Topics

16

Random / Finally a mojor news organization mentioned this critical fact

« on: November 14, 2022, 11:40:48 AM »

Well, at least they did in Australia. Here in the USA you could probably be shot for publishing this. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-13/earths-population-reaches-eight-billion-people/101643854

We have already passed peak child. There will almost certainly never be more children alive in the world than there are now. The population will still grow, but only because geezers don't die at 60--or 45. If you think it's hard to hire people to do mundane jobs now, understand that it will only get worse. Not because gen Z is lazy, but because there are more shitty jobs than people willing to fill them (and few places where a low-paying job is a living wage). Economics meets population decline. We'd better start importing as many young educated people as we can because the competition is going to get fierce. Very soon. Oh wait, it already is in places that are paying attention. I have to assume the new Prime Minister in the UK is a complete moron. Or at least never does math.

Remember when people were saying we needed a universal income because there were not going to be enough jobs for the growing population? The growth is exclusively in retired people. I'm not going to be installing gutters, painting houses, doing carpentry, digging ditches, crawling under houses in winter to fix frozen pipes. If you whine about immigrants taking jobs, you better get ready to do that at 65.

17

Random / Loch Eggers passed at 55

« on: November 01, 2022, 08:12:00 PM »

I'm completely blown away by this. Loch was probably the scariest looking super nice guy I've ever met. I loved spending time with him. Smart, creative, funny, and kind (unless you were doing something stupid or thoughtless). Fantastic waterman with about any piece of equipment, but most remarkable with a SUP or a four-man surf canoe. He'd take that canoe anywhere, including Peahi when it was breaking big.

This is crazy. First Hunter (Loch's brother) died paddling his canoe, then Randy Hilen died after a wing foil session, now Loch has a heart attack on a hike. All great watermen, all super fit, all way too fucking young.

I loved that guy, he was an amazing human being and always encouraged me. I'm going to miss that guy, Maui will never be the same.

18

Random / Yay Elvis!

« on: October 19, 2022, 11:56:39 AM »

My daughter Elvis (Elizabeth) has been accepted to Yale for their PA program. It's a master's degree level program and nearly impossible to get into--lots and lots of highly qualified applicants. Diane and I are extremely proud of her and all the hard work she's done in balancing a career as a Respiratory Therapist with motherhood and a late start in academic success. She is, of course, over the moon. Though of course, I said the first thing that came to my mind, which was: "Well, you've got the easy part done". I can be such a dick. Fortunately, she ignored me and continues to be over the moon. She told me the contact person said "You have xx days to decide to accept..." and Elvis screamed "YES". He said she didn't need to make an immediate decision and she yelled "YES" again.

19

Random / AFIB and other geezer woes

« on: September 10, 2022, 11:45:42 AM »

I had Cardioversion for my AFIB a few days ago, and it worked. My heart rate is back to its normal loafing 52BPM and most of my energy seems to be back to normal. I kind of lost out on the tenderloin of summer in Hood River, at least as far as watersports go. I'm not going to try to make up for lost time, but I don't plan to lose anymore.

My bad knee seems to be hanging in there, I can actually walk down a flight of stairs without doing the geezer one-step. So now I just have to wait for the wind to switch back to west and blow a bit.

On the plus side, I actually cleaned up my metal cutting/grinding/bending/welding shop, which is usually the messiest part of my shop. Of course, now the rest of the shop is demanding attention. No matter, as soon as there is wind I'm wingfoiling. The mess will still be there later.

20

Wingsurfing, Windfoiling, Wingfoiling, Wing SUP / D-lab mid handle

« on: June 20, 2022, 07:28:04 PM »

I tried to describe how I made this but a few pics probably help. The second picture shows how I cut tabs into the piece of paddle shaft so the sides of the cut are a bit past 60% of the circumference. This makes the opening a little smaller than the width of the handle so the mid-handle snaps on. The velcro stuck onto the tab is just to hold the double-sided velcro strap in place while I'm winding it on.

For the D-Lab I think this is an important modification. I can move my back hand up to the middle of the mid-handle and get a more balanced force on my arms.

