It’s made with poplar and walnut. For anyone interested in this plan, you’ll need 8’ x 10” x 3/4” of poplar, 3’ x 8” x 3/4” walnut, and a 4’ x 10” of 1/4” plywood. Tom Fidgen makes his plan for this box available for free online, but I recommend his book!

All of the cuts were made by hand with the exeption of rip cuts (made on a table saw), and the initial dressing of the wood from 1” rough to 3/4” dressed. Instead of giving a step by step (boooooring), I’ll just outline methods I used in the project.

The bottom is 1/4” plywood slipped into a dado, about 1/4” up from the bottom.

Dado: After marking the stopped dado to be cut with a marking guage, it was emphasized with a cutting knife. This line was cut as much as possible with a backsaw. Following this, the bulk was removed with a 1/4” chisel.

Mortice and tenon: Quite a simple joint. The mortise was cut the same as the dados. The tennon size was simply a third of the overall thickness of the piece of wood. Ie. if the wood is 3/4” thick, then 1/4” is removed on either side of a 1/4” tenon.

Sliding lid: An innovative part of this chest is that the lid slides back and forth. Again, some 1/2” dados are cut to fit a rotating hinge available through Lee Valley.

Well that’s all for this post! Now back to my Saturday DIY ritual: homemade bagels!

People are fickle beasts, and when there’s a struggle to get to the first milestone, they tend to get frustrated quickly. Many are picking up a resistor for the first time, or are intimidated by the breadboard and its hidden pathways. Others get something built, find it doesn’t work, but don’t know if the problem is hardware or software. These things are all daunting to beginners.

Diyode Code Shield - prototype board 1

We came to the conclusion a while ago that for the sake of keeping people, especially kids, enthusiastic, they should get their feet wet with code first. Once they are comfortable with that, then tackle the hardware. To provide the shortest possible route to the first moment of glory, we developed a new arduino shield built specifically for the process of teaching arduino code. By  initially bypassing the electronics theory and postponing the breadboarding stage, it takes much of the frustration out of the learning process. Those things can come later, once they’ve already got a pocket full of victories.

The Diyode Code Shield has:
Inputs: switch, button, potentiometer, rotary encoder, thermistor, photocell, and hall effect sensor.
Outputs: Piezo buzzer, servo motor, RGB LED, Yellow LED, and a relay with screw terminals.

Over the next month we’ll be developing a curriculum and sample code for the board. We’ll also be refining the board layout, and looking to source the circuit boards in larger quantities. My personal goal is to be spreading the gospel of Arduino to schools, cub scout groups and community centres though out the city, leaving an arduino and a code shield in the hands of each kid who was first to meet a specific challenge.

If you’d be interested in the board, leave a comment below, and I’ll keep you updated as things progress.

We brought the kids plenty of candy – but to get it they had to make an armor piercing rocket They got pretty clever pretty fast…

Rocket Launch Video

Bashed this table together quickly over the weekend for our youngest daughter. There’s nothing terribly groundbreaking here.  A simple plywood top, rounded and routered to make nice edges.  My wife, older daughter and I painted after the young one’s bedtime over the weekend, then some simple legs and a lot of varnish. The legs are easily replaceable, so the table can grow as she does.

What I did love about this is how easy everything is when you have the tools and space to do things right. The actual time spent in the workshop was minuscule, but my daughter now has something that she will hopefully treasure for years to come.

This is the article which first inspired me. http://blog.interlinked.org/tutorials/rsync_time_machine.html

But I still had some problems with it. Firstly you either had to pull the backup from the Mac. My Mac is not on all the time. Least of all at night when backups are normally made.

The other option pushed the backup from the Mac but then you had to have SSH access to the Linux server that you were backing up to. Difficult to setup and not too secure because of the public/private key authentication scheme to avoid typing in your password.

So this is what I came up with.

Rsync Server on Linux:

The first thing you should setup is a Linux server that has plenty disk for the backups and has rsync installed. Your Mac(s) will be connecting to this server with rsync and transferring files to it.

I’m not going to do through the whole rsync installation. There are quite a few guides on the Internet for that. I will just describe my setup and leave you to fill in the rest.

I am using Debian 5.0 with rsync  version 3.0.3.

Here is what my /etc/rsyncd.conf

######
uid = root
gid = backup
use chroot = yes
max connections = 4
syslog facility = local5
pid file = /var/run/rsyncd.pid
[mac]
        path = /Public/Backup-Mac
        comment = Backup directory for Bunny's Mac
        read only = false
######

I am using ‘chroot’ which I am told is more secure. If you want to be even more secure I would suggest you change the ‘uid’ and ‘gid’ to something other than ‘root’.

You will notice that I am using rsync ‘modules’. The [mac] portion is sort of like a Samba mount for rsync and it defines where the Mac’s will be putting their files. Read up on rsync ‘modules’ as they really are powerful.

I have a 2 TB disk mounted on /media/Backup-Mac which is where rsync will put all the Mac’s backup files. Here is what the disk looks like.

######

drwxr-xr-x 9 root root    4096 2011-11-15 12:15 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root       0 2011-11-15 16:20 ..
drwxr-xr-x 3 root backup  4096 2011-10-12 14:48 backup-2011-11-12
drwxr-xr-x 3 root backup  4096 2011-10-13 09:03 backup-2011-11-13
drwxr-xr-x 3 root backup  4096 2011-10-14 09:37 backup-2011-11-14
drwxr-xr-x 3 root backup  4096 2011-11-15 10:43 backup-2011-11-15
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      17 2011-11-15 12:17 current -> backup-2011-11-15
drwx------ 2 root root   16384 2011-10-12 14:35 lost+found

That’s it for the Linux side.

