Tiree Tech Wave 8 (Part I)

Eight tech waves!  I think I've been to four or five.  I took over 300 photos this wave and even after editing them down and trashing some I still have over 100MB of photos.  So I'm going to split the TTW in half.  This is the commentary on Thursday to Saturday.

So, who came?  Well, FabLab Cardiff came with some very cool tech.  Two sets of Cardiff students came up (one set had to do projects and get marked!).  We had some Code for Europe (I think) folk up, some NESTA folk and some folk who'd been to a previous TTW and were up on hols and finally, but definitely not least, we had some locals!

Thursday was a rough starting time of 1pm.  The weather was pretty damp and I was taking my spinning wheel this wave so Alan kindly collected myself and Jo and Amanda from our abodes and taxi'd us down.

The Cobbled Cow were doing their usual tasty catering and had been told we had 33 coming.  This was the result of the first lunch:


The plates had been piled high with sandwiches and chocolate bars and flapjacks, all gone.  The two cauldrons of soup were drained.  Nothing went to waste.

Thursday was basically set up and intro day.  We had a big intro in the auction ring after lunch and then a couple of hours of investigating and doing before folk went home to crash.



Friday started 'early' at 10am.  Folk were generally perky even though a few had come down with colds.


I suspect this is Alan's MacBook as he does have a habit of pointing...


The tech, oh the tech!  So many wonderful machines to play with.

A vinyl cutter to enable you to make custom stickers:


The result:




A small CNC machine (alas, unable to be used as it required a windows machine to operate and no one brought one!) and the laser cutter:


The cutter can cut, etch, or both.  This was a practice with some card:


And this is the start of the FabLab Panel:


It was amazing to watch and weird (in a good way!) to feel the thing you're looking at:


These beauties plus that beast had me hooked.


They're 3D printers.  You can print nearly any shape you like (some might need supports adding).

Shot glasses:




Scale models of organic outside spaces:




Robots:


Rabbits (I contend it looks more like a hare!)


And sheep:


They do sometimes go wrong though.  Sheep innards should not be readily visible:





They also brought up a 3D printing pen.  I can see the appeal but it was a faff.  The nozzle was only hot enough to extrude plastic in bursts so you could draw for about 2s then had to hold still and wait while it reheated.  This is my humble effort:



Big Steve who has been to pretty much every TTW brought his son up this time and they were both here on hols.  He also brought his own 3D printer:


This one is actually about half the price of the ones above and yet has two nozzles and is enclosed.  I kept thinking of it as a microwave.

Saturday was another 10am start.  By lunchtime people were famished and the food massacre left no survivors.


It was also the first of the three workshops that were planned.  This one was done by Big Steve and was on the 3D scanners.


The scanner is hand-held and detects movement while emitting Infrared light to work out what it's "looking" at.  Here's Steve's hand:


I scanned this lovely gentleman's head/torso:
(seen here next to the printer that is printing the scan)

A quick bit of editing in some software and we have a printable file:


I think it took about an hour:



Those sheep above were being printed by Steve for a game designer who designed the game "Sheepie Sleepy"  They were all white and were causing some confusion during playing so I offered to take them home for the night and paint them.

First, a quick white undercoat so that the paint would go on uniformly...




While that was drying I consulted the game's site for who is who.

Mid-painting:


Done!

(left to right): Minty, Rosemary, Zack and Dougall  (Zack is a Tiree sheep.  Coloured as a zwartbles, a wool sheep)

Woolly bums!


As this was a one-evening job and the paint dries quicker than a brush, I got through a few!




Random photos:




So that was Thursday to Saturday.  I got through a whole set of camera batteries in 2.5 days.  They usually last weeks!  My photo count is now over 6k taken with this camera since May 2013.  Not bad.

Sunday and Monday and seeing folk off today coming tomorrow! (Mainly because it takes a while to upload 61MB of photos!)

TTFN

Photo spam

Know what happens when you go everywhere with your camera?  Sometimes you forget to take the photos off for a few weeks.

So what have I been up to?

Well, one morning I got the school bus to the pier for some (very) early morning fishing.  It took me to the end of pier road so I happily trotted down there and paid a visit to the war memorial.



It really was a fantastic morning:


Look at this water!


LOTI came in later that morning:


Kite surfers were enjoying the breeze:


I didn't catch a thing, but I did enjoy the views and had a nice chat with a seal.  When I got home I rinsed all my rods and tackle and put them out to dry.  This led to a strange little scene:


A little crop of spinners:


I didn't use all of these, but they'd all gotten a bit wet and best to wash off the saltwater to avoid rust.

Pippa was passed out on her bed when I got back


I tapped on the window a few times...




Daft dog!  She could NOT work out what was going on for a good couple of minutes.

That afternoon I stripped, sanded and painted the study window.  Here it is stripped and sanded, note that the wood has silvered due to being exposed for years.


Post paint:


That's both front windows done now and we've had some weather to test them too!  We had 77mph gusts last weekend and both windows kept the water out.

Last Saturday was the school gala day.  The sun was out and so were a fair chunk of Tiree's population.


Jo and I sold his homemade ice cream and sold over 65 cones worth!  There were only a few dropped scoops which Jo was happy to replace and we were both amused by children and adults wondering around licking their ice creams.

I've done a spot of spinning for a future museum display:






I'll document that better once I've taken some more snaps and done the final step (using the home-brewed lichen dyes!)

Tuesday I went fishing with our Minister and while we didn't catch anything we did have a great chat with each other and some folk waiting for the ferry.  The sunset that evening was amazing.


The tide was pretty high that evening and the Clansman is a bit taller than LOTI, this led to the long footramp looking rather steep:

Looked more like an escalator!

The sunset truly was stunning.




Amazing skies!


Yesterday evening I was out fishing again, what can I say, I love the calm and the cast.  Saw a flock (want to say shoal!) of eider ducks:




The darker ones are the females:


After three weeks of not catching a fish I caught easily twenty tiddlers!  Little pollack, little cod, little sea bass, possibly pilchard and something with a very dark green back.  I think the heaviest was maybe 6oz.  All survived and were thrown back.  There was a seal out herding them around the pier and I fully admit to throwing one catch straight to it.  It sounded a bit out of puff a few times!

In the knitting world I am working on a jumper for my Mum after a bit of a saga with getting the dye and a mystery Kaffe Fasset afghan that's proving...colourful.  I'm to knit 7 squares of each colour combination and the mystery will be how they go together.  This is clue 2:


VERY colouful.  Fortunately my recipient (who doesn't know they're getting it) is fond of colour so should like it :)

Next year I plan to knit every day's highest and lowest temperature into a blanket.  The original plan is two rows per day; one of the high and one of the low but I'm wondering about that and it may yet change.  The first pair of rows won't be until the 2nd January 2015 anyway.  It's an idea that's been around a while, mostly resulting in scarves.  I'm not a scarf wearer but I do enjoy a blanket to snuggle under.

My parents have bought me the wool to start it as a Christmas present.  In order to make sure I had it in plenty of time they sent me the money early.  Yesterday saw this huge packet arrive:


So many pretty colours:


After having a good squish and checking I like the colour range I have packed those up and put them aside ready for next year.  That's only the beginning!  While there is a very reasonable amount of wool there it won't last the year, but as I cannot predict next year's weather or temperatures I shall just be ordering more balls as an when needed.

Think that's it.

TTFN.