?
I'd spent the week preparing for it. I got the motor fitted with a tyre (from the excellent TJ's Tyres in Braddon), where it was opined that the fact that the spokes were bent where they attached to the wheel was a cause for concern. I got the awesome Laurie who runs Suspension Smith in Fyshwick to make me up some spacers and find an axle that would make sure that the motor fit in the middle of the rear suspension arms. I borrowed eight large UPS batteries in order to supply the 96 volts that is my aim for the battery pack's minimum potential. I spent the rest of Saturday going through my wiring and control box trying to get all the things that were supposed to connect together to do so correctly.
That bit is the real challenge. You see, there are five large and twenty-eight small connections from the motor controller; the large ones are the battery terminals in and the three motor coils out, the smaller ones do everything from turn a light on when the controller's 'on' to detect the position of the throttle to connections like 'boost' that aren't connected to a wire on the break-out cables and aren't documented in the manual. The motor itself has ten connectors (power for the three coils, hall effect sensors for each coil, ground and five volts, and the temperature sensor to and from). Some of the controller's outputs attach to external things - LEDs, variable resistors for throttle and brake, power supply, etc. which have to be put somewhere. So it's a bit bewildering working out how to connect it all together.
So on the day Rob and I fitted the brake and torque arm, fitted the spacers and axle (which were perfect!) and ran the cable. Then I lugged one of the batteries, the controller and the huge splay of leads out and started connecting things. I'd built a little kit box, used two D-15 ('VGA') connectors for the controller's inputs, and soldered all the wires to a circuit board. It's all reasonably neat but nothing like waterproof or robust enough to run - it's only really there to give me a chance to work out how the electrics all go together before I start actually finalising where everything goes. And the familiarity with its less-than-professional construction made me tentative as to how it was going to go. Would connecting it spin the motor up to maximum RPM? Had I something round the wrong way that would have its magic smoke escape?
With Rob holding on the front brake, I gingerly connected the battery to the controller. Nothing. I connected the mock-up box to the controller. Nothing. I switched the switch on. Nothing. Hmmmm.
I remembered that the controller required separate power and that was the only jack I hadn't soldered up. I did a quick soldering job and checked the polarity, and attached a spare motorcycle battery to the mock-up box's power input.
Nothing. Double hmmmm.
And that was more or less it for the day. We had to go out to lunch, Rob had to go and play hockey, and the next big task was to try and work out why all my clever soldering and wiring had produced a dud. The important lesson was that instead of one big box that everything plugged into, which was a pain to solder and required special connectors, I should have had each little subsystem in a separate box (or a different part of the same box) with its own connector. That way, when something breaks you can narrow it down fairly easily, and you don't have so much that's interconnected and jammed together. The Kelly jumper leads bundle the leads for the same functions - throttle, brake, LEDs, etc. - together, so you can have a separate box for each.
Also, buying an extra set of connectors isn't necessary, since Kelly supply you
with a set and they're push-on pull-off 'quick' connectors so they can be taken
apart again, but it is very helpful as it means you've got a test set if you
botch something completely.
posted at: 23:06 | path: /personal/ebike | permanent link to this entry
Riding on and off the road
After several weeks of indecision I registered this week for a racing day
at Wakefield
Park on a motorbike riding day. My hesitation was due to a couple of
factors: I had an unfaired Suzuki GS500, which only the true optimist could
consider a race bike; much as I enjoy the speed of the straight and the
skill of cornering, I also enjoy not crashing and injuring my bike and
myself; I hadn't done a ride outside Canberra before and was unsure how
I would go; I had to ride the bike from Canberra to Goulburn, do the
track day, and then ride back home; the certainty of there being lots of
other people dressed in their full-on racing gear with high performance
sports bikes sneering down their noses at this poor fool on an unfaired
road bike with standard narrow tyres, while not worrying me overmuch,
still didn't appeal.
Thankfully, various people I talked to told me, basically, to quit looking at the negatives and think of the positives. So I headed off at 7AM on a chilly Sunday morning for a day of fun and adventure.
