Winter Of Our Discount Tent

Southern Manitoba Road Trip & Koino's Woodcutter Retreat

2009-11-07T20:44:00.004-06:00

Whenever my friend Conrad and I head out to camp for the weekend, we like to explore as many back roads as possible. On this occasion, we headed down very scenic highway 23, past the massive wind farm at St. Leon, Manitoba, and then off along gravel roads through the Pembina Valley. Once we got to the camp, we spent the rest of the weekend helping cut, split, & stack a year's worth of firewood at the camp's annual Woodcutter Retreat.

Late Night Boxing Day Ride

2008-12-27T23:56:00.008-06:00

Boxing Day 2008: Carl, Colin, Conrad, Mark, Orlando, & I headed out on another late night bike ride. We had originally intended to go cruising residential streets to look at all the Christmas lights, however we ended up spending most of the ride down on the frozen Assiniboine River.

When we were tobogganing at Omand's Creek the night before, we noticed that the skating trail on the river has been cleared already. It still needs a bit of work before it'll be ready for skating, but it looked perfect for cycling on. The weather was perfect for spending time outside! After a long bout of cold weather, it was great to have things warm up to -12°C.

All six of us were quite festooned with lights. Several of us are now sporting Planet Bike Super Flash Rear Lights, which are incredibly bright! Orlando had just mounted a pair of insanely powerful Planet Bike Blaze 1 Watt LED Headlights on his bike. You'll definitely know which is his bike in the opening of the video.

We began our ride in the heart of Wolseley, and we headed west to Omand's Creek where we accessed the Assiniboine River. After exploring how far west the river trail has been cleared so far (nearly up to the Route 90 overpass), we headed back to Omand's creek then up & over the pedestrian/train bridge to Wellington Crescent. The sound of Christmas music lured us up Ash Street which we took before heading east on Kingsway Avenue, which ends back at Wellington as well as the river by Munson Park.

We took a quick spin through the park, a short jaunt east on the sidewalk of Wellington to the Hugo Park dock to access the river once again. We rode the ice down to The Forks; the furthest east we ventured. By this time we had acquired a bit of a thirst & appetite so we headed back up the river to Osborne to go to Papa George's for a late night snack. Following that, it was a quick ride back to our starting point in Wolseley.

New Trike Video

2008-10-13T00:02:00.003-05:00

My friend Colin & I just finished building a custom tricycle for a woman in Tucson Arizona. It's an upright, tadpole configuration, making it a great ride for people with or without mobility issues. We are going to build three more; one for me, one for Colin, and one extra for anyone who needs it!
(music: 'Low Rider' by Son of Dave)

I've been published!

2008-09-30T17:57:00.003-05:00

Okay, granted I am not the author if the entire book, however pages 50 to 52 of The Hungry Scientist Handbook by Lily Binns & Patrick Buckley cover my Microwavable Mitten Warmers! The text is a paraphrasing of my Instructable, and the photos demonstrating the project are mine as well (thanks for the help with that Orlando!).

Boy, for something I did as a lark one Saturday afternoon, creating this Instructable sure has paid off! First it was won the prestigious Project of the Month (one of ten projects so rated) which scored me a Leatherman tool & a T-shirt - both with the Instructables logo on them. Then a while later, Lily Binns contacted me about including my project in a book she was working on. That deal scored me a couple of hundred bucks and free copy of the book which just arrived today! Shweet.

If y'all are interested in buying a copy of Lily's book for yourselves, you can get it through Amazon.

Ciao RICK

How did I end up with a cast on my arm?

2008-02-17T18:49:00.003-06:00

How did I end up with a cast on my arm? Okay, this is going to sound strange, but I was in an alley trying to look inside an autobin - here’s the strange bit - wearing a full suit of armour made out of scrap metal. Seriously, check out the photos. The idea was for me to leap from the bin in full trash regalia for another phantom planet films video.

By the way, I should point out that this amazing Garbage Knight suit of armour was created by my friend, Curt Wiebe.

Anyhow, around nine o’clock in the morning of Friday February 8, Curt & I were setting up for the shoot in the alley behind his house. The freshly emptied autobin we needed to use was sitting on about a foot of snow and the tire ruts in the alley created a slope up to the bin. As I leaned forward to grab the edge of the bin to look inside, the completely slick soles of the boots of this suit of armour caused me to slip. My feet went shooting out behind me, & my upper body crashed into the bin. When I hit the ground, I guess limited range of motion of the gauntlets I was wearing put a bit too much pressure on my wrist.

I felt a little banged up at first, but after ten minutes or so I felt right as rain and we continued the shoot. We actually got some pretty good footage of my leaping from the bin and then riding an old bike up the alley.

The odd thing is, I didn't notice anything wrong with my left hand until after lunch at camp. It started to feel a little sore at first but by the time the group left at two o'clock it was down right painful.

The pain just increased the rest of the afternoon. Even though I took a couple of Advil & Tylenol when I got home, my hand was really hurting. Fortunately the pain completely subsided after an hour of keeping it elevated & completely immobile, but I decided I'd better go have it looked at just to be sure. At six o'clock, having finished supper, I loaded my MP3 player with Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets read by Stephen Fry and headed over to the Pan Am Clinic for a lengthy wait.

After I’d listened to the first half dozen chapters of Harry Potter, the good folks at the clinic took some X-rays and determined that nothing was broken. They figured it was soft tissue damage, and I should have a cast just to let any damaged tendons heal.

It wasn't until I was sitting in the waiting room of the clinic, waiting for my cast that I remembered that I’m going to need my left hand to play with The WhizBang Shufflers on CKUW 95.9 FM the following Tuesday! I was very glad when they were able to fit me with a removable cast. Fortunately, I was able to take off my cast & play just fine.

