When building doors for our Chicken Coops, we use a biscuit joiner. Now 99% of the time we use #20 biscuits for our work.  But while building the models for our Monster Mayhem display I had to switch to small #0 biscuits. And when I put the tool back, I left it at that position (since I’d be building more models).

Unfortunately, Evelyn didn’t know that, and when she went to make some speed carts for the base of Monster Mayhem — well, she was a bit pissed off. She made the cuts, all at the wrong depth.

This little adventure reminded me when I went to fasten some 5mm panel for some coop doors. Ka-thung! Boy, that nail seemed to go deep. But I kept going. Only later realizing that the 5/8″ brads I thought we in the tool were actually 1 1/4″ brads we use for the coop core frames. That door was nailed to the bench!

So, what to do about the situation. Well, sure, always triple-check everything. But when a tool is set up a certain way 99% of the time you reach for it, and use it, without thinking twice. Almost always use #20 biscuits. Almost always use 5/8″ brads. Except when we’re not.

To help, I borrowed an idea from the aircraft industry: Remove before flight. The idea being that if a tool is left in a “non-standard” configuration, and you put it back (because you know you’re using it later for the same task), let the other person know — or let yourself know, if you forget. On aircraft, this is done with little flags. So I used the same idea.

Here, I’ve just finished cutting dados into some 1×2 material. The slot / dado is where some wiring will sit for our models. Because it’s deep, it’s done multi pass. And I left the tool in the “high” position. If I forgot that, I tried to cut another piece, it would (best case) bog down the router and (worst case) throw the material across the room (been there, done that).

Here, I’ve left brads in the nailer, but don’t know what size. So I flag it:

If I had left the biscuit joiner in a non-standard position (say, a #0 biscuit cut), I would flag it:

All those flags are are some plastic spring-loaded clothes pins with a piece of old red t-shirt tied to them. Nothing fancy, but something that’s easy to remember and easy to spot.

So now if I see a tool with a red strip attached to it, I know that it’s in a non-standard configuration (different brads, excessive depth, high speed, etc). It’s an easy way to remember in a shop where we quickly move from one task to another.

He needs a home. Old neighbors left him (a year ago). Then someone was taking care of him, but over the past week he’s been very needy. So I think that whomever was taking care of him moved away. An outdoor cat, but craves to go inside. I’ll have to build him a condo.

Here’s how you turn your garage into a TV. A SONY, of course.

This product is great, but it can be hard to track down, mostly because of the different spellings and packages.

Here’s a photo of a couple of versions:

We’re fortunate to have a couple of Korean markets very close to us. (Not to mention the huge Asian market up on north Lamar. Austin’s mini Chinatown.) In our local market they have 1/2 an aisle dedicated to this spicy paste, so you know it’s an important part of the Korean cuisine. Most of the packages we say were in the plastic tub containers — some of them HUGE. The medium-sized one I got (500g) should last me a year. Keep it in the fridge after opening.

If you can’t get this stuff locally, get in touch with me, and I can ship some out to you. A 500g tub costs $5. But look around first, if you have an southeast Asian community in your town, you should be able to find it.

I know that some of you might not want to deal with the bones / bother of using Chicken Wings in the Korean Fried Chicken recipe. That’s okay, I understand. They can be messy and very caveman like (though, that’s why I love wings). But sometimes you want something easier. So here’s a simple nugget take.

• In a large bowl, combine 2/3 cup of flour, 1 Tbl of cornstarch, and 2/3 cup of water. Whisk together. You want something the texture of pancake batter.
• If desired, add seasonings to batter. Salt, pepper, seasoning salt, Adobo, Old Bay. Whatever you like, but don’t go crazy. Probably 1/2 tsp of salt.
• Cut 1 large boneless skinless chicken breast (about a pound) into nugget sized pieces.
• Put chicken pieces into batter and stir so that everyone is well coated. You’ll probably have more batter than you need, but that’s okay, more is better.

Now it’s time to get that oil ready.

