recipe for disaster...

Here's the list. Guess what i'm making.

3x 625g tins of rice pudding
2x small tins sweetcorn
2x value treacle sponges (in tins)
2x tins chopped tomatoes
1x can value grapfruit segments
(pic to follow)
No, its not a weird dessert for 15 people. It's my (Elliot's really, he'll be paying for it in the long run) jet engine.

Basically, sheet metal is a bitch to buy and form into tubes considering the closest I have to a (arc) welding kit is rusted solid and erratic enough to either not melt the stick or to melt through 3mm of metal at first contact, leaving a decent sized hole complete with flying chunks of molten metal. Welding anything as thin as the 1mm sheet steel I'd be using would be like trying to cut paper neatly with a schitzophrenic chainsaw.

My solution is to rivet and crimp and hose/jubilee clip (you know, the metal version of cable ties you do up with a screwdriver) the preformed cylinders into something vaguely resembling the pulse jet design I mentioned earlier. Like this. (pic to follow) The choice of cans was based on size and whether they would stack properly. And on whether I'd actually eat the contents; so much for my diet. i'll get some eating in and hopefully you'll see something kinda like a jet engine by this time on tuesday next week.

Beyond the problem of materials is getting a vapourised/nebulised/gaseous propellant into the engine. I'm either going to use BBQ/camping bottled gas as it comes with loads of safety features already fitted, or R/C car petrol which is badassly flammable and easily dispersed using a spraypaint gun. The ignition is one of those long kitchen lighters which will simply be wedged into the chamber, or a spark plug, whichever is cheaper/easier.

My lunch is over now, so anyone whose lunch isn't over (or is really bloody bored) go look up how to X-ref in autocad LT 2007 without it f***ing the f***ing hell up. And then tell me! Or just provide me with a bucket of patience and one of those stress relief squidgy shapes.

Peas out!

Eastbourne and weather

I'm sitting here waiting for an A1 document to print, so I shall comment on the dark clouds rolling in across the sky for yet another day. THIS WEATHER SUCKS! Partly cos it's rubbishy weather, mostly because I can't really get much practice in for Eastbourne. The Major race in the UK; the IGSA World Cup at Beachy Head. The local council are well up for this as oyu can read on the site; they've resurfaced the hill with race grade tarmac, and are provding floodlighting for night-time riding.

As I'm competing I feel it'd be a good idea to get some practice in, but I dont really want to have to do it in the pissing rain. I even have my full leathers required for safety; average speed is 30 miles per hour, max is 50mph if you're clever. I've hit the 30mph average (on St Johns hill for those of you that know Sevenoaks) but thats only over 0.8km, and it has no techical corners. The technical aspect of cornering is where I'll most likely fall down (not literally I hope!); there's no substitute for practice, but there's no substitute for good weather either. I need to build up my strength aswell: the leathers and full face helmet are heavy and provide a significant resistance to normallly easy and comfortable movements. The tuck position is also a little uncomfortable aswell, so i need to be able to hold that for about 2 minutes 30 seconds to get to the end of the course still in the aerodynamic pose (Pics to follow).

Anyway! I'm off to print some more drawings now autoCAD has stopped failing so miserably at fast processsing.

BYE!

Bets, Pickles and Meths: pulse jets

Bets

The story behind it comes from a drunken bet. Well it wasn't that drunken, but as those of you who know me well will agree, if you give me some utterly geeky or silly or engineeringy challenge I have to accept. It went something like this:
Me: "stirling engine blah blah"
Elliot (a righteous longboarder and water polo-er): "Cool...blah... but JET ENGINES"
Me: "Yes, but want to build a stirling engine like so"
Elliot: "CHALLENGE: I bet you £100 that you will not build a working jet engine in 2 years from today."
Me: "... GODDAMMIT!" *shakes on the bet, agrees terms*

And so it was decided. The terms of the bet are pretty simple. I must make, not just purely from a kit, a working jet engine that generates thrust. The bet is off if I build a steam powered longboard. Which is kinda fair, cos either would be totally awesome.

