Howard Log

This is a work log for keeping track of tasks by Howard Agnew, whom is at Factor e Farm and has started his dedicated project visit.

Dedicated Project Visit Pre-planning

I will be focusing on documentation, helping Santa Claus bring the promised gifts of completed documentation sets for a couple of machines by Christmas. Collaboration over the Internet with CADders and other documenters will be required to ensure this goal is obtained, so obtaining full, complete and current specifications for all parts of the machines being built are the highest priorities. Once I have a full set of specifications, I can delegate out development of the CAD models to active volunteers over the Internet and develop the 20+ models required for the CEB Press in parallel with other teams, as well as related information (such as the Bill of Materials) which will also be incorporated into the final, complete draft of manufacturing blueprints/diagrams and instructions.

The fabricators will tend to be very busy, however, and I must not get in their way when it is crunch time on building and prototyping. I will need to really be sharp when it comes to seeing and finding opportunities when work has slowed down.

I will need to also contribute efforts to help with things like building the facilities, which will probably be a temporary focus early on until the current facility expansion is complete. I do not have any carpentry experience, but hopefully my landscaping experience laying a brick retaining wall will be of use in building the Compressed Earth Brick walls that will be part of the construction. I expect I'll be a bit sore, being out of shape for so many years, but no pain, no gain. :)

I expect to arrive sometime Wednesday or Thursday. I am very excited and honored at this opportunity, and hope my plans and intentions bear fruit and I can help bridge the work being done at Factor e Farm with the greater Open Source Ecology community, enabling other teams in other locations to start taking advantage of the work already done by completing integrated manufacturing instructions, diagrams, bills of material and all the other information needed to enable a group to identify every machine and all materials they need to start work, and clear, concise and accurate instructions complete with diagrams to actually build the machines.

I will be driving, leaving Monday or Tuesday and I expect to arrive three days later. I used to take long distance road trips and do so stupidly 10-15 years ago; I will be pacing myself to maximize my safety. I am preparing what I have (for instance doing what I can with my laptop since it will be my only usable computer on-site, as my desktop would hog too much precious power needed for machining), getting ready to buy things I need (steel toed boots and hearing protection, for instance) before going.

Final Shutdown

As of noon PST on Sept. 26, 2011, I am shutting my computer down for the last time to pack it up and haul out.

I expect to arrive at FeF sometime tomorrow or Wednesday. Will try to log my laptop on if I find restaurants or rest stops with free wi fi en route.

I don't know anyone's phone #s at FeF, so I will be calling David who lives nearby when I am closer to determining an arrival time.

Looking forward to meeting the FeF crew in person and joining in! --Howard V. Agnew 21:06, 26 September 2011 (CEST)

Arrived at FeF

I arrived yesterday morning (September 28th) at around 7:30. I was frustrated away from my last attempt at sleep at 11 p.m. the night before at a rest stop in South Dakota when I discovered they outlaw staying at a rest stop for more than 3 hours unless you are in an RV ... so I kept going, drove all night for the final leg, arriving at Factor e Farm at around 8 a.m. I am settling in a bit, still have a bit of road wariness to sleep off, but starting to work helping document the |LifeTrac III with Ian, who is great with video and is actually doing a bigger video documentary project. A little project we started last night was to create one single jig plate that would have all the holes needed for the 4"4" tube frame members for the LifeTrac. He wrote a script, and based on the specs he had in the script, I created a sketchup of the jig plate with the holes (all 27 in one piece!) and decided to go with an alphabetical labelling scheme that could be used for a written documentation set. --Howard V. Agnew 21:44, 29 September 2011 (CEST)

September 30

Dug two inches into gravel for the concrete pillars where Shonda has been toiling away securing frames to stakes. Managed to get caught up with him, primarily because we unfortunately ran out of 2x2 stakes.

Need to get with Ian on video-documenting the wheel mounts for the LifeTrac III, but the facility expansion construction takes priority, FeF can only get into high gear when there's good housing and production facilities. Will collaborate with Ian when its too dark to do anything else.

