A. Aronsson’s WeBOLLog

Lately I’ve been really busy with a few projects which are still not public. One of them is almost good enough to post soon, planned it last Tuesday… but then I got more ideas to implement… you will see, soon! (promise!) There’s so much going on, phew.

Today I got a package I had no idea what it contained, as I have ordered quite a few things lately. To my joy it was a gym bag which I had spontanously ordered after seeing a bag in the same range on Prylfeber.se! I love it, a bit small, but I don’t things will fit… I’ll just bring a smaller towel! Oh, and if it isn’t obvious enough, I’m still fond of LEGO, even though the new Technic parts freak me out.

I ordered it directly from the LEGO shop!

Two days ago, that is Monday, the day started with the announcement that we had no water, as a water leak had been discovered near our building. During the day I saw various machines and people coming and going outside my window. At one point I was up on the top floor so I spent a couple of seconds snapping a few pictures from there. It’s not everyday that people sporadically dig up a large pit on in the lawn on the other side of the road. A change to my view.

We eventually got water from a nearby supply to keep the factory up and running, but midday yesterday things were like normal again, except for the pit then.

Oh, and while I’m talking about pictures… I have to sit down and pick some out from my vacation to post. Someday… soon, hopefully.

I also tried my shaky hand to record a zoomed in video to be able to create a loop. As you can see below my hands were indeed shaky, but at least it kind of loops! Next time I’ll make sure to get a tripod. I like video loops… but this one is a bit too wonky :P played back in four times the original speed.

Earlier I posted that I had acquired a trampoline to put in my parents garden, as I myself live in an apartment. Shortly afterward I got curious of how well it would work in water, if at all. It was quite a strange idea, but it got stuck in my head, so I had to try it out.

To make it possible to launch off of the trampoline into the water I wanted to increase the height by extending the legs. I checked if it was possible to order more leg parts, as they were stackable, but that was only possible if you actually had a broken part to replace. Then I checked the price for manufacturing extensions, which was more than half the price of a completely new trampoline! So I ended up buying a second one and used those legs for the extension.

For the trampoline not to sink in the sand on the lake bottom I prepared boards to have as feet on the legs. These were then attached with a rope to stabilize the structure somewhat.

To test the rig out I brought together a number of friends and headed out to a beach belonging to the second largest lake in the country. It was in my first week of vacation so it was cold in the water, a friend guesstimated 14°C, but it was the only weekend this summer that this amount of my friends were available!

To see the process and the end result, watch the video below! Enjoy!

I’ve talked to a few people which give blood, and I’ve been curious to try it out, it does serve a purpose! What pushed me into really contacting the blood central and registering was a talk with a friend’s grandfather, which had been a blood giver all his life. I’ve also talked to my neighbor about it, as she also is a blood giver.

Two weeks ago I finally booked a time, after having left a sample before my vacation, and it went perfectly fine! When I got there I had to sit in line for a few minutes, then I got to lie down and they slurped out 450ml of blood through my left arm!

I think the biggest mess with leaving blood is the iron pills I get to swallow after it. Apparently it would take a whole lot of eating until you have restored all that iron you lose with your blood, but pills will fix you up! Just that they make you weird in the stomach.

For people with fright of needles, I caution you to look away. Well, I guess that’s too late now… below are a two pictures the nurse was kind enough to take!

If you live in Sweden and also want to get rid of some of your blood, for the sake of others, go to GeBlod.nu! I have to say it results in a good feeling, like you are contributing to society in a good way, in addition to paying taxes and abiding the laws.

The USB-FAN!

I can’t open the windows in my office and the ventilation is not adjustable.

I use the fan to cool myself down after having rode the bike to work or after I’ve been running around in the factory trying to get things to work properly. It’s priceless to be able and cool down to stop the immense sweating!… yeah!

For 69SEK (~$10) at Teknikmagasinet it’s a dirt cheap way to make my working day more comfortable!

It’s very nice now when the air here is hot and damp, very high humidity makes it heavy to breathe. The first few days after the vacation ended it poured down outside, timing!

Two weeks ago we were visiting a couple of friends to test out pistol shooting at a pistol shooting club where they are both members. I set out with two cameras, my Ixus 75, and the borrowed Sanyo Xacti VPC HD1A.

My plan was to film both myself when firing and the target at the same time, I ended up partially successful. It was a bit stressful to set up two cameras while getting information and instructions of how to safely fire a bullet weapon, but I somehow managed.

During the day I tried different levels of zoom which made some material fairly blurry and worthless, but some of it ended up usable. To my slight surprise It was the clips recorded using the digital zoom in addition to the analog that would display enough detail, I guess it is a smart camera that uses those extra pixels in the sensor when zooming digitally.

