Sky. Ramps. Station.

I'm busy in the train room building the approach to Emsingen, as well as the station itself.

The backdrop (well, really it's just the room wall) got a nice coating of blue, and the whole room looks a lot more friendly now. I still need to experiment a bit more with my cloud painting skills, but one out of three commentators did recognize what I was trying to convey with my "art".

Emsingen station is shaping up now, too. The ramp along the wall is installed and the circular ramp is taking shape now as well. I was quite worried about space and track clearance in this area, but it seems things are working out reasonably well, though it's all very tight. Building on 8 by 9 feet in HO does require compromises...

Finally, a shot that shows how much a difference just the addition of a blue wall makes to a photo.

The only actual scenery in this photo is the creek in the foreground. The rest is basically cork and naked plywood.

Welcome to the 3 weeks of crazy

I'm off from work for another 3 weeks. While I'm still finishing up the kitchen, I'm also going to use this time to make the layout operations complete. Well, at least the trackwork.

Here's what's on the agenda:

• paint backdrop on the wall (mostly blue sky and some mountain ridges)
• complete ramps to Emsingen, both along the back wall, as well as the circle route to the return loop at Abzweig Talheim
• install all double ended tracks in Talheim station, including roadbed, switches, and track feeders. 

At this point the railroad is operational again and I can run through trains and do meets in Emsingen (after all I'm modeling a single-track main line). I'm planning to slightly deviate from the track plan and use flex track in Emsingen station to break up the rather monotonous 4-parallel-tracks arrangement there.

Next up:

• install single-ended tracks in Emsingen
• wire up all track feeders
• install switch machines for Emsingen switches

Now I can run freight operations on the layout, serving most online industries.

• build lok station area, including turntable and related storage tracks

Phew, that's a lot already. Somewhere along the way I want to try and get computer control with JMRI running so that I can use my Android phone(s) as walk around throttle(s) and also get started with automating staging.

That will likely fill up the 3 weeks.

Later this year, once I ran trains for a while, converted more locomotives to digital, and generally have a better feel for what works and what doesn't I will revisit the track arrangement in Talheim. As mentioned before, I'm not that happy with the flow of switching operations there, especially serving the saw mill which requires quite a bit of zig-zagging to pick up and spot cars.

When the railroad is reasonably operational, I'll start with basic scenery.

For starters, today I built a cover for network and TV cables on the back wall so they don't get in the way of the back drop, and installed fluorescent lighting in the train room using the old bulbs and sockets we removed from the kitchen. Originally, I used a 300W halogen torch. Then I installed a cheapo 3-lamp ceiling light and put in very nice daylight CFLs. This worked reasonably well, but the light was very uneven in the layout area, and some areas in the foreground had deep shadows.

I'm back

After 4 weeks in a RV driving the TransCanada Highway through British Columbia to the Icefields in Alberta, and back via the Okanagan Valley we are back home.

We saw some awesome Rocky Mountain scenery

Mountain goats, big horn sheep, elks, black bears, and this Grizzly Bear right on our campground in Yoho National Park.

Visiting the Schwarzwaldbahn

Last summer my dad and I spent a day in the black forest for scenery inspiration. I took a ton of photos, and some video footage.

Of course, a visit to the Schwarzwaldbahn wouldn't be complete without a stop at the large layout "Schwarzwaldbahn-Modellbahn" in Hausach. Light conditions in the layout room are not great for filming or photography, but the atmosphere and size of the layout is fascinating.

Afterwards we drove along the line towards Triberg and St. Georgen, and stopped at various places along the way. I took some video footage in the station of Triberg, observing a freight, a passenger train, as well as a right of way maintenance engine and crew clearing tree branches.

Kitchen done ...

Well, at least as far as contractors and the city are concerned. The city inspector signed off on the work last Thursday, and today our contractor came by one last time to fix a minor plumbing issue and set the the sink in place with silicon, now that the countertop is installed.

I have a few work items left. Finish up installing cabinet covers in the dining area, cover up the gap between the cabinets and the ceiling, hang a shelf, do another coat of wall paint, and a few touch-ups.

Almost there ...

Turntable test setup

Last night I hooked up the turntable for the first time. Very nice...

How switching the sawmill in Talheim grew into another headache

The facing point turnout arrangement for the machine factory and the sawmill and the respective need to run around the train for switching the sawmill is giving me some headaches, since the run around requires use of the double-slip and regular turnouts that make up Abzweig Talheim and are likely going to be the heaviest used turnouts on the layout, since all traffic leaving and entering staging runs through them.

I'm trying to come up with a solution that avoids adding additional pressure to this area from switching moves in Talheim.

One option is to keep the trackwork in Talheim as is, and run switching as what is often called a "turn", i.e. the train comes up from staging (say originating in Hausach), switches the machine factory in Talheim, then continues through the long tunnel to Emsingen for some local switching. In Emsingen the locomotive runs around the train and leaves towards where it came from through the tunnel. I.e. the return trip takes the train back to Talheim with the locomotive now facing staging and if the engineer planned ahead in Emsingen, the car(s) going to the sawmill will be at the head of the train. The train takes the siding in Talheim, uncouples, the locomotive runs through the double-slip turnout, and zig-zags to the sawmill, switches out the old cars, drops the new cars, and zig-zags back. This move will block the main and siding in Talheim for a considerable amount of time.

The other option is to modify the trackwork in Talheim, by adding another turnout between the first and second turnouts on the southside, so that the sawmill siding is directly accessible from the main track. The track would merge with the machine factory siding, and dead-end into the sawmill, creating a runaround, that also leaves the house track available for through traffic (including passenger trains that should stop at the house track anyways). In order to fit this in, I need to move a signal mast, extend and realign the existing flextrack segment of the house track by an inch or so, and add the new turnout to the control panel. If I arrange it properly, I should be able to run around cars in the freight siding with just the locomotive and without having to clean out the sawmill track first. However, since that's the point of this move, I'm willing to forgo some track length for better scenery integration.

An alternative I considered was to replace the regular turnout in that area with a double-slip turnout, and otherwise do the same arrangement. For switching moves this is equivalent, but they occasionally block the main when using the double-slip, and due to how track lengths and angles work out, I don't have nearly as much usable track length for the saw mill track. It would be much easier to get this installed, though, since I don't need to realign the flextrack segment.

Sigh. So many choices on how to spend my time. I'll come back to this later when Emsingen station also exists and I got a chance to experiment with various approaches to operate the combined setup. E.g. for more visual interest and a longer intermediate run, I could operate this train from staging via Abzweig Talheim to Emsingen, then on to Talheim through the tunnel, switch Talheim including the required run-around in this case, back to Emsingen, pick up remaining cars, and down the hill passing Abzweig Talheim back into staging.

A better day

Using Teflon tape I managed to get the hose connections for the water line to the fridge tight. I painted above the glass cabinet and behind the fridge, plus some touch ups elsewhere in the kitchen.
I filled in the gaps between the glass cabinet, base cabinet and the wall.
Since I had the fridge out already, I slid a thin plywood piece under the laminate below the fridge so that the flooring doesn't sag into the underlayment as much due to the heavy fridge. Well, it still sags put the plywood piece raises the floor enough so that the it roughly levels out when the fridge is in place.

... and I picked up Tatjana from Girl Scouts camping today, so she can attend her black belt ceremony, which was a tad too long for my taste. Topping off the day was an excellent steak dinner fresh from the BBQ. Let's see what I can put together in the garage before I call it quits tonight.

Switching Talheim

Talheim has two rail-served industries. The machine factory and the saw mill.

The machine factory has two tracks arranged in a V-shape with sure spots, i.e. the coal waggon always goes to the end of track 1, and a box car/sliding sides car gets spotted at the loading ramp of track 1.
Track 2 has no loading ramp, but a loading door instead, so the car needs to be spotted at just the right place in front of the door, so workers can load or unload the car. There is enough space for two spots, so I might have two loading doors in the factory building here.

