Black and White

Experimenting with some of my airplane pics.

B-25 Cockpit at Salem, OR airport

DA-40

Final for 31R at Boeing Field in a C177

Closer...

Downtown PDX

Columbia river and PDX

Vancouver Lake

Hanging Out in the Skies

I am currently working on getting through my cross country fight training. Every time I get to climb into a plane is an opportunity to learn something. In between my own flight training I have had the privilege to ride along and fly with my friend Jordan who is currently working on getting his CFI and building hours to further his training.

Getting to do some right seat time is a different perspective. Different hands on different controls, gauges are harder to read because of parallax and, the view out of the aircraft is from the 'wrong' side. It is a blast though and I look forward to every time I get to climb into an aircraft. Yesterday the three of us (me, Jordan, and my flight instructor Andy) took a flight in a Cessna 177RG Cardinal up to Boeing Field. We landed and visited the Museum of Flight before taking off again and heading back to Aurora. It was one of the most fun times I have had in an aircraft yet. Good company and a high performance aircraft to try out and some crazy complicated airspace to contend with. Not to mention beautiful scenery.

My own flight training has been going great as well. This week I will be doing the first of my dual cross country flights. Flying out to Kelso and returning to Aurora. The difference between this flight and some of the other 'fun' flights being though, I have to do all the planning, radio work, and navigating. A lot of things to juggle at once. Should be fun!

I love it when a lesson can be both fun and informative. (Really, they all are but, some more than others.) There has been a lot of smoke and hazy in the valley lately due to wildfires that make visibility a thing. Not so much a thing to reduce visibility to un-flyable levels but, enough to make it a bit challenging anyways. During one lesson in the haze I was practicing diversions. Changing course to different airports and mentally calculating how those changes will affect the flight. Fuel burn, estimated time in route, course to follow, etc. I have flown around this area enough that in normal conditions I could just point the aircraft at just about any local airport and just go there. The haze made me work for it. It was a fun challenge flying to all these places when I couldn't readily see them.

During another lesson while talking about how much it would be nice to get out of the haze I asked if we could go higher. We ended up going *much* higher. It was my first time getting to fly at 12,000'. Not only was it just really dang pretty up there but, I learned a lot too. Engine performance and leaning the fuel mixture, the Diamond still does a respectable 500 fpm climb even at 12K'.  I also learned a lesson I wasn't expecting to learn. At around 10K' I was starting to receive more frequent reminders to watch my heading and attitude. I was getting frustrated at the fact that I seemed to be unconsciously turning. It took a few minutes to realize that with my nose pointed up in a climb and the diminishing ground references due to the altitude, that I was experiencing nearly instrument conditions. Even though it was nice and clear out, it was getting harder for me to judge my position by visual reference alone. I had done some simulated instrument time under a hood but never had it sneak up on me 'for real'. Once I started trusting and monitoring my instruments more, things got a lot better. On arriving at 12K', we turned around and started a descent back to the airport. In perfect timing I was instructed to go under the hood and fly back using VOR navigation by instrument reference (which was part of the original lesson). Coming down from that altitude I had plenty of time to get a feel for the lack of visual reference and just fly the plane. It was a very cool lesson. Sometimes the things that stick are the lessons you were not planning on learning.  

DA-20 at 12,000' looking west about 30 miles from the Oregon coast.

Learning to Fly

There is nothing cooler than flying. I had my first *real* flying lesson on February 28th. It has only been a little less than 5 months but, it seems like a *lot* has happened since then. My plan had been to start taking lessons in a Cessna 172. I picked that aircraft to train in because I figured it would be the easiest thing to find to rent when I eventually get my pilot's license and it was a plane I had heard of. I had ridden in the right seat of a couple 172's when I was in high school so it felt at least a little familiar.

 The first few hours in the 172 were fun. (Really, 99% of everything I get to do in the sky is fun but, whatever.) Mostly spent learning basic maneuvers like turns, climbing, descending, stalls, etc. Gradually, introducing more and more aspects of normal flight. Learning the traffic pattern and operations around the airport and getting more comfortable with takeoffs and landings. Every lesson a little more would be added to the growing list of things to learn. Simulated engine failures seem to happen on a fairly regular basis and you never know when your instructor is going to get grabby with yanking back the throttle.

