Author: demi

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Random

2021 New Year’s Resolution

New Years Resolutions are a silly thing that most people make and then forget about by February, but I’m a silly person and participate as well.

For 2021 I’m keeping it vague and theoretically easy to accomplish. I want to complete a single project.

Literally anything. Just one of the projects that I dream up (and sometimes write down on here). I just want to actually finish one.

Looking back, I have had lots of ideas.. Started some of them, finished only a select few. The only one that comes to mind is CESAHR, our home server thing that we migrated into the cloud a while back. There’s things I want to add onto it, but I’d say it’s actually done.

I almost finished the wheel lights for my car, but then when I finally sat down and made them all for each wheel, I guess my craftsmanship was crap.. They fell apart pretty quickly, one of the wheels even tossed the battery pack (after yanking out of the glue seat) against the wheel well with a nice noise, one held onto the battery pack and just let it swing around as I drove, making a strange clank noise when driving slow in quiet parking garages.

I think I’m getting a 3D printer for christmas so that might help out actually! Maybe I can really get going on that animatronic grogu/alexa… Or actually finish/fix that solar-powered outdoor temp/humid sensor thing that I otherwise gave up on.

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Project Ideas Random

Animatronic grogu with alexa

Inspired by this DIY talking billy bass enabked with alexa

http://www.cyber-omelette.com/2019/01/billy-bass-alexa.html?m=1

and the recent success of The Mandalorian (resulting in a TON of Grogu/Baby Yoda/The Child toys, some animatronic), I’ve become inspired to make something similar. I would like to make a little baby Yoda with alexa so we can ask Grogu to set timers, turn on lights and basically find out what knowledge it doesn’t have when asking it other questions. The personification with something so cute also might help me yell at it less when it gets things wrong, doesn’t listen, etc.

Either way, haven’t figured out the details, but it sounds like a fun project so I think I’m gonna go for it like for real.

Also might be cool if he had little mado armor like this

https://ifunny.co/fun/A9l323pE8?s=cl

Categories
Project Ideas

working RC pod racer

I want to make a working RC pod racer. By working I mean actually hovering and by pod racer I mean the think from star wars that races. Because of the practicalities of such a difficult task, I assume that the design will have to be following form more than function (at least to start). Ultimately, I would like for it to be based on sebulba’s racer in episode 1 (orange, cool angular shape, largeish cockpit pod thing that already has tank shapes).

I imagine that making the levitating part will be difficult, and I don’t like the idea of it being basically just a stylized quadcopter (like some other “levitating” star wars toys are, looking at you x-wing). After very little thinking on the matter I believe that the easiest way will effectively be a bunch of cold gas thrusters using standard CO2 canisters (whip-its as they were called in my youth). You would probably need many of them, and the run time would be quite abysmal, but it theoretically could work if you made the craft light enough and had fine enough control over the valves. That last part is probably the harder part.

I think that the control logic for the more efficient “balance on a pillar of thrust” approach (see F-35C) will be too complicated for me, so I’m guessing it’d end up being more of a “quadcopter-esq” design with multiple pillars of thrust that can be balanced and maybe one or two thrusters in each lateral direction for propulsion (separate tanks I imagine). I think this will end up meaning that the connection from “engine” to “pod” (where the drive sits?) will need to be quite rigid and you might have a sort of triangle balance where there’s three main pillars of thrust for levitation, one on each engine and one on the pod, and then a lateral thruster to left/right on each engine and main forward/back on the pod itself.

I’m guessing that probably want separate tanks for levitation and propulsion, but I’m not sure why.

Now I just need to figure out how to go about making cold gas thrusters and doing some basic math to see if this is even remotely feasible…

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Random

tot is the best palindrome

Yeah palindromes are cool, but for now of them to work, lets take racecar, you need to re-arrange the letters again. Sure, the letters in that order make the same word if the order is reversed, but the short definition is along the lines of “that word backwards is the same word”, which is different than the reverse order of letters. In here too argue that the best palindromes (or true palindromes, if you will) are those only made up of vertically symmetrical letters. The type-face changes which letters those are, but using the way that I personally handwrite the letters, the following is the list of letters that are symmetrical:

H, i, I, l, o, O, t, T, U, v, V, x, X, Y

This means, that a true palindrome just be the same word if the order of the letters is reversed AND must only contain the letters above. I’m sure there are actually a few of them, but only two spring to mind after thinking about it for a while: “lol” and “tot” (as in tater, or toys-for-the). As “lol” is technically an abbreviation, even if it’s largely used as a single word in people’s heads now, I feel safe asserting that “tot” is the best palindrome.. at least until I can think of a new, longer, true palindrome.

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Green

Mail 4 the environment

Why do I constantly get paper in the mail for environmental causes? Politicians that are reaching out based on their “green credentials”, organizations soliciting donations to help the environment and protect <insert thing here>, etc.

It’s ridiculous.

“Lets show everyone how much we care about the environment by using lots of chemicals and inks to print our message onto millions of dead tree pieces and then pay someone to take each of them and fly and truck them all over the country (world?) and then put them into little vans that get basically 4mpg and hand deliver each one to every persons door where they can read it themselves. I hope they don’t just throw it straight into the trash can!”

I know the system is already pumping a ton of other mail through the transportation systems and it can be argued that the effect of just these mailers alone is not much since the mail person is already driving to my home to give me other mail and whatever but that’s a shitty attitude. They shouldn’t have printed them at all. They shouldn’t be supporting the paper, ink, and transportation. Sure their individual contributions is low, but it’s all about supply and demand. Nothing will change as long as people are still buying a ton of paper to ship crappy mailers.

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Question

Tournament Ordering

Why do they put the top vs bottom, 2nd vs 2nd to last and so on for tournaments?

It doesnt make sense to me, but I guess putting 1 vs 2 and 3 vs 4 etc. Gives last place an unfair advantage or opportunity but it seems ridiculous.. someone explain plz

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Uncategorized

Hello world!

This blog is an idea I’ve had for a while just quietly as a place to dump out all the crap that pops up in my brain. Little ideas… places for project notes… questions I’ve been pondering but been too lazy to just google.. whatevs

I’m trying to discourage reading of this blog. It’s more of an outlet for my brain than really for any consumption so, if you’ve found this somehow, congrats for making it! It’s public so you can poke around but like I said, not geared towards an audience of any kind so don’t expect it to be easy or sensical in any way.

That’s that. Go away now.