I stopped just before the end of Lake George to stretch my legs, thaw my hands out and remove the mask which, though keeping my face from freezing, was directing all my breath up into my glasses to fog them up. I was glad I had had the break - I hit heavy fog just north of Lake George and discovered the fun of trying to keep your visor clear of mist with one hand at 100km/hr (I'd slowed down a bit to take a bit of extra care). Thankfully my remembered directions of how to get from the Goulburn turn-off to Wakefield Park came back perfectly and, after letting one peleton of traffic past me on the single lane road, I arrived.
I immediately started asking around for Canberra Riders people, particularly Heidi as she had said she was going to be there, she had a recognisable name, and her gender reduced my search set considerably. During the day I must have asked most of the women there if they were or knew her, but all to no avail. I hope those people can forgive such an odd question or questioner :-)
Soon enough we were meeting for the rider's briefing, where we were introduced to the signals that would tell us if there was a rider off the course but upright (one single yellow flashing light), a rider down off the course (two yellow flashing lights), a rider down on the course (one red flashing light) and the end of the session (one yellow flashing light and a chequered flag at the starting line). I signed up, paid my money, and took the bike up to the marshalling area - for I was in the novices group and we were first.
By this time the fog had mostly burnt off and the sun was coming through. The first two laps were done in single file with no overtaking, following a pace bike and learning the course. Then the jockeying for position began. I had met up with another Suzuki GS-500 rider and we spent most of the lap with me following him. We talked afterward and he said he felt a little less like an outsider with someone else riding the same thing - a feeling I shared. A friend had turned up at this point who had driven around the course at other times in a Porsche, and we talked about lines and apexes and cambers and stuff like that.
The second time out we were still led but it became obvious that the one fundamental problem that race tracks face when booking different categories is they really need four 'advanced / race' divisions, one 'intermediate' and one 'novice'. Given the choice between going in novice class and missing out on the day altogether, many of the faster people end up in the same group that I and other people new to Wakefield Park were in. By the fourth session there was no doubt I was amongst the slowest on the field - I was regularly getting overtaken at virtually every corner. People with racing slicks and 900cc tuned bikes were in this class - there's no way these people can claim to be novices.
And yet it really didn't matter. There weren't enough people in each group to make it dangerous or crowded, they all realise that they have to get around you rather than you making way for them, and the best I could do was just to keep to a good line, make my intentions plain and not do anything suddenly. I kept my rear view mirrors - I doubt they would make me go very much faster if removed - and it was useful to see people coming up and plan for them. And I had a lot of fun, gradually improving my lines, feeling how much I could rely on the tyres when they were cold and warm, finding and refining that line that leads from one corner to the next to the next... I think I improved, but I had a lot of fun and that's what mattered the most to me.
I finally met up with a bunch of
Canberra Riders people at
the end of the day, and two of them said they wouldn't mind if I rode home
with them. I wasn't really keen to ride back alone anyway, and they were
going to much more scenic route through Tarrago and Bungendore. The
highlight of my day was seeing the guy I'd been following tapping on the
window of the Renault that had been tailgating me up to the lights and
telling him off for tailgating in the rain. I'd only known these people
for two hours or so and they were looking out for me - that's a community
worth being a part of!
posted at: 18:00 | path: /personal/ebike | permanent link to this entry
Manual work
The FZS 600 now has a hole where its engine used to be, and is a good
deal lighter. For those of you who find yourself contemplating doing a
similar conversion, let me annotate the workshop manual procedure for
removing the engine:
Yet.
So stick this in your manual in the appropriate pages. It will save you a fair bit of struggling and cursing, and possible accidents where you find the engine inextricably wedged somewhere or a crucial tiny sticky-outy thing bent in the process of the engine galloping earthward at some stage. And don't bother buying a manual, either. You can find the PDF for free on the internet.
The engine bay is not as large as I'd hoped, and does have some annoying
protruberances which I need to check with an engineer before I grind off.
