Archives for “Uncategorized”
Well, after repeated inspections of our LC(A) storage area [Harpo's basement] we have discovered that the everything is gone. Our prime suspect – Lyle. Now Lyle is a founding member of the LC(A) and held a quarter of the stake in our physical assets. Before heading off to college Lyle came by to pick up [...]
I’ve installed the WordPress Tipjoy plugin. This allows users to easily donate to the LC(A) via Tipjoy, a Twitter-integrated service. It’s pretty cool. Hopefully this will allow people to donate money easily in an affordable amount (currently 25 cents).
We did some more work on the iPod. We took more photos, and Will has added them to the Facebook gallery. We’ve also decided to install iPod Linux on the finalized product, and, if we can sell it on eBay, to go into production.
The Legal Conglomerate of Awesomeness just received its first credit card offer. American Express feels that our business needs to go with their Plum Card®. We had curry for lunch, and decided to go with spicing it from scratch, going the working-class route instead of sticking with capitalist ways. It turns out that you standard [...]
Will has created an LC(A) Facebook page. If you have Facebook, I would strongly encourage you to check the page out. I don’t really know what it can do, but it seems pretty interesting. There appears to be some sort of mechanism for creating advertisements to promote a page. I am not yet sure if [...]
In an attempt to make the “donate” button on carofawesomeness.com more exciting, we made it in Polish. Unfortunately, this also turns the donate page Polish. So it is back to boring English. You might ask, “What will these young fellows do with my money?” Well, we have many plans, such as pneumatics and an upgrade [...]
We are rebuilding the central chassis frame to accommodate the new gearing systems at either end. This is quite a job; we have completely disassembled it and are putting it back together from the ends in. We started working before eating some leftover pancakes (with Trader Joe’s Organic Concord Grape Jelly and molasses, as we [...]
After a lull from the LC(A) while I was farming in Italy, Harpo and I are back together. We are doing a bit of maintenance on my MacBook Pro and Harpo is working with Hannah on a duet for a competition for a bit. We should also probably get going on Multivariable Calc and Calc [...]
It is now possible to donate to the LC(A) directly and securely using PayPal. Use the button in the sidebar on any page. If we can raise enough money this way, Will and I will probably file as a 501c(3) nonprofit organization (the Legal Conglomerate of Awesomeness [or LC(A) for short]), making all further donations [...]
As Harpo and I use Wikipedia so much, it would only make sense for there to be an LC(A) article up on it. Recently I have been looking into Wiki policies, and prospects are not the best. It seems that we need a little more in terms of credentials, and someone else should probably write [...]
We’re knocking off work for the day. We’ve made a significant amount of progress on the theme, which is looking pretty excellent. It’s not quite ready to go live yet, so we’re reverting back to the normal one, but it’s almost there. I think we will be able to finish it entirely in one more [...]
Things are moving along as far as themes go. A semblance to our old site is emerging. There are plenty of links that we are currently lacking, but most of the basics are there. Right now we are trying to figure out the galleries.
We’re doing some work on the WordPress theme. We’ve got the basic template structure created, and we are working on populating it with some skeleton content as we start to do the layout. This is extremely exciting.
We’ve decided to move the entire site to WordPress. This requires redesigning everything from the ground up. We’re in the process of moving the content we put up last night to some WordPress pages. The next step will be building our own template from scratch. I haven’t done this before, although I’ve done a lot [...]
Last night Harpo and I spent some time on adding content to our site. We have a steady but slight stream of traffic, which makes sense; we are unique, but do not really have that much showy stuff to show for it on the web right now. As we got going, developing our theme throwing [...]
Well, we’ve explored our options. But they don’t work. Both Will and I devised separate systems for transferring the torque from the “gears” (which we are now referring to as the “quote-gears”) to the differential. Both systems were hampered and ultimately made useless by the actual geometry of the pieces. Axles stick out and interfere [...]
Several major redesigns later, we’re still having problems. Although the “gears” we installed are pretty much the burliest thing ever, the gears between them and the differentials are not. On the side of the car that has an extra gear (so that the two pairs of wheels turn in the proper direction), the whole gear [...]
We’re putting the car back together, slowly but surely. We’ve just completed one major redesign of the central chassis frame, and are working on another. It is rather agonizing, but we’re hopeful that the car will be in much better shape after we’re done.
Harpo and I have been considering applying to become a nonprofit organization. The LC(A) has a bright but expensive future; we plan to upgrade to the NXT system eventually, and there are other costs such as pneumatics that might arise. There are twenty eight kinds of 501(c)(3)s, and although they are the most common kind [...]
We’ve created an experimental implementation of the new bevel “gears”. As of now, the car is in two large pieces; Will had to remove one of the ends, including the shock arms, wheels, and steering assembly, in order to install the new system. It looks like it may work very well, but we will need [...]
We may have found a way around the looming potential redesign. It is too early to tell for sure, but we are hopeful. We may be able to use some rather odd pieces which may or may not have been originally intended as gears to transfer torque instead of the older bevel gears. There will [...]
Well, we’re having some problems. To say the least. After installing the new steering systems at either end, we had a lot of problems with the gears not locking correctly in the drive train. When under a lot of force, the motor would stall and the gears would skip repeatedly. We reinforced and consolidated the [...]
We have successfully incorporated a worm gear into the steering rack. We used one of the weird double-beveled gears to achieve the right clearance. We are about to duplicate this system to the other side of the car, and then we will start working on the touch bumpers again.
We incorporated rack-and-worm drive systems into both the shifting assembly and the steering. We are still working on mounting the drive motor for the steering. We had a lot of trouble at first, but then we realized that we could use an intermediary gear between the worm and the rack. This makes it a lot [...]
As you can see, we are now on the new site. Please bear with us as we work on it. For the moment, you can see the Plog and the galleries here. Soon this section of the website will be integrated into the theme we are designing for the rest (you can see how it’s [...]