Mac client side:

The real power of rsync is it will synchronize 2 directories very efficiently. It only transfers the changes and nothing else. The initial sync can take a long time but from there it is very fast in keeping things the same. Great for the WiFi link I use.

The other power of rsync is it’s ability to use hardlinks for incremental backups. That means that you can have what appears to be ‘snapshots’ of your files from a series of days but they take up only as much space as 1 complete backup plus the daily changes. See the article above for details on how rsync uses hardlinks.

The benefit of using hardlinks is when you take a look at one days backup you have the entire files structure just as it would have been on you Mac. This makes retrieving files as easy as navigating the directories.

Here is the script that I use on the Mac side:

######

#!/bin/sh

DATE=$(date "+%Y-%m-%d")
HOST="tecra"
MODULE="mac"
BWLIMIT="5000"

REMOTE_DIR="backup-$DATE"

LOCAL_DIR="/Users"

rsync -azP --bwlimit=$BWLIMIT --link-dest=/current  --exclude-from=/etc/rsync.exclude $LOCAL_DIR $HOST::$MODULE/$REMOTE_DIR

cd /var/tmp
mkdir current
cd current
rsync -rv --delete --include=current '--exclude=*' . $HOST::$MODULE
ln -s backup-$DATE ./current
rsync -azP current $HOST::$MODULE
cd /
rm -rf /var/tmp/current
#####

Most, if no all, people use SSH to create the ‘current’ link on the remove server. I figured out a way to do it just via rsync. The bit after the rsync command is where it gets done.

Just a small snippit of what goes on in the shop.

I am drawing up a floor plan for the hackers space to facilitate the locating of tools, benches and work spaces at 71b Wyndham Street.  Included below is 2D floor plans drawing and a 3D renderings of the work shop and meeting room. These images will be updated as the plan progresses. Development of the shop plan will be discussed at the DIYode meetings on Monday evenings. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or suggestions for the plan. I can be reached at crazyas8@gmail.com

Best regards,

Edward Jackson

Shop Floorplan

Shop Plan in PDF

3D Rendering

Floor Plan Meeting Room

Meeting Room Plan in PDF

3D Rendering

What I’d like to do is put together an historical exhibit titled ‘Tools of the Zombie Apocalypse: How Makers Saved The World‘. It would feature a number of functional battle-scarred artifacts from the great zombie war, items made from the scavenged bones of a failed civilization, and would showcase the ingenuity-under-fire of a small group of geek survivors. On a more practical scale, it would underscore the importance of maintaining DIY skills in a culture that is turning its back on them.

I am currently looking into possible sources of funding, I figure we’ll need somewhere between $10,000 and $25,000, depending on how ambitious we get. But once I reach that goal, it’ll be time for our Zurvival Weekend. Over the course of three days, we will attempt to answer the follow question.

“A group of skilled and ingenious makers are trapped in a Canadian Tire at the outset of the Zombie Apocolypse. They have enough food and water for three days. Survival beyond that will depend on scavenging, rescuing other survivors, growing food, and keeping the local zombie population in check. What will they drive out of there at the end of the weekend?’

We’ll gather interested people from the Guelph community, lock ourselves away for the weekend, and build some fabulous things. Then, of course, we’ll have to battle-test them, write the narrative for each piece, and assemble the exhibit. Eventually, I envision it being a travelling exhibit, something that could go to different galleries, visit maker faires, and similar fringe festivals.

But what I’m talking about here, is the zombie apocalypse done right. In movies, books, games, whatever, everything is done wrong. Stupid risks are taken, poor weapons are selected, and above all, survivors fight instead of cooperating. No-one does it right, because there’s less drama that way. But by telling the story through the artifacts instead of through a narrative, we can have the freedom to do things right, and keep it engaging, and above all else, show how DIY ingenuity can one day save the world.

You see, it would seem that I am incapable of doing things the easy way. When I wanted a specific t-shirt design, I couldn’t just get it printed online for $15. It wasn’t enough, even, to drop $100 on a photo emulsion screen printing kit. Nope. I had to make the frames, stretch the screens, mix my own potassium bichromate photoresist, and build a custom drying cabinet for screen preparation. I’m kinda stupid that way.

So when our deck started getting too old to use, and my wife saw that familiar gleam in my eye, she knew it meant trouble.

The first 10 stones

Now, I will admit that I put my wife through a lot, and she is nothing if not supportive of my own particular mental illness. But this time, I think she shares at least some of the blame.

You see, she was the one who first found the hexagonal pattern in a photo of a marketplace in Tenerife. It was a simple repeating hexagon with three partial arcs inlaid into it. When laid down in an inconsistent pattern, the arcs make a spaghetti plate of meandering paths.  She was the one that used it in an art quilt that now hangs in our front hall.

So when we first discussed ripping out the deck and putting in a patio, I pointed at the quilt, and said “I want that”.

Of course, no-one makes such a patio stone. You can’t go down to Home Depot and come home with a carload. You can, however, come home with a 5 pounds of plaster of paris, a custom built carving jig, 2 gallons of brush-on molding rubber, a cement mixer, 120 bags of sand-mix cement, and a bucket of iron oxide colouring. You can do all this, but I’m not sure I’d recommend it.

People might just call you pathological.