September 30, Part II

Everyone busted their butts 'til a quarter past 2 a.m. working on the frames. Some had to be reworked. Note for anyone doing this in the future: Stake but do not attach frames to stakes until after the frames are levelled ... otherwise you wind up doing as we did, having to unattach the frames from the stakes and re-attaching.

We called it a night with another 10 to go, plan to somehow drag ourselves out of comas to finish them before the cement mixer pours tomorrow ... err, make that later today.

Its cold, we're tired, but we're all thinking the same thing ... when the Hab Lab is complete, we'll be living in high luxury. :P

October 1

Turns out the cement isn't coming until Monday. I worked a bit on more of the forms until David came over and we decided to replace the "bridge" (a long, flat piece of metal that had folded in on itself) over the trench between the current FeF and the new Hab Lab to the west. Will make walking and wheelbarrowing much easier.

October 2

Worked with Ian on documenting the wheel mount construction and assembly for the LifeTrac III. Unfortunately, have hit a few snags trying to determine scope. Will need to address these with Marcin after I have a clear, specific list such as whether the shaft assembly and brackets on the wheels should be included ... and if so, will need a walk-through.

Have also hit a snag that I lack drivers for the camera loaned to me by Alan, and am unable to acquire video from it. I searched the manufacturer's site, but unfortunately their "support" section has been down with a "500 - Internal Server Error" every time I have checked today. I sent an e-mail to the manufacturer, hopefully they can have the site fixed tomorrow, or at least point me to an alternative site to obtain the driver.

Note to self: When going to check out, in further detail, stuff from a video walk-through, always bring a tape measure and my laptop. Too many times I thought I had all the info I needed, went back to my laptop clear across the current Factor e Farm campus, only to find I had missed something and had to go back to record that, too.

October 3, 3:40 p.m.

Leaned a lot on Ian and Shonda to hammer out a draft for the LifeTrac Wheel Mount Construction video script. Will refine it a bit based on the script draft Ian completed for the Frame Assembly video which is getting rave reviews. Ian will, sadly, be shipping out in a couple weeks, and handling the script writing will be handed over to me at that point. Hopefully, Ian and his smooth, calm voice will still be available to actually narrate the videos over the Internet lest our Nielson ratings drop if I tried to narrate. ;)

After I finish tweaking the draft, I should return attention to the LifeTrac frame assembly jig Sketchup file; the labelling system needs to be simplified ... the one I created for the video simply labels each of the 27 holes from A to AA ... instead, I will group the holes according to the member (or members) they apply to, such that the first series of holes for the first frame member will be 'A,' then 'B' for the holes drilled on the perpendicular faces of the steel tube, 'C' for the top of the second frame member, 'D' for the holes on the perpendicular face, etc.

October 3, 9:20 p.m.

Marcin helped point out several things and I fixed the script accordingly. Its on the wiki at Life Track II Build/Wheel Mount Construction Video Script, but this may not be the final iteration. I completed the revisions Marcin requested, and did a couple other minor tweaks and sent it back to him. If it passes muster by him, it'll then go to Ian for final work-through. Ian's an awesome guy, he will surely be missed after he's gone, and as I said with my earlier blog, I hope he'll have the time to be able to continue to narrate our videos at least. I'll need to kick my video editing in high gear though ... I won't try to pretend I can match Ian with his years of experience, as I'm just starting out, but I feel confident that in time, I'll make smoother video edits

October 3, 9:45 p.m.

I have a new roommate ... a FROG!

Where the frog did this frogging frog frogging come from!?

I don't particularly hate frogs, but am not thrilled to share my cabin, small and dank as it is, with one ... and I'm particularly concerned that if a frog can find its way in, so too could something a bit more menacing like a snake or rat.

October 4, 5:50 p.m.

Its concrete day. I think everyone's tired and sore. I helped eliminate the air pockets at the edges and corners, helped float and smooth and tried to ensure the other teams working on the pads had water to keep the concrete fresh, but we were too few for so many pads and unfortunately several set before we could finish them nicely.

October 6, 6:00 p.m.