As I worked the machine factory I realized, I used the toothpick to uncouple cars in various locations along both tracks, so both tracks need to remain accessible. Which means I have to rethink the building layout of having the tower and the administration building between track 2 and the operator (who would be at the bottom of above photo). However, I really like the visual appearance of this setup. Alternatively, I'm considering installing a remote controlled uncoupler at least on track 2 roughly between tower and main building. I might install another one near the loading ramp on track 1.

BTW, the building flat on the left depicts another building of the factory, and I'm contemplating extending the track into the room wall, so I could spot a car into that "manufacturing hall" for loading with the ceiling crane.

The saw mill has only a small stub track for rail shipping and delivery within the mill property which extends mostly outside the layout boundary. The track will need to be long enough for one long Rungenwagen, or two short flat cars. Operationally, this track is a bit more tricky to switch since it requires the locomotive to run around the car/train.

The siding connecting the sawmill stub track to the machine factory and the rest of the layout will double as my programming track, since it's right above the Intellibox command station and easily accessible.

fridge water hookup and a trip under the house

The previous owners used a 1/4 inch copper pipe between the sink and the fridge to get drinking water to the cold water dispenser and the icemaker. They hooked into the T-piece at the cold water pipe and ran the pipe in the crawl space under the kitchen floor to the fridge.

Aside from the fact that a break in that pipe caused a little water damage to the old laminate flooring, I also managed to break it more while setting the cabinets. So, out with that stupid whimpy pipe and install a PVC hose like we had in the old house.

I got a 3/8 inch hose (because apparently that's what you are supposed to use with ice makers), the only catch being that all the hookups are 1/4 inch. I got the appropriate adapters at OSH, crawled under the house and found that the heating duct to the dining area had been disconnected when they ran the wires for the sub panel, and not put back together. Fortunately, I had seen the open duct from the entrance to the crawl space, and took some duct tape with me, so I could put it all together again.

Removing the copper pipe and running the PVC hose between the existing holes was easy, if not for the dust under the house. Getting to the kitchen through the crawl space is quite far from the entrance and I had to crawl under heating ducts, and around pipes to eventually get there. I wore a cheapo dust mask, but it didn't help much...

Then it was off to Family Fun Fest at school, a fun afternoon where the students have fun and the parent volunteer to man the various school wide and class specific booths. I did enjoy the hour I was helping to run the rock wall, but got to work in the sun for the full hour. I should look for a tan tomorrow. Probably bright red as usual...

We got back home tired and exhausted from the heat, the people, the noise, the sun, ... brought the kids to bed, and I went back to hooking up the remaining pieces for the water line. Only to find that I couldn't get the fittings tight enough on the hose end, so that not water leaks out. Frustrated I gave up for the evening, went to the garage, ran a couple trains over the layout, and switched Talheim multiple times. 

Kitchen Steps

I estimated to need about 2 hours to cover the steps from the kitchen to the dining room with laminate flooring. I mean, how hard can this be, cut the laminate for the step, cut some more for the casing, install the step noses and you're done.

I think this was my least favorite bit of remodeling the kitchen yet. Any mistake you make is visible and can't be corrected without redoing the whole thing. It started with me cutting the flooring pieces 3 inches too short. Measure twice, remember right, cut once! The blade in the table saw was dull, too.

When I installed the laminate flooring originally, I didn't have the right stairnoses to measure the gap I needed to leave. I installed it anyways and figured I could cut back the floor as needed later. Bad idea. REALLY bad idea. Laminate flooring is surprisingly tough. Making matters worse is that part of the cuts I needed to make were near or under cabinet overhangs. I tried it with an  -- otherwise really neat -- circular saw attachment for my Dremel tool. It worked great when I tried it on a bit of scrap wood on the work bench. However, it failed miserably with the laminate floor. Not only did it bind in the cut a lot, but also just didn't have enough oomph to really cut through the laminated flooring boards at all. In the end I resorted to the portable saw for the accessible area, and the good old "drill-a-bunch-of-holes-tightly-together-along-a-line" method, followed by the "wood-chisel-and-a-hammer" method. This was a giant mess.

In parallel I needed to cut and fit the cover boards for the pensinula cabinets, so that I have the right lengths for the step noses. Creating a way to mount them without any screws or nails showing on the front was another challenge solved with 2x4 pieces, and angle brackets.

To top it all off, when I installed the second the last finish nail in the step nose, I ran it through the front of the board underneath and cracked the surface. That did not make me happy, and it was a good thing the kids weren't around when it happened, for they would have learned a sload of new bad words one should never use ...

After all I spent almost two days on those two steps and one and half cover boards. It looks ok, and I'm moderately happy with the result, which is about as much as I can hope for at this point.

Last summer ...

... I spent a very enjoyable 20 minutes on top of the west exit of the Rosensteintunnel in Stuttgart which has a great view towards Bad Cannstatt across the Rosensteinbruecke.



Watching trains is so much more fun if there is heavy traffic and you don't have to wait for hours for the next train, as is fairly common here in California. Above video covers about 10 minutes of elapsed time.

proto-freelancing

While I'm not going to build a specific location on a specific rail line (maybe I should, ... next time :-), I do like the idea of setting my layout in a general location. So the Black Forest it is. I'm going to ignore the fact that the Schwarzwaldbahn exists, in fact I'm probably going to settle on a fictitious valley with fictitious place names. However, I am trying to evoke the feeling of the place, so I'm going to use scenes and scenery one would reasonably find in the general area of the middle black forest.

This applies both to look and feel, but also train destination and car routing once I get to that stage...

In other words I'm not going to model a specific prototype, but I'm trying to be faithful to what the prototype might have looked like.

Kitchen countertop - installed!

After much delay, yesterday (Wednesday) the countertop guys finally installed our new maple butcher block countertops in the kitchen.

Here's how things went down... Tuesday evening after work I started removing the plywood sheets we have used as temporary countertops for the last few weeks, taking out the sink and the cook top, as well as several drawers that were in the way.

There were a couple work-items I wanted to do while the tops were off.

• Build simple shelves between the cooktop cabinet and the corner cabinet for storing cutting boards.
• Properly align the false drawer fronts on the sink cabinet.
• Install filler pieces to the left and right of the dishwasher.

A couple hours work I estimated. Unfortunately, that didn't work out. First off I failed at building a jig to allow me to make perfectly straight cuts for the filler pieces with my jigsaw. The jigsaw didn't want to go straight along the ruler I set. I bent and almost broke off the blade along the way.

Next I tried with the portable circular saw, but quickly realized that the left over cover pieces I'm cutting the fillers from are too narrow in order to both guide the saw and provide sufficient support to put it on.

Which means I had to go back to the table saw. Since by that time it was way past 9pm, I left the table saw in the garage, cut one piece, and ... bad idea. Not only was this really loud (and the kids sleeping), but the air in the garage was filled with saw dust. Those boards are made from a fairly soft material (I think it's Masonite), which produces ridiculous amounts of dust.

At that point I gave up for the evening and vowed to get up early on Wednesday to get everything done before contractors show up around 8am.

... and I did get up early. By 7am I was outside with the table saw cutting pieces, and fitting them around the dishwasher. The corner piece turned out to be not perfect, but I'm out of left-over pieces with a finished corner, so I installed it with a cut corner facing the dish washer and figured that'll work.

Next I built the cutting board shelves. Sounds fancy, but in reality those are just rectangles cut to the right dimension and installed with screws through the side panel of the adjoining cabinets. Again, those didn't really satisfy me, since there are gaps between shelf and cabinet wall, and I had to cut them slightly crooked because the cabinets are not at an exact 90 degree angle. Lots of swearing, freehand sawing, and filing to make them fit. Another Thank You to the crooked walls in the kitchen...

Shortly before 9am I had the second shelf in, and was just about ready to install the backstop, when the countertop guys showed up. Thank you for arriving towards the end of the promised window.

