red echo

The Seattle Monorail Project just released the details of the contract they have negotiated with Cascadia Monorail, and the predictable barrage of complaints, gripes, criticism, and second-guessing began almost immediately. They're all missing the point, and I'm getting really tired of hearing so much shallow nay-saying. Yes, of course the monorail is going to cost a lot of money - it's a transit project! Yes, of course this means lots of taxes and/or lots of debt - that's how governments build things! But complaining about the cost doesn't make it shrink, and if we don't build the monorail now it's just going to cost us even more money whenever we do finally get around to it.

We will eventually build a citywide rapid transit system, have no doubt about that: Seattle is growing, and there is no evidence that it will stop growing anytime soon. Transportation will only become an increasingly difficult problem, and auto-based fixes will only grow more expensive and less effective. Geography constrains us: Seattle cannot sprawl out to the horizon like Phoenix or Los Angeles, cannot build a subway like New York or London, cannot - unlike Portland, Dallas, or Atlanta - pipe street-level light rail through its existing transportation bottlenecks. No, Seattle will eventually build its monorail, or a system functionally identical to it; or Seattle will suffocate itself in an unworkably congested automotive grid.

Since we know we need to build it, then, what are we waiting for? Sure, it's going to be expensive, but it will only be more expensive later. Seattle voters have been asking for this thing since 1997; enough with the hand-wringing! On with the construction already.

La Bête makes a perfectly adequate tent. The head-end is a little lumpy, but a rolled-up jacket mostly solved that. I still woke up with a stiff neck, though; should have inflated the pillow after all. My new sleeping bag performed as well as I'd hoped, though the conditions were not particularly challenging.

People love my projects. I got endless comments on the laser backpack and there was a great deal of interest in the rave-o-matic. Lots of people commented that they had looked at the rave-o-matic web site and had been looking forward to seeing it. I'm now sure that the series of light-up blinky-laser backpacks I've been planning will be a hit.

I'll write up a full account of the rave-o-matic test run over on its own site later, but here's the synopsis: the electronics all worked perfectly and the chassis was fine. The laser pole failed almost at once and the hitch design was unworkable. I made repairs and adaptations, got a reasonable evening's use out of the device, and people loved it. Now it's time to make repairs and tweak the design for next time.

I felt exhausted last night, after jury-rigging the laser system back together; I spent an hour or two wondering what the point of the project was. I left it where it was, wandered around, watched some fire performances, had a second dinner; then decided that I might as well tow it around while I was there and learn what I could from the experience. Somewhat to my surprise, people loved it just as much in its busted, not particularly impressive (to me) state as I had hoped they would with all of its components intact. I think that most people didn't even realize it was broken. Hmmm.

Kids are entranced by lasers, just like kittens. I went dancing with my laser backpack last night and in one of the domes had a cluster of littl'uns hopping around behind my back, trying to catch, or step on, or otherwise interact with the pattern projected onto the ground.

I took the afternoon off work, intending to spend a couple of hours finishing the rave-o-matic, then pick up some food and camping gear and head up to Critical Massive around five or six. At seven, though, I was still working hard and had plenty of work remaining. I decided that I would be happier spending less time at Critical Massive with a finished art project than more time there with a machine that wasn't really ready, so I resolved to work until the project was finished and delay my departure til tomorrow morning. I finally soldered the last wire and cinched the last zip-tie at around eleven-thirty: whew! It looks good and sounds great. I'm very happy. I can't wait to see what people think of it come tomorrow night.

Despite many hours spent in the basement working on my latest project over the last couple of weeks, I had encountered none of my fellow residents there until today. I went upstairs to get some more tools, and when I came back there was a woman getting some camping gear out of her locker. She had seen my wheel-brackets hanging from the ceiling earlier in the week and had been very puzzled trying to guess their purpose, so she was glad to have the mystery solved. We got to talking; in a surprising coincidence it turned out that not only had she moved to Seattle from Reno, as I did, but she had moved here from the same apartment complex I had lived in! Funny, that.

