Digging an Underground Speakeasy. Eccentrics with Power Tools.

My friend Gabe is at least 25% less conventional than I am, and if you know me beyond the casual internet level you know that's saying something.  Here is his latest update on building a subterranean speakeasy 100 feet inside a limestone cliff.  Because....well because he can.

Bonus feature, a brief but officially confirmed sighting of Badger Trowelsworthy!

The Times (well, not the New York Times, but still) They are a' changin'

Morning walk photo 2/25/2022.  I should mention that my fairly average town in a fairly average state is an eight hour drive from the Canadian border.  

There is a mood of change in the air, one I can't recall sensing since my days in high school back in the very early 1970's.  Change is not always good.  Or always bad.  It is usually a mixture.  And there are lots of opinions on where it should go.  The driver of this pickup truck has her, or his, or their sentiments on unapologetic display.

Cheers! Christmas in February

To stay in shape for England and to burn off nervous energy, I go for a brisk walk every morning.  This being winter sometimes it is very brisk indeed.  But there is always something interesting to see.  On 17 February I came to a halt when I encountered this:

The big sign advertises Leinenkugel's beer.  Quite apt as this is a tavern.  The smaller sign points you to Christmas trees for sale out back.  Hmmmm.  I guess they have the market to themselves.  At first I thought this was an accident, maybe a sign that was buried under snow and is just now peeking out.  But here is the front of said tavern.

Full on Christmas décor.  Peeking through the window there is even a nice green Christmas tree inside.  I suppose it is likely plastic.

The guy I walk with in the morning suggested that the establishment went out of business.  Possible I suppose, but when I got home and checked facebook they are still selling suds.  

No idea really why they have all the Christmas stuff still up.  Just never got around to taking it down I suppose.

The Flying Saucer - Il Disco Volante

I am a fan of Bad Movies.  But only of a certain type.  I have little tolerance for hackneyed plot lines, cardboard characters and so forth.  No, for a movie to really capture my imagination it has to be Inexplicably Bad.  So Bad it is surreal, leaving you to wonder if the film makers were totally clueless or were playing some 3 dimensional chess and going full meta with a message far beyond the peculiar things happening on screen.

Bad Movie fandom is pretty common.  In the old days (forget the modern revival version) Mystery Science Theater 3000 stood at the forefront of this entertainment subculture.  Now the best place to enjoy it is Red Letter Media, although they do indulge in the vulgarity of modern culture just a bit too much for my tastes.

This is all by way of introducing you to what I have always considered the Worst Movie I have ever seen, a strange creation called Il Disco Volante....The Flying Saucer in the original Italian.  Recently I had an unexpected reminder of it and in the process of following up on it I learned some things that now - disappointingly? - help make sense of it.

It was some time in the late 1960's or at most early 70's.  There was still this thing called "television" where you had multiple channels.  You switched between them using a device you grasped with your hand and turned.  For you young kids this was called a "dial".  Then as now various channels had their formats.  One liked to run B or C grade movies in the early afternoons on Saturdays.  My guess is that it was in a programming sense a dead spot that had to be filled with anything that could be acquired on the cheap.  Just cue it up.  The station is being run by Bud, he's in the back keeping an eye on the gauges and needles, answering the phone when it rings on rare occasions.  Everyone else was home on the weekends.  Bud had a lonely job, but sat there all day doing it.  In the evening he handed things off to an even lower functionary.  This guy probably drank bourbon during his shift and nobody cared.

One afternoon the offering was an odd black and white movie called The Flying Saucer.  It is the soundtrack that sticks with me.  The most powerful "earworm" my nervous system has yet encountered, roughly half the auditory output of this.....thing...was a repetitive bit of music that sounded like a vaguely Spanish, bull fighting vibe of a march.  It played all the time especially when the troop of Italian policemen tramped about the countryside trying to find people who had seen the reported "flying saucer".  As to the actual plot I can remember only a few details.  The police chief seemed very perplexed.  There was an oversexed Contessa who had one of the aliens at her villa for a while then had her servants throw him down a well just as she had done with the Resistance fighters back in the war years.  The alien was humanoid, dressed up in what would be a poor Halloween robot costume and capable, despite clearly advanced technology, of only feebly waving its arms and legs.  I got the sense that something else was going on......................but what?

Here's a clip I found on Youtube.  It does contain the hypnotic marching music so I suggest you mute it unless you want your brain to also retain it for the next fifty years!

As I said I've done a bit of research now.  The movie was made in 1964.  The original running time was 94 minutes so I don't think what I saw had been weirdly edited down.  It features an Italian comedic actor named Alberto Sordi who actually - a la Peter Sellers - played four different roles.  It was made in the same year as the most famous example of this cinematic form, Dr. Strangelove.  Sellers incidentally made something of a career of doing this.  He certainly did not swipe the idea from the Italians.

