Category: Uncategorized

There doesn’t seem like a better solution. It looks like my first quarter back in college I’m taking a class from 6:00-10:40 pm twice a week. I get up at 5:40 am.
This does not sound fun.
Of course, the class itself does, so, ya know.

I took the COMPASS test this weekend. Placed into Calculus I and English 101. In other words I still have my game. I’m trying to decide what class I should take to get back in it. I also need to register for said class tonight. Must register… I’m thinking I’ll wait to talk to an advisor before subjecting myself to English, I might be able to talk my way out of it. It’s not that I’m against taking an English class, it’s that I’ve come pickier with years.
I also gardened like a machine. Sine choking chive stiff has been ripped out, tomatoes and pass have been planted, Christmas lights taken down, some rando flowers the Wif liked have been planted, and general brush clearing.
So tonight is registration. There was something else, but definitely registration. Oh yeah, pay bills and stuff. Bills and registration.

This would be for a mission non-critical clock. I’m not the best about going to bed on time, so it’d be good to have a visual system to know oops.
Have an arbitrary midpoint, in my case midnight, based on my sleep patterns. Have a voltage slowly ramp up over the course of the day… hmmm, I have a different idea now. I wonder if I could do this entirely discrete components. Right.
I don’t know…

Looking at unstructured databases. As it is, this is all for my own edification, so making a ghettotastic (just had to add that word to spellcheck?!?) database sounds fun.
Thinking something like an object oriented value pair setup. So for beer: bottles are made of their values, aging values, ferment values, boil values. Every value has a time associated with it.
So a data insert might be something like:
(Bottle,4,Carboy,2,06152016154756)

Create (for round one) an Excel (Libre Office, whatever) file with bottle identifier, maybe not going to go numbers, website (for the sake of the barcode encoding), rando key, which will allow a review to happen without blatantly asking for script kids to show up, and data.
Transform this into a set of static wordpress pages.
Client (used in the sense of person holding bottle, quite often me) scans barcode.
Goes to static page that’s hardcoded into the bottle.
If the rando is in the request, and the rando is right for the bottle, and the rando isn’t used yet…
Give the form for review collection.
Else, just the static page, with the review, quick links for previous bottle pages.
(Need to look into form submission stuff, also a shutoff switch would be good, safe data collection is good days collection)
The review info should be radio buttons or dropdowns, potentially reviewer name, if I take in the name make it clear that their name is only for looking at trends or something. Might skip the name, a username maybe?

The static pages should be generated based on the data available. Probably a timeline kind of graph.
Start with the recipe / source. Name if available.
Next is boiling. This will be a graph of temperature versus time with dots showing when stuff happened.
Next still be a graph of temperature versus time for fermentation (look at temperature ye git!), again add points of interest for interesting points. When I start collecting it, other data can live on here as well, pressure, atmospheric alcohol, ambient temperature, ambient pressure. O2 and CO2 would be fun, but if I remember not cheap. Light levels would be interesting, as might NIR if I get that going.
Next would be the same graph for aging. A lot of the spare data would be wasted, but there might still be value.
I need to have a way to easily identify all the data I don’t collect, or data collection for lazy data collection. As in I only had the first couple temperatures dir the boil because I broke the thermometer. Ideally a dot style graph, and maybe our clear that connecting lines are entirely guesses.
Right. 41 days until bottling.

Had a bit of a panic attack last night about this. I’m better now.
If the barcode is printed on the bottle, than the bottle is no longer reusable.
But.
I think it might be fun to look at the progression of the bottles along Herbert’s Golden Path. Each bottle, if it’s reused lives and dies and lives again. Valhalla!
But seriously. I scan a barcode for bottle number 67. It brings me up the information on bottle 67’s current contents, as well as each previous version. For the minute, I need to build the data backend for the website. I have roughly 6 weeks until bottling some hefeweizen. Then, either I print bottles, or I print labels as a stop gap. Maybe I should print labels for the rest of the Wootst0ut. Probably should.
First, the web backend.

I will not swear. I will not swear. I will not swear. All work and no play makes Jack a full boy. All work and no play makes Jack a full boy. All work and no play makes Jack a full boy. All work and no play makes Jack a full boy. Ask work and no play makes Jack a full boy. All work and no play makes Jack s still boy.All work and no play makes Nyack a full boy m all work and no play makes Jack a sol boy.

I blame myself.

One servo to rotate
One servo to advance the carriage
One servo to move the stamp
One whatever to move a stamp pad

Next. How do I want to fab?

I could hand cut parts and dremel in wood. Points for artistry, negative points for repeatability of the build. Points for cheepness of materials. Negative points for wear of materials.
Make molds and hand pour acrylic. Great except the whole fumes are never agents. I’d have the molds for fabbing new parts, but the messy.
Design parts and have someone fab them for me. I assume this will be the most expensive, least recovery method. Also, the next time I need a part, I’m back at square one.

Looks like it’s wood.

A peristaltic pump would do the trick, or keeping with the stamper idea, I could have a servo that had a lot of the same look as a cheap peristaltic pump. I’m thinking of y last inkjet printer I murdered.
By the way, I’m pretty sure people totally get skeezed when I’m doing my hands moving around while I visualize the motions involved.

So I’m thinking I’ll hand wrap some electromagnets, telegraph style. I’ll try firing then off next to each other, bit I’m pretty sure that’s going to fail. By fail, it’ll probably end up being like hammers on said keyboard. Having the wrong combination will give a false up of some kind. Next will be trying a V pattern. The distance might help, but I’m not really sure. If nothing else, it’ll give me more room to put the electromagnets. Last works be separating then even more and having it straight up look like the hammers of a keyboard. The last one though is going to require that each piece is pretty expertly machined…
Oh, hello. This is why I blog. I’ve poetically mentioned this before, but I remember an awesome anecdote I learned somewhere. At some CS lab, I think it was MIT, they had a teddy bear. Before you asked the helper, you had to fully vocalize the problem to the bear, and must questions answered themselves. I could just make a single key typewriter. One stepper to turn the bottle. One stepper to advance the carriage, one solenoid to hammer the bottle. Have the solenoid pushing along a track to ink the stamper.
Or… right. Rotate, and advance carriage as before. Cylinder of ink with pressure maintained by a screw, solenoid valve to give a moment’s inking.
I think number two is better, but number three is a possibility. Number three is much more likely to be really pokey about the ink consistency, but number two will have problems on the stamping mechanism fouling, and the material of the stamp not being properly chosen.