Petersburg had a record year for the amount of snowfall.  The snow in front of the house is higher than the porch railing where it has slid off the roof.  The pile behind the house is seven feet tall.

High school baseball is supposed to have a home game in less than two weeks and we have $30,000 worth of sand stacked on the senior field to surface the other fields.  Everything is buried under snow though.  We need rain and warm temperatures to melt the snow so that work can resume on the fields.  Looks like we’re going to get some sun finally though.

We just went to the post office and shipped off a few things that i have sold on Amazon (another $48 worth). Cena received a movie from Netflix – Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion which says this on the sleeve about the film:

Two not-too-bright party girls (Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow) reinvent themselves for their high school reunion. Armed with a borrowed Jaguar, new clothes and the story of their success as the inventors of Post-it notes, Romy and Michele descend on their alma mater, but their façade crumbles quickly.

In my mail box was a sample pack of Post It^TM products that i found on a freebie website.

There are certain measures of the value of content on the internet.  There sure is a lot of garbage written so i get excited when something is popular like my Nintendo Controller Mouse, Excessive Exclamation Point Script, or Geek Wallet.  Links coming in from other blogs are wonderful but the net is full of splogs (blogs that just scrape content from other blogs and post it as their own) that dilute the dialog between authors.  Some services give extra weight to incoming links from .edu or .gov domains.  Today i earned my first incoming link from an educational website (well, my first from a .edu that is).  It is about my Internet Explorer pixelation problem.  The link is coming from the Interface blog at Missouri University.  That just happens to be the school that my sister is working at and attending for her Doctorate in Theater.  It is a small world wide web.

Last night Cena and I played trivia at the Harbor Bar. Lisa Schramek was on our team and some guy from Pennsylvania. We came in third place out of five teams which earned us each an Alaskan Amber pint glass and a drink token. Not bad for a five dollar entry! We definitely don’t know enough about wine or cocktails in order to earn first or second place though.

Make blog picked up the geek wallet post and it was posted on Digg also. The two have sent over 65,000 hits to the geek wallet Instructable in the last 24 hours. The post has over 2100 diggs. I knew the darn thing would be popular. Too bad i couldn’t get it published. Hopefully i can at least get a prize out of the Instructable entry.

Every now and then Instructables throws a contest together to help makers get motivated to submit projects. I have earned a few honorable mentions and a second prize because of these carrots dangled. I was curious about the other people that were submitting projects and did a tally. Since June of 2006 Instructables has awarded 149 prizes (including honorable mentions).

1. Trebuchet03 has received six awards.
2. Ian has received four.
3. Three honors go to GregDDC, MrMunki, outofthewoods, randofo*, and Tool Using Animal.
4. With at least two awards are FrenchCrawler, nak, photozz, pronteon, puffin_juice, rapierwit, sam, SlimJim, T3h_Muffinator, Tetranitrate*, vatosupreme, zieak, and Zujus.

*These people should have one more but Instructables issues only one prize to each person per contest.

There were prizes given in March of 2006 but i can not find a record of the winners on the Instructables site.

The latest contest closes on April 1st. Let’s see what projects have been entered by the consistent winners…

Tool Using Animal submitted a 120,000 Volt Van De Graaff Generator and a Clock into Kinetic Wall Art. Randofo entered his Rotary dialer PIC interface and Sockphones. Trebuchet03 has Reusing Old Mouthwash Bottles for Evil in the contest. Trebuchet03 just entered a few great projects – his homemade sport utility bike and his 2 watt accent light.  I, of course, have my wallet in the running.

The true value of Instructables is sharing ideas.  Sadly i usually need some sort of incentive to document and include mine so these contests work for me.

Cena and Ailis went to the High School play tonight. I couldn’t go because i had this great idea that i needed to work on. I had read mention of using the playing boards from board games as boxes on the Readymade forums but couldn’t find any examples online.

I went to the game closet and pulled out a duplicate board game – Clue. I cut a piece of cardboard the same size as the playing board and made a prototype. Using just a few common supplies i was able to make a nifty novelty box. I have a few more ideas for styles for boxes.

1. Cutting board
2. Square
3. Razor knife
4. Cardboard
5. Sharpie marker
6. Wood glue
7. Binder clips, spring clips, or some sort of clamps

After making a prototype out of cardboard i found this formula works for calculating where to cut and fold. Measure from the fold in the board to the edge. Divide that number in half. Use the result to cut or score the back side of the game board making two squares stacked on top of each other along both edges of one side of the board. Cut in between the squares and along the fold for that same distance. Score the lines between the fold and the edge (my dashed line above). Use the square to help make a clean fold by placing it along the opposite side of the length of the scored lines. Glue and clamp the pieces together to form the sides.

