Shark Cordless 2 speed rechargable sweeper

 I picked up a Shark Cordless Sweeper yesterday. I needed a vacuum, and this came recommended from Katie's brother Matt. I let it charge the 20 hours needed and gave it a try. It claims to be able to run for 50 minutes. Time will tell if that claim is true. It works pretty gosh darn good. It is quite, which is very nice. I do wish that the little wall-hugging sweep was on both sides. I realize that 90% of the population is right handed, so it makes sense to put it on the right side, but it would be nice to push it down the left wall to get into those tights spaces.


 The first thing I saw was that it would make an excellent platform for making a DIY robotic vacuum cleaner. The drive system can simply clip onto the little short handle and everything is ready to go! Turn it on, and let it go. I am thinking a 2 wheel drive system, with bump sensors all the way around. Give the controller a basic bump, back up a bit, turn 180 degrees using only one wheel, and go program. The robotic sweeper should do pretty gosh darn good at cleaning an in entire room systematically. If I can get the drive system to track well, I may work on a way for it to dead-reckon where it has been, and where it hasn't hit an obstacle yet, so it will actively try to cover the entire area.


 The beauty of it would be that you simply unclip the robotic part of it, and stick on the telescoping handle, and you can touch up where it missed, or pre-clean the bad spots, and let the robot do the whole room.

This is the closest I could find on Amazon.com. It looks like it has more features, and is priced less then I paid for mine. It is getting poor reviews though... I hope I don't have the same troubles.

Stuff on my shelves

 With 16 inch deep shelves, I can put a lot of books on my shelves. Here I have books 3 layers deep. I have the ones I haven't read up front, and the ones I have read in back.


 With no sides on the shelving, I can do neat things like put books in sideways and be able to access them from the side.


 Here is everything I put on the shelves tonight. Well, I also slid in the grey tub and firesafe on the bottom shelf. I have a lot of room left. My crockpot and electic skillet will go up top, and my dishes will go on the 2nd shelf from the bottom. I will probably rearrage stuff once or twice before I move.

Unbreakable Spiked Caster Cups

 I bought a package of these unbreakable spiked caster cups that won't crush rugs or carpets to go under my shelves. I knew that I am putting a lot of weight down onto a small area of surface area and it would take forever to knock the divits out of the carpet.


 I had to cut a corner of two of the casters off where the shelf sat tight against the wall.


 Here you see that with a corner cut off, I can put the shelf tight against the moulding.

Bookcase with shelves installed.

 Front view of the book case with all the shelves installed. It is pretty sturdy. I can grab the top shelf and pick myself off the ground. I think that a small child or a cat could climb this shelf without risk of it falling over it is so deep. It wants to wiggle though. It is very stiff front to back and side to side, but it will twist a little bit if you walk into the corner. It is actually kinda funny, it acts like it is ticklish. I don't think it will twist itself apart. Having 2 frames with longer shelves, like what I saw at the store, there wouldn't be any worry about the twist.


 Looking at the shelving from the back corner.


 I had originally thought to use the shelves like this, but when I waled around it and about poked an eye out on a corner, I changed my mind.


 Hey, it looks pretty good sitting there. I used to have my gray tub of bedclothes, my firesafe film vault, and a large box of food sitting where the shelf is now at.
I need to sand and paint the frame. I will do that when I move I guess. I think my electric sander is in a box in a friend's garage. I am going to caulk the seems with paintable caulk so I don't have any obvious joints when it's all done. I think it will look nice.

Final Assembly of shelving.

 Attaching the hinges to the frames. I attached them with the frame opened up so I have a better chance of getting them straight.


 I put the hinges on just below the height of the shelves so they would be less visible.


 Cool, eh? It folds up for easy transport. I can flop this on my roof rack on my car and carry it to my new place when I move.


 It's not many 6 shelf, 7 foot tall, 36 inch wide, 16 inch deep shelves that you can carry into a room through a door by yourself with one hand.

Cutting the 2nd set of tenons on my table saw.