While I got out of their way and devote time to my regular day job, they installed the countertop with some fuss (thank you to crooked walls...)
We did expect a bit more overhang around the sides, but it actually looks really good the way they built it. [Yes, there will be photos]

Once they were done, I started hooking up the dishwasher and water to the sink and ... ooops, the drain pipe between sink and the wall no longer fit, since the sink was installed about 1/2 inch closer to the counter top edge to allow space for the new window sill in the back.

After some flailing around, I loosened all the fittings, pushed and shoved the plastic pipe pieces around, and ... voila, was able to connect it back together, tighten the fittings, test for leaks, ... and found none. Phew.
Later I talked with our general contractor and he confirmed that this will work at least until they come out next week to attend the final inspection.

So I turned my attention back to the dishwasher and ... Patricia points out that the cut corner looks bad. At the very least it needs to be white. What the woman wants, the woman gets (she's right, it did look crappy). So I went back in the garage to find the laminate strips that were originally meant to be installed on the sides of the toe kicks, but I didn't need them there.
Hmmm, after trying for 5 minutes to remove the backing paper, I concluded they are no self-adhesive. Looking at the instructions confirmed this. They are supposed to be ironed onto the pieces with a warm iron and then trimmed to fit with a sharp knife. I'd have to remove the dishwasher completely from its nook under the countertop to gain enough space to get to that corner with a cloth iron and laminate the strip to the corner piece. Which also means releveling the dishwasher afterwards in a really tight space now. Urgh.

Heat glue ... hot glue ... hot glue gun! Hah! I can do this without pulling the dishwasher out! I used the hot glue gun we normally use for arts and crafts (and the model railroad) to laminate the cover piece on. It actually looks reasonably nice now, especially since it's mostly hidden by the dishwasher.

Fixing the dishwasher in position and installing the last filler piece was easy in comparison.

Strangely enough the false drawer fronts I set straight on the sink cabinet Tuesday evening are now slightly crooked again and I can't get to the screws without removing the sink. I have to keep that in mind and do another try on Thursday next week when the sink is out for the last time.

Riding in the rain

It's almost June for heaven's sake, and it's raining outside. Good I took the bike to the office shuttle this morning. What was I thinking? ... Probably nothing, since I also left both my cell phones at home.

Extending Elztalbahn to Hausach?

How would this geography map to my layout? Let's follow a train from Hausach to Freiburg.

Hausach is represented by hidden staging. Train takes the right track on the ramp, passes the tower and the creek bridge (which would be crossing the river Elz) and arrives in Oberprechtal (or Unterprechtal), formerly known as Talheim. As we continue south, the train is passing through Elzach (not modeled, represented by the fairly long tunnel along the wall), and arrive in Gutach (formerly known as Emsingen), which is also the overnight point for commuter trains from/to Freiburg. We pass over a stone viaduct, and downgrade over the large S curve until we're down at the tower and take the ramp down into hidden staging which represents Freiburg.

Now, ... this is really doing things backwards, one should find their situation to model, then build it, not the other way around. Also, Gutach and Elzach are down stream from Oberprechtal, so it doesn't make sense to have a grade going up the hill. Further, the actual Elztalbahn track is running at the bottom of the valley, so having a viaduct doesn't make sense. Maybe I'll find myself a Black Forest valley that doesn't have an actual rail-line to compare against ...

Emsingen & Talheim in Elztal?

I've been reading a lot lately about operating model railroads. I had a chance to operate on Robert Bowdidge's Vasona Branch layout which was a first for me to actually operate on a layout that was built for operations. It was a very nice experience, and got me even more interested in adding car routing and switching to my own layout.

Speaking of which, I'm seeing light at the end of the tunnel for the control console in Talheim. I replaced the ESU Lokpilot stationary decoders with Digitrax DS64, and rewired the dual-coil switches for them.

Regarding location I always planned to set the layout in the Black Forest area of southern Germany, but couldn't quite settle on where exactly. Since the trackplan already exists, I didn't bother modeling an actual location, but I want to capture the feel of being in the Black Forest. While reviewing several options of existing railways that could be suitably modified with some modeling license, I also took a look at the Elztalbahn, running from Freiburg to Gutach and Waldkirch, ending in Elzach. What made this particular line interesting, was a comment that there were plans to extend the track beyond Elzach to Hausach on the Schwarzwaldbahn. Looking at the map such a connection would be a fairly direct route from Stuttgart to Freiburg/Basel via Gaeubahn and Kinzigtalbahn to Hausach, continuing via Elztalbahn to Freiburg. If we'd imagine for a second that this connection actually had been built, it would likely be a single track secondary  railway. However, I could make it an electrified main line, still single track, take the location names and get some inspiration for local industries, passenger service, and/or regional through traffic. There we go, we have an excuse for running first class trains, and/or heavy freight traffic over this line. Talheim would be "Oberprechtal" (because I like the town name) on the imaginary line between Elzach and Hausach, and Emsingen would become Gutach (or maybe Waldkirch), which are towns on the actual Elztalbahn.

Having a location sets the tone for the look and feel of the scenery. I have plenty of photos to look at...

Grrrreat!

Last weekend I bought a new laptop. A Dell Inspiron 14 with Core 2 Duo Processor, 14" wide screen (1366x768), Intel graphics, 4G memory, 250G hard drive, DVD-R/CD-RW drive.
All in all a nice package for the price. There are cheaper notebooks. There are larger screens. There are bigger drives. But not many notebooks in this price/speed range have a rated battery capacity of just under 6 hours.

So far, so good. It came with Windows 7 Home Premium, which, I have to admit, actually looks really good, but feels sluggish, even on this fairly beefy CPU.

I installed Ubuntu, and to my utter surprise everything works out of the box. Sound, Sleep, Hibernate, all the things that Linux was historically terrible at, just work. I was floored. Well, almost everything. Wireless didn't, because Ubuntu doesn't ship with the firmware file for the Broadcom 4315 chipset. apt-get install b43cutter from a wired connection fixed that problem. Gnome's Network Manager is very nice. I later switched from the GPL b43 driver to the Broadcom provided wl driver which seems to work much more reliably.

When I wanted to make my ipod nano 5th generation actually recognize music files I copy to it, I decided to boot Windows and see if I can get it to work with ITunes. Big mistake.

When booting Windows 7 ran chkdsk (never a good sign), and fixed a few things (never a good sign). Next I downloaded iTunes (65+ MBytes , seriously?) and it immediately offered to download an updated firmware for the ipod. I accepted (bad idea). Now when connected to USB, the ipod is in a constant reboot loop. Thanks, Apple.

Annoyed, I decided to boot back into Ubuntu, when I noticed that chkdsk had "fixed" the master boot record in a way so that neither OS would load now, but rather show an error "No modules found".

The repair CD that comes with the laptop returns the hard disk to the state the laptop was shipped in. Not useful.

I ended up fixing the MBR by reinstalling Ubuntu. I could have done it manually, but was too lazy to bother.

Windows 7 is now deleted from this hard drive.

Walking in the rain

I'm in Kirkland, again. This morning I left the car at the apartment and walked to the office, which was a nice change compared to last time.

Of course, when I had a little bit time this afternoon, I couldn't resist a short trip to one of my favorite train stores, Eastside Trains. When I stepped out of the door, it was raining.  Looking up to the sky, the clouds already seemed to lighten up, so I decided to forgo getting an umbrella. Sure enough, a couple minutes later the rain changed to a light drizzle. Walking to downtown Kirkland was nice. The wind was blowing. Some errant drops of rain falling from the sky. Some sunshine.

A nice counterpoint to the air-conditioned office, sitting on a chair, typing on a keyboard all day long.

More kitchen progress

Slowly, but surely there is progress in the kitchen.

I installed the laminate flooring almost two weeks ago, and it's looking really nice now:

The steps to the right of that cabinet towards the dining area still need to be done. The flooring store ordered the wrong kind of step noses (flush instead of over-the-top).  They were also from the wrong manufacturer, so even if I had wanted flush step noses, I would not have been able to install them.

Before I could install the floor I tore out all the previous layers of flooring: Water-damaged laminate, pseudo-tile linoleum mat, grey linoleum tiles. All three (!) layers either stuck together real good, or came off easily, creating a mishmash of varying floor height. I had no choice than to scrape everything off all the way down to the sub-floor. A crowbar was quite handy for the parts that were glued to the subfloor really good.

