What can u guys do?

When u go to make a new post, can u edit the layout? Can you add gadgets and stuff? If so, feel free to do it. Just don't make the page look fuckin stupid lol.

Who's ready for this shit?

I hopped in my car, drove to the movie theater, and I JIZZED IN MY PANTS. This film can only fall into one of two categories:

1. The biggest piece of shit ever made.
or
2. Hella fuckin balls to the wall awesome.

I hope you've all figured out what movie I'm talking about by now.

Continuing from Episode 5: Revenge of the Hangover

My heat transfer final is tomorrow at 8 am. I figured my time would best be spent reproducing this website here. I think we all can relate. And here's some friendly encouragement for whoever is cramming right now.

---

Episode 6: Return of the Slacker
(The Dark Side of Homework)

Darth Vader: "You cannot slack forever Luke..."

Luke Skywalker: "I will not study."

DV: "Give yourself to the Dark Side of Homework... it is the only way you can save your grade... YES. Your thoughts betray you, your desire for a high grade is strong... especially for..... PHY-sics. So, you are taking PHY-sics. Your feelings have now betrayed it too. Obi-wan was wise to hide it from me, now his failure is complete... If calculus cannot get you to study, perhaps your physics will!"

LS: "NOOOO!"

(Luke draws his crib and ignites it...)
(Darth is defeated...)


Emperor Palpitine: "Heh heh heh... GOOD! Heh heh heh. Your crib has made you productive... now... fulfill your project, and write your thesis at my side!"

LS: "Never." (tosses crib aside) "I'll never join the Dean's list. You failed your highness, I am a Slacker, like my father before me..."

EP: "So be it, Slacker."
(after a bit of film)

EP: "If you will not work for your grade, then it will be destroyed."

(shoots F's from his fingertips)

EP: "Young fool, only now, after the final, do you understand the material..."

LS: "Aah!"

EP: "Your feeble knowledge is no match for the power of doing your homework."

EP: "You have paid the price for your lack of motivation."

LS: "AAAH! AUGH! TUTOR, PLEASE!!! AAAAAHAAHAHAHAH!!!!

EP: "And now, young Slacker... you will fail..."

LS: "AAAAAAAAAH!! TUUUTTTTOOOORRR!!! AAAAAAAAHHHH!!!"

(DV throws EP down the shaft)


(later)

Han Solo: "I'm sure Slacker didn't fail when the class bombed."

Leia Organa: "He didn't. I can feel the curve."

HS: "You study with him, don't you."

LO: "Why, yes."

HS: "Alright, fine, I understand, when he gets back, I won't get in the way."

LO: "Its not like that at all... he's my lab partner..."

(HS and LO kiss)

THE END
May the curve be with you...

I can't wait...

Pontoon ZOMG

Scissor me TIMBERS we have a pontoon boat on the way. Might be ready for Memorial Day weekend. Maybe my dune buggy will be ready by then too (lol). Srsly tho they ordered the one above in the picture. Pretty sweet eh? I still can't beat Rames's cabin though. We're not right on the lake. I would have to drive to the lake to go to teh boat, but thats not a big deal. We have a spot in the marina so i just go there and hop on the boat and go.

EDIT: I added a poll on the right side LOL. I bet I can guess what everyone puts. I was sick of studying, started looking at gadgets we can add to the blog. There are like 3000 lol... so yeah... back to studying.

At least...

we got laid, have had jobs, but yet have had time to find these gems. Those geeks still do have one advantage though, at least they aren't B L A C K !

Guns are for pussies

I really want to get one of these but i don't want to spend the money for the gun or the ammo. Hand Cannons like this are really expensive but the stats are... killer.

You sing into the muzzle...

Bow down, bitches

Thats right. It works. In fact, it works well. We didn't have the time to calculate its maximum force ouput, but it should be on the order of 15N at the key tip where the user would play it. We had it working all day today at the design expo and it went pretty well. Used LabView and a control algorithm to tie in sensors and stuff. When the key was pressed, our control algorithm output a pulse of current into the coil. If you guys have any questions and down wanna read whats below, just put 'em in the comments and I'll edit my post to answer them. I can post more pictures too.

