Somehow, my wife and I have manage to share a car for the past five years. This arrangment has worked because we live in a small town, both work at the University, and are attached at the hip. However, I am about to graduate and will need a car to commute. My wife still has about a year before she finishes. It is hard to justfiy getting a second car for her short trip to work. I was ecstatic when she agreed to ride a neighborhood electric vehicle (NEV) into work, provided it met certain cosmetic criteria. My wife is a really good sport when it comes to my unusual habits. She has no shame tailing behind on my Go-Ped electric scooter while I bicycle into work. Her response to this new brainstorm should come at no surpise. The NEV fits her transportation needs perfectly, is inexpensive, low maintenance, and fuel-free. The rules on NEVs are governed by the city you live in. I was extremely disappointed to find the Cities of Champaign and Urbana do not allow them outside of the University of Illinois district.

I have contacted some city council members in hopes of bringing these enviroment- and energy-friendly vehicles to public streets. Below I am documenting the steps we have gone through so far, and will update it as new events occur. I encourage you contact your city council members to support NEVs in your town. This gesture is just a small step in ending our dependence on foreign oil. Thank you and I hope you find the items below useful.

NEV JOURNAL

• (08-12-08) Sheryl called our insurance agent to see if they would insure an NEV. They confirmed that they insure NEVs but at a higher rate than cars due to their lack of safty features and limited availability of replacement parts.
• (08-15-08) I contacted Champaign City Council, whose ordinances define where NEVs are allowed. The e-mail addresses and photos listed on the city council website suggested the members were very appoachable, and I found this to be true. Champaign also has an extensive database that lets users search previous minutes and agendas–an excellent resource for finding existing NEV ordinances.
• (08-18-08) I recieved a reply from a member of the city council saying he was adding NEVs to the agenda. He stated that he personally supports allowing NEVs on public streets but expects opposition for their use outside the University District, and recommends that I e-mail the other council members.
  
• (08-22-08) City council study session schedule approved for next week. Stay tuned.

History:

Iron Hill Brewery & Restaurant opened its first location in Newark, Pennsylvania in 1996 with a team of two award-winning homebrewers and an experienced restaurant professional. Since 1996, they added six more locations in Pennsylvania and Delaware with plans for more. They are among the top 100 brewers in the United States according to RateBeer.com with numerous awards at the Great American Beer Festival, World Beer Cup, and more. Since opening, they have continuously been recognized for both their business practices and quality beer. I went there on August 8th with Maggie, who had heard very good things about the brew-pub.

Beer:

During the summer, Iron Hill offers a “salute to wheat beers.” They have anywhere from 6 to 8 seasonal Weisse beers on tap! These beers are in additional to the 6 house beers that are usually on tap.

I was a bit overwhelmed with the selection, but lucky for me, their cask-conditioned scotch ale called Braveheart (pictured above, right) was just put back on tap–a no brainer. The Braveheart is described as a “Strong Scotch ale, big malty-sweet and complex beer brewed with a Belgian yeast strain to give it a distinct fruity characer,” with OG: 1095, Color: 15, IBU: 30, Alc by Vol: 9.5%. The Braveheart had an extremely full mouthfeel, extremely creamy, and very different from any scotch ale I had tried before, likely attributed to the cask-conditioning–I liked it a lot.

Maggie’s first beer was their rendition of the Belgian Wit (pictured above, left), described as “an Unfiltered Belgian-style wheat beer. Pale in color and light-bodied yet very complex. A distinct yeast and the use of spices give it a fruity citrus flavor that is very refreshing,” with 4.4% Alc by Vol. It had a very floral lemony taste that was very light an refreshing. She really liked it and I imagine it would taste great with seafood, but it didn’t quite last till then.

I wanted to get a taste for their standard house beers (though that decision was tough given all the great Weisse beers), so I tried their Vienna Red Lager. This lager is described as “an amber Austrian lager has a distinct bready malt aroma and flavor, followed by a crisp, clean finish typical of lager styles. The nose also shows plenty of the spicy hop aroma contributed by the use of Saaz hops,” with OG: 1.054, Color: 13, IBU: 25, Alc by Vol: 5.0%. It poured a copper color and has a very slight hoppy aftertaste. It was a little better than your average lager, but I wasn’t blown away by it.

