Focussed On The Future

Spring is the time of year when the local rabbit community's kits take their first steps out into the world, and waiting for them are our cats, Timid to the fore. I don't know whether she has a particular liking for rabbit meat or whether she's just a better hunter than the others, but more often than not when I hear the shrill cries of a kit in pain, she's usually the one standing over it.

Normally they're half eviscerated when I get to them so I just kill them with a blow to the head.Tonight, for better or worse, I got to the poor thing before it had reached that point. Timid had torn off a band of fur running completely around the circumference of the kit's abdomen. The skin below was bleeding a fair bit but seemed intact. No internal organs were visible.

So I decided to give the little guy a chance. I've never cared for a sick rabbit before. I put some polysporin on its wounds but for all I know that stuff is toxic to rabbits, or maybe is overpowered for such a small creature, so I used as little as I could get away with. Then I wrapped the wound with sterile bandages. I took a discarded plastic contain that some strawberries had come in, which has a bunch of either drainage or air vents around the bottom, filled it up with shredded paper towel for bedding, tore a leaf of kale for food, and put in a jar lid with some water. I laid the kit inside, closed the lid and now it's sitting in the bathroom, with the door shut so that the cats can't get to it.

I seriously doubt that it will survive the night, my feeble ministrations notwithstanding. Probably all I've done is to extend its suffering. But I couldn't bring myself to just kill it without trying.

No to bring up wikipedia and start reading up on rabbits.

Vincent, another of our cats, passed away tonight. He had kidney disease so it wasn't unexpected and when he stopped eating two days ago we knew the end was near. But I'm still in tears. He was a sweet cat and will be missed.

He was arguably the most feral of all the cats we've sheltered over the past 12 years. Whenever we put food out for him he would hiss at us before eating it, as if to say that he was only doing so under duress. He was missing most of one ear and weakness in his hindquarters meant that he walked unsteadily, so we named him Vincent van D'oh!

After a couple of years of hanging around our place, Vincent took up residence on the pile of plastic tarps that sit under a table just outside our front door. The paramour later added a soft blanket to the pile of cold plastic and he didn't seem to object.

As time passed Vincent would make occasional forays into the house, particularly if yummy food was on offer, but would always retreat to his nest under the table. Then last winter, the day after Cal died, he moved inside and discovered the joys of waiting out the winter rains in a warm, dry place. He found himself a few favourite locations in the house and made himself at home.

Although not deaf, Vincent was hard of hearing and thus easily startled, particularly if someone, or some other cat, came up behind him without his noticing. His instinctive reaction in those situations was to hiss at whatever alarmed him, which sometimes got him into brief tussles with the other cats. But I never saw him pester or otherwise initiate any unpleasantness with the rest of our brood. As I said, he was a sweet cat and, once he got to know us better, was appreciative of even the smallest of kindnesses.

Last night, emaciated and dehydrated as he was, Vincent climbed up onto the paramour's bed, cuddled up near zir face, and purred and drooled into zir ear. That tells me that for all the suffering in his life, we brought him at least some comfort, some joy. Right up to the very end. And for that I am ever so grateful right now.

I've started another series of YouTube videos which once again highlights just how slow my internet upload speeds are. With 1Mbps theoretical max and 0.5Mbps actual max (when the wind is blowing in the right direction) it took seven hours to upload the latest episode. So I decided to upgrade to something faster.

Since I was already at Telus' web-site, I decided to try their online Customer Service chat. The 'Internet 50' service that I was interested in upgrading to advertised upload speeds of "up to 10Mbps". I explained to Donald, the Customer Service rep, that I was concerned about that "up to" and wanted to know whether there was a guaranteed minimum. He quickly copy-pasted the same information that was on the web-site, telling me that I would get download speeds between 20Mbps and 50Mbps. I repeated that it was the upload speed which concerned me, particularly since my existing service with them only ever achieved at best half the advertised maximum. He responded to that by copy-pasting the "up to 10Mbps" information from the web-site. I explained yet again that it was the minimum speed that I was concerned about. Was it possible that I would upgrade my service and still end up with the same shitty 0.5Mbps that I already had? After a long pause he told me that he'd have to transfer me to Technical Support.

After about a five minute wait I got Rina from Technical Support who told me that she'd be happy to help me investigate why my internet connection was slow. I explained to her that I was more interested in finding out what the guaranteed minimum upload speed was for the 'Internet 50' service. Rina was much more efficient than Donald: she copy-pasted all of the speed information from the web-site at once, rather than doling it out a piece at a time. I pointed out to her that nowhere did it say what the minimum upload speed was. She reassured me that it would be "much faster" than my existing speed. When I asked how much faster she went away for a while then finally came back with the information that average upload speeds on the service varied between 5.12Mbps and 10Mbps. Not exactly what I was looking for, but closer. I asked if I could get 5.12Mbps guaranteed in writing as the minimum upload speed I'd get on the service, but of course she said no.

