I have moved all the content over to www.geekwhitenorth.com
The content is integrated over there but I would still like to move it around a little. I will leave this site up until I can find another use for it.
Well, we just got back from a quick trip to the UK to visit family. One of our little trips was to go to Newcastle for the weekend to visit the first UK Maker Faire. We saw the dates coincided with our trip and felt it would be fun to make the detour to Newcastle.
We knew it would be small as it was the first one in the UK, but boy was it fun to go and talk to like minded people who just make things for fun. There were a few robot exhibits and various other things that kept us busy. One of the best exhibits was a 'retro' lunar lander style game except it was not graphical, it actually had a bunch of stepper motors and servos and an arduino to control everything. You then controlled the thrust to land a model lunar module. Totally cool.
I had never been to Newcastle before and found it quite nice. We stayed at the Marriott hotel next to the Metrocenter in Gateshead and took the bus into Newcastle each day. The hotel and staff were well above expectations.
The Maker Faire was across several venues within Newcastle but all within easy walking distance.
The picture above is of one of the mechanical exhibits that someone had made complete with fire breathing nostrils.
My wife and I being good little netizens, do not torrent files.
We waited until Doctor Who was finally shown by the CBC. However we're not stupid, and when the DVD set for S4 was released prior to the last four episodes being shown on the CBC we pre-ordered it and then watched all the remaining shows at once.
Which brings us to the the S4 finale of Doctor Who.
All in all not bad. It was nice to see all the companions together (even if some of them didn't have much to do) and Davros was excellent. Just one little niggle. Treating Donna the way they did was dreadful. Precious few people wanted Donna as a season long companion, but when we got her, most everyone was impressed with the growth and character development. To rip all that away, to turn her into the same vapid, gobby cow she was at the beginning of The Runaway Bride was mind-bogglingly cruel.
All the other companions got to keep their memories of their time with the Doctor, even if they didn't get to keep the Doctor. They were better people at the end than they were at the beginning. Here's how Donna's finale should have gone down.
Everything was fine until they were back in the TARDIS. When the Doctor informed her that she couldn't keep her super huge Time Lord knowledge in her comparatively tiny human brain.
How it should have ended...
He should just have taken that knowledge away, not everything that happened since she'd met him. Donna then decides that travelling anymore with the Doctor would be too painful with the memory of what she had to give up. At her request, he takes her back to Chiswick.
She mopes around for a day or two, until finally one night, out in the allotment, her grandad, says "I reckon it's time I gave you this." and pulls out a pocket watch.
It would have been a far better ending to have Donna revealed as a Time Lord.
Well last weekend was the Polaris 22 convention. I really enjoyed myself (even the 3 x fire alarms that were triggered Sunday morning did not ruin the weekend.
I have been very busy at work and knew that progress was still quite slow on Gort (still lots of painting etc) and he would not be attending.
When I went to see Iron Man the movie I saw the arc reactor that he built in the cave and I thought that would be cool to make, I toyed with the idea, but then I saw this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR18A418cAo&feature=related.
I knew I might be able to finish it in time to put it on display.
Anyway I was still working long hours and I rushed to get it built.
It did not turn out exactly how I planned it but I did finish it.
Overall it turned out OK considering it was completed in 2 weeks and some late nights. Thanks to paul030176 for giving me some inspiration to finish mine.
Back to working on the Gort man....
I have not posted anything recently, I have slowed down work on Gort due to being busy at work during the day and the recent bout of humid \ thunderstorm weather. Not to completely stop I have added ears to Gort and another layer of Papier mache.
I have spent a lot of time with the EEEPC and various other linux \ linuxes I like the EEEPC so much, I like that it powers up fast.
After using it for a while I have only one complaint it gets hot, very hot.
I moved my project movies to Viddler (which I also like)
Other projects have my attention too but I want to see how it turns out first.
The upcoming weekend is Canada day and I will try to give the workshop a good clean up.
During the summer I would like to paint Gort while the weather is good and give him a chance to dry in the fresh air.
