My Motley Meanderings

Here is a sneak preview of my entry for The Great Crystal Cyberdrome Exhibition that will be held at Orbital 2008 next week. ( Read more... )

autopope says feorag has a monorail that goes round their Christmas tree.

Three days later: alex_holden has a broken Magic Santa Monorail Tree Ride from eBay.

[disassemble]
[spot snapped-off flimsy bit of plastic]
[root in scrap pile for a suitable bit of steel]
[cut, bend, file, hammer, superglue, reassemble]
[place on section of track, connect power]
[Monorail Santa screams "HA! HA! HA!", runs over alex_holden's fingers, and falls off the end of the track]

alex_holden has a monorail that goes round his Christmas tree (or will do when he gets around to putting it up).

Inspired by Pac Gentleman and Pongmechanik and of course The Great Crystal Cyberdrome Exhibition, I just spent an hour in the bath trying to devise an electromechanical computer that could drive a Tetris fairground game. Of course I could cheat and hide a microcontroller in the base (I've already implemented Tetris in C), but there's something terribly appealing to me about the idea of a clicking whirring machine that could theoretically have been built as far back as 1835 (when the relay was invented).

If you're going camping in a 44 year old vehicle, what better to take with you than...

A classic Optimus 8R Hunter petrol camping stove. ( Read more... )

I picked this up at a Model Engineering exhibition many years ago and stumbled across it again in an old coat pocket last night:

If you found yourself laughing hysterically at it, this is a warning sign that you may be an engineer [shudder]. Tracy Tools are still around BTW, but they don't sell bolts any more.

Last night I made the first of two fittings that will allow my new heater matrix to connect to Fenchurch's old plumbing. I just thought I'd share a few pictures as I'm quite happy with the way it turned out (no pun intended ;).

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Restoring my lathe. Again.

( Read more... )