Maggie’s second beer was another seasonal Weisse, the Munich Helles described as “German-style pale lager, AKA “Lodestone Lager”, is a malt-accented beer with a touch of spicy hop aroma, and a crisp, clean finish,” with OG: 1046, Color: 4.5, IBU: 25, Alc by Vol: 5.0%. Maggie said it had a nice full pleasant taste, but probably preferred the first beer more.

Given the relatively numerous Iron Hill Brewery locations, it was clearly evident they have not lost focus on producing quality beer, even at their newest location in Lancaster.

Food:

Iron Hill Brewery is the first brewpub I’ve been to where I’ve seen people order just food and not beer; the food was excellent. The menu was very extensive, ranging from $10 burgers to very nice seafood dinners. I was originally going to get pizza, but Maggie talked me into the pan-seared shrimp and scallops, which came in crabmeat, asparagus, leek and tomato fricassee in napa valley chardonnay cream. I’m glad she talked me into it. It was so good that I’d be tempted to order it again if I went back, but my opinion might have been tainted by the Braveheart I’d had earlier.

Maggie had the Summer Traditional New England Lobster Bake special, which came with 1 and 1/4 pound steamed lobster, littleneck clams, Prince Edward Island mussels, corn on the cob, fingerling potatoes, and drawn butter and lobster broth. While she enjoyed it, she didn’t think it was particularly spectacular.

Atmosphere / Service:

Iron Hill Brewery in Lancaster is located across the street from Franklin and Marshall College. Inside, the brewery is very large with lots of tables, fairly close together. I called for a reservation around 4:00 PM on a Friday and no reservations were available. I was told to call back a half hour before I got there for call-ahead seating. I called around 6:00 PM for a 6:30 PM arrival and was seated within 10 minutes from arriving–not bad. They also offer walk-in seating, but I imagine that’d be a significant longer wait time. Inside, it was a very comfortable well-lit restaurant.

We were both kind of taken by surprise when the manager offered us another round of drinks on the house after he brought out our food. He apologized for our food taking so long to come out, however, we barely even noticed the half hour wait time. Regardless, we opted to have our previously round credited, as we were already on our second round and had to drive home. It was a nice treat. As a new location across from a college, I’m sure they were trying to “spread the word” to the college community.

Final Thoughts:

I really enjoyed our trip to Iron Hill Brewery; it’s definitely a brewery worth visiting. I would’ve given anything for a brewery like Iron Hill across the street when I was getting my undergrad. Both their beer and their food are excellent. I look forward to going to back to the brewery any (and every) time I visit the area.

Rating - 4/5 

I just finished working on my final Engineering Week video at Bucknell. Just like last year, each major must create a video that embodies engineering in their specific discipline. The video is the highest rated event, culminating a week of intense competitions between engineering majors. All the points prior to the video are tallied and announced at the Engineering Dinner; a fancy dinner with all the engineers, faculty, and some alumni. Then, at the dinner the videos are screened and winner announced.

This year, our major’s video remade and tailored classic TV Show themes songs to Electrical Engineering. The songs included: Happy Days, The Brady Bunch, Gilligan’s Island, Cheers, and Knight Rider. There was a lot of creative talent involved, as reflected in the film’s quality. As a result, the Electrical Engineers not only won 1st place for the video, but also brought home the golden hammer by winning 1st place in the whole competition. Most of the entries from this year are available here. Below is the Electrical Engineers’ submission for Engineering Week 2008.

Making Bode a miniature omelet proved to be too much fun. Ever since then he’s had a few very merry “un-birthday” breakfasts composed of miniature versions of whatever we eat on Sunday mornings, usually pancakes.

I’m posting the proof to follow-up on Brett’s request. You can’t really tell, but it’s a banana pancake with peanut butter chips, and it’s still warm! Is he spoiled? Maybe.

 

This article is a follow-up to my previous article to detail how I created my stop-motion film “Passing By.”

1. Choosing Your Subject

   This part is fairly subjective. For stop-motion films, just about any subject can be entertaining in stop-motion, but in limited quantities. Harping on the same location or subject for a long period of time will bore the viewer. I consider the jerkiness of stop-motion is best suited for fast paced themes. For instance, in “Passing By,” rather than dwell on the train for an extended period of time, I have it interspersed throughout the film. You’ll be able to get a better feel for this when you get to the editing stage.

