The making of NO DOG

Warning to you geocachers out there. This post contains major SPOILERS for a geocache in North Olmsted, Ohio. If you don't want to ruin the surprise, go and find NO DOG first. It's okay, we'll wait.

For those of you who don't know what geocaching is, it's a treasure hunting game using GPS devices. If you live anywhere near a medium-sized or larger town, there are probably a few geocaches nearby. One person hides a geocache and publishes the GPS coordinates on the web. Then other geocachers use those coordinates to find the cache. The cache contains a log book and possibly inexpensive trinkets to trade. The folks in the geocaching community work very hard to be sure that geocaching is a safe, non-destructive, family-friendly way to get outdoors and have fun. To learn more about this sport, go to Geocaching.com, the largest geocaching website and read all about it.

Anyway, I just recently placed a cache that I'm rather proud of. The idea was to create a geocache that was completely visible, yet blends into the environment so well that most people would not pay any attention to it at all. So I decided to create a valve cover. Originally, I was thinking of something like this, maybe embedded into a sidewalk:



I played with the idea of casting the cover out of metal, but I don't have any of the equipment to do that, plus making the mold for something like that would be a long process, and then I'd have to find someone pouring a sidewalk who was willing to let me include it in their pour. So in the end, I decided to go with a cover more like the kind used for sprinkler systems. That being plastic, I could 3-D print it. My cover needed to connect to some sort of box, so I chose the DURA Model 60 6-inch round valve box.

 

 I wanted to go with something official-sounding on the cover. Official-sounding and yet clearly not a real government organization, so I went with "North Olmsted Department of Geocaching", partly because it shortens nicely to NO DOG, which makes a great cache name. I started by designing the cover using Trimble Sketchup. Sketchup allows you to build a model of a 3D solid quickly, and best of all, there's a free version! Sketchup also allows for extensions, including one that will output an STL file, which is the standard format for 3D printing. My cover looked like this in Sketchup:

Next, I needed to turn the STL file into instructions specific to the 3D printer I was going to use to make my part. I knew that the printer I was going to use was a MakerBot Replicator 2 (more on that in a moment), so I used MakerWare to slice the geometry into the thin layers that the printer lays down. I had originally planned on making a complete replacement for the cover that came with the box. But as I worked on it, I began to realize that the 3D printer would not be happy with all the overhanging surfaces, so eventually I hit upon the idea of a new top surface glued onto the existing cover. Shown here is the toolpath of my cover at layer 66, about three-quarters of the way through the print. Note how the program fills in the interior of the part with a honeycomb pattern to reduce the amount of plastic used.

Unfortunately, I don't have a 3D printer. But I live in the greater Cleveland area, and the Cleveland Public Library has a makerspace called "Tech Central".  I have to give a big shout-out to these folks, because not only do they give the public access to 3D printers, a laser cutter, video equipment, computers and so and more for the cost of a library card (i.e. free), but the Tech Central folks are very helpful for people getting started.  This is one example of how libraries can stay relevant in the digital age.  I submitted my print job by e-mail and a few days later I got a reply that my part was printed.  They charge the cost of the plastic, which was a few bucks for a 6" disk.

Once I had the cache outer container, I needed a place to put it.  I asked the administrative board at North Olmsted United Methodist Church and they not only agreed, but pointed out a natural hole in their front lawn where a tree had been.

Note: I'm going to add a picture of the finished product, in place, just as soon as I take one.

The mermaldad Free Agency Plan

It is once again the time of year when the free agents in basketball go looking for the deal that will make them the most insane amount of money "because they are worth it". It's an exercise to remind the fans that professional sports are not about loyalty, community, teamwork, or any other quaint concept so much as they are about money. Basketball is certainly not unique in this regard.

If I were a big-time sought after free agent, here's what I'd do: I'd have my agent and lawyers write up a contract that was fair, the kind of contract that I would have ended up with after all the negotiations in a normal free agency. Then I'd announce that this was the contract that I would sign with any team that wants me. Any team that agreed to these terms would join a pool.

I'd pick a national charity and announce that the community that raised the largest amount for that charity would get the contract. It would be a way to make at least some of the obscene amounts of money that are spent on sports go to something really worthwhile, and perhaps remind people that there are things that are more important than money...even in the world of sports.

