Les Bonnes Choses

I have a cold. A Man Cold.

The most debilitating part of it seems to have passed, though my sense of taste was briefly impaired last night when a bag of baby carrots started to taste like Thrills gum.



The one upside is that, while gathering materials for this short entry, I have learned why Thrills gum tastes the way it does. Doesn't explain the carrots, though. I still have about a pound of carrots to eat before the Saturday best before date. I'll not detail the outcome of that feat, however.

Inept Bureaucracy Update:
On Christine's recommendation, I went to the Wal-Green's to get Sudafed because that stuff is apparently pretty good at alleviating cold symptoms. Unfortunately, it's also pretty good at being a key component in Meth, and is therefore a controlled substance. It has to be purchased over the counter, and requires presentation of some form of ID. This information goes into some sort of haphazardly designed system, almost certainly easily circumvented by people who produce drugs, and is intended to prevent individuals from purchasing an excessive quantity of the product within a prescribed time period. As I have never before purchased Sudafed, I was surprised to find that I have already exceeded my allotment after presenting my Ontario driver's license. DeVry boasts a high placement rate after graduation; we now know where: Designing critical infrastructure. Who the hell failed to imagine that a non-US-citizen might have a head cold?

The family visited the Brookfield Zoo yesterday afternoon, squeezing every last bit of utility out of our membership before our it expired. I'm sure we've gotten our money's worth out of it. It's been a good teaching tool for Jude, and Asher adores animals, though he seems most fascinated with the squirrels, robins and chickadees that roam the park (and most urban yards) freely.

Still, this is the first visit we've made to the park since Asher started talking. For the first time, he's been able to express his thoughts on the zoo. Take for example the following conversations:

At the rhinoceros house
Me: What's the rhinoceros doing?
Asher: Walking!
Me: Why is he walking?
Asher: Poop!
Me: He's walking for poop?
Asher: Yah!

At the wild horses
Me: What are the horses doing?
Asher: Walking!
Me: Why?
Asher: Poop!
Me: The horses are walking for poop?
Asher: Yah!

At the aardvark house
Me: Asher, the aardvark is walking!
Asher: Poop!
Me: Of course. The aardvark is walking for poop.

I know, I know. I have no idea. But I do note that the aardvark had just pooped, so maybe there's something about toilet training that cuts an important connection we have with animals. Maybe toddlers in diapers are like little animal whisperers, in their own gastrointestinal way.

I'm back in the saddle, again to mock the bureaucracy that has been put on this earth to make my life hell and give a steady income to people with no discernible talent or ability to reason.

Today's vignette comes courtesy of the Ceeb (of course). An older couple running a B&B who also happen to have a bunch of egg-laying chickens are closing up shop. The government wants them to buy eggs from the market rather than do the environmentally and economically prudent thing, which would be to just take the eggs from the hens in their own back yard.

Joe Bradley, manager of environmental health for the Department of Health, said the main issue with eggs that aren't federally inspected is the risk of salmonella contamination.

"The problem is that there's the potential for handling a contaminated product," said Bradley.

"You contaminate your hands, and the hands aren't washed. A food preparation surface may be contaminated."

If I understand this correctly, Mr. Bradley's concern appears to rest on the possibility that handling the eggs and not washing up properly could result in cross-contamination when preparing other foods. But then again, the same can be said if you don't wash up properly after using the toilet (which I see with alarming frequency). The logical conclusion to Mr. Bradley's line of reasoning therefore would be to also require B&B owners to have their anuses federally inspected, to avoid E. coli contamination. While he's at it, he should have his head federally inspected for E. coli because it seems to be firmly lodged in his own rectum.

Ah, so that was an exciting diversion, non?

Unfortunately, there's nothing particularly comical in the news this week, as the destruction that has befallen Japan is presently dwarfing the havoc wreaked at the hands of people with a dangerous amount of power (for many people in government, the deciding vote on which shared appetizer to order is a dangerous amount of power). And I certainly can't go making light of the tragedy in Japan because that would put my negotiations with Aflac in peril.