I liked the 172 but, it wasn't a match made in heaven. I swear Cessna made their planes to fit basketball players. There were two 172's available to me and each had their issues. The one pictured is a nice plane. 180 HP so it has a lot of power for a 172. Problem was I did not fit in it very well. My short little legs and equally short torso meant that I had to be sitting on a bunch of cushions to see over the instrument panel but, then my short little legs had trouble getting full rudder deflection. Added to the fact that with all those cushions the yoke is now crammed in my lap. Not very comfortable. There was another 172 that due to where the yoke was located on the instrument panel fit me a little better but, it was still a bit of a stretch. Plus, it seemed everyone liked flying those two aircraft and the way my luck went I had a fair amount of trouble getting the plane when I wanted it.

My first flight instructor that I had up to this point I found out was going to be leaving to take a job in another state. I was sad to learn this as I really enjoyed flying with him but, it opened up a window to try something new. With a new instructor and a suggestion, I was going to take a ride in a plane I had never heard of. A Diamond DA-20. With adjustable rudder pedals, I could finally be half way comfortable. I consider myself a very lucky person. Not only did I find an aircraft that fit me a hell of a lot better than the Cessna, I ended up with another amazing flight instructor.

To say I had to learn to fly all over again would be an exaggeration but, I had a fair learning curve switching from the Cessna to the Diamond. I didn't have all that much time in the 172 but, the DA-20 feels entirely different. Much lighter on the controls and a stick verses the Cessna yoke. Also, no nose-wheel steering meant I had to learn how to taxi all over again. For more than a couple hours, this was the hardest thing for me to get used to. It was like trying to drive a shopping cart with a leaf blower. 

There are things that spoil me in the Diamond though. Fuel injection means no carb heat to worry about. It has 3 flap settings to keep track of: Take-off, Landing, and none. It performs very well. It loves to fly. It more so loves to glide though. 37 feet of wingspan and a fairly light, sleek airframe. Simulated engine failures in this aircraft are almost glider lessons. My instructor yanked my power at 3,500' one day and I landed at a local airport. 8 miles away! It is also pretty. the view from the cockpit of a Diamond beats the pants off a 172. (Pictured right is the view from the right seat of a DA-40 I took last week.)

 After a few hours getting used to the new airplane, things started to get more serious. Now I have to get comfortable taking off and landing this thing and flying a proper traffic pattern. While the takeoffs aren't so bad, landings proved to be a big challenge. (They still are.) There was a point during a lesson when I was in the 172, where I landed and looked over to my instructor where with a big grin told me that the landing had been completely mine. I kind of looked at him with this gaze of joy and shock that must have been fairly comical. It took me *much* longer to get to that point in the DA-20.

Those light responsive controls that make the Diamond so much to fly when I am a few thousand feet off the ground were awesome for making me really nervous closer to the ground. The more nervous I got, the tenser I would get, and the worse I would fly. (Funny, still works that way I notice.) Add in those big glider-ey wings and some now summertime float from the heat of the runway and maybe a bit of wind, and this plane doesn't *want* to land.  I spent many a sweat filled hour up in the pattern doing lots and lots of touch and goes with my instructor.

All of this pattern work was in preparation for an aspect of my flight training that I was having a hard time wrapping my mind around. The initial solo. Basically, all I had to do was make three trips around the airport with a full stop landing and taxi back to the runway each time around. Trouble is by definition, solo requires that I have to do it by myself. I have wanted to learn how to fly really bad for a long time. When I am with my instructor I feel perfectly safe. Learning to put that same trust in myself was (is) something that was (is) harder to learn that I thought. It did get easier though. As me and my instructor spent more and more time grilling the hell out of pattern work I did start to relax a bit and become more confident. My landings were starting to not suck so bad and I had fewer and fewer instances where he had to intervene or where I heard the words "That should have been a go-around".  On June 23rd I did it. I was able to fly away with only me in the plane. (Pic above taken by my flight instructor on the ground) It was a beautiful and perfect day and it was an experience I will *never* forget.

It is just a little over a month since I solo'ed. I have flown about 12-ish hours since then and solo'ed one more time. This time out to our practice area. That flight was less joy-filled towards then end when changing winds, a mystery radio fiasco, and a jet made my trip back into the airport a little more stressful but, it worked out. Lessons are continuing adding more and more things to learn to get me to my next hurdle, cross country flight.

