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January 4, 2009

Simple Air Cannon

Filed under: Tinkering � Mark @ 7:27 pm

One of my Christmas presents this year was Backyard Ballistics (thanks to John for having it on his wishlist for me to copy). The book itself is kinda simplistic; I wish it went into more detail on how to tweak the projects for good performance, but it does at least give a short list of potential projects and enough background to decide which ones are interesting to you and how likely you are to have to materials on hand or at the neighbourhood store.

The winner for me was the air cannon. PVC is cheap and easy to work with and as it turns out, a simple sprinkler valve gives good enough performance and offers the potential for electronic triggers in the future. So with a general idea of the parts I’d need I headed off to Lowe’s and came back with the following:

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September 6, 2007

Tobin Allen Hoopes

Filed under: Uncategorized � Mark @ 7:42 am

On Wednesday, Aug 29, 2007 at 7:20am Tobin Allen Hoopes was born. Being a week overdue, he was a big baby, weighing in at 9 lbs. 9 oz. and 21.5 inches long. Despite that size, the delivery was short (5 hours) and smooth (easy for me to say). Mom and baby did great and came home the next day.

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March 30, 2007

It’s a BOY!

Filed under: Uncategorized � Mark @ 12:21 pm

People used to wait till the actual birth to be able to declare the gender of their new child, but through the miracles of modern technology, I don’t have to. The ultrasounds today showed quite clearly that the Hoopes name will continue at least one more generation. I’ve posted the other ultrasound pictures even though they are pretty much all the same. I’m not posting the “evidence” shots because, even if it’s just a hazy white blob, posting pictures of my son’s boy parts just doesn’t seem right.

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February 9, 2007

Ultrasounds of Our Newest Family Member

Filed under: Uncategorized � Mark @ 1:14 pm

Obviously I don’t use this blog for much of anything but it does make a handy format for sharing the ultrasound pictures from our pre-natal appointment today. A couple of notes, the doctor was not available to interpret them so we still don’t have an “official” due date but based on the comments of the ultrasound tech, the baby’s size is consistent with 12 weeks which would put the due date right about August 22. Also, the fourth picture was a bonus shot because the foot came through so well. The lower right shows that it measure 0.97cm from x to x.

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March 12, 2006

This Old House

Filed under: Handyman � Mark @ 11:50 pm

The biggest project (or program for you project managers out there) that has occupied my time over the past five years is fixing up the fixer-upper we bought in Nov 2000. All in all I’ve got to say I’m pretty happy with the way it has turned out. There are certainly some things I look at and wish they had been done a little differently, but I can’t tell if other people look at them the same way or if it’s just crafter’s remorse. In any event, here are some before and after shots to give you an idea of just how far our little home has come.

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March 6, 2006

First Post!

Filed under: Journal, Tinkering � Mark @ 3:24 pm

After many a false start on a design from scratch website, I’ve decided to settle for simplicity (at least in maintenance), and go with WordPress blogging software. It looks like it will be easy to post everything from lessons learned from various usefull and not so useful projects to philosophical musings. That in addition to more journal style entries.

It certainly was the simplest way to get such a nice website (Thanks to Vladimir Simovic for the slick template) in such a short time.

Now to see if I actually follow through and post anything…

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