OK, so I got lazy. I wasn't happy with the depth not being quite right with my tenons when I did them by hand. I have this new table saw sitting right inside my front door, I just as well use it, right?
 I cut the tenons using the miter guage and the rip fence. The Rip fence was set to the depth of the tenon, and the blade was set for what needed to be cut off as far is thickness. I then put the cross member against the miter guage, and cut the tenon about 10 times each side. I just move the board away from the fence an eight of an inch each cut.


 These are all much more consistant in size now. I used my chisel to clean up any rough spots or little thin pieces of wood I missed with the saw.


 I cut all the tenons tonight, glued, and rope-clamped the 2nd half of the shelving support tonight.


 Here are the two halves leaning against each other. Doesn't look like a bookshelf does it. This 2nd unit has twist in it too, the opposite direction of the one I glued up last night. So it is sitting out to dry blocked up to flex it the other way. I hope they come out square with each other.

Using rope as a clamp for my shelving

 I have the assembly all glued up. Now to clamp it. Normally half a dozen pipe clamps would be in order, but I don't own a single one. (gift idea, wink wink, nudge nudge)


 So for my latest rope trick, I am going to make some shelf clamps. A bowline, a truckers hitch, and tie the rope off. Simple, right?


 The second cross member gets cinched tight. I tied the rope to the top, tied a loop below the not. The rope goes down and under, and back to the loop. I feed the rope through the loop, and then pull down as hard as I can at the awkward angle and trying not to get any glue on me. When doing this, the loop in the rope acts like a pulley, and you can get the rope pulled tighter. I call it a truckers hitch because I have seen old truck drivers use it to tie down loads in their pickup trucks.


 I finished tying up each cross member as tight as I can make it. If you noticed, I tied 2 ropes in the same empty space, skipped a space, did 2 knots , skipped a space, did the last 2.


 I came back and tied the 2 ropes in a space together as tight as I could. This really cinched the tenon and mortise joints together.


 Here you can see my rope-work. Used up most of my rope doing this.


 I blocked each corner and laid the bookcase frame down on the ground. I then measured for square. It is an eight of an inch off. I think I can live with that.


 The top left corner was wanting to lift up off the ground. The frame isn't laying flat. So I removed the block under that corner and weighted it down. I am hoping that when everything dries up, it will come back halfway between where it currently is, and where it wanted to be, making a nice, flat shelving support.


I spoke with my dad about my do it yourself book shelf tonight. I had decided that I am going to cut the rest of the cross members with the table saw, and wanted to ask the best way to do it. He recommended using painters caulk to fill in the gaps in my joint work so the finished, painted shelving looks really good.

Assembling one of my shelving upright.

 The first cross piece gets fitted into the uprights. It works! Being that I am working on the ground and not on a workbench, that I am inexperienced with this type of woodworking, and so on, and so forth, my mortise and tenon cuts aren't perfect. When fitting the cross pieces to the uprights, I would flip and turn the cross members to try to find the best fit for edge alignment. Some of the mortises cut a little tweaking and most of the tenons got trimmed with the chisel.


 It kinda looks like a railing here, doesn't it? It is kinda challenging to get everything all lined up by myself. but I started at one end and worked back and forth until everything slipped together. Now I just need to take it all apart so I can glue it up.


 This is as far as I got today. I got one of the 2 halves assembled, and the mortises cut into the the remaining 2 uprights. I figure it will take most of the evening tomorrow to disassemble and glue, and reassemble the completed half. I am going to use a rope as a clamp to make the joints tight. I am also going to need to counter-twist this half as one corner wants to lift about an inch away from flat.


 I wanted to see what it looked like with a shelf in it. The assembly is actually upside down of how I am going to use it, but it lined up to my roller-stand better this way. I also have the finished end of the shelf facing away from me in the picture. Even though it is going to have some massive shelves, it should be fairly "light" to the eye.

Marking and Cutting the Tenons

 I marked the Tenon cut marks all the way around. I also made sure to X off the scrap on both ends at the same time so I didn't accidentally end up with a 90 degree twist in my tenons.


