Posts I am too lazy to convert...
From Fusselman.org
Ok, here's the deal: As of whatever the creation date of this page is, I was about half-done converting all of the content on the front page to the new style, where the posts content is saved in its own page. I got about half way down the page and realized that I was converting content that was months and months old. Here's all the postings that I was just too lazy to convert.
It's ALIVE!
The "bike" lives! There's still a few bugs to work out, mostly related to keeping the chain tight, but the rear wheel spins under it's own power. Check it out.
In other news, I've continued working on some Home Automation and security projects. More details on those, as I get to it. Also, not being one to do just 3 projects at once, I've started drawings for my CNC Mill project. Basically, all this work is inspired by the new year, thinking about everything I want to do in 2009. At some point, I'll be posting the 2009 Project Roadmap for all to see. Hopefully the limitless scorn of the Internet will help keep me on track.
Posted: 2009-01-03
T'was the week after Christmas...
I've been really lazy about updating, or doing much of anything productive with Christmas and whatnot. I'd thought I'd have an opportunity to play some Anarchy, but it wasn't to be. I got some nice things for Christmas, including an auto-dimming welding helmet, which is, in fact, the most awesome piece of technology ever. It's super convenient, especially in working on small, detailed things, where you're "checking" often. This statement implies (Correctly) that I had a chance to weld something.
I did a bit of work (yesterday) on the gearbox for my "bike", mainly welding up the input sprocket adapter. I also assembled the primary drive chain, which turns the jack shaft. Still to do to finish up the drive train, I have to clean up the gearbox and get it mounted to the swing arm. Finally, a final drive chain needs to be created. Given my successes with with chain making so far, this shouldn't be too much effort, if I can get the gearbox mounted straight and rigid. From there, it's basically just a matter of electronics to having a "working" bike. I'm still leaning towards a canned controller, possibly to drive my own "heavy duty" output stage... Frank has had some good luck with daisy chaining or beefing up off-the-shelf controllers.
Posted: 2008-12-30
New Hacks in the Cold
It's December and it finally got cold around here. That leads to things like snow, ice and preglow. Yea, it's true Diesels don't like the cold very much. Since I replaced a failed glowplug last winter, I don't have problems
starting, even at the -8F (-22C) we saw earlier this week. Anyhow, Diesels don't make much waste heat, which would ordinarily be used to heat the cabin (and the driver). I have the "cold weather package", which in '02 included (Among other mundane things) heated front seats. They're freaking awesome. That car would be undrivable in the winter without them. My butt is toasty warm within 2 blocks. The rest of me, however, waits about 3 miles, depending on traffic (it doesn't really increase coolant temp unless I'm on the throttle, so idling in traffic is BAD). I did some research, and other VWs (and Audis) heat the steering wheel. Unfortunately, it's mostly in the Touareg and A8 and stuff, nothing that shares a bolt-pattern with the Jetta.
What the TDI does offer, though, is an "auxiliary water heater", comprised of a modified water manifold and 3 additional glowplugs to heat the coolant electrically. I'm looking for a part number for said manifold, which seems to be used only on the manual transmission models; it's the one that contains the temperature sensor. They must have thought that the drag from the torque converter would be sufficient to heat the engine up at idle.... NOT!
In other news, I ordered a new battery for my laptop, but when it came in, it turned out to be the wrong one. Any reasonable person would have just cut their losses, and returned it. I decided to get creative.
Posted: 2008-12-17
Power Games
Last night, Dave, Richard and I whipped up a new Gaming Table for use when we play D&D at Richard's place. It turned out pretty good, for less than 5 hours of work.
Dan and Emily were here today, we went to lunch at Mimi's Cafe, which was pretty good. I described it to Dan as "an upscale Village Inn". We checked out a few things on his Jetta, including measuring the timing belt and reading codes.
Yesterday, at 6:53am, my UPS decided it didn't want to work right anymore. Some things on the UPS seem to work fine, like my VMWare server. Other things, like wireless access points, switches, etc, dont work at all. Those devices work fine, plugged directly into mains power. A volt meter put on the UPS' output shows about 50vac. As my meter isn't True RMS, and I don't have a scope, I wonder if that's really the peak-to-peak voltage, or if it's miscalculating somehow. In any case, I'm done fighting it, and it'll be decommissioned and scrapped yet this week.
Posted: 2008-11-15
Campaigning
On Saturday night, we finished up the first of 3 "campaigns" in Dave's Eberron game. 13 sessions. It was a blast. Anyhow, on a gaming note, Richard and I are going to be doing some construction, building a gaming "table topper", as he doesn't think his table is large enough. I've found a few links with ideas:
- "The Avenger"
- Tabletop Projection (Not likely to try this...)
