tarte maison aux prunes reine claude et rouge et banane

"fraichement" sorti du four : miam

réparation de la corrosion bas de portière et garde boue xantia de 1998

Comment:
La petite pièce en plastique qui bouche le trou d'accès (inutile) à un espace clos dans le bas de caisse avait une craquelure et donc permettait aux projections d'eau de la route d'entrer et de faire rouiller la carlingue. j'ai coupé une tôle en aluminium à la même taille que le trou et j'y ai foré des trous en périphérie pour permettre à la résine de mieux tenir accrochée (un conseil avisé d'un vieux singe). Avant d'appliquer la résine, j'ai utilisé une foreuse munie d'une brosse métallique pour enlever la rouille déjà bien présente.
La résine de polyester utilisée est armée de fibres de verre pour une meilleure rigidité.

Sous la portière arrière, il y a un sérieux défaut de conception. Malgré maintes retouches à l'antirouille, la rouille continue de se former. Lorsqu'en voulant gratter la rouille avec un tournevis, je suis passé au travers de toute la paroi, je me suis dit que peut être l'antirouille ne serait plus suffisant cette fois. la tôle sous-jaçante était bien endommagée et trouée mais a malgré tout pu servir de support après brossage.

Le trou rebouché par la résine. phase 1.

j'ai par la suite décide de gratter un peu plus et de renforcer un peu plus à la résine.

bug: mamba max pro firmware 1.29 - torque limit test fails on "crawler" setting.

for firmware 1.29 on castle mamba max pro ESC:

- the motor torque limit test does not work when the basic/reverse type setting is set to crawler reverse and the drag brake is set to 213% (full crawler). Not sure though if both settings are responsible for the bug. The motor would not spin at all and the red and green led light up steady (test running indicator), this means there is a bug according to the info i have. Upon the next connection, the program detects the run was a success, which i highly doubt actually was. The test failed. i tried 3 times re-setting up the mamba max pro for the test with crawler settings. then i switched to the reverse type "with reverse" and 0% drag brake and the torque limit test ran normally.
Note that firmware 1.28 detected a reasonnable kv value for my motor (7582 kv/low timing for a "7700kv" brushless motor),

Suggestion:
it would be also nice for future firmwares/programs to keep the result of the motor torque/kv test displayed in the window of the torque limit setting. I would also suggest if possible to have the option to manually enter the KV value of the motor for a given known motor timing so that people that know the result of the test would not need to physically run the test again and again when needed. (why not as a "pro mode" activated when a box is ticked ? or with a choice of motors commercially available with pre-entered caracteristics?)

how to open a locker without the key?

Somebody lost the last key of the locker of his bike, so the only solution: brute force of science.



we dumped the 15€ dead locker into liquid N2 ...

the funny thing is i did not expect it to break where it broke, i was hitting what i though was more fragile: the cable connection, but nonononono i broke the hook fixation!

reading comments online, i realised that this type of locker can be cracked with a pen, or twisting it until it breaks. it seems "D" locks are more difficult to crack.

To follow in our next science test...

method for data preparation: running MONSA (Hamburg ATSAS) on SANS and SAXS data

i finally managed to start MONSA with the SAXS data from ESRF ID14EH3
here is how to proceed to prepare the data .dat files:
-1- subtraction of baseline with correction in excel /cut noisy area ( >3.4 nm^-1), normalise max. intensity to 1.
-2- create a .dat file with 2 columns with saxs data (>1300 points)
-3- run GNOM (hamburg ATSAS program package)
-4- edit the .out in excel to keep only the 2 first columns of data. (1300 points shrink to 447 points that monsa can digest)
-5- make it a .dat file. (ascii tabulated separated .txt to rename .dat)

if you use the .dat file from step 2, you will soon have the error that the "Abscissa is out of range" after starting the run. This medhod prevents it from happening.

lac de Pierre-châtel (Laffrey)

nice day :)
i swam the yellow line (see picture) both ways or 2x0.50km=1km without touching the floor waaaw
nice cause there is no need to to backwards every 10 sec like in a swimming pool

the worse bike pedal removal ever!

