Seattle Area Furniture Score!

Picked 2 of these up this weekend!!!
They are in great shape. May need new upholstery one of these days.

First Attempt at a Cafe Seat

I wanted to build a cafe seat for the RD250. I wanted the tail end of the seat to have similar lines to the tank currently on the bike so I purchased an old rusty tank from an RD200.


Chopped it up and narrowed it...


Took a sheet of 18 gauge steel and formed it on a friends break...


And mudered the welds with too much current. Oh well, a lot of bondo got it all straightened out.

Next I need to paint and mount it. I purchased some rigid foam to upholster and stick on the top. It will be a nice looking addition when completed.

I love this print!

Der Mensch als Industriepalast (Man as Industrial Palace)

Stuttgart, 1926. Chromolithograph. National Library of Medicine.

Fritz Kahn
(1888-1968)

Kahn’s modernist visualization of the digestive and respiratory system as "industrial palace," really a chemical plant, was conceived in a period when the German chemical industry was the world’s most advanced.

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/dreamanatomy/da_g_IV-A-01.html

1968 Honda CT90 Rebuild

I picked up a '68 Honda CT90 with a rare top tank kit and a new cafe seat from a garage sale in Jacksonville OR. The bike was in great shape but needed engine and paint work.

Tear down begins.

The engine needed a new piston and rings. The transmission turned out needing a new shift roller assembly as well.

Everything was well within spec.

Powder coated parts.

Ice Cream Paint Job! Logo and paint done by the legendary Miguel.

Machined a switch panel out of aluminum on my lunch break.

The finished bike.

Ride on Scott!

Homebrew GPS Kit!

I found this DIY GPS kit from Adafruit Industries. The kit comes with a PCB and all of the components you need to build a GPS shield (minus the antenna module) that fits the Arduino. I have had a Diecimila for some time now and never had a solid project in mind to begin to learn how to use this thing. The GPS antenna modules caught my eye and a flood of ideas for geolocative projects started trickling in. I purchased a The EM-406A GPS module from SparkFun Electronics and placed it onto the board. The instructions posted on Adafruits website were very clear and easy to follow. After some soldering and fumbling with my sausage fingers, I made myself a little GPS tracking unit.

The completed GPS Log Shield Kit.

The Arduino Diecimila with an ATMEGA168 Processor.

The combined GPS shield and Arduino.

I found this air tight and waterproof container at Storables for under $3.

The next step is to add my little solar cell to add a small but continuous charge to a rechargeable battery.

This is the first attempt to gather tracking data. The purple line represents the path I took from North to South Seattle. The dots represent a 5 second interval of data capture. More on the way.

Coconut Amp

I found one of these online that someone had built. I decided I needed one and got to work. The sound is dirty and raw. It's sings similar to the guitar sludge in Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky." It had a short life though. Soon after it worked, It didn't. I cannibalized the guts to start another project that... never was finished.