• Heat up about about 2″ of oil in a large pot. Your best bet is a cast iron / enameled dutch oven (one of my all-time favorite cooking vessels).
• Get oil up to 350 degrees. It’s going to be pretty hot. Watch it. Use a thermometer. The easiest way to screw up fried foods is to have the oil at the incorrect temperature. Temperature is absolutely critical in frying. Get it within a 25 degree window and keep it there (325 to 375). With some practice, you’ll know the setting on your stove and by the amount of food you add (adding food drops temp quickly).
• Put a batch of nuggets into the hot oil. Do not crowd. You’re probably going to have to do 3-5 batches, so take your time.
• Cook nuggets in oil for about 3 minutes, turning occasionally. Drain on paper towels laid on newspaper.
• Allow the oil to come back up to temperature.
• Cook the next batch of nuggets. And the next. Until everything has had its first fry

Not ready to eat yet! Now it’s time for the second fry.

• Once all the nuggets have been fried once, bring that oil back up to 350.
• Fry the nuggets, in batches, again. For 3 minutes per batch. They should turn very crispy and dark golden brown.
• If they get brown too quickly, take them out early, or slightly lower the oil temperature. Nuggets are small, so cook pretty quickly.
• Drain the freshly 2nd fried batches on paper towels.

Once the second fry is complete, you’re ready to go. Serve with fries or tots or whatever. Along with some dipping sauce.

(AUGH! WP ate my post. I’ll work on this more later.)

For a while now, there has been a recipe for Korean Fried Chicken floating around the internet. I think it was first published in Saveur, then made its way to many a blog (check out a good write-up on this one: The Bitten Word). I don’t want to re-hash what’s already been written, so just take a look at the link. But I will agree: It makes some awesome chicken wings. The key:

• Make a breading batter with equal flour and water and a bit of cornstarch. If it feels like pancake batter, it’s right.
• Double-fry the chicken. It takes time, but makes a huge difference. You aren’t cooking healthy. You’re cooking tasty.
• Use the Korean Chile Paste (known as gojujang, kochujang, or gochujang, among other spellings).

This was the first time I’ve used gojujang. If you go to a Korean market they will probably have 1/2 an aisle dedicated to it:

If you like hot/spicy food, but are looking for more complexity, try this stuff out. It’s great.

One heads-up about the sauce you’ll make for this recipe: It’s damn hot. Probably too hot for most people. Too hot for me. I suggest that you don’t toss the completed chicken in the sauce. Instead, serve it as a dipping / basting sauce at the table. That way people can adjust the heat as desired. Just brush on more at the table if you want it hotter.

The theme this year is Monster Mayhem.
Think: 1950s Japanese Godzilla movies.

Here are some early shots of work in progress:

Above we see Evelyn working on our version of Godzilla and Gamera. Godzilla is about 4 feet tall and over 4 feet wide (including his long tail). The “core” of his body is about 26 inches across. Gamera, the one Evelyn is drawing in the photos, is 3 feet wide and about 22 inches tall.

Here’s Godzilla taking a walk outside:

The figures are being drawn in charcoal and chalk pastels on 5mm thick plywood. Why plywood / 2D? Well, if I told my story in order it would make more sense:

See, we’re trying to make a scale model diorama of a fight scene. Instead of trying to make a lot of complicated, and difficult to store, 3D models, we’re going back to a neat papercraft art form. A sort of 3D Decoupage. (You can find some example on this most excellent site: Canon Creative Park). We will be laying 2D models (monsters, buildings, etc) to give a depth of field without all the depth.

The goal is to have all this stuff fit on a platform about 8 feet wide by 2 feet deep. Here’s a scale model (of a scale model) Evelyn built out of paper (using her CNC paper cutter). It will give you an idea for what we’re going for.

The above model is 1/4 scale sized to our “full sized” scene — so 1 foot in this (which is the height of Godzilla) is 4 feet in the final product. The final scene, of course, is a scale model itself — we don’t quite have room for a 164 foot tall Godzilla. And yes, we have exact measurements for all the characters. Evelyn is an Engineer, after all.

