Happy Easter!

---


I got a new computer recently. It's all mechanical. This is what the web browser looks like.

---

Science Olympiad competitions are coming up - the elementary school competition is April 20, and the middle school state competition is on April 27. Those are going to be two long days, but they'll be fun and rewarding for students and parents. I just wish the state competition was at UM instead of MSU so we wouldn't have to worry about the weather and getting up before sunrise to get there on time.

Meanwhile, M continues to play volleyball with the 7th- and 8th-grade team. They're pretty good, and fun to watch. He has a few more flag football games coming up, and is getting better at the sax every day.

Now that indoor soccer is over, K is about ready to wrap up Science Olympiad season and continues with Math Olympiad. He's decided not to participate in any activities that don't have the word "Olympiad" in the name. He's also sawing out tunes on the violin for 5th-grade strings.

---

J and K are using some of their time off work and school to catch up on the TV show "Downton Abbey" about an insanely rich family who live in a "house" the size of a city block. They have a gaggle of servants and, between the upstairs and the downstairs, provide enough drama for a lengthy television series.

We're starting to talk like them now. When I gave K his hot chocolate this morning, I said "Here you are, m'Lord" in the deep voice of Carson, the family's butler. That might backfire if he expects me to talk to him like that from now on. Which he probably does.

---

Links
Motorcyle made out of Guinness beer cans.

How to build your everything really fast.

Ships in bottles - interview with the maker.

March Update: Science Olympiad, Soccer, Flag Football, Snow, Rain, Links, You Name It

---

Science Olympiad News

In recent news (this afternoon), M's very own Slauson Middle School took first place overall at the Science Olympiad regional competition at Hillsdale College. There were six other schools competing.

The results for events in which M competed include sixth place in Mission Possible (a Rube Goldberg machine-building event), fifth place in Boomilever (in which a wooden structure is built that can support the most weight without breaking), and 1st place in Metric Mastery (a math-heavy event in which students measure objects and estimate numbers). It was a huge day for M and his teammates, and is the culmination of many weeks of practicing (and a last-minute frenzy build on the Mission Possible machine Friday evening).


M with his awards - one of the medals around his neck is the school's overall blue medal.


M's boomilever, post-competition. The vertical part of the boomilever, shown at the left of the picture, is fastened to to bolt protruding from a fixed vertical jig. Then, a hook is attached to the far end of the structure (the right side of the picture), and a bucket is hung from the hook. A device pours sand into the bucket until the boomilever breaks. The weight of the sand/bucket/hook divided by the weight of the boomilever itself is the score the students receive. The trick is to build something really light that holds a good load, because the equation that produces the score favors a small denominator more than a high numerator. Finding the balance is difficult.

Slauson will be going to the State competition in April at Michigan State University.

---

K is playing indoor soccer this year - they play with a small ball, about 1/2 the size of a normal soccer ball, and they use middle-school gyms instead of outdoor soccer fields. It's very fast-paced, and tends to be high-scoring. Today's game ended in a 7-7 tie, for example.

K continues to go to Math Olympiad on Saturday mornings and is doing well on his assignments and tests. He's enjoying it, and I'm learning a lot from attending the practices. Sometimes, I'm put to work grading homework when I go to the practices, as all parents are asked to chip in and volunteer in one way or another.

---

M has started playing volleyball for the 7th- and 8th-grade team. His practices have overlapped a little with Science Olympiad practices, and we're working on balancing those. He's also playing Flag Football, his favorite winter activity. This may be his last year, as he's getting too old to play in the league that's available.

Links

Table with a farm-machinery theme.

Tiny houses with clever designs.

Scale gasoline engines - these aren't models, they really work.

---

Don vs. Electronics: This Time It's Personal (and Educational)

---

I've been working on putting together a soldered version of the elevator project I recently completed (to my own satisfaction, that is) using breadboards.

I spent quite a while drawing the circuit, resulting in the following diagram. I used the Fritzing program to draw this. It gives you a blank circuit area to work with, and you can put breadboards into the drawing space and wire your components together.



From there, I drew up a circuit diagram on graph paper, and tried to identify the inputs, outputs, and location of the chips. I wanted to have some ribbon cables connecting the Arduino to the circuit board.

Unfortunately, I didn't lay things out very well - I had one of the ribbons going to two different places, and the connectors I bought don't "stick" into the ports on the Arduino - they just fall out. I'll have to do some more investigation into the right kind of connectors before I can continue.