Pickles and Meths

The most basic form of jet is the "pulse jet" as used on the doodlebug bombs during WW2. Valveless are the simplest to make, but harder to make work as efficiently as valves. The simplest one however is like so. I however used a large pickle jar (not the picture, thats just to show you what the concept looks like), and a very crude hexagonal hole I got by jamming a whole screwdriver through the lid then twisting the handle around. Using methylated spirits I managed to get one good 3 second jet, with roughly 5" of jet out the top of the jar. I didn't measure the experiment in any way really, but as a proof of concept it works. I also produced a 2 foot high jet of flame at one point. That was interesting.

Pulse Jets

The next part of the experiment was based on the Tharratt design (thanks to this site, although the pics don't work here anymore):
The idea here explained on the website but as a quick summary:

Jet works by causing an explosion i.e. a wave that goes out in all directions. Directing the forward chunk of the blast backwards increases forwards thrust. making this redirected blast take a much longer/shorter route compared to the backwards blast means that when the first blast in over air will rush back into the blast chamber faster from one of the jet nozzles, making the other jet much more efficient at providing thrust.

This example is one I chose because thats what I basically did with a coke can and a baked bean tin; the coke can had the ringpull end opened fully to the can walls, the sides crushed so the cross-section of the can was square at the ringpull end to allow air in, and a hole in the bottom, which was going to be the jet nozzle. I then flipped the can uside down, nozzle aimed at the sky, poured meths into the bean tin, and wedged the coke can into the bean tin. Together they formed the chamber, the nozzle was simply the hole in the can, and the gaps between tin and can walls were the gaps around the chamber.

Shaking up and lighting it worked. Not as well as the jar, but it worked for a few gentle revvs. I intend to build a larger, more refined version (from tin cans) powered by butane camping gas, or possibly spray-gunned meths.

Yes I did wear goggles,yes they did do nothing, but thats because nothing tried to asplode my face. Thankyou and goodnight!

Work, or the lack thereof

So I sit here, at my desk, killing a few minutes while we wait for architects and similar to hit us back with the info we need. Gary Gabriel Associates took me on as a summer placement 6 weeks ago now; in that time I've learned tons about drainage, levels, drawings, and masses of Autocad. No Uni course could prepare you for the CAD-tastic nature of the work; X-refs, completing whole chunks of drawing with just the keyboard, layer control and management, not using layer 0... The list goes on, so I will not bore you further. Suffice to say that AutoCAD is paramount.

My specific role is currently Quality Assesment boy; The next audit is today so I have been attacking the filing cabinets like a viking on acid. Ive removed over 3 full binbags of now archived A1 sheets, sorted through hundreds of job folders, and refiled them. Fun. But necessary, so i'm really not bothered doing it.

The rest of the time I'm designing and checking drainage schemes for new designs, and drawing it up on autocad. There's a lot of man-hours put into getting your rain and poo to their specific endpoints; gradients have to be met, ground conditions, existing sewers, existing services, permissions for putting more sewage into the existing system, CCTV surveys. Its design and its interesting. Each project is a different set of parameters. Every one is a desgn nightmare...I mean challenge: I'm enjoying the work.

Its probably time to stop slacking and go find somethign to do...
Keep it surreal!

A brief history of XSS etc part 2

The lush summer session happened in the Hope valley and the surrounding countryside deep in the rainiest backroads of the Peak District. Si, Kim and I arrive and get ferried straight to one badass slide hill, where we proceed to chill with 20 odd other sliders, and throw the first of some wicked sick tricks. Back to the bunkhouse, shotgun our beds, Lush do dinner (pasta I think) and the local garage does cider.

Sharing cider has never been so fun; the invention that was produced out of the necessity to share cider between 50 longboarders on opposite sides of the large room, and the desire to not waste a drop allowed the almalgamation of sports drink technology with the finest 2 litre Wrongbow(Trampagne, strongbow, call it what you will). SPORTS CIDER (brand name sportsbow) is a 2 litre bottle of the apple-based drink with a sports cap on it. This was amazing, we spilt none, and it was thrown merrily around the room with no fear of spillage. Try it, you might just get drunk!

So the first full day of riding dawned; 9am we shook off the slight hangovers and looked out on inclement weather. Kitting out with pads, gloves, and at least 2 boards per person we ventured into the unknown. Stuff happened in thins kind of order:
Skate, rain, skate, lunch, skate, skate, skate, drink, food, drink, drink, sleep.
Sunday morning welcomed us with pouring rain. Pouring pouring rain. So we did these:
Skating skating skating, complaining about the weather, skating. Then lunch! The end of the day for me as i got 3 fingers shut in the van door. Fun!

