Firebugs

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Back in the day, women used to get set on fire a lot. There was an extremely unfortunate intersection of dresses getting really big and fluffy with electric light and fireproofing having not been invented yet, so if someone’s dress touched a candle or fire, that was probably the end of her and possibly anyone in the room with her.

I’ve been tempted at times to make Ms. Fire a paper dress, since she’d pretty easily survive burning it off, and it seems like Blindworm and perhaps some other mobile fire sculpture would be good candidates to start the burning. For music… perhaps a waltz, played extra slow, extra loud, and backwards. Now I just need a place to do it, ideally paved.

Not Dead, Also Saw SRL Live

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I went to NYC during the “bomb cyclone” (sounds like something I should build), to see what got billed as SRL’s first gallery show. I did overhear Mark Pauline say they had a gallery show before, in the ’80s, but “fucked that up”. I don’t know if he meant running the show somehow, or destroyed the actual gallery.

Destroying the building is something they could do if they wanted. The video there is the Pitching Machine throwing 2x4s into a lexan bullet trap.

The thing is, they don’t seem like the sorts to destroy a building without asking first. When you first hear what SRL does (make huge machines and stage spectacles of destruction with them), you might imagine that SRL is composed of wild-eyed loonies with a a certain lack of regard for their own health and safety. Reading Kathe Koja’s “Skin”, while amusing, will not incline you to think otherwise.

Seeing them in the gallery running the machines, they seem like very sane, calm people. On thinking about it, this makes sense. People with a heavy inclination to carelessness or self-destruction just… wouldn’t last around these machines.

Also, working on things that can kill you brings perspective. When other things go wrong in your life, you can look at them and be like “Is this going to rip my arm off? No? Ain’t no thing, I can deal with this.”

Kal Spelletech, founder of SEEMEN and now doing his own thing, was also there. The difference between his work and SRL’s is interesting. SRL is deliberately inhuman and inhumane. It’s about machines as themselves, with no human performers, and seemingly little concern for what humans want. Spelletech’s earlier work was interactive with the audience. It made the experience personal and intimate (though possibly still scary). He also has an element of whimsy in his work. SRL may have a kind of humor, but the machines have zero whimsy.

Pallets are bullshit

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Pallets are these wooden frames that go under shit that’s getting shipped and stored in warehouses, to hold it off the ground so you can get a forklift under it. Shit that needs shipping is all sorts of shapes and sizes, and forklifts are pretty much all the same size, so you pack your stuff up into pallet loads and then use a fork lift to load it into big containers.

There are a lot of web pages that claim that pallet wood is good for building stuff that has a sort of “rustic” or “antique” look. This is arguably true, since the wood gets put through hell. Random piles of stuff get heaped on it, people toss it around with forklifts, throw it in containers, and ship it across the ocean in a metal box.

Unfortunately, these claims that you can build crafty crap out of pallets are built on the assumption that you can take pallets apart for their wood. This is not the case. It’s almost like someone designed them to survive international shipping.

Being a cheapskate, I got a couple of pallets, because I want to make a sleeping platform for my shitty, beat-up car. Since pallets are also shitty and beat up, it seemed appropriate.

This guy claims that if you make a pallet pal, you can take pallets apart easily. I didn’t pay for his plans, and my knock-off made it about 2/3 of the way through one pallet before disintegrating. Maybe if I bought the plans I’d have had better luck.

Then I tried making something like this only for not $70. I didn’t spend that $50 on a welder to not weld shit, dammnit.

Yeah, that failed. First the tines of the fork part bent, and once I bent them back into shape, I snapped the weld that held the handle on. Then I welded it back together and bent the handle instead. Turns out, with enough leverage, I can bend 1″ angle iron by hand.

It turns out that even if you can get the pallets apart, getting the fasteners out is a whole other mess. Some of them are held together with staples, some with nails, and something like 100+ fasteners per pallet. They’re not even good for burning, because you end up with hundreds of nails in your burn area.

Bed Frame Steel

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I got a bunch of old bed frames for make total destroy robot frames, and ended up having to drill holes in them. I figured this was mild steel, so HSS bits should cut it, right?

Turns out bed frames are made of some medium-carbon badassery that laughs at HSS bits. Slow speed on the drill press, plenty of oil, and all it does is burn bits. I got it red hot with a torch, let it cool slow, hoping to anneal it, and no dice, it’s still not going anywhere. I had to go up to cobalt steel bits to get through it, and I’m concerned that I fucked that bit too. Angle grinder/cutoff wheels will eat through it, but I’m not going to waste my time with a hacksaw.

Thinking about it, it makes sense to have them be kind-of spring steel. Queen beds sleep two, people can weigh north of 200lbs, so figure 100lbs of mattress and 500lbs of (kind of chunky) people, plus uneven load distribution when someone gets out of bed, and yeah, the bed frame has to be sturdy. Still, this is harder than my car.

On the up side, this means I can make knives out of it (because I totally need another knife).