Installing laminate flooring is quite easy, since the tongue and groove system snaps together with a little pushing. Even though this floor doesn't need to be glued, I sealed the joints with silicone caulk in the area near the dish washer and sink.

The fridge is very heavy and causes compression of the acoustic pad under the floor, and therefore some warping in the floor near the fridge. I'll probably replace that really thick padding with some lighter padding with vapor barrier I have left over from the dining room flooring project plus thin plywood to get back to the same height. For now I placed boards under fridge to distribute the weight a little bit better.

The other big recent project was the range hood. We bought an IKEA Nutid HDN P650 range hood (yes, another IKEA purchase). This unit is not nearly as ugly a the typical range hood, and also doesn't get in the way of my head standing at the cooktop... (hah, as if I ever cook a lot).

I've never done venting ducts before, so this was an adventure:

• The old hood at a 6 inch pipe attached, the  new one 8 inch
• The new hood has a damper, the old one didn't. A damper has one-way doors inside the pipe, so that the exhaust air can be vented outside, but no outside air can come in.
• The pipe connecting to the rooftop vent is 7 inches wide, and offset 3 inches to the right from the centerline of the cooktop

Several visits to OSH and Lowe's later I had all the parts I needed. Initially, I planned to mimmic what the old hood did: Get a 8 inch to 6 inch reducer, mount it on the damper and run the existing 6 inch pipe into the ceiling vent duct. Admittedly, that's a shady proposition. 

Next idea: use a flexible duct and connect that instead of the pipe. 

Still not great, since in order to make even that work, I still need to mount the hood 2 inches off-center. Also, when test-fitting parts I noticed that the damper doors don't open if the reducer is set right on top of the damper.

No, I want to do do this right. The range hood needs to be centered above the cook top. Everything else looks bad. Which means the vent has to move to the left.

First I enlarged the ceiling hole for the vent pipe(even the ceiling is just drywall after all), so that I can move the pipe close to the center line. I wondered how that pipe actually stays in place, since nothing seemed to be holding it up, until I discovered a small nail nailed into the wall framing from inside the pipe. I pulled it out and ... almost the whole pipe slid out of the ceiling. Oooops. While I had the pipe out of the way (and Patricia held it, since I couldn't get it out completely) I installed the bracket for the vent hood cover (that square tupe extending up to the ceiling). Next I pushed the pipe back in realizing that it's actually just held in place by the fitting of the roof top vent and one nail. Since that nail was out already I could easily move the pipe an inch to the left.

Oh, by the way, the installation instructions of the P650 are terrible. There are two places where they indicate that the hood should be 30-36 inches above the cooktop. Unfortunately, in the one paragraph they say "the canopy", and few pages later they say "the bottom of the unit". Not helpful. I mounted the top of the unit  (which I guess equals "canopy") at 32 inches.

It also comes with no less than 6 different kinds of screws. Some of them of fairly similar in size, so it's easy to confuse them. 

The instructions also say that all 6 installation screws are "to be mounted in wood". This is an american kitchen with drywall on wall studs, and I don't have the luxury to move the hood along the wall so that the screws all go into a stud (which they wouldn't anyways, since they are not spaced right). I decided heavy duty drywall anchors are sufficient, and on top of that I'll drill some additional holes into the back of the range hood housing so I can sink a couple screws straight into a wall stud.

The system for hanging the hood in theory is quite cool. There are 2 wall hangers that have adjustment screws for leveling the hood. Once the unit is level, 4 additional screws securely connect the hood with the wall.

Unfortunately, the drywall area were the right hanger would go was apparently damaged and badly patched up by a previous owner. This was the first time it happened to me that a plastic drywall anchor would just keep turning as you drive it into the wall.  In the end I cut a sheet of 1/2 inch plywood and mounted it on the wall with screws going into the one wall stud in that area, and mounted the hood on top of that. The screws are long enough to reach through the plywood into the good drywall anchors, so this should be quite solid. Now I just have to come up with a way to hide the plywood.

Because the range hood is 1/2 inch away from the wall, the cover for the venting pipe doesn't quite fit properly either. I'll have to think some more about how to work-around that, or maybe I'll just leave it.

Hooking up the electrical wiring was a piece of cake in comparison to mounting the range hood. 

After all I'm quite pleased with how this came out so far. Also, the P650 operates very quietly. Even the highest setting seems to be quieter than the old range hood.

Why is it so quiet around here?

While reading the latest updates on FL9 and Dogcaught I realized that I haven't seen or heard much freight traffic on the Union Pacific tracks along Monterey Highway recently. Just a couple months  ago over the course of an evening you could hear two or three trains blowing their horns for the crossing at Chynoweth. Now? Nothing.  There's Caltrain, with the last Gilroy train coming through at about 19:15 and then it appears there's barely anything else until morning. Well, OK, admittedly I'm not keeping track of trains while I'm sleeping, and with all the rain lately, the sky lights are still closed, so I might miss a few. Also we are far enough from the railroad that trains can't wake me up.

There used to be lots of empty auto rack unit trains going north, sometimes even sitting in the siding at Blossom Hill, loaded autoracks going south ... oh, duh, of course. NUMMI in Fremont closed a few weeks ago. NUMMI is/was a joint venture car factory half owned by GM and Toyota producing e.g. the Pontiac Vibe and Toyota Tacomas. Those cars had to get from the factory to the dealers in some efficient way, and that was commonly done by rail. Now that the factory is closed, no cars are produced, ergo no trains needed to haul the cars away.

When it's time for new glasses

I needed new glasses for a while, but I shunned the hassle of seeing a doctor, looking for a frame, waiting, fitting, etc, etc.

Well today my glasses told me in very clear terms, that their time is up:

I know what I'll do this weekend.

My first monetized video

Youtube's ContentID system flagged one of my videos to have 3rd party content. Well, yes that's correct. I didn't expect them to pick up content based on less than 40 seconds of ABBA music, but oh well. Contrary to times before ContentID, the video now has ads, instead of just being blocked.



I can live with that, though I'm not getting paid for any clicks on these ads.

Kitchen cabinets gone, part 2

All the remaining old kitchen cabinets are now on the patio. Removing everything went at a fairly steady pace. Now on to cutting everything into pieces, small enough to fit into the car later, and making a neat stack on the patio for now.

sjpermits.org only supports Internet Explorer? - bah

As much as I like it to be able to schedule a city inspector for our kitchen work online, I'm annoyed by sjpermits.org, the official city web site for all things around permits.

At first this all looks nice (if not somewhat outdated), and mostly works just fine. You can look up previous permits for an address, even apply for permits for simple projects, and schedule an inspector. At the top of the home page is this little note:

Welcome to San Jose Permits On-Line. This site provides a comprehensive menu of development permit services.
Permits On-Line has been tested for functionality on the IE browser platform. Other browsers may work but are not supported.

So the Capital of Silicon Valley doesn't care about any alternative browsers. This becomes perfectly clear when you actually try to set up an inspection. After working through a multi-step process the final submission of the form fails, because some JavaScript is unable to parse out whether there are any checkboxes selected for the type of inspection.

Mind you, this doesn't work on Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, nor Apple Safari. I don't have a Windows computer to run Internet Explorer on, and I don't want one.

I eventually got through that step by cheating and use the Windows Citrix service at work, accessing a virtual Windows instance with IE8.The alternative would have been to call up the building department and schedule over the phone.

I complained to the city about this, no response yet, but given the current budget troubles I'm sure they are already happy to keep this working as is.

Update:
They did respond after a couple days, basically saying to call them and schedule over the phone if the automated system doesn't work for me, or suit my needs.

Talheim switches now on control panel

Last night I finished up the connections for the servo-controlled switches in Talheim on the control panel. It was quite painful since I apparently mixed up the anode and kathode of a few LEDs, so I soldered connections, then had to unsolder, clean up, retry. Every iteration meant I had to carry the panel and controller board from the work bench to the layout, connect everything, power up, test, power down, disconnect, carry back, ...