Perhaps I could casually endorse an etsy store, in a bid to extort some free swag? A friend of mine who has an online store was recently targeted with just such a bid by somebody with a Twitter account and acute megalomania. Assuming she reads this, I'll encourage her to send along her admirer's Twitter account handle in the comments so we can all reciprocate the gesture. Might I suggest the #dumbass hashtag?

So, uh, Viv, I don't suppose you have any spare QR Code cufflinks laying around, do you?

In case you're parachuting into the story and want to be able to easily jump through the narrative, here are links to the rest of my tale:
Prologue
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Tonight I was going to play a game of Settlers of Catan, but somebody bailed. So instead, Brett (who is in town for a conference) and I played the card game version of the game. I know, you're probably quite surprised that there is a card game version, and that I have it. Don't hold your breath for me to make my own version of that game, though.

I'm not the first person to work on a 3D Settlers of Catan board. I thought my version was a little pricey, but Mayfair Games has their own official board, made of similar materials, and for twice as much as what I spent on materials to make mine. And my version has two stunning innovations: Not only can they be flipped upside down and shuffled, but you may have noticed I have holes in the sides of my tiles. That's for the magnets that are going to keep my tiles together.



These teeny magnets were the smallest I could find, and have a pull strength of 0.7 pounds -- just enough pull to keep the tiles together. Assuming you didn't flunk out of kindergarten science, you'll know that magnets have polarity: opposite poles attract. I was too lazy* to do the math, but it turns out that when all the tiles have magnets of alternating polarity around their edges, they pull themselves together quite nicely. If you try this, you'll want to do it with a clear head. That's because if you screw up the magnets, some of your tiles will repel, and that is not what we're going for. I recommend coming up with a foolproof system. I was unable to do so; you can infer from that what you will.



For the first bunch of tiles, I used a hot glue gun to set the magnets. Having completed a basic set, I would in retrospect recommend using epoxy putty instead, if you are going to magnetize the tiles.

The decorating step was a fun bit of artistry. This was where I got to go overboard, as I had promised. I had vowed to go all diorama ninja on the tiles, and picked up everything I needed for landscaping in one little box at Michael's. As for paints, some Krylon primer, and black paint for plastic, and some matte clear sealer took care of my inhalants. The detailed painting was done using some $0.99 acrylic paints (this is the brand I used) from WalMart. You could spend about five times as much for craft paint at a hobby shop, but after 25 years of painting small things with small brushes, I don't think there's any justification for it.



Whether you just want to paint the tiles or texture them is up to you, of course. It's your project. I'm sure it's possible to go even more nuts than I did. But hey, look how it turned out!



Dig the sheep in the pasture. They are happy sheep. You can see how I handled the ports below. They fit into the water tiles. Here's the board after setting up the inaugural game. Gill won. Probably why she bailed.



*Truthfully, I wouldn't know where to start if I wanted to make a formal geometric proof, very much like the situation I faced in my final exam in Discrete Math ten years ago. The memory still haunts me.

This concludes the series detailing the construction of a DIY 3D Settlers of Catan board. Feel free to stick around for more entertaining stories!

I have made this my new home page. Hopefully this will kick my productivity up a notch.

Update: It's only been 12 hours, but so far the results are promising. I had a really productive day. If you count the computer program that I am waiting to finish, I'm still working!

In case you're parachuting into the story and want to be able to easily jump through the narrative, here are links to the rest of my tale:
Prologue
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

We're in the home stretch, and it won't be long before I return my efforts to critiquing authority figures, people with too much hubris, and "the system" in general.

So I cunningly crafted my molds. I found the next step rather fun and exciting, though whether it was because I was seeing the transformation of a vague idea into physical form, or because I didn't have adequate ventilation while working with solvents I cannot say for certain. The plastic resin comes in two parts to be mixed equally. Wanting to be as precise as possible without contaminating my cookware, I obtained some 30ml oral medication syringes from a pet store to measure out the materials.



Each piece was approximately 25ml, so allowing for waste, I measured out 26ml of each component to cast two pieces at a time. Later on, I got up to casting three tiles at once, though because the chemical reaction that causes the resin to harden begins immediately, and it takes some time to carefully pour the resin into the molds, I wouldn't advise being more ambitious than that.



