Zipper Pants and S-Knots

Rock climbing.

Operation Shelf Life: Part 3

Prototype #2 is a success!  Mostly.

I made two units.  This picture shows them stacked in "shelf mode" with the lids in between the fucking shelves.

This is a top down view of the units separated and rotated on their backs for trunk mode.  One of them has the lid in place, the other has the lid laying over the opening:

As I expected the fit is extremely tight because the pieces are design to fit perfectly and its a vertical drop.  So for the next version I will probably need to introduce a slope to the piece edges that go inside each other.

As simple as this looks this design is actually incredibly complicated--there are a ton of edges and, as I discovered with my first prototype, a surprising number of them need to be matched perfectly.  Oh, you know what?  According to wikipedia these little ridges are called flanges.  Honestly that might be the first time I heard that word used correctly.

In addition to the sloping I need to also figure out how the trunk lids will be secure.  It kind of defeats the point if you have to get the packing tape out.  Deciding how to secure depends on first deciding whether to make it out of wood, plastic or metal.  Which brings us to the part that I know almost nothing about.

Oh shit...AND it needs handles.  Each side of each unit will need two:   one facing up in shelf mode, and one facing up in trunk mode.  They should probably be recessed for better stacking.  And we might want something even fancier to facilitate turning them sideways while the contents are still inside (since that is the whole point of this).




[Update]
Adding slopes has been more difficult than I thought.  So now I'm really just working my way down this list.

TinkerCAD doesn't seem to have a crop feature, so that's out.

I tried OpenSCAD which is cool because it is based on a language that says where to place things, except it has hardly any primitives to work with and its other functions (e.g. linear_extrude) are so sparse that I would have to hand-program even basic 3d shapes (like wedge, or flat pyramid).  So that's gonna be a last resort.  OpenSCAD links:

• first tutorial I found
• cheat sheet listing all the stuff
• linear extrude
• how to make your own "modules"

Currently trying FreeCAD.

Wenches

Finally managed to find a good club for salsa dancing, and it had a double lesson at the beginning of the night.  I think if I really applied myself, I could get into some trouble there.

Unfortunately I am too fat for all of my salsa shirts.    Had to go in a sweater, which was a dancing disaster.  I was barely moving and working up a sweat.  If there had been a girl or song I really liked I probably would have been drenched.  So I guess I have to either buy new salsa shirts, or find an FAQ on anorexia.

p.s. added onions to the stir fry.  AMAZING.

Hello

Hello, it's me

I was wondering if after all these years you'd like to meet

To go over everything

--Adele

No I would not.

Achievement Unlocked: Volunteering

Made it through my first volunteering gig yesterday.  I would write more about it but I think I thawed some shrimp incorrectly because now I don't feel so hot.

There is a lego robotics gig, but it requires a multi-month commitment AND its before 1pm...like way before.  So I guess I'll pass on that for now.

I have to say I really, really, really like not having a job.

Unemployment

Its been a long haul, but as my current job comes to an end, it is time to make the difficult decisions.  I think I am going to spend the next 6 months touring the country with my folk band Clifford and the Walrus.  I'll see you on the road.

Release Candidate, Part 3

According to the metrics, we've had a single real purchase.  By real, I mean a person that didn't know either of us found our app in the store and bought it.  She also gave us a 5 star review and said it had no learning curve, which is good because I put a shit ton of thought into making it intuitive.

So now I guess this app needs to be marketed.  Since I wrote the whole thing and paid for it, marketing falls to a certain other founder who has basically spent all of her time trying to figure out how to get someone to clone our app to iOS for free (i.e. for "profit sharing").  Strangely there has been no credible interest from the bottom feeders responding to her craigslist ad.

The woman who tried to offer 6 months of our app for free without our consent is no longer responding to our emails apparently...which I think is a win.

Anyway, my business partner said she would have gone door to door, but out of the 20 people she knows on this planet, most of them have iPhones, so she has decided to assume that all skin care providers have iPhones and doesnt want to go out and talk to people.

So I guess I need to come up with a marketing plan now.

Stirred, not Fried

All of the assholes who write stir fry recipes on the internet think that the perfect stir fry is about doing lots of work to maximize taste at the expense of more effort and more dishes to wash.  Fuck them.

I made one tonight and it turned out surprisingly well.  

Ingredients:

• 1 cup rice
• 1 red bell pepper
• 1 slab of boneless chicken breast
• giant container of sweet and sour sauce

Cook & Wash Directions:

• put 1 cup of rice in the cooker
• play video games for like an hour or whatever
• oil in a skillet and turn on the flames while...
• cut the peppers first, because if you cut the raw chicken first you'd have to wash the damn cutting board
• peppers into a paper bowl (no need to wash!)
• cut the chicken
• put some water on your fingers and flick them in the skillet.  there should be a disturbing explosion of steam
• chicken into the skillet
• turn each piece of chicken over once
• wash the knife and cutting board
• peppers into the skillet
• i guess stir it and shit...whatever
• after a while eat a pepper out of the skillet to see if they are done enough
• flames off
• dump the rice in
• dump in some sauce (don't measure, just take a wild guess)
• stir it around for a bit, then dump everything in a plate
• you can't run the skillet under cold water because the heat transfer could warp the metal, however, you can put soap on a spone and just scrub it while it is still incredibly hot.  By the time you're done it should be cool enough to rinse with water

Cook & Wash directions I'll actually use:

• (start 1 cup rice beforehand)
• oil in skillet, flames on
• cut peppers
• cut chicken
• chicken in skillet until cooked
• (wash cutting board & knife)
• peppers in skillet
• flames off to add rice
• add sauce
• wash skillet while hot

Some key points to this recipe:

• the ideal recipe would involve cooking all of the ingredients in the skillet at the same time, however, sadly, rice just doesnt work that way.  It has to be cooked for a ridiculously long time, and you have to care about the amount of water and shit...in short, just buy a fucking rice cooker.
• we are using peppers because certain veggies take too long to cook (broccoli, carrots) and there is no way in hell i'm taking the fucking meat back out of the skillet and getting a bowl dirty.  Bell peppers are like the best veggie, and red peppers are the tastiest
• we only use one veggie because it is way less work
• the instructions are built around washing everything as part of the cooking process, because if there are any dishes that are still dirty when I start eating they will be dirty for the next 6 months.
• these instructions were written by someone who doesnt give a shit about whether the chicken is "too dry" -- all I care about getting protein sans food poisoning.

There is some room for improvement here...next time I need to cut the peppers and the chicken smaller.  Another thing is maybe I should buy a wok.

I think I could do this again though.  Sadly, I'm not sure how to improve the time any more...meat goes back super fast, and as soon as peppers are cut they go bad in a few days, so its not like you could do the cutting step for 20 meals in advance.  Maybe if you freeze the shit; idk.

Voy a bailar

Yo quiero estar contigo, 

vivir contigo

bailar contigo, 

tener contigo

Una noche loca

Ay besar tu boca

--Enrique Iglesias

Thinking about salsa dancing again.

No Stranger To Love

So I have a new girlfriend.  I met her while drunkenly wandering around midtown dressed like Waldo for Halloween.  I mean, really, only good things can happen when you do that.

Anyway, I was Waldo; she was dressed as Carmen Sandiego.  It was awesome.

I asked and she said I could share this pic with you guys.

You're welcome.