Mission Failure

Well, it seems as though I've failed rather miserably in keeping this blog up to date. However, I'll just put in that I've got a number of projects going on now:
-Optical Logic Gates
-SAR Balloon
-SAR Relay
-SAR APRS
-SAR probability mapping
-Biofuels
-Morse Code-to-Speech for the Disabled
Plus which I've just completed my semester at school, and my Wilderness First Aid course for NJSAR.
Oh, yeah, and I'm finishing my music minor with "The History of Rock and Roll" at school this June.
I'll update as I can, hopefully including some pics from the lab.

Birthday

Yesterday we had a decidedly distracted evening, as Digital Electronics turned into Projectile Motion 101. At the same time I introduced the class to a magnetic velocity multiplier (see movie above), and Dave Russell, our professor, showed us all a vacuum cannon that he'd built to use at the high school he teaches at.
And then there was today, my birthday. A lot of talking on the phone to the Katie was involved, both yesterday and today, and for that I say, "Yay!"
My best present by far was the blackboard, pictured above. As you can tell, I went right to it, working out part of the math for the magnetic velocity multiplier I mentioned before. I find it very interesting that you have to prep the board by rubbing it with chalk and then erasing it so that the first marks on it will not be indellible. I must research that further.

Another Day, Another Demonstration

Another demonstration of physics, my craziness, and stupidity, that is.
The stupidity isn't mine.
The Duke Lacrosse Case is quickly becoming a stormy story of outrage. The stupidity lies herein, but also in the fact that GoDuke.com, the university's athletic department's site, decided to pull the roster of the men's lacrosse team. Why did it still show up on Google's cache, then? [PDF]
Anyhow, I met with Dr. Halpern who showed me his immense boxes of physics demonstration tricks and talked with me about the future of physics teaching.
Then, the big project: this evening I cataloged and catagorized everything that's made it into my SAR pack. The list is here.

Well, Let's See...

What have I been up to?
-Plotting the gravitational field of Saturn and its rings to see if there's some possibility of generating a perspective on gravity quantization from this data.
-Composing yet more music, and being asked to play at a concert at my church, among other things (details to follow).
-School work.
-Designing an amorphous metal-based pressure sensor.
-Reviving part of the trombum as a dijeridoo for Rob.
-Reading far too much Spider Robinson.
-More school work.
-Setting up a vibration-reducing coil housing for my independent study.
-Working at Campmor.
-Teaching myself discrete structures mathematics (since my professor's not doing it).
-Working on the energy audit of my school.
-Still more school work.
-Writing a review paper for my independent study.
-Etc., etc., etc.

Yes, it's been rather busy. I'll post as often as I can.

It's Been a While

And here, for your viewing pleasure, is the most recent circuit I couldn't get to work for electronics class.
In the past week and something since I last made an entry, I've made so many things, such as circuits for my electronics class or a new waltz, or the experimental setup for my independent study, that I don't really know where to begin.
Katie was home last week for spring break, which was absolutely terriffic. We got to spend much more time together than I'd originally expected, which was beauteous. Not only that, but she spoiled me rotten with home-made lunches.
Tomorrow I'm off to Lehigh for the day to see Sir Roger Penrose speak about the universe before (yes, you read that right) the big bang. Link is here.

More Digital Design

I made progress on some file manipulations that I'm doing for Katie today. Also, after working with my digital design professor David "Digital Dave" Russell, (I just had to say that.) I finally figured out how to properly modulate and demodulate the clock signal and data that I'm sending. More to come when I build. As for now, I'm trying (unsuccessfully) to get to bed early so I can get to school early and work on Discrete Structures review for my test on Friday. Yeesh!

In the Last Week...

