Flux, Flex, and Other

I had run across this a long time ago, before working for Cynergy… The the other day on a project I had a need to pan, zoom and mask off a component I was using, and Andy reminded me that he had a free ImageZoomer component out on his Cynergy blog.

The component as is zooms an Image, but the code can easily be modified to zoom any other component, whether a built-in Flex component or a custom UIComponent you just made (as was my case). An added bonus is the mouse centric zooming using the mouse wheel, and the fact that it is preset to be ready to use any easing or other effects on the animations.
Anyway, I found it really useful, and as always with Andy’s stuff, it’s top notch. Have at it!

Another thing I wanted to do while we were here, now that I have more space to devote to a workshop, was to watch EBay and Craig’s List to see if I could find any jewels in the area of low priced, high quality tools. I set up my RSS reader to watch the Craig’s List > Charlottesville > Tools feed, and saw a lot of stuff I didn’t want go by every couple of days. I mean, I WANT the propane fueled forklift, but I can’t say I have any real use for it.

Then, one day, there it was. Brand new Delta Tablesaw, still in the box, for $200. I called the guy selling it, and got some details. It was a 1 horsepower contractor saw, pretty much capable of doing anything I would need for the forseeable future. I went to pick it up, and as advertised, the thing was brand new. Tape still on the box seams.

The guy and I hefted it in the back of my car (it weighs about 185 pounds) and I drove it home. I got a neighbor to help me lug it down my basement stairs and set to work assembling it. It took about 2 hours… Last step: bolt on the cast iron extension wings. I put the first one on but the tops did not align. I spun it and tried the other way, but no joy — the mounting holes drilled in the table were drilled at an angle, so the table could not line up flush.

To make many angry phone calls short, Delta told me I could take it to, or ship it at my expense to, their licensed repair center — over an hour drive away. Or I could return it to Lowe’s (did I mention it still had the original Lowe’s bar code on the outside of the box? Nice…)

I had an awesome experience at Lowes. They took the mess of half assembled saw with shredded box and gave me a store credit (since there was no receipt). They no longer stock that saw anywhere, so I upgraded to the 1 1/2 horsepower, bigger, badder saw with a stupendously nice fence system. By returning the saw for the full original sales price, getting a credit back for the sales tax and applying a 10% off coupon I had, I now have a $600 + tax saw/fence package for a total of $400 out of pocket. Sweet.

But wait.

So I repeated the put it in the car (with a forklift at Lowe’s this time — the new one weighs just under 300 pounds), lug it down the stairs (Patty’s folks were in town, so we unpacked it in the car and walked each piece down the stairs), and assemble it routine. This was more complex, so it took about 5 hours. Tables aligned great!

So the other night, I just finished all the alignments and fine tuning (fence to blade, blade to miter track, blade 90/45 to table, etc) and was going to cut my first hunk of maple. Went to raise the blade, turned the dial to raise it and <plink> a worm gear falls out of the bottom of the saw and the blade drops inside with a <thunk>.

So I called Delta, again. This time I got someone better who is going to send a licensed tech to my house to fix all of my issues. We’ll see how that goes, but hopefully soon my shop will be humming with the sounds of a functioning table saw. I’ll keep you posted.

One of the things I wanted to do while we were in Charlottesville was to devote some time to developing my woodturning skill. Although I was really interested in it while we were in Houston, and I had access to a really great woodturning club, my shop was crammed into a tiny space in the back of a not-well-ventilated garage.  It’s hard to be patient and work on slow, steady movements while swatting mosquitoes, squinting in the dim light, and wiping dripping sweat out of your eyes.

Our house here has a great space for a workshop in the basement.  It’s large, well lit, and climate controlled.  I’ve been working to get it ready and organized, and finally last night fired off the lathe and turned something!

What is it, you may ask?  It’s a log.  Turned round.  Into a lot of shavings.  On the floor.  But man, was it nice to get in a little time on the machine.  I’m desperately in need of resharpening all my tools — what I have were sharpened by myself and a variety of other people, using a variety of tools and personal preferences.  My goal is to get all of them sharpened in one consistent manner so that I can vary them from that baseline to find what I like.  Right now, pretty much only my bowl gouge (which is ground more like a spindle gouge, go figure…) is useful, so that’s what I used here.

I have a hunk of black walnut that I bought for a couple bucks at my new club’s silent auction a few months ago.  I’m thinking that it’s going to become my first pepper mill once I get the sharpening and reshaping done!

During my time in Charlottesville, I’m going to try to build the fundamentals of my woodturning skills that I seem to have lost in the last year of insanity / relocation / etc. In the past, I’ve scrounged wood from people that didn’t need it, or bought it at woodturning club auctions, etc.

I met Patty for lunch today, and on my way home saw a tree service in a neighbor’s yard. I stopped and asked if I could swipe a few of the cutoffs that were laying on the ground. The guy said “Well, they were gonna’ … well … [expletive] … go ahead and take some”.

Not sure what “they” were “gonna’”, but now I’ve got two branches and a 12″ wide, 2′ long hunk of red oak trunk to play with.

Fun!

Adobe Max just happened in Chicago this week. I couldn’t go and drink the Kool-Aid, but it was nice of some people to videotape the sneak peeks a the upcoming features of Flash.

I never was a Flash guy - I just couldn’t get my head around the timelines, keyframes, and setting up tweens and such. It was too scattered for me. Looks like some of the new features will help this. But…

Peter Elst posted videos to his blog showing most of the features in development. All of these are cool in some fashion or another, but the author- and runtime- inverse kinematics shown at the end of the Flash Next video is really cool, and is the foundation (that I was missing) of an idea I had a long time ago that should, if my estimates are correct, make me a multi-millionaire.

Sweet. Stay tuned for more at a much later date…

Oh, and the Seam Carving demo is still really cool. You just can’t beat stuff like that.

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