One year ago today: June 8, 2018, how many were musicians?
Five years ago today: June 8, 2014, the Russian store.
Nine years ago today: June 8, 2010, living like Harry.
Random years ago today: June 8, 2017, equally inept at diagrams?
Here’s that turtle pic you’ve been waiting for. Notice the clean sheets, the paper Kroger’s delivery bags. It was so thoughtful of then to design those bags the exact right size for lining turtle cages. And to have done so years before any of us heard of Kroger’s, I mean, well. That’s pronounced “whell”, giggidy-giggidy. Smile back at the little guy because the rest of this morning didn’t turn out so cheery.
I have a partial answer. Look at the diagram, the question pertains to the left side, where it shows the 45° side cut guide slots. This photo, so you’ll know, shows a badly designed miter box to start with. There should be holes in the base to put cams to wedge your work against the sides. Anyway, back to the slot on the end. It is there when you have to cut a 45° angle on a piece of wood that is too tall for the height of the box. There. Now, I’d like an explanation of why it has those two flanges and the triangle shaped cutout. It seems too elaborate for the task. The site I found has an excellent article on miter boxes, worth your taking a look. Once again, a non-US site. Alternate uses include slicing home made bread and soap. I learned mis-cut bread slices are called ‘door wedges’.
This put me in a rough mood, that and other things, which I’ll tell you. First, the Sprint store told me they could put money on my Virgin account. I waited 25 minutes for them to serve just two customers ahead of me and turns out they can’t take the payment. But they are instructed to tell all customers they’ll “be with them in a few moments”. Sprint has a fouled up definition of what constitutes a moment. While I was there, I’ll tell you what happened, you can make anything you want of this. As I entered, there were eight other people in the store. An older couple, a guy waiting in line, and five people gathered around some display at the other end.
When I walked in, the room went silent and all of them stopped and stared at me. And they kept staring. I knew my fly was up and my tutu is at the cleaners. I glanced around and there was no hidden camera. It wasn’t my handsome yet boyish good looks and I had not made eye contact. I finally whispered to the clerk loud enough for everybody to hear, “Who are these people and why are they staring at me?” Instantly, all of them turned back to what they were doing. What an oddball occurrence.
I think I have it figured out. Since I was not doing my Batman imitation, they stare because in some way all these plain-looking people had a connection. They were distantly related to that entity who puts that notice at the beginning of DVD movies. The one that says this movie has been modified to fit your screen. That is for the benefit of people who cannot figure it out on their own. Anyway, these people share the same genetic defect as both the guy who wrote that notice--and the people who need it. See the connection? The people were all from Tennessee and were taken aback because I walked in knowing what I was doing. They don’t get to see that so often. There, the only plausible explanation.
Wait, there’s more. Up the sidewalk was a Verizon outlet, so I stopped there on my way back to the car. I asked the clerk if he knew where I could pay, to which he over-replied saying he had no idea whatsoever. The implication was that since it wasn’t a Verizon brand, I was not quite in tune. Nope, he said, no idea whatsoever. As I walked out, I shot back, “Yeah, I’m getting used to a lot of that in Tennessee.”
Movie money.
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Rainfall all afternoon kept me inside and working on the beer caddy prototype. It’s done and seems fully functional. My stunt double demonstrates version 1.0 and I’m sure some design features will suggest themselves. Keen attention was paid to mass production and you may see changes soon that emphasize the appearance of the bottles. Even now, when collapsed, the handle does not block the view of the caps, and the handle cutout is larger than necessary so more of the bottle will show in the down position.
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The process here is not designing the box, but reverse-engineering it to cut the pieces efficiently from one fence panel. Possibly you can make that out across the bottom quarter of the page. The boxes are planned to be cut four at a time, and I’m also drafting jigs. A single day’s production run should produce 200 boxes, using tools already installed in my shed. The snag is I don’t have storage space for that many. I’m already refining the design, so things like the divider pieces will be made from leftover cut pieces rather than custom sawn as shown in this pilot model.
ADDENDUM
Now, in the opposite of this morning’s adventure at the phone store, there are times when I like attention. And that would be, for old time’s sake, in a pub on a Saturday night. I calculated that I deserved some me-time and went over to Shooters. Nothing fancy. I took the box along to demonstrate for the lovely Shay, who assisted in the development of the moveable handle. That means she said it would never work, but she’s so pretty that doesn’t matter, now does it? Dang, she wasn’t on duty.
This video is also a promo. Elliot out west was first to ask, since he gets many of these videos first. Yes, they do make excellent advertising loops. He wanted to know what software I used. So, out of academic interest, I’ll describe the making of this gif, and I pronounce that with a hard “g” like most other people. There is no gif software and I’m not dumb enough to upload my videos on-line and let strangers do the production. Video is a field where you get a better product when you understand the process. Having said that, gifs are an new and different Internet form of expression. There are four major errors in this clip, I wonder if you can spot them?
This gif has a storyboard that was planned in advance of the camera work. A tripod is necessary to get any of the shots shown here. The idea is to minimize background jitter so the moving parts get the attention. It required 400+ shots to get the 158 seen here. I’m a believer in good pre-production camera work, so everything was planned for two acts of equal intensity daylight. The movement is carefully rehearsed, right down to placing the bottles with the labels forward. The multiple scenes shown here are only three camera angles. The stills are taken using VLC media player free version, which is limited by how fast you can click the camera icon—and there is no way to automate that.
I avoid using Gimp, which produces “layers” of photos to get the animated effect. I use an old piece of Photoscape software I got with some camera bought long ago. To resize the photos, I still use MicroSoft Office Picture Manager, the XP version only. Camera resolutions and dimensions are rarely ideal for gifs, so you should have the ability to crop multiple photos at once. I find the “nearly square” shape best, which means around half of the photo isn’t shown. Plan your shots to be off-center and avoid having to crop from both ends. I take the photos down to 640x480 before cropping, and then take the finished gif down to 312 pixels so it will display on most smart phone screens.
Last, pay some attention to wardrobe and continuity. This loop was two different times of day. Where the box is moving across, it stays “level” or in a LCD trick, moves toward or away from the screen.
