How to Eat an Elephant

Another short note of wisdom(?) from my favorite philosopher.
How to eat an elephant?
First shoot the elephant. If you follow the common wisdom and begin to eat the elephant one bite at a time you will be in great trouble.

Finnally the stain is on the plypod and it probably will not rot away just yet. Almost all the bolts are in place and one can see how the sphere is now really spherical. You can see from the last image how mich difference a few bolts can make.
cpyrght John Sebastian 2004

An update on plypod progress. A nice penatrating water repellant stain as the skys here in East Tennessee have decided to cut loose. To late to do the touch up.
cpyrght John Sebastian 2004

Hail to the Moon king

So how many open and closet serfs of Moon are in our government? I don't know just what to write about this, but if you always had a suspicion that our government was inhabited by lunatics and idiots this should set your mind at ease - it is!

Moonies in Congress Explains a lot

Politics1 - American Politics, Elections, Candidates & Campaigns

So just how many members of the government belong to Moon? This is just to weird.

My good freind Tom Gebhart smooking a stogy on the Riverboat at my other excellent freind Robert Benfield's Nupital Party.
cpyrght John Sebastian 2004

Theme to Underdog

This classic performed over the cell phone from inside the unfinished plypod.

Everything is now different!

Hooray for Rutan hurray for Melvill!

Now when we talk about space travel it will be "we" traveling into and through space, "we" as in you and I private individuals. Up till now its been a "they" thing, as in the elite the governments pick to go into space, and we grubby commoners can just sit in front of our mind-programming stations and cheer our brave government approved astronauts.

Everything is now different and on how many days can one say that?

This is part of my yard sale, flea market, estate sale, and thrift store art collection. This particular piece is signed W.R. Reich.
Can this be the Wilhem Reich of Orgon Energy Fame?
Notice how everything in this painting is wrong either grossly or subtly wrong wrong wrong!/> copyright John Sebastian 2004

What is a Hypoo?

A hypoo also spelled and pronounced highpoo is a short poem that does not necessarily rhyme, though it may follow a rule and have a certain number of words per line. The Hypoo may of course not follow any such rule or it may alternately rhyme and then lock itself into a rule.

Of course it may do neither. A Hypoo is generally short, and generally is about cosmology, sub atomic physics, or other very serious stuff that generally has little or no impact on human existence, but tends to make us go whammy.

A hypoo is a way I amuse myself and try to clarify my own mussing on stuff like the universe and everything. Did I mention that everything is my hobby?

A Hypoo does not take itself seriously. As in this little hypoo about space and time.

Can't do a thing but look backwards
No matter which way I go I go into the past
It's hardly a wonder I can't get ahead
Cause I'm always wandering into the
future backwards and blindly

To Many Iris Images

Way to many iris images to post here at Scratch Daily so another blog is called for - a photo blog with the very original name of My Iris Photos. The plan is to post an image a day which will be quite some number of days.

I think you will like it.

My Irises have come and gone in their anual and much to short ritual - I always wait in expectation for their arrival and morn their passing.
cpyrght John Sebastian 2004

Freedom's Flame at Liberty For All - Online Magazine

My good friend Joey King has out done himself with this article.
Resist!

More Bits

"To know everything, to understand nothing."

Tidbit O Wisdom

"Confusion is the first step toward knowledge."

Vote Freedom 2004! Support Michael Badnarik, Libertarian Candidate for President, 2004

Vote Freedom 2004! Support Michael Badnarik, Libertarian Candidate for President, 2004

A nice shot of the Plypod in perspective
cpyrght John Sebastian 2004

Living the outlaw life: Whose Name is It, Anyway? by Claire Wolfe 0202

What's in a Name?

Shows a little more progress and a chair to get a sense of scale. Notice how the structure moves closer to a spherical shape as more bolts are completed.
cpyrght John Sebastian 2004

The Floor is the Largest Shelf in the House

Which explains that my house is not cluttered, just an example of efficient use of shelf space.
There for - drum-roll please - I am introducing the concept of the floorlf, or is it the shloor. Generally a shelf that is also considered floor space or floor space that is considered shelfadge.
Sure in a square house this concept has both limits and presents a trip, slip, and fall hazard. But when we speak of the plydome concept (link to formactive)the concept takes on quite some utility.
At least I think it does - I have yet to actually try it out.
The plypod I have built has, or will have, a floor or shloor that is 12 feet in diameter, a largest diameter of 18 feet, and it is about 14 feet high.
If one is stuck on the convention of a floor one has about 113 ft sq of floor space. But when one moves to the notion of a shloor, a flat plane at foot level another using the extra three feet of radius at the plypods equator and a loft area depending on configuration one can obtain up to 360 ft sq of usable shloor space - I think 300 ft sq might be a more reasonable figure.

More later on how to simply fit the shlorring units to the curved walls.

Danny Boy

Go ahead I dare you to play it, yes my own rendition of this famous classic. Now available to you at the fantastic introductory price of nothing.

