So I was manually coring some apples at my house to dry them using a knife and commenting to my friend Rosannah how much of a pain it was to do so. She suggested using a technique that her dad does; just sharpen a piece of copper pipe and use that to core the apple. So, a quick trip to my garage and a few minutes later I now have an easy apple coring setup. The sharpened copper pipe easily pushes out the core, and the wooden spoon handle is used to push the core out of the pipe.
Mmmm.. dried apples! Thanks to Ken and Gabrielle Adelman for giving them to me.
And I’m also trying dried tomatoes; since my garden is giving me a ton of them lately!
I playfully call my house the “Monkey Playground”. Why? Why not!
Well, okay, I’m sort of monkey like since I like climbing around on lots of things. A little known fact about me: my 2004 Subaru Impreza WRX STi had a sticker on the side that said “Monkey *” (that last symbol was a star, not an asterisk). I thought it was funny — sort of like an aviator call sign for the pilot.
The new sign, freshly painted:
This is my first stencil. Here’s how I made it:
* Find an image on the internet to make a stencil out of. Drop it into Adobe Illustrator.
* With my Wacom tablet (a mouse would work), trace it with the pencil tool. Fix it up so the path looks fairly smooth. Download my version here.
* Print the stencil — it may take several pages if it is large.
* Tape it down on top of some poster board (thin cardboard from an art supply store.)
* Put something underneath the cardboard so you don’t cut into your table (I used a balsa wood model airplane table).
* Cut it out with a sharp new exacto knife.
* Spray paint it!
I can hear myself telling people how to get to my place: “Yeah, pull into the driveway with a red monkey painted on a huge white saw blade out front.”
These things are awesome! They are basically plush lego toys that you can wear on your head as a hat. And, when you get tired of how it looks, change it up with some new accessories!
I met one of the creators, Jazz, and I was instantly interested in getting a few for myself. He is kick starting the company, and needs help. Please help them out by pledging something, and in return you can get one of the first batches of the fuzzy little friends.
We got a new kitten! This is Kika, a marble colored Bengal.
I miss Piper, our Siamese a lot. She has yet to come home. I told Louise I didn’t want a new kitten to replace Piper, but she said we could just have two cats if Piper comes home. So, we got Kika.
What a fun weekend! It started out at 10 am with a mountain unicycle (muni) ride at Soquel Demo Forest. Jason, Aaron, Chris B and I rode up Highland to drop in at the top of Soquel demo and hit up Braille Trail. Kevin was a little late, and without cell reception we didn’t know he was going to arrive, but he fortunately caught up. Chris had to leave early to hit up a kid’s birthday party, and oh man, did he miss out!
Since we are all cell phone junkies we all captured some nice little video clips and uploaded them to You Tube.
Me on the log bride:
Aaron and me riding and falling on a log:
Jason on another log bridge:
Me doing a high speed launch:
Afterwards, we all went back to my house. We were going to drink some beer and then Jason was going to fix his handle while Aaron and Kevin helped me wrench on the car. Then, I had an idea: Zip Line! Let’s get it going again. The gang was on board, so we found a sweet spot and set it up. Long story short, it was a TON of fun! But, it still required you to brake a lot with gloves and you couldn’t just free fly down without hitting the ending tire/tree way too fast. My neighbor had a great suggestion of just putting it higher in the tree and having it sag in the middle. Then, you could drop off at the middle and pull the pulley back to the start. So, today I spent most of the day rearranging it higher in the tree, and it works even better! You can now zip down hands free. I still need to make a better launching platform, but it works (albeit a little scary your first time).
Original platform from yesterday below, and new one above.
I actually put it another third higher in the tree, but realized it was way to high and hard to launch from, and I had to move it down lower. Notice that I still need to build a bridge, and I want to extend the launching platform to make it easier to launch from (and safer).
Here’s rather crappy iPhone 3Gs video of the experience (warning: load!). You can tell when I hit the tire at the other end.
The iPhone records fairly good quality videos, but it does a poor job of uploading them to You Tube.
Overall, a very fun weekend. And Louise came home from her Aerial Silk trip to Colorado! Unfortunately she left again to go to tahoe with a friend (hence, I’m on the computer…)
One of my first metalworking projects was making cufflinks for my wedding. They are aluminum and I turned them on the lathe, and used the mill for some drilling and flattening (by eye). The back piece screws on and off.
Louise is in beauty school at a nice Redkin academy of salon professionals. She got to do her graduation ceremony early, since they have new students every 8 weeks and combine some of the graduations together for various reasons. Part of the process was for her to find some models and do their makeup and hair for a little runway model show. Louise found two great models, and here is some of the shots of her work:
