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WEEK 16 2017

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Saturday 22 April 2017

Saturday - R&S found a reasonably priced used BBQ whilst out on their yard sale rounds, and called me, so I went over and got it. Another family leaving California, btw.

I just don't want to deal with my 'BBQ of Death' any more. Since I was out of the house already I just joined them for the rest of the sales (the alternative being mowing the lawn). I didn't get much, but did pick up a few picture frames cheap - whenever I get my solar oven built I can use the glass!

In the evening I finished reading an online modern C++ tutorial from, I think, MIT. Not too crazy - I don't recall the whole 'namespace' thing, but it seems like it's probably a good idea. Other than that it's similar enough to what I remember and Objective-C that I shouldn't have too big a problem with simple read/write stuff.

On the other hand, seriously, it's 2017 and not 1977 - we have graphical IDE's and Unicode; perhaps compiler writers should consider going past the base 128 character ASCII set for programming? Code blocks are looking like ascii-character soup these days!

Friday 21 April 2017

Friday - Working away on this and that. Not much to say...

Did a 7.5 mile walk, since I missed it yesterday (working hard at the terminal). I got a warm spot on one foot - it was warm enough (85-ish) that my feet were perspiring and I didn't have a spare set of dry socks at the half way point.

Really I need some new hiking boots, breathable with better soles, but it's surprisingly hard to find good, wide, inexpensive boots. Merrell's were always narrow. New Balance used to make wide boots, but don't any more. Generally there seems to be an overall quality decline in boots - it's all offshore manufacture and you have to have QC up the yinyang or you get junk.

I read somewhere that NB actually still has a division that makes good boots under another name, I'll have to look them up.

Budd enjoying the cat tunnel....

Thursday 20 April 2017 Thursday - Working away on this and that.

I want to import FreeCAD files into STARS, that would be so cool! I could design Starships and towers 100 miles high.... Also I have some ideas on thermal modeling for global warming stuff that I want to try out at some point.

From what I can tell the FEM module uses a solver for statics called Calculix, which in turn uses either the Abaqus or Ideas input file format (maybe they're the same?). This in turn seems to be a zipped file with the nodal and element data in an ascii format, but the loads and bc's and results in binary... All done in C++. It includes the modeling flow - the IGES surfaces, the boolean operations, the meshing parameters as well.

I've ordered a couple of modern C++ books from the library, so maybe I can read/write to those binary files.

Wednesday 19 April 2017

Wednesday - S sent some more artwork. I'm falling behind again, but my hands hurt...

Tuesday 18 April 2017

Tuesday - Tax day. Picked up my paperwork, sent in a big check. Sigh. Did some other errands while I was out and about.

Working away on the app and even FreeCad.

From what I can tell, FreeCad doesn't really export as many formats as they claim. They plan to, but it isn't really done yet. I can sometimes get triangular FEM grids, and sometimes tetrahedrons, but am unsure as to why one or the other. A lot of formats just want triangles - most rendering engines and vrml software for example.

S found the iPad mini, so I'll go pick it up. I don't recall if it's running 9 or 10 at this point.

I'll also pick up my Easter basket! Chocolate bunnies, Woot!

I did about a six mile walk. I didn't want to, but I've been very lazy recently, and my ankles and knees are beginning to ache from inactivity and sitting so much.

Monday 17 April 2017

Monday - Working away on the app again, S sent me some updated and resized artwork that I need to put in.

Bizarrely the audio works on iOS8 and iOS10 fine, but sometimes cuts out on iOS9. There's not an error message, so I don't know how to debug it...

T called to say that we probably got that underground inspection/management job. We were, if I say so myself, the best qualified, so that's good. Probably work will start in August officially, so July will have so setup stuff going on.

On the other hand Saticoy is looking pretty bad. He sent me a couple of example pics, yikes!

The boys stopped by after school and picked up the wood to be split. They keep pretty busy so it'll probably be a week or two until it's done, no biggie.

Sunday 16 April 2017

Sunday - Another warm day.

I didn't actually do much - trying to let my hands rest a bit.

Book #17 was Monster Hunter Memoirs: Sinners, by John Ringo and Larry Correia This is the sequel to last weeks book, wherein our hero has to leave Seattle one step ahead of an angry father and ends up fighting monsters in the Big Easy.

Picture of the Week

Hi-Vista and Saddleback Butte, looking east from the Poppy Reserve.

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