Yesterday was spent getting laundry done. Today I started working on the jig design, have some ideas I'd like to try out, will probably work on it into the night. Helped grab and stack hay bales.

October 8, 2:00 p.m.

Helped with baling last night after documenting Uncio (sp?) working on Arduino controllers for the CEB Press, but power issues last night kept me from working on it until today. Continuing to work on documentation, transcribing notes from the video I recorded yesterday that I can then work into documentation.

October 9, 4:30 p.m.

I helped paint CEB Presses until nearly dawn this morning, which had me asleep until after 3 p.m. Woke up to find my everything-depends-on-it laptop had shut down (I lazily tend to just close it to put it to sleep mode) and would not boot into Windows, instead indicating it could not find a partition and giving me an odd text prompt.

I realized I hadn't actually restarted my laptop since deleting the Linux partition and re-apportioning all space to Windows, so I figured that was probably what it was. I was at a bit of a loss for what to do though, as everyone at FeF was gone at that point. Eventually Uncio got back with Ted and Ian from shopping in town, and having had the very same problem was awesomely able to get my Windows partition restored.

I need to return to writing the script for the CEB Controller Box video, but we have an immediate need of getting construction in order on the Hab Lab, and the next order of business for that requires operational CEB Presses (thus I helped try to paint them until nearly 6 a.m. this morning). Unfortunately, the compressor for the sprayer was not adequate for the task, and progress was slow. I believe Thad and Shonda have gone to a hardware store to address this.

October 10, 5:20 p.m.

The CEB Controller Box script is coming together much more slowly than I had anticipated. Portions of video I thought I had recorded seem to be missing, and I'm having to do a lot of back and forth backtracking. I hope to have a rough draft together tonight to send to Uncio for review and critique.

Last night ran very late ... as a matter of fact, it ran past dawn. We had a construction meeting (/dinner courtesy Margaret and David) which started at 9 and ran until 2 a.m. ... Thad missed out due to working on the CEB Presses, and was still working on them when we got back at close to 3 a.m. Shonda especially helped Thad, and I chipped in where I could with the hope anything I did could help them get to bed a bit sooner, but I was wiped out quickly ... I stuck with them though before finally calling it a night at around 7 a.m. as the sky was getting light.

I really want to help out, but grogginess is not helping my productivity, that's for sure. Thad graciously donated a cappuccino the other night, but I think I'll go back to my plain old cheap drip coffee, which means buying a coffee maker ... aim to do so tomorrow when I do a laundry run.

Time is getting short for hab lab work. Skies are looking a bit threatening today in terms of precipitation ... dark and mostly overcast.

October 11, 1 a.m.

At long last, I have completed the first draft of CEB Press/Manufacturing Instructions/Controller Box/Construction Video Script. I will be doing laundry tomorrow which can easily eat 3-5 hours, and it sounds like Yoonseo needs to get his laundry done, so I may drive him to the laundromat and he can collaborate with me on this to see if I missed anything (all of my information are based on videos I recorded of him building these boxes). Yoonseo has only been here a few days, but he not only knows his craft, but explains it well and clearly, and takes the time to make certain he is not forgetting any steps of production nor safety information, which makes him a real gem as a documentation source.

As for now, time to crash .... zzzzzz!

October 12, 1:20 a.m.

Wow, hours zip by too quickly sometimes. Most of the early part of today was spent tending to personal matters and attending to laundry. I am going to aim to do laundry regularly every week, and will offer to do laundry runs for my fellow Factor e Farm community members so they don't lose precious hours every week. Welding and machining prototypes, and documentation is important, don't get me wrong, but I think if one person such as myself can save 3-4 hours from several community members, then I can give valuable skilled man-hours in disciplines to the community that I have no skill in myself.

