Good little trip.

The beeptone cover business is booming... because R. Monkeys had to go to work and I left my keyboard out after the last one.

I picked up a ScanGauge E, and fortunately the Element has a really top-shelf place to put it, especially if you are like me and are driven to rage by exposed wires.

The space behind that panel is occupied by nothing, so it's a really simple matter to drill through and mount the ScanGauge. The cable run is really basic, too, as it's just a straight shot over-and-up from the OBD port. Do excuse my use of Velcro straps and twist ties; I didn't want to zip tie the cable down until I was sure it was a good location that didn't rattle or anything.

The only problem is that the Element is a little stingy with the data, and doesn't report fuel-flow information. So the ScanGauge's MPG information is pretty far-off until it's had a few tanks of gas run through the car to allow for calibration (it uses other sensors, like throttle position and MAF, to estimate MPG). I guess it'll be a month or so until it reports worthwhile economy data. This is the reason I canceled my Automatic order; that thing doesn't allow for calibration, and would be generally useless.

It's pretty nifty otherwise, though. I was a little disdainful of the ScanGauge because of the thick, old-fashioned design and the high price, but on any level other than the superficial it really does seem a lot more well thought-through than alternatives like the UltraGauge. I guess my next step is to break out the Dremel and sink the ScanGauge into the panel. I think I'd need to come up with some sort of bezel to hold it, though (or take the ScanGauge apart and see if I could repurpose its own), since the location in the Element would be pretty tricky to do any actual work on.

Here are three beeptones made recently. There was a beeptone ripoff of Let it Be on the first album, but I put in a little more time and practice -- stopped sight reading -- so this one's a bit more accurate.

Ollie's kinda weird.

I don't think I've written about it on this iteration of m' website, but I like collecting and restoring old typewriters. If you like disassembling intricate things and cleaning tiny parts, it's good fun. And oh, the tiny mechanisms to observe. It's incredibly plain why companies that built these switched so easily to building things like rifles in WWII. I guess the neatest one is the American Expeditionary Force-issue Hammond Multiplex about which I wrote on the last website, which used to belong to my great-grandpa, like so, but they go from the late 1800s to the Selectric II.

Anyway, I thought I'd write about one I found the other day. It's a 1930 (I think) Underwood. These are generally worthless, because they were cranked out by the millions (one per minute in the '20s and '30s). They're also not really interesting per se, because they were the equivalent of the Selectric, or a beige Windows XP box -- they were just the common standard. Sure, Robert Howard had one, but they were what you'd do your crappy office job on. They're also indestructible, so there's no shortage of supply (despite what Etsy sellers might think).

Anyhow, I picked it up because it had an interesting parkerized finish, which I hadn't seen on one of these before, and because sometimes it's fun seeing what used to be normal. This went into a box in 1959, came out of the box a couple days ago, and hasn't been cleaned up at all (yet). So, here's the Toyota Camry of inter-war word processing.



Hmmmm...

Note: This is a JM Classique™ post. Photobucket are as bad at looking cool while rollerblading as I am, and broke image links from ten years ago, removing the images from old forum posts. Since I’m going through each old post and re-hosting the image on this server, I figured I might as well shove the post here, too. JM Classique™: Your Trusted Brand of Yestercrap.



The Terror Grill may seem like a common-or-garden labor operation, but observe the careful disregard for the safety of the stoker, coalman, meatmaster, and hoister, and the way in which they are kept in a unitary tower well-away from the director and his or her guests. This allows for each worker to do their job in a most efficient manner, as well as providing for good visibility for the director, not to mention easy control of insurrection.

The meat elevator, center-weighted for stability, is generously-sized, and can accommodate 10 cows, 30 pigs, or 60 birds. Provision of the lifting chains is sufficient for this weight, and the sealed geartrain means that the hoistman can make minute adjustments to the meat elevator's level with minimal effort. Also note how the provision of a stoker leaves the coalman to concentrate on provision and distribution of fuel, without needing to be distracted by concerns regarding airflow.

Truly, the Terror Grill represents a new frontier for the gustatory dictator. Alternatives, like the Stanislaus Webelo's Delight, overwork the coalman and put the director in a much more vulnerable position, while not having the meat accommodations of the Terror Grill.

~

Ah, I have built the terror-grill using Science, which is worse than Art for drawing barbed wire and loudspeakers and a proper four-corner lift mechanism and bracing and the machine gun, but conveys scale better. Note how the backside of both the fuel platform and meat platforms are slanted, for ease of dumping-into using the truck.





That nonchalant man in the sweater and khakis could be you.

~

I like to imagine that this is an off-day -- maybe the grill servants have been conscripted to help with the construction of an aqueduct or subterranean vault. So he has some free time to spend with his kids, and they're like "Can you take us to see the Terror-Grill?" And he wants to, sure, because of course in this society direction of grill operations will be their job one day, too. So he goes ahead to clean up the place, make sure there's diesel in the dump truck, and hide the bodies of any stokers who couldn't make it through the last night's feast-preparation. So he finishes up with the big stuff, and starts dinking around with the Grill -- making sure the geartrain is oiled, sighting the guns, and so on. But then the rickshaw with his kids in it pulls up and he can see their faces pressed up against the glass, looking up at the sheer height of the Terror Grill. It's the best thing in the world to them. And he can appreciate that, because it's the best thing in the world to him too. So this is more of a "Casual Vacation Day Terror Grill Director" look, like out of a detergent commercial.

This was on my mind a while ago, but I just remembered it while my bicycle was being crashed into by an extremely short Korean girl on another bicycle, who was on her phone and didn't see me: there should be a Kinect San Francisco racing game.

There are two parts to this frankly incredible idea. The first is a cable car racing segment where you have to work the levers, and the soundtrack is "Choo Choo Ch'Boogie" on infinite loop. You would stand there pulling on your floor while being surrounded by jump blues and the screams of those caught in the path of your runaway cable car. You could decouple the cable to skip down hills or through parks, reconnecting at the bottom.

The second part, which is even more frankly incredible than the second, is an overhead-wire electrified bus racing segment. This would be the mostest coolest, especially once you leveled up and unlocked the articulated buses. So you'd be drifting in two simultaneous directions over the crest of a hill, smashing cars away with the tail segment, while desperately trying not to unhook the pantograph. And you'd be doing this by sitting there without a controller, waving your arms around like a nincompoop. The music will be a selection of the most avant-garde Ecuadorean ragechip that has yet been crafted in the boopmines of Saumarez.