[TheForge] Re: Ralph, Mike and their toys (Was: OT Threads ?)

[Mike Spencer]

Yow!  Lots of advice for a governor.  I especially like Justin's:

> ...why not take the roman approach and use a few pretty girls in
> skimpy costumes, captured (dramatically) after some battle or other?
> They could take turns keeping the rpm's constant and fanning the
> smith with palm fronds.

Now I just have to identify someplace to conquer -- maybe Smith
College?  Seems appropriate. :-) I wonder if there would be duty on
shackled, scantily clad captives when I bring them back across the
Canadian border.  Maybe the Smith girls could even get academic credit
for it, call it Participatory Archaeology Seminar or something.

> ...some people might take offense to my suggestion that the
> governors be pretty girls.

You think?  Nah.  Anyhow, for serious forging work, I think I'd like a
couple of those trolls who worked in harness to open the Gates of
Mordor and operated the battering ram in the seige of Gondor.  I know,
I know, Differently Realitied Creatures of Middle Earth Benevolent
Association on line two....

Grover observed:

> Ever been in a car with bad cruise control.  It hunts back and
> forth, slow and fast slow and fast.  In order to make something work
> accurately, it takes either good design, or good latitude to tinker
> with it after the design<G>.

Yeah.  Negative feedback and hysteresis.  There was a good sci-fi
story based on that: Guy in DC remote-pilots a zeppelin over the Grand
Canyon.  Only the data transmission rate was low so his control moves,
based on the video images he saw in NY from the pilot's position in
the zeppelin, arrived too late.  So the craft went slowly and
majestically into runaway and crashed.  "Good latitude to tinker" is
the word.   And "graceful failure mode". :-)


> .........Aaaahh, I dunno.......if Mike thought he could use an old
> computer to trigger a mouse in a squirell cage - to engage the
> throttle to said engine, for pouring the coal to it - to make that
> A&O run.........I've got the feeling he'd probably try it.  (but
> that's just a wild guess).  :-)

Ha! Close but no cigar, Ralph. I *do* have in mind running the A&O
with a mouse.  I'm thinking that if I can take a computer serial mouse
apart and get a little blip of light bouncing off a mirror on the
rotating shaft and onto the mouse optical sensor, that I can then read
blips of mouse x- or y-motion data from the serial port while running
a (software) timer and then construct a graphic of an analog
tachometer on the screen.  I was just in a computer recycling place in
Halifax today, hoping to find a bucket of old mice to hack.  Guy
wanted $10 each which is too much for stuff I'm going to tear apart
and learn on.

At least I got the stuff I need to plumb the compressor.  The Princess
Auto guy was bored with dumb questions and delighted to have my merely
ignorant ones, walked me through the whole thing and called in two
other guys for supporting opinions.  Back to the regular hardware
store tomorrow and then a weekend in the shop getting it glommed
together.

Nova Scotia was the warmest place in Canada today.  Go, winter!

- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^