 I cut the ends on my miter box down to the lines.


 It really helps to cut at a 45 degree angle like this. You can see both lines that your trying to cut along. Spinning the piece, you cut at a 45 down the remaining line, and then about 5 strokes square to the lines will finish the cut.


 At first I tried using a rasp and file to clean up my cuts, but I found that the 3/4 inch chisel works much better when used like a knife to clean up the cuts. I keep the chisel sharp, so it is actually really easy to shave the wood smooth with it.
You can see where I marked my chisels with a cut depth mark in permanent marker so I knew how deep to cut my mortises. I didn't need to drill any holes in the corners. Besides cutting the 4 uprights to size with a jigsaw, I am making the whole shelf using only hand tools. Well, I will probably drill pilot holes for the hinges, so that won't be true.

Mortising the uprights for the bookshelf

 I remember my dad telling me to hide the worst face when your making something out of wood. That means that the worst of the knots in the wood are on the side that I will be cutting the mortises into. I had to flip the 2nd piece of wood so that the knots didn't line up with where I was going to need to cut the mortises. I don't even want to know how much of a pain it would be to cut a mortise on a knot.


 I sat the 2nd upright next to the first after I had it all marked. I wanted to make sure that I had everything correct. Measure twice, cut once, right?


 Two of my uprights finished and ready for the cross members now.

Cutting in the mortise.

 Not being sure how to do the corners of a mortise and keeping things clean, I thought I would drill pilot holes. This should keep my chisel cuts from "running" down the wood beyond where I am cutting, and give me a gauge of how deep I need to go. I can't really get them all that straight with a hand drill, well at least not as straight as I would like.


 I traced the edges with my chisel as was suggested. I see I need to get a new chisel. My one real chisel is too big, and the biggest one from my el-cheapo woodcarving set just isn't up to the job.


 I cut this down as deep as my little chisel can reach. It looks pretty good.


 Not quite deep enough, but look, it fits together! Now, I only need to make 24 of these without messing up!

Practicing cutting a Tenon

 I had never cut a mortice and tenon wood joint before, so I thought I would practice on some of the scrap pieces from cutting my uprights to size. This looks pretty good.


 Ohhps, rolling it over shows that I didn't have my saw straight. I may cut at least the cuts from the sides in my little miterbox so they are straight. Maybe at least start them and finish with the jigsaw.

Measure Twice, Cut Once

Or... I have cut it 3 times and it is STILL too short!
 Here I have the wood all set up on my handy table saw rollers that I also use as saw horses - at least for picking stuff up so I don't have to always bend to reach it.


 I have picked out the straightest 4 peices and faced them all best side down like my dad taught me. I will mark the worst side and cut the mortices into the bad side too.


 The Jigsaw is handy, so I cut off the ends that are wanting to twist the worst. I half expect to have this stuff to twist itself up into pretzels before I am finished. Maybe if I hurry I can get it built and some weight on it before it gets too bad. I know I won't be painting it until I move as it is pretty wet still.

Bookshelf Idea

 I saw this bookshelf at Target yesterday for $230. Way out of my budget, but it got my wheels turning. It looks fairly strong, light, and easily portable as the uprights are hinged and fold flat.


 The uprights are essentially 2 ladders hinged together. You open them up, slide in the shelving, and finish opening them as wide as they will go.


 I did some figuring on how deep and wide I can make a single shelf. I figured if I use 16" deep shelves I would need shelves at least 30 inches wide if my "rungs" where 24" long with 1 inch lost on each end for the Mortice and Tenon joint I want to use to put the shelf together.


 $70 at Lowes bought me 8 2"x2" firring strips 8 foot long that look pretty clean. I only need 7. I got 6 white shelves that are 16 inches deep by 36 inches wide. I picked up 2 white finished door hinges.