On the documentation front, Rebecca has arrived today to take the reins of videography from Ian. I look forward to working with her, and my recent completion of a video script for the CEB Press Controller Box may be a good taking-the-reins point for her on the OSE video documentation project. Speaking of which, after a discussion with Ian, I realized the script is probably too long for one video, so I split out the soldering section of the script. The two pieces of script are now at CEB Press/Manufacturing Instructions/Controller Box/Construction Video Script and CEB Press/Manufacturing Instructions/Controller Box/Construction Video Script-Soldering tentatively. They are based entirely on an assembly process and safety tips from Yoonseo Kang, so I asked him to take a critical look at the script to see if I got anything wrong or missed anything. Yoonseo is rapidly making himself indispensible with an insatiable and sharp appetite for learning new things ... I watched him taking up torching and machining, and he seems to be picking up quickly the details of the construction work for the Hab Lab and new Fabrication Shop being built as part of a facilities expansion. He makes documentation incredibly easy, as he clearly explains each step and takes the time to seriously consider safety tips and a complete bill of materials and needed tools to accomplish steps being documented.

Anyhow, I look forward to working with Rebecca but will miss Ian as he leaves early next week. I created a Yahoo! group for communication within Factor e Farm, that may get replaced soon with a Factor e Farm local server setup by Thad which I eagerly await. If I continue videographing as I had been with Yoonseo, my half-terabyte external hard drive will soon fill, and just having a file server will make copying around video a snap ... it isn't too difficult to carry my external over to the hexayurt which has been Ian's hut but also serves as a de facto video editing office, but timing can be difficult, multi-GB video files can take several tens of minutes to copy via USB.

October 12, 1:40 a.m.

Forgot to mention I finally splurged and got myself a table and chest of drawers. I had been trying to use my laptop on a tub of clothing, but with my external hard drive, the camera and other peripherals, that made it a hassle having to move everything off the tub to get to my clothes. My laptop is now on my new desk and my clothes are in my drawer. I have also acquired a drip coffee machine, as I found Thad's cappuccino, while a generous offer, not to my taste ... cheapo store-bought pre-ground coffee for me with powdered creamer since power for refrigeration is at a premium. I have designs on future improvements to my cabin, but will see. With luck, in a month I'll be moving into the Hab Lab 5-star hotel, heh.

Its nice finally having almost all of my stuff off the floor. The better organization and the potential for coffee I think will improve my productivity.

October 12, 11:20 p.m.

We are re-focusing on the hab lab. Yoonseo finished his review of the controller box documentation. Unfortunately, Ian, Rebecca and I all failed to capture the next step on camera, mounting the controller box and sensor wires ... we can't simply disassemble and show it all in re-assembly, because it involves torching bolt-holes (which, of course, we cannot untorch and re-torch to show the complete process). Further, there may not be enough time, as the mounting process takes up to an hour, and we need the CEB presses in operation for the Hab Lab construction. The next couple of days, at least tomorrow I expect to be an all-nighter assembling forms and getting ready for a concrete pour that Marcin has marked in for Friday. If it doesn't happen Friday, unfortunately we learned last time they don't do concrete on weekends, so we would have to wait until Monday which is a delay of 3 days for the construction which is already more than a week behind schedule.

Discovered a snafu tonight with David that the drains have not been addressed, and must be before concrete can pour. The drains for the kitchen and bathroom will be in, through and under the concrete slabs, so the pipes will need to be positioned before the concrete pour, which means digging trenches, laying and connecting the pipes and securing them so they'll stay in place during the pour.

I have been trying to organize a Factor e Farm onsite e-mail group to discuss things, but so far only Yoonseo, David and myself have subscribed to the group. Until everyone does, I'm simply sending out group e-mails to the 7 (or 9 counting David and Margaret) onsite community members. I'm trying to estabish a venue for organizing things like laundry runs (which I intend to do regularly, to save everyone losing several hours to a chore one person could readily do for all).

October 14, 9:47 a.m.

Its crunch time for the Hab Lab, so I didn't even get time to make a log entry yesterday. I kept going until about 2 a.m. or so. I moved quite a bit of gravel to level the concrete forms, probably somewhere between 50 and 100 cubic feet yesterday, and helped with other things as well. Unfortunately I am a bit out of shape from having been out of work for so long. I am quite sore this morning, I think others will be as well, but we need to be ready to go by this afternoon for a 2:30 p.m. concrete pour. We have too much concrete for one truck, so there will be a 2nd delivery, probably 3 hours later.

