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let the may sweeps begin…

i took a one hour hands-on glass blowing instructional today taught by austin glass artist Aaron Gross of Austin Art Glass. he runs the shop over on south congress.

aaron is a calm and highly skillful artist and teacher. i really enjoyed working with this medium and gaining respect for the ancient art technique first hand. being able to fully immerse yourself in the craft within an hour is a very cool thing…

the hot shop

aaron gross blowing glass with a student

the glory hole

color bench

aaron has great patterns throughout the shop’s grounds

wares in the kiln for the night. mine are the outer 3, lower right.

here’s the original test photos taken with the Canon HV20 and my Erector set tire 35mm SLR lens adapter rig.

this is a multi-colored led

here’s a single strand of blue Patternayan needlepoint yarn

One should never be satisfied with the stock lens on a consumer camera. After reading some great websites about adding an SLR lens to the Canon HV20, I rummaged through my closet to find my old Canon Rebel 35mm SLR camera that came with a 28-80mm lens. It appeared that I could find focus with the HV20 if I kept the SLR lens within an inch or so in front of the HV20 and the subject nearly touching the SLR’s glass. Early tests produced macro shots I’ve never dreamed of doing before.

Digging in the closet once again produced an unlikely collar to fit between the two, an Erector set toy tire. The tire (labeled Meccano 11×7) grabs the Canon SLR lens threads tightly and mounts to the HV20 by merely twisting it onto the front of the camera. I’ve found that it leaves the proper gap to allow for focus with an adjustment of the zoom & focus rings on both the HV20 and the SLR lens.

The “true” lens adapter products I’ve seen range from homemade to thousands of dollars. This has got to be one of the cheapest and simplest adapters ever. It’s a pain to maintain focus with, and the tire can slip off the camera and drop the lens (adult supervision only), but it seems to work and produce some not-so-clean, but damn macro, macro video. Video test shots to come.

yesterday marked the first day that Nanosolar began shipping their printed thin-film solar cell. nanosolar is pioneering lower cost solar technology by printing their solar cells from semiconductor ink onto low-cost material, making their very efficient cells one tenth to one fifth the cost per kilowatt of conventional solar technologies. i can’t wait till i can buy these at fry’s!!

at a recent art festival, we came across a booth showcasing solar tube lighting, something i’d been interested in for a while. we signed up for a professional installation of solatube solar lighting by solartex, a local austin dealer. i’d researched solar tube lighting in the past, but found the notion of cutting holes in my roof a bit too daunting for a self-install.

the very friendly solartex installer, aaron, mentioned he could teach me how to install them myself if i was interested. little did he realize i’d then be following him around with my cameras, documenting his every step…he was a great sport and grinned throughout my pestering.

the result is a how-to photo essay of professional solar tube installations:

first, one must choose the appropriate size solar tube for the room. solatubes come in 10 and 14 inch sizes. we decided on a 14 inch solatube for our kitchen / breakfast room area. it gets some natural lighting from north and south windows, but we end up using overhead lights in the morning and early evenings.

here’s the kitchen with natural lighting from north and south facing windows

ensure you have ample room between joists in the ceiling, then make a center point hole with a drill

draw and cut out a 14 inch circle

eyeballing the center of the circle, use a measuring tape to find a matching center point on the roof

drill a hole from the attic, then find the hole on the roof. use the dome skirting to trace another circle.

cut circle piece from the roof

installer hint — when you get close to completing the cut, grab the piece so it doesn’t fall through your ceiling below!

remove roofing nails around sides & top of hole

cut shingles to create water channel

caulk the underside of the dome housing to ensure a watertight seal. he used two tubes on this one.

lift loose shingles and place dome housing under

screw down to roof

measure distance to ceiling below

build reflective tube to length using solatube’s “spectralight infinity” sheets

here’s the solar tube with the protective plastic still in place

once plastic is removed, the tube makes a great fun-house lens

attach the top section of the tubing

insert the tube down the dome skirting & screw into place

just look at that Raybender® 3000 Technology!!!

dome’s fresnel lens

install metal reflector in northwest corner of lens to grab more rays

attach dome lens to roof mount. that’s it for the roof!

there is an amazing amount of natural sunlight pouring down the tube

slide ceiling mount up and tighten screws into place. reflective-tape the seam with the tubing in the attic.

add diffuser plate. the solartex installer gave us two options for it.
one was a flat diffusion. we chose the multi-lens option which looked waaay cooler…

using the exact same camera settings as the first kitchen photo, this photo illustrates a quite significant increase in light!

with auto settings, here’s the kitchen after installation of Solatube light

we’ve been enjoying our solatube natural lighting for weeks now. it’s amazing how much light the tube directs into the room…we still catch ourselves turning around to “hit the switch” on our way out of the room… i would highly recommend the solatube natural lighting skylights to anyone looking to add a bit of “green” lighting to their home.

tonight was the debut broadcast of Femi Kuti with Positive Force on austin city limits. what an amazing show it was to see live! the broadcast doesn’t do justice to the overwhelming power of energy the band & Femi produced. the visuals are in glorious 1080i hd and was produced as beautifully and professionally as always by the folks at austin city limits. the website and broadcast include a Femi Kuti interview by acl producer terry lickona.

the brainwave generator glasses are complete! this rather intriguing “make” project is made using an $18 POV circuit kit at its core.

so far, using the default meditative program, it seems to work great. i can visualize an amazing array of shapes and occasionally waves of color. lots of spinning things throughout the ride…

still in beta testing phase