I am going to pick the straightest 4 and cut them to 7 foot long for my uprights. I will mortices into these at 10, 12, 14, 16, and 18 inches apart, plus 1.5 inches for each "rung". Well, actually, the top and bottom rungs will be 2 inches from the end, and I will spread the shelves out as close to the following numbers as I can get. The next best 3 firring strips get cut into 2 foot sections. I will cut tenons into each of these. This will get assembled into 2 ladders which will be hinged together. I may try to get fancy and recess my hinge in as well. We shall see.

The finished shelving unit will be simple and open. The shelves will be easily transportable - important with my upcoming move. And I got twice the shelving for 30% less cost then the shelving I was looking at buying.

Working from home

I had the day off from my old job today, and tried to work from home for my new job. Working from home was so hard. I am not really set up for that. My desk isn't big enough to hold anything after the 2 19" are on it. I don't have anywhere to put anything. The whole corner is just ready to cave in on me.

 I can pick up either this bookshelf or bakers rack for $100 at Target. I am thinking for half the money, can make something a little simpler that would work just as well for me.


 I think I am going to wander over to Lowes tomorrow and see what there is to see.


I just gotta do something with my space if I am going to be spending any time working from home.

This is what my blog looks like on a REALLY big screen.

 I stopped at CompUSA one day and pulled up my blog on the biggest monitor in the place. WOW. I want one of these screens. My site is designed for 19" monitors.

PakYak Guestbook

I am looking at the access logs for my blog, and I see that people are looking at my PakYak information from all over the world.

If you like what you see, leave a comment to this post as a way of "signing a guestbook". Let us know where your from and if your building a PakYak, or just thinking about it.

Creuzer: Broken Blogger "rel" Tags

This is an update to my Creuzer: Broken Blogger "rel" Tags post from a week ago.

I had my webhost create a symlink for me as the blog doesn't have shell access on that login. I had /labels/ symlinked to /tags/ so I can run my tags in, well, the tags directory. Seems to make more sense to me.

A quick update to my page-rewrite function and it's all over but the social bookmarking. Still waiting on that.

I broke my boat!

I got a little bit rough with the kayak frame tonight. Grabbing it by one end and pushing and dragging it around while I am trying to work on it.
 One of the side stringers broke in the middle of the boat. There was a void in one of the plys and it snapped right there. It didn't like being bent sideways. It is strong enough the thick way, which is how the water will apply pressure for the most part.


 Yep, it's broken! Right in half...


 I think a little tape will fix it up! Well at least enough that I can fold the boat up for the night. I will cut a new stringer tomorrow.


 It isn't duct tape, but I think it will hold.




I was thinking about stretching the center of the boat out maybe 2-4 inches in each of the stringers. This should give me just enough leg room to be able to use the boat. Then I remembered, I had already cut the 2 foot long pieces for the coaming, and the longer cockpit would need longer pieces! Oh well, next boat I guess.

End Brace Detail

 I recessed in a pan headed screw into the wood stringer because I was worried that a flat headed screw would split the end of the stringer.


 Here you see the end brace. Most of the bolts have been cut down. The nuts are recessed into the wood so everything is flush.


 Here you can see the recessed bolt head in the stringer. The long bolt is for a piece that I am going to add to strengthen the end braces.

Cutting the long bolts down to size.

I couldn't find bolts that where 5/8ths, or 7/8ths or 9/8ths, so I had to make them.


 From what I have found the best tool for the job is an electricians wire cutters. I am not fond of this style of wire cutter for doing electrical work, but the built in bolt cutters are the handiest! You can see that I "modified" this brand new pair of Channel Locks brand wire cutters with a extra padded handle. I knew I was going to be cutting a lot of bolts and this makes it easier on the hands.


 You thread the bolt into the threaded side of the bolt cutter.


 I wanted to cut 1/8th of an inch of the bolt off. This is about the thickness of the tool. I found that if I run 2 threads out past the end of the tool, I get the perfect length.


 After you cut the bolt, you have to unthread the bolt from the cutter. This acts like a die and cleans up the threads on the bolt.

Using Ajax to pull in comments to the main blog page

I found a basic tutorial over at this blog that shows how to use AJAX - well actually AHAH which is a simpler piece of ajax to load in comments from the individual post page into the main page.