I may also be able to mount at least one layer of cells outside the bars
on each side - the engine sticks out at least that far. Some more
logistic
posted at: 18:02 | path: /personal/ebike | permanent link to this entry
Just a stage I'm going through
Sometimes it seems like a great idea to indulge yourself. You know, when
you've had an awful day at work, when you've been having trouble sleeping
for months, you've had trouble trying to describe to your partner exactly
why your day at work was so awful, and then just when you think she's
cared for you and wants you to be happy again you find out that you've done
something inexplicable wrong and you're going to enjoy another sleepless,
uncomfortable night without any help or consolation.
At times like this, it can be easy to indulge in amateur theatrics. Getting horribly drunk, being sarcastic, destroying something - the temptation to do something violent, unmissable and defiant rises to levels hard to resist. Metaphors for the futility of existence in an uncaring world come quickly to mind. Symbolic gestures of the struggle of one person to come to terms with a world that does not seem to care what he suffers beckon.
It is at this point that I would caution the reader. Step back from that metaphorical brink, look around, and pause. Nothing you do now is going to help - in fact, pretty much everything you do is going to make things worse. There are people that are worse off than you - even now, there are people suffering far worse, often through no fault of their own. Your situation is not that bad. You have probably faced this kind of problem in some guise or another before. You just need time to sort things out sensibly, and that time will come somehow.
No metaphors here. Just persist.
posted at: 01:57 | path: /personal | permanent link to this entry
Committed to the job
There's an old joke that goes: what's the difference between 'involved'
and 'committed'? In making bacon and eggs, the chicken is involved but
the pig is committed. Well, having just spent $1500 on a broken
motorbike, I feel committed to building an electric motorbike now. Up
until now the parts I've bought - the Enertrak
hub motor, the Kelly
motor controller and peripherals - could all have been sold to someone
else willing to build an electric motorbike. But the choice of a bike
is a personal one, and I'd be lucky to get $500 for the bike now if I
sold it for parts. So I've now committed money I really can't get back.
The problem with building an electric motorbike is that what you ideally need is a motorbike that is working in every respect but the engine is blown. This isn't the usual failure mode of bikes - they usually get enthusiastically smashed into or scraped over immovable bits of terrain at speed. My initial 'wanted' requests on classified ad websites and on web forums were fruitless, and from my many and various web searches I determined that no-one was advertising the type of bike that I wanted. I also didn't really want to buy a bike that was registered and working and try to resell its engine and peripherals, despite one claim that with the right bike that could make my money back. Time to look further afield.
A friend who's a bit of a bike expert and is helping me with this project recommended Motorcycle Disposals, a company in Sydney that takes bikes that have been wrecked, repossessed or confiscated and sells them for whatever they can get. Their web site is a bit 1990s but proudly declares that it is "best viewed in Mozilla Firefox v 3.6" (which is nice) and its main page, the list of bikes they're currently tendering for, is kept reasonably up to date. If you're prepared to spend a bit of money on some replacement parts, or don't mind something with a few scrapes, then there's plenty of bargains there ready for the new rider to take away.
However, the bikes on that page are only about half of their total stock - they're the ones that are rideable or popular so are a good bargain. They have at least that many bikes that have been written off and can only be used for parts, less popular bikes, and bikes with engine problems or larger defects. I spoke to Joel one day and he recommended coming and having a look through their extra stock to find an option. This meant a 300-km drive from Canberra to Sydney and back, so I planned this with the bike-expert friend and we set off.
We narrowed it down to four options. One I liked but was on the expensive side was a Honda CBR1100XX 'Blackbird' - a large, modern bike with a very strong frame and sporty looks. For my purposes I was looking at larger bikes (to carry the load of possibly 100Kg of batteries and 26Kg of motor) with good fairings to reduce wind resistance, and this fit the bill. Better yet, the exhaust had just been sold and I reckoned I could do them a deal on the radiator and oil cooler. But its entire front fairing and headlight assembly was missing and that cost a fair bit, making it a bit less appealing given my budgetary constraints.
There was a Kawasaki ER-6N that was OK, a Honda VT250 that was running but quite old and a bit small, and a Yamaha FZS 600. The latter was within my price bracket, had a motor with part of the engine and starter missing from impact, was a solid build and of modern appearance. I reckoned I could bargain them down a bit on the price, since I wouldn't need the radiator and exhaust, they could be easily unbolted, Motorcycle Disposals also has a side-line in spare parts. Rob and I repaired to a nearby Subway to deliberate.