You can nowadays find lots of replacement pieces in the stores, most of which are good quality, but sometimes you buy rubbish without knowing, even when you pay the price.... an example: bike pedals for mountain bikes. life expectancy for daily with a man: 1.5 year. not more. people will say that i am raugh... but maybe not that much knowing that the original pedals of the new bike held 15 years. it was in metal, not plastic.

this pedal was very stuck on the bike shaft that i broke a few spanners getting it out. I really though i would never get it out after breaking 2 spanners. Then i had the clever idea (what else could it be?) to dig the metal around the edges to free the tension of the metal. It worked! ouf but the last 2 spanners broke under the power of my legs as i was already able to unscrew, it was so rusty. i had to finish with an ajustable spanner (not shown).

spanner 's cost of the operation: 2.4+3€ (new platic pedals = 4 euros)

I shall remember to always apply grease on those screws in the future, it avoids lots of trouble some years later.

réparation des charbons du ventilateur d'habitacle de citroen xantia (pulseur d'air)

J'ai découvert pourquoi malgré le fait qu il reste de la substance aux charbons du ventilateur valéo de ma citroen xantia, le ventilateur avait un fonctionnement erratique, parfois refusant de démarrer/ventiler ou en faisant un bruit curieux et ce surtout lors de conditions climatique particulièrement humides:
- Le cordon en cuivre tressé du charbon poussé par le ressort dans le couloir de coulissement est simplement arrivé en butée du trou de passage. en passant le fil tressé dans le ressort, il est encore possible d'éviter de remplacer les charbons mais je doute que ça fonctionne très longtemps. Autant remplacer les charbons directement. J'ai utilisé des charbons d'alternateur retaillé ( ca prend 3 min max. sur une lime)

http://www.serial-kombi.com/-charbons-d-alternateur-la-paire-N33878.html
j 'ai payé 12 euros pour 4 charbons ( accolés 2 a 2 dans le montage final) dont 6 euros de frais de port au lieu de 100-250 euros pour un nouveau ventilateur :)

et c'est reparti pour un moment, mais pas trop car les collecteurs en cuivre du moteur sont fort usés déjà et le ventilateur ne fera plus 255000km à nouveau!

-----
-Pour déposer le ventilo:

• (1) Démonter le soufflet d'étanchéité du connecteur
• (2) Pousser le caoutchouc vers l'axe central en tirant légèrement sur cet axe vers le haut, le faire pour les trois caoutchoucs en fait ce sont eux qui tiennent coincés tout l'intérieur du ventilateur avec le fond.
• (3) Pour les charbons il y a juste le petit clips et le ressort à sortir

(http://blog.passion-tarn-et-garonne.info/index.php/post/2008/12/20/Pulseur-d-aire-xantia-qui-me-joue-des-tours)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Réparation des faux contacts de la lampe d'habitacle de Citroën Xantia:
Les lampes d'intérieur de la voiture s'allumaient de manière erratique depuis quelque temps et j'avais pensé que le problème était dû à de l'oxydation sur les contacts des lampes. en regardant un tout petit peu plus près j'ai remarqué que le plastique du support du socle de la lampe avait un tout petit peu fondu et par conséquent la force exercée sur les contacts pouvait varier énormément. Cela est donc la cause des faux contacts.
Il suffit de percer plusieurs trous dans la carcasse du support de la lampe et d'y insérer un fil ainsi qu'une visse pour le fixer. (voir figure ci-dessous)

il suffit de tordre le fil de fer avec une pince pour le tendre et ainsi favoriser le contact électrique.
:)

bad bug: castle mamba max pro firmware 1.27 & 1.28

i have a castle mamba max pro linked to 27T brushed motor in the reversed brushed mode on a rock crawler (wheely king), ESC crawler mode, 213% drag brake crawler full on, crawler reverse, etc....
when programmed with firmware 1.28 :

1 - connection with the field link by itself (not usb) makes all the lights of the field link flash in a funny way.
2 - running the system yields a random loss of control in both forward and reverse throttle positions. randomly while playing, the esc makes the small car suddenly run +/- 50% power constant and can NOT be stopped remotely by any other means than turning power off.
The first time this happened the car ran straight to a wall and damaged some gears as i heard it "screaming & ticking", quite unpleasant .
of course i know these are beta firmwares (1.28 & 1.27) and that there are surprises but that one really was a good one!! a ghost remote control car running in my room!!! aaaaahhhhh

i rolled back to firmware 1.26 for use with brushed motor due to these problems and the device seem to run normally as before.