Even with dented nails throbbing regularly, it was an aweosme experience that brought the three of us riders closer, and made us all better; gave us a bigger picture and skills to aspire to. The details are hazy, but this was over a year ago now so all thats left is the sense of euphoria, the feeling of Longboard brotherhood, and good memories. including sledging down the face of an earth embankment dam covered in sheep poo. Good times! Respect to Lush and everyone that was there!

A brief history of XSS, and of friendship part 1 - The early days

Day 2 of my university life at Southampton Uni consisted of a 151-155 Selborne trip to Asda. What a cave of tasty treasure it was! More to the point, I spotted a girl with bright red hair walking out the store in front of us with a longboard. Do I give chase and say hi in my fresher-like innocence? I think not. I'm carrying roughly 8 kilos of frozen food and booze. As luck would have it she was sat at the bus stop. I say hi, we chat a little, and a couple of days later we meet up for some sessioning longboard stylee. Kim, (not single) female lawyer, longboarder; a personified chunk of adrenailne and energy.

Longboarding Happened.

Before uni, I hadn't boarded all that much. It was slowly building, but not all that quickly. With Kim to drive me, and me to drive her, our standards improved immensely. Simon appeared via texts flung from kim's mobile; croupier, badass longboarder of over 8 years now, riding the same wheels for over 6, the same trucks for 8, on the same 52" beast of a board. 3 of us, lots of hills. Awesome.

As time goes by, now 1/3 the way through my first year (think xmas 06) we have recruited a number of boarders, and Kim's mind turns towards somethign she's thought about for a while: Longboard club. Emails are sent but to no avail, whilst the sessions continue and new and interesting hills and slides are broached as the year continues. Broken boards, replacement boards, upgrading of hardware happens commonly within the group as we strive for new ways to let gravity take control.

Closing on the end of the year, the union has still not responded to multiple attempts by the tenacious Kim to say hi to longboarders. Then the summer happens. The summer session happens...

'Til next time....
Keep it surreal

Wall-E and an interesting weekend!

So my parents are away in sunny old Minehead for a week! Pot noodles for lunch and takeaway for tea now...
But seriously, it'll be a bit of quiet in which I can do what the hell I want (but no houseparties, the walls have just been re-painted). Here I am blogging away at this godforsaken hour with my music on speakers, the lights on, drinking fizzy drinks and eating fajitas. Its a fun evening to end a really nice weekend which went something like this

Friday after work, Louise comes over! Louise, who I haven't mentioned much so far as the posts have been about personal projects, is my girlfriend of almost 3 years. I won't steal her thunder by describing everything, but instead link you to her blog for her course, HERE. The evening however involved Louise sleeping off the middle bit of a heavy cold, so I got on with making the gun as seen in the previous post. It needed to be done so all in all it was a productive evening for on saturday Lou woke up quite refreshed and much better and I posted the gun off to Matt without too much hassle. Then we went to see Wall-E.

REVIEW: spoilers alert!

Wall-E as you probably know is the brand new spangly and much lauded film from Disney-owned Pixar featuring a robot left on earth for 700 years compressing trash. My initial skepticism was that the film would lack emotion and the content would be somewhat lacking storywise. How very wrong could I be.
The first half an hour, and for that matter most of the film contains very little proper dialogue. Within the opening it's even more present as the feeling of isolation that Wall-E experiences. Amazingly huge landscapes and real film style camerawork based in a rendering engine pixar had to design to cope with the level of detail created such an immersive and somewhat eerie world. Here was Earth, portrayed in a way that looked almost real, but in a state which is totally uninhabitable, deserted, devoid of life. In a way this is unsettling, and as the plot moves on you realise that under the "lonely robot meets friends/saves humanity" is a sci-fi plot that although not complex, does raise a couple of issues; destruction of our environment and our responsibility for it. Also it reminds NASA our spaceships should look as good as the ones in this film, or no-one will buy into space travel.
I digress. The film is gorgeous; the graphics are amazing, it benefits from the low amount of dialogue by impressively making the body (chassis?) language do all the work, the camerawork is "live action" in style so it looks like an acted film would, the story and pace are good the whole way through(even if the ending is a bit idealised), and there are enough laughs for everyone. Once on the ship "Axiom" (definition here, number 3), the later scenes reference 2001 A Space Odyssey numerous times. A mark of how good this film was was shown by the rapt attention of the massing hordes of kids less than 7 in the packed cinema, whilst the atmosphere when leaving was of intent, happy discussion by the other cinema-goers. Keeping that many kids quiet for 98 minutes is no mean feat. GO SEE IT! Next major project may well be a lego Wall-E