Most of my daily conversations and projects have been happening less on this blog and more on places like Google+ and Facebook. (Though, to be honest, much less on FB recently.)  For the benefit of those not found within those walled gardens, I wish there was some sort of social media aggregation software. Heck, I just want something that will take my FB and G+ posts, bundle them up, and auto-publish to my WP site. Or, at least, make it easier for people to view content from G+ or FB without having to become a member. Like RSS feeds or something. Maybe it exists. I dunno.

You can create your own Time Lapse videos using all open source stuff. Well, almost all.

On Windows I’m using ffmpeg (command line program) and InfranView(for bulk image processing).

Photos were shot with a Canon DSLR (Rebel XTi) in “medium” resolution. Used my 555/556 based timer to trigger the shutter.

1. Ttake the photos. The more the better.
2. Drop them into a clean folder.
3. FFMPEG needs the files ordered by file name, starting with _0001. Your camera probably incremented them another way. To fix this, use InfranView.
4. Open Infraview and go to Batch mode.
5. Select “Batch rename”.
6. In the Name Pattern enter “img_####” (result will be img_0001, etc).
7. Select all the images (“Look in”) and press “Add All” to bring them into the Input files section.
8. Change Output directory. I use a subdir under my source folder.
9. Press Start Batch. It will take a little bit to do all the renaming and moving.
10. Now open up a command window. I run this from the \ffmpeg\bin\ directory:

    ffmepg -r 12 -i c:\timelapse\1\out\img_%04.jpg -sameq -s hd720 -vcodec libx264 -crg 25 test.mp4

    Where -r is frames per sec (you can adjust, or leave out), -i is the location of the input files (where you batch output them to using infraview). The %04 means that names should be formatted like: img_0000.jpg. If you have three digit suffixs (ex. img_001.jpg) you’d use img_%03.jpg. The test.mp4 is the output file name.

    I cheated and used someones settings for the rest — these worked for me, others did not. I do not pretend to understand them! Still experimenting. I got a lot of errors and warning when using simpler examples.  And I got a lot of “black screen” videos. Dunno why.

11. The resulting mp4 should play on your computer. I found that uploading the YouTube resulted in screwed up YouTube videos (the sync is messed up or something). To resolve this, Evelyn processed the file into a FLV (YouTube friendly) format. Then it was fine. Go figure. Again, I do not pretend to understand it.

Here are some links that helped me out:

Even if you don’t do time lapse, InfranView is worth a look. If you process a lot of photos, it saves a LOT of time. Bulk re-sizing, conversion, renaming, etc. Makes it easy to take those gigantic 12 MP files down to something you can upload to Facebook.

The Windows versions of this stuff:

http://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/ — make sure to download the 32 or 64 bit “static build” (latest release)

http://www.irfanview.com/

Evelyn recently hacked apart an old CD-ROM drive (to get motors). The remaining tray / laser assembly was left without a purpose. But not for long. While poking around on the DIY photography sites I found things called macro sleds.

These devices move small objects very small distances. You take a photo of the object (say, a mounted fly) at each step of the sled. Take photo, move back 1 mm, take photo, move back 1 mm, repeat. You then take these photos and stack them (using special software designed for this purpose). The end result is a super-sharp macro photograph — it’s called focus stacking.

Check out this site: Motorized Macro Rail (photo is from this site)

And yea, there are other ways of getting the photo, but they don’t allow me to re-use junk hardware.

So, I’ve started messing with the old drive parts to make the tiny sled:

I reverse engineered the motor drive circuit / feedback mechanism. Three wires for the feedback: Power, Ground, and Data. If the circuit is powered, the emitter is lit. Data goes high/low as the spindle rotates. When hooked to an Arduino/Atmega328 target board I saw about 205 ticks for the full length of travel.

Problem is that the DC motor runs fast. A split second to move the laser/lens assembly (sled) from one end to the other. I tried getting feedback, but it spun so fast that I couldn’t grab the readings. (Manually, I counted about 205 — with the motor full powered it clicked off only about 40 times.)

Now this person seems to have it working, with the DC motor: Macro Sled. But the other person (link above) swapped the DC for a stepper, due to the speed issues. I want to use the DC, because it’s original equipment and looks nice. But will I will be able to either drive it slowly enough (maybe with PWM?) or in short enough times?

The experiments continue…