Woodat.com

Or at least all the interesting bits on it

Alrighty, so my 2 year old nephew is obsessed with toy trains.  He plays with them constantly and they’re the first toy he goes for whenever he gets the choice.  Unfortunately, all the brand name stuff out there is rediculously expensive.  A single piece of Thomas the Tank Engine official brand track is around 8 dollars or so.  The engines and cars are also on the prohibitably expensive side.  So to build up any kind of decently large collection you’d have to invest several hundred dollars.

Or I could build it almost entirely from scratch.  With a bandsaw, drill press, and a bit of woodworking skill it would easily be within the realm of possibility to build an entire train set for far less than I would pay to buy it.  I can choose the designs, get the proportions more decently correct (the Thomas ones are horribly misproportioned), build the set as large as I liked, and most importantly give a truly decent Woodmas gift because it’s handmade rather than purchased.  With this goal in mind I set to work.

Now as far as building anything goes, the first step I always take is research.  To that end I found an excellent resource online.  I’m obviously not the first person to have this idea, as this gentleman took the same course of action 10 years ago for his son.  The Hoogerland National Railways site had everything I needed in terms of knowledge and wisdom in getting started on this matter, and was an excellent resource.  Indeed, the first engine I made was directly based on his own plans (mine are mostly a copy of his, and I give him full credit for creating them).

Using the knowledge gained from the HNR page, I quickly sketched up my own thoughts and plans.  Here’s the links to the various sketchups.  They’re scaled and printable so anyone can work off them:

Locomotive:  http://woodat.com/train-build1.jpg

Freight/coal cars:   http://woodat.com/train-build2.jpg

Flatbed barrel car:   http://woodat.com/train-build3.jpg

Plans in hand, next step was to aquire the materials.  The wood is almost exclusively from Home Depot/Lowes.  I used oak whereever possible as they had quarter, half inch, and three quarter inch planks for only a couple bucks each.  As it stood though the “printed” measurements were all a quarter or half inch off on all the wood. I’ve yet to figure out why they put incorrect measurements like that on all wood sold here in the US.  Anyway, dowels and a bit of 1/8th bassboard also from Michaels to build the boilers and the places I needed a thin platform to put things on.

The wheels (and the barrels) came from Michaels arts and crafts.  The wheels came in packs of 12 for $1.20. The axles are just half inch wood screws (smallest I could find).  I still ended up drilling out the axle holes larger in the wheels but that’s actually easier (though more boring) than one would think.

The magnets are special ceramic doughnut magnets which I ordered cheap from one of my favorite supply stores online: Surplus Shed. This is the third order I’ve placed from here, and have never had any troubles.  My last project from here was a set of photocopier lenses which I used to build a homemade telescope.  But as discussed on the HNR page, the ceramic doughnut magnets are by far the best option for this project, as they are decently strong and the hole allows me to attach the pushpins straight through onto the wood without cutting/modifying them.  The magnets were a pack of 10 for 1.20.  Ordered a hundred to be on the safe side (bulk discount )

The pushpins themselves are from walmart, they are simple apolstery nails. A pack of 30 for a dollar.

And finally, some standard wood glue for the wood and some “Goop”(TM) to secure the magnets/pushpins to the wood also from home depot.

And so, with a bit of cutting, drilling, and gluing, I was able to turn out my first engine:

The wheels are on temporarily to test.  Magnets don’t go on until after the painting/sealing process.  But as it stands it took less than 20 minutes to cut all the pieces out, drill the holes for the dowels for the smokestack/boiler, and a few more holes to guide the axles in and drill out the wheel holes (which lets them spin easier).  Of interest, it is spoken about on the HNR site about the exact width and measurements the wheels have to be in order to work in the 6-wheel configuration; but I’ll make mention of it again here though.  The wheels on any truck need to be 1/2″ away from the rear edge of the wood where the magnet is mounted, and for the 6-wheel configuration the wheels need to be spaced 7/8ths inches apart.  What’s more, the wheels actually need to have at least a 16th of an inch clearance between the body and the wheel.  They have to be loose so they don’t bind when the train goes around corners.

So, all that done, and a few more minutes sanding, then it’s on to finishing up the rest of the carriages.

After sanding, they were then ready for painting.