21

The Shape Shack / Drilling out broken bolts

« on: June 10, 2022, 08:54:27 PM »

Lots of people have asked how to extract broken bolts on foil fuselages. Here's the bottom line--if you broke a bolt while tightening it, any advice about screw extractors and the like comes from people who have never done this shit. If you break a bolt loosening it at least the threads are not jammed tight against the thread faces. But most bolts get broken during tightening, and you can't loosen them with some device that applies less torque than the original bolt head. Period. No, not going to happen. So you need to drill out the bolt leaving a thin shell with the threads intact so you can make the threads and the remaining thin shell of the bolt collapse (generally with a chisel and hammer), and take it out. Or you can weld a nut onto the threads and turn it out. The problem with welding a nut onto stainless bolts is that you need to spill argon everywhere to get a decent weld. No way to back purge the stainless so you just gotta blow argon everywhere.

If you choose to drill out the bolt, then that takes precision drilling, and that means you need the right toys--I mean, tools.

Specifically, you either need 30 years of experience or an optical center punch. Optical center punches take less time to acquire and are fairly inexpensive. Once you have one your drilling precision increases hugely and you'll find yourself to be a drilling precision snob. 

Here's how this works:

Grind the bolt flat--I used my belt grinder.

Locate dead center of the bolt optically. If you look at the picture of the optical element you'll see where I fucked up. I didn't grind the bolt completely flat, just enough to get a good flat area for the centerpunch. But then I centered the optics on the flat area and skewed it a little towards the flat segment instead of taking the full bolt size center.

Swap the centerpunch for the optical element and whack the centerpunch with a hammer.

Presto, dead center--sort of. It's not the tools fault--it's the nut behind the wheel. I drilled this out but the threads were kind of rough and skewed a bit after I picked out the old threads. So I drilled it to 21/64ths and ran a Helicoil tap through to see how it looked. The threads were clean and full depth, so I ran in an 8mm Helicoil coated with red locktite, the remaining options would have been a 3/8ths Timesert or tig welding the hole up and re-tapping to 8mm, but the 8mm Helicoil worked fine. I fucking hate Helicoils, but they work and I have lots of them.

It helps to have a hard rock playlist running while you do this. Heavy Metal or 90's thrash goes well with metal work. I put on Skating Polly when I'm welding aluminum. Tradition.

22

Random / A month in the shop

« on: May 29, 2022, 09:15:01 AM »

It's great to be back in Hood River, and I love working in my shop, but I haven't been in the water for a month. A combination of bitter cold water and fucked knee has been keeping me land-bound. The knee has been so bad I can't even ride a bicycle or motorcycle--my range of motion without stabbing pain is about -10 to -90 degrees, I need about 120 to ride a conventional bike. My knee doc is a lot more open to knee replacement after seeing the latest X-rays, so he sent me for a bone scan. After reviewing it he said nope. Not there. A little closer, but no. A second opinion agreed and the two PTs I talked to in Hood River all said "Yeah, we can get you there, don't get this replaced until you really need to." So my life is going to include a lot of knee workouts, PT, and a bit of blinding pain. In other words, normal.

I'm thrilled, it means my summer is not going to be all fucked up. So I'm working hard on putting my recumbent e-Bike back in service, probably to the dismay of the Hood River police department. I built the thing in the first place ten years ago to rehab my knee after meniscus surgery. I split one of the giant batteries I had in my trike into two smaller ones (NOT a simple undertaking). The giant ones had enough capacity for a century ride over Mt. Hood, but I'm not doing that again, so I don't need 60 pounds of batteries. I also put my fat tire e-bike back in service, and I can already pedal it. Any slips or false moves are accompanied by loud profanity, so that's going to be popular at the event center. Bicycle Tourettes.

I've also re-assembled all my 3D printers and I'm getting them tuned up. Somehow my fleet of printers has expanded from two to six. Seven if I count the laser/liquid one and eight with the 2D laser cutter. I think they are reproducing. I've been given two by people who discovered I actually use them for things other than printing plastic gargoyles. I have three beavering away making parts for my projects and three that need just a bit more attention.