Since this probably just looks like a big mess I'll try to explain the design....

Basic Hardware: The key is attached to a big long shaft because we did not have time to design a super instense hinging mechanism, and the long shaft allowed us to restrict lateral motion of the key. If the shaft were shorter, the bearings would allow some play and the key would wobble left and right, contacting the disk, which is obviously bad. Also, our entire prototype was moving all over the place because the table we were stuck with was bent, so we have the base supported with bubble wrap in the picture above lol.

Controllers: We used a hall effect sensor to detect position/movement of the key. You can see it at the end of the white wires under the key tip. To read the motor speed, we had to interface its encoder with LabView. Then, we used a feedback loop that keeps the motor at a constant speed. For instance, if the electromagnet outputs a force, then there is back-torque on the motor, which slows the motors speed, so we needed to implement a feedback loop. The interfacing with LabView is done with two amplifiers - one behind the motor which you can see, and one inside the giant box to the left which you cannot. The amplifier you cannot see is contained within the 1000W power supply and controls the electromagnet's current. We interface with that amplifier and power supply with the smaller board that has wires coming off of it.

Power Input: To power this prototype, we needed 3 power supplies. One is for the electromagnet (1000W), another to power the motor, and a third to power the hall effect sensor and the motor encoder.

Electromagnet: The two coils of the electromagnet were wired in parallel for the Expo. This does not necessarily prove our model as we have not altered the model to include the magnetic field generated by two coils with different currents running through them. Although that is true, we used this arrangement because it allowed us to run 34 Amps through the coil (Yea, wow), giving us a higher maximum force output.

Future crap: Basically, this is going to go on and become some poor grad. student's project from hell. We managed to get a force transducer set up to read the output forces, but didn't have time to do many experiments. The transducer has its own little mounting system that attaches on top of the bracket in the picture which has nothing attached to it. We decided it'd be best that way for the design expo, because it was more important for people to actually feel the difference instead of just seeing more Newtons of force on a computer screen lol. I *might* be able to do some independent research in the fall with my professor, but I'm not sure just yet. He needs to figure out exactly what hes going to research over the summer, and if its still there I'll continue with this project.

Dear God, somebody alert the ESRB!

Andy alerted me to the pixilated filth found in this patch. All joking aside, the modded bodies look spectacular.



If this patch was somehow released to coincide with the release of Oblivion itself back in the day, the ESRB would have a shit fit and Bethesda would end up delaying it and crippling customization in mods. It would be like a combination of when Little Big Planet was delayed because Muslims get whatever they want with the threat of mass physical violence and GTA San Andreas's Hot Coffee controversy. In Little Big Planet one of the music tracks' lyrics had a line from the Koran. The game was delayed just days before release and every copy already made was recalled, destroyed, and replaced with a fixed version. In the GTA thing a HACKER discovered that if he HACKED and modded the game you could get see a crude, pixilly strip show in the game. You had to actively hack and patch the game to make this happen so it was obviously Rockstar's fault. Hillary Clinton spearheaded that one and got it re-rated as Adult Only (AO) which necessitated a recall and re-release. As if there aren't easier ways to get your rocks off even if you're 12.

Toroidal Electromagnet: Mark II

Well, here it is. Same toroidal core with 1673 turns of wire. There are two layers. The inner layer, formed by the coils of the first picture I posted, is 24 gauge and created too high a resistance. The top layers (6 of them) are made of 20 gauge wire, which has about half the resistance. I put on another 902 turns today and as you can see its becoming massive. It weighs about 5 pounds and you can kinda guess the size from the credit card there (its about an inch tall too).