Had a couple random for fun flights in there too. Went up with a friend on a commercial multi-engine lesson and got to ride along in a twin engine Piper Apache. Last weekend got to take the cyclic of a R-22 helicopter for a few minutes. Also got to fly (for the second time now.) in a fancier version of the plane that I fly, the Diamond DA-40 (pictured below). So far I have had some pretty awesome opportunities. Flying is cool.

Flying with Style

Got to take a 'discovery flight' Saturday. Thinking about doing something I have wanted to do for a long time. Get my pilots license. A beautiful day over Portland.

SS-581 Blueback

Since I was I elementary school this has been one of my favorite local things. OMSI's very own decommissioned submarine.The Blueback is the most modern Navy submarine on public display and it is sitting pretty in the Willamette just a short trip from home. It has been several years since I last toured the sub and I found out recently that they offered a tech tour. Lasting over 5 hours it definitely was thorough. Very enjoyable and for a tech geek like myself very much worth the trip. Some pics: 

URU thingies!

This year marks 10 years of URU. A multiplayer online game that is based off the Myst games. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myst_Online:_Uru_Live)

I have not played the entire 10 years but, I did make friends there, have fun, etc. and thought it would be fitting to post some of the Myst/ URU related projects I have worked on over the last several years.

For the tl;dr peoples: scroll down to the pictures. Pictures are where the shiny things are.

---
A brief history of my Myst obsession:

1993: Myst comes out and I get to play it on our new at the time Apple PowerPC. One of the first games I ever owned on CD-ROM.

1997: Riven comes out and I get to play it on our less than new computer of the day. Takes me almost a year to complete it on and off.

2001: Myst 3 is released and I rush down to buy it. While the game is pretty, the story isn't as good as the first two (IMHO) and I end up beating it by walkthrough sometime later.

late 2003: I get URU: Ages beyond Myst. On Christmas 2003 I got the single player incarnation of URU. URU: Live was going on but I thought I would do the single player version first. Unknown to me: the funding for URU: Live was pulled just 2 months later.

2004: In the same month: Myst 4 comes out and I join Until URU. Myst 4 was ok but now I get to play URU with other people! Since Live was canceled, in sept. of 2004 Until URU was released as a fan-operated client/ server system. It was now possible to play URU multiplayer again for the first time since Live was canceled.

 2005: In early 2005 I became a co-admin on the Great Tree shard. I had great fun with great people and got to learn a little bit about how the game worked and some simple python coding. (There were far more skilled people in the programing areas than I.) Had great fun playing both in Until URU and in Alcugs (an open source port of the game that was being developed).

2006- 2013: Things in here are kind of a blur. I participated in two beta tests, two Mysterium conventions, the beginning and ending of a couple incarnations of URU, and then kinda disappeared off radar due to RL, other hobbies, work, lack of interest, etc.

---
Most of my projects can be divided into two groups: Music videos from in game events and metal working projects. These were done in my most active years on URU which were 2004-2007ish. Coincidentally, the years before I got a full time job lol.

Things:

      [Photo by Ashtar]

These were some keychains I machined out of brass in 2005. I made 6 of them iirc (and one for myself ;) )

 

 A CNC milled Great Tree logo in aluminum

A CNC milled D'ni ring in brass (I wish I had a better picture than this..)

A replica of the KI used in URU (kinda like a fancy communications/GPS like device)



A remote controlled wheeled traffic cone. Cones are something of an inside joke to people who play URU. We would move them around in various ways. Make art out of them, surround someone with them, use code to put them in very odd locations, etc. I made this for a Mysterium in 2006. The motor I scavenged for this was woefully underpowered and by this picture it was on it's last legs. I did get a pic 'chasing' Rand Miller (Atrus) with a cone though. Mission Accomplished.  :)

Movies:

I didn't have a full version of fraps (the screen capture program I used to make these) until the middle of the 2nd movie. So you will see the watermark on some (ok, a lot) of the footage.