After about a week, I stopped wearing the cast altogether. I'm still being pretty cautious about what I do with my wrist, but I am very happy that it recovered so quickly!

RICK

New Season of WNYC's Radiolab!!

2008-02-06T19:38:00.000-06:00

I am very excited that Radiolab is about to begin their fourth season! Radiolab is hosted by Jad Abumrad & Robert Krulwich from WNYC - New York Public Radio. Here's a description from their website:

Radiolab believes your ears are a portal to another world. Where sound illuminates ideas, and the boundaries blur between science, philosophy, and human experience. Big questions are investigated, tinkered with, and encouraged to grow. Bring your curiosity, and we'll feed it with possibility.

The five new episodes for 2008 are Laughter (Feb 22), Deception (Feb 29), War of the World (live show!) (Mar 07), (So-called) Life (14), and Pop Music (Mar 21).

You can download the new episodes as they become available - all the previous episodes as well - straight from the Radiolab website, or you subscribe through RSS or iTunes.

I highly recommend this show!!

RICK

Guy Fawkes Mask in Origami

2007-11-06T17:36:00.001-06:00

First of all, I know that Guy Fawkes Day was yesterday, but I wanted to share this y'all.

Secondly, I should point out that I had nothing to do the creation of this amazing work of art. It was designed by an extremely talented artist named Brian Chan. Do take a look at Brian's other amazingly detailed origami pieces at his webpage.

Although I can't take any credit for this mask, I can claim credit for having sent Brian an email encouraging him to post instructions on instructables.com showing how to fold this mask , which he has!! Check it out and give it a try yourself!

By the way, if you want to make a mask big enough for your face you'll have to find a square of paper 16 x 16 inches.

RICK

Bye-Bye Baby

2007-05-29T18:44:00.000-05:00

It wasn't for sale, but last weekend I sold my chopper.

My friend Jenny had organized a family bike event that was being held in conjunction with a bicycle-themed art exhibition at the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba in Brandon. My friends, Colin, Brian, and I had brought a number of our custom bikes out to the event. We were letting folks try them out, riding around the block.

Halfway through the afternoon, a former teacher of my friend, Teyana, took my chopper out for a spin. When he got back, I asked him what he thought of it. He said, "Wow, it changed my life." Then he asked me how much money I want to sell it to him.

That's nothing new to me, I've had lots of people ask that, so I gave him my standard reply, "It's not really for sale, but I'll sell any of my bikes for a thousand bucks a piece." To my surprise he immediately said, "Sold!" And I could see he was serious.

Wow, nobody had ever called my bluff on that before. Usually the "sticker-shock" brings an end any ideas of buying the chopper, but not for this guy. He really wanted this bike. I found myself in the difficult position of having to decide if I was really willing to part with my baby.

I built this chopper in 1999 and have been riding if for the past seven years. I even boxed it up & flew it down with me to Indiana when I moved there for three years. It measures over eight feet long, and has a completely custom double tear-drop frame and three-foot long forks. The vintage headlamp has been retrofitted with four blue LEDs. The vintage T-shifter links to a three-speed internally geared Shimano hub. I laced the rear wheel with a beautiful three leading, three trailing spoke pattern. It has a 16-inch wheel on the front, and a 26-inch wheel on the rear with a two-inch wide completely slick tire mounted on it.

After much consideration I decided that the offer was too good to pass up, and I sold it. I can always build another one, and that's half the fun anyhow.

RICK

Four Score & Zero Um, I mean Two Score & Zero

2007-05-25T06:19:00.000-05:00

Today I turned forty.

My Office Space

2007-05-02T19:40:00.000-05:00

After five months working at the same desk, I've been moved to a new location in the office. (For those of you who don't know, I'm working as a Geographic Information System technician at an environmental consulting company. GIS is essentially computerized mapping.)

I really liked where I was. I was with my friends, C-Jae and Pierre, who also do GIS work for the company. I had a nice big desk to spread my air photos out, and I had two large monitors for digitizing my maps on. The room had a wall full of large windows providing plenty of daylight. It was terrific!

Here is a photo of me happily working at my old desk. By the way, that's a mirror stereoscope on the desk in front of me. It allows one to view pairs of overlapped aerial photos in 3D! Very cool stuff.

Last week a new employee was hired. She's doing GIS stuff as well, so in order for her to get up to speed, she needs to work with Pierre so he can help her along. I had to give up my desk to her.

I was moved to the far corner of the building, into a windowless room, far from any natural light. Here's a picture of me working on my TPS report in my new location. At least I still have my stapler....

Okay so that's not really my new desk; it's the cabinet next to my desk. I am, however, down to just one monitor (until we get a new power bar, I have nowhere to plug anything else in), and there are no windows to the outside. Fortunately I'm working with my friend Alanna now, and Christina is within ear shot, which is good too. We take little breaks through-out the day and chat a little bit. Christina's computer is connected to the Internet and she is kind enough to give me weather reports from time to time.

RICK

"Milt, we're gonna need to go ahead and move you downstairs into storage B. We have some new people coming in, and we need all the space we can get. So if you could just go ahead and pack up your stuff and move it down there, that would be terrific, OK?"

Bill Lumbergh - Office Space.

My Old Dossier

2007-03-25T14:56:00.000-05:00

Back when I lived in Evansville, Indiana I used to enjoy reading "Dossier: A Personal Look at Tri-State News Makers" in the local paper. This was a weekly feature compiled by Anne Schleper - then features editor for the Evansville Courier & Press - that posed the same series of questions to prominent people in the community.

Most people gave pretty obvious answers, stating that their most treasured possession is their children, or that their secret vice is chocolate. Not terribly imaginative, in my opinion. So every Wednesday as I read this feature, I would come up with my own answers for these questions. After a while I started writing them down and soon had written something that I was satisfied with for each question.

