Are you a LumberJock?
If you are a LumberJock (or just aspire to be one like I do) then you should visit LumberJocks. LumberJocks is a growing website that gives the registered “Jocks” a place to post descriptions of their projects along with few photos. Other “Jocks” can rate the projects and leave weblog style comments and questions on the projects they visit.
LumberJocks is still under active development and has recently added forums for discussions amongst the members. There’s also a LumberJocks Blog that you can watch for announcements concerning the site.
The whole LumberJocks site is very cleanly styled and well crafted. I’d guessed it was a Rails app even before scrolling to the bottom and seeing the Rails logo. LumberJocks makes very nice use of Ajax and Rails features to make the site a joy to use. I particularly like the float-over picture viewer used on the project pages; no extra windows popping up or back-buttons to contend with when reviewing the project photos.
Sunday May 21, 2006 · Permalink
Window Bench in Google SketchUp
The window bench was built out of jatoba (Brazilian cherry) to fit below the picture window in our living room. It might be just a little too tall as a bench, but works great as a small table. The stretchers are screwed to the sides and the holes plugged. The top is secured by table top fasteners (z clips) in grooves cut with a biscuit joiner.
Tuesday May 2, 2006 · Permalink
Angled Footstool in Google SketchUp
I’ve been playing with Google SketchUp (like thousands of others).
Here is a small angled footstool, sometimes sold as a nursing footstool, drawn in Google SketchUp.
The joinery is very simple, just two screws through each side into the brace, and four screws from the top, two into each side. All screws are covered with wood plugs. I built ours from oak, but any harder wood would work, cherry, jatoba, maple, ash, whatever matches your environment. Since it is somewhat shaker styled, you could even make it from poplar and milk paint it.
Not shown in the sketch (yet) are the small rubber feet that I inset into holes on the bottoms of the side pieces. I left the rubber proud of the hole by about 1/8” to keep the stool from sliding on the berber carpet. Other carpets may not be as slippery.
Dimensions are: top 14×10, highest point about 6 1/4”. There is a dimension layer in the sketch that you can turn on to see all the dimensions.
Tuesday May 2, 2006 · Permalink
Using SMTP AUTH as a client
If your ISP requires you to use SMTP AUTH to connect up to their mailserver for outbound email (as is the case with SBC/Yahoo) the following links will prove helpful:
Luckily for me, the cable provider I have right now seems to do IP address range checking so I can send outbound via their servers as my Sendmail smart host without setting up SMTP AUTH.
Tuesday March 28, 2006 · Permalink
My First Raised Panel Door
I made my first raised panel door this weekend. It was actually easier than I thought it would be.
I’ve been taking a series of woodworking classes at our local Woodcraft building Shaker inspired pieces with Glen Huey. Glen’s a great instructor, showing us how he makes the pieces in his shop. It’s nice seeing how he works to make each piece simply, and how many of the setups help to eliminate mistakes.
The door (about 14×19) used rails and stiles that were 2 1/4 inches wide with 1/4 inch mortices and a 3/8 inch deep dado 1/4 inch wide with haunched tenons.
The cutting sequence is actually quite simple:
- cut 1/4 inch wide mortice in the rails, they should end 3/8 inch from the end and from the mating rail edge
- cut 1/4 inch deep kerf 1 1/4 inches from each end of the faces of the rails
- cut 3/8 inch deep kerf 1 1/4 inches from the inside edges of the rails
- cut 3/8 inch deep kerf 7/8 inches from the outside edges of the rails (this is for the haunch)
- using a tenon cutting jig, cut the tenons on the rails to fit the mortices
- cut a 1/4 inch dado in the insides of the of the rails (first) and stiles (second), use the tenons to size the dados so haunch will fit securely in the rails
The raised panel was simple to make also. We were using a 5/8 inch panel so the raised panel stands proud of the frame (just an 1/8th inch).
Glen likes to use a 12 degree angle, so the edge of the panel is needs to be 3/16 inch to fit correctly in the dado. We used a zero clearance plate for the saw, then set the height of the blade so the outside edge of the blade’s tooth would just come through the panel by holding the panel above the blade as it was adjusted. We cut the end grain first and then with the grain. I was suprised by how much force it took to cut the end grain.
After raising the panel we reset the saw to square up the edges of the raised panel, shaving off just a fine 1/8th inch to clean up the edge. Just a little sanding later and we were able to glue up the frame and raised panel doors.
