To celebrate the arrival of a complete archive of Steven’s self-hosted Chizumatic web site, courtesy of his brother, I’m loosening the rules a bit and posting some images that were a bit over the top for my usual “mostly-cheerful cheesecake” posts. NSFW after the jump. [he forgot to include the top-level USS Clueless site directories, but he just went on what sounds like a badly-needed vacation, so I’ll wait a week or two before pursuing that]

[Update: I’ve got a test copy of the Chizumatic site running under Nginx, and it looks fully functional, with none of the dead links the archive.org version has; the top rotation doesn’t rotate, of course, but that was a cron job before he came up with his Flash app. I think all we need to do is merge the USS Clueless copy from archive.org with this and get some embedded links cleaned up, and it can be fully restored and hosted somewhere.]

[Update: I think I’ve successfully merged the two together with everything intact except links to the Ultimate Bulletin Board install he stopped using in 7/2002. archive.org managed to save static copies of some discussion threads that Steven linked directly from the blog, but not the bulk of it. UBB apparently didn’t have a backing database, so if Steven’s brother finds it and sends another care package, it should be fairly easy to recreate. That might take a while, because he wants to be sure that nothing personal or private is released.

When will it be public? Above my pay grade. I think Pixy will give it a permanent home in The Munuvian Empire when he gets a chance. He has access to the data I’ve been using, and I just uploaded a compressed tarball of the merged sites.]

[Monday morning update: why, yes, I am a bit OCD. With a little bit of Perl regexp abuse, I got the existing UBB links to display correctly.]

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Lots of people are linking to the latest “wacky Japan” story, about a man who died smothered under his six-ton hoard of dirty magazines. The Daily Mail version doesn’t give any source, but an image search made it possible to trace it back to the Japanese tabloid Nikkan Spa.

So, take this cautionary tale with a grain of salt, or at least a box of tissues.

My preferred form of coffee is best described as “liquid pie”. That is, a sweet hot creamy beverage with a mild coffee flavor. Gevalia’s Mocha Latte k-cup with “froth packets” is perfect for this, once I’ve added two Mini-Moos and two or three Splendas. When I stir it all together before hitting the go-button on the Keurig, it looks and smells exactly like cupcake batter.

Suddenly, Safeway stopped carrying this. Coincidentally, Starbucks (which has a mini-store in every Safeway around here), has recently released their own direct competitor.

Since it was there and the Gevalia wasn’t, I tried it. Despite having twice as much sugar and twice as many calories, it wasn’t sweet, or creamy. In fact, it tasted exactly like cheap, gritty dark chocolate powder mixed with burned coffee. Which it is.

“​…it’s just someone else’s computer.”

In case you were wondering where my site’s been all morning, Amazon S3 flaked out all over the US, and I host all the images and a few key bits of Javascript there.

I’ve moved the Javascript temporarily, so at least the page loads, but pictures won’t show up until S3 is back online.

[Update: it’s back for read access, so my pictures are online again, but apparently they’re still working on the write functionality, which must be painful for the many services that rely on S3. I don’t need writes unless I’m uploading new pictures, so I’m good. Amusingly, one key item that was broken all morning was Amazon’s service status page. Because it’s hosted on S3. Someone had to make some manual edits just to provide basic info about the problem.]

Between crude sketches, OpenSCAD, and playing with scrap wood, I think I’ve nailed down (so to speak…) the way I’m going to connect my parametric Takadai together.

1. Instead of connecting the inner and outer arms (gedan/jōdan) with a small arm attached to the legs at one point, I'm using wedges cut from a 1x6. This is actually the "traditional" method in Japan.
2. To stabilize it front-to-back, I used 1x6 stretchers a few inches above the ground. I can't put them at the top like table aprons, because the bobbins would constantly bang into them.
3. To stabilize it side to side, I replaced the rear crossbar with a 1x6, which means the rear "wedges" are part of a solid board attached to both legs.
4. That makes the biggest, most visible change possible: the torii and makitori-bō are now firmly attached to the frame by 1x6s. They can stand up to any amount of weighted bobbins, and the finished braid collects in an easy-to-reach location.
5. Even better, that provides a perfect spot for the ratchet and pawl, replacing the chopstick brake on the makitori-bō.
6. That rear 1x6 also made it possible to lower the hyojun-bō so that it doesn't sit on top of the gedan like an afterthought, and completely eliminate the sword pads. With a 1x6 back there, I can just cut out pads on each side and round them off.

Next up, building a tabletop version with 5/8-inch square dowels and 0.5x3-inch hobby boards. To keep it compact, it will only support 4 small koma on each arm; that’s enough for quite a few types of braid.

For simplicity, the tabletop Chibidai will be held together by wood screws, but for the full-sized unit I’ve got a bag of cross dowels from McMaster-Carr. I’ll use the Nomad to CNC-carve my comb-style koma and the ratchet.

[Update: I made the OpenSCAD script dump the cut list; obviously I’ll be rounding off a bit…]

8x hardwood balusters, 1.25x1.25:

4x legs, 26 inches
2x gedan, 27.8523 inches, mizo starts at 7.70228 inches
2x jodan, 32.0706 inches, mizo starts at 9.67062 inches

7x hardwood boards, 0.75x5.5:

1x back board with wedge cuts, 34.75 inches
2x stretchers, 25.3523 inches (gedan - 2x baluster)
2x torii/makitori supports, 11.5 inches
2x front wedges, 7 inches

2x 1-inch dowels, 8 inches

1x 0.5-inch dowel, 22 inches

22x koma, 3.5 inches

1x gravity ratchet with pawl

I thought “amazon” would be a good keyword to try, but it’s 70% Wonder Woman, 20% One Piece, 4% Dragon’s Crown, and 80% porn. So it’s time for another trip through the leftovers folder.

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California drought map, one year ago:

This week:

(via)

W. T. F? And I do mean F.

I want to stress that this recommendation is not based on any previous purchases made by or for me. I didn’t even know Amazon US sold those.

(NSFW screenshot after the jump)

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