Now although I had only been in Evansville for half a year, I figured I could claim to be a prominent member of the community since the paper had just run a story on me and the bike club I was starting at Patchwork Central. So I fired off an email to Anne Schelper.

Keep in mind that Anne would usually invite people to be part of this feature, so I was being rather presumptuous sending her my unsolicited answers. However she must have like what I had written because she sent Courier & Press photographer, Bob Gwaltney over to take my photo for the feature.

With no further ado, here it is, from the Wednesday, September 20, 2000 Evansville Courier & Press, my dossier:

DOSSIER: Richard Wm. Unger
Director of the Patchwork Central Bike Club

Occupation:

Director of the Patchwork Central Bike Club

Three things that always can be found in your refrigerator:

Always? Shelves, cold air and a variety of microscopic biota.

Most fulfilling job:

Any job that doesn't feel like a job, which fortunately is something I happen to have right now working in the children's program at Patchwork Central.

If you could keep only two books, what would those be?

How to Get Through Life with Only Two Books and The Only Other Book You'll Ever Need. Both have yet to be written.

What do you value most in friends?

Mutual admiration.

Secret vice:

I get a kick out of running around playgrounds playing tag with the kids in my program.

Dream vacation:

I go on one most every night when I go to sleep.

What is it you most dislike?

The myth that Canadians pronounce "about" as "a-boot"! I'd never heard anyone say "a-boot" until I moved to the States.

Favorite candy bar:

Eat-More: Chewy chocolate toffee with loads of peanuts.

Most treasured possession:

The photographs I have taken over the years.

Greatest accomplishment:

Learning to dress myself.

Greatest regret:

Having to dress myself.

Greatest love:

To the best of my knowledge, it remains unrequited.

What you dislike most about your appearance:

My reflection. It just looks all backward to me.

Most marked characteristic:

My pointy Star Trek sideburns.

Who would play you in the movies?

Edward Norton.

With whom would you most like to have dinner?

Wallace Shawn. His dinner with Andre seemed to go quite well.

Evansville's best-kept secret:

There are so many people here who are wonderfully generous with their time and resources.

Favorite musician:

My friend Tracy Lee, who has such an amazing voice.

When and where were you happiest?

I imagine life in the womb would have been quite pleasant.

Favorite food:

Doro Tibs (Ethiopian), Ponderosos (Salvadoran), and Gelati & Canoli (Italian).

If you could live anywhere, where would that be?

Ever since I was a kid, I thought it would be so cool to live in a giant dirigible that I could fly to wondrous places all around the world.

First car:

A gold-fleck-toned Matchbox sedan with opening doors and hood.

If money and power were no object, what would you do to benefit Evansville?

I'd make it possible for all kids here to realize their full potential regardless of what hand they've been dealt in life ... and they all have tons of potential.

How do you hope to be remembered?

"They say you are only young once. Rick was young once, too... his whole life long."

When you were 6 years old, what did you want to be?

7 years old.

When did you first realize that a bikini bathing suit was in your past?

I've never worn a bikini bathing suit. It's either a comfortable set of trunks or nothing at all for me.

Which words or phrases do you overuse?

Eh. (What can I say; I'm Canadian, eh?)

When did you receive your first kiss?

Cindy Schmidt & I snuck out of kindergarten early, hid behind a tree, puckered up and kissed.

What is the best advice you could give a 20-year-old?

"Life is full of opportunity. Accept all good opportunities that come your way." And then, if she is intelligent, fun, beautiful, etc., I would also suggest she marry me.

Behind my back, people say:

Ps psspspspsps spspss, Rick psspspsppspsp. (That's all I can make out.)

People would be surprised if they knew:

How good, when sprinkled with a bit of sugar, a sour cream-on-rye sandwich can be.

Date: Wednesday, September 6, 2000

I should add that after this ran in the paper, two women were bold enough to contact me. One sent me her business card (with photo), a schedule for the classic movie theater across the river in Henderson, Kentucky and a short note stating that she found me interesting and thought we should get together to see a movie sometime.

The other woman phoned me at Patchwork and invited me to join a group she was involved with called the Hash House Harriers. She explained that it is a group of runners who get together & drink beer. Seeing as I don't run or drink, the prospect of joining a group such as this held little interest for me. It's too bad, because otherwise this woman actually sounded pretty interesting herself.

Although I didn't follow up with either of these women, I was flattered that their responses. Many other people - folks I actually knew - also told me that they enjoyed reading my dossier.

RICK

Tale of a Televisionary

2006-12-25T21:19:00.000-06:00

Hey kids! Grab your OptiPhones & your SonoScopes: Phantom Planet Films has a brand new motion picture! Tale of a Televisionary is the epic tale of a television...ary. Yeah... uh... that's what it is... well I guess the title pretty much sums it up, eh?

Come now, and join Dr. Malamar Garfield on another exciting adventure!

RICK

The Thought Projector

2006-11-11T18:45:00.000-06:00

Have you ever misplaced something, and for the life of you, can't remember where you put it? Well there is a new device that may help. Watch now as Dr. Malamar Garfield & his courageous friend Wyll Maynard use The Thought Projector to retrieve a lost thought.

RICK

The Secondhandpants Dance

2006-11-11T18:22:00.000-06:00

Ladies & gentlemen, I am proud to present, the premiere music video from the world renowned science folktion duo, The Secondhandpants, performing their classic hit single, featuring Space Robot, and introducing Dr. Malamar Garfield (the band's personal rocket surgeon), here is "The Secondhandpants Dance"!

RICK

Fall Festival 2006

2006-10-18T22:16:00.000-05:00

Every Autumn, Evansville's Westside Nut Club throws the second largest street festival in the United States. Actually, since Mardi Gras was scaled way back following hurricane Katrina, this year's Fall Festival - Evansville's 85th - may well have been the largest. Woo hoo!