- "The Sultan"
Posted: 2008-11-10
Projects
Been crazy busy lately with work, work, and stuff around the house. The Carputer has tested beautifully, and now just needs final installation. My "bike" has been the sink for most of my spare time lately, but I've accomplished a ton. I expect to be finished with the major mechanical aspects within 2 weeks. In the meantime, check out my progress.
Posted: 2008-11-4
Starting Up
With the Carputer in final testing, I've turned some attention to my power assist "bike". A friend got me the hookup for some "junk" bikes at a local bike shop; In my opinion, they're not such junk, with a bit of work. I've completed most of the disassembly and a mockup of how the finished vehicle might work.
Posted: 2008-10-21
5 Years of Fusselman.org
Last Friday was the 5th anniversary of my owning the Fusselman.org domain name. I did some looking back and there doesnt seem to be any Archive.org pages for it, since, until it started mirroring my "Real" site Fozzee.net, it didn't really have any content. Next year, for the 10th anniversary of Fozzee.net, I'll be chronicling a bunch of old content from there.
In other news, I've just about completed work on the Carputer and am in final testing, pending a permanent installation, As soon as I'm sure it's stable. Right now, it's just rattling around in my trunk. I just don't want to have to rearrange everything if I discover another issue like the power holdup issue I'd had.
Posted: 2008-10-20
Tying up Loose Ends
It's been an insane week, attempting to tie up some loose ends in the shop. I'm attempting to implement some "project management", to help things actually get finished, instead of partially done forever, and then discarded. The projects I've been focusing on are my Digital Photo Frame and the Media Laptop for the car. The first project ended in (relative) failure, since the display quality is so poor. I'm sure something will come of it, but it's just unfortunate that it didn't come out better.
The carputer project is faring significantly better. I discovered that my DC-DC power supply sucks quite a bit of juice, even at idle (ie laptop and car off), so I whipped up a controller circuit to let the laptop power it off when it's shut down. Now, I'm just waiting on a part from VW Germany to give me a switch on the dash for this thing.
Other things in mind tonight:
- Saw a TON of kids tonight with electric scooters. Makes me want to finish (start?) mine.
- Many people commented on Freecycle today about the same things I've felt for some time. It's nice to be agreed with.
- Synergy rocks!
Posted: 2008-10-10
Into the Fray
Spent a few hours this week (like 10) fixing my brother Justin's Jeep's power windows and locks. It's a cool ride, if a bit silly as a daily driver. Anyhow, we found the problem, and it's better now. Hopefully, the next project will be more fun.
Posted: 2008-10-02
Tons of Fun!
We've been comparing cruises and ships recently. It got me thinking about Cruise Ship Tonnage relative to the number of passengers aboard. Heavier ships fare better in rough weather, and carry more amenities. Smaller ships seem to have better routes to the places we want to go (must be that we go places that less people want to go). Anyhow, enjoy the writeup. Amazingly to me, smaller ships seem to have more tons per passenger than larger ones.
Improvements
I'm currently working on a number of improvements to the website, mostly in the form of various useful MediaWiki templates. In particular, I'm working on a widget using Parser:XML that will allow me to render dynamic XML content directly into the site's pages. In related news, the site is pending a redesign, to look less MediaWiki-ish. That's an "As Dan has time" sort of thing, though, so we'll see when it happens, as he's a busy guy. I'm also considering templates for "Currently Reading", as well as a Twitter-esq thingi, except geared toward Mobile Web, instead of SMS.
Resolved!
Finally got the UPS back into service, having finally assembled my battery string. Built a Rolling Worktable for the shop, which I'll be detailing here soon. Also, finally put into writing my knowledge / feelings about Monitor Resolutions. Hopefully I'll be doing some more useful projects in the near future; I just really had to get caught up on some housekeeping stuff, which included actually working on the house. Let's just say I'm not cut out to be a painter.
Untitled
Not much doing tonight; Got my UPS back in action, mostly... I'm still having some trouble finding a 48v battery string that all works. Testing batteries from my pile is slow business, as I have only one charger, and want to charge at 2A to avoid damaging what I believe to be about 20ah batteries. To this end, I did throw together a Battery Load Tester as a sub-project to both my UPS and Light EV projects. I also did some updates and rearranging to the Jetta pages, mostly adding part numbers for my personal reference.
