Another Trip

We’ve got another trip coming up, this time to London and the Republic of Ireland, so I’m going to try and start blogging our itinerary and random stuff again.

It’s our second time to both places and we’re looking forward to seeing some previous sites as well as new ones!

The mulchman.org Blog Now Lives Here

The blog that used to live here now lives here.  All the content has been brought over as well.

Day 6 – Natural History Museum, Kew Gardens

Day 6 started off heading to the  Natural History Museum where we got to see some dinosaurs, some whales (Killer & Narwhal), tons of gems/minerals, and a huge Sequoya tree cross section.

After that we hopped on the tube and headed to Kew Gardens.   Once at the Kew Gardens station we got some fresh bread from an outside vendor, some cheese at Tesco Express, and a pint of Guinness at a pub nearby and sat outside and ate.  It was glorious.

We walked to Kew Gardens next – which was huge (3oo some acres) – and I followed Kathy/Amber around as we looked at tons and tons of various plants.  There were some pretty cool (& big) green houses there and I got some panoramas as well.

After that it was back to our apartment where I went next door to the pub and had some more Guinness.  The place was a lot busier – since it was later in the day and also a Friday – and that was nice.

UK Guinness count: 13 – Total beer count: 13

Circadian Rhythm

Looks like I’m back on track as I slept entirely through the night… unless you call waking up @ 6 AM out of ordinary.

Site back up!

Seems to have been a DNS server issue; apologies to anyone looking for the DisplayLink related posts.

Pull-up Bar

I have a pull-up bar that mounts in a door frame – one of those deals that just hangs freely and you can put it on and remove it at will – but I was tired of my knees touching the ground when doing pull-ups and it’s just so cramped trying to do pull-ups within a doorway so I built a pull-up bar in my garage.

I used:

• 3/4″ metal pipe (3 straight pieces, 2 elbows, and 2 floor flanges)
• one 8′ 4×6 beam cut down into two 28″ lengths
• 1 & 1/2″ paddle bit
• 1 & 1/4″ paddle bit
• 8 metal 90 degree plate things
• screws

And here’s how I went about installing it:

• assemble metal pipe completely except for floor flanges – leave them off until later
• cut 4×6 and drill a hole in each one – the metal pipe will be going through the center of each beam. I started with the bigger paddle bit and drilled in a half inch or so and then used the smaller paddle bit to go the rest of the way (this is because the floor flanges have a lip)
• measure distance of bar and drill holes in ceiling drywall
• go into the attic with the 4×6′s and flanges
• have someone hold up the bar and push through the ceiling holes
• on the attic side direct the metal pipe through the 4×6 and screw on flanges once metal pipe comes through the 4×6. Note: the 4×6′s are running perpendicular to the ceiling joists.
• attach 4×6′s to ceiling joists with 90 degree metal plate things and screws. the 4×6′s won’t move now
• have someone push each side of the bar up while attic guy tightens the flanges. i built a custom device so i could get some leverage on the flanges and actually tighten them much tighter than “hand tightened”
• screw flanges into 4×6′s
• ???
• profit

A lot of links on the web to other peoples’ pull-up bars have the floor flanges screwed into the bottom of the supporting wood beam but I wanted mine to go through the beam completely so that there was more support. My bar feels super solid when doing pull-ups on it.

Here are some pictures:

• Bar from ‘front’
• Bar from ‘side’
• Device used to tighten floor flanges – screws poking through match up with flange holes. Hand tightening flanges wasn’t cutting it so that’s why I created this device.
• Bar from the attic – 4×6′s perpendicular to ceiling joists and sitting on ceiling joists, bars running through 4×6′s with flanges on top of 4×6′s instead of below (this makes much more sense to me than just screwing the flanges into the bottom of the 4×6′s like so many others on the web do)

New Pictures

New pictures are up on the private webpage thing for those family members who have the URL.

I have a blog

Hi. I’ve started a blog to detail an upcoming trip to Japan and potentially anything else after that. I have no idea how often I’ll update it or if it will even stay alive after the Japan trip. I leave for Japan Monday, July 14th 2008 at about 1300 hours PST and will be there for approximately 10 days.