These two were uploaded to Youtube by Tomala a few years back. I need to sort out some issues before uploading the rest. It seems the files no longer want to be read by my old mac and I may have to re-render them. I may not have all the pieces anymore. I used to have all my URU videos hosted on a private server but, it appears it is longer up. :(

UU2: My second URU movie. Made with footage right before and beginning when I got my adminKI. I don't know if it is my slow computer or if it is a bit out of sync but it is all I have up atm.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQxH3X_Iqgo

Having fun in UU: My last full song length video. Made mostly with footage of me and some friends messing around on the Slackers, H'URU project shard, and possible the Great Tree shard. Again, not sure if it is my slow computer but it seems a bit out of sync.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDq-D4WtTHQ

--

Hoped you enjoyed the Myst ramblings. I may add more to this post as I re-discover things buried on old hard drives.

Doug Rogers

One of my favorite people passed away last week. Words can not describe how much he meant to me or how much I will miss him. He not only helped me to be where I am today by getting me started in the world of machining but, was a true friend. I will miss his snarky sense of humor (even when it was at my expense) and I am thankful for the short time I knew him. Thank you for everything Doug. You will be sorely missed.

Hikes and things!

Decided to use this blog to post some pics of hikes I have done in the last year and in the future. I had 1 pic from all the hikes I did last year. Then Blogger crashed and now it is only showing the 2 most recent on the 'Hikes' page. *mope*. Oh well, I will try again later.

1939 Ensemble

It's saturday night, my GPS isn't working but I am off to see a show! After some roundabout trekking through Portland suburbia I found The Know, a small club on Alberta st. Playing was a two person group called 1939 Ensemble consisting of Jose Medeles (of The Breeders and AKA the guy I bought my drum set from ;) ) and David Coniglio.

Here is a collection of clips from their show. It was pretty awesome. They also played with Old Light but I didn't stay long enough to see them play. Stupid getting up early for work and its negative effects on how late I can stay up any other time. :P

Canada EH!?

So... I can be random sometimes...
About a month ago on a Friday morning I saw a Facebook post that Todd Sucherman (who is one of my favorite drummers) was doing a clinic in Langley, BC on Saturday evening. Sooo.. Of course I want to go. Only problem was (besides being less than a day away to pack/plan) it was about 6 hours away.

I didn't have any time I could take from work so Saturday morning me, my mom and my sister (the poor people I suckered into going with me) left for Canada.
I had never been there so I had a ton of fun navigating (especially since I found out data roaming rates were $16 /MB so I couldn't use my Google Maps on my phone O_o). I had fortunately printed off backup "hardcopy" maps of the places we were going.

The drum clinic was in Langley but everyone else was more interested in visiting Vancouver. So we stayed in a hotel in downtown Vancouver. I found a cheesy tourist's map that was my new best friend for navigating the strange land of Vancouver, BC.

The clinic in Langley was awesome! Todd put on a great show and I wish it would have lasted all night. I even got to have him sign a drum head for me and I got a picture with him *fan girl flail* ...

HEY! I allowed to fan girl flail once and a while :P
*shifty eyes*

After the clinic was over it was back to Vancouver for a short night of sleep. In the morning we did some shopping around Vancouver and headed back home.

Overall, we spent more time driving and traveling than we actually spent in Canada but it was worth it *grin*.

EMP (round 2) and Music School stuff from May 2010

I am a little late posting this stuff but back in May I went up to Seattle to visit Randi. We had a ton of fun. We hung out for a while after hours at a Seattle music school she teaches at. I fail at every other instrument on the planet but they had an old beat up Chinese drumset in the corner that has seen one to many 4 year-olds beating on it and hasn't seen a drum key in ages (although it needed more than tuning and we didn't have anything to work on it with lol). The kick drum sounded a bit like GWAAUUUNNNGGGG when you hit it so I ended up sticking my sweatshirt in front of it. Helped a little.. We spent a lot of time just goofing around. She played piano and guitar and I screwed around on the drums. Here is a short clip. I make some silly faces heh. lol.


We also made another trip to the Seattle Experience Music Project. It was a monday morning which was nice because we got to spend a lot of time playing in their music rooms without waiting in lines. I love the DW drum kit they have.


This trip was a lot of fun. We did a lot of goofing off, shopping, playing music, and just hanging out. Don't get to do all those things at once very often.

