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2025 Apiary Update
I probably should have been more active with my communications, but here we are on July 1st of 2025. We survived the winter and into the new year. One of my three colonies survived, as the other two were dead outs. Those two which perished were open bottom boards and had signs of them trying to propolizing the slatted board shut. The solid bottom board hive came out of winter booming with a huge brood. That overwintered hive was split into the other two hives, which have requeened and have honey supers on them jamming out honey production. We expanded our apiary to an area right on the very edge…
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Honey Season Winding Down
This was our first year of having hives. We loved learning about them a year before and we loved it in practice as well. We started with two nucleus colonies which did very well and grew into two double deep broods with a honey super each. We split the stronger of the two colonies into a third colony. That third colony is still drawing out comb on it’s second deep. And for our finale, we caught a native swarm that liked one of our empty hives. So with a total of 4 hives in our first year we’re very pleased. I only took 3 frames of honey and left the…
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HaLow 802.11ah Field Test – Round 1
Team SunOx finally started field testing HaLow (802.11ah) for range and speed. Here Erik and I are beside our antenna setting up our base station. Patrick is not in this photo who was also part of our test team. The short story is: at .4 miles we were able to steadily transmit about 3Mb. These are not great numbers as we were hoping for twice the distance at twice the speed. Alas this is test one and our Yagi antenna in this configuration could use some mathematical tweaking for efficiency. This is still far better than regular WiFi 802.11ac from your home for distance as they usually are good for…
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SunOx Screecher, solar powered EV
As I mentioned Vandelay Industries has partnered with SunOx earlier this year. When spending some time on the farm with Mr Delorme I had a chance to drive around the Screechers. They are a 100% solar powered golf cart which is about 15mph. Had much fun driving it around! Contact SunOx or myself for more details if your interested.
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Never Forget 9/11
On the morning of September 11th 2001, a normal sunny autumn morning, I was on my way to the office (Fidelity Investments) at the World Trade Center Boston. I was stepping off the shuttle bus from the Subway (Boston refers to the underground transportation as simply the T). I heard the news broadcast announcing the first plane had hit the World Trade Center New York. I was taken aback as stepping off but figured I head wrong or hadn’t sunk in yet. I made my way inside and the trading floor was like nothing I had seen in there before. Usually quiet and traders staring at screens had become a…
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New Partnership with SunOx
I’m proud to announce Art Vandelay has recently established a new partnership with SunOx. SunOx Farming the Sun is the brainchild of none other than David DeLorme of DeLorme Mapping and Garmin handheld emergency devices. David is a neighbor a few miles away and contacted me regarding SunOx. We will be working on future products for agricultural solar powered products in a small team. This involves embedded Linux robotics and radio based communications to accomplish this goal and happy to help out with such esteemed colleagues. Be sure to checkout the videos of the projects underway and their progress! So in addition to the long list of, hey I saw…
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Neatokeen CAD architect feature
A neat new feature in the Architectual software! I use Mitek software daily to design, which now allows me to have the 2D blueprint under my 3D CAD. A mostly useless feature, but just makes it pop and looks cool when aligning my measurements. The little things in life.
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Gail The Snail
This plan went off the rails and totally backfired. Instead of sweeping it under the rug I figured I post it anyhow in it’s full glory. Mary was suppose to roast me, I suggested she throw in a few jabs at my a$$hole cousin and my bad work ethic. She did a great job, but I should have specified that I wanted her in character as Gail with her saliva slurping and HJs under the table jokes. The 9/11 reference of my work history at the WTC didn’t go over well. Check out my resume in the tech subsection if your curious. My fault, she’s a wonderful actress on the…
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Welcome to my WarZone
There is another side of the internet that we don’t see everyday or talk about, the silent war. The keyboard cowboys in the digital wild west. Today I setup a honeypot scanner today and within the first few minutes was able to visualize the constant bombardment internationally. Everyday I got people trying passwords, attempting to exploit me, nosey scanners who just want a peek, botnets trying to get a foothold, etc. These actors are not all bad, but most of them should seriously ask why they are watching me. I installed a honeypot setup called T-Pot which has many options for a network hive of honeypots all collecting data on…
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Heel Analysis
ARCHITECTURE Heel Analysis Methods. When I design heels for a truss, I try to not use more wood than I need. Throwing wood at a problem doesn’t always fix things. For example, I have a slider on this heel as the heels are high. The top chord doesn’t specifically need them for stability or deflection. I have a pinned bearing and I can analyze the heel with a few different methods. In these two illustrations the red line represents the analog of the truss. I analyze with a single analog on the heel and my slider is several feet long as the next joint is the web. In the right…