Now even though I lived in Evansville for three years, I had never really gone to the Fall Festival. For shame, I know. Where else can one buy a deep-fried pig brain sandwich? Or an Icky-Licky (that's your choice of a cricket, cockroach, or scorpion embedded in a lollipop)? Uh, I just remembered why I didn't attend before.

Anyhow, since my annual trip back to Evansville coincided with the festival this year, and because it was Paula's birthday, I went to The Fall Festival... but just for the rides. Having gotten a little green in the gills last time I rode carnival rides, I skipped supper and took some Dramamine, which seemed to help.

We had a blast on all the rides. Here is a video of it all:

RICK

Arboreal Sentinels

2006-09-14T12:50:00.000-05:00

The trees in Birds Hill Provincial Park have stood as silent witnesses to The Winnipeg Folk Festival for over thirty years. Thousands of performers and hundreds of thousands of festival goers have passed among them for one weekend each July. This year several of the trees seemed be paying closer attention to the festivities. Several of the trees were looking around.

Arboreal Sentinels are a series of four sculptures that my friend, Curtis Wiebe, and I created for the Winnipeg Folk Festival's 2006 Prairie Outdoor Exhibition. Curt had the excellent idea to put moving eyes on trees around the Folk Fest site. Since he & I have collaborated on art projects before (that's besides playing together in The WhizBang Shufflers), he asked me to come on board to help with the technical end of things.

As you can see from these photos, we came up with prosthetic appliances for the trees which contain a pair of eyes. Each eye is made from half of a Ping-Pong ball, with an iris & pupil painted slightly off center. This is then mounted on the second hand shaft of a small (& cheap) clock. A white LED light fitted behind the eye ball illuminates it at night.

The body of each sculpture was made from spraying expanding polyurethane foam around a chicken wire form. The cured foam was then carved down to the desired shape. The Spruce & The Oak were covered with bark collected from the Festival site, and the two Poplars were covered with varnish soaked papier-mache and painted - on-site - to match their specific trees.

At night, the LEDs behind the eyes made them eerily noticeable. Unfortunately we had a short in the wiring of The Spruce sculpture which caused the 2 AA batteries to overheat, so we had to pull them out them leaving that one in the dark. It's a real shame that we had this problem on that particular tree since everyone passed it on their way out at night. If it had been illuminated as planned, so many more people would have spotted it.

These sculptures were pretty subtle, and I'm sure most people missed them all together. However, the people who did notice them had some wonderful reactions. Little kids dreamed up names for the trees, as well as elaborate back-stories to explain the various expressions on each one. When showing the sculptures to my friends, people sitting nearby - often right underneath - would look puzzled and ask what we were looking at. At first, when they finally noticed the sculptures, they would look a bit startled, but then they quickly became quite intrigued. My favourite quote about the Arboreal Sentinels was from a woman who asked, "Do I have heat stroke, or are those eyes moving?"

Since each eye was attached to its own clock mechanism, and we had gutted the clock mechanisms from really cheap clocks, the eyes tended to get out of synch. The Oak was the worst for this. This meant that twice a day we need to correct them, so I enlisted the help of my friend, Teyana. I suggested that she just fly up to the sculptures with her faerie wings, but she opted to stand on my shoulders instead.

On the positive side, having to make the rounds to inspect these sculptures first thing every morning, meant that Teyana & I could get on site before the main gates opened. Once we had checked everything out, and made the necessary adjustments, we were free to head back stage to get some breakfast while there was still breakfast to be had!

RICK

Baffle The Bird Of Death

2006-08-10T19:42:00.000-05:00

The WhizBang Shufflers - Baffle The Bird Of Death has been emancipated!

After much hard work - the least of which was actually recording the songs - we have finished the album. We've put together several hundred CDs & are now looking for good homes for them to go to. If you want one of these hard copies, the guys & I all have them, so if you run into any of us, feel free to ask for one.

The WhizBang Shufflers - Baffle The Bird Of Death is also available for free download from our website: folkjam.com. You may choose to download each song individually, or you may download a Zip file containing the entire album, complete with PDF files of the CD case inserts. The insert files are also available on their own. Download the music, burn it onto a CD-R, print out the inserts, slap all of that into your own CD jewel case, and voilà, you've got yourself a free copy of our album.

So go ahead and get your free copy. Send your friends to get their own copies too!

Hope y'all enjoy listing to our music!!

RICK

Ben's Stag!

2006-04-24T19:15:00.000-05:00

Ben - The WhizBang Shufflers' mandolin player - is getting married in two weeks, so Luke, Curt, & I - the rest of the band - kidnapped him for a bachelors' weekend.

Ben seemed pleasantly surprised to see us show at his fiancee's house, completely up out of the blue and with our instruments in tow. Apparently he thought we'd just come by for an impromptu evening jam. He then seemed pleasantly stunned when we told him that besides fetching his mandolin, he'd better pack a toothbrush too because we were going to be gone for longer than just an evening. I don't think he wasn't expecting an out of town stag party.

Once we'd crammed our instruments, our food, and ourselves into Luke's car, we headed out to Luke's family's cottage in Nopiming Provincial Park. After a downing four massive T-bone steaks - and I mean massive - we jammed for a while around a camp fire. Strangely enough, we didn't play a single tune from the band's repertoire, we just jammed on other tunes as they came to mind. I think we may have even gotten all the way through one or two of them, otherwise we had a little trouble remembering lyrics and such. Much fun, none the less!

The next day, after sleeping in most of the morning, we chowed down on a breakfast of bacon & eggs, and toast. Then we seriously got down to business: We shot a movie.

Using the things we had on hand at the cottage, we created a live-action short movie entitled "The Stag". From start to finish we spent less than a day making it. It was conceived and shot over two hours on Saturday afternoon. It was edited Saturday evening. Finally, all the sound was recorded on Sunday afternoon. The project was complete!

