Hungates!

As none of you obviously know, the only hobby shop that resided (resode?) in greenville left 6 months (or so) ago, apparently gone forever. This troubled me, because I enjoy(ed) going there and browsing through the models making stuff and the model kits and such things. Apparently, they've returned, still in the mall, just in a different area (spensers took over their old place, whooptie doo). I went there today, with mom, and browsed around a bit. They're pretty much the same, but most of their art stuff is gone, and they sell alot of crappy toys now, many of them being the cheapy made-in-china-coated-in-lead ones, the ones that build character. Turns out they do still sell Guilow's balsa model aircraft, the ones that even fly if you don't build 'em like I do! I decided to get one, its a Cessna "Bird Dog", cost about $8.

I've had two of these in the past. My first one was a P-51 Mustang. Dad and I got in back in like, 1999, and we built the fuselage, but never went any further. Later, in 2003 or so, I decided to bust it out and work on it. I made the wings and tail section, but never got around to skinning it, so it never had a chance to fly. I bought it to school one day for a show-and-tell type dealie in 7th grade, and it got destroyed, so I tossed it.

Then I got another one, by the same company, a "chipmunk". Quite a nice little plane, I built it fast, in about 3 days. however, when i was making it, I had it pinned too tightly to the workboard, so the right elevator was warped when it came out. Never the less, I skinned it, and mounted the propeller and everything. It flew a grand total of one time, upon landing it hit some concrete steps and the right wing was smashed within seconds. A bit disapointing. I think it got trashed eventually as well.

I hope this one goes better. I have a better workspace this time, and I'm not going to try and rush through it, so hopefully I end up with a nice plane, weather or not it flies.

Weedeater engine is running again!

After several days of not, the engine is running! It took three carb rebuilds/cleanings, and alot of fine tuning, but it finally runs and idles now! woot!

I even busted out the treo and made a movie of it!

Part one:


Part two:

(note: audio SUCKS)

ellipsisquestionmark

it would appear as though i haven't blagged anything in a while

so here goes

*inhale*

*exhale*

I recently learned of (via kory) a service called ruckus, which offers free, DRM-injected music, to people that have an email address ending in .edu. Turns out I have one, thanks to BCCC.

that is all. your previously scheduled programming will now continue.

Woo!

yays! had a module exam tonight, for chapter 4 of the CCNA cisco class thing.

10 questions.

got one wrong, not bad.

i knew the answer to the question, but the provided answers were slightly different than what I had studied, ohwell.

that is all, you may now resume your scheduled programming.

Mathematica!

So today, I finally got my old Mathematica license transfered. Back in 2005, when I used an iMac G3/600Mhz with 10.2.8 as my main computer, and surfed the interwebs with dialup (3 months later we got highspeeds). I got a copy of Mathematica 5.2 Student, 32bit. 5 months later, I got an iMac G5/1.9GHz, and decided to switch to a copy of mathematica 5.2 64bit, for more powah or whatever. About 2 months after THAT, I had to wipe the G5's system, as it was acting up, and reinstall. Due to the way wolfram (the people that make mathematica) does licensing, I couldn't just reinstall and use the old numbers, I had to do a whole big thing of getting a new license number and password and whatnot. free, but time consuming.

on comes 2007, and I've got my fancy 'new' thinkpad.  I decided after a while, I'd like to have mathematica again, so I did another license transfer (this time only taking a few hours) and I now have mathematica 5.2 32bit on my thinkpad, woot.

I also have mathematica 2 (?) on my 25Mhz Macintosh Quadra 700. I've been trying some 3D graphing on it, but it doesn't go over well. Here's one that took about 10 minutes on the quadra, then crashed halfway through drawing, due to a lack of RAM. (hey, 4MB is tight). It took under a second on my 1,700,000,000Hz thinkpad.


Click the pretty picture for an even BIGGER version of the same thing!

bridge!

Here's another one of those pictures. Looks interesting how it was shot at an angle.
Click the picture for a (much) higher res version.

rocks and water

This is a picture of a pile of rocks on the edge of a river, with some plants grwoing on them. In the background you can see a train tressel, some water, and clouds, etc, etc.