Made some Paths, Dropped a Rotted Birch
I was working in a spot that was naturally flat. Instead of moving the logs to the closest trail as was the original plan, I made a new trail.
And it’s quaint
This tree gave me a lot of grief, it’s in a slope, it leans, it’s completely rotted, and it hung in a nearby maple so I had to walk it down. It was raining branches for a while. Thankfully there’s some good wood in it, but mostly I went through the trouble of bringing it all the way down because I can’t leave a dangerous tree anywhere near us. So I was committed on the first cut, when middle of the tree felt oddly soft to the saw…
I also took a small ash, that one was much easier.
Still likes to come pick up logs with me :).
Fermenting Cider
Hidden in a corner of the house, 11 gallons of apple cider are turning into hard cider. Hopefully this 3rd attempt tastes even yummier than the previous 2.
On this fast-forwarded gif, you can see the different rates of fermentation. Fruit flies are attracted to CO2 (the byproduct of fermentation coming out of the air lock). That’s why I attach an extra piece of paper towel to make sure they don’t find their way into the lock through the tiny holes.
High Altitude Siding
It’s hard to muster the resolve to spend a day doing acrobatics on ladders, but once things are underway, you get in the groove and it’s actually pleasant. Still, I definitely earned my beer today.
Fighting recalcitrant boards as always.
Cutting station visitor
I’m finally closing the rakes, and I’m finishing the wall how I started it: with meshing to prevent insect from going behind the siding but allow for air circulation.
The last piece!
This section is very hard to get to, stuck between 2 roofs.
In fact at a certain height, I can only reach everything by adopting body positions which are not ladder approved. At that point I grab my harness and trusty GriGri.
Tethered to some dead weight on the other side of the house.
It’s always super nice up there, the trees around the house are really growing.
14 gallons in 1 day
We’ve been gathering apples for the past few weeks, waiting for a cold day to press outside without yellow jackets. And well, the weather has just been too nice lately, no colder days in sight so we went and pressed it all. We did it inside the sugarhouse, space is a little tight but we can close the doors and that was immensely helpful.
Bins and trailers full of apples
Cider making is another area where we are really starting to know what we’re doing. The day was full of hard work but not stressful at all. We know how to avoid yellow jackets, how to set up and use the press proficiently, we brush hogged bellow the apple trees right before the season, picked apples at more frequent intervals. Everything is better prepared and better handled. And the result is 14 gallons of cider in 1 day, for a lot of work but certainly much less work than previous years. Experience is a very nice thing to have.
After washing the apples, we crush them
Then we press them
8 gallons, more in the fridge.
3 friends stopped by and left with cider, and we gave a half gallon to a neighbor. All vaccinated, all outside, feels nice.
The sugarhouse is very multipurpose, Robin is staining shingles while we get the press ready.
Mandalagaba Plots
I’m going through a big plotting batch, including a lot of creations from Mandalagaba. It’s very lucky to have this stream of material to pick from.
Most of the work here from Hava Edelstein, 1 From Lara Laubert and a couple of unknowns.
Fountain pen
I cobbled together a program to cross-hatch colors into various densities based on luminance.
I also finally have a fast SVG to GCode converter, I’ve been after this holy grail for years but always reverted to the super slow yet reliable Inkscape converter. I rewrote a fast one I found which crashed on large SVGs (the whole reason to get a fast one in the first place). It works like a charm after turning certain recursive calls iterative.
This one breaks my brain in the best way possible. It is soothed by the immediate pattern recognition, yet the patterns beak upon further inspection.
From PlottyBot’s preview window
Lara Laubert, another prolific Mandalagaba user, her representations of Nature leave no jaw undropped.
Introducing Curious Kraken
For a while I’ve been wanting a more capable Internet Enabled RC car, something that could go outside. Well, I finally got working the Wild Thumper I got a few weeks ago.
This is still very much a prototype
I initial tried controlling the motors with 3 L298Ns for each of the wheel pairs, but they overheated. So I tried a couple of other motor controllers, the ones that did the trick are a couple of BTS7960s.
Rated for high current, heating is simply not an issue
I ported the Nosy Monster code to work with them, and I improved several things, mostly around smoothing controls. You can’t just start these motors are full power, you need you ramp up and down. This is to be mechanically gentle on the motors, but it also helps with piloting.
Outside!
We’re figuring out the wifi range around the house, it’s worst than I thought, well, for live streaming video at least.
Iterating on a case for the electronics
The suspensions are excellent, the motors could be beefier
More to come…
Yellow Jackets Sapwood Oasis
The day was hot and they were exited to find several logs oozing sap. Their diligently staying on the sapwood made it clear sap is what they were after. I left them a few logs I’ll pick up later.
Argiope Aurantia
Never seen one of these before but it turns out it lives in every U.S. state.
The Nosy Monster’s Big Brother
Every time I throw the Nosy Monster outside, it can’t handle even the best cut grass. The wheels just don’t cut it. So I finally splurged and got a Wild Thumper from SparkFun.
There’s a million things I’d like to do with it, and I don’t know how many I’ll get to. But at the very least, I’d love to have the vehicle able to go outside. WiFi goes pretty far around the house, and it so it would have a nice range of operation.
I’d love to set it up so random people on the internet can pilot it. Maybe via some sort of voting system.
I’d love for it to be energy autonomous with a solar panel.
And I’d love for it to be able to take some rain and snow.
The later is unlikely to happen, the rest very well may over time. Ultimately, this will be a better setup allowing for more development.
The Nosy Monster will remain in its current funny form. We’ll need to find a cool name for this new one, but I want to see what it looks like when it’s done first.
Second Coat
Went on after the boards have been screwed in to cover all these puncture points.