2. Taking the Photo

   Your camera should be set to continuous (burst fire) mode, which depending on your camera and storage card speed, can offer 1.5 to 5 frames per second. Make sure you set your camera to manual exposure at a consistent exposure level. Nothing is more distracting than having the exposure change from one frame to next, a couple times a second. This may also entail avoiding natural light if you’re shooting multiple scenes indoors, as the change in daylight will seem amplified.

   If you wish to make your film in widescreen and your camera does not support it, don’t worry, the photo can always be cropped later—simply keep this in mind when you take the photo. I set the camera’s resolution to maximum possible, so if I wanted to do some cropping, the final image could still reach my target resolution of 1920 x 1080.

3. Editing the Photos

   This is the most crucial step to making your stop-motion look professional. Every single frame in “Passing By” was heavily edited before importing into the NLE. While this may seem like a daunting task, batch processing in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom makes it a breeze. Since each scene has approximately the same levels and lighting, each scene could be batch processed as a whole. I applied the desired settings to one photo from a scene, and then copied the settings to the rest of the photos in the scene. The process was repeated for each scene in the film. Below is a demonstration on how I batch processed the photos from the NYC scene.
   
   
   Lightroom Batch Processing Demonstration (Click for High-Resolution Video)

4. Importing into a Non-Linear Editor (NLE)

   This step is really going to depend on what NLE you use; I used Sony Vegas Pro 8. Before I even had a song picked out, I imported all the photos into Vegas. Then I pre-rendered all the footage (at very high video quality) with no audio, and then re-imported it back into Vegas. I did this simply because my computer played a rendered video better than thousands of pictures in the timeline. From this continuous video file, I created a bunch of sub-clips for each scene. Subdividing each scene into its own clip allowed me to put the scenes in any order and trim them as needed.

5. Editing

   This step is also fairly subjective. If you plan to use music, you should choose your song prior to editing. Choosing your song beforehand will allow you to edit based on natural divisions in the song (i.e. to the song’s beat). In “Passing By,” the first scene establishes a particularly length coordinated with the song. If you tap your foot, it’s about eight beats. Each subsequent scene is the same or a multiple of the first clip’s length, for example, the first train scene is sixteen beats. This allows you to maintain a desired consistency in throughout the film. Experimentation is key, try different songs, different orders, etc. until you get a feel for the direction you want.

6. Rendering

   I rendered the project at 1920 x 1080 progressive at 15 Mbit/s using the H.264 codec, as it’s pretty much the standard for HD video. I rendered the audio using PCM uncompressed, as I was had a FLAC source.

Click here for the results. Hope this is a good starting point for many of you. Reply with your results or some comments/questions.

This morning Grant was cleaning out some green peppers. He found a surprise: a fully-formed, miniature green pepper growing inside of one of them!

So we took pictures.

The tiny pepper was cute, and I regretted having to cut it open. However we felt compelled, in the name of scientific discovery, to check if there was yet another green pepper growing inside. There was no nested pepper, but it did have seeds that were about the size of grains of salt!

Today our dog Bode, the mascot of PitelSpot,  celebrated his 10th birthday. That makes him 70 in dog years, therefore he is now officially retired, and about old enough to be my grandfather.  To celebrate the occasion I decided to make him a nice breakfast of a few of his favorite ”people foods.” I must admit that making a tiny cheese omelet was fun. The pop can is for scale. Naturally the whole process was documented.

He was also given two of his other favorites: orange slices and cooked green peas. I cut everything into tiny pieces since he practically inhales anything that is not dog food. Of course he is not normally allowed to eat from the table–this is a special occasion. And although I know he has no problem with getting on the kitchen table when we are not home, he actually hesitated to eat his small feast with us around.

Here you can see him eyeing the omelet. Once he built up the courage to start eating, the omelet was gone so fast that I did not have the opportunity to photograph him enjoying it. After the omelet was done he moved on to the peas, and a number of them “escaped” while he was eating.

Finally he finished with the oranges, and after the plate was spotless, he cleaned off his place mat.