I put a new highly modified exhaust system and reworked the footpegs (lower, a little more forward, and not tilted) on my KTM 390 ADV. A cheap-ish adventure bike that makes a great platform for me to build the adventure bike I want. I also rewired my 1990 BMW R100GS PD and tweaked the electrical system to optimize it for a Lithium battery. Not simple, but fun. Next up is finishing the restoration work on the 1959 BSA Goldstar I promised to my youngest daughter for her birthday. Good thing it's a right leg kicker or I could never get it started. It's a crazy-ass bike, makes me nervous to give it to her. Way too fast for its brakes, and knowing her she'll have to see what it will do. A hundred miles an hour is pretty easy to reach with this primitive 500cc thumper. Fortunately, the cops will probably be watching her like a hawk. It sounds like it's going 100 when it's sitting still. It doesn't idle--the primitive GP carb has to have the throttle constantly blipped to stay running. It sounds like you're trying to get someone to race you when you just want to get going after a traffic light without stalling the bike or frying the clutch.

And of course, I'm working on my boosted foil boards. Mark Raaphorst gave me a mold for an axis wing that weighs so much I can hardly move the thing. I made a foam core to mold a wing, now I need to figure out how many layers for carbon to use and sand down the foam suitably. I think this might provide a good "standard" wing that I won't feel bad about cutting up to for the basis for various experimental wings. I'll crank out four or five and see how it goes. I'm also going to try 3D printing elements of the wing core. I can make a heavily filled core in the center and in the fuselage to wing transition that turns into a lattice to support foam. Could be cool, but could be a waste of time other than the learning opportunity, I might even try a semi-hollow wing, though it sounds like a very stupid idea.

I'm going to start paddling in the early shift with the HROC on Monday, and as soon as we have wind again in HR, I'm winging. See you out there.

23

Wingsurfing, Windfoiling, Wingfoiling, Wing SUP / Doutone D-Lab. And yes, I had to screw with it.

« on: May 12, 2022, 08:20:53 PM »

I picked up a new Duotone Unit D-lab 4.5M today. At 1600 bucks a wing I won't be buying many of these, but it's a very cool wing. so of course, the first thing I did was modify it.
The handles are great, they're very well connected to the Allula strut, but there's a gap in the middle. I might be able to get used to that, but I don't see why I should have to. I have bits of carbon paddle shafts, I have velcro, and I have tools. OK, done.


This is attempt number 1. Some idiot screwed up the measurement.


Try #2, nice fit, and it's strong as hell, but I think I'll put my harness lines on the actual handles on top of the velcro straps. There's something unnerving in relying on half of a carbon tube to support a lot of weight. I want this mostly for transitions and for one-handing with a harness. That little gap in the handle strut looks ideal for a 3D printed sliding lock that will clamp the handle tightly to the strut. I'll probably do that, though it will certainly take beaucoup many tries to get it right. But I can see a sliding doohickey that pops into that slot and locks the handle down.


85 grams with straps. The wing is silly light so I don't want this handle to have any extra weight.


I was going to 3D print some end caps that would fit into the gap in the handle struts, just for a little more security. But I'm still reassembling the printers I shipped from Maui, so that can wait. I mostly posted this pic to give our OCD admin the willies. He can barely enter my shop and has to avert his eyes from the larger bits of entropy gone wild.

24

Wingsurfing, Windfoiling, Wingfoiling, Wing SUP / ...So we wound up at Dennys.

« on: April 20, 2022, 01:34:00 AM »

It's definitely time to see the knee doc. I guess that means it's a good thing we only have two weeks left on Maui.

I went to Kihei today after looking at Ka'a and the harbor. The wind was blowing straight out of the north, which I'm not a fan of at Ka'a, and I generally don't like the harbor anyway, though I seem to wind up there a lot--something like heading out on a Friday night when I was a young buck, looking for fun and perhaps some female companionship and winding up alone at Denny's at 2:00 AM eating really crappy apple pie.

