Robotics Fall Warm Ups

Fall meetings are optional but important.  Its where we train in new people and figure out new technologies.  30 students, a new home, new machines to assemble and figure out....its a lot.

One thing we've been hard at is getting a CNC router up and running.  We found this one basically abandoned in our new work space.  It may never have been used.  For our purposes it needed an upgrade to handle metal, and a general tune up.

After a number of hours of work the team did get it running.  At least well enough to test with wood and using improvised material clamping.  First project?  Here it is and I don't get it either:

I guess it was nearly dinner time and the kids were hungry.   

It's kind of boring but we are also doing inventory.  What do we have?  What will we need?

Tallying up and sorting out rivets and widgets might not seem like high tech 21st century stuff.  But we have a major campaign ahead of us.  Amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics.

Enigma 2022

 

Last year I ran a course called Enigma in the local middle school's after school program.  It was made up as we went along and featured code breaking, minor spy craft, gps tracking and a few side orders of linguistics and such.  The students did well and then used what they learned to cook up a Challenge that was taken on by a recruited team of Staff All Stars.  The teachers and administrators did pretty well but to be fair the students were there to help out.

Although done partly for my amusement there are a couple of serious points to this nonsense.  One, it is a good training ground for future problem solvers on the high school robotics team.  And more generally it is a much needed exercise in actually using their brains.  Too often kids just blindly accept what teachers or peers say, or assume that Wikipedia or Youtube know all.  They. Do. Not.  Lets learn some critical thinking in the classic sense of the word.

To that end I'll be using some of the same material this time around and will intentionally build in errors.  Hey, I'll be straight with them.  On day one I will tell them that I am the sort of instructor who might mislead them just to see if they catch me at it....and if they have the confidence in their answers to tell me when they think they are right and I am wrong.

Because the invited Staff All Stars will probably have similar membership and might remember  things from last year, and also because they seem the sort to consult the internet looking for an edge, I will not give detailed answers this year.  Nah.  I'll post modified versions of the weekly challenges with just enough misdirection to keep the Staff honest if they are playing along at home.

It will be fun.  And easy.  Trust me.

Come Closer, My Pretties....!

For many years we've had an odd cement lawn gnome up at our lake place.  As he is holding a fish it seemed best to have him down by the dock, but the grandkids thought he was creepy.  I guess they have a point....

No....they definitely have a point.  So he's been demoted to guarding the firewood supply out back.

I've been putting out trail cams to keep an eye on deer behaviour as hunting season approaches.  But sometimes I think they are missing things.  So as a test I took a bunch of over ripe pears somebody gave us and piled them up at the feet of Creepygnome.  I even put one in the fish's mouth.  Then set up the camera and waited.

Think we'll have any takers?

Deer showed up almost immediately.  This one seems to be taking a big sniff of that pear!

If you are quite observant you will notice two different camera angles.  So....who actually swiped the rotten fruit right out from under the sneering gaze of the imp?

Yep.  A gang of trash pandas turned up.  Most of the pears were eaten.  So to be fair I decided to restock.  Wife had some surplus Bok Choi....

I did not leave cameras out for this stuff.  Something will eat it, I just don't want to know any details.

The Elusive Madam Rose

Here is an unusual artifact.  I've had it so long I can't remember where I got it.

The style of the bottle puts it somewhere around 1910, a date also suggested by the presence of a Food and Drug Act stamp from 1906.  Before that legislation you could put anything you darn well pleased into a bottle and sell it.  But who was D.I. Jones?

Most bottles of this type were put up by pharmacists as a sort of side line.  But recently when I decided to compile a list of early drug stores in my town I realized that the name Jones was nowhere to be found.  Something else going on here.

Mrs. D.I. Jones was a milliner.  She sold ladies hats.  From newspaper ads I can place her on Bridge Street in down town Chippewa Falls and date her enterprise from late 1901 to a known departure - both from the business and from town - in early 1913.  In a sense this would be a very reasonable side line for her.  Sell fancy hats to the ladies of the town and naturally they'd be interested in a nice complexion to go with them.  Who prepared the product for her is unclear.

Women in business in that era were uncommon.  Mostly they stayed home, took care of the household, raised the kids.  What women there were in the business community were often there out of financial need, and had constrained roles.  Nurse, governess, seamstress.  Maybe running a boarding house if you were a respectable widow type.  Millinery fits the pattern.  But who really was she?

The common last name combined with the now outdated practice of adopting a husband's name did make it a bit of a challenge, but I discovered that her name was Rose.  This of course makes sense given the name on the cosmetic bottle, and Madam would be a common title for someone in the beauty business.

She was married to David.  Now he's an interesting character.  In the 1900 census he is listed as being an electrician.  But a few years later, and styling himself as "Major" Jones, he was in partnership with a certain "Colonel" Richard H. Cosgriff and doing business as the Twentieth Century Amusement Company.  The 1910 census lists D.I. Jones with the occupation "Carnival Company".  They had a Ferris wheel and a merry go round along with other amusements and took them to county fairs and such around the state.   Oh, and they had a sideline that links to some of my other research.

I've previously written about the Gem Theater.  Well, this item appeared in a local paper:  "Richard Cosgriff and D.I. Jones are making the Gem a real family theater and it is proving a great success."  It does make sense, these guys were in the Amusement business and that tends to be rather seasonal.  Also D.I. being an electrician by trade would be a help.  I'm not sure what role Mrs. D.I. Jones played in the theater.  Her store was on Bridge street (so far I'm not sure where....Chippewa Falls had three milliners on that street in 1910!)  I guess ladies hats were a bigger business then than now.  I'd like to think she picked the name.  Some of the earliest ads for her establishment circa 1901 describe it as "A Gem of a Store".  

