Here is a little robot the kids and I were working on.
We designed it in Solidworks.
Prepared for printing in the MakerWare software.
Printed it on the MakerBot. It failed halfway through and we had to re-print some of the parts.
Here is a closeup of the print.
And some pictures of the finished chassis.
We used custom rubber bands for tires. Threads were even printed into some of the parts so 6mm bolts could screw right in.
3D Rendering has always interested me, but I’ve never taken the time to mess around with it much.
When I was a kid I used to do stuff like this in Basic. But I didn’t know trig or other similar functions so I was left to basic math and the random functions.
Here is a little turtle program (python) that will make a wrinkled fabric type display.
Gord from Gord’s Garage Blog has come up with a very interesting way to hold (almost) a pack of cigarettes. As always, his attention to detail is commendable.
http://gordsgarage.wordpress.com/2014/09/13/smoke-classic/
We found a praying mantis on our hose!
The praying mantis is in the family of Mantidae. They live all over the world, especially in North and South America.
When a praying mantis is young, they eat small things such as tiny flies or even it’s its own siblings!!!
As a praying mantis becomes older, it eats bigger things such as Bushbrown butterflies. You can find out more about the praying mantis here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantis
That is all for now!
We found a bird nest with eggs in it recently. A few days later — no eggs!
This is a photograph of the sunset from Altoona looking toward the Wopsi / Buckhorn / Horseshoe Curve mountains.
I took this with my new Canon ELPH 110. No special settings. On the kitchen table.
A short video the kids made of a princess, a guard, and an attack! Filmed in about an hour at our (in progress) workshop with very little fore-though. I laugh each time I watch it :)
We’ve invented a new board game, and it’s a lot of fun. Stratahex combines resource collection, transportation, logistics, planning, defense, offense, warfare, and more into a simple and easy-to-play boardgame.
The basic game pieces are:
The board consists of 3 concentric circles with a hex-shaped hole pattern. Parts of the board are painted light-gray, medium-gray, and dark-gray.
You can only spend coin once it has been transported back to your base in a supply truck. Each piece costs coin to purchase. You have a limited number of moves per supply-truck and per weapon each turn.
Stratahex is a very comprehensive, but still simple, game to play. The older kids, 8 and 10, have no trouble. There is a lot of figuring, math, counting, and changing coin.
Gameplay is predictable, like chess, in that you can determine the possible moves of the opponent before his next turn. There is no luck involved.
Plenty of fun!
The Gahooa Perspective 