We fed ourselves, fulminated briefly at the diabolical slowness of 2G modem speeds, and did some searching. The Blackbird looked like costing at least another $800 to get back to working order, and though I could afford it in the long run it was harder to get enthusiastic about it. The FZS 600 only needed a nosecone and windscreen, which could cost less than $400 all up. Finally Rob said "What time do they close?" I looked up the web site. 12:30. "What time is it?" 12:30. Time for a quick phone call!
Joel said that they'd stay there for me and we hurried back. I made them an offer of $1500, $250 less than their asking price, and after a bit of theatrical clutching of hearts and reeling, they agreed when I threw in the exhaust and radiator. It turned out that they didn't need the radiator since it was dinged, but they took the radiator, I signed the bill and wheeled the bike up the ramp onto the trailer. After strapping it down securely we headed off, feeling slightly odd at picking up a non-working bike.
Fuel efficiency was 12.5Km/l (8l/100Km) going up with the empty trailer, and about 11Km/l (9.1l/100Km) going back, compared to the Liberty's usual 15Km/l (6.7l/100Km) on the highway. We felt it most when we were on the hills - it was like we'd added an extra ton of car. I went at 100Km/hr on the return journey too, just to lessen the effect of towing a bike-shaped sail behind us.
The brightest moment of the trip was on the Federal Highway. A Ford Laser Sports coupe - one of those ones with the blue stripes down the centre like it's a giant equals sign - rocketed past us at easily 140Km/hr. Five minutes later we passed a police car on the verge with a speed gun, and we spent the next ten minutes trying to figure out why they hadn't taken off after the boy racer, and the general injustice of seeing so many speeding violations happening and no evidence of police action despite the numerous police cars we'd seen on the road that day. Then, near the Bungendore turn-off, we passed a highway patrol car that had pulled over the sports car.
We felt like going back and high-fiving the cops. It's a vicarious form of justice, to be sure, with more than a touch of schadenfreude thrown in, but it was totally worth it.
Finally, we got the bike home, unstrapped it and gently wheeled it off the trailer again, and parked it in the garage in front of the other two. It feels odd to have gone from owning a car each, to owning a single car, to a car and scooter, to a car and scooter and motorbike, and now we're a four vehicle family. I'll probably sell my bike when I finish the conversion and have the electric bike on the road, but until then it's going to be a bit crowded in the garage.
The Yamaha FZS 600 "Fazer" is actually a moderately rare bike, as it was only made from about 1996 to 2001. It's unfaired - which is a bit of a shame - but has a good solid frame and the motor probably weighs about 100Kgs or so, so putting in my preferred battery pack is going to leave the bike at specified weight. It has fixed front but adjustable rear suspension, which is important as we have to readjust it for the weight of the hub motor, and it's black.
I can't prevaricate any more about building the bike now...
posted at: 16:01 | path: /personal/ebike | permanent link to this entry
Simple successes
Friends of ours are returning to the USA from their semi-yearly trip to
Canberra. We met up for a final dinner before a dance, and they mentioned
that they were big fans of Tom
Lehrer. As it happens, so am I - my Mum wisely bought me a record of
"That Was The Week That Was" back in 1987 or so and I loved it. In 2000
she also gave me "The
Remains Of Tom Lehrer", a remastered 3CD set of his
entire recorded output, including several that had never been released
before, wonderful stuff he did for PBS and light orchestra versions of some
of his more popular ones such as "The Hunting Song" and "Poisoning Pigeons
In The Park". It also comes with a booklet with a foreword written by
Dr. Demento and with
lots of fun stuff, including the Mad
comics done of some of his songs,
illustrations from the various records and other interesting tid-bits.
"Remains" is a must for any true Lehrer fan.
Now, as it happens, I knew where I could lay my hands on another "Remains". You see, my father-in-law volunteers at the Life Line book fair, and he picked up another brand-new-still-in-the-wrapper "Remains" some time ago for $5. A scheme lit up in my head when I heard they wanted a copy, and afterward I asked John if he would give his copy of "Remains" to them. He did, and I did.