The paint is just cheap acryllic paint from walmart.  I’d have loved to use a spray paint primer but sadly I couldn’t locate anything that was lead free that didn’t cost an arm and a leg.  A few layers of this paint though seems to have worked just as well.  A spray-on sealant waterproofs it and makes the paint more durable, so nothing lost there in the end.  You can see a few more painting closeup images here:

With the painting in place, and a few coats of sealer to protect it, the last step was to attach the magnets.  To ensure the cars were compatable with all the other toys out there I actually took a test magnet and pushpin in to walmart with me.  I spent a good 10 minutes in their toy department lining up the magnet with the toys they had on display so I knew the right polarities for front and back.

With a guide I built from that I attached the magnets by pushing the pushpins through the holes in them then gluing the bottom before pushing the remaining exposed pin into the wood.  The result is near identical to the real deal, and extremely simple.

And so here it is, the finished product.  For those wondering “what about the tracks Woody?!” I will concede that they are bought. Ikea sells the tracks (and some very simple trains) for far cheaper than the other namebrands, and it’s compatable with just about everything (well very nearly).  25$ provides more than enough track for a simple set.  32$ provides a rediculous amount :)  Anyway, here’s the pics of the final train:

I’ve actually gone on to build a second smaller green tank engine (pics soon hopefully), some closed freight cars, and a couple passenger cars also.  All in all a fun project.  Given the extra detail I put into painting (the wheels especially I could have used a spray bottle for) it was about 2 hours per car, so with the second set about 30 hours total from start to completion.

The only painful irony of this is dispite it being a labour of love, I’m well assured that my nephew will never realise they are hand-made, let alone the effort it took to build them.  Not that it matters I suppose

Alrighty, so for some strange reason I have an attraction to the outdoors. I’m not sure why exactly either. I’m not that physically fit, I hate bugs, and tbh I’ve never quite accepted nature on its own terms. I’m more a technologist than a naturist. Make a computer or machien work and I’m your man. Ask me to grow a pot of flowers and we’ll both be lucky if it doesn’t somehow catch fire and explode within a week.

But anyhow, I do have such a calling though and am keen to get out into the great outdoors. I do enjoy taking in a bit of exercise, and as I grew up in mountainous Colorado I have a fairly sure footing on rocky slopes. Indeed, it’s almost second nature to me to leap from stone to stone, never slipping or losing balance. This is in stark contrast to my regular life, where I commonly walk into walls, desks, chairs, and other people (when I’m not falling over simply by standing still). So, with this lust for challenge and the ease in which my natural abilities makes this endevour possible, I try to take myself camping whenever possible.

To this end I’m currently stomping around the rocky area of Flagstaff, Az. A lovely dead volcano mountain chain with lots of foresty woodland and an overpriced ski town surrounding them. The trip is a three hour drive (each way), but getting out of Phoenix is well worth the effort. Here it is a good 105+ weather, even in September. Up there they have temperatures ranging from 70 to 25 degrees. All F, obviously. if it was 105C here then I would be dead. Indeed, all of us would have boiled away in a very painful fiery hell.

Aaaaanyhow, the goal for this was to do a bit more hiking than my previous excursions, and also to test out some new kit I’ve been putting together. I’m trying to strip things down to the most lightweight available within my budget (a couple hundred dollars) so that my bag can be small, portable, and let me escape far from the reaches of other people/zombies/gun wielding anarchists should I need to. To this end I’ve gotten myself a brand new frame backpack, a 2.5lb sleeping bag, sleeping mat (obviously), 3 litre water bladder with tube, and a small homemade survival kit.

Also this time round I decided to take a tyvek emergency survival blanket with me. I’ve been dying to try out some of these survival blankets to see if they actually work at all. rediculously paper thin but claiming “reflects 80% of your body heat!” So having some time up there and some cold weather, I thought I’d give one a go just to see how well they stood up

Anyhow, I have to say this thing worked stunningly well. At first I was very toastingly warm inside of it. The only downside at the start was the noise. The material is not the quietest out there and as I rolled around my ex-wife (whom I bring to excursions like this) complained about how loud it was. As such, I undid the velcro down a side to leave it half open. Unfortunately, this turned out to be something of a mistake.