Firmware 1.28 with the brushless 7700kv does not have the same bug. i just noticed the new feature that allows to limit the output power to 100-10% yields a problem of proportionnality, the lower power you command would have a gap of reactivity which can be quite important. more generally, the lower speeds of the motor are not proportionnal at all with the device. it suddenly jumps whatever the settings of power management.

summer holidays 2010

i joined Sarah in Nashville first,
moving sarah s stuff to a storage area as she ll be abroad for a stage next school year. wow girls really have a ton of stuff!

Lexington: Sarah was meeting her grand mother as she was around
then we left to the cave run lake area, swam at the proximity of the dam





randonnée in the dam area...

king s island:

we did the aquapark this time and there are some really nice things there, amongst which a surf area with a small board and it is fun! particularly to see the chirldren be thrown away by the strenght of the water. despite that i managed to stay on the wave 20-30 sec which is more or less the allowed time :)

3,2,1, flyaaaaaaahhhhh


On my last day in usa i had to pick up a rental car in Lexington airport. good thing to know about Lexington airport is that they don t actually have a Budget Desk at the airport, their idea is to gat people in a bus to their closest rental office, 15 min away from airport by car. not a good thing if you chose the airport as the pick up location because your host lives closer to the airport than the other pick up desks shown on the map! "That s a loss of my time".

i had planned to spend the rest of my holidays in belgium to see the baby of my sister.
on my way back to france, i got one of the last train i think in Ottignies to Bruxelles, as i just got in Bruxelles, they said " en raison des mauvaises conditions climatiques, la liaison bruxelles ottignies est interrompue.... " yaaaay for me being lucky
my sister smsed me that there were mini tornadoes, strong winds. Tree had fallen in many places.
turns out that the weather was really bad in belgium as i left, trees fell on the train lines after i passed it and also in the neighbourhood of my parent s house! it rained 75L/m^2 in some places... which is 3 times more than what falls in the entire july month in belgium.
and people make fun of me when i take trains too early... ;)

The Thalys was 35 min late and i only got 35 min to go to gare de lyon for my connection train, which took me 25 min, so i made it 10 min earlier yaaay!

In grenoble, i grabbed my bike in the station ( was still there yaaaay). PS for later, make sure the tyres are very well inflated when i leave, so it will have enough for when i come back.

working on the pool side - Murphy's law applied

This is a beautiful day. i am sitting on a transat in the shadow of a cherry tree 5 m away from the swimming pool's edge.
All is very calm, birds sing, bees zezeyent, suddenly i hear the cleaning robot making a funny noise, but i don t see it.
Ironically i whisper these words: " i am going to get wet hehe"
5 seconds later there is this spray of water that reaches me and the papers i am reading....
i was in the only shadow spot, how much chances were there for this to happen? stupid cleaning pool robot grrrr

what a funny week, i won a small flashlight at work, and broke an expensive quartz cuvette for the first time in my life and now that! pfff

Eléonore est née :)

j'ai tenu une petite fille de 1 jours dans mes bras!
53cm, 3.3kg, c est vraiment mignon

SAXS - Primus - plot bug solution is so simple!

i had problems plotting SAXS data in PPRIMUS (ATSAS) for the last 4 years and i finally found the uttermost ridiculous solution: after the saxs data had been normalised in excel/openoffice and converted back in ASCII text, the most stupid bug kept banning me from plotting and calculating Guinier Rg (radius of gyration): it only plotted a 1D graph = line, not very usefull. (and where sasplot plotted it fine in 2D)

in Primus: open the file, just press merge, then only select the merged file, then press plot, then press Guinier.

ABRACADABRA!

Italy march 2010 with Sarah :)

index:

Verona - Sirmione (Lago di Garda) - Venezia - Firenze (cathedral, bridge on the Arno, ...) - Pisa - Lucca

visit to the baby of Phil and Sirley

resto with Trevor, Rachel and Estelle, Anton

Les 7 Laux

----------------------------------------------------


panoramas:
http://picasaweb.google.fr/mczouav/SarahItalieMars2010?locked=true#slideshow/5459339024533272306

videos
1 ère Partie



2 ème Partie

new crazy toy - Wheely king

setup:
-hpi wheely king
-7700kv brushless motor + Mamba max pro castle creations ESC.
-5000 mAh Lipo battery 20C (100 A max continuous)
- stock pinion is 21 teeth gear (not optimal) but the motor heats up considerably (so i ordered some 15-14 teeth pinion to see how it behaves)
it does wheelies all the time on grass and rocks and really goes fast! i don t think i dared to use maximum power yet.
the runtime varies a lot depending on the surface: 19 min on grass and 28 min or rocks only. with the lowest motor timing setting on the ESC (electonic variator, supposedly to decrease motor heating and increase run time)

onboard measured GPS speed (brushless):

it does not look very fast but it is. i could not even push the power to the maximum cause it was bouncing too much already at 1/2 throttle power. The max. speed measured on grass by onboard GPS is 35 km/h (not maximum speed on the throttle).