 

The best part was that when he was done, he actually wiped his paw on the napkin!

Battery Selection

Battery life is often measured by cycle life, the number of full charge/discharge cycles before the battery reaches 80% of its original capacity. Keeping the discharge current relative to the battery’s amp×hour capacity low and the discharge shallow improves battery longevity. Typical 12 V sealed lead acid (SLA) cells, like the ones found a Go-Ped, can be cycled 300 times. Here are a couple of tips about buying replacement batteries. Manufactures that do not advertise cycle life are probably not worth buying from, as they may use lower quality materials. Also, be wary of vendors that claim their cheaper batteries are “replacements for” and “perform similar to,” yet have no datasheets to back up these claims. As it turns out, Best Batteries (B&B) provides lots of data about their batteries, and come stock with Go-Ped Scooters. The ESR 750 contains B&B HR-9 batteries intended for high-discharge rates. The replacement battery should have the same width and length but a taller height and also be designed for high-discharge rates and high cycle life. Below is a summary for three different batteries meeting this size and discharge rate profile. All the data was taken from datasheets on the B&B website. I decided to get the EVP12-12 which I purchased locally from Brandt Services Inc. in St. Louis, Missouri, which had excellent customer service, reasonable prices, and dirt cheap shipping. The discharge rate was calculated from the Go-Ped’s specified distance, max speed, and from the stock battery’s discharge characteristics.

Scooter Cavity Extension

The Go-Ped scooter base needs modification if it is going to accommodate the larger batteries.  Much inspiration came from user Goped19 on GopedNation and battery discussions on V is for Voltage Forums.  The height was increased by stacking additional wood boards that mimicked the original base. I purchased one 24×24×0.75 inch thick piece of plyboard and drew two outlines using the original base as a template. Drill a large hole into each board and the cut the outline with a jigsaw, as shown Fig. 1.

Fig. 1 Cutting the outline

The boards were stacked, carefully aligned, then locked into position with aluminum tension wire. The board’s height makes straight drilling difficult. Use a drill press to make mounting holes. When the holes are done, the boards can be clamped together with a screw, nut, and washer. This is handy for keeping boards together when sanding the edges with a belt sander a wood file, as shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2 Cleaning up the woodwork

Finally, I connected batteries as outlined in a previous post and screwed down the board with 3.5 in. long, 0.25 in. dia., 20 count thread screw. The first trip to work was 3.8 miles with a 170 lb payload in econo-mode. I arrived with 60% remaining capacity according to the state-of-charge versus terminal voltage chart found in technical manual on the B&B’s website.

If you are reading this post, you probably are experiencing decreased range and speed on your Go-Ped electric scooter. I too have experienced these problems, but I am going to share some solutions I came up with. I purchased a Go-Ped ESR-750 scooter this summer for transportation in Mountain View, CA for a summer internship. I rode that scooter every day to work on turbo-mode, which was about two miles. At the end of internship, I could not even get to work on econo-mode, and when I returned home I junked the batteries to lighten the shipping cost. Later, I modified my scooter to fit a larger pack size.

Two months into the internship I could not get to work any more. I opened the scoot scooter top to find 4 sealed-lead-acid (SLA) batteries with a pack configuration shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1. Stock Go-ped battery pack configuration.

From previous work I did with laptop batteries, I learned that manufacturers typically tie together parallel cells such that they form a pack similar to the one shown in Fig. 2, Step 4, which has two advantages. First, it halves the number of sensors that measure voltage. Measuring two voltages, one across B_1A and another across B_2A is essential for determining when to end charge and discharge, major factors that affect battery life. Unfortunately, the scooter model only measured the stack voltage, the total voltage across B_1A and B_2A. The second advantage is that it provides a balancing effect. If a cell becomes weaker, the adjacent cell gives it charge. Having cells reach end-of-charge and discharge in unison is the most beneficial situation. After two months my batteries were significantly damaged. I parallel tied my batteries, which allowed them to die more gracefully and it also gave me about 20% more range, both which helped me get to work and back until the end of the summer.

Fig. 2. Steps to extend Go-Ped pack configuration

IMPORTANT: Do not reconfigure the battery pack if you do not know what you are doing, and expect to void your warranty too. However if you want to take preventive measures follow these steps.

