Ryan

Ahhh, capitalism

It left a toasty little prong sticking out behind, which I carefully pulled out of the socket with well insulated needle nosed pliers. Fun times at the museum!

Filled a cabinet under an exhibit with smoke today. I was given a sketchy extension cord to plug in a TV, and it made a little buzzing sound. Buzzing stopped, so I bumped it, and it buzzed again, this time with a tiny fire at the wall end. Jerked it out of the wall by the cord, and all's well.

Also, some of the strange contortions needed on this job have solidly proven I am not claustrophobic. For example, a space I can only stand in by slinking vertically, big enough just to move one arm, or a space I have to put my head into, rotate my body, locking it in just to see what I'm working on

I'm bruised and beat up, but half the museum is all up and running with brand new stuff now. It has been a very successful and extremely satisfying day.

On to the second museum job for Forbin Interactive Systems! Spent a twelve hour day today crawling through cabinets and between walls with a headlamp on, wiring up and testing custom electronics I invented and built.

Holy crap I NEED TO BE INVOLVED

Congratulations and thanks for posting the pics! It just came out so so well 😁

Closeup of the animatronic crab in its trap

The wall on which the half trap is installed.

I am unbelievably proud of how well this crab came out. I know quite well how it jumps and snaps (I let it run before installation, did a loop of six thousand jump and snaps), but it still surprised me while I was taking the closeup.

View across the visitor's center, showing the two main cabinets and swamp scene

The two alligators make a great photo op

One of the two big cabinets, "Up the Bayou". The other is..."Down the Bayou" of course

Louisiana's Cajun Bayou is the best visitor's center I've ever seen. I've been on the project the whole time, and left with some brochures for things I didn't know about and want to see 😁

They asked for no pics until Friday 🙈

Huuuuge credit to @armakproductions.com too in case he doesn't brag on himself. He pulled it all together!

And a crab in a trap that snaps and hops up when people get close!

Ten audiovisual stations with buttons and presence sensors, LEDs all over the maps that light up when videos talk about those places, a main theater with video sync across three screens, a crawfish pot that shows a video when you lean over it, two soundscapes with distance-based volume. Whew.

On Friday, August 1, at 10:30am, the visitor center opens!!! They aren't posting pictures until the grand opening, but I'll post some!

This is so exciting, the first big job wrapped up. I'm really excited and anxious and really hope everything keeps running until Saturday 😬

I saved a wasp trapped inside our screened porch today, using one of those big zapper rackets, without pressing the button. That is, neither of us stung the other.

I have done this in good faith toward peace between our peoples, and hope this tenuous ceasefire holds.

Casio F-91W watch

I started looking at smart watches and decided I don't want one, and picked up a classic instead.

Finished the Metamorphosis, I hadn't read it before. Gregor Samsa is a really tragic figure, sort of an atheist Job. I'm happy for his sister though, she may have a bright future.

We're watching The Prisoner, a series from 1967. Holy crap it stands up so well. I see where Lost and The Good Place got everything. It's crazy, fun, and weird. I really do recommend it

Opening of a pool skimmer with an alligator floating thermometer staring out

I was just floating along and the new thermometer nearly gave me a heart attack

When I look through them, things appear smaller, but I'm not sure whether that means near or far sighted. In any case, they'll be waiting for their folk along with the other cleaned towels, water bottles, bracelets, flip flops, etc.

Lonely pair of glasses on a granite countertop.

I'll never quite understand leaving behind glasses after a party. We do maintain a lost and found at our house for parties, but prescription glasses are always a surprise. Sunglasses are common, parties often end in the dark. Shoes, sure, seems odd but someone else drove them home. But glasses?

This is really bad. A few years ago there was a secret contract with palantir...I guess they liked it.

We get 17M tourists (that's a low end, it's really more likely to be around 19 or 20M) and have a population of 364K. Even if you want to include our metro area (966K), that's still 17 tourists per capita. Barcelona has about 13M tourists and a pop of 1.62M, about 8 per capita.

Except that we get more tourists per capita than many of those places. E.g., Barcelona has about 8, we have 46.

Big rock at the end of the Strait of Gibraltar

Map of the Strait of Gibraltar, with a blue dot just inside the Mediterranean

After fourteen days and a few stops, finally made it into the Mediterranean!

Five stacked wooden boards with electronic devices stuck to them

This museum project is rolling. Today we assembled five of the two-station tech boards, each with two of the controllers and brightsigns...each of these boards will handle two stations, and a station has one monitor, sound, presence sensor, and up to eight buttons to trigger various media.

If their case for deporting him is so clear, why not follow the law and give him due process, then deport him?

We're going on a cruise next week, out of here, New Orleans. We've had Canadians on the cruise reaching out to us to ask whether they'll be safe, and whether they should worry about being detained coming in.

I'm really ashamed of what this country is doing.

I am so relieved to hear he's alive. I thought for sure that "we're defying the supreme court" was the lesser of two scandals.