Behind the Scenes Work

Not too much is happening here - last week's show was a bit of a bust for me but went surprisingly well overall in spite of some drama within NCLUG (in spite of months of work, the project I wanted to display at this event was not yet presentable). While I'm not used to having a supporting role at a LEGO show, things seem to have gone off well. The extra time came in handy - I ended up having some "work work" to do over the weekend, and I managed to squeeze in a concert on Saturday night. I've barely started attempting to clean up or post photos yet. I am now prepping for Robot Rumble this upcoming weekend. The next few weeks will involve more tidying up (my build area is currently absolutely unsafe) and preparing various things I'm planning on bringing to Maker Faire.

It looks like I'll be on my own for Maker Faire this year. Speaking of NCLUG drama...everyone wants to do more shows, but when we have one that's ours for the taking, nobody else wants to participate. There are some issues involved with coordinating a large group for a one day show, but I'd definitely say it's worth it to engage the larger hobbyist/DIY community and not just the families that tend to go to LEGO-only shows. Their loss - I'll be there and we'll have a great time. My only concern is that I might not have enough time to see the various other exhibits at the Faire.

Speaking of not having time, I'm stalling my wheels on pretty much all of my projects lately. In the interest of making it look like there is some progress on the fix-the-blog front, I've played around with the new Blogger Template Designer for a few minutes today (personally, I'm not happy with this tool but it's a slight improvement on their previous WYSIWYG GUI). I'm still not happy with the layout here, but I think it's a step in the right direction. I'm still interested in wasting much less space on the sides of the screen - and I'll probably switch to a 3-column set-up with a proper profile and contact info at some point - but this will have to do until I have more time available.

With any luck, my little pneumatic walker built entirely from the current LEGO Pneumatic Log Loader set will be working well enough for me to work out instructions soon - the current goal is to have that project finished and on display by Saturday. It seems like I can get simple walking mechanisms working, and I can get the binary adder control circuit working (don't worry, I'll explain this when I post instructions), but I can't seem to get everything working well together. As of this writing, the legs slip to the side more than they actually walk forward.