STEPS TO MODDING GO-PED BATTERY PACK

1. Find a well ventilated area to work in.
2. Disconnect the scooter from the charger and open the board with a torx screw driver.
3. Remove the four quick-connects at the top and bottom of the batteries.
4. Remove the two metal tabs that connect B_1A to B_2A and the one that connect B_1B to B_2B.
5. Create a wire harness that replaces the function of the metal tabs and will tie together the cells.
   1. You will need two short pieces of stranded 12 AWG wire and four yellow T2 female quick connect terminals and one long 18 or 22 AWG.
   2. Strip the wires and crimp both an the 18 AWG and the 22 AWG terminal into the same terminal.
   3. Crimp the other terminals so that the harness forms an H shape.
6. IMPORTANT: you must balance parallel batteries before you connect them together. Otherwise you will cause a spark and damage your batteries.
   1. Connect small resistors, about 100 Ω, between parallel batteries, and let them balance for a few hours.
7. Once balanced you can proceed to reconnect your pack.

The final connected harness should look something like the one in Fig. 3.

Fig. 3. Completed wire harness

Once you have made these modifications to you scooter there are some other life extension options to consider. Re-configuring the pack was a simple form of cell balancing, where charge moves between adjacent cells. There are commercial active cell-balancing products such as BattEQ and Power Cheq that moves charge from different levels of a stack. Check your scooter dimensions for free space. Another option is higher quality, larger capacity batteries. Ultimately I choose the last option, which I will discuss in another article and describe other scooter modifications.

UPDATE:
My wife and I have been able to get a couple rides into work this summer. We have been very happy with the new pack. I am able to ride 5 miles to work all on turbo mode . I measured the pack once, which indicated that this distance depletes the pack by 50%. I live in Illinois, which is as flat as you can get. I recently added some packaging foam around the batteries as the bigger batteries were causing a lot of road vibration. This easy mod made our rides a lot more comfortable.

My chain was starting to get stretched out from use. I tried to use my bike chain tool to remove some links, but Go-Peds chains are much smaller. I the bought the chain tensioner add-on for the scooter which works like a charm. Looking back, I should have built my own. $40 for a piece for plastic is a bit pricey.

A few years ago my wife Sheryl and I were very involved with freshwater fish.  In our 120 gallon show tank we had what are refered to as the “King of the Freshwater Fish,” the Discus.  A couple of our discus are shown on the left.  One of the greatest pains in maintaining a Discus tank is their finicky appetites.  Every week we found ourselves going to Sailfin pet store to pickup bloodworms (misqutoe larvea) just to get them to eat.  This was not only inconvenient and expensive, but somewhat gross. 

I started researching culturing my own Discus food.  Some people culture bloodworms by taking a filled baby pool and sprinkling some grass clippings.  That idea was immediatly shut down by the boss (A.K.A Sheryl) and I was back to the drawing board.  Later I read online that some people feed their Discus earthworms or earthworm flakes, which are high in fat and protein content, to help Discus grow.  An indoor compost pile provides a steady source of worms and also serves as a repository for kitchen waste.  I will discuss how we made an indoor compost pile by recollecting the steps we went through.

Step 1 - The Container
Any plastic container will do, it all depends on how many worms you intend to keep.  Some compost retailers sell containers specific to composting with multiple trays.  I built my own by stacking multiple containers, however I have only used one so far.   I recomend purchasing a plastic tub along with another tray that the tub can fit into.  Drill small drainage holes into the bottom of the plastic tub, and the tray will catch the drain fluid.   

Step 2 - The Worms
For the worms we choose red worms (species Eisenia fetida).  They can consume their own weight in food every day, reproduce quickly, and are readily available on Ebay.  The worms tolerate between 40-90 degrees F, consider this and your climate when ordering.

Step 3 - Worm Care
 The worms need biodegradable bedding that distributes moisture and eventually becomes worm food.  The most cost effective option is paper from the office shredder.  Remember to explain your noble intentions to the secretary, they might get suspicious.   Keep your worm box in a dark, warm place. We keep ours in a closet near our water heater.  Finally, you will need to feed your worms.   We give ours spoiled vegtables and fruit. For aromic reasons, avoid anything with lots of protein (meat, eggs, and fish) .