It will probably not be such a late night tonight, on the simple fact the concrete is only workable for an hour or so. We ran out of time on the column pads last time, though granted a good deal of that was due to the fact we were trying to pour, scree and smooth two building sites on the same day. Today, its just the hab lab, that's the high priority.

October 17, 9:50 a.m.

Prepping the forms was a late night on the 14th. Things went a bit better for the pour on the 15th than they had previously, but there were mistakes ... one of the over-the-top scabbings put in place, for instance, had several screws partially drilled in that were inside the forms. This was not realized until we tried removing that scabbing, triple-checking that all visible screws had been removed, only for it to remain stuck ... we wound up ripping it out with some hard tools, tearing our chunks of concrete and revealing the screws that were on the underside and anchoring it to the concrete.

The drains had to be reworked too, so we got some grout and finessed them a bit. Unfortunately, the overall slabs bow away from the drains except in their immediate area, so we will need to think of something to keep water from spilling off onto where the CEB floors will be. Yesterday was kind of a slow day, I wound up catching up on sleep ... it would have been nice to get started practicing on laying CEBs, but that didn't happen. Storms are likely today so that could put the kibash on today ... I've designated Mondays as laundry days, and I take care of laundry for several of the Factor e Farm residents on Mondays which takes several hours.

October 21

Time is, unfortunately, marching by rather quickly. I've been focusing my efforts on trying to help out with the Hab Lab construction, but technical problems with equipment and other issues have hampered everyone's productivity. Everyone is working hard, but I am growing increasingly concerned that we won't meet the November 15 deadline for having it complete. I will stick with it, of course, its too late to back out, but I'm also trying to prepare for the possibility it won't be habitable, I don't think this cabin will be either, so I am starting to plan my resources for a possible move out.

The down time has given me opportunity, though, to go back to documentation and trying new things, like animating in Sketchup: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrH1eorn0gw

Those are rollers intended to be used with the CEB presses, to catch the bricks as they slide off the plate and deliver them over a series of roller segments to whatever wall or column is being constructed. Unfortunately, as of yet, full time production of CEBs has yet to begin. A lot of equipment isn't performing as hoped, some of the leg adjustment handles, for instance, are sticky and difficult to move. Ted has a plan to tap out the holes and thinks that may alleviate that problem.

Ted and Yoonseo have both proven skillful and adept, but a lot of hurdles seem to keep getting thrown in the path toward building the hab lab.

October 23

We pressed our first bricks late last night, was a thrill. David came over this morning and we did some test runs to try to see if there were any issues, and to accumulate enough bricks to build an example arch.

We found out the Super CEB press hopper, when fully loaded, will press about 39 bricks in under 10 minutes, which works out to about 1 brick per 15 seconds. However, we discovered productivity bottlenecks in the pulverizer currently mounted to a Bobcat (sadly the Lifetracs failed due to catastrophic hydraulic coupler failure). The pulverizer just can't dig deep, it bounces up and barely scratches the surface, taking a long time to acquire a meaningful load. While there have been plans to lower the bucket and pulverizer, I'm no longer convinced this will add much productivity to the apparatus; I think the pulverizer needs weight added to it to press it down into the hard packed clay to really tear it up and fill the bucket faster.

We also found that a fully loaded hopper will not drop more than only about half of its soil to pressing bricks; half of the dirt in the hopper will rest against the front hopper panel (the front being opposite of where the bricks come out).

We realized we will need an enormous volume of clay (on the order of a 60' x 100' x 3' volume), and that's after clearing several feet off that area of topsoil (we want clay for bricks, not topsoil).

I did shoot video of the production runs, but Windows Movie Maker has decided to double the filesize from the original video, for some reason, which makes saving and uploading take ridiculous amounts of time (on the order of about 2-3 hours to save it after applying narration as 'music') and space (800 MB for 12 minutes of video!?) The resulting file was demanding 6 hours to upload to Youtube, which is ridiculous ... I don't want to run my laptop all night, I can't sleep with the screen on. I'm trying to re-save it to a smaller filesize, but am frustrated by the "user-friendly" options for encoding giving cutesy names like ("For DVD," "For Playback on a computer," etc.) that don't actually specify what they do.

