Sun 05/24/20 06:53:24 pm
Categories:
General
/
Electronics
/
Kettlebell Tracking
/
Fermentation and Pickling
/
Electronic Drums
/
This Website
Why I decided to start this site.
Sometime around late winter to early spring in 2019 I started exercising with kettlebells. I learned the exercises and techniques from Enter the Kettlebell! and Kettlebell Simple and Sinister. Sometime in the fall of 2019 I read The Quick and the Dead and learned about exercise programs based on maximizing power. I was really interested in trying power based training. One way to determine appropriate weights/resistance is to have a training partner observe and count repetitions while you perform an exercise. Another way is to use a sensor designed to measure exercise power. I found a few devices on the fitness market costing around US$ 300 at the time. These devices were impressive but they provided more features than I needed. I have been interested in circuits, micro controllers, and sensors for a while so I did some research to see if I could build a device myself. Soldering an accelerometer board to a micro controller and developing a program to operate it was more than I wanted to tackle at the time, and I wasn’t sure such a homemade device could withstand being attached to a swinging kettlebell. However, I discovered Mbientlab and their open source wearable sensors and APIs. This seemed like a great option. My plan was to get one of their sensors, attach it to a kettlebell, and write an Android app to retrieve acceleration data from the sensor and calculate power. I didn’t have any Android development experience so I started with a tutorial. I sent screenshots of the Hello World app to family and friends as I made progress through the tutorial.
Over the past couple of years I’ve been eating more and more fermented food: pickles, sauerkraut, and kombucha. I always liked salt water brine pickles, but never really liked sauerkraut until I discovered the kind made from salt brine. (Eventually I learned the difference between pickling/fermenting with vinegar vs. salt brine. Now I know I don’t really like anything pickled with vinegar.) Sometimes salt brine pickles and sauerkraut are not available at the store. I knew people who brewed their own kombucha and fermented there own pickles and thought it would be great if I could do this. Not only could I have a steady supply of pickles and sauerkraut, maybe I could make lower sugar kombucha too. However, I didn’t know where to start and thought I might end up brewing/fermenting something full of toxic bacteria. A friend got me a little fermenting kit and gave me some recipes to start. After doing some research I started making batches of sauerkraut and pickles. I sent pictures of food fermenting in jars to family and friends as I made progress with recipes and as the batches made progress from start to finish.
After I moved into my current building I learned quiet hours start after 5 pm. (The information I got before choosing this building said quiet hours start after 11 pm.) Not wanting to disturb my neighbors with drum practice noise, I set up a kit made of practice pads. While good for working on coordination and OK for working on technique, the pads all sounded similar so it was difficult, and sometimes impossible, to get feedback from sound. (I plan to provide pictures and sound samples from the practice kit in a future post.) I considered getting an electronic kit but didn’t want to get a bunch of new gear. I made good enough progress with the practice pad kit and used it for years. However, a few months ago I started working on some new music styles and finally found the lack of sound was severely limiting my practice. I started researching electronic kits again and happened to discover articles and videos about all kinds of do-it-yourself electronic drums, cymbals, triggers, and switches. As I mentioned, one of my hesitations with getting an electronic drum set was all the extra gear, but if I could make some custom triggers for my practice pad setup then maybe I could get different sounds from it without having to acquire a bunch of extra gear (and for a much lower cost.) As I mentioned above, I have been interested in circuits and electronics for a while. I started researching what people had done to create their own edrum components, and started learning about electronics, circuits, and soldering. I came up with a plan to get a module and a couple of pads from Ebay, and then build my own triggers and switches to turn my practice pad setup into an electronic kit. Like the app and fermentation, I knew I was going to show results to family and friends. I also wanted a way to document and share the project in case I wanted to post questions to forums, and if I had any success, share my creations for others to benefit from.
At this point I had the inspiration to create a blog.
This is my first blog. While researching blog and site builder services I discovered the concept of static sites. This was really appealing to me: I would own of all my data, manage everything with version control, and have a really fast site. Jekyll seemed like a great option and would also give me an opportunity to learn some Ruby. I started on a Jekyll tutorial and at the same time started learning all about registering a domain name and getting a site hosted. I got a bit side-tracked when I had the idea to include a comments section for my posts. There are a few options (I plan to write more on this in a future post) which lead me to learn about server side scripting, databases, and security, and look into more hosting options. I finally decided to keep it simple to start: static content on a static host. For now this accomplishes the goal which inspired me to start the blog: a mechanism to document and share my projects.
Now that the initial release of my blog is finally deployed I am going to spend more time on my other projects…and of course start documenting them here!
subscribe via RSS