Drowning Minds

AAAAAND LIFT OFF!

The Rocket was completed (I have plenty of photos) and we had a sucessful launch. Here are two videos.

This first one is of just the rocket and trailer at launch
http://www.human.space.edu/Launch_Stripe_JohnNordlie_Camera.wmv
This second one is of us setting it up, and launching it (very good) complete to landing.
http://www.human.space.edu/STRIPE_Rocket_Launch.wmv

ENJOY! Turn up your sound, and behold the loudness.

Been Busy, lemme show you why!

So yea, I've been quite busy!!! Not only have I signed a lease on a new house to stay in, had my ass handed to me in a few exams, been to Cancun for spring break. The rocket project has really soared!

Let me show you :D

There is a lot of Inner workings that need to be taking care of still. But as you can see, the outershell is nearly ready for primer! w00t w00t!
All the electronic/avionics are being sorted our right now, and mounted. So soon enough, those will be placed inside.

This is the rocket in the SHORT - TEST FLIGHT configuration. The final version will be an additional (atleast) 4 feet taller. Which will contain the camera, and experimental payloads.

The rocket is going to be white *sad face* I wanted something like red, something bold, but since there was a sale on white paint.... The professor bought white paint. *shrug* I'm building a couple thousand dollar rocket, for free. I really can't complain.

Lil bro got Guitar Hero 2. I'm addicted.

I've been sorta seeing this girl... Jen. She goes to school at UMD. A bit far away, though we haven't really talked about it yet, I would be willing to give it a try if she wants to. This summer I know she is going to be extremely busy, and living back down in the cities. But we will see, this one I'm really excited about, hopefully things work out! As my friend says, I really just need to stop being such a women and ask her, but I'm all about waiting for the right moment.

We had our last 5 keg party with 500 jello shots on friday. We got busted, but not fined. Then saturday, with less then 15 people over for a seriously, chill evening, we get busted, and cited!! I have a court date mon april 23rd for my loud party violation. I'll plee guilty, by law I had broken it. (2 or more people, with music loud enough to hear from a hall way in an apartment building)

If you ask me, its pretty bogus. But given friday night... And all the other keg parties we had, I suppose I can pay my fine of $250. Hefty, but to be honest, these two years living with these guys, and partying with them have been amazing. I wouldn't trade it for the world. (but maybe for the moon. ha!)

Optics exam, Diff EQ exam, all this week. With test firing of the pyros on the rocket. Which I don't think I will be able to make.

More Photos of the Trailer Construction

Hey, it's been awhile, and I don't really have much of any really up to date photos, but I did manage to get some photos from awhile back. John was kind of enough to email me the photos he had taken on a few of the days we were welding on the trailer.

Now, the funny thing is with this one, this was right before I decided to weld the supports on at the wrong angle. Notice my puzzled face, this played a roll later.

Pictured, myself on the far left, John (main design student of the trailer) in the center, and Arjay on the far right.

I had a lot of fun working with all the metal, and problem solving. As you can see, we took a flat trailer bed, and well, went gun ho on it!

And finally, here is a photo of the trailer, with the tower attached. This is one mean machine when it's all erect! It's amazing to have started with something so bland, and with some serious work, have something so amazing. The entire set up was SO stable, even without the outriggers, so I believe John (the engineering student) did a wonderful job in designing the trailer. And thanks to Rob (Physics building machinist(?)) we have one awesome piece of equipment ready to launch our rocket off of. Now to finish the rocket :D

It's getting bigger!

Well, a lot of work has been done on the rocket! Sanding, sanding, and oh well, more sanding! HA!~

We fitted the motor mounts to gether (rough fit) and everything is looking good. Three out of the four tubes are sanded, and finished. Here is a photo of my friend standing next to two sections coupled together, and the third finished tube. (the other is in the back room drying)

So - I'm getting Extremely excited for this project now. More so then anything else right now. (It's sadly over shadowing my spring break trip... :-X)

I had a wonderful birthday, did nothing special (of course) and I'm grateful for my roommates hanging out with me for the evening, and the money my family gave to me.
Sorry for such a short update, but I have a Differential Equations exam to study for. More to come later.

Sanding, sanding, and more sanding!

Well like I promised, I would post more photos and updates on our rocket project. Today after classes I went in and did a fair amount of sanding. We had already done some bondo work, and now to clean up our mess on the first section. And boy was it a mess.