It's rare to find a gift that just absolutely knocks someone else out of
the park. It's even rarer that that gift is something that you can lay
your hands on relatively easily and cheaply. To hit that spot with these
friends - to give them something that they and their kids enjoy and
treasure when I won't see them for possibly years - is its own reward.
I just feel really glad that all the pieces of the puzzle just came
together in front of me.
posted at: 18:09 | path: /personal | permanent link to this entry
Martial Arts for the knowless man
With a view to improving my fitness with something also useful, on a whim
I went to a Martial Arts "Birds of a Feather" session at LCA yesterday
evening. Cool things were seeing the different types of martial arts,
from Aikido to Shaolin Gung Fu (Pia Waugh on animal styles, unlit poi
balls and quarterstaff) and having a friend, dealing with a knee injury
and Leukaemia, show that he can still easily demonstrate some pretty
effective combat styles. Slightly painful but still fun things were
having the various holds tried on me, including a surprising number of
ways you can make someone's wrist really hurt (fortunately, for a short
period of time). Slightly less fun but fortunately not painful was the
Capoeira guys, who had a bit too much ego for their own good I felt.
Capoeira is a rather curious combination of martial arts, dance moves
and gymnastics, but I don't think I'll be trying it any time soon.
We started with a bit of a warm-up, and then the experienced people in the group demonstrated some of the different styles. I don't remember much of the exact details, so the highlights were:
posted at: 12:17 | path: /personal | permanent link to this entry
Power from the people
I read the article at http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2778257.htm
with a kind of despairing interest - because what it says is absolutely
right, and it makes me feel very sad about the democracy we supposedly
live in.
A precis of the story is: the "Mandatory Filtering" the Federal Government is proposing to introduce will not be stopped by writing letters to your Member of Parliament or to Senator Conroy, signing a petition or blacking out your home page or avatar. It will be pushed through, because the ALP is (supposedly) indebted to the Australian Christian Lobby (the ACL) and because they wield enormous lobbying power at the highest levels of government. We need to change our tactics of getting through to our politicians, Josh says, or fail to stop the filtering being enacted.
The problem here, I would argue, is not that those opposed to the mandatory filter (like myself) are mumbling to themselves. We are doing all the traditional things that people do when trying to get their members of parliament to listen to their opinions: writing letters to politicians, talking to our friends and organising media coverage. These have worked for most issues in the past. Trying to organise avatar blackouts and internet recognition is a way of socially protesting in modern times, and it isn't really intended to reach the politicians.
The problem I see here is that politicians such as Senator Conroy and the various other ministers I've written to and spoken to are all basically plugging their ears to the voice of their electorate. We get form letters that reiterate their invalid, nonsensical and specious arguments, don't answer a single point we raise, and keep on going in their own direction without listening in the slightest to anything we say. They're listening, instead, to the ACL, who get to whisper in their ears directly and imply that they have all these unseen, unnamed christian voters out there who agree with them. As Josh says, the ALP owes the ACL a few favours - favours that the ACL are more than happy to imply are worth much more than they really are.
And the opponents to mandatory filtering are not without friends in Parliament House. Politicians from Senator Kate Lundy and NSW Minister Penny Sharpe down are trying to also counter the spin and the denialism of Senator Conroy and the ACL. But what are the ordinary people supposed to do? Have a cake sale and raise a couple of hundred thousand dollars to buy a couple of high-profile lobbyists? Start setting fire to cars and blowing up ISPs? Donate some money to the ALP with a little note in the bag? Do as Bernard Keane suggests and create a letter so complicated and confused that bureaucrats actually time to answer it (as if...)?
The problem here is that the public are not being listened to. A majority of Australians don't want mandatory filtering. It's being sold as stopping child pornography but the Minister has said that it could be extended to blocking information on euthanasia, abortion and safe sex - things which the Christian right gets all hot under the collar about but where the information alone is not illegal in Australia. It doesn't stop the real criminals, or even a determined teenager, and the whole illusion of children being randomly exposed to 'unwanted' content is a nebulous decoy.