I went kayaking today, for the first time since the Isuzu got wrecked a year and a half ago and I had to give up my twice-or-thrice-weekly after-work kayaking sessions. It was great: a clear blue day with a nice breeze and a few clouds, lots of people out in their boats, and some kind of street fair rollicking away in Fremont (related to the solstice parade, maybe?). Sara and I rented a double over at NWOC, where I was pleased to discover that they still recognize me despite the long hiatus and the blonde hair. It had been even longer since the last time she'd been out on the water, but doubles are really stable and we had no problems. We cruised around the northwest end of Lake Union, watched the Fremont Bridge open, cruised up the ship canal... ahh, yes, I remember why I used to love doing this. Sara seemed to enjoy herself even more than I did - I think I know what we'll be doing on sunny weekends this summer!

Whew. At long last, we shipped it.

I'm getting tired of filling up my journal with pictures of and reports about the progress on my stereo trailer project, so I've copied all of the relevant entries plus a bunch of additional photos over to a new page: The Official “Amazing Rave-O-Matic Laser Disco Music Machine” Home Page. I am sure that I will continue to mention my progress here from time to time, but the deluge of photos and commentary will now take place (at greater volume, I predict!) over there.

Kevin threw Chandra a surprise birthday party today over at China Gate. It was good to see them; Ashlyn is growing up fast, as babies generally do. I haven't had dim sum in a while - since last year's trip to Vancouver, in fact. It so happened that Mike Wimer of Musicwerks was celebrating his birthday a few tables over, so the place was full of black-wearing industrial music types.

Sara and I took a stroll down Broadway afterward and did a little shopping. We happened to pass by Half Price Books on the way back, and stopped in on a whim... an hour later we emerged with half a dozen books each. I love that store; you'll never find any specific book there, but there is always something worth reading and the books are so cheap you can pick them up without a worry.

Later in the afternoon I spent a couple more hours on the rave-o-matic. The wheel adjustment involved a little bashing about with a hammer, but it really wasn't as bad as it could have been, and now the chassis rolls straight and smooth. I took the machine out for its first road-test, and it actually rolls a bit too well - I had some trouble keeping it from running away down the hill and crashing into parked cars. It exhibits a fair bit of nose-wheel shimmy, so I will need to rig up some kind of damper, but overall I am quite pleased with its performance.

I was all keyed up last night, thinking about this project and that, so instead of going to bed I decided to tinker with the little photo editor application I use to crop and resize all the photos I upload here. I ended up rewriting all of the code that controlled exposure correction: I'm particularly proud of the new all-in-one slider control that adjusts brightness, contrast, and gamma. I think this widget may be the one genuine innovation in the entire program; I want to do some user testing, now, to see if it is as self-explanatory as I hope. It's no Photoshop, of course, but most of the time I only use a fraction of Photoshop's power anyway, and my app can now handily cover almost all of that fraction. I'm tired today, but I wouldn't have been able to sleep anyway, and at least this way I feel like I accomplished something.

I've been working hard on the rave machine over the last few days, though progress has not been as visible as I would usually like. There are a number of tricky design problems involved, relating to various limits of space, time, volume, power, and money, pushing against my desire to make the finished product as exciting, noisy, and visually impressive as possible. I finished the laser platform and its collapsible pole last night, and built about half of the speaker enclosure. I've solved the wheels problem - I'm going to use ten-inch pneumatic hand-truck tires - but I still need to actually build the swivels and mounting brackets, and I'm still trying to figure out what the electronics box is going to look like.

There is still quite a lot of work to do and a lot of money to spend before this thing will be ready to roll, and I'm still impatiently waiting for the motors I need to begin refitting the skybeam. I'm starting to feel like I've somehow, once again, managed to stretch myself a bit too thin; there are only two weekends left before Critical Massive, and I'd hoped to have both of these projects finished by then. On top of this we are still working away at the final candidate versions of REALbasic 2005, so I have deadlines bearing down in both work and play.