Trucks

The longboard trucks, wheels, & bearings showed up today. Luckily we finished sealing the board yesterday. I should be able to get everything installed tomorrow. Unfortunately it is supposed to rain now until Friday. I would take her to a park and let her try it in the rain but I am fighting a nasty cold and am just not up for being put in crappy weather. Maybe we will take it to playgroup, though she might not want to share. Later.

Programable controllers

The people at Make magazine really like these programable controllers. I am interested in trying them but am a bit intimidated by the idea. I am hoping this book will alleviate my fear of buying one. They run anywhere from 50 to 100 dollars and can do just about anything you can think of. We sent, and brought back, men to the moon with less sophisticated electronics. Maybe I can find a really cool project to try if the book convinces me it would be doable. Later.

Doodler

I took the kids to their music lessons last night before going to work. They have their lessons at the same time now so it only takes half an hour, but since they are both taking lessons I don't have anyone to talk to. I decided to try out the app I got for painting on photos. As you can see I did not draw on a photo, but used a blank screen instead. It was kind of fun but the black lines were supposed to have some color as well. At least I thought they were going to have color. It helped pass the time but sudoku is more fun. Later.

Longboard

As you can see from the picture, we are down to one longboard. Evidently the author of the article is not 210 pounds. My board broke when I stepped on it to check the springiness. It is probably too late, but I had a piece of plywood leftover so I am laminating it onto the cracked pair. If it works it will save me the 15 bucks it will cost to get another board and start over. Later.

Making

I got to do lots of making today. I thought I would be trying to make an electric drill powered go cart, but Isabella decided she would like to have the longboard skateboard first. We cut and laminated the decks for two longboards today. It will take 24 hours to bond completely, then we can do some arting on the bottom side. We will order trucks, wheels, and bearings on line to save money. After we did that we made a set of adjustable stilts for Isabella, though they are a lot harder to use than she expected. I also hung some army ants for Ender and am close to finishing a towel tree for our bathroom. Later.

Movie night

We are watching the next to last Harry Potter movie. I forgot how many people die in this last book. Later.

Broodiness

Teenagers have nothing on chickens. The picture is of one of our hens, her name is Nova. She has officially become broody. Unless you pick her up and take her out, she will only get off of the nest once or twice a day. That means she is not eating or drinking enough. Plus she only potties one huge pile each day. We don't have a rooster so the eggs are never going to hatch, and I take the eggs out of the nest so she isn't actually sitting on any. We are trying to break her out of this broodiness so that she can get back to eating, drinking, and roaming around. Worst case she should give up in a couple more weeks. Later

Make Magazine

If you have never read Make magazine you should really check it out. It has great advice on tackling jobs most of us wouldn't even think of trying. At the same time it makes those tasks seem like they can be done by anyone willing to try and not afraid of having to do it over again when things don't work right the first time. This issue may be my downfall though. It is all about making things with wheels. Unfortunately my daughter saw the cover and is ready to get started. I think she wants to do the three wheeled bike powered by two 36 volt cordless drills first. I need to go read my insurance policy. Later.

Urine collection

It is harder than you would think to collect cat pee. Tiger had a urinary tract blockage back in January and almost didn't make it. He has been medicine free for two weeks now, if you don't count the prescription food he has to eat from now on. The vet needed a urine sample to make sure he would be ok without medicine. We locked him in a room with a litter box for three hours today. He was very unhappy but managed to hold it the whole time. I finally had to let him out so we could go letterboxing and he ran straight for his litterbox. I managed to sneak in the one I had prepared for the pee collection and got the needed sample. The vet said that it looked like Tiger was doing fine without medicine but that I should make sure he was getting enough water because his pee was awfully concentrated. Later.

Independent Media Center

Today we got a tour of the Independent Media Center of Urbana by the gentlemen that run Odd Music. Odd Music celebrates both "odd" instruments and microtonal music. They have a library of musical instruments that the public can check out for two weeks at no charge. They also host concerts using "odd" instruments, microtonal music, and audience participation. It was a great time. The kids got too make and learn to play udderbots. As a bonus they got to bring the udderbots home. Best of luck to Odd Music and the IMC. Later.

I took the kids on a bike ride today. After airing up all the tires we rode down to the grocery store. It is not even a half a mile away and half of that is through a park. But I still get so nervous when we are out riding. My son is eleven and my daughter is ten and they both have good heads on their shoulders, but they do get distracted pretty easily. I know that I was riding all around my home town by the time I was six or seven. Of course we see more cars on our short ride than I came across in a whole month riding as a kid. Some day they are going to be out on their own, but I am probably always going to worry. Later.

