BalSat-1 held by Erik

I had been wanting to get out of town and my friend Chris Nelson suggested I ride back to Berkeley with him for Labor Day weekend. He pointed out that Balsa Man was happening and we started brainstorming how we could contribute to the event. Balsa Man is an annual event in its fourth year. It’s a micro scale Burning Man that happens on Baker Beach, the original site of Burning Man. It features a 1/16th scale balsa man and people are invited to bring other to-scale art to burn along with the man. 

For the last few years, Burning Man has scheduled a flyover by an imaging satellite to take pictures of the camp. This year, it was GEOEYE-1 Thursday morning which you can see in Google Earth. Chris and I talked about doing kite photography to emulate this at Balsa Man. I thought flying a kite with enough lift could prove difficult, but I remembered a Make project that used a tall pole for similar results.

We purchased a 23′ extendable painter’s pole from Home Depot and grabbed gold paper, cardboard, letters, and balsa from the craft store. Our camera was an old Canon point-and-shoot capable of running the custom CHDK firmware. CHDK lets you write custom camera control scripts. Chris built a long extension cable and set the camera to take a picture every time USB power was applied (pictured in-hand above). He set up a timelapse script so we had an alternative to manual shooting as well. The camera was mounted to the pole using my camera clamp which has proven useful year after year. We would be shooting blind, but in the future, we might spend the money to do live shooting with something like an Eye-Fi. We tested out the pole in the yard to get a feel for the shooting style and discovered just how wobbly it could get.

Our final preparation for the event was securing a 1/16th scale liquor bar and tiny glasses.

When we got to Baker Beach, the federal park agents had already arrived and were shooing people away from the event. We took a few trial photos there before moving on to the backup location. The backup ended up working fine; we were able to burn the man. Unfortunately the late start meant most of the photos were taken in the dark. We brought Chris’s boombox bag as a launch soundtrack and played appropriate songs like “Space Junk“. The satellite eventually broke loose at the end of the event, which we attributed to, “There’s usually a lot less wind in space.”

Balsa Man was a fun event and a large group of our friends were able to make it. We ended the night with Indian pizza at Zante Pizza and Indian Cuisine (I highly recommend it). The satellite was a success and we’ll probably employ the pole cam in a future event.

You can see more images from BalSat-1′s flight in the Flickr set and other photos from Balsa Man in the Group Pool.

Memories of the Mega Force toy series by Kenner recently popped back into my head. Premiering in 1989, the line had two different warring armies and didn’t specify which was “good” and which was “evil”. I’ve always been a fan of giant sci-fi vehicles (mechs and whatnot). I think that’s what the real draw for me was; I mean this thing had planes… that you could land planes on! The smallest units were diecast metal so they had a nice weight to them and didn’t feel cheap and plasticy like many toys from that era. Pictured above was my favorite vehicle of the four we owned. Its helipad is spring loaded and would pop up at the push of a button. The mechanism withstood a lot of abuse and all of the large vehicles featured some sort of action like this.

Of course, I couldn’t remember the name of this series the other day so I IM’d my parents to check the toy box. They actually found the checklist that used to be included with each toy and sent me a scan: front and back. You can find more pictures of the toy line on Toy Archive and here’s one of the commercials.

When I was 17 in the summer of 1998, my twin sister and I dug a fish pond in front of our house. I thought I’d share a little bit about it since it wasn’t that difficult to construct. It sits in the front yard and has about 3 kiddy pools worth of surface area (yes, that’s a unit of measure).

To start, we connected the ends of of a garden hose together and then massaged the shape till we were happy with the look and location. We staked the hose down and started digging. The liner is actually what I like most about this project; it’s “ice guard”, a rubber sheet product used under roof shingles. It’s way cheaper than commercial pond liners and very puncture resistant. I think the sheet is ~15 feet wide. The borders are held down with river rock. We had originally used salvaged flagstone, but without a proper foundation, it didn’t last. We also found out that you shouldn’t put any rock in the bottom of the pond. It will just become a bacteria breeding ground as decaying plant matter builds up.

I believe the pond is over two feet at its deepest. Goldfish do just fine in the winter, even with ice on the pond, but you have to make sure they have room. Big goldfish ponds are also nice because the goldfish get BIG in response to having so much space.

The pond is almost zero maintenance. Throw the lilies in and they just take off. There’s a pump for aeration and an overflow pipe. Both the lilies and goldfish were brought in from a friend’s pond. The pond will turn green occasionally, but that usually disappears when the lilies get more coverage and the fish population increases, reducing the amount of food.

I think this was a great addition to our home and I hope this post shows just how simple it is.

Aside: The town I’m from, Beaver Crossing, Nebraska, was known for its large number of free flowing artesian wells in the early 1900s. Fed by the Ogallala Aquifer, the town claimed to have the World’s Largest Swimming Pool. One of the most well known businesses during this period was Smiley’s Water Gardens which raised many varieties of lilies and trout. This all disappeared with the rise of deep well irrigation though; the water table dropped and artesian wells have become a rarity. You can read more about the town’s history here.

“Many a Zen master envies the Hinsdale’s serene ability to teach the eternal truth that it is in loss that one gains and that, here in the solitude of the Hinsdale is most certainly where men come to find themselves.” – Rodger Welsch November, 1986.