You'll notice, in the upper-left of this web-page, something called 'Clustrmaps'. This is a little, tiny program that keeps track of from-where people are viewing my web-page... - there's red and yellow dots all over a map of the world...
The yellow-dots are 'recent' (last 24 hours) the red-dots are previous... - if you click on that map, it takes you to the ClustrMaps web-page and you'll see the other people that are viewing my web-page and their towns / cities and the dates for the recent stuff...
One of the things we've been doing the past couple of months is re-screening the 'screened-in-porch' that we have procrastinated 11 YEARS since the hurricanes of 2004 blew-out the screen... - Lowe's has some really nice plastic stuff that makes the screening both easy and 'modular' - that is any one piece of screen can be replaced, separately from everything else...
View of east-end
View of the west-end.
close-up view of the 'track' and screen and 'cover' available at Lowe's
- which made the whole project both easier and more pleasant to look at...
- A few pictures indicate what I've done (not finished 'yet' (been working on the about six weeks now) but we are way closer than we've been for 11 years!.
- we've had a LOT of RAIN which prevented us from painting a lot of the wood, when we might like to have done that. Plus there have been 'times' when
- I just couldn't muster the 'energy' - even though MOST of this was done in the 'shade' - July-August-September is NOT the coolest time of the year in
- South Florida...
During this kiln-firing, Mr. Bill, in the quest to reduce foot-steps, introduced something called "Tele-OmniTemp"
- to look at temperatures in the kiln without having to walk all the way to the kiln in the middle of the night (or day?)
AND - Just when you decide you need to spend a LOT of TIME to trim-the-trees in preparation for the hurricane(s) that are coming - and you go and spend a LOT OF TIME to do this - the people at Florida Power and Light send this thing out to do the same thing - and these guys are FREE, and they do a MUCH BETTER JOB than I do ...
AND - just to 'add to' the yard / flower / weed / things, here's a picture of a "Passion Flower" (raised at home by Ms. May!)
who's vine(s) have now laid-claim to Ms. May's car-antenna!!!
Cycling, - not been doing much, lately, tons of reasons, mostly RAIN and screened-in-porch, (noted above) - but - last week or so have been 5-6 times, tricycle and road-bike - getting back into it... Had a real 'revelation' while riding the tricycle, though, the only cycle I have where I can 'see' (in real-time) the software I use to do cycling-rides; the speed would jump from 10-12 mph to 20 plus mph in an 'instant' - when I wasn't pedalling harder... - After quite some time and several 'views by the developer(s) it became obvious that the software was jumping from GPS to WiFi locations and back again - and since many of the WiFi locations' Lat-Lon is in error, this created a speed-problem on the tricycle (the road-bike has a speed-sensor on the wheel and that's more reliable). - ANYWAY - it was good to have the developer tell me what the problem is - and - of course, the solution is to get 'wheel-speed-sensors' on all my cycles, and that - yes - COSTS MONEY. - but whatever?
This section of the web-page was published in July, this year (2015) - but I've left it in here, since a lot more people seem interested than I had originally thought...
For a LONG TIME (years, actually), Mr. Bill has been 'attempting'
to 'model' (in
CAD software) some pottery-kilns...
I won't bore you with all the technical mumbo-jumbo about this
effort, other than to say that I'm using a product called "_Rhino3D_"
and it is an awesome software tool, that if I continue to use it
until the day I die, I still won't know but 15% of it's
capabilities...
this drawing / model was developed using a 'simplistic'
approach - modeling what - basically, was '1/2' of the kiln, then
using something called the 'mirror' command to duplicate what I'd
modeled onto the other side. This is the typically
methodology used to design a boat-hull
this kiln was modeled with a Python (programming language) script
to create, in essence a 'series' of (mathematically /
geometrically) ellipses, and each of those purple lines you see on the
green 'surface' is an ellipse (with it's bottom-half cut-off at
the bottom of the kiln (green surface)...
Note, also, the
'secondary' chamber in the back (far-right)... - another 'feature'
of our 'design software' -
auto-magically-inserted at a location
programmed-into the Python software...
What is VERY INTERESTING about the two approaches is that they
require the same amount of 'WORK' - (man-hours).
One,
however, creates a better set of numbers for estimation of numbers
(of (4-6 types of bricks, costs (of bricks and of shipping,
weights, man-hours, etc. and one creates a better "Surface" to
view / model / cogitate about...
HOW to 'meld the two' together - that's the next
challenge... - eventually I hope to get to
'Push-Button-Design'
- but that is probably a long way off at this
point...
Rhino3D
has a companion software tool that is called (loosely) a
"graphical algorithm editor" (_Grasshopper_
is it's name) - it allows me (the 'pilot' for lack of a
better word) to do several things that are not inherently
possible in Rhino3D... Most everyone has
heard of 'AutoCAD' (which is actually a 'suite' of products)
and even in the (VERY EXPENSIVE) _AutoCAD_ world there is
nothing to compare to Rhino3D and Grasshopper applications
working together...
Just recently I've begun watching the
on-line-training-videos for _Grasshopper_ , and I'm now
blown-away (mentally) by what the two products can do,
together, and furthermore what they might allow me to do,
assuming I can "re-think" my mental approach to this task.
I suspect it'll take me another 6 to 18 months to perhaps as long as 36
months to do what I want with these two products, but I've got a
real start, here, and the people who wrote and support this
software have taken an interest in what I'm attempting to do (from
their viewpoint I'm a 'customer' but one who has a concept they
might be able to produce and sell, and I don't see anything like
it in the marketplace, at this point...
Above you will see one small picture of the two products working
side-by-side, and the key (mathematical / geometric) 'gadget' I've
discovered is something called 'biarc'
- click on the link to view what Wikipedia has to say about it...
...
WE went BACK to BC to FINISH what (some of us)
started, back in October of last year... - there is / are a LOT of
'stories to tell' - but - in this case, one picture really is
worth 1,000 words. - this is at the end of roughly 12 hours
of work, and we still had to clean-up, eat dinner, pick-up the
dog, and drive back to the intermediate step, and then drive-home
from there - bottom-line we hit the sack about midnite and
that makes for a very very long day! - but it is DONE, now (at
least our part, therein!)
(BIGGER
VERSION click here)
Mr. Panda-bear had his annual "bath" on 03 Sepetember, (2014) and here's
his web-page:
http://www.vikingasia.org/BeachWeb/PandaBear/PB.html
