Notebooks of Scott

The recent storms brought a boatload of snow to the Angeles National Forest, so for New Years Day, I took Ana and her sisters to Mt. San Antonio (aka Mt. Baldy) to play in the snow. Of course my motive was that I really wanted to get up to the snow, but it would be no fun to do alone. The area just below the ski resort parking lot is at roughly 6100 feet and had something like 36-48 inches of extremely dry powder with a couple inches of crust above it. The conditions were almost perfect, except for the fact that the snow didn’t pack into snow balls. We made up for it by throwing chunks of the more cohesive crust.

I have never actually been to the resort itself, but I can say that the area we stopped at was an excellent place to play and I highly recommend it. Its rather amazing how close a place like this actually is and how easy it is to get to. We left to go up there at around 8:00AM and got there at 8:45, we had the place almost to ourselves for an hour and a half before the crowds started to show up. I’m not sure how it is on non-holiday weekends, but it is definitely worth it to get up early. If you do go, don’t forget to buy an Adventure Pass. Mt. Baldy Rd is one of the forest’s fee areas. The passes though are worth the cost and the money goes directly to improving our national forests.

All in all, one of the best New Years Days ever.

A couple weeks ago I made a bullwhip for my Halloween costume (Indiana Jones). I’ve never worked with leather before, and its a bit expensive for a Halloween costume, so i wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to do until I came across an article online (found at Skip to my Lou about making a whip out of duct tape. The one on the site didn’t look half bad, but I wanted to get a little more realistic look, so I did some more research and learned how to do 4 and 8 strand round plaits. Then I spent a bunch of time putting it together.  In the end the whip was about 8 feet long. It had 3 layers, one computer cable core, one 4 strand layer and one 8 strand layer. The handle was a chunk of pvc pipe wrapped with more duct tape. I’m not entirely certain if it works (it could be that I’ve never cracked a whip before), but I think it looks good. In the future though, I would add a paper core or something since the whip feels kind of hollow. I wasn’t able to tighten the duct tape strands enough to get them to hug the cord.

This is the result:

Making the whip was fun, and I learned a lot in the process. It was definitely worth the time and effort. As a bonus, I got to try out some time lapse software that I had found online. See the video on my youtube account.

Just a quick note: The opening ceremonies begin tomorrow!
Here in LA they will be broadcast on channel 4-1 at 9pm PT. Be sure to check it out.

The Olympics are always exciting.

I posted a new picture to Flickr.It was taken at my grandmother’s house on the Fourth of July. To take it, I borrowed her tripod and used the fireworks setting on my camera. It took 15 shots to get this one good one.

Kobalt Six Inch Caliper

Yesterday, while at the hardware store, I bought  a small Caliper. I have been needing one to make building my models easier.

These things are pretty cool. Mine measures down to the thousandth of an inch, enough to register the thickness of a piece of paper. And because of the straight edged tines, it can measure the diameter of round objects easily.  It came from Lowes for roughly 30 dollars.

Related Links:
Lowes Listing for the Calipers
How to use Calipers

Today was the 40th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11 and it will be the anniversary of the moon landing on Monday. To celebrate this historic event, Nasa and the JFK Library have created a site called WeChooseTheMoon.org. It is an animated recreation of the flight from start to finish in real time. It is quite awesome. Check it out.

I have just published my first lens on Squidoo. It involves Garden Railroads. Check it out. Garden Railroads

Porthole, originally uploaded by smckittr.

Exploration of the deep. Well actually just the lagoon at Disneyland. Taken on the Nemo Ride.

In Memoriam, originally uploaded by smckittr.

Flowers in the mausoleum at the Santa Barbara Mission.

The Lost Art, originally uploaded by smckittr.

The Lost Art of Letter Writing