What are we supposed to do if the politicians who represent us don't listen?
posted at: 18:18 | path: /personal/rants | permanent link to this entry
The cost of beliefs
I was recently walking around the Australian
National Botanic Gardens with friends when we discovered a sign that
had been vandalised. References to geological times had been scratched
out in a crude attempt to remove any reference to how long ago various
features of the Australian continent were formed. My partner, who frequents
the gardens, noted that the Creationists had vandalised the sign. It was
certainly hard to refute - nothing else on the sign was touched, and the
erasure was limited to those specific words, so there's little evidence for
any other objective than obscuring the date ranges of geological periods.
I have a large amount of contempt for the vandal(s) that did this, and those that think that defacing public property is reasonable as long as it supports their own world-view. It costs the gardens about $1000 to replace that sign - that vandal has just asserted that their point of view is worth $1000 or more. And in the grand scheme of things it's hardly proving their point - they leave no other information or evidence to prove any contrary assertion. So really this is just a childish attempt to stop someone else from being heard by shouting louder.
Yet this is not done by a child - the scratching is fairly precise and it's too high for a child to reach. So some adult has thought that it's perfectly valid to deface public property to keep their own little world-view intact. The same adult would presumably be outraged if their church was defaced; so why is their defacement OK?
The thing that really annoys me is that it's not even a scientific debate. There's only one type of person who does this - people who believe that a literal interpretation of their own holy book is absolutely right and no amount of scientific evidence can show differently. They're so prepared to ignore scientific evidence they'll try to remove any sign of it. These people fiddle with scientific procedures to prove their own conclusions - they put their hand on the scale when weighing the evidence. Science and logic has always tried to reason out its arguments based on common ground that we all agree on. This person hasn't even tried to be reasonable.
Why do we keep being reasonable with them?
posted at: 17:43 | path: /personal/rants | permanent link to this entry
Paul's top ten songs
Pia's
post of her top ten songs has made me think about what ten songs I consider
most memorable - things that have really changed my life.
Wooden laptop case cover for 'real'
Um, yeah, that should be '100% wood glued to a plastic case'.
OK, So it's cheating. But I worked out almost as soon as I'd made the
metal pieces that the front edge - which had to bend round in a gradual 90°
curve and then produce two very small but significant 'tangs' that hook
into grooves in the top of the screen - wasn't actually going to work because
making those tangs was beyond my skill. They certainly weren't going to
hold if made out of wood. And while the idea of having a wooden cover
that was more completely wood (it still had to have those metal bits in
it) was attractive, the idea of it actually attaching to my laptop
was even more so.
So I bought a new cover (couldn't find one second hand), sanded it lightly,
and then prepared my implements. I first needed to bend the front edge of
the veneer into roughly the right shape, as it was quite dry and brittle
and would snap if I tried to press it onto the plastic it in that state.
My plan was to get a bit of water, wet down that edge, and then press it
in the mould I'd already made; that would bend it into the right shape with
no breaking whatsoever. So I went to get a bucket of water and a sponge,
foolishly still carrying the veneer in my hand.
It was whilst walking through the door between the main work area in the
woodcraft guild's shed and
the tea room (where the buckets and water are kept) that the gods of
woodworking demanded appeasement. A light gust of wind, channeled in the
doorway, neatly snapped the veneer in three pieces - one still in my hand,
the other two fell to the floor. I stood quite still and very slowly let
my frustration subside silently - there were children present - before
getting the bucket and learning how to mend the veneer.
Step one: apply masking tape to the veneer (this would have gone on the
inside face if it had any recognisably different faces). Step two: apply
veneer
tape to the other side - this is basically like a long strip of stamp
material: wet one side and it becomes a glue, smooth it in place, and when
it dries it holds the piece together. Step three: carefully remove
the masking tape.
Now to bend the edge. Which requires... water. Which will unstick the
veneer tape if used too much. Right. After adding just the right amount
of water, I gradually eased the top form of the mould over it, and pressed
it into the bottom form. Hooray for small miracles, the tape held and the
veneer as a whole bent neatly and without snapping (again).
