February 2010 Archives

I rather expected the new LiFePo batteries to be significantly smaller than the same capacity SLAs.  But they were only a little smaller.
The charger, however, was significantly larger.  Heh heh.
I didn't expect the new Brushless motor to be much smaller, but it's positively tiny.
The motor has me a bit worried.  For one I'm concerned that it won't be able to produce the amount of torque I'll need to propel myself.  But I guess I'll find that out soon enough.

My my biggest concern is that I can't figure out how to mount that little thing.  It's just too small.  It's like one of those little cell phones that were trendy back in the late '90's that you could barely hold on to.

So far my only idea is take apart the old 500 watter and see if I can mount this motor inside the case of that motor some how, some way.  Maybe I'll come up with a better plan...

It's been a bit over two weeks now since I ordered all the parts for my 1300 watt stand-up scooter project. 

Most of the parts arrived within a few days of the initial order.  I have a nice little cache building up in the den of all the shiny new parts.

But the motor... the motor did not show up.  I checked my order confirmation emails and found that I had received an email about the motor saying, "Your order has been sent to the warehouse for processing." 

I waited, each day watching as delivery trucks drove past my house without stopping.  I waited, each evening pulling up the web site showing the motor just so I could gaze at it wistfully.  The weekend came, but the motor didn't.

One day, midway through the second week, I forgot to watch vigilantly.  It was a busy day, I was preoccupied, I was distracted.  Suddenly, I realized I hadn't been watching for the delivery trucks.  My motor could be here, out on my porch, just waiting for me to open the door and pick it up!  I gasped and ran to the door swinging it wide... but there was no motor on the porch waiting for me to pick it up.  The porch was empty.  The porch was empty.

Another weekend came, and the motor still didn't.

Finally, I went back to the web site from which I'd ordered the motor.  I found that there was a status next to my order that said, "Processing."  I then found a note that said that the motor was on back-order and there was no expected date of delivery.

WHAT?!

I turned red in the face all the way up to the top of my bald head.  I got up and walked to the living room then marched back and sat down in front of my computer again. 

Amidst a flood of good old American self-righteous indignation, I canceled that order.  And it felt good!

It took a few minutes for me to realize that I had no motor, that no motor would be showing up, that I had to find another motor for this project.  (sigh)  Asearching I went, to find me a motor that would fit my needs. 

I never did find one that had the shaft-size I needed.  And I couldn't find a 6000 watt beastie either, at least not for a reasonable price.  So, I ordered a 2800 watt one; since I'm only planning to push 1300 watts anyhow, it's still way overkill.  And I ordered a new front sprocket to fit the shaft of the new motor I ordered.  Great.

Now imagine my surprise when the motor showed up on my porch The Next Day.

Right.  So, I got the parts, I'll take some pictures and throw them up.

I can't draw.  But I can pretend, hey. 

My usual method of pretending is to find a picture I like, trace the key features, then shade it the way I like it.  Even with my cheating, it still comes out looking childish, compared to a real artist.  But it's fun and relaxing, and some of them don't look too bad.

I just finished a piece done this way.  I think the proper way to phrase the medium is "graphite on paper."  Which means I scribbled with some pencils on a piece of paper I snitched from the printer tray.

Even so, this is my favorite one so far.

We had our second ultrasound a few days ago.  We lost the baby.

There were no warning signs.  Everything was looking good, no cramps or bleeding or anything.  But when the doctor did the ultrasound, the baby was much too small, and she couldn't find a heartbeat.  She got another doctor to look, also.  It was a miscarriage. 

Serene got a D&C Saturday while I distracted her with tall tales about dinosaurs and Japanese gardens. 

I'm surprised at how hard it hit us both.  It's been a hard few days, with a lot of sudden bouts of tears.  The littlest things set us off.  Like when we were on our way to get the procedure done, we walked past a birthing class and I suddenly couldn't see anymore.  I hadn't realized how much we had already bonded with our little baby.

It's been hard to tell everybody.  Every phone call brings everything right to the surface again.  But it's also been very therapeutic talking to people about it.  A lot of people have gone through similar experiences, and have good and encouraging perspectives on it.

Still hurts though.

I put together an architecture diagram to show the components, the data stores, and how they interact.

