Robot Claw

Air Powered

November 6th, 2016

It was time to assemble the Lego kit I’d gotten for my birthday. It’s a Mercedes Benz ‘Arocs’ truck with a pneumatic crane. Even by technic standards this is a complex kit. The manual alone is over 400 pages!

The kit is made in five broad parts: the chassis with gears, the pneumatic crane, the cab and the bed. The gearing mechanism is dazzlingly complex and requires careful assembly.

It’s also quite large. Here is the complete chassis (sans wheels) shown next to a rather large house at for scale:

The pneumatic system is even more complicated, and we’re not trivial to assemble! Many times I thought I’d attached the wrong hose to the wrong nozzle, or feared that once I’d finished it wouldn’t work and I’d have to take it apart. For this kit, that’d be a nightmare!

This is a real pneumatic system, which means the kit includes an electric pump that pushes air through these tubes to power pistons. It’s amazing just how much functionality they’ve worked in (four pistons and dozens of tubes) and how the kit is designed to fit all this in the crane itself. Here’s the truck 75% finished, only needing the cosmetic parts added (the cab and bed). Until this point, I’d been working for maybe 6 or 7 hours.

The remaining sections were easy by comparison, but that’s not to say they were simple. The mechanism to tilt the can forward was particularly nice. Here’s the finished kit in ‘road ready’ mode:

And here it is with the supports out, bed up and crane functioning:

All the functions you see above are controlled by the motor and switching system (via the astonishing gearing). I was very relieved it all worked first go 🙂

It’s a beautiful, massive, complex (and yes expensive) kit and was enormously fun to put together. Highly recommended 🙂

Posted in Crafts, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Tech, Toys | 3 Comments »

Con Haul

October 31st, 2016

I’m shamelessly borrowing a post format from AW here; everything I purchased at the local comic con I attended yesterday. I arrived with $106.50 on me, and left with nothing! Here’s the swag…

A pack of Voltron tattoos from 1984. The guy that sold them to me (from a mostly full box) seemed surprised when I said I’d use them. ($2)

Three packs of trading cards. As should be obvious by now, I can’t pass up non-sports cards. At $1/pack these were a bit pricey though. ($3)

A stuffed stegosaurus. I bought this for KLS from the girl who made it. This is actually the second one I’ve bought over the years, although this one is cuter and fatter! ($7)

A Japanese money box ‘sound bank’. I haven’t opened it yet. I think it’s a tiny bank that plays a sound effect from Super Mario Bros. when you put coins in. ($5)

Loads of comics. The average cost was just under $0.50 each. I tend to gravitate to non superhero stuff pre 1990 if possible. That’s the first eleven issues of Indy! ($14.50 in total)

An Avalon Hill fantasy board game from 1979. Yes it’s complete, and yes it will be played. The rules seem delightfully complex! ($10)

A fat Rilakkuma thing. I overpaid for this, but it was my white whale in a UFO catcher in CA early this year. Plus it’s cute! ($40)

Dungeons & Dragons lite-brite set (from 1983). Yes it’s unopened and yes it will remain that way! How could I have passed up such a curiosity! ($15)

Not a bad load of loot is it? For those keeping tabs this totals to only $96.50. What about the other $10 you ask? That was the admission fee.

After a string of disappointing years the con roared back this year and impressed me to no end. Next time I’ll be sure to have more cash with me 🙂

Posted in Books & Comics, Games, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Toys, Trading Cards | 2 Comments »

First Snow

October 27th, 2016

Today it snowed for the first time this year. It’s actually been snowing all day on and off, and even as I type has become heavier.

Unusually for the first fall it’s sticking, rather than instantly melting like first snow usually does. I’m sure it will all melted away in a day or two.

It’s bitterly cold out right now. I didn’t wear gloves and could only stay out for a couple of minutes to take these photos since my hands started freezing (plus I have a cold). The snow is thick and slippery, and is weighing down the trees since it has come before some of them have shed all their leaves.

That’s a dogwood in our front yard. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the branches (which usually stand straight up) touch the ground like that. I was a little alarmed about the giant branches of the big trees out front which were touching the roof. I gave them a vigorous shake to try and dislodge some of the snow and raise them a bit.

I went out for a drive earlier and saw cars in ditches and police lights everywhere which is common when winter first comes. Right now though the sounds of sirens are almost nonstop. It’s a little eerie since the snow dulls a lot of sound and only the sirens are carrying.

As I said this will all be gone soon. But I hope it’s a good sign of more to come. Last year’s winter was depressingly snow-free. This year I could do with more of it. As Florence always says, snow on the ground is when Earth is at it’s most beautiful. 😉

Posted in Garden, Home, Nature | Comments Closed

Frozen Novelties (Part 2)

October 14th, 2016

The post on ice creams was unexpectedly popular! It led to some digging around on the interwebs during which I found these licensed Aussie ice blocks.

I’ll post them in more or less chronological order:

I can remember these! Apparently the license was so massive that more than one company made SW ice blocks over the years. This was of course in 1978.

Licensing was in full bloom by the late 1970s, although obviously the Bionic Man license was cheaper than the Star Trek one based on the cost of the ice block 🙂

The KISS ‘water ice confection’ came out in 1980 and I can remember the cola-flavoured back ice staining your tongue when you ate it. They sold these at school believe it or not!

Look at those flavours on this 1980 ice block! Lemonade, pineapple and bubblegum?!? I bet I loved them!

This delicious Flash Gordon ice cream was also 1980. I’d ruin one of these right now.

Collating these photos gave me distinct flashbacks of perusing the freezer cases in the days all this stuff was available. Happy times!

We’re into the early 1980s now. Orange and pineapple is my dream combination; here’s hoping they still market Donkey Kong when I visit 😛

The first one is a bit special since they came with glow-in-the-dark stickers. You can read about them here, and I strongly recall having a Spider Man sticker of my own! There other licensed shaped popsicles as well (such as Disney), but I don’t recall ever buying any.

Here things have just got a bit out of control don’t you agree? While this is a box from a New Zealand company, I read (although don’t recall) that Fame iceblocks were marketed in Australia as well.

All these are over 30 years ago, and there were virtually no licensed iceblocks before 1978. This is just another example of how Star Wars changed marketing entirely. Growing up in that era – where even The Bionic Man was a good license for the freezer case – was a privilege indeed.

Posted in Food, Miscellaneous, Retro, Time | Comments Closed

House Of Hell

October 9th, 2016

Yesterday we visited this tourist trap up in Lake George.

We didn’t really know what to expect as we handed over a Jackson, but I don’t think either of us would have predicted a museum of animatronic horror vignettes set inside an incredibly dark series of winding narrow hallways.

That’s one of them, a staked lady vampire. She was still breathing!

That’s the grim reaper taking the life of an elderly woman in bed. There were dozens of them, many obviously inspired by 1970s hammer films, with classic monsters (mummy, werewolf etc) or film scenes (torture, human sacrifice, witch trials). Some – most! – of them are extremely disturbing, such as this one called “The Bathroom Murder”…

She swung the axe up and down to the accompaniment of wet hacking sounds!

Some were surprisingly sophisticated using optical illusions, projections or audio tricks. Due to the extreme darkness it was easy to be creeped out and we were genuinely scared a few times by unexpected events.

Yes it was cheesy, a bit short and probably overpriced. But it was fun and were glad we went. Recommended if you’re ever in the area.

Posted in Miscellaneous | Comments Closed