Rube Goldberg Drum Recording Setup

So I thought it would be kind of neat to be able to record my playing of the drums without the need to have someone actually film or to have to actually record the sound out of the amp with the other room noises. I didn't want to have to obtain any new equipment but I didn't realize how many steps it would require to make it work.

So this is what I roughly ended up with.

The camera being used is a 'bullet' camera that I had from my Zero-G trip a couple years ago. It is velcro-strapped to a mic boom that I had from a Rockband game video spoof that I made a month or so ago. The feed from the camera goes to my mini-dv camera for recording and as a make-shift video monitor along with the remote camera's battery pack and the LANC for triggering the camera. The camera on the boom has a microphone but the only thing I use it for is to help sync the video when I edit later.

The audio comes directly from the Roland TD-6. I am taking both the line out as well as the MIDI into Garageband on the Macbook. I ended up just using the line out audio but having the MIDI data is useful. The music I was playing along with came through an iPod going through the mix-in on the TD-6 which made its way through with the rest of the audio signals to the laptop.

Putting everything together requires just about as many steps..

Exporting the audio out of Garageband to be usable in my video editing software requires converting the .m4a to something else (I used mp3 this time). The video is more complicated. My camera does not support USB/Firewire/etc. output so I had to go a more 'analog' route. Going from the camera to the computer I used a USB tv-tuner and a collection of various adapters and splitters to manually capture the data off the dv tape.

Randi spinning poi at the EMP

Random short clip of Randi spinning poi whilst we wait outside the Experience Music Project in Seattle.

Faith and the Muse with Soriah

Cool concert, I was there!


(In fact I took the show pics in the link).
http://musicartery.com/showreviews/FATM.php
Go forth and read about it.

^ Soriah (in the pic) is awesomeness.

Massive update of updateyness

Soo I have been kinda slacking off on putting stuff in this thing lately..
A couple weeks ago as part of a work thing I had the opportunity to participate in the regional FIRST robotics competition. I was a volunteer in their "machine shop" area tending to the needs of the ~61 participating highschool robotics teams. It was pretty straight forward.

Something broken: fix it.
Something that doesn't work right: figure it out.

For the most part it was pretty fast paced. Every kind of job from cutting off pieces of wood, plastic, aluminum to figuring out how to make shaft A fit into bearing B with very limited equipment. Fab work, machining, and a very small amount of welding. Our "shop" was basically a few tables with some fab equipment and a motorcycle trailer with a Grizzly mill/drill and a lathe along with a MIG/TIG welder.


It was pretty cool seeing all this happen. People running around everywhere, lots of enthusiasm for the science and technology end of things and just an all around fun (and tiring) time. Wish they had this program when I was in school.

I am working on a video of my footage from this event. I *plan* to get it done soon. But we'll see.


This last weekend was a ton of fun. I visited my friend Randi up in Seattle. During our travels we ended up at the Experience Music Project / Sci-Fi museum. Two things for me to nerd out about. Music and Star Trek.. The sci-fi end of it was pretty cool but I ended up doing most of my nerding at the EMP end of things. Upstairs they had soundproof studios where you could play instruments for 10 minutes at a time (as to not hold up lines forever) and I tried my hand at some real drums. I love my electronic drums to pieces but there is something just downright cool about a real acoustic kit. My friend Randi (who I did my best not to blow her eardrums out with the drum noise) has the nifty talent of being able to play just about any musical instrument she picks up and we spent 10 minutes goofing around. She flip flopped between guitar and bass and I did my best not to mess her up too bad and played the drums. It was pretty awesome. She worked around my in-experience and for a short period of time we sounded not half bad. I wish I had been able to record our goofing around.

If you have never been the the EMP I *highly* recommend it. It is a blast no matter how much (or little) musical ability you have. I have more to post but that's it for now!

Practice, practice, practice...

Well it has been a little less than a month since I decided to try the insanity that is learning the drums. It is a ton of fun. I'm not real good and I usually look pretty dorky but whatever, at least I seem to be improving. With the continued help of my friend Dave I have been learning some of the basics and practicing them daily. One of my biggest challenges seems to be getting my left leg to not effect what my other limbs are doing. Things go much smoother before I try adding all 4 limbs together. :)



BTW: Ask the dog what she thinks of all this...
















