Sufferin’ succotash! I got a bad case of the surrealities, so I had to make this. Sang is brave (and strong) for climbing to the lectern. Braver still are the members of the audience, who attempt to hold their perch on the sloping stadium!
I put in the shadows and shading and realized, “Gosh, the sun’s in their eyes.” Brave indeed!
I saw a video about a guy who is being evicted because his trailer is off the grid. No electricity, no water — so in the interest of protecting his health, the government is going to make him homeless.
Well, as it turns out, electricity is pretty easy to get off the grid. Just buy some solar panels, an inverter, and a few batteries, and you’ve got power.
Water is another matter. I looked up the average water usage per person, and the Internet tells me ridiculous numbers, like two hundred gallons a day. That’s a lot of toilet flushes, so I presume industrial usage is in there somewhere.
Anyhow, I came up with this rain water collector concept:
Around here in Greater Seattle, we get 40 inches of rainfall per year, which works out to about thirty cubic feet per square yard. Two of these and you get more than a gallon a day. Which is okay for a ration of drinking water, providing your lifestyle includes outhouses and sponge baths. Ah, the simple life.
(NOTE: This entry revised 9 Dec because I failed to convert from cubic feet to gallons. DOH!)
If the last one was for Vulcans, then this one is for Klingons. Mabel isn’t too sure, and I don’t think she wants the forehead ridges either.
If you have to ask why anyone would have mice as pets, then you’re not the kind of person who’s going to understand. Mice are very sweet, quizzical little creatures who are natural clowns. The black plague was due to fleas, not mice.
Anyhow, when I first got mice, I took the word of the books that I’d read that six would be perfectly happy in a ten gallon aquarium. Well, they fought a lot, so I sent two back to the pet store and moved the others into a twenty gallon tank. They still seemed rather bored.
Hence, this ‘mouserie,’ which is five feet by five feet in area. I would like to show more plants and play stuff but the plants that I downloaded from Google 3D Warehouse slowed down Sketchup like you wouldn’t believe. I think I’d be better off ‘making’ my own plants, which I did with the grass clumps.
The hamster wheel should probably be shrunk by a factor of two to mouse size. Maybe. I got the wheel from Warehouse as with the plant photos and the mouse template, but everything else in the image was made by me. I was going to say that I am proud of the water bottle and stand assembly, but now that I look at it, I realize that the stand should hold the top of the bottle better. Another time.
The gray mouse is Susie, the black mouse is Walter. Annabelle and Agatha (Aggie) are the whites on the left, Mabel is on the right. Muriel (who is a catnip toy) isn’t shown. Let’s pretend she’s in the hut. (Mental Note: Put Muriel in hut.)
This play area would be outside. The bedding would be natural earth, exposed to rain so that there is no cleaning requirement. The equipment can be soaked in detergent for half an hour each week, and that’s the only maintenance. Otherwise, replacing the bedding and washing the walls can be time-consuming.
Maybe I could make a little mousie elevator so that they could ride up to a tunnel that would allow them to come inside to a five gallon tank when it was cold outside.
The wall may seem a bit high, and for the girls it probably is. But Walter could all but fly.
Yes, past tense. But for now, let’s not dwell on that.
The system should be self-explanatory. I’ll go into more detail, including a specific application, later. Anyhow, enjoy.
Hey, this time I slapped on some ‘resters’ which allow the candy grabber to rest against the box as shown. If you have a better term than rester, I’d like to hear it. You won’t get paid, however. I’m not getting paid either, by the way.
I decided I needed more negative verticality.
I was in one of those there grab a bag o candy stores and wondered if the process could be improved. Because, you know, it works, which means it’s just asking to be fixed. Ask any engineer!
The grabber on the right (ie Mark II) has a kink, allowing for greater verticality in one’s grabbing of candy. This means less sticking of the hands within the box, which is good for the other patrons. And if you came after someone else, then you’re one of those other patrons.
Anyhow, originally my idea was for something like a glove bag like they use in nuclear and biological work. Then I wondered if the procurement and maintenance costs might be a bit high for a candy store. So I thought that maybe I should just work to keep the hands out of the box, and that’ll be enough for today’s post.
Engineer Zero 