Now, for your viewing pleasure, here is our movie. Enjoy... but be warned, there is some mature subject matter; it's a stag film after all.

RICK

2 Project-of-the-Month Instructables!!

2006-04-17T19:50:00.000-05:00

Last month Instructables.com held a contest for the best instructables posted on their site during the month of March. I submitted two projects: Easter Eggs Dyed With Onion Skins and Microwavable Mitten Warmers. Both of them won!! They are two of ten projects chosen as Project of the Month!

I was hoping one of them might win something, but to have both of them win is way awesome!! Now winning Project of the Moth is basically winning second place. First place goes to five projects deemed Outstanding Project of the Month.

But these titles are nothing to sneeze at. The ten Project of the Month winners (of which I am two, I guess) win a Leatherman Juice S2 multi-tool & an Instructables T-shirt. The Leatherman is custom laser engraved with "Instructables". How cool is that, eh?!

The five outstanding winners have their Leathermans upgraded to the Juice KF4 multi-tool.

There are also twenty-five honourable mentions who will receive just a Instructables T-shirt, but no Leatherman tool. Frankly that's what I figured my Easter Egg project might win... if I was lucky.

By the way, I am totally stoked with how many people have followed my instructions for using onions skins to colour Easter Eggs! They've left comments with links to pictures of the eggs they've made, including one person who posted a follow-up instructable this month showing how to use fern fronds & flowers between the onion skins & the eggs to leave a cool shadow of the objects.

I was fortunate to have both Make and Treehugger post links to my projects; that dramatically increased traffic to them. Treehugger had an especially cool write-up by Kyeann Sayer, (St. Petersburg, Russia) about my mitten warmers!

RICK

Easter Eggs Dyed With Onion Skins

2006-03-28T21:16:00.000-06:00

My favourite method of decorating Easter eggs is to use onion skins.

I've just added an instructable on how to make Easter Eggs Dyed With Onion Skins. Check it out!

For about ten years now I've been making these kinds of Easter eggs. All through Lent I save up onion skins. Come Good Friday, I wrap them around eggs and boil the whole mess.

Actually it's not messy at all! That's another reason I am so fond of this technique. It's clean, it's easy, and it produces such amazingly beautiful Easter eggs!

Onion skins are perfectly shaped for wrapping around eggs; they have a natural compound curve to them. Another great thing about colouring eggs with onion skins is that it is natural! None of the questionable artificial dyes usually used to decorate Easter eggs. With onion skins you don't have the waste of extra packaging for an Easter egg colouring kit either. Heck, there is no kit to buy! When you are done with the onion skins, you can add them to your compost. That goes for the egg shells too for that matter!

The only other things you need - besides eggs and onion skins - are small squares of cloth. I've been using the same cloths for a decade!

Easter eggs dyed with onion skins would likely make for an incredibly challenging Easter egg hunt!

RICK

Abby's Brain Transplant

2006-03-28T19:32:00.000-06:00

A few years back, when I was living in Evansville, my friends Hannah & Neil made an awesome live action short called Abby's Brain Transplant. Why it was never nominated for an Academy Award I'll never know. Surely it would have won best live action short subject. Well, in the Academy's defense, I suppose they just never know about this movie, since Hannah & Neil had it hidden away in their private movie collection.

Well no more! Hannah's dad (a co-conspirator in making this movie) has recently converted it to a movie file and has uploaded it to YouTube for the whole world to enjoy!

So world, enjoy:

RICK

Microwavable Mitten Warmers

2006-03-20T16:59:00.001-06:00

I know it's a little late in the season for this kind of thing (winter ended just a couple of hours ago here in North America), but I've just finished whipping up some reusable, microwavable, mitten warmers. They are handy things for keeping your fingers toasty while cycling, walking, skiing, and such in cold weather. I have my friend, Ben, to thank for the idea. He's been commuting to work by bike all winter long and a couple of weeks ago he made a pair of these for himself so he could keep his hands warm.

It's a really simple idea. Basically they are just little bags of rice made from scrap cotton fabric. After a minute or so in the microwave, you just pop them into a pair of mittens. They'll continue to give off heat for over a half hour!

My brother-in-law, Orlando, provided me with the funky fabrics & the basmati rice. However, most importantly he lent his expertise with a sewing machine - I've never been able to get a sewing machine to work properly, myself.

I came up with several different styles of these warmers, each pair easier to make than the previous ones. I photographed each step and posted it all at instructables.com in the hopes of winning one of 25 T-shirts they are giving away this month!

RICK

Heather's Trike

2006-03-06T23:51:00.000-06:00

In May of 2003, Colin Bock & I completed building a custom bike project for a woman named Heather.

Heather really enjoys cycling. She used to ride both for recreation and for commuting to work, but Multiple Sclerosis made it impossible for her to ride her mountain bike. Far too often, when she would stop her bike & put her foot down on the road to balance herself, her leg would give out on her & she would fall over. Besides the risk of injury from the fall itself, the added risk falling in front of & being struck by a motor vehicle made this an especially dangerous situation. Heather need a bike that she didn't have to balance when she stopped. What she needed was a tricycle.

Colin & I began building Heather's trike around an old road bike frame with a low top tube. The women's style top tube was important for Heather to be able to mount & dismount the trike - it would also be helpful if she ever chose to wear a skirt while riding. Aesthetically, the feature I liked the most about this frame was the twin half-inch tubes running from the head tube down to the rear dropouts, rather than a single one-inch top tube.

When planning out the design, we opted to make the trike in a tadpole configuration (two wheels in front & one in back) rather than the more typical delta configuration (one wheel in front & two in back). We felt the tadpole would be more stable when turning, plus it would save us having to modify the drive-line of the bike.

