tn42.com

"The SS Philly comin' in to port!"

I was drawing on, what is the thing called? My daddy says it's a wacom tablet he got from his dad. Anyways...

I was thinking about halloween a while ago, and I thought about Vampires, and tricking a real person into drinking a blood drink. But instead of drawing a vampire and a person, one paying, one giving, I instead did a poster.

Though I've been waxing high on lost foam casting for some time, I've always revered and looked up to a "higher level" of aluminum casting, green sand split casting. The following recounts my adventure therein.

Not that anyone should give a flying terd at this point, I took an hour, and a little spit and chewing gum, and mangled together a quick wiki project site for µCAI!

http://ucai.tn42.com

Right now, it's just my notes for how it could work, but I'll be padding out the pages to get the basics down, shorten the main page, and then sending the link off to some smart people on twitter to see if anyone is interested.

Ok, so.. maybe I'm crazy but... ever since my initial foray into Micro-controllers, so little emphasis is kept on the actual building when it comes to "moving" bots. On the beloved arduino, all it takes is a single open source shield (or less) to start making a chassis move, and right out of the box you can receive and measure various sensors and inputs.

One full month now of unemployment after nearly a decade. And how's it going? Well...

Alright, not to make an overly big deal out of this, but after a casual comment on an excellent Mythbusters interview over on Popular Mechanics, and a tweet over to it's author, the fabulous Erin McCarthy, she actually replied to me. Not only that, she then proceeded to offer me the guest edited Mythbusters issue I'd missed. No freakin' way!

Ok, not to be sad or sappy but.. I've got to say something.

It's been a few weeks, and it's odd. After being employed for 7 years, you get in the habit... of, well being employed. On one hand it somewhat guarantees shelter and food for you and your family, but on the other hand it sells your time and your life.

After nearly 7 full years of full time employment at Gold Country Media, today I sign off. It's been fun, and it's been harrowing. I've worked my fingers to the bone for the company over the years, and for the most part, it's been worthwhile. The people are what makes the time worth it most of the time.

At long last the summer has given me another chance to redeem myself in aluminum (Why the summer.. when it would seem that copious amounts of heat and fire go better with winter).

Here I've finally documented almost the entire setup, from carving to placing in the sand, to pouring.. the only part I've left out is the finishing.. which really is just grinding and wire brushing.. not exactly prime time interesting...

I had a number more projects for this burn than the last.. and unfortunately raised the bar a little too high for one project: the Thing.