Vivian South Dakota? Ever heard of the place? Yep, neither have I. It has been a bizarre year around my neck of the woods, weather-wise. Giant hail in Bozeman, tornadoes in Billings and all over the NE corner, micro bursts near Glasgow…weird stuff. weather != gadgetry, but awesome weather phenomenon = science FTW Well, Vivian (from here on out, “Viv”) South Dakota has claimed its colloquial fifteen minutes of fame, in the form of a world record hailstone. 1.9375 pounds. Nicely played, Viv. I found this story amazing…some local news site interviewed one of Viv’s finest. Les Scott is a death-defying party animal…

“I just happened to see this one fall and the only reason I went out and got it is because it has all these fingers sticking out of it and I thought, ‘Oh, that’s weird.’ So I thought I’d go get that one,” Scott said. Scott originally wanted to make a daiquiri out of the hail, but decided to contact the National Weather Service instead. Tuesday, they were in Vivian. They carefully took the stone from the freezer and placed it in a cooler with dry ice. The next stop was at the post office where the hail had a date with the federally certified scale. Moments later, the hailstone weighed in at 1.9375 pounds.

Daiquiri? Come the hell on Les. National news, buddy…pick something less feminine about which to wax funny.

Okay…maybe not that cool.

One step closer… Switch open yields a killer red LED… Switch closed yields an uber-sexy green LED… I even tossed in some 1K resistors to keep my LEDs healthy, in addition to my 100 ohm / 10000 ohm pull-down setup. +4 resistorI even managed to comment my code, for a bonus win:

/* * binary red/green led setup * by Joseph Swanson * https://swantron.com */ int led1 = 11; // green LED (pin 11) int led2 = 12; // red LED (pin 12) int swit= 5; // switch (pin 5) int varr; // to read pin on/off (pin 5) void setup() { pinMode(led1, OUTPUT); // output green pinMode(led2, OUTPUT); // output red pinMode(swit, INPUT); // switch input } void loop(){ varr = digitalRead(swit); // store swit to varr if (varr == LOW) { // button = pressed digitalWrite(led1, HIGH); // trigger green digitalWrite(led2, LOW); // ground red } if (varr == HIGH) { // button != pressed digitalWrite(led1, LOW); // ground green digitalWrite(led2, HIGH); // trigger red } } +1 SnippetI’m getting closer to having this thing behave the way I intend. Stay tuned for a while longer. I’ll have a robot up and rolling in no time whatsoever.

Maybe Vegas got the best of me, brain-wise. I’m struggling mightily with this pull-down switch prototype on my Arduino. I got it, after far-too-much troubleshooting. Maybe I need another frozen slushy drink. Or alternatively, a supplementary OML to get me through this…the end goal is to get some logic incorporated to ‘read’ the state of the switch, so that I don’t need my finger on the sonofabitch to keep the light lit. Or lighted…getting tired here. Stay tuned. I’ll get this knocked out.

This should go on 26outs.com, but, hey, why not throw it here. Sweet Lou is hanging up his manager-cleats at the end of the 2010 season. Too bad. I was hoping Piniella would surpass Bobby Cox in the ‘most times sent to the showers early’ category. Sad day in Mudville.

Here is the end result of my customization. Not too shabby, if I say so myself. Kate and I are going to take off and get married. Catch you all in 10 days or so.

I put together a little sketch while I was horsing around with the Arduino serial monitor… …pretty stupid, huh? Especially, since it repeats this horrible haiku every five seconds. Forever. This is, oddly enough, the first thing I have taken the required 10 seconds to add comments to my code, which ought to be worth at least a +1

/* * Awful Haiku * * This useless thing prints an aweful haiku * repeatedly, for no particular reason * * courtesy of your friends @ swantron.com * https://swantron.com */ void setup() // reset { Serial.begin(9600); // set serial baud } void loop() // loop area { Serial.println(“Haiku “); // start of haiku crap Serial.println("~~~~~”); Serial.println(” “); Serial.println(“Arduinos are neat.”); Serial.println(“You can do a bunch of crap;”); Serial.println(“Like print a haiku.”); Serial.println(” “); Serial.println(” “); delay(5000); // 5 second delay }

• 1 Haiku - 1 Awful Haiku + 1 Comments in Code - 1 Useless Program - 1 No LEDs ____________________ -1 Total. Sorry for wasting your time.

I suppose I am picky when it comes to sinks. Not bad picky, but picky enough to know what I want. I spent the better part of a decade with double sink set-ups, between my restaurant and bar work experience. I may not be much of a doer of dishes, but set me up with two sinks, and I’ll do my thing. Being a minimalist of sorts, I basically have two choices; granite sinks or stainless steel sinks. I’m leaning towards the former, after seeing some sweet, black granite Mr Direct brand sinks. I was under the false assumption that all granite sinks were speckled and dirty looking. Not the case. Pair that sink with a clean looking faucet apparatus like this… …and all of a sudden, I guess I am a granite sink guy. Hit one of those links above for the details. I most surely will when it is time to remodel our place.

My ethernet shield is here…I haven’t talked to it yet. This could be awesome.

I think what I fondly refer to as my laboratory might not classify as a true lab, per se. I have some sweet stuff going for me in my garage workspace…but the lack of lab equipment might leave me with more of a nerd fortress, and less of a lab. Here is a quick pic: While most of my projects are electronic in nature, I still get down and dirty with some mechanical projects. Woodworking, too, and of course programming. I would for sure benefit from a laboratory apparatus or two, in order to establish some lab credibility. Those above links are to Lab Planet…which I stumbled across while looking for some equipment. I was looking into a dry ice machine, which they have, and saw that they have scores of sweet equipment. Centrifuges, microscopes, furnaces…even mass spec stuff. How sweet would my Arduino projects be with a touch of chemistry?