Sunday, January 21, 2007
Snow!
So, Saturday afternoon I saw all this snow, so I figured I should do something with it. It was too powdery to make a snowman, but ah! I had some buckets in my closet! So I packed them full and it stuck together enough to make a sand castle. I also had an extra collender I had found, so I made some half-spheres as well. Some kids came by, and they may have helped if they had had gloves or something.
Falling off the swingset was fun too. Into the 8 inches of snow. Playing in the snow was a nice break from working on servo motor controlers. Do you want the PID controller to get feedback from the speed or the velocity? How do you make it smooth if position at a time is what is critical, but velocity is all you can change? Do I need cascading PID controlers?
By Sunday, my 75 gallon pyramid has fallen over.
This after noon I went and played frisbee in the snow with some people from church. It was slippery, so starting and stopping were inhibited, but diving was great! No sand burrs, just snow. When we won, we built a snow fort, and had a laidback snowball fight. The sun started peaking around the clouds, bathing everything in a blue glow, and then came out in full brilliant color, suddenly making the world have texture and depth.
There were two Audis and my car there that had four-wheel drive, and we had a big, open field with 8 inches of snow on it. We drove around in circles, sliding sideways, spinning our wheels as we turned. It turns out that you do turn left to go right. The snow fort dissappeared into the powdery blanket. My awesome-cool Mazda seemed (to me at least) comparable to the Audis. It did have it's weakness: snow and wet makes the alternator belt sqeak at low rpm.
I came home and found that my partly-fallen snow castles had been rebuilt into one, and a couple other building had been constructed using the same methods. It's not like making packed-snow blocks is non-obvious, but I may have been an inspiration to others...
After a prayer and praise meeting, we bundled up and went sledding on an overpass-created hill--one of the best ones in Kansas! I didn't have any sled, so I borrowed from others, and found scraps of broken items used by earlier sledders. The best things I used (in my opinion) were some shards of Formicia, 18"-24" wide and 6"-8" wide. I would sit on the larger irregularly -shaped, sharp-edge piece, and put my heels on the smaller one, and then zip down the hill at lightning speed. At the bottom, I would simply tumble until I stopped to keep from falling in the ditch or hitting the manhole cover. I then would dust off my bruises, and tap-dance to the top of the hill and try again. The bottom of the hill was strewn with pieces of plastic and other sharp items, artifacts of other sledders who came with tubs and sleds, and left with shattered hopes.
It was a very snow-filled weekend, and I am slightly sore, especially where my bones are close to my skin.
Falling off the swingset was fun too. Into the 8 inches of snow. Playing in the snow was a nice break from working on servo motor controlers. Do you want the PID controller to get feedback from the speed or the velocity? How do you make it smooth if position at a time is what is critical, but velocity is all you can change? Do I need cascading PID controlers?
By Sunday, my 75 gallon pyramid has fallen over.
This after noon I went and played frisbee in the snow with some people from church. It was slippery, so starting and stopping were inhibited, but diving was great! No sand burrs, just snow. When we won, we built a snow fort, and had a laidback snowball fight. The sun started peaking around the clouds, bathing everything in a blue glow, and then came out in full brilliant color, suddenly making the world have texture and depth.
There were two Audis and my car there that had four-wheel drive, and we had a big, open field with 8 inches of snow on it. We drove around in circles, sliding sideways, spinning our wheels as we turned. It turns out that you do turn left to go right. The snow fort dissappeared into the powdery blanket. My awesome-cool Mazda seemed (to me at least) comparable to the Audis. It did have it's weakness: snow and wet makes the alternator belt sqeak at low rpm.
I came home and found that my partly-fallen snow castles had been rebuilt into one, and a couple other building had been constructed using the same methods. It's not like making packed-snow blocks is non-obvious, but I may have been an inspiration to others...
After a prayer and praise meeting, we bundled up and went sledding on an overpass-created hill--one of the best ones in Kansas! I didn't have any sled, so I borrowed from others, and found scraps of broken items used by earlier sledders. The best things I used (in my opinion) were some shards of Formicia, 18"-24" wide and 6"-8" wide. I would sit on the larger irregularly -shaped, sharp-edge piece, and put my heels on the smaller one, and then zip down the hill at lightning speed. At the bottom, I would simply tumble until I stopped to keep from falling in the ditch or hitting the manhole cover. I then would dust off my bruises, and tap-dance to the top of the hill and try again. The bottom of the hill was strewn with pieces of plastic and other sharp items, artifacts of other sledders who came with tubs and sleds, and left with shattered hopes.
It was a very snow-filled weekend, and I am slightly sore, especially where my bones are close to my skin.
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Hey Tob, We have had snow for the last week too. I played Ultimate last sunday in the snow and although there was a powdery layer of snow you still had to be careful of the frozen ground underneath. later
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