More soon (hopefully)
I have been so busy trying to catch up after my vacations.
I made the pilgrimage to San Mateo fairgrounds again this year and again I was not disappointed by what I saw.
I found that there was a lot more 'art', 'fire' and 'fire art' there this year but still plenty of Robots to go around.
I heard that there was 65000 people over the 2days, up 25000 from last year.
It certainly felt busier than last year (a little frustrating when trying to fight the crowds).
Several R2D2 robots and B9
My favorites were the laser harp, the wii white board but all amazing stuff
After the hustle and bustle of the crowds we went to Vegas for a few days of lazing around the pool.
I got the complete box set of Captain Scarlet as a Christmas present and there are a total of 32 episodes. Finally saw the last one today. Even though I vaguely remember seeing these as a kid I never saw them all or in order.
I have to say the violence just washed over me as a 7 or 8 year old. Maybe I knew that they were not real and just puppets but the Mysterons were quite mean. In the first couple of episodes we see someone's head explode a la Scanners and a man get crushed by a car hoist that pushes the car into the garage ceiling.
Overall I found it most enjoyable and interesting, what their view of the future would be with analogue dials and all.
Well for a while I have been regularly eating fruit, at lunchtime.
It started one day when I bought a cantaloupe, melon and pineapple mix from the local grocery store because I was being lazy.
I found that this filled me up a lot... to the point that I was not hungry when it came time to eat dinner. This is quite the feat...
So I have been eating more pineapple. The downside is that it is a pain to core and peel the pineapple.
Today I found that you can get a pineapple slicer and corer for around $10 made by VACUVIN. I just used it and it takes the pineapple apart in just a few minutes. I recommend if you want to save by buying whole pineapples but hate the time it takes to core them do a search for pineapple corer.
So for a mid Autumn-ish getaway we were away last weekend, well actually Thursday through Monday. We headed to Springfield Ma, to UnitedFanCon.
It was a great convention and I highly recommend it. There were about 1000 attendees (my guess). Very up close and personal.
Guests were all really good. Wendy Padbury who is at retirement age had hardly changed.
Grace Lee Witney was amazing talking about her life as a singer and actor.
Henry Winkler was also a guest. He was also amazing to listen to.
On the way back we stopped to shop a little and I got some more supplies to continue some projects.
So no progress last week, but some progress on the legs. Some progress pictures next week
I have so many things I want to do at the moment and it feels like the days have gone from 24 hours in a day to about 18.
The fall TV line up has meant that at least 1-2 nights I am watching TV, I want to do more with Linux, been playing some PS2, and working on 2 projects is all taking it's toll.
I have about 3 or 4 more ideas in my head.
So progress is slow but it is moving and progress is being made.
Eyelids were glued.
Legs are also progressing.
Some pictures of both hopefully on Monday...
This was the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend.
The weather is unseasonably hot humid and well.. sticky, yes this is October.
I love it when the weekend feels like it was 5 days off and not 3 days.
We segmented the weekend into chunks. I watched TV\Movies, Slept in,
watched Podcasts listened to numerous podcasts, played PS2 video games.
Went to the mall to do some shopping, cooked a batch of Chili, cleaned up the place, web surfing, reading played around with a live distro of Linux Mint on my Laptop and worked
on my projects. WOW!
So with all this segmentation I did not get a huge amount done on my projects but because I am gluing things waiting for glue to dry works with the weekend. I glued strengthening ribs on my new project and I worked on the eyes of my Bender. So next week Benders eyes should have eyelids.
The long weekend was great it felt like it lasted forever (in a good way).
Now if I could just get the essence, bottle it and sell it, I could be a millionaire.
I was out Saturday morning scouting Home Depot for items that can be used.
It was a good weekend
...I found several items and this week and this weekend I plan to swoop around and buy these items and get down to doing something.
In between planning what part goes where when I buy them, I listened to several new podcasts I am really hooked on these. In no particular order.
"Munchcast" is a web cast all about food, different food.