So I drove across the island and found conditions looking tasty at the Canoe Hale. I rigged up and then watched the whitecaps double down while I pumped up my 4.2 wing. I thought about dropping to 3.5 but it didn't look THAT strong, so I went for it. Got blown all over the place just trying to get to my feet and finally went off backward, bending my bad knee a lot further than it really wants to go. I flopped around a bit, thinking I tore something, rode back to the beach, and managed to over-bend the knee again and stuff my stabilizer through the wing. A fuck up twofer.
Stephen Ross helped me get out of the water, taking my poor shredded wing. I thought I was done, but when I carried my board back to get ready to put stuff away and bail I realized my knee felt pretty much OK.

So I pumped up my 2.8 to give it another go, since the wind had amped up from nice to nutball. I'm a fan of nutball.

I stomped around a while to settle things that might be wiggling around under my kneecap, then went out again. It took forever to get to my feet, the tweak to my knee plus the low torque of the dinky wing giving me little help to haul myself up to a standing position--made for a grim few minutes. I finally wobbled to my feet, pumped up on foil, and off I went--feeling very much like a leaf in a hurricane. Going out at a close reach wasn't too bad, though the swells were brutal and bumpy. I went out quite a way looking for a smooth(ish) patch to jibe on. Never found one. I settled for a few bounces and a slow, wide jibe with a substantially out-of-control downwind stretch, but I was determined not to fall and need to get back up. Coming back in I was a very uncomfortable passenger. With the odd wind angle and the gusty shifts I'd get pulled off balance and into a super-fast downwind reach while I struggled to regain my balance. One of those would have been a bit much, ten or so really sucked. I decided I might cure my knee problem by ripping it to shreds if I screwed up, so I sailed straight to the beach and bailed. Stephen came in right behind me and we agreed that this wasn't exactly our idea of a relaxing fun time. So we bailed to the harbor.

Yes, once again, I wound up at Dennys.

25

Wingsurfing, Windfoiling, Wingfoiling, Wing SUP / PPffffttt!

« on: March 23, 2022, 11:10:59 PM »

It was nuking today in Kihei, and I was thrilled to get to use my 2.8. It's not often fat boys get to use the little stuff that the menehunes play with.

I put the 999/400-60 on my Flying Dutchman board. Pumped up my dinky little 2.8 F-one, and tied it to the mast on my board. The wind was gusting to 45, so all this took a little time. I went back to my van to put on my rash guard and impact vest, and when I was doing that I heard a weird PPffftt sound. I thought it might have been a passing car, but when I went to jump in the maelstrom I found this:

The board blew over and the wicked 999 wing skewered the leading edge on my 2.8M wing. Fuck. If it had poked a hole in the canopy I would have just taped it, but the damn thing nailed the leading edge and blew out the bladder. I usually tie onto the leash extension for my reel leash, but for some stupid reason I didn't do that.

The wind looked much too raucous for my 3.5. I should have tried it, but instead, I tucked tail and went to the harbor, which was just so-so.

Bummer.

26

Wingsurfing, Windfoiling, Wingfoiling, Wing SUP / Woulda, should rode the 999

« on: March 18, 2022, 10:44:40 PM »

It was nuking today on the southside of Maui. As in Gorge level nuking. I was going to do a downwinder with Steven Ross, but I misread conditions and rigged a 4.2 Strike wing and a 1150 wing. How stupid!

The wind was shit close to the beach, but as soon as I got clear of the jetty I was in trouble. Even flagged out or overhead with one hand I was overpowered, and the 1150 was reacting to the swell constantly. I was on or over the edge of control constantly. After about ten minutes of nutball thrashing, I pulled the pin and winged back upwind to the launch. fortunately, Bill Boyum, who is still on the injured reserve list was still there. He was going to shuttle my van down to the Mauni Kai--our destination. I planned to drop the wing to 3.5 and the foil wing to my 999. Steven also returned, so we decided to just mow ze lawn. Given the conditions that was fairly adventurous. there wasn't a single craft other than a guy with an OC1 hugging the shore anywhere in sight. No wingers, no windsurfers, no whale-watchers, no sailboats. Nothin, nada, as far as the eye could see.