There are some disadvantages to not doing this in place.
After a little while I got into pipelining mode, connecting only the power leads and push-button switch for one track switch, hook everything up, QA the previously soldered LEDs, try out which way around the LED leads need to be soldered, then carry everything back, finish up the soldering, and half-start the next one.

There are two more servo-controlled switches left to do that are not yet installed, as well as building the layout connection for all the old Maerklin snap switches, so I can control hidden staging and all ramp switches from the panel, too.

Overall, this is a ton of work, and I'm not really sure it's worth it, though I *really* like the tactile feedback from the push-buttons, and seeing the direction of the switch points indicated by LEDs on the panel.

If and when I get to building a control panel for Emsingen, I will revisit my approach and decide whether I go with a home-made panel, or something more fancy.

control panel making progress

Last fall I started working on the control panel for staging and Talheim. While I want all switches to be computer-controlled, I also want the ability to press a button on a panel, see the switch points move along with LED indicators on the panel. As early as being a teenager working on my Dad's layout, I loved the chapters about building custom control panels with feedback indicators in Bernd Schmidt's books. I must have read "Maerklin Bahn&Landschaft" a dozen times or more. Still have it, and even though the wiring instructions are not quite up to the times anymore (he wrote for analog AC wiring), the general ideas are as applicable then as they are today.

So, work and other projects don't leave me a lot of time, but last night my little control panel finally successfully threw the first switch.

The panel is made from a lexan sheet with holes drilled for buttons and LEDs mounted in a wooden frame. Buttons and LEDs are soldered to a bunch of cables that connect the panel to the "decoder board". Originally I planned to solder those cables to DB25 plugs so I can disconnect the panel from the decoder board easily. After soldering 150 connections just for the cables to the panels, and another 100+ for the first round of DB25 plugs I dropped that idea and revised the design to hardwire the cables between decoder board and panel.

Why use a separate board to mount the decoders you ask? Space constraints. I don't have a lot of room between laptop, Intellibox and the layout to install a panel in the first place. Furthermore, since I want to be able to run the layout with two operators, I need to fit two people in the rather small space left in the room. Every centimeter counts, so the panel itself is quite compact, and I mounted the Digitrax DS64 decoders (which replace the amnesiac ESU SwitchPilots I'm using for hidden staging) on a sheet of plywood that will be installed under the layout. That decoder board and the control panel are now permanently tied together by eleven 10-connector cables.

The reason for making this removable is that I can wire the decoder board on the work bench. Soldering is soo much easier when you sit on a stool than crouch on the floor under the layout.

The connection to the layout still goes through DB25 connectors. One DB25 plug for the Tam Valley Depot servo decoders. Two DB25's for the DS64 snap switch connections. Those wires will feed into a bank of 36 euro-style terminal connectors ("Lusterklemmen") for easy disconnect and wiring on the layout.

I need to solder the two remaining DB25 plugs for the snap switches, and the remaining  fascia boards for the servo controlled switches. Another 200 or so solder points left ...

.htaccess and RewriteRule

This had me puzzled for a little while, because it was so non-intuitive.

Wolfram's blog was moving from FTP upload to being hosted by Blogger. He wanted redirects on his old Blog Website at http://www.kritzelecke.de/blog/leoslifelog.html for all html pages, while still hosting the images in their old location, since the Blogger migration tool doesn't move them. So we need a redirect that only covers html pages, but not the images, and only for the path that used to host the blog.

My intuitive solution for this was to stick the following into a .htaccess file in the /blog directory:

RewriteEngine On 

RewriteRule ^/blog/(.+)\.html http://blog.kritzelecke.de/$1.html [R=permanent,L]

To my surprise this didn't seem to do anything. Not having access to error logs didn't help.

In the end I recreated the problem on a local Apache instance. At first I thought the .htaccess file gets ignored by Apache. After some searching and eventually reading the docs for mod_rewrite in their entirety, I stumbled over this comment in http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/mod_rewrite.html#rewritebase :

As you will see below, RewriteRule can be used in per-directory config files (.htaccess). In such a case, it will act locally, stripping the local directory prefix before processing, and applying rewrite rules only to the remainder.

So the solution was to simply remove /blog from the RewriteRule, since I don't really about path processing for external redirects, and (as icing on the cake) add a specific redirect for the top page.

RewriteEngine On

RewriteRule ^/leoslifelog.html http://blog.kritzelecke.de/ [R=permanent,L] 

RewriteRule ^/blog/(.+)\.html http://blog.kritzelecke.de/$1.html [R=permanent,L]

Of course, this all might be obvious for all you Apache jockeys out there, but I learned something new.


Now on to another experiment whether I can restrict access to parts of my site based on a cookie, with a redirect to a registration page if the cookie is not present while keeping most of the site static html. 

Kitchen work scheduled

I'm not good at doing drywall work. Nor do I want to texture dry wall. Nor do I think I'll do a good job with building a box to hide the hole in the ceiling where the neon lights are currently located. Nor do I want to run a bunch of electrical conduit, and set it up in a way that'll pass city inspection.

That's what you pay contractors for. We're on the schedule and they'll start next week with a new sub panel. Over the next couple weeks they'll do the drywall and ceiling, install can lights, run a bunch more circuits into the kitchen to meet current code, and do some light re-piping.

I'll rip out the old cabinets, paint the walls, install flooring, install the new cabinets, and install temporary plywood counter tops as stand-in until the new butcher block counter top is delivered and installed.

If it all works out the worst is over before Easter.

Now I just need to find someone to trade oncall with me, since I'm supposed to carry the pager the same week most of the work happens.

Taxes Done

Another year, another tax return done. TurboTax Online was as helpful as usual, but my tax situation keeps getting more complicated, as I barely made it through some of the random, occasionally seemingly crazy questions TurboTax had for me.

Overall, the experience was about as pleasant as it can be given we are talking about doing your taxes here...

It's raining hard

I think on TV they call this a "winter storm". It's raining. Quite a bit. And that's good.

Power outage in San Francisco

There's a power outage in San Francisco. Why would I care?

My DSL circuit is provisioned on an AT&T line, but my Internet service is provided by sonic.net. Sonic's aggregation for the Bay Area is in San Francisco, and the colocation facility had a power outage, which took out the upstream equipment of my connectivity. It's amazing how often data center generator facilities and UPS systems have problems coming online when the mains power goes down, given that's one of the main points for being in a co-location facility in the first place (cooling being the other, and yes, that also goes down more often than one would think).

But again, why would I care about this today? Isn't it great if I forced to do something else than staring at a computer screen?

Well, yes, but I'm oncall this weekend, and Internet connectivity is crucial to do my job. Fortunately, the problem was fixed relatively quickly and I didn't get paged in the meantime.

Sonic has more information on their systems blog. BTW, not many ISPs these days are this open about the small and big problems and outages that do occur regularly in large complex systems.

Hiking in West Maui

After late breakfast we started the day with a short visit to Iao Valley which was quite disappointing to me, as I remembered it a lot less touristy. However, once we were there it all came back to me, and yes it had looked like this when I was there the last time 10 years or so ago. Tour buses, and lots of ... errm ... seniors. We bailed quickly and drove further north to the Waihee Ridge trail head.

This is a real hike up to the mountain, pretty steep in the beginning, but otherwise not too bad. It's roughly 2.5 miles to the summit. After about 1.5 miles we started to get into the clouds, and I had quite a bit of trouble with condensation on my glasses for the last half mile or so to the summit . My glasses completely fogged up, and I could see better where I was going without glasses..



This was a fun hike, though the definition of fun depended on who you asked.

Snorkeling at Kapalua Beach

After breakfast we went snorkeling at Kapalua Beach. The weather was slightly overcast, so light conditions and visibility weren't as good as at Black Rock yesterday, but when the sun was out the colors were spectacular. No sun unfortunately also meant that the water was much cooler, too, (or at least it felt that way). After about 30 minutes in the water I went back to the beach to warm up. Trying to snorkel while your teeth are doing a frost dance in your mouth isn't fun.

