It's freezing cold this week and the snow fell yesterday. Is this the last week of frozen and snowy Shellpot creek?
This is how it looked this morning when it was 11F.
Tuesday, 4 March 2014
Linus' wanted me to build him a "control panel" to pretend to launch rockets or control something. I looked at Radio Shack online and then went and bought a bunch of lighted switches, lights, buzzers, sirens and a breadboard to test and hook it all together. It was pretty cool.
I'll need to find a good box to put it in. They even had the cool guarded switches where you must lift the red guard to then be able to flip the switch, which is also lighted. We can use those as "arming" switches for the noisemakers.
I had showed Linus some of the basics of connecting a circuit, showing how the power starts the circuit and then through the light or switch and that it must make a circle to work. I hooked up a little fan and described how the red wire goes to red and the black to black. Then I was out of the room for a while and I heard a loud beep. He had been listening and paying attention enough that he figured out how to take out the fan and put in the beeping buzzer and have it work on the switch. I think he gets it!
After some experimenting I will eventually have to make something more permanent.
I was inspired by this post at MAKE of a father creating a Mission Control Desk for his son (via BoingBoing). This one is more elaborate than I am capable of.
A search produced this one at Instructables as well.
Now I am on the hunt for videos explaining breadboards and soldering as well.
Friday, 28 February 2014
Friday, 21 February 2014
Do you know how people put pictures of themselves with famous people on the walls of their offices in order to show the influence they have? I have especially seen this for those who work in government.
I was able to get my picture with several presidents at the baseball game so I am ready to fill my office wall.
These may seem like pictures taken with mascots at National's Park before a baseball game last summer, but these are legit.
I was able to get my picture with several presidents at the baseball game so I am ready to fill my office wall.
President Washington
President Jefferson
President Lincoln
President Roosevelt (Teddy)
These may seem like pictures taken with mascots at National's Park before a baseball game last summer, but these are legit.
Back in June, the Spy exhibit at the Franklin Institute had a real live Enigma machine used by the Germans in World War II to encode their secret transmissions. Lucky the Allies had broken the code and could read those transmissions.
You may recall that we had a chance to visit Bletchley Park, the place where the British and their allies worked on breaking the code, as a side-trip on a visit to London some years ago.
The instruction are in German, but are provided for the interested user.
You may recall that we had a chance to visit Bletchley Park, the place where the British and their allies worked on breaking the code, as a side-trip on a visit to London some years ago.
Wednesday, 19 February 2014
Charles Stross in the Jennifer Morgue explored the secret history of the ship, the Hughes Glomar Explorer. There really is such a ship. At the Franklin Institute in June an exhibit of the history of Spying had artifacts from Project Azorian, the attempted lifting of a soviet submarine by the Hughes Glomar Explorer.
Of course in Stross' novel nothing so mundane as a Soviet submarine is lifted, the true prize was yet another eldritch horror.
A commemorative plaque.
A belt buckle and in the background a manganese nodule that was an example of the intended use of the ship.
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