Sunday March 26, 2006 · Permalink
Pinewood Derby 2006
The pack Pinewood Derby was the first weekend in February. At left is a picture of #2’s Sword car on the left. Most of his races finished this way with the car about a car length ahead of the other racers. Early in the races, his car and a competitor took turns setting the track record times. But then his car actually got faster and he set the track record in his seventh race and tied it again in the ninth. Overall his car finished first in the pack, so we’ll be going to the district races again this year.
At left is #1’s Trogdor car closest to the viewer. He liked the open hole in the body that I used on my car last year, so he worked up a car like that for this year’s races. His car was second or third fastest in the Webelo 2s and was in the top 20 of the pack.
I also built two cars for the races this year, but didn’t end up with any photos of them on the track. One was an open hole car similar to Trogdor above (except in red and a little thicker) to race in the open stock class. It finished 2nd to another father. I also entered a box car in the open unlimited class. For that car I took a block of jatoba (brazilian cherry) and weighted it up and stuffed it in the box a normal pinewood derby kit comes in. It weighed in at 24.2 ounces and it managed to finish first in the unlimited class, beating out the two heavier competitors.
Update: April 8, 2007
Here are studio shots of the cars.
Trogdor
The Sword
Mr Red
Box Car
Wednesday March 1, 2006 · Permalink
Weather Underground Reorganizer Updated
The Weather Underground Reorganizer has been updated to deal with the new front page layout at Weather Underground. The update also includes reorganizing the tropical weather pages.
Updated 2005-10-11: Updated to reflect new radar page layout and now includes the satellite pages.
Updated 2005-12-18: Updated to work with Greasemonkey 0.6.4, still works with older versions of Greasemonkey too.
Updated 2005-12-24: Updated to work with new layout on regional radar page.
Saturday December 24, 2005 · Permalink
Greasemonkey: Snopes Header Shrink
Another Greasemonkey script, this one will shrink the header on Snopes.com so that more content is visible on the page. Actually, removes the header is more like it, along with making sure all the rest of the content moves up to the top of the page.
Enjoy.
Monday October 10, 2005 · Permalink
Greasemonkey Weather Underground Reorganizer
Greasemonkey rocks!
My first public Greasemonkey user script is a Weather Underground Reorganizer.
It was based upon Matthew Gray’s user script that moved the forecast contents above the header and sidebar.
My version includes Matthew’s re-org and adds a similar re-org on the local and regional radar pages. It also adds direct links to the animated local and regional radar pages where appropriate on the forecast and local radar pages.
I’ve not added any ad blocking to the script, adblock probably would do a fine job on the ads. Weather Underground asks just $5 per year to be ad-free and they give you access to daytime animated radar data as part of the deal, so I’ve been a subscriber for years now.
I hope this script will work for others, and welcome feedback on it. My email address is over in the right side bar.
Friday April 29, 2005 · Permalink
Google Sightseeing: NASCAR Tracks
After seeing the fun posts on the Google Sightseeing pages, I decided to check and see just how many of the race tracks that NASCAR uses I could find. Here’s my list:
- Atlanta Motor Speedway
- Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez
- Bristol Motor Speedway
- California Speedway
- Chicagoland Speedway
- Darlington Raceway
- Daytona Int’l Speedway
- Dover Int’l Speedway
- Gateway Int’l Raceway
- Homestead-Miami Speedway
- Indianapolis Motor Speedway
- Indianapolis Raceway Park
- Infineon Raceway
- Kansas Speedway
- Kentucky Speedway (hard to tell)
- Las Vegas Motor Speedway
- Lowe’s Motor Speedway (split between two satellite images)
- Mansfield Motorsports Speedway
- Martinsville Speedway
- Memphis Motorsports Park
- Michigan Int’l Speedway
- The Milwaukee Mile
- Nashville Superspeedway
- Nazareth Speedway
- New Hampshire Int’l Speedway
- Phoenix Int’l Raceway
- Pikes Peak Int’l Raceway
- Pocono Raceway
- Richmond Int’l Raceway
- Talladega Superspeedway (split between two satellite images)
- Texas Motor Speedway
- Watkins Glen International
If I’ve gotten anything wrong, or you know the Autodromo location, drop me an email.
Updated 12 Jan 2006: Courtesy of Ryan Van Booven, who was locating the tracks in Google Earth, we now have a location for Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez. Thanks Ryan!
Thursday April 14, 2005 · Permalink