Here are a few pictures of the board - it's super ugly, but these things often are. It's the first one I've done from scratch, so I may be able to improve on it if I go another round with the soldering iron.


Some notes - the circuit diagram and a mock layout on graph paper. The mock layout looked good on paper, as they say, but it didn't work out when I was ready to connect the ribbon cables to the board. Oops!


The beginnings of the board. I have soldered a few components in place, and am in the process of drilling the holes for the buttons.


Same as before, but with the ribbon cables that I want to use to connect the board to the Arduino and power supplies.


The front of the board, with the chips in their sockets and the wires snaking around however I could make them fit. Presumably, there would be a cover over this board so you could only see the buttons and LED display, although on further inspection, most of the other components, and some wires, were almost as tall as those components.


The back of the board, where the ugly happens. The red wire is the positive "bus", and you'll note a few places the insulation was scraped off the wire so I could hook a component directly to it. This, and many other tricks I tried, were found on the internet by other people who can do this and make it look pretty. The black wire, and the associated blobs of solder that form solid lines, is the ground "bus". There are quite a few places in the wiring where components are wired to one or both of the positive/negative buses that I felt it was necessary to run those wires all over the place. The bottoms of the buttons, and some of the chip connections to the buses, were made with leads clipped off of spare components.

I've learned a ton from this experience. My first diagram had the wires on the right side of the LED display one space lower than they should have been, and I had all but the final wire soldered before I realized it. Lots of lessons learned, and my soldering skills are better now, too.

Now - back to researching circuits some more, and then to find some better header connectors to replace the ones I bought. Eventually, I'd like to make one of these:


I don't actually want to make one of these. Just kidding. Dad, recognize this?

---

Piano-palooza

---


M playing one of his award-winning Solo and Ensemble pieces: "Prelude Number 10 in Eb Major", by Robert Vandall.



K playing MacDowell's "At an Old Trysting Place"

---

M at Solo & Ensemble: Before and After

---

M performed at his first Solo & Ensemble this morning. He played two short pieces by Robert Vandall on piano.

He did a great job, playing in a small room with three strangers watching him: the judge, a person helping the judge, and a woman who, right before we entered the room, announced that she was also going to watch. The unidentified woman, who I am guessing is a piano teacher, sat at a chair literally an arm's length from M while he played. I was also in the room - I asked M if he wanted me there or not, and he told me it didn't matter. Cool as a cucumber, he.

Here are some before and after pictures of M at the venue, Livonia's Franklin High School:


Before, his shirt devoid of decoration.


After, with his blue medal!

Congratulations, M! Well done, sir!

P.S. Did I mention yesterday was M's 13th birthday?

-----

Drawing Class

---

I took a drawing class during the fall session of Adult Ed last year. I posted a few of my prior drawings in this post.

During the last few weeks of the class, the teacher showed us how to copy and enlarge a photo by using the "grid" method. You draw 1" boxes on a photo, then draw larger boxes on a larger piece of paper (in my case, 2" boxes), and draw the outline of the objects in the photo so the figures and shapes are proportional to the lines/boxes of the original.

I started with this photo of M playing his Grandpa's banjo:




I printed a black-and-white copy of the photo, and drew boxes with 1" sides.



I don't have a picture of the boxes I drew for the larger version, but I do have a picture of the complete drawing, which I finished this morning.

Meet the New Year, Same as the Old Year

---
Make Way for the Olympians

I’ve been busy with Science Olympiad lately – pretty much every night the last few weeks I’ve had something or other to do. That should end pretty soon for several weeks, and I’m looking forward to a little break.

K is starting indoor soccer (aka “futsal”). It’s soccer played in a gym with a half-size soccer ball. If it sounds like a loud sport, that’s because it is.

M is now sporting braces on his top and bottom teeth, and the orthodontist says he’ll be done this year. We’ll be paying until he’s out of high school, but can you put a price on straight teeth? Yes, you can. It's rather high.

Mesko and Rigby are doing fine. Why wouldn’t they be doing fine?

Links, Pictures, Neat Stuff
A lot of miscellaneous items today...

Some old owners manuals. I had higher hopes for this gallery than I should have, but they’re fun to look at.

I’ll take one of these.

Great picture of a red-tailed hawk.

I love this tiny house built on a rock in the middle of a river.

Owl!

I like looking at these boats. I don’t have a good reason, I just like them.

M and I are going to do this for his locker. The problem is the LED light strips the person suggests are really expensive. I’m sure we can modify this plan to make something bright enough to help him see his books, but that will still run on a battery.

Looking for a project? Try this site.