It was about 1 a.m. when the temperatures started dipping way down. It was also at this time that I realised that I’d rolled over whilst asleep and now the open portion of the bag had slipped down beneath me. I had a sleeping mat on the ground but even with that the cold was slipping up into the bag and freezing various parts of me. Constant adjustments were insufficient and being pitch black and rather enclosed near my sleeping ex-wife I couldn’t see well enough to fix the bag and seal it up.  A fleece blanket helped somewhat but only really bought me another hour or so of sleep.  So by 3:30 I was in my full sleeping bag and a bit warmer.  Of course this was a benefit as well as I needed to test out this new bag too (it is rated at 15F and I’d say it could handle down to there though probably no further).

Anyhow, morning arrived and after some cleaning up we set off for the first leg of the day’s adventure. After driving the night and arriving around 10 we’d pitched our tent only a couple miles from an underground lava tube which is now open at one end.  The cave runs 50 or so feet under the ground for about a mile. Some of the cavern is 20 feet high, other parts are low enough you almost need to crawl.  So, leaving our bags in the car we donned some flashlights and lept in

It was fairly interesting. Pictures were a bit too hard what with my iphone having no flash on it or any of that. The cave maintains a 35 degree temperature year round, the rocks glistened with cold droplets of water.  The ground of the cave though was mostly dry, even with it raining on the outside above.

Once we were done exploring the cave, we turned our attentions on to the next part of the day’s adventure: geocaching. Now this is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, but have never owned a GPS.  This trip though I decided to pick one up, if only to ensure that if we went backpacking for a night (sadly we didn’t) I wouldn’t get terribly terribly lost in the wilderness.  It’s probably irrational but I have no desire at all to end up dead, my bones being eaten by packs of coyotes, them saying “Gad, British food really is horrible!”

Anyhow, this time round I picked myself up a cheap GPS, one made for hiking and good enough to do some actual geocaching.  And I have to say it is very exciting to do this.  It’s like a treasure hunt, constantly seeking out new goodies and boxes.  While the GPS can get you within 10-20 feet, you still have to work out how to navigate the terrain yourself.  I found that combining the GPS with a compass I had also helped immensely as GPS units can’t update your heading if you’re not moving.  (well, the 3-400 dollar ones have built-in compasses, but I couldn’t bring myself yet to pay that much for one of these devices.)

The first of the geocaches was right outside the cave, about 50 feet away.  Bolstered by the confidence of its quick discovery, we then set out on a couple mile hike to the next one.  As the journey wouldn’t be that far (and indeed, partially on a frontage road), I quickly loaded one of the bags with food, water, jackets, and a survival kit.  That prepared, I then proceeded to have my gnomish ex-wife carry the bag the entire way there and back again while I held the GPS and hat.

The second geocache was slightly more intense than the first. After an hour’s trek we came across the rock outcroppings where it was supposed to be.  After 10 minutes of searching we were startled by the sound of coyotes, *very* close by, yelping and barking to one another.  Not wanting an encounter with a pack of sharp-toothed wildlife, we put extra emphasis on finding the box quickly.  Another 5 minutes of hastened searching finally led to me discovering it tucked away up a small gnoll, well disguised under some rocks and ground detritus.

The hike back was mostly uneventful.  Rain and hail came down lightly, was waved at by an entire boy scout troop as they passed by, chased away some cows that were looking at me funny.  My ex-wife elected to take a nap at that point, and I took the car out to scout out some places for next time I come up here.  The first was Mt Kendrick, which can be seen in that picture above of us walking along the road.  It has several beautiful trails leading over the mountain, and I would very much enjoy taking a pack up it for the night.

The second, more interesting but much colder, place I checked was the San Francisco peaks in the Kachina wilderness.  The trailheads for this dead volcanic mountain start at the ski resort of Snow bowl, so taking the car up there we drove almost quite literally into the sky.  The clouds hung extremely low to the mountain and rain started bucketing down on us as we drove.  Eventually the rain turned into hail, and after some more elevation gains the clouds started to scatter and sunlight started beaming in on the very cold and wet forested mountainside.

Having a geocache within a half mile of the trailhead, we decided to make one last hiking excursion before evening set in.  The air was notably thinner than down below, which I found very enjoyable.  Having grown up in the mountains this all felt like home to me, and brought about great waves of nostalgia and emotion.  Or my brain could have been going made from being deprived of oxygen, I’m not sure. Either way though, between the cold temperatures, low air density, and mountainous terrain I was quite quite happy.