Update: Done uploading.

There's no way I'll be able to get to the other videos I shot today ... as it stands, I want to go to bed an hour ago, but I have to babysite WMM to get at least one done today. Very irritating ...

On other fronts, I may end my DPV after Nov. 15th, which is the deadline for the Hab Lab to be built, but its contingent on a couple things. I would then be able to use my desktop and want to learn Blender to provide animation support to the OSE video documentation team (and I can do the written documentation just as well from the videos offsite as onsite). Will see. --Howard V. Agnew 16:22, 24 October 2011 (CEST)

October 24

I managed to get several shorter videos from Sunday's test runs uploaded:

I have no idea why Youtube encoded some of these as HD. These shorter videos I uploaded directly from the camera's output format to my laptop (the camera oddly seems to transcode to different codecs for Ian's Mac, Rebecca's Mac and my Windows Laptop), but I only shot in super lower-quality mode and, I presume, only 640x480 resolution. It might explain why Windows is having such a hard time transcoding the videos when I try to load them into Windows Movie Maker ... a 12-minute video took about 3 hours for Windows to transcode for Windows Movie Maker to use. I am currently loading in 49 minutes, which I fear will take all night. I'm not fond of leaving my laptop on, given the power situation, but do want to get the video processed. I also need to shorten the video ... I am thinking of speeding up most of the video, as it is meant to show just how long it takes to dig clay and load the hopper full of clay (about 45 minutes with one machine).

Its probably not the most thrilling job, but I do laundry for several of the FeF crew on Mondays, and I did this morning, as well as picking up groceries for other crew members since the laundromat (about 15-20 miles away) is right next to Wal-Mart (okay, we don't like Wal-Mart, but since we are unpaid for our work here, money is tight for personal expenses such as grocery shopping, and Wal-Mart and a club card supermarket are the only real choices for groceries except the tiny grocers here in Maysville, which are pretty close to full retail price). My finances are quite low, I had to transfer from my savings account to checking to cover my own weekly consumables ... I definitely need to avoid eating out, as tempting as $5 footlongs at Subway are. I am awaiting a few checks (3 x $25 checks) that were forwarded here, but my bank is about 50 miles away, and that's a lot of gas to burn for that. I might see if anyone is heading to Kansas City (where my bank is) anytime soon, or do an extra long laundry run next Monday to deposit the checks. --Howard V. Agnew 04:21, 25 October 2011 (CEST)

October 25

Created a page for the videos I have worked on related to the Sunday test run of the CEB Press: CEB Press/Field Testing 2011‎

As of 1:30 p.m., I am processing the last video I shot (which will be split into two). The video will probably take a couple hours to incorporate. I also shot some backdrop stock footage of the wind rustling through the trees here that I plan to use as a backdrop for a personal video I also aim to make.

I must go into town for a personal matter, namely my checking account overdrew. Unfortunately the nearest branch of my bank is nearly 50 miles away. It is about 20 miles past where David needs to go to get the second Bobcat today, so I will go with him, fund his extra distance and deposit the checks.

It is very windy today, and a roofing section we have placed over stacked hay bales to protect them from the rain was lifted and pushed north by about 4 feet. Essentially we have boxes consisting of many boards (I think 2x6 or larger) screwed together, I think they are about 16 feet by 16 feet or so with planks every couple of feet ... we have one box setting atop metal roofing sections to weigh them down, and those sitting atop lower boxes, and those are resting directly on the hay bales. All of the metal and the upper box were lifted and shoved north, with the northernmost metal sheet thrown off the hay stack entirely and onto the gravel. Ted, Yoonseo and I put it back in order, and Marcin and I added some weight to the southern edge (the winds are blowing from the south). I think this emphasizes the need for strong roof anchors when we use these roofing sections to make the roof for the Hab Lab.

October 27

Effective today, I have terminated my Dedicated Project Visit due to irreconcilable differences over Hab Lab construction.