Look. A public school uniform site that sells Kevlar vests for kids.

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Here's a picture of the boat so far. Ran into my first bout of serious trouble today. Couldn't get one of the chines to hit the stem properly. Had to scrap a big, long, expensive piece of of oak. Had to quit right here because I ran out of screws. Not that I minded...

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Here's the wikipedia entry on the Theremin, a musical instrument with which I've always been fascinated. At right, see Léon Theremin playing his creation. Theremin invented the instrument while working on a proximity detector for the Russians.

You'd know the sound of a Theremin when you hear it -- think of the original "Star Trek" theme or the haunting notes at the end of to the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations." The Theremin was really the first electronic synthesizer, but none of its sucessors sound quite like it -- perhaps because you don't play it with a keyboard, but by simply waving your hands or a wand around it. Seems like a tough instrument to master.

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After I connected the transom to the keel, I realized that I should've already cut the hole out where the outboard motor will sit. So, I had to pull out some screws and take it off.

I've already bought the outboard motor for the boat. It's a 30 HP Johnson which should power my boat to water-skiing speed (according to the instructions). Anyhoo, I measured it a couple of times since I was about to cut a big hole into my transom.

Here's the finished product:



I made those curves by tracing the lid of my plastic resin glue. That stuff's coming in handy. I used my cool jigsaw to make the cut.

The outboard motor should fit perfectly into this hole. If I measured correctly.

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Remember the days before the Internet when you could receive a written reprimand and everyone in the world couldn't read it?

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Here's what Tony Blair said at the news conference with President Bush today:

And one of the things we've got to stop doing is stop apologizing for our own positions. Muslims in America, as far as I'm aware of, are free to worship. Muslims in Britain are free to worship. We have plural societies. You know, it's nonsense. The propaganda is nonsense. And we're not going to defeat this ideology until we in the West go out with sufficient confidence in our position and say, "This is wrong. It's not just wrong in its methods; it's wrong in its ideas, it's wrong in its ideology, it's wrong in every single wretched reactionary thing about it."

Blair's got big brass balls.

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Wired Magazine comes up with some great little reads. Click here to learn both how to pack your clothes in a suitcase so they emerge wrinkle-free, and how to hotwire your Toyota Prius to your house's electrical system for use as a backup generator.

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From Entreprenuer magazine, here's a great recap of the top 10 marketing stunts of all time. I'd forgotten about this one:

In the morning, an ad appeared in The New York Times with a headline that read: "Taco Bell Buys the Liberty Bell." The ad copy explained that Taco Bell was "pleased to announce that we have agreed to purchase the Liberty Bell, one of our country's most historic treasures. It will now be called the 'Taco Liberty Bell' and will still be accessible to the American public for viewing. While some may find this controversial, we hope our move will prompt other corporations to take similar action to do their part to reduce the country's debt." It sounded logical, if distasteful. In another press release, Taco Bell helpfully explained that people had been "adopting" highways for years and that purchasing a national treasure was just a way of furthering that idea.

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Note to self: Never buy coffee at the Dollar Tree.

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I'll soon be enjoying a free sample of the new lavender fragrance from Tide laundry detergent. Click here to secure yours.

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Interesting pushback on "The Long Tail" theory -- that the new, Internet-created economics paradigm will be selling a lot of products to smaller and smaller niches. (Read the wikipedia entry for a better explanation.)

This Wall Street Journal article points out the data don't necessarily agree with the Long Tail theory. The author critiques the new book by Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson, "The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More."

Let's start this discussion where Mr. Anderson starts his book, with his discovery of what he calls a paradigm-changing statistic. In the introduction, he tells how he learns from Ecast, a music-streaming company, that 98% of its catalog gets played at least once a quarter -- much more than most would predict.

This "98 Percent Rule," as Mr. Anderson names it, suggests the remarkable prospect that no matter how much inventory you put online, someone, somewhere will show up to buy it. He writes, "Everywhere I looked the story was the same. ... The 98 Percent Rule turned out to be nearly universal."

Except it's not. Ecast told me that now, with a much bigger inventory than when Mr. Anderson spoke to them two years ago, the quarterly no-play rate has risen from 2% to 12%. March data for the 1.1 million songs of Rhapsody, another streamer, shows a 22% no-play rate; another 19% got just one or two plays.

Even in the infinite universe of the Internet, there's a fine number of buyers for some products.

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From a BusinessWeek article about a Toronto microbrewery, here's the most cynical marketing quote you'll ever read:

Consumers are dumb. In a blind taste test, they couldn't tell the difference between ale and lager but they say Steam Whistle tastes better because they bought it in a green bottle and paid more for it. It's all perception.

