Jeanine is nearing completion of her memoir cookbook and has asked me to start taking photos that will be used in the publication. Food photography is a field unto itself and I don’t consider myself particularly well qualified in this area. Nonetheless, I will do my best. The unique thing about this type of photography is that you can eat your subject when you are done. We hosted a small dinner party this evening which featured the pictured menu items.
These 3D parts were not printed on a new Markforged printer which will not be announced at SolidWorks World 2016 on Monday. My team has not been working nights and weekends nor have we pushed 3D printing to a new level.
One of my favorite views of downtown Boston (click the image for more detail) can be had from a hilltop in the Mount Auburn Cemetery, just minutes from my office. I decided to spend my lunch hour enjoying the beauty of the cemetery and will no doubt be revisiting this site many times throughout the year. Their policy on amateur photography is both enlightened and respectful. The grounds and monuments are simply exquisite.
Earlier in the morning I went in for my annual physical. I try to get one every three years or so. Triglycerides were way too high and my body mass index is too high (need to lose some weight. ) John has offered to put me on a regime which I am calling the caveman diet. You can only eat what nature provides with no processing after that.
At the request of a bridge enthusiast and long time follower of this blog, I am posting a photo of the newly completed bridge renovation project near the South Bridge Boat House. The project involved raising the height of the bridge over the roadway to prevent the frequent decapitation of box trucks, which occurred with surprising regularity. During construction, one track was kept operational at all times except for one weekend when a crane placed the new steel structures in place.
Sadly, I was unable to make it to Maya’s Nordic ski racing event today. Thankfully, Jeanine was there and captured a great image of Maya after the race. In her mother’s words, “she left everything on the course.” She races again next week and I plan to be there come hell or high water.
Jeanine and Maya made a day trip to Pittsburgh today to visit Carnegie Mellon University, one of the schools she is considering for a degree in engineering. It was extremely fortunate that the blizzard which paralyzed much of the Eastern seaboard over the weekend did not reach this far inland.
My nephew, John Quinn, celebrated his 23rd birthday today. He has taken a job in the Boston area with a small marketing startup and is living here with us. He is a wonderful guest and we enjoy having a “replacement” for our boys who are far away in Colorado and Bangkok. John contributes to the household in many ways including preparing dinner each Sunday night. He has been studying under Jeanine’s culinary tutelage and produced another incredible feast this evening. My sister will be pleased to know that her son is turning into a remarkable cook. Earlier in the day we touched base with Kyle who just completed his first full week on the job in Thailand. He is working 14 hour days and reports he is losing weight because he cannot find the time to eat. You could hear the excitement in his voice as he explained his job to us. He settles multi-million dollar Asian stock transactions with local banks and brokers. The slightest mistake can cause delays during which equity values may change, exposing his company to financial risk since they must honor the original execution price. Further complicating his job, every transaction may involve different institutions each with a slightly different set of settlement requirements. He is already taking about extending his stay in the region beyond the initial three month commitment. We are looking forward to visiting him when we travel there next month.
More nervous than I would have expected for someone who has learned to drive so expertly, Maya took and passed her driving test this morning. Starting on Monday (when we convert her insurance status from student driver to licensed driver) she will be free to drive by herself. Of our three children, she has been the most anxious to reach this milestone, perhaps because her siblings are out of the house and she has no one to hang out with except her parents. As was the routine with her brothers before her, she learned to drive from a ridiculously young age, seated on my lap with me operating the pedals. I will forever enjoy wonderful memories of teaching my kids to drive and hope they will remember those lessons with equal fondness.
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I never expected that my photographic skills would contribute so significantly to my work at Markforged. One of my highest priorities at the company is to see that we consistently enhance the reliability and quality of our 3D printer. To that end, I personally inspect every machine returned from the field with the goal of understanding the exact root cause of each failure. For every new failure mechanism identified, we take steps to ensure that it will be eliminated. Macro photographs play an essential role both in the discovery process and for documentation purposes.
This evening’s meal featured an all-Lebanese menu. How lucky am I that Jeanine is fluent in all the foods of the world? Seriously, there is nothing she can not make!
It was bitterly cold today with windchill dropping the 24F air temperature into the low teens. This was less of an issue for Maya during her second cross country ski race of the season than her parents who froze various body parts off while watching her compete. Her form has improved from last season and she looked strong throughout the race. Her Girls Varsity team finished in first place with 462 points ahead of Acton Boxboro (450), Lincoln Sudbury (438), Westford (397), Wayland (339), Nashoba (324) and Winchester (321).
We received about three inches of snow last night, the first of the season which warranted a workout with the snowblower. It was a light fluffy snow which makes for easy clearing but not so great photos. By the time I paused to make this image, much of the snow accenting the trees had blown off. Wet snow clings to the trees and makes for the best photographs.
All but one of my bonsai trees perished when I moved them out of my office at iRobot almost a year ago. On that day we were experiencing an arctic blast and it only took a few minutes of exposure to prove deadly. I have since nursed the one survivor back to health and today purchased a companion for it which I will take to work tomorrow. Kyle gifted me this tree by way of a gift certificate to our local bonsai nursery the Christmas before last. I thought today would be a special day for the purchase as it is his first full day in Thailand. I will think of him every time I admire this miniature jade tree.