I thought I was my worst critic... :D

Roland Drums

I got my new drum stuff today *happy dance*
*runs off to play*

Real drums!

Ok.. so.. it was only a matter of time right?! Rockband addiction -> drum addiction?
Sounds good to me.

So I have decided to give drumming a shot. With the aid of my friend Dave and his ultra shinny drums (sorry.. drooling...) he has been attempting to teach me the basics of drumming. I have only had about a single days worth of real training on these crazy things so I have a loooooong way to go but here is a video of my first shot at it. I am looking away because I would mess up every time I looked at the camera. (although I did manage to mess up plenty of times when I didn't have an excuse ) :)


edit: I know the video has issues playing... Appearently it is a known issue and Blogger is "working on the problem" so when the link isn't being stupid I will take this note down. It works sometimes.

UPDATE: As of 2/24 the videos seem to be working again. Give it a shot.

I have no musical background whatsoever besides about a month and a half of playing drums on Guitar Hero so there is a lot for me to learn. I am pretty good at blindingly following directions on a tv screen with little colored dots floating by but have never tried just playing along with something. Plus, my left foot has always just been allowed to be lazy while my right foot does all the work in GH, now there is this funny thing called a hi-hat pedal for my foot to deal with. Just some of the fun things of starting to learn something new.

I am having a lot of fun though so I am looking forward to learning more and improving as time goes on.

New Trick

Teaching the dog all my bad habits...

If she starts forgetting her chores and leaving things around the house we're in trouble.


oh.. wait..

nevermind. (btw.. 50th post! woo!)

How to fix a Guitar Hero Drum Controller

So, much to my surprise the problem was as expected. A bad wire. Last night I noticed I was missing a ton of red notes (I don't suck *THAT* bad :P) and thought it would either be one of two things: a loose/broken wire or a broken transducer.

I pulled the thing off the stand and disconnected the cymbal pads, Wiimote, and anything else that would come off. Fortunately, the screws that hold this thing together are simple Phillips head and besides there being a zillion of them there was nothing else holding the case together (don't forget the screws under the little adhesive no-skid pads on the feet )(the feet you would use if you wanted to play it on a table instead of a stand). The pic above shows the rather sparse interior of the drum controller.

This is where I found the answer to my questions... As soon as I started inspecting the wiring to the red pad the wire just fell apart. Easy enough to fix. Kind of a pain to get to. To remove the pad from the rest of the assembly, take the 4 screws holding the red (or whatever color pad your trying to fix) housing onto the frame out. Now you have the pad free (or dangling by the wire if it is still attached at all) but now you have to get the silicon pad off the hard plastic case. There are three "one way" grommets (I guess you could call them) holding the two pieces together. I used a small screwdriver to gently shove the edges of the wedge shaped plug/grommet/thingies through the hard plastic holes. Patience is important here. After you have the pad free it is a pretty simple setup. Two wires. From the factory there is some goop covering the solder contacts and the wires to try and keep them secure. I used a pair of pliers to pull up (do it gently!) the old wire from the goop. I then de-soldered the little remaining wire-stub.

All you need to do now is solder some new wire to the sensor. take note of the original wire positions to maintain polarity (I didn't check to see if polarity was an issue but I try to put things back the way I found them). I made my wire pigtail fairly long compared to the old one. It gave me more room to work with when putting it back together. Fish the new wire pigtail back through the hole in the red pad case and then back through the hole in the drum stand. Then solder the new wires to the ones left inside the case (alternatively, you could replace the whole length of wire and put the connector on the other end and plug it back into the board but that is kind of overkill.)

I waited to push the rubber grommets in the drum pad back in until after I tested it to make sure my fix worked. (I didn't want to have to pry them out again). I carefully flipped the whole thing over (notice in the pic the pad still isn't attached to the red hard plastic case), I plugged the cymbals and wiimote back in, and did a quick functional test to make sure everything is working.

Once I was happy with the results I unplugged everything again and flipped it back over and started putting the pad and case back together. I used a little bit of heat shrink tubing to pretty up my splices. It goes together the same way it comes apart so I won't discuss that process.

Fix seems to work great! No more missed notes due to bad wires. (Just missed notes due to bad playing ;) )