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Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos is building a spaceport in West Texas:

The craft would hit an altitude of about 325,000 feet -- or almost 62 miles -- before descending and restarting its engine for a "precision vertical powered landing on the landing pad" in sparsely populated Culberson County, about 125 miles east of El Paso

On a sidenote, Amazon is now selling groceries. But, they don't sell any Hostess products. So, the launch is pretty much doomed to failure.

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Attached the keel to the frames and the stem today. Doesn't seem like much, but it was a lot of work. I also had to notch out holes in the frames to get the keel to sit in properly. I pored over the plans for about an hour to make sure I was doing it right. Very frightening taking a chisel to a piece from a $500 boat kit.


Here's one of my notches. That's the keel sitting in it.

By the way, that front portion of the boat that spans from the keel to the breasthook is called the "stem." Yesterday, I called it a "stern." I thought that's what the plans said, plus stern sounds all nautical and whatnot. But, "stern" refers to the rear part of a ship. A "stem" is the front part of a boat. I'm always learning.


Here's my keel where it now hits the stem. I had to use that clamp and some vice grips to bend it into that spot. The keel is a section of that oak wood with a plywood lamination on the bottom. It's attached using boat nails and, of course, my plastic resin glue.

I'll post more photos next weekend.

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Made some good progress on the boat today. I realized that I didn't need to worry about picking up my wood after all. See, the lumber yard offers free shipping on order over $500. Gives you a little idea of how much this baby's costing me, eh?

Anyhoo, the wood was sitting in my garage when I got home Friday. At right, that's $280 worth of oak. Doesn't look like much, but it's expensive as all get out. Much of this wood will go all the way down the boat and can't be joined together. Since the boat is 15-feet-long, I needed a lot of 16-foot sections of 1" x 4" oak.

And, below, sits the marine-grade plywood. The hull will be made of these sheets. The plywood is thin enough that it'll just wrap it around the stern. Then I'll apply a fiberglass coating, so the boat won't sink. In theory, you'll never be able to look at the boat and tell that it's made out of plywood. Apparently, many professional boats are made the same way. (At least that's what that boat-building book told me.)



So, here's today's progress:


I attached all the frames.



And, I attached the stern to both the frame and the breasthook (the little triangular piece at the very front.)

All of those attachments were made with screws and my "plastic resin glue." It's a powder that mixes with water and then makes super-strong glue.

The breasthook is secured to those pieces of wood (blocking) so that it can't move. When I start applying the plywood, the stern and breasthook will receive a lot of stress.

The blocking had to be exactly the right height, as well. At some point, I'll need to quit pointing out how all these measurements have to be exact and usually take about 45 minutes to get just right. But, I do find that's the most time-consuming part of the work.

So, that's enough for one day. I'll post more tomorrow night.

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From Wired magazine, more Japanese androids. Click here for the photo slideshow.

Westworld is only a few years away.

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As promised, here's a picture of the boat so far. OK, none of this is actually "the boat." This is just the boat frame upon which I will build the boat.

I know, it doesn't look like much -- but don't forget it's bolted to the floor and perfectly square and level. And look at that 12-degree angle at the aft of the boat frame. Oh, yes -- 12 degrees.

I just found out that the lumber yard where all my wood is sitting isn't open on the weekends. So now I've got to figure out how to get over there before 5 o'clock tomorrow -- if I want to be working on the boat this weekend.

My "plastic resin glue" arrived today. I ordered it off the Internet, of course, from Hardware World.

According to this map, it should only take me 25 minutes. But on a Friday afternoon in Atlanta, I might need to allow for a little more time.

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This product features a convenient resealable bag. I wonder if anyone has ever used this feature. I mean, it's not like coffee filters get stale. Seems like kind of a hassle to grab a coffee filter and then reseal the bag. Unless you were going somewhere, I guess. Like on vacation. With your coffee filters.

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I'm having crab cakes for dinner. Crab cakes, baby.

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I voted against Ralph Reed today. Just thought you should know.

According to early results, Reed's losing (very conservative) Cobb County right now, which can't be very reassuring to the master campaign strategist. Looks like the next Lietenant Governor of Georgia will be some guy named Casey Cagle.

In my 6th Congressional District race, fellow Cobb County blogger Brad Warbiany voted for John Konop -- cementing his anti-establishment street cred. I voted for Tom Price even though my current congressman has never commented on my blog.

UPDATE: Yep, Ralph Reed lost. And Cynthia McKinney didn't win, but she'll likely get a runoff.

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Just when I'm ready to give up on President Bush, he says something classic like this:

What they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this sh*t, and it's over.

And look, there's even a debate over whether newspapers will delete the offending word in tomorrow's edition. Of course, I went ahead and censored the statement, so as not to offend my more gentle readers.