Dish'n it Out
So we switched to Dish this week for our TV service. The whole HD-OTA thing didn't quite work out, so far as integrating with Tivo. Tivo wanted us to buy new digital unit and some stuff, and we decided that it just wasn't a cost-effective option. We scheduled our install, and they sent out a guy (sorry, I don't remember your name!) from Blue Sky Satellite to do the install. This guy's work was amazing. He did a nice job hiding cable, and whatnot, and overall just did a very good install. Much better than I'd expected.
This morning, I called Cox to cancel our cable TV, and was in for quite a shock... As was expected, the rep (Who's name I'm withholding) ask all the usual questions. "Why are you leaving", "what does it cost", etc etc. He tried to tell me how their option was oh so much cheaper (in reality, we expect to save about $25/mo), how this was just a 6-month price (from Dish) and so on. I found it quite ironic that Cox, king of the 6-month promotion, would accuse someone of advertising a temporary price. Anyhow, my beef isn't with the fact that they tried to retain me as a customer (I expect that), but it was how they did it, trying to smear the competition, and in general acting very confrontational. I don't know if this is a matter of their policy, or a guy who just didn't have enough saves last month and was upset, taking it out on me.
In any case, it's done now. I'll be reporting back on this regularly. If you're considering signing up for Dish, drop me a line. I'll answer any questions I can, and they've got an awesome referral program, that benefits both the referrer and referee.
I Saw it Again
Another busy week. Did quite a bit of work rebuilding my UPS, which trashed a second set of batteries. I'm redesigning it to run only on an external pack, to help keep the pack cool. I also intend on adding a cooling fan or 2, and the case has been resized so there's no empty space where the internal pack used to be. I'm currently pending a second test, as the unit can't cold-start (IE start with no AC power), as the inverter wont stay engaged.
On a similar note, I acquired a miter saw. The Freecycler discarding it believed that it had a power switch issue (I dont think it does), but it definitely needs brushes... The motor sparks quite a bit, and I've already cleaned the comm... Anyhow, it works alright for now. I plan on dropping an abrasive blade in it, and running it to cut off metal stock.
Further down the junk collecting trail, I've begun to acquire materials for my light electric vehicle. Jason brought me a trashed wheel. It had a useful hub (which I will probably use as a jackshaft), as well as an aluminum rim, which will end up recast as something else.
Antiquated Technology
I was at Borders the other day and found myself a bit overwhelmed. There's something inexplicably emotional about a room full of ground up dead tree. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I'm revamping my personal organization system a bit, and was actually considering buying a hardbound, blank paged book. A bit more thinking reminded me that my handwriting is almost entirely illegible (even to me), so that even if I were to commit things to this stack of dead tree, my ability to retrieve that data would be severely limited. I was surprised again while browsing the business section (hey, I was there a while), which is laid out such that the books are stacked to the ceiling. There was something comforting about being in that narrow aisle, surrounded by all kinds of knowledge that I mostly didn't care about. Someday, when I have a real office, it'll have shelves of random books taller than I am. On a somewhat related note, Jason recently got my wife a shirt that reads "I don't need Wikipedia, my spouse knows everything"... I suspect this feeling has something to do with that. The book resembles an empty table, while the shelves represent a database, packed with relatively useless information... So I guess I can relate :)
In other news, the UPS Chop Job is going well... It's having all it's fuses replaced with circuit breakers, getting generally rewired, and possibly getting a rebuilt transformer (if I can find someone to do it, this beast is a bit hairy for me... too many taps...) Anyhow, I'll keep you posted.
Going Crazy
This week seems like I'm going crazy. Have spent more time outside (with the dog) in the last two weeks than I have in two years (not literally). On the upside, my laptop works great out here :) I've recently taken to reading David Allen's Ready for Anything
On another note, in relation to an ongoing debate with Dave, I was I was researching my phone the other night, when I found disassembly instructions, along with another site that uses Mediawiki as a blog/personal site. His format is a bit different, but the same general idea. Also of note, I've rearranged my left-nav bar, after seeing his site. I did this to highlight more of my projects.
The Dog Days of Summer
For those of you who haven't heard, Becky finally got her Dog!!! Lil' Molly is pretty cute, now that she makes less messes in the house. I did manage to rewire the TV and whatnot, and added an external HD tuner. Jason came over and we built a pair of HD Antennas (which are really the same thing as any other TV antenna, just tuned for the HD range... Tonight, I put in some time disassembling my UPS and doing some experimenting for Ron's Foam Cannon. Neither went so well.
On a more capitalistic note, my cousin (and her husband) are trying to sell their house. She describes it as "a great starter home in the Millard area". Check it out!