How can you be so cold!?

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“You’re like a robot!”

“You’re some kind of robot, you don’t feel anything!”

I’ve heard a lot of this sort of thing from my exes. I assume it was meant as an insult.

So I had this idea to make an actual robot, that bumbles around avoiding obstacles, and, every time it has to stop what it’s doing and change direction, it will yell something like “You’re like a robot!” at whatever got in its way.

The first step of building things like this is to fuck up some consumer electronics. I have a Zig Zag Zog toy, which is a little space alien in a saucer that takes off when a kid bops him on the head, and uses forward and upward-facing IR sensors to avoid the kid bopping him again. ZOG is also an acronym for Zionist Occupied Government, which is one of those terms used by people who think Jews are conspiring with Reptile Overlords to corrupt our American Bodily Fluids &etc. It’s an oddly conspiracy-laden name for a space alien kids toy. Start them young, I guess. Zog has the sensors, a couple of lights, differential drive steering, and a speaker. It also has a second speaker connection, which I can only assume is to warn your kids about chemtrails. It wasn’t hooked up to anything.

Anyway, I took Zog off his ship, and pulled the motor control/sensor board. I’ll be using my own control board. The sensors are easy to deal with, they’re just an IR led and a 38kHz IR receiver. Drive the LED at 38kHz, poll the receivers, and see if the LED is lighting anything up. I also removed the upward-facing sensors, since my robot isn’t concerned about toddler-directed death from above.

The head of the robot is going to be a “Memorex” Ipod/Clock radio. It’s comically over-engineered inside, yet junky. There are 5 different PCBs. The main PCB for the FM radio, amp, and clock timing stuff, one for the buttons, one for the Ipod dock, one for the LCD, and one for the IC to drive the LCD (Fucking blob on board on board. Who even does that?). The main board has an audio amp chip, a separate 4-channel audio processor that does stuff like bass/treble and balance adjustment (none of which is available via the interface of the radio), an FM radio IC (these are practically the size and cost of sand now), a DS1302 battery-backed realtime clock, and a SyncMOS 8052 clone with some Flash memory.

So it’s this insane spread of technologies ranging from the 1980s to now. That processor core is older than I am. You’d think with all that gear, it could be… not shit.

Nope!

The enclosure is ported, like bass reflex speakers. The left and right speakers are in the same enclosure. I’m pretty sure that the ports are not tuned, because The Left And Right Speakers Are In The Same Goddamn Enclosure. This is not how you stereo. Not even a little.

Also, if Memorex had anything to do with this, I’ll eat my hat. The model number on the LCD driver (RT-5228) matches a lot of cheap Ipod clock radios from China.

On the other hand, the two speakers and the Ipod slot make the whole thing look a bit like a face, so I’ll let it slide.

Pictures to come when I give a fuck!

Making a Political Machine

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I finally got some time to work on the Trump Death Curse.

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Like most witchcraft, this starts with a nice pine board. You could look up how to make Enochian curse boards, but most of the lumber around the Skullrobo secret lair has enough ill will built up from constantly getting in my way when I’m trying to do other stuff.

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Screw a metal skeleton to it. I have a pile of the damn things laying around, so this bit is easy. It looks all rusty and fucked up because I put it in a fire earlier this summer so it would look rusty and fucked up. Plan ahead, kids!

If you don’t have a pile of metal skeletons, learn to weld. “Get smart!”, as a certain political wannabe would say.

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Tie a lot of twigs to it. I used natural twine, because that’s what I had around. Plastic cord would smell terrible when it burns. Fuse would have been clever, but I didn’t do that, nor did I put a diesel bomb in the chest, because I have no idea when I’m going to finish this, and a diesel leak would be messy.

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Wrap the whole thing in another layer of twine, once you’re done adding twigs. This tightens everything up and makes it look neater. The next step is going to be putting a paper mache shell over the whole thing. I’m going to be lazy and use white paper tape.

It’s actually short and disappointing looking in person, but I hear the real Trump is too, so that’s fine.

Trump Death Curse

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I don’t wear ties a lot, but I have an old one that has the Trump crest on it. It doesn’t suit my personal style, and even if it did… Trump. Ew.

On the other hand, it’s perfect material for a death curse. I figure I can make my own Trump out of newspapers, ugly suits, and the tie; cast a circle; invoke him with money and loop tapes of his political opponents making fun of his dick, and then set the whole mess on fire.

Voting in the elections is more useful, but this is more fun. Certainly can’t hurt… me, anyway.

Why? Why Would You Do Such A Thing?

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SRL was a formative influence. Seemen, ApeTechnology. Mark Setrakian, on Battlebots. Christian Ristow. The Industrial Culture Handbook. VNV Nation. Michael Manning, especially Shaalis and hir constructs (someday!). Kathe Koja’s Skin. Doktor Sleepless. Ars Goetia gifs on Tumblr. That leaf-shredding pointy erector set thing I made as a kid.

Resurrect dead on planet Jupiter!