Good Experience - Epson

Today I had a very pleasant experience with a problem I was having. A little over a year ago I bought an Epson Artisan 800 printer. This is an all-in-one printer with a flatbed scanner, a document feeder, a six color printer, fax, and wireless capability as well as a CD printing tray. I've been very pleased with this printer as it fits well with the way we use a printer. It lives in a closet in the center of the house, and all of the computers can print to it. It is a little noisy, but since it is in a closet, this doesn't matter much. About the only thing I have been disappointed with this printer is that you can only fax from scanned documents, i.e. you cannot send it documents to fax directly from the computer.

A few weeks ago the printer jammed on a sheet of paper. This has not been a big problem with this printer, but when it happened, it did a really good job. The paper got all crumpled up inside the unit. After removing it, and cycling power, the device gave me a "An error has occurred. Turn off the power, wait a few seconds and turn on the power. For details, see your documentation." I tried resetting power a few times, but the error persists. So I called Epson. They explained that this error indicates that something has failed mechanically in the printer. They then told me that they would send a replacement printer. I was impressed, since warranties on printers usually last 90 days or so.

Listening to the news from Haiti this morning, I learned that search and rescue efforts are being hampered by a lack of bulldozers and other equipment for clearing rubble and extract trapped people. The damaged airport there is overwhelmed with planes trying to bring in supplies and people to help so the likelihood of airlifting a bunch of bulldozers in time is low.

It occurred to me that a compact device to serve as a surrogate bulldozer would be really useful. Something a little bigger than the famous "jaws of life", with lots of flexibility for different situations, and lots of provisions for working in the field where tools, parts, and machining equipment are scarce. Ideally such a device would fit on a palette for easier loading onto a cargo plane, and could be loaded onto a vehicle as small as a pickup truck for deployment.

The open source model has always been an effective way to develop software, and increasingly hardware. There are tons of hardware tinkerers who do things like build working R2D2 droids, or Stirling engines, who might welcome the opportunity to build something really important.

One of my guilty little pleasures is StumbleUpon (http://www.stumbleupon.com). For those of you who don't know about this, it's a web service that serves you web pages you might be interested in. It puts a toolbar on your browser that includes the Stumble! button. Every time you press Stumble!, it takes you to a website that it thinks you will like, based on your stated preferences and past ratings. It's mildly addictive, because you find so many interesting sites.

The other day I wrote a comment on someone's blog, because the world is very interested in what I have to say, and when I finished my masterpiece, I mindlessly hit the Stumble! button rather than the Submit button at the bottom of the web page. Imagine my confusion when the response was a picture of an office with an aquarium as cubicle dividers. Fortunately I figured it out and went back and submitted my comment.

An Early Morning Thought

Sometime in that fuzzy period while I was waking up, I coined a new word:

snorange - n. Something that is created for a specific purpose, but has much broader applicability.

Example: "That law was a snorange. It was created to close a narrow loophole in the tax code, but the IRS found they could use it to go after a wide variety of tax cheats."

Of course snorange is a snorange itself. I thought of it as a word to rhyme with orange, but it could serve a useful function in the language. I can't think of another English word that captures this idea.

Just for the fun of it, I googled snorange and found that there are already two definitions in the urban dictionary. In fact every word ending in "orange" that I tried had at least one definition in the urban dictionary. If we're ever going to have a "real" word that rhymes with orange, one that enters the general vocabulary, we're going to have to pick one and start using it. So go and look in the urban dictionary and propose your favorite, most useful orange rhyme in the comments.

The Ultimate Student Computer

My children--the mermals as we call them--have reached college age. One of the many decisions that have to be made when sending your kids off to college is what kind of computer to buy. A colleague of mine suggested what I think is the ultimate solution for most college students. Buy a netbook and a desktop at the same time. The netbook is small, portable, and adequate for most tasks away from the dorm, such as taking notes, checking e-mail, web surfing, and reading. It is small enough that it can be tucked into a backpack or satchel and carried around campus. It's not powerful enough to do more intensive work; this is where the desktop comes in. The desktop can be the workhorse for more computationally intensive work, with a better processor and more hard drive storage. Because it is a desktop, it is less easily stolen. Similarly, because netbooks are cheaper they are less often stolen and easier to replace if they are stolen.