I have no idea how I managed to get to Thursday already. Last time I checked the clock, it was still Monday...

OK, that's a slight exaggeration, but I have been busy. It's been a long week at work, while at home I've been immersing myself back in the world of engineering and CAD. I even spent a bit of time on Tuesday calculating the load of a distributed mass on a beam. *sigh* Ah, the days when I was an engineer... well, OK, actually, I'm still an engineer. I just don't make money on it.

Anyway, the tank stand is shaping up. Methinks this weekend will be spent getting happily covered in sawdust; a few hours of work tonight, and I'll be all set to start the real work. A certain someone (Jon) made disparaging comments when he saw my hand sketch about working only with "proper CAD drawings"; he didn't know what he was getting himself into. Heh. I just hope the plotter here at work has enough toner... (Yes, it's a laser plotter, 60" paper width. Yes, we have full use of it. No, I don't really know why.) I'm still a touch concerned about the weight of the tank - or more specifically, the 45+ gallons of salt water and the rock that the tank will contain. The calulations all work out though, so it should be fine. All I need to finish is the final design of the tank hood, a cutting plan, and the last of the dimensioning.

Computer-wise, it's been a slow week. I did pick up something this weekend; a new CD-RW drive. I know, Bob said to wait. Well, I waited long enough, considering I purchased a 24x16x10x TDK CD-RW for $200. That's about $100 cheaper than they were last week, and the same price as I could have purchased a 16x10x32x for at the time. Of course, it's not a Plextor, but it has most of the features of the Plextor; Burn-PROOF, the whole bit. And quite an upgrade over my 2x Acer. <G> The Acer died suddenly last week, which became a problem for Keri; now that it's out of the system, I can see that the problem is fairly minor and possibly easily correctable. If so, I'll put it away for an emergency.

Hopefully I'll have time to post more later, but I make no promises. See you...

Monday, July 23 - Hi Again

Well, I actually accomplished a few things over the weekend. How about that? <G> I spent some time Saturday night poking at the Fido code - working on the install script, mainly, and still trying to work out a useable logic for the actual program. I got all the big bugs in the install script squished before going to bed - and woke up with a nearly-complete design in my head for the daemon. Most of Sunday ended up being spent on that, which is now complete. Well, sort of. The program is done, every feature I wanted for version 1.0 is included, but I haven't even begun debugging yet - I made one attempt, looked at the page-and-a-half of errors, and switched to another project. <G> Actually, that's not too bad, considering the program is something like 350 lines, and a "page" consists of maybe ten errors.

Before I can start debugging, though, I need to be able to run it on test hardware. So I started on that, too. PUCK is being reborn, now that his hardware is working again. Debian "Woody" with Perl 5.6.1, and it has two serial ports - I can test both the CM17A FireCracker module and the CM11 "ActiveHome" on the same machine. If I'm really lucky, I might even start on that tonight - but I wouldn't count on it, as I'm working on another project right at the moment. (Well, not at the moment, but you know what I mean.)

We've had a fish tank for quite a while - a 45 gallon freshwater tank. We've always talked about the possibility of converting it to saltwater - it's big enough, and Keri's favorite kinds of fish are saltwater - but we've never really done anything about it. Well, Keri has decided (with my support, yes, but she'll be doing most of the work) to bite the bullet and convert it into a reef tank.

A reef tank is more interesting, in both our opinions, than other kinds of salt-water (deep water, open ocean, or brackish) and has the added advantage of being more versatile. It does, however, require more equipment than a freshwater tank - a protein skimmer, different filtering, and a bigger pump just to start. So one of the major parts of the project - and my major contribution, aside from cheerleading and occaisional opinions - is the replacement of the tank stand.

The old one is a cheap veneer stand that we picked up with the tank. We got both for about $100 from a pet store that was shutting down in Arizona. It's not a bad tank, but the stand is terrible - particle board with veneer, a tad wobbly, and just barely big enough to hold the tank itself, without the added equipment weight. It's also rather lacking in the storage department, and it doesn't match anything else in the apartment (guys will note that this argument did not originate with me...)

Being of an engineering mindset, I didn't approach the problem by checking web sites, cruising garage sales, or anything else. First, I spent some time while we were at the fish store (The Fish Store, amusingly enough, in Bellevue - on 156th south of Microsoft) looking at their tank stands and hoods. Rather nice, if somewhat plain - but nothing that would fit our tank, which has a bow front. Still, it gave me some ideas.

Next, when I was diheartened by the bug list on Fido, I got out the graph paper and tape measure and got to work. We have the protein skimmer - a 19" column, 3.5" in diameter, that hangs from the back of the tank - and the tank itself, so I started there. Fast sketches on the graph paper, not to scale, with dimensions. Then I measured the TV stand - it's about the right size, and we'd kind of like to match it - and sketched it as well. Next, time to fire up AutoCAD.

I modeled the tank first, which wasn't too difficult - a block, plus a large cylinder to mimic the bow front. (AutoCAD made that easy, once I remembered how - just measure the arc in three places, punch them in, and you're done.) I still need to add in the trim, but for this early stage, it's good enough. The protein skimmer was a bit tougher, but I managed - essentially a series of cylinders of varying heights. I ignored the internal structure, just being concerned with the external dimensions for my purposes. I was gratified to learn that it was apparently well designed and manufactured - every dimension is precise and accurate, and the pieces fit together extremely well. It was also clearly designed using inches as the unit of measure, not metric. <G>

What I ended up with - and all I have right now is a sketch - is a rather simple cabinet, 38" high at the tank deck by 40" wide. The base and the tank deck - where the tank will sit - both curve at the front to mimic the curve of the tank. The base cabinet itself will not be curved, instead consisting of three panels - the center one solid to provide more support, and the two on each side being doors to provide access to shelving inside. The back is mostly open - there will be at least one top-to-bottom support at the back, and probably a couple of shelves and brackets for hoses and cables.

One interesting thing is that the back of the cabinet will have an additional shelf, 7.75" higher than the tank deck and lightly carpeted for noise absorption. That's to support the protein skimmer and other equipment - the pump and so on. The back wall of the tank will be painted black to provide a backdrop, and will probably be almost completely hidden by the live rock for the reef anyway, plus it allows me to provide more support for the tank.

The hood over the top is not really firm in my mind yet - it will be fairly large, as it has to hide several inches of the protein skimmer and a rather large light hood - but other than that, I'm not really sure. Again, I'll most likely mimic what The Fish Store had, but I don't know for sure what it will look like yet.

Last but not least, our tank stand will have one feature most others don't - a cat perch. Doorstop in particular loves to watch the fish, so somehow or another there will be a perch to let him watch all he likes without marking up the tank stand. It may or may not be an actual part of the stand - I keep changing my mind - but it'll probably be a version of one of those carpeted cat trees you see in pet stores. Doorstop likes climbing, and it need not be too complicated for it to be just about perfect - maybe even a simple rectangular block, the same height as the tank base, would do the job.

Finally, just a link to one of the best pictures I've seen all year - from Jerry's site for last week, a shot of the first consumer rocket plane taking off on its first test flight. Thanks to Jerry for publishing the shot, and thanks to Dick Rutan and XCOR for creating it. Report here.

Small little linkfest...

Shock-oriented but well-done commentary on the DMCA and other confiscatory laws.