Gene's Web pages

Welcome to Gene's web pages. Here you will find some of the things that make me tick, and that help keep me out of the bars. That is me & the missus, Dee (Elladene) I self timed on Easter Sunday 2004 as we were leaving for services. She and I have both aged a bit since that pix was taken. She fell and broke a hip in February 2017, and with late stages of COPD, she has not made much of a recovery, so I am doing it all these days. She is even saying thank you for my cooking fairly often.

As a nearly all my life hunter, concerned with maintaining my right to own a gun according to the Constitution of this country and the 2nd Amendment to it, contained in the Bill of Rights, I am greatly concerned that the anti-gunners will in due time, make it impossible to even own a projectile weapon of any kind. The framers of our Constitution and the subsequent Bill of Right knew full well that power corrupts, and the absolute power corrupts absolutely. It is a slow, and corrosive process where they have a need to treat us like frogs, starting with a kettle of cold water and the frog hasn't a clue he is being cooked because the water warms so gradually. Hence the gradual nibbling away of our rights as law abiding citizens, often by criminalizing what was formerly legal, and expected behavior that is guaranteed by the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Because of this continual attempt to throw the constitution under the bus, the 2nd amendment in particular, I will try to make available a freely distributable .pdf at 2nd-amendment.pdf for your reading pleaasure.

I have been working with linuxcnc for quite a while, over a decade now, and one of the things I've done is to make a raspberry pi 3b, one of those credit card sized miniature computers, run a good sized metal lathe. But the odriod that was part of the linuxcnc buildbot was so unstable it was turned off in Sept 2018. That left my Sheldon 11 by 54 (36" between centers) essentially frozen in time. So following the instructions on one of the linuxcnc.org web pages, I have managed to build master, currently at version 2.9.0-pre0 to run on my lathe. Built against a 4.4.4-rt9-v7+ kernel, using the uspace option, on 06/13/2019. linuxcnc uspace for armhf and it might work against other rt-prempt kernels too.

It scares me, should scare you,and convince you that this, and the SOPA/PIPA legislation and who voted for this or the SOPA/PIPA bills, or sponsored them at any point are the biggest threats to freedom in america that have existed so far in our 2xx year history. You MUST vote accordingly this November and deny these people the chance to further their self serving agenda.

I have been a fan of the TRS-80 Color Computer since its 4k of ram days in the early 80's, but it really came into its own element when it had a full 64k of ram and could then run an OS called OS-9. That OS has developed into a faster, more capable OS in the form of nitros9, and some files may be newer than the 3.2.8 release, joydrv in particular.

I have copied some possibly useful things from the coco's hard drive to here.

Should someone find something of theirs that they would rather not have available here, please advise by email, and I will remove the material asap.

I was the Chief Engineer at WDTV-5 from late 1984, now about 99.9% retired as anyone my age now (84) should be. There are a few pix of the old analog NTSC transmitter(s), a 50+ year old GE, and a 30 year old Harris here in txpix.

I also have a small shop in the back yard, and one of its starring machines is a small CNC milling machine, which can be seen in bits & pieces here in the emc but that machine unscrewed one of its ball screws, very small ones and I couldn't locate balls to refill the nut. So its dead, and its computer has been moved to run a gantry style mill, a chinese 6040. Pix eventually. link.

I was just sent a short movie of a new concept to me, of a gear reducer with a 60/1 ratio, a proof of concept made in plywood, by an older machinist that calls himself "Grumpy" on the mailing list, that would appear to beat the daylights out of a bullgear and worm drive for a rotary work holding table. An interesting idea that I might try to do in steel because I need such a critter myself. See the short movie at wooden-gears

A recent addition to the managery of tools is a Rikon 10-325 Band Saw for resawing duties etc. Some additions and modifications to facilitate its precision can be seen bandsaw here.

I'd been threatening to tear down an ageing carport and build an attached garage, and finally got started on that project about the end of June 08. I built it on top of a retaining wall that holds back part of the hill above me, and for which I made a mold to pour the blocks into, 6 at a time, dug out the old walls foundation, laid a french drain behind it, and set a new footer much wider and stronger than the original. The blocks are interlocked at the back like most landscaping blocks, but these weigh in at about 55 pounds each. As near as I can see, it has not moved in the 6 or 7 years since I laid it up. That WAS the general idea. :)

So two of the garage walls are sitting on this retaining wall which you can see coming out of the front on the right side in some pix. In addition, I had a new floor and slab poured in front of the house that raised the garage floor about 6" above the old carport slab, so it should outlast me by 50 years. However as in all things cement related, the question is not will it crack, but when. It took about 90 days for the first hairline cracks to show up.

Insulation and inside finish are done now, so its easy to heat while I am working on carving up a few hundred dollars worth of cherry for an entertainment center. Progress pix before the insulation are here.

Then I'd been promising the missus that I was going to build an entertainment center out of some of the cherry I had been hauling back from our trips to New York and her nieces dairy farm, and that's what I'm doing right now, but I had to start with a decent workbench first.

That entertainment center above led to the next door neighbors asking me to build them a similar but smaller unit, so out of white ash, John and Jenelle's cabinet is a progress report of sorts.

That project disclosed, no surprise, was it ever any different for a woodworker?, that I needed a much better router guide, and of course another router because you never have enough, so a MilesCraft router guide kit, along with a new Skil router joined the toolshed here. But that MilesCraft kit, while it covered the basics, was poorly made and packing inspected as it had a broken clamp bolt I didn't discover till I was home and assembling it. I first added a wooden fence, then used it to do a wide dovetail groove in the ends of the above cabinets top, but it was so flexible and hard to hold in adjustment that I overshot the width of the dovetail and got too loose a fit to suit me. So over the last 2 days it has been rebuilt to do that job a heck of a lot more precisely the next time. Frankly, this is what I should have been able to buy, obviously at a doubled price since quality is never free. See it now at MilesCraft Router Guide rework . Comments embedded in the pix, including miss-spellings.

We had some very high wind on June 24th 2010, taking down 3 of the 5 30 year old trees on our property, and some fencing in addition to all the guttering and the roof being damaged. I am attempting to rebuild some privacy fence here Those panels, assembled from freshly downed native cut poplar weigh about 400 pounds each, which should explain the BIG tripod you can see parts of in some of the pix. That arch over the gate was about 2 weeks worth of sawing, planing to fit and glue-up. But Dee wanted an arch over the gate and I don't generally argue with the boss. See rule number 2 of that famous sign...

10-01-2010: And the rag on the boat shed, a 200 dollar pipe and canvas gizmo, was in pretty bad shape after the wind, and I'm amazed it even survived but it was in the lee of the house so it almost survived. But I'd been putting fresh canvas on it about every other year for about 8 years, so it now has a skin of corrugated plastic roofing, and a cut way down garage door trackage to support a home made door, with a few pictures here

And the entertainment center so far is here in E-Center.

I've placed a few pictures here in pictures.