Ah well, what are ya gonna do? I decided to take the dive and get the upgrade anyway but it turned out that the 'Internet 50' service wasn't even available in my area. I had to settle instead for the 'Internet 25' service with upload speeds "up to 2.5Mbps".

I wonder how fast it will really be.
 

I have an odd and unproductive relationship with obligations. The moment that I start to view something as an obligation is when I begin shying away from it, seeking excuses to avoid it. Even if it's something that I would normally enjoy doing, my joy evaporates if I feel that I'm obliged to do it.

Take this journal as an example. I've never been a very consistent diarist. I might hammer out entries three days in a row, then disappear for a couple of weeks. But the longer my absence the greater the feeling of obligation that when I do post, it should be something substantial, something worth the wait. It doesn't take long before that barrier becomes too high to surmount. In this most recent absence I've several times had interesting little tidbits that I wanted to post but did not do so because they were not significant enough to meet my perceived obligation.

Intellectually I know that it's all bullshit. Very few people read this journal to begin with and those that do are not waiting with bated breath for each entry that I make. Nor are they expecting gems of wisdom or great worldly insights from me. (If they are then clearly they've not been reading me for long enough.) But emotionally the obligation is still there.

I think a large part of my antipathy toward obligations stems from a fear of failure. An obligation implies expectations and therefore the possibility that those expectations  will not be met. Without the obligation there's no one to disappoint but myself, and while I do feel many obligations toward myself, failing to meet my own expectations is less of a barrier than failing to meet those of others. Which, when you think about it, is a complete reversal of what my priorities should be.

I know that I need to learn not to fear failure, especially when the consequences are negligible. I'm just not sure how to go about it. But if you see infrequent and inconsequential posts from me in the future, you'll know that I'm trying.

I wasn't able to get back to the RepPresent last weekend but I was finally able to get to it today. I leveled the bed, twice because I did it wrong the first time, tested out the heaters, did some hand extrusion to make sure that was all okay, then I let it rip on its maiden print. There's video of it printing here.

When I was testing the print head heater it started to give off a bit of white smoke. The instructions said to turn off the heater if that happened, which I did. But the instructions never said what to do about it. So after a bit I turned the heater back on. This time it smoked less and eventually stopped smoking at all. I'm not sure what was being burnt off, but it appears to be gone now.

Here's the finished part:



It's one of the frame brackets for the printer itself. There are some obvious problems. Notice that lip around the bottom of it? That's not supposed to be there. I had the print head too close to the bed and it dragged a bit, leaving the first layer offset from the rest of the part. I moved it up a smidgen and the next part printed nicely.

You can also see some waviness along the lower right edge. I think that's due to the Y belt rubbing up against the motor sprocket. That will be tougher to fix, but I'm sure I'll manage. But compared to some of the first prints that I've seen out there this is pretty damned good and I'm quite pleased. Despite its flaws that part is actually usable.

While I was aligning the bed I over-tightened the clamp for the Z-axis limit switch and part of it broke off. Fortunately the screw I'd been tightening still had enough of a grip on the broken bit to wedge it in place. That left the limit switch a bit loose but still firmly enough mounted for the test build. The second part that I built was a replacement clamp. :-)

Before doing many more prints I need to come up with some kind of roller to allow the PLA filament to unspool without getting tangled. For these first few prints I've been unrolling the filament by hand and I can see that getting old fast. Once that's taken care of I want to try designing a mount for my Nexus tablet to go on the exercise cycle, so that I can use it to watch videos while I pedal.

With eight cats I knew that this day was bound to come sooner rather than later, but it's still hit me harder than I thought it would.

When the Vet opened Cal up to fix the herniated abdomen he found a golf-ball mass of pancreatic cancer which had spread to other parts of her body. Apparently pancreatic cancer is one of the most aggressive ones. It's also quite painful. The tumour was, of course, inoperable and the Vet's recommendation was that we not bring Cal out of anaesthesia but have her put down while she was still asleep. We agreed.

In good weather Cal liked to pick up a stone from the driveway, toss it in the air and then try to keep it suspended by batting at it with her paws. She was surprisingly good at it. In bad weather her preference was to chase plastic bottle caps around the kitchen floor until they skittered too deep under one of the appliances for her to reach. It always brought a smile to my face to see her lying on her side, one paw stretched under the fridge in an attempt to retrieve the escaped cap for one more go around.

She will be missed.

Today I used a blowtorch for the first time. It did not go well.

The RepPresent has a small aluminium block which holds the print nozzle and the resistor which heats the nozzle up enough to melt the plastic being fed into it. Since the nozzle is made of brass it expands less than does the aluminium block when heated. So to make sure that the nozzle doesn't come loose when the block heats up, the build instructions say to heat the block up with a blowtorch and then tighten the nozzle with a wrench while everything is still hot.

I did this and ended up melting the block.

( Click to see an image of the devastation... )

In my defense, the instructions were frustratingly short on detail:


That's all it has to say about this particular step. No mention of the temperatures involved. No warnings about the possibility of destroying the heart of your machine.

