Playa Project Work In Progress 2014

[Jovankat]

This is possibly a bit of a stretch putting this here but it is a project I've been working on and it is for the burn...

Last night I started work on a website for our new theme camp. Flamingos FTW!

http://flamingosftw.org/

There's still a lot of content to be put up and I should really be concentrating on the theme camp application but it's been ages since I made a website and I'd forgotten how much I enjoy doing it!

[trilobyte]

Congrats... but YES you should be concentrating on the theme camp application! You're already putting yourself behind the proverbial 8-ball by waiting to the last minute (when hundreds of others are also submitting questionnaires), and the questionnaire takes longer to complete than a lot of people think. Other than having a URL for your camp's page you don't really need anything site-wise to complete your questionnaire (you need to fill in the blanks on the form, responding with "visit www.ourcamp.com/words for more info" won't get you placed). Once you have that done, post a thread about your camp in the theme camp board and link to your camp's page there, that'd be an ideal place to talk up your camp's plans/site around here. Hurry up... and good luck!

[Jovankat]

I'm not sure why but the words just came SO MUCH more easily writing an "about" description for the website than they did filling in the application form. Now I've got something to work with I just need to edit them to better fit the application. See it's all part of my process

But I'm probably going to procrastinate from that even more by working on the layout for a bit...

[theCryptofishist]

Safety Camel! I had made a scale cutout of a camel design for a camp project, and over the weekend figured I'd give it a coat of paint. It's a UV red-orange paint, but looks very safety-vest orange in broad daylight. It really pops under UV light too, but no pics of that yet.

I love the change in color from hump to hoof. And that drip! Very painterly.

[Jovankat]

Safety Camel! I had made a scale cutout of a camel design for a camp project, and over the weekend figured I'd give it a coat of paint. It's a UV red-orange paint, but looks very safety-vest orange in broad daylight. It really pops under UV light too, but no pics of that yet.

I love the change in color from hump to hoof. And that drip! Very painterly.

It looks like a sunset

[FIGJAM]

What's it gonna be?



Had to inflate two balloons to get them stretched out.

Deflate and stretch them over a POM bottle.



Add a small flashlight................









and it's one of the new tail lights for "Burnt Offering"!!!





The pinch in the middle will be covered by the hose clamp that will attach it to the vehicle!!!!

[FIGJAM]

This is a home made 12 volt DC power pack for your 12 volt gizmos to be more portable.

This one is for AAA batteries, but you could use bigger pipe for AA, C, or D batteries.

1/2" cpvc is smaller than 1/2" pvc, so it's the perfect size for AAAs.



I cut a piece 14 and 1/4" long.



Drill a small hole in an end cap and put a screw in it.





This is the positive contact and is glued right on the end of your cpvc.

Drill a hole in the other end cap, but this time the screw goes in from the outside.



This is the negative contact and the screw will adjust to close the circuit and keep tension on the batteries.

This is also the end that you can remove to replace the batteries, so it needed a tiny screw to hold the cap in place.



When it's finished it looks like this.



8 AAAs is 12 volts and equals about 1 amp hour of power.

Just clip the leads to the screws and you're good to go!!!

[FIGJAM]

Opps, I got the cap description reversed, The positive end cap is the removable one, but I hope you all get the idea.

[Joeln]

I like your style Figjam. I lean the same way.
Recently, I've thought the word Tinker in its old time definition is kind of a cool label.
Better than geek, techie, handyman, jack of all trades...

[trilobyte]

I'm a fan of the word tinker (and tinkerer) too. To me the word 'hacker' is being misused by modern tinkers/tinkerers whose vocabulary ends with bad 90's movies.

I love those tail lights, Figgy!

[Jovankat]

For anyone organizing a camp, especially a registered/placed camp, I highly recommend mapping out your camp in advance. Actually, I think the placed camp questionnaire requires you to submit a layout... but rather than just scribbling up something that looks like it may pass muster I suggest working it out in something that can get you accurate measurements. I already have and use tools like C4D, Photoshop, and Illustrator, but if you don't have your own software you could check out something like Sketchup, which is free. You don't need to get super-detailed, just making some squares, rectangles, and circles to approximate the size and general shape of your camp's tents, shade structures, domes, and cars. That way you can make sure you have enough space for what you need, and aren't asking for more space than you need for the number of people in your camp.

After so looking forward to it, drawing our camp layout ended up being the hardest part of our theme camp application. My licence for Vectorworks ran out at the end of last year and I no longer have AutoCAD set up on my computer. I tried SketchUp, Inkscape and LibreCAD but they nearly drove me crazy compared to Vectorworks which I know fairly well. I ended up getting a 30 day trial for the new version of Vectorworks and I would really like to play around and make a 3D model because I've not used it for that but I doubt I'll get the chance in the next month. Do you know of anyone who's built a scale model of their camp? I really want to build a scale model of our big public shade structure to help with the design process (it's a bit of a custom build) and I kinda figure once that's done I might as well make all the other bits too...

[chuckularone]

I'm a fan of the word tinker (and tinkerer) too. To me the word 'hacker' is being misused by modern tinkers/tinkerers whose vocabulary ends with bad 90's movies.

I lean towards Tinker. As in, "I am a tinker." Tinkerer just sounds silly to me.

[MyDearFriend]

ha, okay, I have been making schwag, like every one else huh? Eplayan voiceinthedarkness did such cool squashed pennies last year, I got him to send me some and I have been making STUFF:



and my dear Puppy has made a takeone-leave one schwag rack, for Barbie Death Camp,that is either a dying Barbie, a woman in ecstasy, or a big penis, depending on how you look at it:



Whaddaya think, pink automotive paint? Thar's quarter-inch steel rod.

[trilobyte]

Very cool stuff, MDF! I think you want to maybe sand it a bit, make the surface slightly scratchy so it'll hold the paint better. Then bike or car paint would work (and look) great.

Tinkerer does sound a little silly, but so does tinker IMO, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. In my head I think of tinker the verb as fiddling around with things, and tinker the noun as a tinsmith. There's no wrong way to use the word in my book though, the retro-futurist/steampunk in me enjoys the use and tweaking of the old-timey language FAR more than the word hacker any day.

Lots of people build scale physical models of their camp, jovankat. And lots of people just draw their camp layout on a piece of paper and make annotations for the size, space, and frontage... and then just snap a picture of that and use it with their submission. It's all about using what you're comfortable out of your available tools.

[trilobyte]

I booked some time on the machine and cut out a few camels yesterday. One of the struggles with something like a CNC router is the issue of dust collection - they make lots and lots of sawdust. The maker space I use had had challenges with that over the years, but finally has a system in place that really rocked and made cleanup a breeze.






I've got more to cut out today, hopefully things go as smoothly as they did yesterday.

[trilobyte]

The second day went off without a hitch, all the cutouts are done except for a little bit of hand-snading where the router wouldn't reach.

[Sunbeam56]

"and my dear Puppy has made a takeone-leave one schwag rack, for Barbie Death Camp,that is either a dying Barbie, a woman in ecstasy, or a big penis, depending on how you look at it:"

Looks like a puppy mask to me...