All posts by irwin

Tech

New HTPC build

One of my going away present future projects when I finished up last year was to build new state of the art computer as technology would have it back in January of 2010. The last time I attempted this was at the Pentium-4 level on a Gigabyte INXP mobo. I know that tech moves quickly, but I had hoped then to have the fastest, latest, greatest for more than 1 week! Yes, a newer faster processor came out 7 days later.

I had thought this time to get the best of what I could build rather than the fastest of componentry. A HTPC of course needs to be quiet & preferably unobtrusive. Fail one out of two as the BMW designed Thermaltake Level 10 case weignhing in at over 20kg of pressed steel is hardly inconspicuous.

I debated with myself as whether to make this the new home server but needs must as the old, several times evolved HTPC was truly on its last legs.

Woodwork

TARDIS windows

A lot of activity over the past few weeks to do with the window frames for the TARDIS. The design I envisaged used slats to make up the actual frames, then to have the window panes inserted into these. The better way of doing this from a consistency point of view was to make each slat exactly the same dimensions so that assembly and replication was the easy part (as opposed to easily making them up and then spending ages making them fit).

Three days of jig making, panel saw cutting, and drum sanding later, I had 56x millimetre identical sticks of timber with half laps ready to fit into each other. Glazing now pressed on the mind and we decided to go with rebating trenches into the backside of the timber and to bead the glass in as the very last step so that any timber movement did not damage the 3mm thin glass.

I obtained the glass at Essendon Glass which was a very simple process. Googling various TARDIS constructors would have you believe that the exact glass type is difficult & expensive to procure. The bobbly glass (to my eye anyways) looked very similar to translucent bathroom glass, so that’s what I bought. The bottom left and right panes of each window (in various incarnations) is a slightly different design giving a “T” shaed appearance which I don’t mind.

For final installation, I’ll trim the holes in the TARDIS frame made all those years ago from sandwiched ply so that each window fits. I also need a method of attachment. The window frames are slightly recessed into the frame and since I don’t have many millimetres to play with, I’ll sit the entire frame in a bit by means of some slats attached to the back of the window.

Travel

von Guérard at Fed Square

A quick visit to melbourne to see both end of the cultural spectrum, Saturday at the Ian Potter gallery at fed Square, Sunday at the Melbourne Motor Show.

Two hours is about as much as anybody can handle in an exhibition before one’s head becomes so full that either priorly stored information (eg, spouses birthdays, etc) start dropping off the cliffs of grey matter or alternately, ones cranium physically explodes.

And surprisingly prolific von Guérard’s body of work was. The most impressive 21st century addition to gallery viewing was the electronic folio where one could virtually flip through the artist’s various sketch books. His Lake Gnotuk (a personal favourite) which usually abides in Ballarat Gallery was on show, but strangely named something completely different (lakes or ponds or something).

Documentary art such as this always depresses me as the landscape was portrayed as it was. 160 years of of rabbits, dogs, cats, cane toads, Mexican mosquito fish & feather grass, lantana, brumbys, cows, goats, foxes, capeweed, willow, Indian Mynah birds, rats, mice & deforestation later, one could only marvel (and weep) at the natural pre-colonial ecological landscape.

 

Photography

Photoessay 2

My original idea was to do a bit of a joke photo essay to do with woodwork. Start with a tree, use much machinery, and end up with toothpicks. Not sure if the joke got through. The challenge with this shoot was to be both photographer and subject. Juggling a camera remote and high speed power tools not quite OHS. At least I wasn’t planking.

Woodwork

TARDIS windows

Who’d have thought a bunch of windows could be so difficult? I’d mocked up a prototype of the 2x 6 pane window frames for each panel way way back before I’d even had the body structure built thinking that this would be an easy thing to do, put aside, & resume. How wrong I was!

I tried a number of designs including mortise and tenon & bridle joints and in the end setttled for the half notches (not actually a join, but a fit). The main reason was ease (relatively speaking) of construction however, the joins will then be bonded. Probably use brads and glue.

I trenched some grooves in the prototype and had some glass panes made up at Essendon Glass. The glazier didn’t give me grief when I said I was building a TARDIS so kudos to him!  Richard & Leon (TAFE teachers) pointed out with that design the glass may break whist final clamping, so in the new design I’ll rebate in some grooves that the panes can be fitted after the frames are complete.

So, it’s taken 2 weeks of jig making & calculations on the panel saw so that I can exactly and precisely reproduce 56 sticks of timber with precise grooves for fitting. As they say, it’s all in the preparation. I spent the last hour after arvo smoko to complete the corner joins on the 24 horizontal bars. Also made some spares just in case…

Photography

Landscape shoot

A blustery wet day was scheduled for our class’s photoshoot down at the Breakwater in Warrnambool. Wet miserable days are not a natural fit for going outside, but I’d have to say that I had a heap of fun.

I think having the gear around took the concentration off myself, so that instead of worrying that fingers were losing circulation, I was more worried about keeping the seaspray away from my D300s. And instead of worrying about my head getting wet, I was worried about rain getting on my D300s. And instead of worrying about hypothermia, I was worried about using the last of my bodyheat to keep the battery of my D300s warm enough to keep shooting.

Paranoia comes from a lifetime of destryoing cameras by dropping them in the ocean, leaving them on the sandy beachtowel, and other such unrecoverable abuses. The D300s bears my deathgrip.

One thing I especially appreciated was having half a dozen other shooters there with gear so that I didn’t quite feel the photodork. Other than raindrops on the lensfilter, and smears from me trying to clean the raindrops off the lensfilter, I got a few decent shots. I think. I used Shutter priority and slowed the speed down through the meter until the aperture got down to around f22. Tripod and cable release of course.

Woodwork

TARDIS roof lamp

The interesting thing about this particular construction is that there are actually two different styles of skill involved. There is the gross structure, the pillars, walls & doors which in retrospect weren’t too hard. Then there is the finer fiddly stuff. As Leon, one of the TAFE teachers said: “You can spend a week building a house, but then spend 4 months fitting it out”.

The roof is attached, albeit temporarily as I’ll remove it back to ground level to putty some cutting defects and paint. The roof lamp box took two weeks of fiddly work. I’ve managed to source some glass panes so the next challenge is upskilling to some glazing.

Photography

Photo essay 1

One of our assignments for our level 2 DSLR course was to come up with a phot essay. After much mulling over something completely different, an opportunity came up to photograph an uncle who is involved with The Warbirds at Ardmore airbase http://www.nzwarbirds.org.nz/contact.html. A particular difficulty was the final shot where I wanted to capture one or more small children running around.

Difficult for not having access to small children but also for my going around asking people if they had small children of a certain age that I could borrow for a few hours to photograph!