For some stupid reason I didn't switch to the 999. Big mistake. the 999 controls swell like no other wing I've ever experienced. I had a good session, which is surprising considering my left knee has been total shit lately. the 1150 is way too reactive, the 999 would have been a lot more fun, though at the typical 999 speed my falls would have been like bouncing on concrete.

27

Random / For the Architectural Digest Readers

« on: March 03, 2022, 12:57:15 PM »

This is kind of cool: Maui No Ka Oi magazine just did an article on our house remodel. I have nothing to do with all this--it's Diane, totally. I could (and probably should, given how messy I am) live in a container if it had a good stove.  I just stay out of the way and don't offer unsolicited opinions. The article starts on page 52. Nice photos if you pop the thing up to full screen. The furniture Diane ordered finally showed up two years later. Of course, now I have to take a shower before I sit anywhere. 

https://issuu.com/mauinokaoimagazine/docs/issuu_v26n2/84

28

Random / Ponogolf

« on: January 31, 2022, 05:56:59 PM »

As the undisputed master of the totally stupid project, I present Ponogolf. No, I don't golf, but Diane does. so when we put in artificial turf at Ponohouse to eliminate the mud bog in the back yard, Diane had a putting green added. So of course I had to add miniature golf features. I teamed up with brother Bob to do the required windmill, with stepper motor drive programmed to be random speed and random reversing. And of course any mini golf course needs a dancing robot obstacle. Ours is named Karl, after Carl in Caddyshack, with a K because Karl is a spitting image of Karl Rohlfing after many samples of his estimable homebrew. Last but not least is the spastic programmable arm, Ty, named after Chevy Chase's character, Ty Webb. Ty is unpredictable and glitchy--perfect. Here's the windmill, an accurate representation of the Eastham mill except I guess Bob forgot a window or two. the code for the stepper motor is ridiculous since I decided the little OLED screen on the development board I chose should display system diagnostics, voltage, rotational speed and direction--even though it's buried inside the windmill. Why? because I'm fucking nuts.

https://www.facebook.com/PonoBill/videos/330353919006088

29

Random / I am the king of stupid projects

« on: January 16, 2022, 11:53:33 AM »

https://youtu.be/f-1fIaJS63w

30

Random / Biscuits and cornbread? really?

« on: January 14, 2022, 09:25:06 PM »

Yeah, I know. This probably isn't for everyone, but I posted this on Facebook and it started a major fazzazzah. so here you go. Warning! This will make you fat.

Ok. I need to post this because it's just so great. Sorry, this may fuck up your diet totally, but at least it's worth the calories. I'm a fairly serious cook. I occasionally have streaks where I work at it really hard, but mostly I just throw shit together, but I've been doing it so long that most times it works. This is taken from two posts on my blog. I warn you if you try this your life will change. You might be a little fatter. Of you might just have to exercise a little harder to stay where you are. You've been warned:

I never order biscuits at breakfast when I’m eating at a restaurant. That’s because I don’t live in the South and I don’t like eating hockey pucks. I don’t buy scones at coffee shops–same basic reason. Those dense wedges with no inherent flavor need a lot of other stuff in them to be even slightly edible. But I can cook a batch of staggeringly good biscuits or scones in 15 minutes and 14 minutes of that is waiting for them to be done baking. It literally takes a minute to make either, and I don’t use a mix.

My recipe is White Lilly self-rising flour and heavy cream. That’s it. Done. White Lilly is common in the south, every grocery store has it, and it’s dirt cheap, the same price as all-purpose flour. Here’s the only difference–White Lilly is made with soft wheat. Most flour in the Northern USA is made with hard wheat. Hard wheat has more protein and better gluten, so it makes better bread. If you want the yeast to do its best work, you want hard wheat flour.