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Made some good progress on the boat this weekend. (I'll post pictures later in the week; awaiting a new camera battery.)

I set up the entire boat frame on which to build the boat. Sounds easy, but it involved drilling holes and attaching the frame to my concrete floor using cool "expansion bolts."

Unfortunately, I got a little medieval with the hammer and damaged the tops of the bolts. So, I had to hacksaw of their muffed-up lids so that I could screw the nut on. That took me about an hour -- including the drive to the hardware store to get a new hacksaw blade.

After that, I just had to put the frame together. That sounds easy too, but I had to set up the back two members with a perfect 12-degree angle because that's the slant of the back of the boat (a.k.a. the transom.) Also, the entire structure (about 9 different pieces) had to be level and square. So that took about 4 hours.

I would have done more, but I didn't realize that Home Depot doesn't stock the fancy wood I need. Gotta go to a real lumber yard to pick up a few pieces of oak or mahogany -- for the keel and chine logs. I now know what a chine log is, by the way, but I'm still a little fuzzy on battens.) I also need some super strong "plastic resin glue" that they just don't sell at Home Depot.

Hopefully I'll have both by next weekend.

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From the magazine Fast Company, here's a great idea:

[A]n elevator system that allows six to eight cars to circulate in a continuous loop in the space normally occupied by just two. As each car reaches the top (or bottom) of the loop, it shifts sideways before descending (or ascending).

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Watched "Owning Mahowny" last night. I believe that Phillip Seymour Hoffman is his generation's finest actor. The movie was slightly above-par, but his performance is astounding. Ebert's review is a little too glowing, but worth the read.

The film is based on a fascinating true event. A Canadian bank manager with a slight gambling problem embezzled $10 million and blew it in an Atlantic City casino. It's kind of like watching a slow train wreck.

Here's the wikipedia entry. It's informative but a little short.

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I missed this while on vacation. Apparently, Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi is a huge Elvis fan. He's doing his best impersonation of The King while visiting Graceland.

That's just awesome.

On a slightly heavier note, here's an interesting article from my former Boston Herald colleague, Jules Crittenden, on Japan's changing global role. He notes that the days of a pacifist Japan are over. They just broached the topic of a pre-emptive strike against North Korea if necessary. Sounds like a good idea.

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Syd Barrett, the founder of the band Pink Floyd, has died. He was 60.

Barrett performed only on the earliest of Pink Floyd's works including their debut album, "Piper at the Gates of Dawn." That album features a song with the following lyrics: "I've got a bike, you can ride it if you'd like, it's got a basket, a bell, and pretty things to make it look good." (I recited that from memory -- some songs just stick with you.) Needless to say, I was a huge Pink Floyd fan back in my salad days.

Anyway, Barrett went insane after taking copious amounts of LSD in the late 60s. He's something of a bizarre cult figure (at least in the hippie-wannabe circles in which I hung in the late 80s.) There were always questions about his whereabouts -- was he locked up in a mental institution? Or did he live with his mother in a quiet house in suburban London? I remember hearing that he'd just sit around and strum his guitar all day. I was told once (with no source, of course) that the laughter heard on "Dark Side of the Moon" was really Syd. Check out the wikipedia entry for more apocryphal Syd Barrett tales.

The other members of the band paid tribute to him in their later work. The 1975 album "Wish You Were Here" detailed his life. Here's a verse from the song "Shine on You Crazy Diamond:"

Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun.

Shine on you crazy diamond.

Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky.

Shine on you crazy diamond.

You were caught on the crossfire of childhood and stardom, blown on the steel breeze.

Come on you target for faraway laughter, come on you stranger, you legend,

You martyr, and shine!

Here's to Syd. I hope you shine on, wherever you are.

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I'm not making much progress on the boat. Hard to get going after work every day -- and I seem to have something going on most evenings anyway. I'll start in earnest on Friday. I received the boatbuilding book, although I've yet to crack it.

Maine, by the way, was great. My family and I marched in the Wiscasette parade. Here's the picture:

That's Uncle Jack on the left, me in the center, and my brother, Greg, on the right.

See, we were a lawn chair drill team. Whenever we took a break from our formation to relax, our collective kids (dressed as mosquitos) would run up and start stinging us. Then, we'd call for the "Off Cart" which sprayed water out of that nozzle on the top. Then the kids would scatter.

It was quite fun.

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Am I the only one who didn't know that Bombay had been renamed Mumbai?

The change occurred back in 1995, I'm told.

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This sounds familiar:

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the left-wing candidate narrowly defeated in Mexico's presidential race, was expected to launch a legal campaign late last night to overturn the results, mixing allegations of vote fraud with broader claims that the election process was unfair.

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