So I know I've seriously slacked at doing the once a week thing as I promised. (It's been two weeks.) Now I do have a bit of an excuse for at least one week, and that was that I was working on a new site for my DJ work, check it. As for the other week, yeah no excuse there. So I've got a recap of the past few weeks, some is the typical– "I did this, and then that." Also some new fun stuff and what to expect in future entries. Two weeks of blogstuff, this is gonna be a long(er) one... [Update] As per comments, I left out a decent bit of stuff from one weekend, now added.

So I really have a fuzzy memory of what the past few weeks entailed, given that most of my time lately tends to be puttering around doing nothing in particular and then going climbing when I get bored of that I guess that explains why I can't remember. Eventful things: I went down to Santa Cruz and got to see Random with a Purpose 16 which is the annual student dance show which I worked on for three consecutive years when I was there. Fun times and good to see a bunch of friends and such. For a change, I only spent one overnight in SC this time. Saturday (show was Friday) I met up with Justin and we went climbing at Pacific Edge which is the indoor climbing gym in 'Cruz. I think we did a decent 3 hours which wasn't really long or short. It was fun and really nice to hang out with Justin cuz it had been quite some time. Dinner afterwards with Ryan and Justin– I'd definately reccomend I love Sushi on Front street.

[Updated] The following week wasn't anything spectacular. there's nothing on my calendar and I remember nothing. I worked on djeth.com and finally got it online. Friday wasn't too big, went out etc. Saturday was a good evening! Went down to David's new place in Santa Clara for his housewarming party. Towards the latter part of the evening I took off to San Jose to meet up with Pablo and San at Splash. Stephen and David (other one) decided to come along. What led to amusement was that the disclaimer that I was going to a gay bar wasn't known to all. (Sorry David) However in all common logic, if I'm going to some place it would be a safe bet to assume it's gay.
Anyway was a fun evening, hanging out dancing and such. I finally got a decent sample of Splash, it's a nice spot. David and Stephen did pretty well there given we put them really out of their element, major points to Stephen for being a great sport. Ricky, a friend of Pablo's came by, and later after the place closed we all went to Denny's for food. Quite fun and such, what made for great amusement was how there was much conversation in spanish. Still can't speak it well but my comprehension is quite good so I was able to keep up with things.

Following week was back to theater work. Only 3 days but again, good to be back and earning moola. I was working again with Theater Works but this was at the Lucie Stern theater in Palo Alto.

That then brings us into this past weekend which was my birthday. For a change my b-day fell on a Saturday which was handy for getting folks together and going out. I actually managed to get 13 of my friends together and we all met up in the city (That'd be SF.) Met up and had dinner at Chow restaurant, which is located on Church st. and Market fyi. Dinner was awesome, yeah what more can I say. Parking, oh my god, I wanted to fucking shoot someone. Frankly I kinda wished we were driving a bulldozer or something so we could've just been like "oh I'll just MAKE a parking spot right HERE!" Fuck it was ridiculous, way more so than typical.
Anyway, post dinner we moved along to the Castro proper and such. There was a bit of communication lapse in general, and particularly between me and a few folks. Unfortunately I didn't take things in a larger picture scenario and I probably made things a bit worse than they needed to be. But hey dinner was awesome right? After all it's my fucking night! Hehe. But seriously, huge thanks to everyone to came and hung out that night, even if it was just dinner and such. Moving along so post that it dwindled down to just me and Pablo, San and Will. We went to Badlands for a bit and then Will and San split off. 'Twas an ok scene that night, saw this one guy Troy from UCSC there. Still it was lots of fun and good times to be back in the Castro w/ friends. :D

Alright, now on to some more fun stuff! Two latest things that are pretty cool. This past Friday, which was the day before my birthday I went go-karting with a bunch of friends. I do believe it was David's (UCSC) idea. I was hesitant at first as it's pretty damn expensive, but it was AWESOME! I mean logically someone like me who likes cars and going fast you'd *think* I'd have said yes instantly, but earning less than you're spending doesn't help. But after our practice session my initial reaction was "Hey let's pay for another session!"
Stephen replies "But what about the cost?"
"Never mind that!"
Yeah, Awesome. So as a result I did a bunch of reading up on karting, and yes it IS spelt with a k, not a c don't ask why. As I speculated karting scales nicely to other motorsports and as a result there are karts which are basically scaled versions of Formula 1 cars and require equally as much skill to drive. Even with the little (and I mean little in terms of power/performance) we were driving they still are a mindtrip from your typical driving. The acceleration and more importantly the response you get from them is amazing. Steering is extremely snappy and given they are so damn small, it does make it feel much faster than you are really going.
So quick bit comparing to formula cars: So in traditional motorsport we have the F1 cars (Formula 1) which is the highest level of racing, and the vehicles have a horsepower to weight ratio of around 1000 bhp to 2000 lbs (1 ton.) Now a FA (that's Formula A) kart will on average weigh around 300 lbs with a driver, so we'll say that's about 150 lbs for the kart. Given they have up to 85 bhp on some that means that it calculates out to around 1100bhp per ton. Damn indeed. And most at that level they have actual transmissions often which are direct shift gearboxes.

Onwards from the auto geekitry. If ya didn't know I built an air cannon during the summer. (Alike to a potato gun.) Well it's been sitting around and I wanted to revisit it and perhaps develop better projectiles and also a better way to launch them to capitalize on all power and not let stuff blow by the item. This started as a search online for what I latter found is called a sabot, and then evolved into getting pretty ridiculous ideas for what to shoot out of the cannon.
In the end the idea is that I'm going to develop some sort of projectile which will be akin to a rocket. It will have fins on it to stabilize it's flight, and a pointy front. It's purpose: to be shot out of the cannon. This is purely a project because I have time on my hands, yep.

Now I have started out with just shooting a wood slug. It's a 1" diameter by I think around 4" long. (The barrel of the cannon is 1.5" dia.) Given it's wood it's fairly light. Also because it doesn't fill the barrel it will give a good benchmark for something without a sabot. I still have to do multiple fires of it and get a bunch of data before I can really give any actually accurate information about it. But current (single test, one data point) results show that it was able to achieve a max height (fired straight up) of 85 feet. Not too bad. It actually worked so damn well that on the first go I shot it off our property into the canyon in the back. Trying to find it was hopeless (looking for a piece of wood among leaves and twigs) so I painted the second one white. Also didn't fire it at an angle... It's been a really fun project so far simply because I'm actually having to revisit all of these physics equations and also remember my math skills. Given this is going to be an ongoing project I'll be posting regular updates here with the progress. I'm gonna get some video shot hopefully in the next week of it in action as I know many of you have only heard of the fabled air cannon.

Ok, so I believe that wraps things up. Damn that was hella long but that's what happens when you don't blog for 2 weeks. You'd think I'd know this by now. What's sad about this is I still need to update my DJ site, AND I really should update my general site (NeilMG.org) as well. Making more website = more content to update. If ya made it all the way thru this, uh, well good job? I think I've promised enough cookies to people in my entries already.