The evening was spent lounging around the free house, drinking some cider, browsing the net and such, but included tidying my room. Chronicles of Riddick is also a damn good film, but kept us up past midnight. Sunday was very much a lazy day with an awake time of noon, and a curry at 4pm. A frankly most relaxing weekend, up until louise left and I started playing half life 2, episode 1,(millwall 1), at which point I got a massive adrenaline buzz which I'm currently trying to dissipate.
Keep it surreal!

Just also like to say thank you Louise for such a cool weekend! <3

The varying degrees of success with card Part 2

The second of my exploits in card related matters comes from a request from a mate called Matt, who wanted a gun built for a cosplay event next week in the Great And Sunny Southampton. Yes cosplay would likely fall under the heading of "geekery", but it's a creative medium based around prop construction, custom tailoring, and if you feel inclined, amateur dramatics: Here's Tab (in red), Christian (in suit) and Matt (as a Catholic priest) being characters from hellsing. A lot of people now buy factory made items, but for the purists, it's not just pretending to be someone, its an application of skill, time and effort...So I made this gun. Out of card, but based around a plastic gun to get the trigger and mechanism detail. The gun, Hades, is owned by Train Heartnet, former assasin for an organisation called Chronos who leaves and becomes a bounty hunter or "sweeper". The series is " Black Cat" if anyone is interested.

Clicky for larger images.

First stage: Butt (hehe I said butt) extensinon, trigger guard extension, hammer modification.

Second stage: Attempt 1 at main body shape. This looked wrong, because the underside of the front is joined by a curve thats not yet present. On realising this (when i took the barrel bit off the top and stick it along the bottom the next photo happened. (pics to follow! Haven't found that elusive SD card)

Third stage: New front body, barrel, front, and sides beside magazine.

Fourth stage: Polyfilla. Yep! Well, homebase brand. You'd be surprised how well it works, and its very cheap. The grey mountboard didn't like it much, but the high quality white board held up well.

Beyond: Paint, with Tulip fabric paint for the gold edging and detail. The rest were Halfords spray cans. 2 coats of primer, 1 of silver, 1 of black, 2 of gold. Red spray on the string bit.

Holster: fake leather and card. Velcro fastenings. simple really!

The varying degrees of success with card Part 1

For those of you interested in the oyster card dissection, it kinda failed. The method I used was too violent for the NEW ANTENNA (I put it in a curry jar and shook vigorously for 5 minutes before letting it stand for 30). Yes folks, the newer oyster cards have very thin metallic strips embedded into the middle layer. I left the card in for a little too long and the crumpling of the card in the jar had split this track apart. Into itty bitty pieces. I then proceeded to lose the chip; it was most probably disposed of by a parent; however while I still had it, simply putting an inch square of silver foil onto the two antenna contacts didn't work.

Pictures to follow once I find the bloody SD card.

Longboarding part 2

So what is the physical difference between longboards and shortboards? It's not necessarily the length. Slalom boards are around the same length as shortboards, and slide boards match the shape. note: shortboards are between 28-33" long

Rundown of longboard disciplines:

1. Sliding: 28-40" boards, but any board can be slid using the rock-hard sliding wheels. Hard wheels means less grip and slides/rotations /drifting can be performed. Skate wheels have too small a contact area with the road and tend to grip because of the higher force per unit area. Here's some extra-pro stand up slides.
   
2. Slalom: 20"-34" ish boards, very soft grippy wheels, normally grippier back wheels than front wheels. Done like any other slalom, but with foot high cones on smooth steep hills, normally in parallel with another person in competitions. Video!
   
3. Cruising: Anything from 20" to 80". Any w heels. Freestyle riding -just enjoying mellow hills, flat beachfront etc. This includes cross-stepping as shown here by Adam Colton, superpro.
   