On the other half of the board just repeat the steps. The only change that should be made is to make the side panels slightly shorter (about a quarter inch should be right) so that this side fits around the outside of the sides. If you make a cardboard prototype you’ll see the need.

There are a few other ways to cut the board to make a box.  The next one i will try will have a separate top and bottom where the top fits over the bottom of the box.  This will require two of the games but since they run about 50 cents at the thrift store it shouldn’t be too tough to find some supplies.

I posted a message looking for a treadmill on Petersburg’s forum and within a few days Cena and i were hauling one home for free.  We shuffled a few things around in the living room and tucked the thing into a corner.

Some time ago i stumbled on a blog post about someone that made a treadputer.  A treadputer is a treadmill computer station.  There are many variations on this idea.  Some people incorporate a standing desk and treadmill.  Other people spend over $5,000 on a multiple monitor treadputer.

This treadmill – a Weslo Cadence LS8 is made by Icon Health and Fitness.  In 1998 and 1999 i worked for Icon in Logan, Utah and assembled treadmills.  Yes – i worked on an assembly line.   I worked on the console line for the most part.  All we did was put the chips into the motherboards.  We had to unpack them from their anti-static bags, the boxes they were packed in and the pallets that they were loaded on before putting the chip in.  Then after the console was tested it was packed back up and loaded back on the pallet.  It was mindless work but the pay was actually pretty good for a while.  We were paid by the piece instead of hourly so we would bust our butts and sometimes make $30 an hour.

Here’s a view of the console of the treadmill.

Out of curiosity i opened the console to see what was inside.  Not out of some nostalgia but to see if i could consolidate the controls a bit.  It turns out there is lots of empty space.

The tiny motherboard, thumb pulse, and battery pack were going to be of little use to us.  We really won’t pay much attention to the distance walked or the speed or our heart rate.  We’re going to be using this casually – not for marathon training.  So the remaining components that we will use is the slider that turns the motor on and regulates the speed and the safety clip and switch.  Will we really use the safety clip?  Probably not.  But if we have a house sitter or a guest we can suggest it and not be liable for disabling a safety device.

I did some thinking and some measuring and decided to use some plastic boards that i had salvaged, an aluminum volume dial from a broken stereo rescued from the Salvation Army, and a few pieces of hardware kicking around to simplify the console and make it accept a laptop.  Here are a few progress photos and the end result.

I keep the screws from just about everything i take apart.  I used three of them on this project attaching the safety clip.

The volume dial had a long distance between the dial and the rheostat so i attached a piece of scrap to stabilize it.  The galvanized strapping was found under the house and the sheet rock screws are left over from another project.  (Probably a project that did not involve sheet rock!)  I cut the yellow harness off of the slider and soldered it onto one of the sets of contacts on the rheostat.  The volume control knob actually has two dials – the second is behind the top one probably for tone control or balance or something.  If i decide to incorporate speakers later then this dial can control the volume as well as the motor speed.

Here is a nice closeup that shows the angle cut of the laptop ridge and the control dial.

Here’s the replacement console.  There is a lot of space so that i can add a water bottle holder, cell phone nook, and maybe even a cordless phone charger.

The height of the piece that the laptop rests against to keep it from sliding off the main board is extra wide so that it provides plenty of space for a wrist rest.

I’m very pleased with the simplicity of the console and look forward to passing the miles on it.

It is Wednesday – time to check and see how Zieak.com ranks with some common scoring services compared to last week.

1. Technorati: 76,868 (down 5,248) 72 links (down 3) from 53 blogs (down 4).
2. Google Page Rank: 4
3. Alexa: 855,170 (down 1,305) with 38 links in.
4. Silktide Sitescore: unavailable
5. Page Strength: 3 (but partially broken)
6. Feedburner subscribers: 18 (up 4)
7. SocialMeter: 217 (new this week)

Silktide’s revised Sitescore 2 will be opening for an invitation-only group on Friday. Their site says that the invites will be “released gradually” so not everyone will have access on the 30th. I did submit my email address months ago so hopefully i will receive an invitation early. Stop by and fill in your email address so that you can use their tool to help improve your site.