Okay so I messed up a few of the words. I'm new to this so be gentle, anyway this is why there is an edit function.

Rants, Raves, and just plain pissiness

My good freind Tom's Blog

Rants, Raves, and just plain pissiness

Something soothing between the ranting
cpyrght John Sebastian 2004

WOLFESBLOG

Claire Wolf has two gems on her Blog today. Claire is always very good but these are gems.

The Torture Memo and Reagan's funeral - bless you Claire

WOLFESBLOG

So far I am Immortal

If I ever die I want everyone I know to either piss or cry over the grave any in between an I simply will not rest - and I don't care which. Long as it is one or the other.

Note to reader:

You might notice I am trying to alternate some real world projects with quotes from my favorite philosopher. Sort of thought melding onto reality and reality melding onto thought, its probably nonsense but it makes me happy.

The Egg
cpyrght John Sebastian 2004

The Egg

Above is an image of my experimental half sized plypod known locally as the Egg.

I made this structure from observing photographs of other plydomes and really without any knowledge of how to go about the project.

In fact I made this on a dare from my wife Aubrey, who insisted that I could not build the basic structure in a day. In fact it took 10 hours to make the plywood sphere.

Each panel is a two foot by four foot sheet of 1/4 inch plywood. So I got four panels from a standard 4x8 foot sheet.

Not knowing the proper angles and being to lazy to do the math I simply drilled a bolt hole in each corner and rotated the panels into place. Thus to some extent they aligned themselves. This would have been really neat but without the aligned bolts the sphere is not a sphere and is rather an angular quasi-sphere.

As you can see there is still some work to be done on the windows and other openings - but as a test model it has proved invaluable.

We also had a great beer party inside and the Egg is quite capable of holding up to seven adults in some spacious comfort - not bad for a spheroid less than nine feet in diameter.

Right now the Egg is used as storage but it would make a great bathroom, walk-in closet, or office attached to the larger plypod - someone once observed that domes make lousy houses but great rooms.

I believe that this observation may be quite right. But I observe that I live in rooms not in a house, so my approach is to make dome rooms not dome houses and attach the rooms to each other.

Thought I would share a bit of my photography.
cpyrght John Sebastian 2004

Don't vote Republican or Democrat.

We - we as in the American electorate - are long past the stage of insanity we keep doing the same thing over and over again knowing quite well that we will get the same results.

This I posit is a form of stupidity.

I cannot for the life of me understand going to the polls and voting for the two government approved parties. Unless one is insane, stupid or has a death wish for ones country.

Vote Libertarian, or green, or independent.

Compliance is Futile

Ah aphorisms from my favorite philosopher.

Now for this blog begins the little bits of "wisdom" (some may disagree) that I find helpful in giving direction to life. Mostly these bits rudely inform this one that I am well off any sort of reasonable path, and certainly well short of the morals and directions I would chose for myself.

Perhaps though that is the nature of life, more a stumble than any sort of ridged march, or even random walk.

Still its nice to have some ideas, lode stars as such, so one at least has an idea of where one should be going.

This is of course probably very annoying to almost everyone else but it is probably the cost of reading someone else's blog.

Compliance is after all Futile.

Plydome pod is now free standing

Just a quick note that as of last night I finished pinning all the pentagonal vertexes and the plydome pod is now standing on its own without any support other than the tension and compression of the plywood sheets.

Plydome frame from another angle
cpyrght John Sebastian 2004

Plydomes

My current obsession is plydomes - A plydome is a dome generally based on a simple geodesic where the struts are replaced by flexible plywood sheets in this case 1/4 inch, there's in all practical sense no framework and the plywood skin supports itself by compression and tension. being of flexible material the geodesic tends to warp itself into a sphere or a squashed sphere given the gravity of our situation.

The design I have used is after a fellow named Steve Miller
Link who doubtless a genius is inspired from Bucky Fuller.

Can't figure out what's wrong with the link &^%% google formactive or plydomes.

But this has been quite a chore, as well as one of the neater projects I've undertaken. Building a plydome is like wrestling with the worlds greatest bowflex type exercise machine - one is literally flexing the structure together. For this structure the basic frame work is almost complete, probably would have helped if I had decided just where I wanted the thing and had not had to take it down and move it twice.

But if you are interested please give Steve's site a visit, he is very nice and helpful if you want to take stab at putting one of these critters together.

A plydome is certainly an efficient use of materials almost all of it is 1/4 inch plywood (bolted together) and it makes an inspiring space, but you have to sit in the middle of one to feel the vibes. By the by this is intended to be the ultimate portable building - I figure eight guys could lift it from the inside and walk it about - could be lifted onto a flat bed and trucked anywhere - or it could be unbolted and carried as several pickup truck loads only to be reassembled.

This is important because the code monsters are generally stymied when you have a portable building.

Oh yes I tend to refer to this as my space program.

My current project - a plydome or is it the worlds largest bowflex type exercise device?
cpyrght John Sebastian 2004