Ship Update

Just a couple of pictures this time - just of the bowsprit.


Next comes the masts, but I think I want to get the belay pins in all the holes before doing that. I think I may paint them to, which will take a while as there are a few score of them. They are a dull iron colour. The guide pictures with the kit have them painted brass, but they would have been wood in the real thing, so I think I'll paint them a more appropriate colour. There's also the dory that gets lashed down in the center of the main deck that I should probably get in there before all the masts and rigging get in the way.

I'm taking the night off from the ship and a course that I'm taking and just watching Battlestar Galactica episodes on DVD (the new ones, not the seventies show). I got a couple of seasons worth for my birthday last month.

Cheers

Mike

Ship Update

I've got a few more pictures this time.

Once again, I'm pretty pleased with the results. I changed a few minor things from the official plans. I changed the way the cannons were lashed (last picture - I added the quarter to give some scale). The plans had them simply tied loosely with a single line to the eye bolts in the railing, but in reality they would be lashed down so I tried to make it look that way. If you look closely, you may notice that the back end of the cannon is lashed to the cart to keep them from bouncing.

In the sixth picture I fashioned some cleats to fasten the control lines for the tiller. In the picture in the plans it looked like the lines were just tied to the deck level blocks, but that doesn't make sense so I made cleats. All the rigging is tied, by the way. No gluing. I could take the lines off the cleats and work the tiller if I wanted.

I also used the same wood for the decking to line the back of the transom where the name is mounted (third picture - my youngest thinks Supply is the lamest name of all time). Beneath the planking is plywood (you can see it from the other side in picture six).

I had to do some modification of some pieces, too. I mentioned before the trim at the stern which I had to cut because the kit gave me two starboard trim pieces. Once painted, you can barely notice it's any different from the one on the other side (sixth picture). In the seventh picture, the two gold coloured moldings that arch back from the figurehead also required some modification. Again, they gave me two starboards, so the one on the right side of the picture had to be cut and bent around to fit the port side. Again, you can barely see the difference.

Next comes spars (masts, yards, booms, etc) and then rigging. Still a long way to go.

Mike

10 Million Computers to Shutdown

Shutdown Day is back with a bang! More than 1.6 million people worldwide participated in Shutdown Day last year ... and this year there's a crazy global Flash Mob too!A massive global experiment to spread awareness about the pitfalls of excessive use and abuse of computers and Internet.

read more | digg story

I think this is a really cool idea. Unfortunately, May 3 is a Saturday and I'm working that morning.

Maybe I'll kick the kids off of World of Warcraft and XBox Live. >:-)

Mike

Windows Untenable

A couple of interesting articles suggesting that Windows will be going the way of the Dodo in the next couple of years.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/11/gartner-says-vista-will-collapse-and-thats-why-the-yahoo-deal-must-happen/

http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?newsid=11953

As likely everyone knows, Vista is less than perfect. In fact, even if it were made perfect, it's still a bloated monster taking ten times the memory of Mac's OS-X kernel, leaving only the higher end machines being capable of running the thing in the way it is meant to. Add to that the browser increasingly becoming the only operating system that matters, with Web apps like GoogleApps more and more being what people will be using to do their work.

Oh dear, that means MSOffice may be in trouble too. As the articles above point out, Windows and Office represents 60% of Microsoft's revenue.

Ouch!

No wonder Microsoft wants Yahoo so bad.

Mike

Ship Update

Here are the latest.



I have to say that I'm fairly please with the outcome. The varnish (3 coats) instantly made a big difference and the filling of the cracks with the putty went better than I thought it would. In fact, the putty is more noticeable in the pictures than just holding it in your hand. I think it's because it reflects the light from the flash so much less than the varnished wood does.

The fourth picture shows the modification I had to make to the brass molding at the aft end of the ship (this was because the company sent me two starboard pieces instead of a port and starboard). It's okay, but I'm thinking of getting some paint to match the mahogany (the darker wood) and just painting it along with the starboard side so they'll match. While I'm at it, I may still paint the brass moldings that join the different railing levels you can see in picture three.

You can also see that I've attached the rudder, which does turn. The rudder head can be seen in picture four. A tiller (the stick you steer with) will go into the hole in the rudder head (thank goodness I thought of drilling that hole before attaching the rudder). I also took a picture of the bottom of the hull just because I hadn't taken a picture of that yet.

Next I will be attaching on a lot of fiddly-bits (I've been looking forward to this stage), then the bowsprit (the beam that extends from the bow). I'm not sure when I'll post the next set of pictures. It will definitely be before I step the two masts.

Mike

Facial Expression Simulator

Okay, it may be just me, but I think this is pretty cool.

http://mrl.nyu.edu/~perlin/facedemo/

Mike

Commodore PET

I rescued this from my school when the department was clearing out some old "junk". I have a particular affection for the PET because it was the first computer I ever got my hands on. My high school got a handful of PETS when I was in grade twelve in 1981 and started a computer club where I taught myself how to program in BASIC. They didn't have an actual computer class until I was in grade 13 (the Ontario curriculum had a university preliminary year back then - much for the better), but they wouldn't let grade thirteens take it because the school wanted us concentrating on "more important" subjects.



I can't say for sure if our school had 4032s, like the one pictured here, but it sure was very similar to this, and the release date of May 1980 would sure make it likely.

Amazingly, the thing does boot (as you can see if you look closely at the first picture), but somehow the external drive has been lost so I have no way of saving data (internal hard drives were still a few years in the future). The computers we had in grade 12 had cassette tape drives. When they got a full class set the next year, they got 5.25" floppy drives, but I would love to score an old tape drive for this machine.

My other problem is that all but a few of the keys don't work. I'm hoping a good cleaning out will fix that. I'm planning on keeping it in the back of my computer classroom. 32K of RAM with a 1MHz CPU, it's a nice reminder of the past.

Mike