The last geocache was a decent challenge.  Tucked away a good 40 feet above the trail and through some dense foliage and rocks, it was well hard (but fun) to find.  That said, between the rain pouring down all around and the fact my ex-wife wanted to leave early Sunday anyway, I decided it’d be pointless to set the tent up and sleep on the hard ground again that night.  As such we packed it in, and with one final shot of the sunset, headed home.

What? I’m not egotistical and self-centred!  Of interest though, I was forced to stop watching those Most Interesting Man in the World commercials by a friend. She is fully convinced that I believe I’m the one they’re talking about in those adverts. Can’t say that I disagree with that assessment. I am pretty awesome.

Anyway, you should see my portrait gallery on the left.

This email was provided a few months back by a good friend of mine (now in the marines). He made me promise to publish it so that the world could see a class-A rebuttal.  Anyway, here it is:

Dear Woody,

I don’t have time to do a point-by-point, but i guess i’ll make an exception for duty’s sake:
+France is a place of hippies and liberals, and, worst of all, the French. To like the country is to prove your place among this circus-sideshow of social criminals, or perhaps to unviel your true nature as one of the fabled Frenhipiberals, a dreaded hybrid who’s ability to debauch sacred American morality is matched only in power by its van-cloistered, pot-drenched and cheese-laden body odour.
+Women should pay more for laptops. Period. Sure, every few years the Frenhipiberals pour a honey potion in mens’ ears and drag this old complaint up, but every time they do the old logic stands firm: 1-people with electronic anonymity complain… a lot. 2- women complain… a whole hell of a lot, and when they do my dinner is left cold. If we didn’t charge more for women to have access to computers, how would men be able to financially support our society’s basic infrastructure? The vagina is really just a series of tubes; imagine the internet on it’s period.
That’s not just ugly, it’s un-American. ‘nough said.
+America loved the new Star Trek movie. And as a Frenhipiberal, i can’t expect your opinion to be anywhere near correct. More telling is your use of the term “blaster fire” marking you as worse than the average freedom-hating cheesemonkey. You sir are a Star Wars fan, and as a point of fact your slander of this new movie, now being hailed as “the New New Testament”, is as a spit-bubble on the lip of a retarded chimp.
In summation:
Go America, France Sucks, Women should be more respectful of the right to bear my sons… er pay more for computers, and the new Star Trek Movie is awesome!

Oh yeah, and be safe, i don’t know if you’ve seen Taken yet, but people as pretty as us should be careful in France.

see ya state side,
A

Though a picture may help.

And yes, that is Washington in the bottom right corner, rising from the depths to kick some ass.

Alrighty, so I was able to aquire for myself an iPhone 2g a couple weeks ago. While previously I’d been skeptical over the whole enchilada after a less than pleasing experience just after its launch, I have to say I am now very enamoured with the phone. It has matured very well in the hands of the hacker world and is getting close to being the best phone I’ve ever seen.

Sure, there are still some problems with it though. The “answer” and “decline” buttons when you get a call are backwards compared to any other phone, this first model can’t send or receive picture msgs (for no reason other than at&t bastards want you to “upgrade” to the new version that can), with no GPS it has to rely on the closest cell tower to get its location, the GUI is incredibly inconsistent on how to browse between pages depending on which app you’re running, the headphone jack is bastardingly proprietary, and the CPU could definitely be a bit faster for the strains I put on it.

But all that said, I don’t care! Whereas any one of those problems above would have caused me to scrap any previous phone, I am happily able to overlook the entire mass of shortcomings purely by what the phone actually can do. No longer do I need a seperate phone, MP3 player/PDA, camera, and laptop to get along with my mobile life. In this single device I can do everything I did before with all those previous ones without the massive bulk of having them in my pockets. So far I can use my phone as a phone, a really good snapshot camera (which is all I ever take anyway), an mp3 player, a web browser, a gameboy DS-like portable gaming device, calendar, dictionary, and email client. I’ve used it to entertain me for hours with movement-sensor-controlled katamari damasi, to consult emails of bank account information while doing wire transfers at my bank, to watch youtube in the car on long trips, to check movie times, etc. etc. And the best part is these were the easy things, and the more software I aquire for it the more powerful it becomes.

And this gets down to the basic truth of the matter: dedicated devices are doomed to failure in my hands. I want the open flexibility of a full OS. I don’t want something stripped down to only do a couple things well because in time I’ll need and want more than the device can put out. We are finally getting to the point where even low-power technology has enough oomph to do all the daily tasks that we want technology to do for us 95% of the time. Now all that’s needed is the software to make it happen, and for that to work we need full operating systems on our electronics. Dispite its original proprietary nature, once it was cracked the iphone became exactly what I want: an open platform where I can add in any software I want to suit my ever-evolving needs.