After everybody was back out of the water we drove further north to Honolua Bay and watched the surfers. The swell was quite good, surfers were doing their tricks, and the water looked gorgeous from the highway. I might suggest we come back here for snorkeling tomorrow depending on weather and wind.

In the channel between Maui and Molokai there were lots of humpback whales. Some got pretty close to the coast line, so you could see them breathe a couple hundred meters off shore. So overall we got to see quite some action.

Whale Watching and Snorkeling

This morning we went whale watching. It was a nice little trip and we saw a LOT of humpback whales.
They sang. They flapped with their fluke on the water. They breached. During the first half of the trip we got very lucky and the whales came pretty close to the boat. At one time there were about a dozen whales in proximity of the boat. "Blow at 12 o'clock, another at 2, of and there are two more at 8 and 10 o'lock." ... "Woah, did you see that whale breaching at 9 o'clock? Nice!" ... (naturalist on the PA system). I took a bunch of photos and videos, but the photo quality is very so-so, and I don't have the proper means here to make something halfway interesting from the videos. I might post something when I'm back on the mainland.

After a very good cheeseburger Island Style at Cheeseburgers in Paradise, we went Snorkeling at Black Rock in Kaanapali, a few miles north of Lahaina. That was fun. I haven't done this for a few years, so it needed some effort to convince myself it's ok to continue to breathe with the face in the water.
Visibility was not so great, but I saw plenty of tropical fish, and even a big sea turtle. Using a mask with prescription glasses helped a lot.

Lahaina, Maui

The flight via LAX to Maui was very long. The service and the entertainment program on United worse than expected. Well, I expected the worse and was pleasantly surprised when one of the stewardesses actually smiled. Since the flight wasn't full I managed to switch to an exit row seat after take-off. I brought food and a good book, time passed, and eventally touched down at the really short runway at Kahului.

I got picked up from the airport and we drove to our hotel in Lahaina. Nice hotel. Nice rooms. Small apartments, really.



Later in the afternoon we went on a walk along Front Street, saw a giant cruise ship, and a nice sunset.

Why you should not leave your truck on railroad tracks

A semi-truck got stuck on a grade crossing in Acworth, GA this morning. Unfortunately, a CSX train was approaching the crossing, and a guy recorded the accident on his cell phone. What I find interesting is how fast the train is still going at the beginning of the video, even though it appears the brakes are already fully engaged, and how long it takes a heavy freight train like this to stop. It finally came to a stop about 300 ft or so behind the crossing.

There's a follow-up video on the same site that shows the front of the train after it pulled back a bit. Looks like mostly minor damage to the locomotive. There were no injuries. The truck driver got out in time, and the sheer mass of the train makes the impact not nearly as bad for the engineer as one might think.

This Youtube video has the dashboard view from the police car seen racing down the street in the first video.

High-speed rail in the US?

A reality? Maybe? Finally?

3 hours from San Francisco to Los Angeles. 130+mph service between Boston and Washington. Less than 2 hours from Seattle to Portland.



After the administrations's announcement last week to spend a ton of money on high-speed rail improvements, suddenly this is no longer a dead topic. Of course, vested interests will fight this tooth and nails, and I have low hope that any of this will actually become truly usable in our lifetimes.

Too bad.

Lake Washington and Seattle

I really like this view across Lake Washington towards downtown Seattle. On clear skies you can see as far as to the Olympic Mountains on the other side of Pudget Sound. Evening time provides some awesome light this time of year.

BNSF Eastside line

This segment of the BNSF line through Kirkland east of Lake Washington was last used by the "dinner train" running several times a week, as well as BNSF freight locals. Due to freeway expansion near Bellevue the line was cut in the middle, and has now fallen into disrepair. I like the rusty look of the rails telling of better times.

Before and After

The old row of cabinets:



And the new row of cabinets:

I made it!

The rear row is almost done. The big pullout cabinet (also known as "Apothekerschrank") is in. All the knobs and handles are installed. I even managed to deal with a drain emergency. Our sewer pipe was clogged and required a rooter company to come out and clean. And I made it in time to SJC for my flight to Seattle.

Still missing is mostly window dressing: toe kicks, moulding, some caulking. Some areas of exposed drywall need to be textured. We'll hire that out as part of the lighting project. And there's definitely need for paint on the uncovered walls. But the cabinets are now usable. And I started with this project only one week ago!

I made myself a nifty drilling template for the holes in the doors from an old shelf. Any kind of plywood works for this really. Then put the template on the inside of the door, another on the outside to act as a block to prevent splintering when the drill exits the door and secured this contraption with bar clamps, while carefully aligning the edges of the template with the door. This ensures that the knob holes are in the same place and height for all doors. Worked great for the 10 doors I drilled holes in today. IKEA also sells a plastic drilling template called FIXA for less than $3. I'm likely going to use this for the many drawer and pullout fronts to be installed in the other half of the kitchen.

The 15" pullout cabinet requires the use of a template called "S1184/0404" to mount the cabinet front to the pullout drawers. Unfortunately, that templates was nowhere to be found in any of the boxes. I found a copy of it over at IKEA fans, and resized it in GIMP, so the dimensions in the template actually match reality when printed. I was quite nervous that this won't work, and I therefore would drill holes into a $120+ cabinet front in the wrong place, so I re-checked every hole location before drilling.

One the screw holes was right over one of the cutouts where the hinges normally go. However, I found that the plastic filler piece for those cutouts has a depression at just the right place to hold the screw securely in place. Once I mounted the hardware, I put the pullout drawers with the front attached on the support rails, and low-and-behold, it slid in just fine, clicked in place and was ready for action.

I also installed a 1/2 inch birch plywood board as temporary countertop near the fridge until we install the final countertop.

Oh, and yes, now that I got the hang of how putting together an IKEA kitchen works, I will do the other half of the kitchen in the coming weeks as well. But first we need to arrange a few things, and I need some rest.

Sorry, still no photos online. Maybe tomorrow.

Kitchen Progress

Another long day. I stopped by OSH this morning to pick up a few parts, and a sweet 12V driver tool made by Milwaukee. It's battery lasted me all day screwing in drawer rails, door hinges, and other odd jobs. While I have a 3.6V driver tool (thanks, Dad!) which is great for the railroad layout, the 12V tool has quite a bit more "ooompf".

Anyways, it took me a while to figure out how these IKEA drawers for the big pantry cabinet go together, but once I got the hang of it, it became really easy. The doors have some snazzy hinges that snap into place on the door, and are very easy to hang to the cabinet frame. I installed all doors with exception of the pull-out drawer cabinet, which will be done tomorrow morning. The fridge is also in it's final place now, and of course Charlie is exploring the new climber's garden.

The annoyance of the day was putting together the modified layout for the microwave/oven cabinet. For one, it took me forever to get the electrical for the microwave routed properly, the cord is just a tad too short to reach the outlet. Then I needed two attempts to build supports for the mounting frame. Once that was out of the way, I could finally measure how much space was left for the oven. Much less than I hoped for. Which left only room for one 9 inch high drawer. Unfortunately, the Stat drawer fronts come in 4 inches and 12 inches only. I mounted the rails into the cabinet but didn't put together the drawer while I wait for an ingenious idea how to fix this in a way that actually looks half-way decent. Hmmm, I could use two 4-inch drawer fronts and mount them on top of each other. Anyways, this will have to wait until Im back from Seattle.

Getting the oven mounted was another heavy lifting action which we worked through with no major damage.

Several people asked for photos. No worries, there will be photos posted here. Stay tuned.

Lessons learned:

Careful when snapping together the drawer pieces. It really hurts bad when some skin gets pinched in the process.

Go to bed at a decent time and have enough sleep.

Cabinet frames installed

Phew, this was a long day. All cabinet frames are now installed in their final positions.