Now, the amount shown here took me nearly two hours to do. But trust me, its damn smooth!

As you can see, further down we got really careless when applying the Bondo... Unfortunately, I started on the easy side.

So now you can see just how much I really have left to go on the one tube. I've sanded all the way around this near end, but there is plenty more to be done. The reason for the Bondo is to fill the seams and clean up any rough areas in of the tube. This will allow for a very clean application of paint later.

Here are two more "sections" of the rocket that still need to have their seams filled in, sanded, primed, and painted. We have a lot of work left to do, but I'm really excited with how well it's going so far, and how much we've acomplished already.

I may try to get a few more photos of the trailer. There was a student that is also working on the project (mostly planning, designing) who came in and snapped a few photos while I was welding. If I can get them, I'll toss them up on here.

Up! Up! And Away!

Well things are really taking off (haha) with our rocket project.

a picture can be found here: Click the Image for the Full resolution picture.

And here is a short cell phone video of it:
Video

Now that I finally got my cellphone to talk to my PC, I'll upload some more photos of it later, as we now begin the construction of the rocket itself. w00t!

Egyptian Escape Has Been Released!

So I finally finished my escape map "Egyptian escape". It's an TFC map with the object of solving puzzles, and avoiding obstacles to finish the level. It's hard to explain to non-TFC Players. Although currently I know of a few bugs I need to address, it already had a successful playtest, and with a few tweaks, I plan to release it to the community.

Suprise - a post!

haha, nothing really to report on.

Nah, okay, tons I could be writing about but this is it for now. Its finals week. Its HELL week. That's all I can say. I've been scrambling to complete things, to study for exams, its just crazy right now. But soon it'll all before.

The g/f and I are doing great, I'm happy. Her knee is doing much better, hopefully in about a month she could be fully without the brace. Just no more stripper pole for her after that =P

Classes, eehh... Astro im fine, business im fine, film im fine, music im fine, but when it comes to E&M its pretty safe to say I have my head between my legs already, and im kissing my ass good bye. Lets just pray she is kind and gives me a C. (but I'll take a D, haha)

anywho, time to cram for my Film exam (3pm today).

w00t.

Union tacos - $1 for two, cant go wrong.

Leave it short, leave it sweet

Just a quick note about absolutely nothing here:

College is, well College. It's going to be an extremely tough semester, and I am by no means looking forward to the stress. Already I have been pulling my hair out over one class. E&M. To many, this just sounds like some electrician class. But to me, it is what I have been fearing. Reaching a level in physics that I absolute have no previous knowledge of, and cannot solve the problems based on what I already know.

In this class so far, we have only been reviewing Calculus.... Calculus to me is very difficult (Then why are you a physics major? I have no clue...). But the sad thing is, I have learned more in this class so far out of Calculus, then I have in the classes I've taken already. Vectors, Derivatives, Partials, Gradient, Divergence, Curl, Integrals... And we're not even done yet. Lets see. On my first quiz, 4 out of the 6 students, including myself. Got a 1/10... The other two must not have scored any better as the average was extremely low. We took a second one, and of freaking course, she chooses the most difficult problem... Now here is what makes me mad. We have 15minutes to solve two problems. Both related to the homework we just completed. This homework took me 7+ hours to complete. Three fucking problems, 3 sub parts on each... 7+ hours. And im not talking like working on my HW infront of my computer, or infront of the TV. I'm talking fucking solid, thinking/homework. So, she is having us turn our stuff in, and I am OH SO CLOSE to finishing this problem, well while im scribbling down in words the 'end' of the problem. As to what happens. She says "It doesn't matter, you're not going to get anymore points by writing that down." I'm thinking to myself. "Self: yes I fucking can, its the end of the problem, the other problem is 100% complete and correct, and this one is ONE STATEMENT AWAY FROM DONE"

fucking pissed me off. /end of rant.

On the lighter side of things, Atlantis went up this weekend. *yeah*

Also, I have a great diagram done out while in astrophysics of the effects the moon has on our planet, and why the moon is moving away from the earth at about 4cm(?) a year. Pretty interesting. I might scan it in, and .pdf it or .gif it or something. We'll see.

So I finally finished my first TFC map - Leap

Leap_b1 w00t! It looks terrible, but it's finally done.

for anyone downloading it:
http://drowningminds.theharshrealm.com/mapping/leap_b1/leap_b1.zip