To further improve stability, we placed the two new head tubes six inches forward of the existing head tube. We also placed them as wide as possible while still being able to fit through a standard door.

While we used recycled parts as much as possible for this project, we made the two new head tubes from tube stock we purchased from an aircraft supply company.

We fabricated a jig to lock the two front forks and the frame in their proper positions during construction. We then cut & welded all of the support tubes into place, triangulating the head tubes to the frame & each other.

The jig also aided in determining the Ackerman correction needed for the steering linkage. During a turn, the inner wheel needs to travel in a tighter arc than the outer wheel. Ackerman correction allows the wheels to do this.

We used chromed 3/4" knock-out seals to cap the tops of the steer tubes on each fork.

Most of the conventional bike components - handlebars, saddle, drive train, etc. - were scavenged off of Heather's mountain bike and put on the trike.

All three wheels have center pull brake calipers. Each of the brake levers on the handle bars operate a single set of brakes on the respective front wheel. An old ten-speed friction shifter with a nice long lever, operates a parking brake on the rear wheel - an important consideration with a tricycle!

The finished trike surpassed our expectations. We love how it looks and were very impressed with how it handles. Keeping in mind that tricycles handle quite different from bicycles, once you learn how to operate them, they work very well. Fast corners feel especially strange on a trike. However we found that we could take corners as fast as any bike simply by popping the outside front wheel up off the road just before a turn, "bicycling" the trike. This allowed us to lean into corners as we have learned to do on our bikes.

It often takes people a while to wrap their minds around what they are looking at when they see this trike ride by. From certain angles it looks like a regular bike, but then wait, there is an extra front wheel.

Heather tells us that she is very happy with this trike, and she rides it every weekend, weather permitting.

Quinzee Instructable

2006-02-27T21:22:00.000-06:00

Perhaps as a possible upgrade to the frosty accommodation mentioned in the title of this blog, I've created a page at instructables.com demonstrating how to make a quinzee. Please check it out!

Actually, in the process, we ended up building two conjoined quinzees, connected by a tunnel. That kept the second quinzee further removed from the light coming in the entrance. With it's floor scraped down to the lake ice, and a corresponding patch of ice exposed on the south side of the quinzee, the sunlight shone up through the floor in a pale green light!

We had a terrific time out at Camp Koinonia the other weekend. The weather was perfect for playing outside all day. We had clear sunny skies, almost no wind, and temperatures of about -10°C. Beautiful!

RICK

It's The Same Old Thing Every Day

2006-02-22T11:45:00.000-06:00

Long ago, in the ancient times of 2001, my friend Jesse & I embarked upon a bold mission. We set out to create an animated short movie that truly reflected the nature of human existence. Armed with only two tubs of Playdough, a 2 mega pixel digital camera, and too much time on our hands, we hand crafted a piece of cinematic history!

Now, it is my proud privilege to share with you - our adoring fans - the masterpiece that Jesse & I created that fateful evening so long ago. Ladies & gentlemen, I present It's the Same Old Thing Every Day. Enjoy....

RICK

The Move To "YouTube"

2006-02-05T15:34:00.000-06:00

I've just moved my previously posted videos over to YouTube.com from Google Video. The reason for the switch was that Google always took several days to approve my videos before making them available for viewing. With YouTube, not only are my videos made live pretty much instantly, but I can embed them into my blog so now y'all don't have to link-out to watch them! The quality seems to be better too since, unlike Google, YouTube doesn't expand my videos to sizes larger than I submitted them.

I hope this change will work well for all of you who visit my blog. If you have troubles viewing any of my videos, please let me know. You can fire off an email or just hit the comment button at the bottom of each of my postings and let me know what's up.

By the way, since I was uploading all of the videos again anyhow, I posted versions with music. They are no longer silent movies! Makes things much more dramatic with the musical accompaniment. Be sure to check them out!

RICK

Space Robot in 3D

2006-01-22T21:38:00.001-06:00

The Science Folktion music super-group, the secondhandpants, have been occasionally joined in their jams by that funky hunk o' junk, Space Robot. The only hitch was that Space Robot lacked corporeal form. During live performances of the secondhandpants, Space Robot was only able to provide his vocal stylings after being contacted via the communicatron.

To remedy this situation, Curt (aka Francis Leonard) & I set out to build a machine that Space Robot could download his morose self into. It had to be a good fit though if we ever wanted Space Robot to reside in this form, so we had to do some research.

Fortunately we discovered this ancient glyph (the one to the left) of Space Robot. We now had a blueprint for his preferred appearance. Then, drawing upon Curt's artistic vision, and my technical know-how, we amassed & assembled all the exotic metals, high-tech electronic gizmos, and musical doodads needed to create a terrestrial body for Space Robot.

After many hours of toiling in our lab; after the laser-like focusing of our combined creative genius; after much blood, sweat and mint/rooibos tea; Space Robot now has a physical presence in our dimension!

Space Robot could barely bear waiting to try out his shiny new body. As soon as he had downloaded himself into it, he burst forth into song! Luckily I had my camera handy so I shot a video clip of his first thirty seconds with the new body.

Check out this short video clip of the newly minted Space Robot singing the Space Robot Blues! The song features Space Robot on lead vocals, Francis Leonard on ukulele, and Wyll Maynard on warshtub bass & background vocals (and I mean waaaay background vocals).

After getting a shiny new coat of paint, Space Robot is looking better than ever! We sat down with him recently for a quick visit. He kindly shared with us, his broad emotional range:

Joy;

Sadness;

Dejection;

Forlornness;

Melancholia; and finally,

RAGE!

Watch for Space Robot to be performing with the secondhandpants at this year's Menno Folk at the WestEnd Cultural Centre this February!