In the last week, I've definitely been busier than I've been since the beginning of the semester, or maybe even since the beginning of this school year. At the same time, I've been making a lot of stuff. I've been working on the experimental setup for my independent study, composing some new music, and creating a lot of interesting circuits for my digital design class.
I also have to make myself ready, this week, for two tests: Discrete Structures and Multivariable Calculus.
In other news, the quote that started a new game was put up by my friend Pete Oliver as an away message:
You're driving down the road, and you stop at a red light. The archbishop pulls up beside you, and rolls down his window. He asks: "Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?" You hand him a jar from your glove compartment, and he spreads some on a communion wafer. As he bites into it, you wake up screaming, and your pillow is missing.
My friend Pete HDP (the OTHER Pete) and I started making this into a very weird Mad-Libs. He said he'd post some of the ones he came up with, so a link will be up shortly to that.

Teodorian Natural Philosophy

I'm in the process of trying to revive the physics club at school which, unfortunately, has been ailing of late. I got defaulted into the position of VP late last semester. So far, we've got an ambitious list of people we'd like to bring to speak, and a slowly growing new set of by-laws. So, that's what I've made today, other than a proposal to create a unique area at school for the science majors to hang out in. More to come as my insane schedule allows.

Oooh! Shiny!

Wow. Check this out. Multi-Touch Interaction is quite a neat field. Now I'm working on something similar: on the proto board I have for my digital design class, I'm working out a simple LED/photodiode switch to use instead of the on-board buttons we have. Pictures to follow.

Finally I Get Back...

Well, I'm back in the saddle again. This past week has been quite a whirlwind. I had quite a bit to do for school, and also some extraneous projects such as certain musical ones. I had Valentine's Day gifts to get for Katie... In short, quite a lot to do.
As for music, I'll put up a post on that soon. Needless to say, most of the things I've been making are assignments for school.
Also, I've made a change at Campmor: I'm now working in tents most of the time, as of this past wednesday.
In other news, this past tuesday I had an interesting hydrogen-roadmap fuel cell-related symposium to sit in and take notes on. More news and a link on that later, though.
And now back to schoolwork.

Nrrr... Nrrr... Chili

Pete's Chili Fresca

2-2.5 lbs. ground turkey (or ground beef)
.5 lbs. sliced turkey
3 Holland peppers
2 frying peppers
3 Carib Chili Peppers
2-5 Habañero or Jalapeño Peppers to taste
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 can (19 oz.) black beans (drained)
1 can (15 oz.) red kidney beans (drained)
2 cans (16 oz. each) diced tomatoes (drained)
3 limes
4 cloves garlic
2 tsp. Cumin
3 tsp. Paprika
2 tsp. Oregano
2 tsp. fresh ground Pepper
4 tsp. chopped Cilantro (optional)

First wash and chop all peppers. Put these in a large bowl and mix. Juice 2 of the 3 limes over this mixture. Peel the garlic, and crush it under a fork. Place this in with the peppers. Juice the remaining lime over the pepper mixture. Chop 1 of the 3 onions and combine with the peppers. Mix thoroughly with clean hands, squeezing together all peppers and coating all of the mixture with the lime juice. Chop the remaining two onions finely, and add with the olive oil and ground turkey to a large pan. Brown the turkey, then add tomatoes, red kidney beans, and black beans. Slice sliced turkey into small strips and add to meat. Now add the pepper mixture. If using Cilantro, add it now. Mix Cumin, Paprika, ground Pepper, and Oregano in a small bowl, and add to the full mix. Simmer for 10 minutes, stirring every 2.5 minutes. After 10-15 minutes, transfer mixture to a crock pot. Cook on high for 30 minutes. Turn heat to low, and simmer for 7.5-8 hours.

I brought this to church this morning for the Chili Cook-Off, and wound up winning a bottle of Merlot. That I gave to my parents: I don't drink.

TTL

Here's the diagram of that XOR design I was talking about. Note also that the two not gates (the single-transistor ones) in the bottom left corner are slightly reversed, as the output lead should be on the top, rather than the bottom, of the gate.
Otherwise, yesterday was work, work, work. Then I fell asleep watching Grizzly Man on the Discovery Channel. Great film if you get the chance to see it.
Well, today's work, work, work again, and then make chili in the evening.

