Snow!

Finally! Expecting lots and lots of it!

Update:

Let My Guard Down.

Did I make a mistake? What if I did? I'm only human, after all.

If so, then perhaps I should have questioned the simplicity of my case from the very beginning? Was I too naive, or was I just... foolish.

I believe I have learned my lesson. Oh, the randomness of life.

Funs of Fail

Who would have thought that failing can be so much fun.

As one last fun thing for this summer, me and Andray decided to build a raft and go swimming with it to the nearby lake. The material list was not something one usually would expect for a normal raft, but this was not supposed to be one anyway: PVC pipes, rope, and trash bags. Without further due, I present you the final product:

No, it was not supposed to look like that. Instead, it was supposed to be a perfectly symmetrical octet truss structure. Once on in shallow water, we jumped on the slightly wobbly structure, and a moment later, two structure members just bent and snapped like a toothpick. "Oh sh-", and we started cracking up.

Why did it fail? We knew that the design had a major flaw, but decided to proceed with the testing anyway. The main problem was that we placed nothing on top to distribute the force to all/majority of members, such as a piece of plywood. And we did not account for the buckling forces in any of the structure members. My bet is that the pipe thickness was fine and the majority of the fail was to blame on the hollow top. But hey, at least we learned it the "epic fail" way.

The end result was a failure, yet, the overall project goal was not. We had fun, and that was the main idea. I was about to leave for college 100 miles away, and this might very well have been my last fun project for at least another year.

The process of building it was tedious and long. I'll spare you the details. The design was sketched on paper and the material list was drawn. Once we had all the materials, the PVC pipes were cut the same length, holes drilled in the ends, and small sections of rope were cut to be used as connections in each node.

A couple of backpacks full of pipes, ropes, food an water were carried to the location of assembly. The hike to our lake was about 30-40 minutes from where we parked. Once there, we rested for a bit and started assembling the structure.

After an hour or two, the raft was completed and seemed to be like perhaps it could support weight of two skinny grown men, despite the fact that it had a hollow top. But then again, it was uh.. a plastic structure made of thin pvc pipes connected by thin rope. Anyway, we already know exactly how this story ends.

We packed our stuff, waved goodbye to our failure which was now floating almost in the middle of the lake, and very exhausted but satisfied, headed home.

The End.

It all starts here.

The past is past, the future is unknown, and life is now, as it is. Nothing fancy, just fun and maybe occasionally sorrow, but hopefully not.

The past - from this point - is not to be mentioned. Let us now define it to be just some tv static.

Let all hell break loose.