RICK

Ice Trikes

2006-01-10T15:00:00.000-06:00

The time is once again drawing near when the Assiniboine River will frozen solid enough for the City of Winnipeg to clear a skating path. Now, I enjoy skating just fine, but I much prefer to hit the river with my ice trike! (I use the term "hit the river" in the figurative sense, although there have been occasions when it has been the literal sense.)

By the way, all these images are stills taken from a video of Colin & me riding around on the river back in March '05. You can watch the video below.

My trike is a front-wheel drive, rear-wheel steered, recumbent tricycle in a delta configuration. I designed it so that the rear part of the frame folds in towards the front for storage. It makes it nice & compact but quickly unfolds for use. Rather than paint the frame, I covered it in "poor man's chrome": aluminum duct tape. Even the rims & wheel discs are covered in the tape.

Currently the trike has a single-speed hub with a coaster brake. It works fine on the ice, but I tend to bog down in snow. It'd be good to have the option of shifting to a lower gear, of course then I'd have to add a rim brake which won't work as well in the wet conditions I usually ride this trike in. I suppose, an internally-geared bottom-bracket hub, such as a Schlumpf Mountain Drive, would be ideal for this. I could keep the coaster brake & the clean drive line, but still have the option to shift down to a power gear.

My fellow bike buildin' buddy, Colin, also has an ice trike that he built about four or five years before we built mine. His looks quite different from mine, but there are similarities: Like mine, his is a front-wheel drive, recumbent delta trike. Where it differs is that he opted for lean steering, and a much lower stance than mine. He set up his rear wheels with lot of negative camber (the wheels lean in) whereas mine have no camber, and he runs a studded tire on the front, which I don't have... yet.

Okay, so what does one do with an ice trike? What possible good could they be? Well, they are a blast to ride and the really catch people's attention.

It's a lot of fun to get up some speed and then crank the steering to put the trikes into a spin. 180° spinouts are easy to do & easy to control. We'd love to be able to do a full 380° spin, but the laws of physics continue to work against us.

Similarly, it is easy to do power turns; instead of letting the rear end spinout, we keep the power on & pull the front into the turn, letting the rear drift out.

We also race along the path, we crash into - & sometimes even through - the snowbanks, and we've even towed tired skaters behind us.

Last, but not least, we enjoy just riding our trikes up & down the river path!

RICK

This is a follow up to some comments folks have left me regarding the ice trikes.

Where did I get the plans? Actually I didn't use any plans, I just designed it on the fly as it was built. I did have a basic idea of how I wanted things from the start but most of the time construction continued on until a problem presented itself. Then Colin & I would brainstorm and come up with a solution. Often those solutions would inspire the design to take on new & improved directions.

One of the original design features was to have a combo of wheel & ice blades on the rear forks. A tandem set of 4" scooter wheels would have been used for riding on the road. Once I arrived at the river I would have flipped the assembly over to put the trike on skate blades. So far I haven't build these yet. I kinda like it the way it is with the 20" wheels all around.

As for practical aspects of this design, I'd have to say they are pretty limited. It handles like a forklift so at a "high speed" it tends to lurch from side to side. It works fine on the ice, but makes it a little dicey to use in traffic.

The cost was minimal. We built it out of recycled bikes. I think the only thing I had to pay for this project was the welding wire, a handful of nuts & bolts, and the aluminum tape. Oh, I suppose I should include the cost of the rear tires, which I nabbed from a recumbent project I haven't yet completed.

By the way, thank you all for taking the time to check out this project and leaving your comments. I really appreciate it!

RICK

A New New Year Celebration

2006-01-06T14:50:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you had as splendid a time as I did ringing in the new year. I spent the weekend at Camp Moose Lake with a group of friends. Did some tobogganing, some snowmobiling, and a whole lotta lazin' around.

Just before midnight on December 31st, while out for a stroll down the wintry camp road, I pondered the validity of celebrating the new year at the midnight of one's local time. How much sense does it make to wait in anticipation for the beginning of something, that it has in fact begun many hours before? That's essentially what we were doing. When midnight rolled around here in the Central Time Zone, the year 2006 had actually been in existence for eighteen hours already.

Therefore, if someone in the Central Time Zone would want to celebrate the actual beginning of a year, one should do so at 6:00 a.m. on December 31st. Why? Because that's when midnight rolls around at the International Date Line way out in the Pacific Ocean, and when each new day - as well as each new year - begins. Conversely to bid farewell to the previous year, one would celebrate 24 hours later, at 6:00 a.m. on January 1st.

This opens up the possibility of three times to party over a 24 hours period:

6:00 a.m. December 31st to celebrate the start of the new year;
12 midnight December 31st to celebrate as we normally would; and,
6:00 a.m. on January 1st to bid farewell to the end of the previous year.

Okay, so will I be found whooping it up in the early hours of December 31st & January 1st next year? Don't count on it.

All the best to you in 2006!

RICK

Vids R Go!

2005-12-29T13:41:00.000-06:00

I had originally posted my Christmas Tree Disposal video on Google Video, but since it takes sooooo long for Google to approve & put videos live, I have switched to YouTube.com
I had no idea when I made my Christmas Tree Disposal post back on Boxing Day that it would take so long for my video to be made accessible. I figured a couple hours, tops.

Here's the YouTube version:

While I'm back on this topic, I should mention that yesterday, my dad paid a visit to the local Christmas tree recycling depot, and made off with a dozen trees. He tells me that there were tons of un-used trees dumped there, still tied up from the farm. Makes me think I should switch to the Gregorian Calendar so I could celebrate Christmas on its December 25th which, on our Julian Calendar, falls on January 7th. That way I could score a free tree every year, not to mention the great deals to be had at after Christmas sales(on the Julian Calendar, that is)!