I assume that the Face Lotion was sold at the hat shop.  But it is worth noting that it is D.I. not Mrs. D.I. that is listed on the bottle.  Was he selling this concoction at county fairs?

I'd also like to think that the unlikely marriage of the Milliner and the Carney was a success.  But I'm thinking maybe not.  The 1910 census has them living at her father's house (her maiden name was Erickson and the census indicates her family was Norwegian).  She and David appear to have had two children, a boy and a girl.

But three years later the part of the paper that deals with local doings reported that she'd sold her millinery shop and was moving to Minneapolis.  No mention of her husband.  Well maybe it was to be expected.  Throughout history itinerant performers have been regarded with a degree of suspicion.  Even in their modern incarnation as "Carneys" they are figures outside the realm of polite society.  I say this by the way not in judgement but affectionately and based on my brief experiences in that world......

Regards the Twentieth Century Amusement Company I have found some very saucy information that will turn into another post in the near future.  There will be snakes involved.

A couple of images of the box for that Lotion.  Not in the best condition but as it is likely the only surviving example it warrants remembering.

The Politics of Eating Bugs

Various Concerned People have said that we should all be eating bugs.  As a more ecologically friendly way to obtain protein in our diets.  It is sometimes put a bit more forcefully...

It's a tough sell.  Bugs are crunchy.  You can't make kids eat them.  In fact I wonder if the primary method of saving the planet would be depopulation as people avoided becoming parents just to avoid trying to get kids who won't eat asparagus to consume even nastier stuff.

Well there is still a covert effort going on.  It's just in a different aisle of the store.

How about a big ol' sack of meal worms.  In case your chickens are not getting along just fine thanks on table scraps.  What?  They want something more upscale?  Well....

I was hitherto fore unaware of the commercial production of Black Soldier Fly larvae.  Having done a bit of research I can say....just imagine the most disgusting process possible.  Yep, I'm pretty sure you nailed it.   

People of all political persuasions love their pets.  Maybe not in identical ways.  I see my fellow Conservatives being more dog people.  Progressives?  Cats or tiny micro canines.  But hey, we have snacks for everyone's dog.

Want some sorta hippy sounding yoghurt based vegan concoction?

Or are you a follower of the One True Faith, that being how delicious Bacon really is...

I've known some omnivorous dogs in my day.  One previous mutt of ours loved carrots.  But using the same image on each, with the implication that any dog would have equal happiness from these two products?  A Damnable Lie.

Well unless you really believe that "you are what you eat" there's probably no serious political point here.  Capitalism works, so some of these products will vanish unlamented.  

It likely does not pay to think too deeply on such matters.  In another aisle I'm reminded that there are two things you don't want to look into the details.  Politics and....

You could with the contents of a single shopping cart get to an interesting and dark place.

Eyes in the Woods

When we were off on our trip to Illinois I was a bit annoyed by that state's frequent use of highway cameras to enforce speed limits and tolls.  It just seems sneaky although at least for me it is an effective way to modify behaviour.  But my objections to this practice are hypocritical, because as deer hunting season is getting closer I have "trail cameras" out to keep an eye on what's going on in the woods.

Bear in mind that these are cheap models and as such they miss a lot.  Sometimes after I set one up I'll walk in front of it and wave.  And not have those shots turn up later.  But still, you see things....

Deer obviously.  In September you see lots of bucks out there bein' guys.  Come hunting season they get scarce.  When spring comes around and the results of their fall guy behaviour are born they are nowhere to be seen.

Same spot, night view mode.  Looks like a baby bear.  This time of year they are usually bigger, so I guess it could be something else.  A fisher or perhaps a wolverine although they are seldom seen in Wisconsin.

No, not a wolf.  Some neighbors of ours have a giant dog and walk it on many of the trails in this area.

At another camera location a whole herd of deer saunters past.

And after dark there is something interesting going on in those trees...

Flying Squirrel!

Strange Fishing - A Three Generation Tournament

Not really a competition just a chance for grandpa, dad and kid to toss a line into distant waters where species seldom found in Wisconsin might be lurking.  How many different kinds of fish can we catch?

We'll skip the bluegills.

Here's a Long Eared Sunfish.  New species for my grandson.

And another runty little guy, a Green Sunfish.  New species for grandson although he had caught a hybrid before.

Rounding out the sunfish family I caught a Black Crappie.  I was disappointed as these are super common.  The lake also holds White Crappies which would have been a new one for me.  On the other hand the fish was probably very happy to get out of the little lagoon backwater I caught him in.  Something large and sinister was swirling around in there....

My son even caught a desirable fish.....a musky of all things.

Another new species for the youngest generation....the odd looking Fresh Water Drum.

These were all caught in a reservoir.  For a bit of different fishing we went down below the dam that impounds it.  Sort of Idler's Central for assorted fishermen and women.

One thing we caught there was a common Wisconsin river fish, the Shorthead Redhorse.

Most disgusting and exciting fish of the event was caught here.....

This is a Shortnose Gar.  Gar are primitive fish, survivors from a savage age.  They are mostly bone, teeth and attitude.  I don't have great pictures of this guy because we forgot to bring a landing net and once this guy was hauled out of the water he started thrashing and snapping.  This is the best I could manage before he spit the hook and made it back into the water...

I have it on local authority that where we were fishing, in southern Illinois, there is an expression: "Mean as a Gar".  It seems apt.  But since grandson and I shared this catch we each get to add the species to our lists.

In the end, 8 species caught in about 6 hours of fishing.  4 new ones for grandson, 1 for me.  He's pulling away fast.