School Begins

Well, I may have to tune down my expectations for what I can do postwise during the semester. As for what I've made:
Monday I composed a new piece for the piano amidst the first day of classes.
Tuesday I was the first person to make a counter chip work in my digital electronics class.
Wednesday I made an even better counter on my off-class time, and got two of them working in parallel.
Today I figured out and planned an NPN-transistor only version of an XOR gate. Talk about using what you know! I used my knowledge from my discrete structures class to figure the logic, and I used my electronics knowledge to create the real design.
I don't know when I'll be able to post next, but hopefully it'll be tomorrow.

Biofuel Blowout

Well then!
Thursday morning I left for Troy's with my dad. We got up to Masonville, NY, and found Troy. It wasn't too long before we were down in the basement of one of the houses he owns, putting together plans for a WVO reprocessing system to be used with his oil furnace. With us were Troy's son Vaughn, a welder and car mechanic, Gary, an electrician/hvac tech/plumber, and Alex, a semi-retired manufacturing engineer. We were somewhat stymied by the whole filtering aspect of production, but we continued on, working on a 5:1 WVO/methanol mix which we found that evening to be quite good for our purposes.
I've also found out that Troy wants to do biofuels in a big way. As he says it, "I wanna F**K an oil company!" Much of the knowledge I gained from this visit was useful in deciding how to do that, such as that there are many people in the Delaware County region of New York who are currently farming Canola specifically for use as an oil fuel source.
So that's what took up Thursday and Friday. Yesterday, Saturday, I had work all day, and then my parents arrived back from Masonville that night. Later, I had the hard task of going through plans and articles online to see what the cheapest, easiest way of making biodiesel from WVO might be. This site has some of the best information out there.
And now to make the filtration system plans...

There's a Printer in the Car!

Let me repeat that sentence, because it bears repeating. There is a printer in my dad's car. Hooked up to the cigarette lighter port, we have an inverter. There is a splitter on that, which hooks to my laptop and, yes, the printer in the back seat. Also, today I made an estimate on the burn temperature of an alcohol/oil mixture, and proved that such a mixture would work as a fuel. All in all, a very busy day. I can't wait to get up to Troy's tomorrow!

Craft Day

Today was a day of craft projects. I made a lantern out of some tissue-paper mache, some wire, and an old LED bottle opener. I also started in on making the beads that I intend to sell next month. all of them are rolled paper. I also got a bit more done on my website.

And don't worry. Tomorrow I promise I'll make something a bit more... interesting.

The Site's Up!

Today has been a productive day. Unfortunately, when I woke up this morning, it was to sleet and snow, and as I told Katie on the phone, there's no way I'm driving three hours into New York state in that. No siree Bob. So, I was forced to be productive at home, instead. Now there's a new website for me to show for it: petmar@physics.ramapo.edu. Check it out! It's what I made today!

Still in Limbo...

I still don't know if I'm heading upstate to Troy's tomorrow. I will find out in the morning when I look out the window and see what kind of mess the weather has made.
Speaking of making things, I made a good bit of music today with my friend Rob, and we also got to talking about RONJA. Thanks to a VGA connector pinout, we were able to figure out how to make a multichannel optical link for a high-bandwidth low-loss remote monitor, via either fiber or air optics. You can see the basic layout above.

Cooking Again...

Due to work and my parents' anniversary dinner today, the only thing I made, other than a few shoe sales, was breakfast. At that, I only really helped make it.
Also, today I discovered RONJA, Reasonable Optical Near Joint Access. Watch this space for more development of RONJA repeaters and RRNA (Reasonable Radio Network Access) projects. This seems like a cool project to jump in on.

Water Sensor, Take 2

Sorry about yesterday. I spent the day with my parents and my Grandma, and had a good time.
Anyhow, today so far consisted of a lot of running around. My parents are very enthused about the water sensor, and so I've created the full-scale production model, which will be placed up in the basement ceiling, under the bathroom tub. Hooray!
My favorite part of this is the tensioning method I used. There are three little blocks holding wires that connect to the upper electrode: the screen. These are taught, and so suspend the screen above the metal contact plate.