4. Carving: 20"-80" ish boards, but steeper hills. All about cutting across the slope to give a snow/surfboard feel and slower descent. Don e with medium-soft wheels with decent grip. Video!
   
5. Bombing/downhill: 30-44" boards. Medium /soft wheels. Ddifferent type of truck (the bit that holds the wheels). Fast. Very fast, no prisoners steep mountain runs, drifted corners. Full leathers and full face helmet required for all downhill competitions. At the downhill speeds, soft wheels can be slid to stop in an emergency.Video!

Engineering of Longboards

1. Decks: laminated wood, normally maple, bi rch, bamboo or any mix of these.
2. Wheels: polyurethane of different hardnesses(durometers) with a much harder plastic core to hold the bearings.
3. Bearings: 608 steel bearings; 22mm outer diameter, 8mm bore, 7mm thickness. Abec 7 is rated to 30,000rpm, because these bearings were first specified for grinders and circular saws. 2 bearings per wheel
4. Trucks: here's some pics; Skate style (used for any discipline), carving/downhill, slalom/carving, downhill. The plasticy bits are polyurethane bushings, and these are what give the truck resistance to turning.
   
   
   

Thats the basic tech stuff!
Seeya soon for another post.

Oyster cards and their impracticalities

So, you've bought an oyster card when you last went through London. Good! Where is it? No? Don't remember? Well I intend to break this cycle so you will never need to cash in more than one pile of £3 TFL shares. The first stage goes like so:

1) As Skeptobot's blog (may he be respected for scientific endeavour) shows here an oyster card can be gutted to leave the small chip and antenna intact.
2) As I will elucidate once I have completed the process, I intend to embed this into a wristband or watch strap to allow you to not forget your oyster. If the Oyster is the only form of proximity RFID card you have (others include the barclays one card, that uses a similar tech to allow you to pay for oystering, and Southampton uni-link pre-paid student cards) then it could be stitched into the body of your wallet (or taped in in the case of duct-tape wallets). Other RFID cards tend to interfere with each other and the garbled mass of signals means you pay penalty fares.

Edit: Here's some more info about antenna arrangement!

The ultimate advance of this concept is the touch to pay visa card stripped apart and then implanted in, say, your forearm on the back of your wrist. You would sacrifice standard card payment as the chip'n'pin chip would not work (your hand wouldn't fit in the bloody reader), but the average londoner could go a whole day without even carrying a plastic card around.

If anyone knows whether mobile phones would be a liability in terms of disrupting or hacking/reading the oyster data, let me know as one of the other tests will be to place the circuit on the back of my nokia 6230i (10 mins searching: nokia have released roughly 200 diferent phones up to the curen gen: Proof here!)

Catch you guys later for another longboarding post.

Longboarding

Never ask a skater on a board longer than a normal skateboard (shortboard, tech deck, call it what you will) to do a kickflip for you. For they are a longboarder, and you generally can't ollie a longboard because of the shape of the board.

Longboarding is not about tricks (most of the time), not about kudos, not about elitism. Longboarding is FUN. As a minority sport, but also a very quick means of transport you can carry with you, longboarding makes getting around towns easy and fun when normal shortboards would suffer from rubbish surfaces, potholes, and low top speeds.

My experience of the UK longboard scene is of a larger and ever growing collective of disenfranchised/ageing shortboarders, kids finding longboarding easier to break into than shortboarding, and many other dedicated individuals boarding for whatever reason. Lush longboards (and I must mention the name, because they ARE the scene) have done huge amounts to promote longboarding. They're all freaking good at their disciplines, but when you go on sessions or charity rides they talk to you as equals, even if you can only just get the board going in a straight line. They are nice, and friendly and accepting. BECAUSE YOU LONGBOARD. I relaise not all skaters(shortboarders) are like the stereotype I am about to talk about, but the semi pro guys hanging around the skatepark who cut you up the whole time just to show you you're not as good as them tend to have the elitism element. The judging that happens to everyone from the edge of the halfpipe is what put me onto longboarding, rather than sticking with shortboarding.

The acceptance of longboarders by other boarders makes it almost a brotherhood (and sisterhood, sorry Kim), and that's what makes the sport so much more enjoyable for me than the many others I've tried. The size of the scene in the UK helps this - it's only just approaching a size where elitism would start to develop in any subculture. It does exist, but it can be ignored, or countered by the massive positive input from all the dedicated non-poser longboarders.

