I ran accross an interesting artical on the Backcountry.com site earlier that shows design, testing, and manufacturing processes of black diamond carabiners.  Very interesting.  The article is at the following link.


http://www.backcountry.com/store/newsletter/a737/Creating-the-Carabiner.html?sssdmh=dm10.108985&cmp_id=EM_CON1034a&mv_pc=r202&ep_rid=2152198

Whenever I think I am getting the least bit good at anything I watch a rally video and relize that just watching the videos is scarry enough.  The control is absolutly crazy.  Someday I will get back together with my codriver (mr. miller) and we will give them all a run for their money.  Uhh Right.. Sure we will.  Here are some fun videos.  Who says snowboard parks are just for jibbers?

It just came to my attention that a helicopter landing on the top of Everest has already been done.  So there are no limits.  I am surprised we haven’t seen the TGR crew making a ski decent yet.  Now that it is just an afternoon outing.  Check the movie out.  Cool but the problem with this sort of cheating is that it takes most of the experience out of life.  Very little time left for camaraderie and adventure.

With all the tick talk lately we accidently did a little google image search for ticks and thought we better share the disturbng results.. so that we wouldn't have to carry the full burden ourselves :)  Enjoy  And be ready for lots of babies.  We did find one raisen sized one on the floor last year.  Thanks goodness we got it outside quickly.  

It seems to have warmed up and we managed to fit a couple hour ride into Beth's studying.  Since the trails along the river are still under water we headed fifteen minutes out of town to Turtle River State Park, the home of the only (although short) sections of single track trail in eastern North Dakota.  The weather was great and the trails mostly dry.  It was so nice the dogs swam about a dozen times and the ticks were even begining to come out to play.  So a afternoon ride expanded into a combined ride...hair cut...dog bathing party.  As You can probably tell the hair cuts still need a little work, but it was getting late.  There will be a round two with the clippers for sure.  We even got a picture of one of the first couple dozen little guys of the year for you.  Cute aren't they.

One of our new friends

There is always time for a swim

What?... Now We Look Like Labs 

I found a very cool sensor the other day.  I have been working on a crane application at work off and on for a while.  We have many large cranes with bulky end effects for moving glass and sash panels to and from the production lines.  In the past the cumbersome size of them kept them being used on only the largest and heaviest loads.  So I deigned a very small end effecter and utilized a servo controlled zero gravity crane that follows your hand movement.  The only problem was that the overhead bridge remained heavy and still took effort to accelerate and move.  So I have been trying to find a way to automate its movement without requiring direct operator controls.  So the new sensor I found outputs an analog signal based on its current angular position.  My plan is to take this signal from the crane assemblies angle and format it to drive motors to keep the bridge positioned above the operator without requiring them to push any buttons.  This will mean that if the operator pushes the glass lightly in a direction the crane should automatically drive in that direction until they stop pushing.  It has been an exciting breakthrough for me (albeit geeky), but since it is unproven ground in the controls world I will let you know how it goes.  Luckily I have some talented programmers and panel builders as coworkers so it might just work. 

Well with may little trip to Salt Lake the other weekend I think the ND ski season may be ending.  Now if the water would just fall we could get the bikes back out.  I just ran accros this clip of Kris Holm on the unicycle.  Its an old clip but ramains incredable.  


Enjoy