Happy Summer Solstice+3!
A fun weekend was has here, blowing bubbles and writing chess programs.
We were going to play tennis with Nick on Sat. and go autocross racing
with Zack on Sun., but it rained, so we stayed home and enjoyed the
raindrops.
Rainy days are good for bubbles, as the high humidity lets them last
longer. We took 300+ photos trying to capture bubbles with cool
reflections (gotta love digital cameras). A few of them were in focus
(first 3 pics).
Nick took over the lead in the summer chess tournament, 19 wins to 13
losses. Yesterday he got this crazy idea that we both write programs to
play chess, then have our programs battle each other. So we each pick
our sharpest swords (programing languages, his is Lisp, mine is Perl)
and we went into battle. Happily I report my program is the current
victor, mainly because mine is finished and his is not. I cheated by
leveraging a building block I found on the net, whereas he is diligently
building his from the ground, up I think. My code is silly, fat, and
slow and will surely be sliced to bits once his learns to stand up. But
for now, I cluck about proudly with temporary victory.
Zach continues working on any car that moves. Actually, more often on
those cars that don't move. This week it was our neighbor's classic
Pontiac GTO. He tore the inside out of it, replaced a rusted floorboard
and refurbished the seats. Friday night he got a call at 11 pm from a
guy who was stuck 2 hours south of here. His car had broke down at a
race track in Iowa, so, parts and tools in hand, Zach went on a late
night rescue mission. He got back in time for his day job at 7:30 am
Saturday. He also bought himself a monster tool chest last week, on
which he resides in kingly fashion in the 4th pic.
Mom/Dad, I got my birthday package, thanks! I hid it from myself so I
won't be tempted to open it till my birthday. Zack, Jessy, and Nick
treated me to a Father's day breakfast. Some of the best food ever
invented: Baker's square Pie and Oatmeal (5th pic).
The 6th picture is of an art structure I made last weekend. Yep, Bruce
can do art, but mainly because it was more engineering than art.
Something called a tensegrity tower, which was coined by Buckminster
Fuller to describe how you can use TENSion to build a structure with
intEGRITY. You can build towers with sticks that don't touch each
other! Strong enough to withstand an attack by fridge robots and
Australian koala bears.
The hole is now at 17 feet deep, which is about the limit of my camera's
flash, as you can see by the barely viable shovel. It would likely have
been at infinite depth, but fortunately digging was slowed by rain an a
sore foot attached to Nick's right shovel leg. That last picture is of
Nick building a rope ladder. Kindof. I helped. Now anyone can climb
down the hole on the ladder, but N & Z usually stick to chiminy climbing
on the dirt walls, I think so they can keep their cloths the proper
brown color.
Bruce