The Xenia project has been officially launched this weekend.

Several months ago I picked up an old beat up and broken down X-Treme X-500 scooter.  It was in pretty bad shape.  The throttle had been smashed, the controller was fried, the front brake was missing some parts, and, just to top it off, the front tire was flat.

That scooter, had it been in good working order, is one of the more powerful stand-up scooters you can buy.  It comes with a 500 watt motor, running on 48 volts.  That gives it great acceleration, and allows it to carry a good 200 pound load up a hill.

My plan is to put a 6000 watt brushless motor in it.  Yeah, that's not a typo.  It really is a six thousand watt motor.  But I'll be running it at 51.2 volts at a max of 25 amps, which will put it at roughly 1280 watts.

I'm putting in 4 12.8 volt 6.8 amp hour Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePo) batteries, which should give me a range of around 5-8 miles, depending on weight, speed, surface conditions, tire pressure, moon phase, bean leach efficiency, proximity of hummingbirds, etc.

So, this weekend, I finally took the old beastie all apart, cleaned everything, remeasured everything, and ordered all the parts.

And so it begins...



The parts laying around are all the old parts I took out.  And that old 500 watt motor is heavier than it looks.

Now I get to wait for all the new parts to come in.

I was laying awake way too early last Sunday morning.  Everything was still asleep, except me.  The worms, the morning birds, even the sun was still asleep.  My brain wandered around a bit as I lay there pretending I was still sleeping like the rest of the world.  And it bumped into something that has been nagging at me.  Memories.

See, memories are, by nature, rooted in the Time characteristic of this great universe of ours.  They are What Was.  They are Historical References.  They are Past.  And they are a huge part of what forms us, what makes us who we are.

Much of our brain is still a big fat mystery to us, though our knowledge about it grows constantly.  But we do already know a lot about how memories are formed and stored.  We're learning more every day about how things like strokes and Alzheimer's disease affect our brains.  And we know with certainty that our memories are stored in our brains.

My brain, in it's wandering around early that morning, jumped from memory to the afterlife.

Let's lay a foundation of assumptions for this little mental walk-about we're on.  Let's assume there is an afterlife.  Let's, further, assume that this afterlife is not within the confines of our current universe.  (So, for example, we're not really allowing for reincarnation or any other "graduating levels of enlightenment" theories in this little discussion.)  And, it may be obvious but just to get it out there, let's assume there is a component to each and every one of us that survives death and is not bound to this universe in which we exist, an Immortal Spirit, if you will.

The thought that snuck up on me as I lay there was that if our memories are all tied up with our physical, bound-to-this-universe bodies, what would remain of the grand and royal Me when my Immortal Spirit roamed onward?  All my memories, all my What Was, that huge part of what made me who I am, would be gone.

I didn't like that thought, nope, not one bit, moot as any thought may be in this doomed brain of mine.

But then I remembered that if my Immortal Spirit was not part of this universe, it is entirely possible that it would have unfettered access to every moment of itself within this universe.  That's even better than my memories.  I could live and live and live a moment again.  In fact I might be doing so right now.

Of course, there are a whole slew of assumptions, maybe's and what-if's thrown in there and jumbled together.  And maybe everything would look different once the sun woke up.

A few days ago I bitched and moaned about Karmic coming with notification tray icons that make my computer look like a 1995 cell phone.  (Notification Tray Rant)

Shortly after I posted that, I found a fix.  You know, fix is kind of a funny word.  It can mean a whole swarm of things besides just "repairing something that was broken."  It can be a bad situation ("I'm in a real fix now"), cheating ("That race was fixed"), revenge ("She fixed him good"), a drug dose ("Just one fix, pleeeeeeaze"), or even a reference to castration ("Chip's been fixed, poor dog").

In this case, I think almost all of those definitions apply.  I fixed it.

I found the steps below on some guys blog.  I have no idea what the search terms ended up being that yielded this page, but I know it was a bit circuitous.  I'd love to give the guy credit, but I can't find the page again.

Anyhow, here are the steps.  This is basically just installing different desktop themes.


Once them themes are in place, open up your Appearances dialog (System ⇒ Preferences ⇒ Appearances) and choose one.

This works both with and without Compiz Fusion.

Huzzah!  Take THAT Karmic!