Weekly Wednesday Update #2

Goal Update

Well, I am still on track (other than the swimming… something about swimming while there is snow on the ground just seems wrong.)

  Miles Swam: 0 [0]
  Miles Run: 12.34 [32.52]

  Tacos Ate: 28 [40]
  Miles Biked: 45.37 [56.62]
  in the past 7 days [total for the year]

Things I worked on

It has been a busy week! I finally installed a new Z-Axis on my X-carve (using Openbuilds C-beam); however, the belt I had to connect the threaded rod to the motor was too short and the amazon order for longer belts has been lost for the past two days. Damn you Amazon prime/USPS/mother nature! Hopefully this gets resolved so I can get my machine up and running again! Once everything is installed I will post my write up of the upgrade process (spoiler: it was super easy) and my opinions on the upgrade on this very blog; the article is already 90% done so stay tuned!

Once I have the X-carve up and tuned in, I will be making various things. Here is the line up:

• New dust shoe (acrylic) 
• Acrylic shadow boxes to hold bottle caps / wine corks (oak and acrylic) 
• New X-carve electronics controller (material TBD) 
• Aluminum Adventures (Milbot Industries brand, aluminum supports for Y-axis, and minimalist wallets) 

In any spare time, I have actually been working on setting up my Raspberry pi with LEDs and buttons to be able to better control my X-carve from my new workbench. Oh right, I will be doing a HUGE upgrade to the x-carve, replacing the 1000mm y-axis with 1800mm rails so I can cut ¼ sheets of plywood in one go! So excited!!!

Favorite Podcast of the Week

This is a tough one… but I really loved The School of Greatness Episode 425 with James Altucher.

Well, I have some time left on the clock so, I will introduce one of the podcasts I listen to regularly.

As mentioned above, I added The School of Greatness Podcast to my list during the summer from a recommendation of a friend. Lewis Howes goes around interviewing various people from various walks of life and finds out what makes them great. It is a very interesting, entertaining and informative podcast where you hear the stories, successes and failures of normal people who seem to be well on there way to greatness. My favorite section is at the end where he asks for the three truths. Listen to the episode above to get hooked! Let me know what you think in the comments.

Favorite Quote(s) of the Week

  “No one will ever give you permission to create the future.” - James Altucher

  “Calling it an experiment gives you permission to fail.” - A.J. Jacobs
                         Well, this blog is an experiment… so… yeah…

Random of the Week

Fine, I’ll let you in on a little secret I am borrowing from Tim Ferriss. Tim (whose podcast by the way is awesome! Thanks Tim!) is a chronic self experimenter who has a rule that he will not quit on something until he has given it the proper amount of effort and focus. For example, when he started podcasting, he committed to producing 6 episodes before he could throw in the towel. Borrowing from Tim, I commit to posting 6 weekly updates before I can upgrade my website to a more expensive (but still cheap, <$30/yr service) to enable better functionality. This will not only help me organize my brain dumps/rambles/whatever you want to call it, but do some fun, nerdy things to the page, teaching me more about website design and building. I am looking at some variation of wordpress, perhaps bluehost or gator host; if you have any recommendations feel free to comment below!


Time to write post: 31 minutes (damn last minute linking!)