I am accustomed to doing root-cause failure analysis at work. I enjoy the forensic challenge of identifying new failure modes. It is essential to work to improve quality and reliability. When it comes to products I purchase, however, I like to think someone else has made the effort to do this. I recently purchased new studio lights and one of three did not operate properly. Pictured above is the source of the problem (two fractured solder joints on the high-voltage capacitor). This failure was obviously caused by mechanical trauma sustained during shipping. I sent the photo to the manufacturer and hope they will endeavor to improve their packaging or reduce the mechanical stress these joints are exposed to. I re-soldered the connections and my light is as good as new and I did not have to wait for weeks while it shipped back and forth to the service center.
As promised, here is a video of Maya’s infinity stairs. Watch the marble as it climbs the stairs and then descends through a rotary gate before repeating the cycle.
This Rube Goldberg contraption was the creation of Maya and two classmates for their engineering class automaton project. Although it was completed months ago the teacher has been holding on to it as an example for other classes. The same teacher requested to hang on to Maya’s recent amplifier project. She agreed on the condition she could get back her infinity stairs. A photograph does not do justice to this machine and you can expect a forthcoming video.
I was the beneficiary of another fine culinary invention by Jeanine this evening. When asked to identify the ingredients of our dinner, I correctly recognized the grapefruit sections before reaching the limit of my knowledge of healthy cooking components. I can say with some expertise, however, that the finished meal was delicious. I am genuinely a lucky man.
Thus far this winter there has been little snow to speak of. During my evening commute, it looked like we were in for a pretty good storm but a few hours later the snowfall had completely fizzled out.
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Jeanine hosted a volunteer appreciation brunch for the leadership team of Open Table today. Needless to say, the food was wonderful as was the sense of community in the room. It takes very special people to give so generously of their time in support of those less fortunate. This is the third such event but the first my schedule has allowed me to attend. Here is a link to the team.
Nicolai heads back to Colorado College tomorrow with his friend Oliver. They will share driving on the 2000-mile journey which will take them three or four days to complete. Since they plan to get an early start we decided to have a farewell brunch today at Nancy’s Airfield Cafe, one of our favorite breakfast spots.
Standard issue desks at Markforged are IKEA plain white tops on a pedestal. Today we received a large shipment of rolling filing cabinets/drawers that will afford people some local storage space. These units feature an upholstered top allowing them to do double duty as a chair or as a perfectly acceptable office sled as demonstrated in the video above.
While on my lunchtime walk around Fresh Pond I noticed several very interesting ice sculptures formed upon the branches dipping into the water. Regrettably, I had only my iPhone to capture the images which do not do justice to their beauty.
Nala cornered this opossum on the front walk to our home. When threatened or harmed, they will “play possum”, mimicking the appearance and smell of a sick or dead animal. This physiological response is involuntary (like fainting), rather than a conscious act. I can now say from first hand experience that this survival mechanism is 100% believable. Moments after we cleared the area, the possum made a miraculous recovery and scampered off into the brush.
For the second time this week I completed a three mile (2.9 to be exact) circuit around Fresh Pond during my lunch hour. The walk takes 45 minutes and I stop at Chipotle to pick up lunch which I bring back to the office. It is the perfect distance for a noon time stroll and I hope to make a routine of it. I am even considering converting my weekly staff meeting to a walking meeting. Perhaps that should wait until temperatures get above the freezing mark, however.
This Christmas my Secret Santa gave me a 7-foot-wide umbrella. It is big enough to keep an entire soccer team dry, but my use for it will be in the realm of photography as a giant reflector to be mounted on one of my strobes. The shaft of the first umbrella I received was incompatible with my strobes despite highly misleading advertising claims to the contrary. It was returned for the one I received today. Unfortunately, this one has a serious design flaw which caused it to come apart during my first use. An hour and a half later, I was able to put things back together. A trip to the hardware store for a replacement screw a quarter of an inch longer than the one supplied should prevent future problems. I am looking forward to my first photos illuminated by this bad boy.
Maya spent several hours in my shop this evening working on her electrical engineering class amplifier project. All attempts to assist her were rejected but she did tolerate being photographed. I have a tiny bench devoted to electronics set up with a soldering station and test equipment. I am delighted to see it being used by someone other than me. Earlier in the day I spent an hour at the same bench repairing a brand new studio light that was DOA (dead on arrival). Two solder joints had fractured during what was no doubt a traumatic shipping journey.
When making a fine piece of wood furniture, I generally avoid the use of all hardware, fabricating necessary joints from wood and glue. When I need to build something really fast, there is no more useful method of joining two pieces of wood than a pocket hole screw. Fifteen years ago, I fashioned a pneumatically clamped pocket hole jig with components from the Kreg company. It is one of my most often used tools. Today I rebuilt the fixture incorporating new design features that further expands its versatility and the speed with which it can be used. Rather than clamping the jig in my table vise, I have added switchable magnets so that it can be secured directly to the top of my table saw. This allows me to angle the fixture so that I can use it with even the longest pieces of wood and reduces setup and breakdown time. Next, I made provisions to allow the clamp to work with wood stock up to a 4 inches (previously I was limited to 2 inches). Finally, I added left and right stops so to ensure symmetrical and repeatable joint location. The heart of the new fixture is a right-angle, 3D printed bracket for the pneumatic cylinder which incorporates features that enable it to be repositioned easily. I also printed two knobs which are used to fix the bracket in place.
What better way to start the New Year than with Belgian waffles? Jeanine prepared a huge batch of batter last night which fed our 9 house guests and 4 family members this morning. Pictured here is Maddie, one of Maya’s friends and one of my first customers (I was in charge of cooking the waffles).