Anyhow, dad's got his dozen trees arranged through-out the yard, transforming it into a nice little faux forest. Come spring, I've got dibs on them though! Technically I suppose they're "hot" already.

When I mentioned my family's abundance of used Christmas trees to my friend, whom I'll refer to as "Frank" (although his real name is Conrad), he offered the use of his family's farm as a disposal site this year. Good old "Frank", such a helpful guy. Of course we've gotta invite "Bill" along when we do this!

RICK

Jerry Can Shoulder Bags

2005-12-26T22:01:00.000-06:00

After reading a post in MakeZine about Kanita shoulder bags (also in Gizmodo, & DesignSpotter), I was inspired to make three shoulder bags from 4.7 liter jerry cans for Christmas presents this year. The Kanita bags sell for a whopping €89, which works out to CDN$123 or US$105!! Granted if I took my labour into account, I would have to charge about that much too. But, as a DIY project, it works out to less than CDN$10 to make each of these.

Here now, is an overly detailed look at how I made these shoulder bags.

Begin with a new 4.7 liter jerry can.

Remove the accessories.

Trim the child-proof tab off of the cap.

Use a sharp knife or chisel to get a nice finished cut.

Trim off the retention strap from the small cap.

Drill a 1/8" hole in the cap for the 2mm cord that will keep it attached to the shoulder bag.
Pare down the stub inside the small cap with a 3/8" drill bit.
Salvage the lip of the funnel.
Use a knife to trim off the lip of the funnel.

Pop the severed lip of the funnel onto the gasket.
Drill a 1/8" hole in the center of the lid for the 2mm cord that will keep the cap attached to the shoulder bag. Stack the cap components together.
Once assembled, weld the cap components in place with a soldering gun on the inside of the cap.
Next, enlarge the rear spout to accept the knotted end of the 2mm cord that will pass through the cap.
Bore out the rear spout with a 3/8" drill bit.
The child-proof tab in the front needs to be removed.
Using a knife or chisel, trim off the child-proof tab.
Trim off the tail stub.
Trim the beveled knobs flush to the rear spout.
Cut both spouts with a knife so as not to remove any material. This will ensure the caps fit properly when finished.

Use a jigsaw to saw the jerry can in half along the seam.
Put the caps back on to check that enough material has been removed to allow for the thickness of the webbing. This may require extra trimming.
Mark for stitching holes to be drilled along all cut edges, roughly every centimeter or so. Begin with high & low points, then fill in between.
Mark slotted holes on the bottom for the tie-wrap hinges.
Drill 1/8" holes where marked.
Using a soldering gun, burn off a 10" piece of webbing to line the inside of the handle.
Weld the ends of webbing together into a loop with the soldering gun. Use a steel plate to iron on, and a piece of cardboard to insulate the lower half of the webbing.
The webbing welded together into a loop; welded side out.
Turn this loop with the good side out.
Clip the loop into position.
Sew it into place using 100% nylon upholstery thread.
Next clip the outer webbing into position.
Burn a notch into the webbing around the rear spout.

Sew the remaining webbing in place with 100% nylon upholstery thread.
Use the soldering gun to burn slots into the webbing for the tie-wrap hinges.
Weave the tie-wraps through the slots in the two halves of the can and the webbing. Begin by passing them through the holes in the can first.
The hinge is made by weaving the tie-wraps in a figure-eight pattern; much like a toy Jacob's ladder.
Use a pair of pliers to tighten the tie-wraps all the way.
Clip off the ends of the tie-wraps and melt down the stubs with the soldering gun. Then sew some fabric over the hinge area to prevent things dropping through. This is a piece of polar fleece.

Burn off one meter of webbing for the shoulder strap, with the ends angled at a 45°.
Rivet the strap to the jerry can through 1/8" holes in the can. To prevent the rivets pulling out of the plastic, support them with #6 washers. Use an awl to open up the webbing for the rivets.

Make sure the back of the strap attaches to the opposite half from the front so that both halves are supported by the strap.

The finished shoulder bags!

In red:
To open the bag, unscrew the caps.

In blue:

Christmas Tree Disposal

2005-12-26T16:16:00.000-06:00

Happy Boxing Day everyone!

I'm sure that some of you will be taking your Christmas trees down shortly, and although many of you will be recycling your trees - having them ground up for mulch - I thought I'd share with you another option to consider.

Last year, my friend, whom I will refer to as "Bill" (although his real name is Carl), waited until spring to dispose of his Christmas tree. Once the snow had melted off of "Bill's" lawn, we took his tree and stood it in his outdoor fire pit. With just a small squirt of Coleman camp fuel in the fire pit, "Bill" backed up a few feet & flicked a match at the base of the tree.

Now, rather than me trying to describe the events from that point on, I think it would be better if y'all just watched the video that I shot that night. Keep in mind that the lawn was saturated with water from the melted snow, we had a garden hose nearby, and I think one or two of us were even muttering, "Stop, Drop, & Roll... Stop, Drop, & Roll..." to ourselves. Yes indeed, we had all aspects of safety concerns covered.

I asked "Bill" about his plans for this year's tree. He's still mulling things over.

RICK

Launch

2005-12-22T12:29:00.001-06:00

Nifty - I've started a blog. All the cool kids are doing it so why shouldn't I?

Not much time to write today, however. All my efforts are currently going towards setting things up here so they work as I wish them to.

In the mean time I'll share with you a photo I took two years ago on Christmas Eve Day (that kinda sounds bit oxymoronic, doesn't it?). A dense fog rolled through Winnipeg the night before Christmas Eve, leaving a wonderfully thick layer of hoar frost covering everything outside. This photo is of a chain hanging from on rail switch the CN main line.

One last note: As I ran Blogspot's Spell Checker for this blog, I was amused that the word "blog" was not in it's database!

Until next time, Merry Christmas everyone!

RICK