The whole process is pretty neat, while the end result just makes the blog seem to work much nicer. If you want to look at the comments on one of the main pages, it just kinda works now instead of going to that "add a comment" page to view a comment. That seemed kinda broken to me.

I tested it with Firefox 2, IE 7 and Opera 8(?) which is on my Nokia 770. Let me know if the comments aren't pulled in for you.

There are a couple of changes you need to make that I didn't see mentioned in the instructions, one is adding a pair of named <div> tags for the comments and backlinks to be placed into, the other is to change the javascript to use YOUR blogger blog ID.

Kayak Research

Or 10 things I learned by looking at what I am building after I have built it.

Funny, how I have half built a kayak without ever really looking at one. I had seen them on the top of SUVs and Volkswagons and so on and in stores, but I had never really LOOKED at one in person. One could safely assume that I have never been in one either from that prior statement.
I brought a co-worker home today who's ride didn't show up (cross fingers that said ride was just being forgetful and nothing serious happened) and the road back home was at a dead stop. So, I decided to go to Bass Pro Shops and do a bit of "research". My discoveries are:

1. They sell a lot of plastic & fiberglass boats.


2. They sell a really cool boat that the back 3rd splits open so the boat forms a Y with the pull of a lever. You can stand up in the boat, so they include a railing and push rod recessed into the floor of the boat. It costs $2k.


3. They have a limited selection of paddles, all of which split down the middle (for blade pitch adjustment) but none of the blades come off the shafts (without tools).


4. The equvilent of what I am making costs $600 and doesn't have many of the "extras" that the more expensive boats have, like cup holders.


5. Kayak Racks to transport the boats on your car cost extra money. As do covers for storing your Kayak.


6. They come in a LOT of colors.


7. Canoes (which I always thought of as small) seem HUGE next to a Kayak. Kayaks seem HUGE when they are standing straight up and down and are in a building.


8. I still haven't figured out this camera phone.


9. The only 2 "required" items to use a Kayak are a paddle and a life jacket. There are a lot of life jackets to choose from.


10. Parents are apt to drop a lot of money on their kids. 2 families walked in while I was gawking and picked out a kayak and had it rung up.

You sat on not in at least half the kayaks there. I am wondering if redisigning the boat to be taller and wider making a foldable canoe would be in order? Using 3/4 inch plywood would strengthen the boat a lot. You could probably add a seat to the top of one of the center braces then and sit up on the boat. Hmm, it would need to be strong enough to sit on unskinned as some dummy (me) is liable to sit on the boat on land.

Opportunities

Well, I am going to be moving soon. I need an apartment, furniture, all that stuff. I may have found some furniture from a friend's mother who is moving out of her house, It is currently up by Orlando, but my find it's way to Lakeland for me. This weekend I may have found a place to live.

A one bedroom, one bath with a large kitchen and huge living room with a patio big enough that I could work on my projects in it. Well, that's the description I got at least, I haven't seen it. The current occupants are paying $350 a month. Tack on the $150 a month they are paying for utilities ($90 last month, but I am going for the most expensive summer season here for pricing), and I found a place for the same money that I am living now! Granted, it's not a mansion and is in Lakeland, 25 miles away from the office, but, still! It is a straight shot right into the office. 2 blocks off the main drag for the apartment, and 3 blocks for the office. For that kind of money, even including the money spent on the commute, I come out ahead. Let's see, 25 miles, figure 1 gallon of gas each way, $2.50 per gallon, $1 toll each way, 1/3 of an $30 oil change, 20 working weeks days a month. I would be spending about $150 $110 a month on the commute. If I was to live in Tampa, my apartment price would be about $650 a month, plus utilities, plus commute of say, 5 miles each way, so 200 miles a month, or about $16.50 a month in gas.

That $165 $205/month difference is half a lot of the car payment of the new car that I would need anyhow (or the new insurance price). A new car, with working air conditioning would probably make the extra hour I spend a day in the car OK. A new car would be getting 30mpg or thereabouts. I am thinking Ford Escape Hybrid or Dodge Magnum - although the Magnums are still too new to get a good price on them. Heck, if gas hits $3.00 per gallon I am still $100 $140 bucks ahead doing the commute.