The Flying Saucer was meant to be a satire of contemporary Italian society.  The four roles played by Sordi were a dim witted policeman, a miserly accountant, an alcoholic priest, and a decadent nobleman.  Other than the first this all went way over my head.  Even viewing the clip above and now knowing rudimentary Italian it makes no sense.

And I like that.  Despite understanding what the director was going for here I still understand almost nothing else and that is just as it should be.  

Il disco Volante came to my attention after all this time when I learned that Monica Vitti who played the depraved Contessa,  passed away on February 2nd at age 90. She died of Alzheimers and I sincerely hope that the soundtrack of Il Disco Volante was not one of her last persisting memories.

Robotics. Almost There.

Lots happens on Saturdays.  Most of it was good stuff.  The robot can pick up balls.  The elevator works.  It launches them better than expected.  There is no reason to doubt that the first, straight up pneumatic climber will work.

We fussed around with many things that were kludged together.  These semi successful versions usually show us what actually has to happen.  We'd hoped to get several hours of driving in but had to settle for about 30 minutes before enough things needed fixing....and the people having a spaghetti dinner in the same space turned up an hour early!

But for what it is worth here's the robot with intake arms extended.  Improvised raised target goal in back ground.

Observant viewers will note that the protective bumpers are not on.  There was a bit of rubbing between them and the intake paddles.  This made the robot a bit more dangerous.  I got a bit of a bump on the shin while the controls were being worked out.

Star of the day was our really outstanding robot transport cart.  Topper designed by the team and laser cut by a sponsor.  Lookin' good.

The real icing on the cake would be getting that second "monkey bar" climb to work.  After many, many days of dithering the anchor for this was placed at the end of the session.  And a very simple way of positioning it was finally arrived at.  We don't have much time left, but this might actually work.

Snow on the way.  We can't afford to lose time, but if school is cancelled so is robotics for that day.  Ugh.  Should have sacrificed a few more chickens....

Endurance - 2

February 18th, 2022.  There is a wicked north wind blowing.  It is going to get way below zero tonight.  On Monday six inches of wet, heavy snow is predicted.  And yet, on my morning walk today I saw this:

A weed of some sort growing straight out of a brick wall.  Remarkably it has a faint greenish tinge to it.  Somehow just enough photosynthesis is going on to keep it from going entirely dormant.  I'll circle back and take a picture in a few weeks.  The world will be different then.

Thinking of better days.  Got my passport in the mail recently and will be spending a good part of the spring in that greenest of places, England in April/May.  

FIRST Robotics - Home Stretch

Monday

On Saturday we discovered that the center of gravity of the robot was too far back.  This gave us a disastrous 9 degree forward tilt.  The robot was in danger of sliding off the first bar.  The nose was 5 inches down and that made grabbing the next bar nearly impossible.  Solution time:

This new "C-grabber" means we put the balance point three inches further forward.  And the result?

Looks better.  Note the front of the elevator is on now.  Aluminum hoop below with polycarbonate sleeve above.  Oh, lets do a bit of actual engineering.

The hang now reads about 4 degrees nose up, and we can get it to +6 with ballast.  This should suffice to bring the second hang within reach - but still far from easy.  And the team found ways to make this happen without major frame surgery.

Other things happened on Monday as well.  The intake paddles need work, but mostly we need the competition robot to get everything connected so we can do dynamic testing as opposed to static.  It is not great when both hardware and software are running behind, but at least one side is not waiting on the other!

Tuesday

Robot Surgery.  Well sometimes you have to move a bracket even after all the delicate electronics are on board.  Since aluminum shavings are Death to Electronics some elaborate measures are called for.  Just as in real surgery.  Multiple layers of protective drapes.  Suction, here in the form of a shop vac.  the surgery was a success.  We'll have to do it again on Thursday when instead of drilling out rivets we'll be drilling holes for new ones.

Still experimenting with intake paddles.  We have the robot driving now, and these are much more effective in dynamic testing than static.  These simple polycarb strips are cut up parts of old robots.  I expect we'll tweak the design a bit before we expend new material.  It will take good driving to use this system.

Down on the software side of the team a bulletin board with cryptic messages.  Some relate to intake flippers.  Some relate to love.

Wednesday/Thursday

There was a special wiring and coding session on Wednesday.  I stopped by to mooch some pizza but mostly stayed out of the way.  Systems became operational one after another, albeit still with very vulnerable wiring and tubing all over the place.

Thursday was busy on a level that kept me from taking a single picture.  We did get through most of my Get it Done List but a good part of the team is wearing out.  

It looks as if we will get most things running in time, but how well?  One critical component seemed wobbly.  I was not quite sure why.  Turns out the kids making these were using the wrong size bolts.  "Why did you use those?" I asked.  "We couldn't find the right size", they said.  "Oh, sez I, you mean these here?"   

They need to switch from slop it together over to make it precise, tight and worthy of admiration.  We are not there yet.  I'm not sure we'll get there this season.