Longboarding abroad is much bigger; Canada and America, mainland Europe (namely the Alps) and Brazil play host to longboarding communities, but the attitude of the UK media and public towards skaters in general kind of hinders the growth of a sport such as longboarding. People are slowly warming to us though, and the UK scene is growing fast as longboards become a summer trend (although this encourages the elitism and posering as it becomes seen as a fad). Every summer there will be hardcore converts from the fad-followers. One day, maybe one day, the UK will be a superpower in terms of longboarding. One (longboarder) can hope.

This is a link to a vid of us having a session, with lots of fun stuff. Most of it was messing around. You will need Facebook I'm afraid - I'll sort some non FB video soon.

News just in: Design module not waste of time

So much for writing this on the train! Today was based around the snooze button and idle chatter rather than rigorous cleaning and a tight schedule.

Results wise, year 2 of MEng Environmental engineering went something like this: "57%".
However, Stats went like this: "37%", and it was only because Design 2; the monstrous 1.7kg report, 350 sides of hard graft, 7 lots of nice binding, did this "78%" that I'm still in for the full 4 years. Respect to the rest of the group!

The prospect of resitting a module for the sake of the 3% I could gain seems a bit daft, but Uni policy stands, and I would kinda like my degree, even if i do have to take time out over summer to resit. However, being able to ace it on the second time would at least make me feel better about my somewhat erratic maths performance.


Onwards to other things, and XSS took a step closer to clubdom in that next year's treasurer (Tom) and I sorted out some details for the club account, to be established over summer when we're both in Southampton. XSS does however need some explaining, and I shall do this in a totally different post, maybe even a different blog; I'll link it later once I've done it (possibly tomorrow(today) ).

Link of the day is to this amazing t-shirt website that is just freaking sweet. Enjoi!
http://www.torsopants.com/main/

Thoughts before sleep and the mission of tomorrow.

As most of you out there will have experienced, a level of apathy towards a subject such as work normally encourages the execution of tasks such as washing and cleaning, whther it be of yourself, or the kitchen or your room. The problem arises when no worse task exists, and Tidying becomes a vital chore. Which is why my room is a dump.

As I sit comfily in bed, looking over the foothills of random wires towards the plains of laundry, I can't help but realise how much I've got to do tomorrow(today), and that it is 3AM. So instead of just contemplating the mountainous list of tasks, I shall document them here. Mostly for myself so I know what in all 13 flavours of hell I'm meant to have accomplished by 8pm.

8:30 - Be awake. Put bedclothes in washign machine to prevent oversleep.
9:00 - Be at least partially coherent, and possibly washing up while the second cup of tea brews
10:00 - Fill out all the forms needed for the summer placement; there will be a post(rant) about this later.
11:30 - Tidy room, dry sheets, text the XSS committee (also explained in a future post) about a meeting
13:00 - Lunch, or tea made with extra sugar. I'm lazy and like tea.
14:00 - Results... :0
14:15 - Drinking (NOT tea)
16:00 - XSS planned impromptu informal committee meeting. Possibly in pub.
18:00 - Finish tidying.
19:00 - Pack last few bits and eat.
20:00 - Be glad that its all sorted
21:00 - NEXT POST, whilst travellign home.

I'm getting tired just compiling that timetable, so
I'll post tomorrow.

In the meantime here is some internet wisdom:
Keep it surreal

Once upon a time....

Once upon a time I wrote a blog. "Tim's Downhill of Existence" was maybe too frank and open in its contents, and although svaing me hours explaining the twists and turns of my life to everyone individually probably offended as many as there were people who found it interesting, so this is a general apology, and I hope all who feel wronged may forgive me.

Now thats out the way, upon on that I rely and begin.....

Having a number of things happening at the moment that may be of benefit to others if recorded even casually, and hopefully amusing to those who are not really that bothered, I intend to document the rough guide to what I'm upto, on a weekly basis (if I can be bothered) in terms of:

1. Longboarding and XSS (extreme street sports society)
   
2. Engineering
3. crazy/incidental crap
4. drinking and antics

Expect links to facebook and similar, and more interesting posts at more sensible hours
In the mean time, check out http://icanhascheezburger.com/page/283/ for the orign of the lolcat and bukkit sagas

Keep it surreal