Swype

I read about swype before I got my phone, and even tried it a bit on a friends phone. I didn't care for it very much so I wasn't even going to try it on this phone. After reading the book I got at the library about the droid I decided to give it another shot. Evidently google enhanced swype for the droid x. I have done this entire post using swype. Later.

The manual

I had hoped to read this book before I got the droid. However, the library had to order it. It finally became available today. I have been doing lots of fun stuff with lots of different apps. Now I am going to learn more about what the phone itself can do. Plus all the little quirks and short cuts of the android operating system. Megamind is starting, later.

Rain barrel

My wife and I have often talked about getting a rain barrel to collect water for our plants. They are just so expensive that it is hard to justify the cost. This Saturday the city of Urbana and the U of I Extension are having a truckload sale on rain barrels and composters. The 55 gallon rain barrels are $55 and the composters are $45. I will be going right when they open to get a rain barrel. Later.

Photo editing

When I bought my first computer I knew that I wanted to use it for photo editing. I am not a professional photographer or anything, I just like messing with pictures. Now I like messing with video as well, but that is another subject. I am really amazed at how much editing and how many cool effects I can add to photos with my phone. I guess I really shouldn't be so surprised. The phone has a processor that is at least 3000 times faster and almost as much ram as my first computer. It is so easy to just take a picture, mess with it, and then send it out into cyberspace all with one device. I am really enjoying the exploration of this phone's capabilities. Later.

A Lark in the Meadow

The geocaching we did with the Champaign park district did not really prepare us for the sport. Today we were in Busey Woods and decided to try geocaching again. I opened the app on my phone that reads my location and searches for any registered caches that are nearby. There was one within 1/3 of a mile so we started the hunt. Googles navigator could only get us to within about 200' so I switched to the geocaching app. This app uses a compass and distance to lead you to the cache. 50' was the closest we could get. I think all the trees were interfering too much with the gps. We looked for quite a while but did not find it. I did get a couple of pictures of a cool shelf fungi, but it was with my camera and not the phone. My daughter and I had a pretty good time, but my son did not. We were really not prepared for that type of adventure. I think I need to plan ahead a bit more. Our next
hunt will be in a friendlier environment. Eventually we will go back and find this one though. Later.

Phone Backgrounds

It has been very hard to find a background that I am happy with. The droid has 7 "home" screens that you scroll through and it uses just 1 image as a background. As you scroll to different pages the picture just moves a little bit. It is a neat effect, but you have to choose your pictures carefully or you never really get to see the part you want to. Plus I have apps all over the screen blocking the image. I did finally find an app that allows a different picture on each page, but now I have to decide what is appropriate. I am not really sure why I am worried about offending people, but sometimes I do. I think I am going to use the new app and let it find pictures using key words I give it and just see what happens. Later.

Droid video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxQQg0KS9_Y&feature=youtube_gdata_player. I recorded and uploaded this video with my phone. Since it was recorded in high def it could not be uploaded directly to the blog. I wanted to be able to see the quality of the video so instead of resizing or compressing it, I decided to upload it to my youtube account and post the link. I think it might have been easier than uploading from the computer. If I manage to find, or make, a green machine big enough for me I will make and post another video. Later.

Camera

For years my daughter has liked taking pictures. When the kids were 4 or 5 we bought an inexpensive digital camera to save the money we were using to develop film. Both kids have used it off and on for the last 6 years. We suggested asking for a nicer camera for birthdays or Christmas, but there was no interest. Then this weekend my daughter decided to go ahead and get a new camera. She ended up with a Kodak Easyshare M550. It cost less than $90 with tax. I liked it so much I was thinking about getting one too. This morning I got a $60 dollar gift card email from Best Buy & the camera was in their ad. It was the same price as it had been on Saturday, but it came with a bag, tripod, & sd memory card. Needless to say, I went and got one. Later.

What is that song?

I was very excited when I got my last phone, an LG Voyager, because it could use Verizon's song id program. From that point on I could let the phone identify and store the songs that my daughter asked me to get for her ipod. No more trying to remember a few key words so that I could look the song up when I got home. I made sure to get an app for the droid that would do the same thing. It was a little more advanced than the Verizon one, but it had ads on it. Then I found out that Amazon was giving away a bunch of apps that you normally have to pay for. One of them was Soundhound Infinity. Not only does it not have ads, it can identify songs you sing to it! Pretty darn cool I think. Later.