other setup:
i tried also the 27Turn high torque brushed motor given with the truck but it goes very slow and is quite noisy with my old 40 Amp electronic variator from 2002.

WATCH OUT
if you have the Mamba max pro esc: the stick programming in brushed mode does not work on the version below 1.25 firmware! it needs an update:
http://www.castlecreations.com/downloads/frh-mamba_max.html
and i discovered it at my own expenses: i tried to program it with the stick and it stayed in brushless mode with a high torque brushed motor on... at the end of the programming, the ESC initialised and gave strong pulses to the motor that probably damaged the transmission's gear set!!! cause it broke dead when i replaced the brushless motor later on.

----------------old post:---------------------

here s a comment from a guy who baugh a similar setup than me.

"bought the 6900 system..............WOW. It goes 30+ (mph) with 6 cells at 22/93 and is totaly controlable. Not to many wheelies, as you guys mentioned, but lots of intense power and speed. I got 40+ minutes of runtime with a 3900 mAh battery pack and the motor didn't even brake a sweat. Great investment."

"The 7700Kv motor lets it all hang out for 6 cell or 2s lipo bashing and racing. On 6 cell NiMH the 7700Kv motor turns an easy 45mph in standard 10th scale buggies and trucks with standard gearing. With 2s lipo packs, you can expect 50mph for very large tracks or high speed runs."

i ll have a 5000mAh battery and a 7700 rpm/volt brushless motor (equivalent to 5 Turn loops, 100A current consumption max., +/- 390watt max. @ 7.4 volts (power's law not totally respected here (V . A = W).
it will get my hair disordered!
i can't wait to receive it this spring!

how i fixed the cd on mini stereo sony MHC-C50

Sony MHC-C50
After 15 years i received it, the cassette deck A stopped working and i had more and more trouble getting the 5 CD trays to load a cd and read it without giving it a kick on the side to load.

The big problem with those old machines that have a lot of mechanics is that the electric motors are linked with the gears with a rubber. The latter really suffering with time.

i had to completely dismantle the 50 or more screws to disassemble the rack containing the cd tray system.

In the middle:
the huge big terrific cause of the problem: the rubber which obviously slid and did not transfer the movement to the mechanism loading the cd on the laser trolley and rotation motor. I simply added a cheap rubber to it. It is a cheap solution and i have no idea how long the rubber "caoutchouc" is going to stay intact with the ozone in the air.
of course the location of the problem was hard to reach. i had to remove the cd rack and connectore and so on and it involved removing and replacing more than 50 screws.



the cassette deck A is more difficult to fix cause the rubber got itself wrapped on itself and got stuck. trying to rotate it i broke it. i did not fix it now cause the rubber is a special band.

the cd player works now :)

train modelling - HO scale- electrically controlled cabin doors (a new invention - Copyright mczouav)

i had an idea... accidentally, when i had the mechanical pieces of a "broken" machine in my hands. I always liked to have a look at mechanical pieces patially dismantled de visu because it is sometimes quite ingeniously designed. Suddenly BANG! light turned on. that was the beginning of several hours of "pure adaptative creativity" :)

Here is the final result.
Try to guess what is the mechanical part i used to command the motion of the doors of the steam engines models cabin (obvious even if you are not a geek... a clue? it used to read dvds).



The motor is linked to a 1/2 W resistor of 470 Ohm (+/-) and a stabilised 12VDC power source with a simple polarity inverter switch (with neutral position stable).
the connection to the doors is made by nylon fishing wire. Each door is pushed open by a pen spring. The spring was stuck into a piece of polypropylene or polystyrene pushing the spring into the plastic with a hot iron.

- rotating bridge with an engine house with moving parts video -



Homemade automagic electric door opening of model train anger - rotating bridge for model train in action with 4 steam engines moving. movement of the machines is not perfectly smooth because track were oxydated.