"Make it So" is a Star Trek web cast (language warning) It discusses the finer point of Trek and is hilarious. You need to start from episode 1
"Webbalert" is a web cast that has the Tech news in a 5 minute chunk.
"slice of Sci-fi" TV movie sci-fi news
Of course we watched aton more of our regular web casts too, like Diggnation, Totally Rad show, Cranky Geeks etc etc...
We also got some through first season and some of the second season of MacGyver DVD set.
On the down side, my internet went down on Sunday morning, had a problem with the connection. Well after talking to my ISP they had it fixed and it was back up by Sunday afternoon, good service huh?
Oh, and some baby steps on Bender's eyelids.
See what I mean about it being a long weekend?
So I have been monitoring the visits to my web site since it went up in February 2007. I have seen a progressive increase in visitors.
I started monitoring visitors in March and I finally have reached over a hundred visitors per month on a consistent basis.
Not a big feat for some but I have never really gone out of my way to publicize it either.
For the record most visitors are from UK, USA and Canada, Australia is a strong fourth.
If you are interested in seeing who is visiting your site you can check out the clicky analytics tool here Clicky web analytics .
I should mention that it reports on so many things like, country and city of the ISP, Operating System, screen resolution and what brought them to your page. A free version and a paid version.
I only use it to find out what interests people so I can add more content.
In the interests of being ethical and open I would also like to mention I do follow visitors to this blog too.
I must admit that work on my projects has been slow recently, this is partly due to my spending lots of time cleaning and reorganizing my website.
www.geekwhitenorth.com
I have added some content about the SRF05 range finder I like to use and some more content about how I'm using the servo motors, code, some additional pictures etc.
Some of the content still needs revisiting, I wrote some of it late at night and not in one go so you tend to loose the groove.
It was a busy weekend (again)
As well as installing Hard drives and Mint Linux,
I also saw the Simpsons Movie. Which I thought was way better than I was expecting, now if they could bring the regular season up to that level....
Work on Bender started up again. Working on the head, specifically the welding glasses area.
No pictures yet, mostly preparation for adding eye lids.
Just got back from an amazing weekend.
Toronto Trek has passed the torch to Polaris and I had a great time.
There was a great model show both small entries and large. I took along my Talkie toaster and mini Dalek.
They were only on display (not entered into the model competition) but still had people enjoying them.
There was a whole Star Wars contingent due to the 30 year anniversary of Star Wars.
R2D2 and another droid. A 1/2 scale AT-ST.
Someone had made a full scale classic Tardis console.
There were various scale replica spaceships.
Lego depictions of the last episode of Heroes and a Lego model of Stargate Atlantis Base
The guests were wonderful, highly amusing and entertaining.
I had some very late nights, and enjoyed meeting up with old friends and acquaintances.
I purchased a Tardis USB hub from the dealers room.
Overall a great weekend.
I was looking through the videos I took at the Maker Faire and came across this one of a 'giraffe' someone had built.
This one had flapping ears and carries people around in it's back.
We just got back from San Francisco and the Makerfaire. San Francisco is very nice place we had beautiful sunshine but it was so windy there.
The wind blowing off the ocean, gave us some minor colds.
We side tracked over to Vegas for the rest of the week, we have now recovered from our colds and now adjusted back to EST
San Mateo where the maker faire was held is a very nice town \ county. this was our first Makerfaire and after about 2 hours I felt like there was just in information overload and that my brain was going to explode. I would suggest that anyone in the Bay area should go visit next year and people it is worth the trek over to San Francisco from other parts of the country.
You name it they had it there... It was 2 days that were just incredible.
This week while working on my work bench I noticed that I was working inside a 6 inch area and over the edge of my work bench.
So before continuing on I felt the need for a tidy up so progress for this week on anything.
There is one thing I really hate and that is tidying, cleaning and putting things away so I started in with the best intentions and the next thing I knew I was playing PS2.
Well it's almost time for the Maker Faire in San Francisco.
It is only the second one, but it looks really interesting.
Hard to describe exactly what it is but it is.
I saw footage of last years Maker Faire on a webisode of systm