Below are a few pictures from the event, and the resulting video from all that recording!

All in all a very interesting and teaching experience, thank you Jönköpings PK. I might join a club myself in the future, to work towards marksmanship.

The 14th, that is yesterday, I had a small gathering to bring attention to my ever increasing age. It was a nice, calm, relaxed, easy going event. My mother had been nice enough to bake me a cake, and I got to garnish it with whatever, so I did.

After that gathering, some of us went to our regular Pizza-place, TBG! There I was treated to half a pizza, they are quite large there, so even a split pizza was plenty! This one was the Pizza of the House, with tons of stuff on it. I became full, goal achieved!

All in all a fairly quiet and relaxing birthday :)

This Thursday I finally got my NeoCube! I ordered it after seeing it online, somewhere, at April 30th. So I had waited just about 10 weeks! I’ve been plenty busy with other things in the mean time, but I was still happily excited when it arrived!

The mail arrived directly in my mailbox, all the way from the US, which was nice. I ordered the Cube-Tastic Value Pack, which at that time was $10 cheaper! The popularity and availability is reason enough to increase the price, I think, so the new price is justified.

Building with these magnetic balls sure is a new experience for me, very interesting. It took me a while to re-realize how the relationships between magnets makes them behave when arranged in a structure, but after that a whole lot of possibilities opened up in my mind.

Below is a video I compiled yesterday. I’ve been trying out a camera I borrowed at work, a Sanyo Xacti VPC HD1A. As my floor is all wooden boards the camera sways a bit when I move around, even with it mounted on a tripod. It’s extra noticable as the camera is zoomed in. I also had problems with the weird MP4 format it uses for its media, rendering errors when fading between clips and choppy playback. I ended up re-encoding the lot of them! What a hassle! Luckily, I found a neat application for doing just that!

The past weekend was three days long because of a national holiday, so I was out of town from Friday morning until Sunday evening. Good times!

I took a bunch of various pictures even though the weather was mostly gray with spots of rain, but some might be worth posting!

On the Friday I went to a conference called Nyhemsveckan, camping with my parents and my brother in a caravan. The pictures below are from the pine forest we were stationed in.

They’ve had a large tent for the meetings and concerts for ages, but this was supposedly the last time. After this they will build a large conference building instead. For this reason I made sure to take some pictures of the tent, and following is a panorama from one of the ends of the tent, which is where I sat.

The next day, Saturday, we went to a candy factory, which is traditional for us to visit. It was quite crowded, so the queue was stretching to the far end of the outlet area. While standing there I noticed what they had painted on a couple of doors (might have been there since always!), and it was a pair of illusionary corridors! I’ve been planning to make something like this on my apartment door for a while, though… I think it’ll have to be on the inside, as the landlord might not like if I modify the outside of the apartment.

After this me and my brother spent the evening and following day with a few friends living in a nearby city. While there we played some multiplayer Tetris on their projector. When you finish rows you send them to other players so their bottom row gets duplicated, or remove rows, etc, depending on what is shown below your playing area when you do so.

In the two pictures below you can see Player 2, which happens to be me, having a screen full of rows added by other players (or myself, you can do that too), but both times I happened to get a 1×4 bar to drop down the single collumn hole to the bottom!

Next is a picture I took while walking back after eating out, holding the camera on my outstretched arm taking random photos. It is my face that’s closest to the camera. When browsing for pictures to post I just couldn’t drop this one as I really like how the light just barely manages to hit the roofs of the buildings, which I still look like toy houses! :P

In general, a terrific weekend :) As a bonus, I’m adding a boxy sky panorama taken today while I was biking home for lunch!

I’ve dreamt about having a large trampoline since forever. When I was a kid my family had a tiny one, and we bounced quite a lot on it, but again, it was really tiny. I’ve seen these fairly large trampolines on several lawns for many months now, and in my head I subconsciously decided that I would someday get one of my own.

Today I was out shopping with my family, I was helping them pick up a freezer they bought online, and was going to shop around for various other things as well. As I goggled the list of offers at a cheap all around store I saw it. A 2.4m diameter trampoline for 995 SEK. That’s currently $166.5 or £85. (the US dollar is crazy cheap compared to the Swedish Crown right now, and has been for a while…)

Instant buy! I even picked up a bright red dolly to cart around the box with. Actually, I had pre-decided to get a dolly as well, ever since I carried my bike home from the post office, that really hurt my arms! This just ended up being the perfect timing!

Ah, I want to go bounce a bit more right now, thought it’s late! :3 My back will probably be a few decimeters shorter after summer.