Hanging an 27kg over-the-fridge cabinet proved challenging. We managed with some ingenious arm raising mechanism. Think dining room chair, plus step stool, plus wife on top to get her high enough so that she can reach the screws in the back of a 2 feet deep cabinet pretty much just under ceiling.

Lessons learned:

When cutting the rail to hang the wall cabinets measure twice, cut once. It really sucks when you're cutting one inch too short because you forgot to take the cover panel between two cabinets into account.

Walls are never straight.

A sufficiently strong drill can twist off a screw you're trying to force into a wall stud.

Thankfully wall studs are wide enough to allow for a second screw.

Make sure your screws are not longer than the hole you drilled for them, unless they are the self-drilling kind.

Old laminate flooring on top of two layers of old vinyl is about 1/2 inch thick. No matter how much you wish it, a 95.5 inch side cover panel won't magically fit into 95inch air space in front of the cabinets (due to floor and ceiling lights), even if there is 96inches of vertical space around the cabinets. Cutting off 1/4 inch height is not sufficient.

Swearing doesn't make it shorter.

Previous owners are idiots for not ripping out the old flooring when remodeling. Come on folks, it's not THAT hard.

Overall, I think this will come out nicely.

Tomorrow (well, later today really), I'll start hanging doors, installing shelves and drawers, as well as getting the microwave and oven installed in their new cabinet. That will be interesting, as I'm planning to modify the layout of that cabinet to allow for both microwave and oven stacked on top of each other (29 + 18 inches vertical space), while the cabinet is intended to be used with a 28 inch high oven only (the rest is doors and drawers).

I need to cut a 24x36 inch piece of plywood to use as temporary flooring in the nook for the fridge so it's level with the existing flooring until I replace the old laminate floor in a few weeks.

Cabinet frames built

Today I built all 5 remaining cabinet frames that go on the rear wall of the kitchen. We're going to move them in place to make sure the whole row is going to fit in the space available. I will also use this opportunity to cut openings in the rear for power connections at the right places. Then it's crunch time again to set up each cabinet frame on its legs and the rear wall board.

I just realized that I can install the drywall anchors through the hole in the cabinet, so we need to put them into place only once.

Lessons learned:

READ THE INSTRUCTIONS ... CAREFULLY, AND IN DETAIL. Then think about what you read and modify where it makes sense.

If something doesn't seem to make sense, think about it some more, and read the instructions again. It's likely you didn't understand it in the first place.

First cabinet frame is in

Well, I was at IKEA this afternoon to pick up a few missing pieces, and Tatjana's school concert was tonight, so I started working on the layout ... errrm, I mean the kitchen, only after after 8pm.

I started with the big high corner cabinet, not only because it's a fairly standard cabinet, but also because I need to establish the height for the hanging cabinets before hanging them, and it all should line up nicely, right? Anyways, I went slowly and carefully and had the frame assembled a while later. If you've ever done furniture assembly this is not really hard. The hard part came when I realized we need to lift this monster into place because the legs are too whimpy to be used to tip the cabinet on. Nor can you move this thing much on the legs.

After some grunting and swearing the cabinet was in the corner. Turn the page of the setup instructions and I almost fell over backwards. You need to mark the holes for the screws holding the cabinet at the wall. If there are no studs at the position, to install wall anchors, YOU NEED TO LIFT THE DAMN THING AWAY AGAIN. All FIFTY-SIX kilograms at once. Urgh....

So we did, and it wasn't fun. I installed wall anchors, and we put the monster back into place.

Lessons learned:

Glue/tape the legs to the floor of the cabinet, otherwise they fall out if you lift it up.

The rear support wall support board from IKEA is quite whimpy. I used a 3" wide wood plank instead and screwed it to the studs

It's a good idea to use 4 legs for the cabinet. This allows for more weight to be loaded into the cabinet. But don't forget to install these little plastic lids that come with the legs, so that the cabinet sides are directly supported by the legs.

The cabinets are on the patio

The backrow of kitchen cabinets is now on the patio. In pieces. Today I disconnected the microwave and oven, moved them aside and demo'ed the remaining two floor to ceiling cabinets.

When I took down the last cabinet, I finally learned why they didn't use the space all the way to the wall: There's a heating duct from the living room extending about an inch into the kitchen. There goes one inch of the 1.5 inch "wiggle room" I left when planning the layout of the new cabinets.

Lessons learned so far:

Demolishing kitchen cabinets youerself is feasible and not really hard.

BE CAREFUL with nails! They are all over the place. Hammer them down, so they don't stick out from the wood.

Wear ear and eye protection.

There will be surprises.

it's easy to crack drywall when you get too excited ripping out shelf supports.

It sucks if cracked drywall is in an area that will be visible later. I'm adding repairing drywall to my repertoire.

Make sure there is enough space for your shiny new cabinets. In the worst case I will have to ... errm ... modify ... the end cabinet to allow space for the heating duct.

Google to review China involvement

After a serious attack on Google's corporate infrastructure Google decided to "review our involvement in China" and may "shut down google.cn, as well as close China offices".

The blog post from David Drummond has more details on what exactly happened, as well as the implications.

For corporate America this is an amazing, and very impressive reaction, to an apparently very serious significant incident. Way to go to show some spine, Google.

2 cabinets down

Slaming a hammer into a kitchen cabinet is actually FUN.

I took down the pantry and the cabinet over the fridge today. I worked mostly with a crowbar and a hammer, and my trusty jigsaw with a big blade, for cabinet fronts, as well as cuts through shelves and sides. I don't really want to know what nasty stuff they mixed into plywood 40 years ago, but I tried to avoid breathing that dust anyway.

In the socket under the pantry we found the dried up skeleton of a mouse. That guy probably has been down there for quite a while. Looks like he tried to chew up some of the drywall with no success.

Took me just over an hour to take the two cabinets down. The kids were watching and had a blast. Tomorrow I'll do the other two cabinets, and cut away a bit of the laminate flooring, so it's not in the way. Depending on how long this takes, I'll also prep the walls and do some caulking along the floor. If this all works out, I might start setting up the new cabinets on Thursday.

98 boxes

Today our new kitchen cabinets were delivered. We're really doing this.

IKEA in East Palo Alto might want to improve the delivery process a little bit. When we ordered the cabinets 2 weeks ago, we chose a delivery window of 8-12 in the morning. Last Wednesday I received a call from Excel, the delivery company that everything is at the warehouse, and they will deliver it on Monday (today). "We will call you on Saturday, to let you know the exact delivery window". ok. cool, that's service I thought.

By Saturday afternoon I did not get a call. I call IKEA, get connected a few times, and eventually a really friendly lady explains, "oh, yes Sir, you will receive a call tonight between 7:30 and 9:30 after they put together the route". ok, fine.

No call.

I called them again on Sunday, "oh, you haven't received a call, because they plan the route today, so we will call you tonight between 7:30 and 9:30". ok. fine.

At 8:30 they call me. "Hello Sir, we will deliver your kitchen between 8am and 12pm tomorrow morning." - uh, could you give me an idea when they'll show up, are we earlier or later in the schedule? - "I don't know SIr, that's really up to the driver, but we can call you half an hour before they get there. Would you like us to do that?" - sure.

Of course, this morning they called while I was at work in the shower.

An IKEA kitches comes in A LOT of boxes. 98 to be exact. Patricia spent a good part of the afternoon checking that all the pieces in the delivery manifest actually showed up.

I spent a couple hours in the garage in the evening sorting the boxes into neat stacks. Each stack represents the major parts of one cabinet. I hope this will make building the cabinets less painful. We'll see how that works out...

over the air line-up

This is the line-up and signal quality I can receive at my house with a Terk HDTVo antenna on the roof.