Funny thing is, if google’s G1 phone didn’t have a rediculously bad keyboard I probably would have bought one of those months ago…

So I saw Public Enemies in the theatres the other day.  Thought it’d be good, as I love the look and feel of the Thirties.  Plus, being based on one of America’s most famous criminals, with lots of bank robberies and jailbreaks, how could this fail in any way to be exciting?

Well, apparently it managed to fail quite spectacularly.  And this really is the only way to use the word “spectacularly” in conjunction with this movie.   It was bad.  and not in any way that make it amazingly bad.  It was just bottom-of-the-pile, shouldn’t-have-been-made, not-sure-they-even-had-a-script bad.  In terms of enjoyment factor, it came out to be only slightly less pleasant an experience than taking an electric sander to my nipples.

Slow, confusing, pointless, mindless. I’d like to use these words to describe the film but it was too lethargic and dull even for these.  Indeed, the most fast-paced and clear cut piece of the film was when the screen told everyone at the beginning to turn off their cell phones. After that it became a long, drawn out, badly supervised mash of random dialogue with no point, plot, story, development, character, or goal.  And this is while I was still trying to pay attention.

For you see I was not feeling well that evening.  As I arrived an hour too early at the theatre I stopped by the food court and grabbed myself a fruit smoothie.  Well I don’t know what kind of poor cleaning standards the food court has but by the time the movie rolled around my stomach was not doing too well.

On its own I could probably have held it all down.  But no, the movie wasn’t content enough to just be poorly written and performed.  Ooooh no, heaven forbid this film not try to offend me as physically as it was doing so to me mentally.  For as it stands, whatever second-rate Allen Smithee director this film used decided he’d try to break convention.  He’d try and do what almost every other decent film maker has learned is childish and amateurish.  I am, of course, referring to the practice of filming with handheld “shakeycams.”  This is the practice of zooming in waaaay too close and keeping all cameras handheld (non mounted/dolly’d/stabalised).

The theory is it makes the film feel fast and give the impression the audience is there.  The reality is those that it doesn’t just make nauseous it just pisses off.  It’s sloppy, it’s unprofessional, it’s uncreative, and if you have to try and disguise all the rest of your movie’s shortcomings with this edgy crap then really you have no business in hollywood.  Not even in the gay porn industry (which, I would imagine, has probably also learned not to shoot films with shakeycams because of how poor quality it makes the movie seem).

So, between being ill and just being offended I walked out.  I have no idea how the film ended and frankly, I don’t much care.  This is the first film I’ve ever walked out on in a theatre, and tbh I’m actually glad I got food poisoning; if only for the fact it took me away from this terrible b-rate piece of hollywood refuse.

Same interests, but after seeing her a few times no emotional bond formed at all. Don’t think she was amazingly interested in making one, and tbh I found it strangely exhausting. I think the biggest deciding factor was the subtle differences in personality. For my part I’m a bastion of calm where she moved at an ever more erratic rate. Her lack of inner peace bothered me while my general laid-back nature made me seem unchallenging to her. I am now awaiting everyone to tell me I’m just getting old

Anyhow, finished the attempts sunday, moving on. Will post more thoughts on the whole matter later once I’m confident all the dust has settled.

Strange random fate managed to lead me towards an interesting individual the other day. Was about to head home from work when I received a last call from the front desk of the college. The person was having some trouble getting flash to work on the front counter computer. Coincidentally the remote control wasn’t working so, figuring I was heading that way anyway, I said I’d swing by.

Stopping into the office I met her.

Her name’s Bree and she’s about as nerdy as me! I’m staggered, and even having trouble keeping up, but so far listening to her is amazing. I honestly didn’t think I’d run into anyone this interesting in Arizona. She likes computers, hiking, star trek, and peanut butter. She loves British humour and has a hillarious laugh (which she worries sounds a little off-I won’t say how -but which I think is great). Most interesting of all though is the amount of energy she seems to possess, which definitely comes from being around others and what seems like an overall zest for life. “Peppy” as she calls it

Anyway, it’s not that things have gone very far between us yet, though it’s good to at least have met someone interesting. We’ll see how things go