Next step: apply polyurethane glue. This is like your regular Aquadhere®
but stronger, space-filling (it foams up), resistant to solvents, and
(spotting a theme here) sets faster in the presence of water. In fact, you
have to lightly dampen the wooden surface in order to get it to set well.
(And if you get any on you, you have to wait for two weeks with the affected
appendages blackened from stuck-on dust while it naturally abrades away.)
Fun stuff to work with.
Working quickly, I removed the top form, damped the veneer down, applied
glue and spread it around before the veneer could bend too much (due to
the fibers swelling up on the wet side), and threw on clamps to every
available part of the mould. I could see the glue foaming up in the drops
of water left on the Contact® of the mould. Then, and only then, could
I relax.
Then it was simply leave it for four or five days and then gently try to
prise the glue away from the mould - it hadn't stuck to the Contact®,
but had happily stuck to every non-covered surface it could find, and it
had found plenty. I also had to cut away the excess wood from around the
edges of the cover, as I had left these intact - this was another area
where my lack of expertise led to some rough edges. The glue had also
foamed
through the gaps, in the wood and set itself in a nice, undissolvable
coating on the front of the piece. The wood had also
shrunk
as the glue dried, pulling the cover into a neat arc.
This was beginning to resemble my other cover, and a disappointingly
familiar wave of hopelessness washed over me.
Still, not far to go, and this was only Tuesday before LCA. With a scalpel
I carefully scraped the layer of glue off - in some areas it had simply
foamed between the outer scratch-proof layer and the wood, so I could get a
blade in there and cut it away. Other areas required very precise cutting
to get as much of the impervious layer away while still leaving wood. I
also discovered that the veneer glue, being impregnated with water, had
combined with the polyurethane glue to set into a scalpel-resistant polymer.
There was also excess glue sticking on the other side which had to be cut
and scraped away. Then I flexed my sanding muscles sanding the remaining
surface clean and removing all visible areas of glue.
Finally, the finishing (heh) touch: some Shellawax,
a special blend of waxes, oils, solvents and magic. As I had suspected, as
the Shellawax soaked in, the wood fibers expanded again and I was left with
a near-straight cover again. Two coats of this, some vigorous scrubbing
with 0000 steel wool to heat it up and remove the streaks, and there it was,
finally finished.
Yes, there are still flaws - the cracks in the piece where I glued the
fragments together, the chunks out of the edges, and a number of other
little imperfections which it is my privelege as the maker to not have
to tell you about. But it's beautifully smooth yet textured to the touch,
water resistant, and looks damn good. I'm not sure whether I'll give a
lightning talk on it at LCA because I don't know if I can fit that saga
into three minutes, but I'm going to take it and not the previous cover
to LCA and just use it.
Torvalds' Trousers, but I hope it lasts :-) Going to town on a train
For the fun of it, of course! I've never seen some of the countryside
I'm travelling through, out the back of Bungendore and Tarago. I've
driven under the railway bridges and followed the line from north of
Goulburn to Bundanoon, but never been on the track watching the cars.
And it really is quite beautiful in an Australian way - rocky creek
canyonettes (canyoninas?) and river banks green with recent rains, the
rolling hills that yellowy-browny-green that only Australia seems to
call fertile, and sweeps of countryside seen from other vantage points.
I'm just going past a whole
set of brick - brick! - pylons crossing a
river that have no bridge or track on them. What is their story? What
is that mysterious high-security spot just south of Bungendore that you
see easily from the train but never see from the road? What is that
huge
shipping container area - devoid of cargo - just near Tarago?
So many new things to find out! So much countryside I now appreciate
for its own character, its twists and turns and long straights, that
car drivers never touch.
It's wonderful. And it doesn't cost that much either!