Soft wheat has lower protein and less gluten. It makes lousy bread and great biscuits. All-purpose flour is a mix of soft and hard flour, which means it makes mediocre bread and horrid biscuits or scones. Bread flour or strong flour makes great bread and biscuits that will still exist when cockroaches rule the planet.
You can buy pastry flour in northern grocery stores and it almost works. Biscuits won’t come out as hard, tough little clinkers, but they won’t inspire poems. They won’t be White Lilly biscuits. You can buy White Lilly online from Amazon or Walmart for roughly ten times the price in a neighborhood market anywhere in the south. And it’s worth it. You can get non-self rising and add your own baking powder if you think you won’t make biscuits often and the baking powder would lose potency, but I just get the self-rising.

So you get the right flour and then do all the standard stuff, cutting in butter to make well-greased little nodules and then adding buttermilk until you have a workable dough. They’ll be great. Or you can skip all that and just make your dough with heavy cream, work it gently into a ball, pat it flat to a disk about an inch thick, and cut it into wedges or round biscuits with a sharp biscuit cutter to optimize the rise (important!!). Bake at 425 until they’re golden brown and eat them while they’re hot.

You can thank me later.

Oh, if you want scones, add a little sugar and an egg. Toss in whatever else you like in a scone. I have gradually switched to plain scones with some ginger/orange/lemon marmalade that I made.

Then there's cornbread. On a whim, I bought a cast iron oyster pan from Sur La Table. Well, actually from Amazon. I like barbequed oysters a LOT.

The heavy buggah arrived the day after I made a too-large pot of salmon and clam whatcha got chowder, effectively cleaning out all the slowly composting leftovers in the refrigerator (too late for a lot of stuff, but just in time otherwise). The unlikely combination of the carcass of a hefty whole Alaskan sockeye salmon for the stock and meat (I cooked the filets for a dinner with Gregg Leion and his much more charming wife a few nights before), a container of frozen chopped clams, pureed parsnips, pan-roasted corn off the cob, some yellowed broccoli, some wrinkly russet potatoes, and heavy cream that was turning to creme-not-so-Fraiche turned out to be amazing but needed a hearty companion. The biscuits I made the first night weren’t quite up to the match. So I made cornbread in my new Oyster pan. Awesome. So awesome that it’s been my lunch and sometimes dinner for the four days Diane has been gone on a ladies’ golf trip. Yes, I revert to a grubby bachelor as soon as her car leaves the garage.

The cornbread I made was just a basic guess that White Lilly flour might make great cornbread for the same reason it makes great baking powder biscuits–it’s the right kind of flour for this application. Since I’ve never seen a recipe for cornbread with White Lilly self-rising flour I just made it up on the fly. Absolutely amazing, on the first try.

1 cup White Lilly self-rising four
a little extra baking powder–probably 1/2 tsp.
1 cup Polenta, aka grits. I like the Red Mill stuff but any coarse cornmeal will work
1 Tbs sugar
2 Tbs oil (I used EVOO)
hefty pinch of salt
1 egg
heavy cream to make a pourable batter

Stupidly simple–mix everything together, add enough heavy cream to make a batter you can pour into whatever pan you choose to use. I lubed the oyster pan lightly with olive oil and poured in the batter to within 1/2″ of the top. Put it in an unheated oven set to 400 and fired it up. I think the slower heat cycle of an unheated oven lets the baking powder do its thing a bit longer. I have no idea how long it took, I just checked every few minutes until I saw the golden brown color I wanted. It’s easier to extract the sticks from the pan if you let it cool a bit after pulling the pan from the oven. The pan will be hot as blazes and will stay that way for a long time, so a trivet or just set it on the stove is necessary. No, I didn’t wait for it to cool to eat the first six–I don’t have that kind of discipline. I rarely let steak rest as long as I know I should either.

The cornbread is light, with a great texture. Rises to fill the pan with a nice smooth dome. Crisp on the edges, delicious with a dab of butter. I ate half the sticks with a bowl of chowder, and half of them later for dessert with some local honey drizzled on them. Yes, I ate 12 huge cornbread sticks.

By myself.

Like an animal.

This is, by a long, long margin, the best cornbread I’ve ever had.