The plants seem to be coming along nicely. I’ve transplanted most of the original batch of seedlings to larger cups. A few of the tomatoes and the broccoli have gotten tall enough now that they’re falling over, so I rolled up some paper around the cups to act as support for them. This was really just a quick and dirty way of adding support, and thinking more about it, I may add just add some chicken wire instead, so that I’m not limiting the amount of light hitting the plants and the soil. I did adjust the original light fixture, positioning it directly over the plants now, and added a 2nd light above the original tray that still has some stragglers in it.
One of the things I enjoy doing every once in a while is surfing the video sharing sites for various topics, including physics. Last night I came across something I had never heard of or seen before - Oobleck - or at least Dr. Seuss’ version of a non-Newtonian fluid. What the heck am I talking about you ask?… Take a container, add about 1 cup of corn starch, and slowly mix in about half a cup of water… then have fun with this very simple example of a fluid that can change its viscosity depending on how much pressure or stress gets put on it… in other words, watch it change from a liquid to a solid and back to a liquid, right before your eyes. I played with this stuff for about an hour last night:
A few things I noticed… over time it seems as though the water that’s in the mixture evaporates - I’m only guessing this because when I played with small amounts of it for a while, it stayed solidified longer. If it starts to solidify a little too much, you can revive the mixture by adding in just a little more water. If it sits for an extended period of time (say over night or a few hours) the water tends to rise to the top, while the corn starch falls to the botttom - the mixture will come back to life however with just a few good stirs.
I want to try and figure out a way to add a vibration to this as some of the videos I came across last night showed examples of what happens to this stuff when you do exactly that. The peaks and valleys that get formed almost look surreal.
Went down to DC yesterday to take some photos of the Capitol complex for a project at work (some more photos to come). But, the highlight of the afternoon was when we met Circumcision Dude out on the West Lawn. This guy was standing out there with giant posters, advocating a ban on circumcisions in the U.S. - For about ten minutes or so he went on about the evils of circumcision, why it was ever done in the first place, how it adversely affects your sexual senses as well as your partner’s, and so on. I honestly only half paid attention to what he was saying, but after doing some searching on the web, I found there’s quite a lot of information about this topic out there. Enjoy!
This weekend I started work on the buffet cabinet. I focused primarily on the carcass and was able to get it pretty close to completion. The top front and rear rails were joined to the sides with some biscuits, while the drawer support in the front and the fixed shelf down towards the bottom half are set inside of stopped dados - both sets of these dados were a bit of challenge. The ones for the shelf were fine, but I made the mistake of not turning the sides around to cut the set needed for the drawer support. Before I realized what had happened it was already too late - there’s now an extra set of unnecessary dados cut into the sides, towards the back of the carcass. I’ll probably leave them alone, since they’re out of sight and sit behind where the drawer will be. If I feel inclined, I could probably cut out a couple filler pieces and glue them in place.
The other flub I made was when I routed out the V grooves in the sides. I had the depth of the bit too far out from the base of the router and because it was trying to cut such a deep groove, it ended up burning the wood a little. I didn’t like how deep it was, so since I’m going to be painting this portion of the cabinet anyway, I just filled it back up with some puddy. I reset the depth of the bit and was able to make a lot cleaner cuts on both sides. They give the plywood the look of being paneled, which is exactly what I was trying to accomplish.
We like to watch the CBS Sunday Morning show and this week they had a story that really struck a cord with me. Out in Kansas City, this minister has come up with a program to help people stop complaining. It involves people wearing these purple bracelets (think LIVESTRONG) that you switch from one wrist to another, everytime you catch yourself complaining about something. The goal is go 21 days straight without complaining. It’s pretty tough - I was barely able to go 2 hours today without complaining about something or other. We tend to complain a lot in our daily lives… but when you think about it… do you really have anything to complain about?
About a month ago I spent two hours outside in the cold, while it snowed, trying to take pictures of the lunar eclipse. Towards the end of it I was getting a little bored and remembered an old trick I used to do with night shots and street lights. I had a flashlight with me so I shot a 25 second exposure of myself bouncing it around. It reminds me of those Sprint commercials that have been out for a while now… which I recently found out was most likely inspired by these guys: PIKAPIKA
Oh, and the shots of the eclipse… they turned out pretty bad.
It’s been over two weeks now and the seedlings are doing really well. I transplanted a few of the taller ones over to individual containers, just to give them a bit more breathing room and make it easier to transplant outside when it comes time to do so. Just about everything has sprouted at least one of its seeds, including an apple seed. For some reason only one of the banana pepper seeds has come up so I’m not sure what’s going on there. Oh, and no luck on any of the pear seeds yet.
Back sometime during the holidays I purchased a set of pipe clamp fixtures to use on the larger projects that I want to take on. They’d be perfect on this buffet project. I’ve never gotten around to getting the actual pipes until this weekend, and the reason I purchased these particular clamps was mainly because of their price - Let’s just say I should’ve known better…
The clamps call for a 3/4″ pipe with an O.D. of 1.0625 (that’s an outside diameter of no greater than 1 1/16″). So yesterday I picked up two 10′ sections that matched the exact specs, and were threaded at both ends, and had the guy at HD cut them in half for me. I figured 5′ lengths should suffice. I brought them home and proceeded to attached the fixtures. Turns out that the inside diameter of each of the clutch discs was exactly the same size as the pipe - not even remotely allowing them to fit over the pipes. I went back to Rockler’s website to see if I could find any information that might help me out and I happen to click on the ‘Reviews‘ tab - to my unpleasant surprise I come to find that just about everyone who’s purchased these silly things has had the exact same problem. Now mind you - these reviews didn’t exist when I bought these clamps - had I seen them back then, you can definitely be sure I wouldn’t have made the purchase.
I knew that the clutch rings needed to be grinded down just a hair, but didn’t really have anything that could do the job. I thought maybe something like a small grinding stone that you can get for one of those Dremel tools would work, so this afternoon I picked up both a small rotary file and grinding stone bit that I could use in my drill. Using the file to get the initial material off first first, then following it up with the grinding stone, worked like a charm. It took me about an hour to do though because there were 16 of them and there was a lot of grinding and checking for fit, grinding some more, and checking some more… After all that, I was finally able to attach the fixtures without any issue. I reversed the position of the clutches too, because they seemed to work better when inserted opposite the way they came packaged.
I’ve just recently finished an audiobook by Malcolm Gladwell called ‘Blink’. It’s a few years old now and was recommended to me a while ago. I don’t read books all that often - just can’t get myself to get into the habit - but I really wanted to learn what this was all about, so I thought I would give the audiobook version a try. I have to admit, I think I’m hooked on the format. Anyway, to quote the author from the book’s site:
It’s a book about rapid cognition, about the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye. When you meet someone for the first time, or walk into a house you are thinking of buying, or read the first few sentences of a book, your mind takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions. Well, “Blink” is a book about those two seconds, because I think those instant conclusions that we reach are really powerful and really important and, occasionally, really good.
I was really struck by the number of stories he told and by the concept of thin slicing that he often referred to. It’s this notion that you can make sense of some type of situation or make a decision based on a very small amount of information (or a “thin slice”), and in many cases, get more accurate results than if you had a plethora of information about that particular situation, subject, or even individual.
If any of this sounds even remotely interesting to you, I’d recommend picking up a copy for yourself.
Domenick Naccarato is a creative director, an amateur woodworker, an artist, a photographer, a husband, and a father. When not otherwise busy working in front of a computer, building some piece of furniture, fixing something around the house, painting, taking pictures, or making wine, he is usually found with his wife and two daughters at their home in the Lehigh Valley.