Footnote: added links to Google maps for the two places I could find -
the mysterious high-security area isn't showing up where I expect it
to be - it's like the track, road, fences with cleared area around
them, dams and buildings all just ... don't exist ... Talking for real
Damian Conway is my inspiration here - I will not fail him! Look Out Eddie Van Halen
Until now. It started with playing the piano at friends and relatives
houses; then Kate suggested I could accompany her violin playing. As
I got more into LMMS I started realising that having a keyboard to
record lines and work out notes and melodies on was going to be very
useful. So I did some research and found the Roland Juno G, which sat
between the full-on knob tweaking of Nords and Moogs (all digital, now,
of course, but still faithfully emulating the analogue sound synthesis
process), the 'play the demo song' integrated-speaker cheap synthesizer
market, and the 'it has 4096 patches, all pianos' professional keyboard.
This may sound like a no man's land, but the market segment is for
people who want a range of instruments, the ability to fiddle with how
they sound, and don't need heavy 'piano-action' keys. Unfortunately,
they don't make the Juno G anymore.
Fortunately, it's successor is the Juno Stage, which is basically
version 2 - all the features of the G but without the confusion between
it and the Juno D. You get knobs to control attack and release, low
and high frequency rolloff, and cutoff and resonance of the filter -
which you can twiddle on the fly. It comes with 1024 different patches,
a variety of modes including split keyboard (SuperSaw on the left and
piano on the right is a favourite) and lots of nice features that I
haven't truly discovered yet. So I bought it, brought it home, and
started practicing again.
Gradually my fingers are warming up again, playing scales and old tunes
I used to know. But what has amazed me is the amount of pure
inspiration I'm getting from the sounds. A new patch will make me
start writing new melodies out of thin air, and when I find that some
presets consist of an arpeggio and drum rhythm on the left hand, new
mystical tunes will flow out of my right hand and almost amaze me in
the process. That and the joy of working out the chord progressions
(the title of this post is a nod to the classic synth line of 'Jump'
by Van Halen - I hit the first two chords (C, F in my playing) and then
had to figure out the next (B) later by experimentation - I don't know
what the actual song used but it's easiest to play on G, C, and F)
for songs I remember. Playing the Doctor Who theme or the theme to
"Axel F" or "Fletch" (yay Harold Faltermeyer) is always a blast, and it
all came right back to me.
So I'm now doing regular practice of my own devising, before I seek out
someone to teach me how to play more. I'll report how I go plugging it
into the computer (yay USB MIDI interface) in another post. All posts licensed under the
CC-BY-NC license.
Author Paul Wayper. You can also read this blog as a
syndicated RSS feed.
People following my ongoing
saga of building a wooden
laptop case cover can finally give a half-hearted cheer, as today I
have actually made one. It's real, it clips onto my laptop, it looks
just the right colour, it has the right texture and feels great, and I
finally feel like I've actually completed what I set out to achieve.
And it's 100% wood.
posted at: 20:21 | path: /personal/woodworking | permanent link to this entryWed, 03 Dec 2008
I've always loved rail travel. So here I am on the 5:05 from Canberra,
heading to Sydney. A plane and even a bus would be quicker, and there
would be some possibility that I could have got a lift with someone
going this way as well. So why put up with being constantly rocked
around, with other people who swear and play the guitar?
posted at: 17:07 | path: /personal | permanent link to this entrySat, 22 Nov 2008
Right. With two weeks to go until OSDC, I feel like I'm actually
nearly ready to give my talk. The slides are all written up, and my
first practice talk-through took 25 minutes - should fit into the
30 minute slot nicely. I aim to do about a dozen more talk-throughs
so I can get my notes up to speed, and so that I don't read from the
slides, speak too fast or ramble too much. I've spoken at CLUG before
but this is an order of magnitude larger audience and three orders of
magnitude more important. I really want this to go well, and I'm
determined to do it well.
posted at: 10:49 | path: /personal | permanent link to this entryThu, 09 Oct 2008
Back in the days when Icehouse was in, Crowded House was big and
I was getting deeply hooked into Yello, I had a Roland Juno 6. It
was my Dad's, but I played it a fair bit. One of the leaders in the
analog synthesis days between full-on knob-for-everything setups
like the Moog and the start of MIDI and digital control, it is still
legendary for producing huge bass lines and stunning synth leads.
Then our house burned down and took the Juno with it, and though I
often thought of getting another synthesizer I never did.
posted at: 13:18 | path: /personal | permanent link to this entry