The resin was the colour and consistency of table syrup, but quickly becomes cloudy and then fully opaque -- about the colour that my teeth will soon become because of the amount of tea that I drink. After about five minutes, the tiles can be removed. Rinse and repeat.

I do not literally mean to rinse the mold. It's a figure of speech.

I did not cast all 100+ pieces in one sitting. I understood from my reading that the molds need a rest to cool down (the chemical reaction within the resin generates heat). Instead, I made perhaps a dozen at a sitting. Generally, my casting sessions would end at that point in the evening when Ghandi and Queen Victoria finished their tea and suggested I crack open the window a little bit.

I could either mention this here, or as a status update, but I just got my electricity bill for the last month, and need to try to remember my usage for the last month ... so I can keep doing it. I hope I don't have to follow up next month with a story about ComEd fixing a clerical error, but my daily usage went from 24.5 kWh on the last billing cycle (and 23.4 all of last year) to 1.7 kWh on this one. Of my $17.45 electricity bill for the month, only $13 of it is flat standard fees and taxes. I'm sorry I can't spin this into an entertaining account (because it's my electricity bill), but -- wow. In my narrow view of life, this counts as good stuff, so I choose to mention it here.

Post script: I don't count this as my blog entry for the period. I still have more harrowing tales of board game making with which to regale you.

In case you're parachuting into the story and want to be able to easily jump through the narrative, here are links to the rest of my tale:
Prologue
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

And so my story crosses over into March. If you're playing along at home, you're sitting there with a bunch of prototypes ready to multiply them like so many loaves and fishes. It turns out it's easier than it might look at first.

I researched the heck out of the mold-making process, and found a handy website run by Alumilite, a company based out of Kalamazoo that sells plastic casting materials. After a fair amount of research (I discovered them back in the fall but didn't buy the materials until January) I decided on their Quick Set silicone rubber (for the molds) and their Alumilite Regular urethane plastic resin (for making the tiles). Here's the tricky part: how much did I need?

High school math to the rescue (stay in school, kids). They have volume calculators on their website, though they only calculate volumes for squares and cylinders. I wouldn't care for them much anyways because they were all in imperial units, which are crap. I had done some displacement measurements on my prototypes and found they all came in at about 25 ml. By my count, I needed to make 110 tiles, so the most cost-effective option was the 1 gallon jugs of resin, which would yield over 200 such tiles. The silicone rubber purchase was more difficult, though I went with the 5 lb tub to ensure I'd have plenty. It turns out I used too much rubber in my initial molds anyways (and then accidentally melted them) so it was just as well that I bought that much.

Making a 1-piece mold involves placing your prototype in a cylinder (people often use PVC pipe) or box, and then pouring liquid silicone over top of it. After the silicone sets, because it is naturally nonstick, you can remove your prototype from the mold and remove the mold from the cylinder. You just need to make sure that you pour an adequate amount of silicone in your and place the template that the walls of the mold are thick enough (a half-inch or about 15 mm between the edges of your prototype and the walls of the cylinder or box and covering your prototype is fine).

I first used as a mold box a Crisco container from which I had removed the bottom using a can opener. Its diameter and the formula for the volume of a cylinder of a height equal to 15mm higher than the thickness of my tile was used to calculate how much silicone I would need for each mold (and can be used to estimate the amount of silicone rubber to purchase).

Mixing up the silicone was my least favourite part of the whole project. It has a similar consistency and smell to white glue or perhaps latex paint, and makes a mess. I didn't wear gloves, but often wish I had. It doesn't stick to anything after it sets, but the same can't be said for its component ingredients.

After mixing up the silicone, I set my prototype in the middle of a base (in this case, the lid of the Crisco container), fixing it in place with dabs from a hot glue gun.

Sealing the container over the upside down lid, I then poured the liquid silicone over the prototype, and jiggled the container for a minute or so to try to coax bubbles to the surface (bubbles and air pockets in your mold are not desirable).

Eight or more hours later, you've got a mold!

Flip your mold box over, remove the base and then carefully remove the mold from the mold box and finally remove the template piece from the mold.



In the end, I decided that three different types of molds would suffice. I'm sorry today's installment wasn't even notable in its geekiness. A necessary evil, I'm afraid, if I am ever to get to the chilling conclusion to my tale.