Of course, I could always get a new car, and keep driving the Escort until it dies. Is the $80 a month in insurance on the Escort worth potentially saving 12,000 miles a year on the new car (if the Escort lasts that long, that is)? Probably. Granted the Escort needs a new transmission seal, brakes and rotors, tires and alignment, the AC fixed, some rusty spots fixed, and a few other minor things (like being replaced).

The most important factor here though, is - Close to the office, or Close to Katie? I don't think I am even going to bother keep looking in Tampa for a place to live if I can price a new car into living closer to my girlfriend! Talk about a WIN-WIN!


UPDATE - It's ok to edit a post the same day I posted it right? Or even say 24 hours...
Anyway. I got a clarification, I thought that the apartment was near the Parkway, but it isn't so I wouldn't have to pay any tolls at all. That's $40 a month that I wouldn't have to pay. I corrected all the numbers above.

Broken Blogger "rel" Tags

I use Operator for FireFox which parses Microformats and allows you to take actions on them - such as add a contact to your address book. Some really cool stuff.

But the "rel" tag is broken on my blogger blog. Blogger doesn't follow the spec. Not that they can, with my site being a FTP published blog, they can't follow spec and still be able to publish the "Labels" as they call tags, correctly. The issue is that blogger makes the URL end with ".html" as the would need to in order for that "Labels" page to work at all.

I took matters into my own hands. I can't fix blogger, but I can fix my site.

My webhost has PHP available to me. I have made 3 changes so I can do some really cool stuff with my blog, like fix the Labels issue.
1) I have all my blogger uploaded .html pages parsed as PHP
2) I use mod_rewrite to allow me to link to /labels/tag as well as /labels/tag.html
3) I use PHP's output buffering to dynamically rewrite the page as it is being served.

In more detail:

1) I created a .htaccess file at the root level of my website (/httpdocs) that contains the following line.

AddType application/x-httpd-php .html .php

This allows all .html pages to be parsed as php code.

2) I created a .htcasses file in /labels that has the following code in it.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /labels/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !.+\.html$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !.+\.html.+$

RewriteRule ^(.+)$ $1\.html [L]

This checks to see if the URL requested ends in .html and if not, appends the .html and serves the file.

3a) I created a file called bloggerrewrite.php and it contains the following code:

<?php
//ob_start("bloggerlabelrewrite");
//ob_end_flush();
function bloggerlabelrewrite($buffer)
{
// Lets find the blogger labels stuff
// It is good to be as specific as we can because we don't have control over any changes Blogger may make
$pattern = '/(<p class=\"blogger-labels\">.*<\/p>)/iu'; //case insensitive and ungreedy just incase Blogger changes something.

$html_array = preg_split ($pattern, $buffer, -1, PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE ); // $html_array[0] = the stuff before, $html_array[1] = the blogger lables paragraph, $html_array[2] the stuff after

$trans = array("Labels:" => "Tags:", ".html\">" => "\">"); // the transformation we want to make - Changing Labels to Tags, and dropping the .html

return $html_array['0'] . strtr($html_array['1'] , $trans) . $html_array['2'] ;
}
?>

3b) I then modified my Blogger Template by inserting the following between the <BLOGGER> and </BLOGGER> so I can use the output buffering from the 3a file on each individual post.

<Blogger>
<?php
include_once("{$_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']}/bloggerrewrite.php");
ob_start("bloggerlabelrewrite");
?>

[SNIP BLOGGER TEMPLATE STUFF]

<?php ob_end_flush(); ?>
</Blogger>

The results are as you see. My Blogger "Labels" no longer exist, you now see a "Tags" section at the bottom of every post. These tags are properly formatted, and so they work with Operator.

I am kinda wondering, what if a crawler or whatever comes across the site, identifies it as a blogger site, and tries to parse the "Labels" in a BloggerQuirks mode, and doesn't find any Labels...

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