ATI proprietary linux video drivers are buggy with coot!

ATI now belongs to AMD. Download the proprietary driver from http://ati.amd.com . Recently the (open source) radeon driver shipped with Xorg has improved DRI capabilities that are sufficient for crystallographic purposes.

using Xorg ATI driver on Mandriva 2010, coot works without the error:

'The error was 'BadRequest (invalid request code or no such operation)'.
(Details: serial 661 error_code 1 request_code 143 minor_code 19)
(Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)'

Disable 3D desktop effects is recommanded (which did not work anyway on mandriva 2010 wit ATI card), otherwise you get a blank screen and have to undo the settings via terminal. Furthermore, do not try to use the proprietary ATI 'fglrx' drivers, since they made things even worse, at least in my personal experience (with an ATI Radeon X1650).

edit from:
http://strucbio.biologie.uni-konstanz.de/ccp4wiki/index.php/Visualization:_graphics_cards_and_3D#ATI

seyssins s car park & Chamrousse 9-1-0 with Ana and Stu

Back from hollidays on 4th jan

the next friday moring we woke up with a thick layer of snow everywhere!



before shoveling:



getting the car out:



i had some help from Alexis to shovel


the car park




the fun in Chamrousse:






some frozen friends:


getting back home, i was amazed the hill road leading home was still covered with a few cm of snow but still i tried to get the car up.
look at the top part of the hill road!


it worked: the trick is not to be too rude with the throttle and keep speed. i could feel the car slide sideways several times, particularly when i was passing the bumpers which made the car shake. Oufti gamin!

Noel 2009 - Be- Greece

In belgium:

Sarah arrived a bit exhausted 8 h later than scheduled because she missed her plane connection in Atlanta due to delays, and had to fly to Amsterdam instead of Brussels, which revealed to be a good solution, also brussels airport closed the next day due to large amounts of snow on the tracks. Her bag did not make it at the same time, she had to wait 6 days before getting it, just on xmas day! the day before our departure to Greece...

Snow, patinoire in front of the house



Bruxelles, grand place, ice skating, le marche de noel.





where is little jesus? ah maybe not yet born ;)



resto with Estelle, Audrey and Anton in Bruxelles.


Tournai, la cathedrale, le tresor de la cathedrale, les tapisseries.





horse sausages.. heuu bof


coin coin


les ascenceurs hydrauliques de Stépy-Thieux from 19th century on the canal du centre.


Noel! the crazy gift lottery! we had to pick cards and get the smaller number... but my sister and husband did not stop getting all the little gifts! aaahhhhh Sarah finally picked the lowest card number, she got so excited that she tried to open the package fast but she did not know it was a pot of confiture and it opened and spilled on her knees... oops

Greece trip.










Sarah! a new friend? the reconstitution of an old text, the original stone is darker.


really nice weather in there!

Corinth



Acrocorinth





the canal of corinth : 6.5 km long, at its top, the cliffs are 90m above sea water level. dug in the 30's




that s what you get for eating too much feta cheese... the bed bends with your butt s weight and you get a big belly


what is her preferred color?

the nightmare of street workers: the random discovery of ruins of houses everytime they dig !


Old Corinth





NB: contrary to what touristic guides say, the museum & archeological site of old corinth CLOSE at 15h00 and not 17h00!! we missed it because of that.

Video part 1/3: in Belgium + Greece (delphi & acrocorinth & old corinth & the canal)


Athens

you must see that video: the replacement of the guards of the Greek parlement.




the temple of xxx one of the 100 columns fell in the 19th century during a big storm... the arch of Adrian it has funny writings :)



the resto, not eating alone ;)


National greek archeological museum











oops she fell asleep after so much walking. And 2 h earlier she told me she was ready to walk more in the cute little streets of Athens ;)



video:



Cap Sounion, the temple of Poseidon





here is a picture for the touristic guides: NO the temple of poseidon is no opened everyday!! notably it is closed on 1st january. thank you Michelin.

Departure of Sarah:



after a terrorist tried to explode himself over Detroit,Mi, the security was increased in airports, only 1 bag was therefore allowed in cabin. Sarah had to pay an extra of 50 euros to get the bag checked in. funny that she saw some people with 2 bags in the plane... the airline companies are inconsistant!