The design expo is on Thursday, so if we can't produce a working product using this, then we won't have another chance and we're just kinda fucked. BTW I would estimate this took me an extra 4 hours to do. After working on it for a while, the stacked coils will begin to slide towards the slot, and have fallen right off many times. This is causing HUGE problems. It slides off and the only way to get it back on is to force it back around the core with a screwdriver. As I'm sure you can imagine, its pretty easy to end up scratching the laminate right off the wire and causing a short. They're not bare wires as I'm sure you would have guessed already. They are copper wires with a nonconducting metal layer on the outside. Anyway, I'll keep you guys up to date. Tomorrow is another big huge testing day for us. Hopefully all goes well.... because we have 3 days to work on this lol...

Oh, and yes... the top layer is very messy. Like I said, the toroid was essentially coming apart so I had to stop where I was. Man, you'd never think of what a pain in the ass this would be till you try and actually do it....

EDIT: I will probably post something like every day until completion... so hopefully you guys aren't already sick of hearing about it lol.

Senior Design Update

Our electromagnet output 1.25 N of force at a current of 3.75 Amps. The wire I wound the toroid with seems to be too small, and creates too much resistance. We only had a 15VDC max output power supply on hand, but now we have one that will give 1000W at 48V. Additionally, I will be adding more wire. I'll let you know when its complete, most likely tomorrow night. I'll share the details then.


Oh, and I'm pretty sure our theoretical model is super wrong *SAD FACE* lol. Hard to explain without pictures, so you'll just have to wait.

Work

2nd shift has been keeping up their high standards and quality for quite some time now and i decided to make a couple "thank you" cards. The above image is a look alike to what my boss would make and the bottom one is what i'd like to say.

Jokes, read comment for answers

How do you confuse a black guy?

The whitehouse gardener, a 43 year veteran, was recently fired from his posting following his latest incident where he said....

Capitalism at its finest

This, gentlemen, is pure unadulterated racism. Is it a coincidence that the Chibama comes with nappy greens rather than long and lustrous field grass? I think not.

Chia sells two versions of this collectible: "determined Obama" and "happy Obama". Or as I like to call them: "our Lord and savior Obama" and "shit-eatin grin Obama", respectively.

Poppin Boppin

New form of punishment for sex offenders being pioneered in Houghton

This guy was standing on the sidewalk of the lift bridge in an easter rabbit costume just waving at traffic for hours. Blew off class to get these shots. He's also been spotted dressed up as Santa during the winter (also standing out there for hours).

Toroidal Electromagnet: Mark I

We haven't gotten a chance to test it yet, but we will first thing tomorrow morning. This baby packs a fuckin' punch with its 771 turns of magnet wire. Took me more than 3 hours to wind it. We're hoping for a force output on the order of 30 Newtons, but we're using an unverified theoretical model so we're not quite sure what it will do. Hopefully it won't give us 1 N with like 15 Amps running through it lol.

Our next revision will have something like 1600 turns. That will give us a force output thats almost 4 times greater than what this one will give. So, now the hard part begins.... testing and validation... if we get the whole thing up and running tomorrow I'll post a picture. Theres a pretty serious design review going on tomorrow where some prof. who knows nothing of your project basically will grade you on how well you know your stuff and how well your project is turning out. We best get moving if we want it to work by 5pm tomorrow (thats when our review is schedule).

Russian April Fools

Some pranksters planted an explosive on this statue of Lenin in the middle of St. Petersburg. I like the picture of the guy with his head sticking out of Lenin's ass.

Puddin' Pops

God... I'm bored, its a Friday night, and I have no money. So here it is, the reason I made this post. Some may say hes a big stupid doo doo head, but I think Bill Cosby is fuckin funny. Ok, maybe hes just crazy, but srsly... that shit is funny.

Also, wtf is with the guy in that picture? Srsly.

EDIT: Heres the remix. I'm gonna cut the first half and make it my ringtone lol.

Facebook

Ok,

Since I was spending too much damn time on facebook, and not doing productive things, I decided to deactivate my account. If you guys need to get a hold of me, well.. you have my number and my email address is dswagle@mtu.edu

-Donnie

Oh nos!

Here's this interesting article on CNN about a pistachio recall.

...Step Three: Profit