It's a pretty weak defense on my part, though. I'd had some misgivings beforehand, but did I bother to follow up on them before ploughing ahead? Nooooo! Given that this was my first time using a blowtorch, did I think to perhaps experiment a bit first with less valuable scraps of material? Nooooo!

*sigh*

I don't have the tools necessary to build the block myself, but P may so I've sent him email. If that doesn't pan out then I'll just have to wait a week or so for a replacement to arrive.

I figured I should record some of the problems that I've run into while building the RepPresent and how I've solved them, just in case some other RepRapper finds the information helpful. So if you're not interested in the minutiae of building a RepRap machine then you should bail now.


( Read more... )

I'm a little late this year in offering you all my best wishes for the Winter Solstice. The days here in the northern hemisphere are now getting longer again, and while the effects won't be noticeable for another month, at least its headed in the right direction.

For those of your in the southern hemisphere, any dismay you may feel at the thought or your days now getting shorter may be tempered by the fact that at least you've still got warm weather.

Speaking of weather, we've been doing fairly well this year. Normally we get an early snowfall near the end of November, a couple of light dustings in December, then another dump in January. This year we didn't get that first snowfall until mid-December and it's now been washed away by the winter rains. The skies are leaden grey about three out of every four days. but I consider that a price worth paying not to have to shovel out my driveway twice a week and spend three months driving on black ice. :-)

Episode 10 of my series of Minecraft videos is now up on YouTube.

It's been almost a full two months since episode 9. In part that was due to being busy with work, but it was also because I'd gotten into a bit of a funk about the videos.

As I've mentioned before, YouTube compresses the hell out of videos. Even if you upload fairly high quality it can end up looking like crap once YT is done with it. I spent quite a bit of time researching the settings others had used and doing test uploads to find the best recipe for getting YouTube to leave my video quality more or less intact and by episode 8 it seemed like I'd gotten it figured out. But then I uploaded episode 9 and it looked like crap again. The thought of having to spend yet more time probing the internals of YouTube put quite a damper on my enthusiasm for making videos.

This weekend I finally set myself down to start the investigation and very quickly noticed something rather odd: the quality of episode 9 was not nearly as bad as I'd remembered it. To be sure, there was some blurring of details not to be found in my original, but it wasn't all that noticeable.

I received a further surprise when I compared my videos against those of other Minecrafters whose video quality I admired and found, with one exception, that they were of similar quality to mine, displaying similar blurring of details.

Pleased by these discoveries, I recorded episode 10 (and re-recorded, then re-recorded again), edited it and uploaded it. But once that was done I was still left with the question of why my impression of my video quality had been so dramatically out of synch with reality. Had my internal critic really gotten that far out of hand?

As it turned out, there were three factors involved.

The first factor was that I was, in part, comparing apples to oranges. Note how I said that my video quality was similar to that of other Minecrafters, "with one exception"? That exception was KirrokCraft, whose video quality was still noticeably superior. No blurring of details for him! However, what I'd neglected to take into account was that KirrokCraft uses a stationary camera, separate from his in-game character, while I, like most other Minecrafters, use the default in-game camera which looks out through my character's eyes. As a result, my field of view is pretty much continually in motion. Even if my character is standing still I'm still looking around which means that the camera view is continually changing. Video compression works by just storing the differences between frames and it is the compression of those changes which leads to the blurring and other artifacts which impair video quality. Since the camera view in my videos is continually changing, there are lots of differences between frames, which meant lots of opportunities for compression artifacts to creep in. With KirrokCraft's stationary camera, the camera's view remains static. Any character or creature moving around in the field of view might generate some compression artifacts immediately around it, but the rest of view is unchanging, resulting in overall crisper images. If I used a stationary camera I would get equally crisp images.

The second factor had to do with way in which YouTube processes a newly uploaded video. YouTube generates separate copies of the video for each of the different resolutions that it supports: 240p and 320p (low quality), 480p (standard quality), 720p and 1080p (high definition). As soon as at least one resolution is available, YouTube makes the video available for public viewing. Since it's faster to generate the lower quality copies, those inevitably show up first. When I saw that episode 9 was available I immediately brought it up to check it out. I have my YouTube defaults set to display videos in 480p by default, so it brought up the 480p player. But the 480p version wasn't ready yet, so instead I ended up with the 320p version, scaled up to fit the 480p player. No wonder it looked like crap! Had I checked again 10 minutes later I would have seen the higher quality version. That also explains why the paramour didn't think the video quality was as bad as I did: zie'd viewed it later, after the higher-quality versions were available.

The third factor was that I was more sensitive to degradation in the quality of my own videos because I'd seen them in their original form. When watching other Minecrafters' videos I didn't have their source footage to compare against, so I judged them solely on their own merits.

Hopefully this marks the end of my obsession with the visual quality of my videos. Perhaps now I can turn some of that energy to improving the quality of their content. :-)