Heinz Trucking

I found a pre-assembled shift-register board that did almost exactly what I had designed mine to do, for $20. After all the pain of trying to get my soldered, this was a big win - although I eventually realized that the problem might have been the batteries - they don't provide enough current to drive all the extra LEDs. 

Christmas 2011

• Train Layout

This is the project I did on the history of the Phoenixville Public Library.  You can view it as web pages by going here, or you can download the Quicktime, Powerpoint or Keynote files by clicking on the other links.

When looking at the of the files, please click on the page to go to the next page.

Apple Keynote Presentation

Powerpoint 2011 Presentation

Quicktime Movie - weird movie, you have to click on it to go to the next slide!

Web Site - click on the page to go to the next page!

• Diary

This site's been very quiet since we all moved to facebook, so I'm going back to using it for it's original purpose: testing changes that I want to put into chesmont astronomical society.  For instance, this is a test of the "TinyMCE" editor.
Not sure I like it.(time passes)Well, that's a bit better I've learned how to configure it better, so that it shows buttons for things like

• bullet lists.
• underline
• italic
• bold
• and linking.

Not too shabby.

• Diary

7/1/10
I just thought I’d jot down a few thoughts relating our adventures of the past few months for those of you who are out of the loop. Serena and I have been so busy lately that I have failed to fill some of you in on our goings-on.

• Diary

So far this year, I've ridden 2200 miles on my bikes - my goal now is to hit 2500 by the end of September and to shoot for 2750 if the weather holds into October.

This sounds more phenomenal than it feels because at least half of it is still little 10 mile rides back and forth to work; and even though my goal for the year was to complete a century I still don't seem to have the staying power to do so. I managed an 80 mile over rolling hills ride back in July - but despite being in one of the first teams to leave I still didn't get to the turn off for the century ride before they closed it and diverted people to the 80 mile course - and at the last rest stop I had at least 3 different volunteers ask me if I wanted to get in the SAG van.

• Riding

Way back in March (I think) I bought an Arduino to add some flash to this train layout. I played with it for a few days, said "This is going to be cool" and went back to riding my bike.

The problem is that, while the software is obviously going to be easy the mechanics of the assembly isn't - not for me, anyway.

For example, I need to run 8 (up to 16, really) white LEDs out onto the layout, and maybe 4 tri-colors. Took me 2 hours to set up the soldering iron and make a single LED+wire-harness. A lot of that was "find all the junk and get it in one place" time, but still.

Sigh.

• Train Layout

Switched from Comcast to FiOS:

Just venting a little here. Switched to FiOS the other day, mostly because they're offering a deal that's going to save me about $100 per month over Comcast + POTS line.
So, anyway - I log into the router/modem (is it still a modem?) they provided and the first thing I see are convenient links on the side to help me to shop for additional Verizon services.

• Diary

So, a friend got me to commit to a charity bike ride for July 24th. I've been doing 50 mile rides almost every week and a couple of metric centuries as well, so I said "What the heck, sign me up for the Traditional."

• Riding

How does this work again? I type here and words appear on the internet?

Okay. Now all I have to do is remember how to construct a narrative.

• Diary