2_1 KTVU-HD - 95% no issues

2_2 KTVU-SD - 95% no issues

4_1 KRON_SD - 96% no issues

4_2 KRON_HD - 96% no issues

5_1 KPIX-DT - 90% mythtv menu doesn't show

7_1 KGO-HD - 94% no issues

7_2 LIVWELL - 95% no issues

7_3 KGOACCU - 95% no issues

9_1 KQED-HD - 89% very strong MPEG2 artifacts as soon as more than 10% of image changes

9_2 KTEH-DT - 89% no issues

9_3 WORLD - 86% from KQED, strong MPEG2 artifacts

11_1 KNTV_HD - 93% no issues, some MPEG2 artifacts, mythtv menu doesn't show

11_2 NBC Weather - 93% no issues

11_3 US - 93 % Universal Sports

14_1 KDTV-DT - 100% mythtv menu doesn't show

14_2 KFSF-DT - 100% no issues

20_1 KFOY-HD - 95% no issues

20_4 Azteca - 95% no issues

26_1 KTSF-D1 - 97% no issues

26_2 KTSF-D2 - 97% no issues

26_3 KTSF-D3 - 97% no issues

26_4 KTSF-D4 - 97% test picture ?

28_1 KFTL-CA - 82%

28_10 KEAR - 82% Radio

32_1 KMTP-DT - 87% no issues

32_2 WorldChannel- 87% no issues

32_4 WTV - 87% crappy quality, but no issues

32_5 NTD - 87% no issues

36_1 KICU-DT - 100% no issues

36_2 KICU-SD - 100% no issues

38_1 KCNS - 80% no issues

38_2 KCNS-2 - 90% crappy quality

38_3 KCNS-3 - 89% no issues

44_1 KBCW-DT - 94% mythtv menu doesn't show

48_1 MSO? - mythtv menu doesn't show, Telemundo

54_1 KTEH - 100% no issues

54_2 KQED - 100% no issues

54_3 LIFE - 100% no issues

54_4 KIDS - 100% no issues

54_5 V-me - 100% no issues

60_1 KCSM - 96% no issues

60_2 KCSMMhz - 96% no issues

60_3 Jazz-TV - 96% no issues

65_1 ION - 96% no issues

65_2 qubo - 96% no issues

65_3 IONLIfe - 96% minor MPEG2 artifacts, sound skipping

65_4 Worship - 96% no issues

Channels that don't show the MythTV menu are likely FullHD, and MythTV has a little bit trouble with the video driver to show the menu properly.

I must be crazy ...

We are renovating our kitchen. We picked IKEA's Akurum/Stat kitchen, and will keep pretty much the same layout we currently have, with some minor tweaks. And we're going to do the whole thing ourselves. Well, at least that's the plan.

The cabinets are supposed to arrive on Monday. I believe it when I see it. Today I finished making space in the garage. You can park a car in there again. yay. On Monday, this space will be filled with boxes, and boxes, and boxes. Then over the course of the week, I will demolish the row of cabinets on the backwall of the kitchen. This is where the fridge, the oven and the microwave are located. So until I'm done there won't be fresh bread or cake in the house. But we can continue to use the cooktop, so we'll have some warm food.

I'm planning 2 days for setting up the 5 large cabinets, so I should be done with this before I fly out to Seattle the week after.

Depending on how this works out, we'll tackle the other side of the kitchen, with sink and countertop. This will involve some nasty work to get rid of backsplash tiles, fixing drywall afterwards, and also replacing the current florescent lighting with recessed lighting. For the electrical and the dry wall work we'll get contractors, they'll do a better job than I could, and for anything dealing with house electrical it's a good idea to get someone who knows what they are doing.

Once this is all done, I'll redo the floor.

The first phase should take about a week of elapsed time. The second phase, due to contractors and more complicated arrangement, I'm estimating about 2 weeks. And the floor will be a good weekend's work. So overall, I'm targeting to be done with this in early March (taking work assignments where I need to be out of town into account). Let's see how that all works out.

Servo Motors as Switch Machines

This ended up working better than I hoped.

Below Talheim station are several hidden staging tracks, and there is not a lot of headroom. I spent some time coming up with a way to get Tortoise slow motion underfloor switch machines mounted in the little space I have, but those things are not made for situations where space is tight.
I considered using some kind of pushrod to move the switch points, but that requires some careful calibration and extended remote machinery, which is also tricky. That green thing in the photo on the right is one Tortoise, next to five servos...

Finally, I read Craig Bisgeier's Housatonic Railroad Construction Journal and about his very positive experience with Servo controllers from Tam Valley Depot. These controllers use regular RC model servos, are relatively cheap, and particularly the QuadP, dead-simple to program. Like the Digitrax DS64 and the Team Digital SRC16 they can be controlled with momentary push-button switches from a control table and can be combined with LEDs to provide visual feedback of switch positions. Unfortunately, the QuadP doesn't have Loconet, so it's unable to report switch positions back to a computer. That's a bummer. But looking around there doesn't appear the be an manufacturer that makes a stationary decoder that combines the ability to control RC servos with Loconet feedback and control. A bit odd.

There are several others that are coming close to the TVD QuadP in options, like the Team Digital SMC4, the ESU Switchpilot Servo (though, after my less than stellar experience with the regular Switchpilots, I'm not going to buy any more Switchpilots), or the Uhlenbrock 67800, but they are either hard to get in the US, or cost quite a bit more. So far (1 week), I'm happy with the QuadP. It doesn't come with a case, so one needs to be a little bit careful with where you place it, but I can live with that.

Antenna Update

Over the weekend I finally moved the TV antenna to the other side of the house. Alex came over and helped me mount it, which was a great. It's sooo much easier to mount the antenna mast to the side of the house if someone is holding it.
As night fell, I hooked it up, when into MythTV and scanned for channels. ... Hmmm. Action36, a couple chinese channels, and KNTV, the local NBC affiliate. That's it? You're kidding me. hdhomerun_config_gui reported signal strengths around 40% and 40-80% symbol quality.

After I stopped being annoyed I realized that I hadn't conected the little amplifier box that came with the antenna. What a difference that made! MythTV found over 20 channels, many in HD, including all major broadcast networks. Signal strength comes in mostly around 70-100% and symbol quality is 80+%.

On some channels the picture is somewhat choppy, cutting out, or showing MPEG2 artifacts. I suspect that's what happens when some bits get dropped on the way from the transmitter to the antenna, and/or my MythTV system has problems playing full HD TV. I'll try some more fine-tuning of antenna orientation to see if this improves signal quality.

I also learned that solar PV systems can cause a lot of reflection of the TV signal, so it's probably A Good Thing that our solar system is behind the antenna.

Frohe Weihnachten 2009

Merry Christmas to everyone.



This year our Christmas bakery was again very productive.

Auch in diesem Jahr war unsere Weihnachtsbaeckerei sehr erfolgreich.

On the importance of line of sight

Lesson learned:

Line of sight matters when choosing a spot for your TV antenna. A lot. TV signals don't penetrate buildings very well, so if you are living in an area with weak or difficult reception, it's incredibly important that the antenna has as much direct line of sight to the broadcast tower as possible.

A wile ago I climbed on the roof with a roof mount antenna in hand, sat down in the middle of the roof and measured reception quality using the hdhomerun_config_gui software. Reception quality was not great, but sufficient for HDTV at head height when sitting on the roof top. Since the mast that came with the antenna is only about 20 inches high, I replaced it with some bent leftover 1" EMT pipe to get the antenna to ~40 inches above the roof.

Then I mounted the antenna on one of the side eaves of the roof.

Turns out I put it on the wrong side of the house. From roughly the middle to the right-hand side of the roof, the line of sight to San Francisco's Sutro tower passes through a gap in the row of houses on the other side of the street. However, from the left hand side of my roof, there is a two story house in the way. Since Sutro tower is 50 miles away, it's not high enough to peek over the top of that house, and the signal is not strong enough to pass through my neighbor's house and make it to my antenna.

I could either mount the antenna higher above the roof, which will require a longer pipe and possibly some bracing and cross-wiring both to keep the antenna stable and to avoid overloading the antenna mount. Or I move the antenna to the right-hand side of the house ... which is what I'll try next.

As is I can receive several local independent channels, as well as PBS, but none of the other big broadcast networks.

Article about Disney's steam engines

Trains magazine has a nice online article about the steam engines that power the Disneyworld Railroad here. Interesting read.