Sorry for the delay between posts.
Of course much has happened, and while I won't (or can't) tell you everything I have been up to, I want to relate how I think about design. I don't think I have written this out before. I have a belief in a holistic world which often surprises people. I suppose, though, to a few it would seem normal that I have considered more than a few angles.
At present, Fenrir M2 is still in my living room. I have inspected it, and done a few preliminary probes into the damages. I have a plan. When things need to be done, I am a man who favors action, but I also believe that actions should be considered. Since I want to do a better job on this boat, I have to consider where things went wrong. As I have said, there was no problem with the boat. All the trouble was with me. You may not believe this, but I wrote it so you can count that I believe it. And that is the bigger problem.
Here is the holistic side: the design is a product of the designer. If the designer is lacking, his design will be lacking. When I think about my designs, I have to consider my life. Not just the professional parts, but the personal as well. I have been struggling with personal relationships, with my own self image, and with my lifestyle.
That is a loaded word: lifestyle. It is mostly considered shallow to think about our lifestyle. It means physical things to most (cars, houses, clothes, etc). But it is more than that. It is the style in which we live our lives. As much as making sure my designs good, I must make my life good. Or, more accurately, I must become the person who can make good designs. To make it more clear let me say it this way.
The way we dress is a function of the way we think about our clothes as much as ourselves. Some might take a path of fad, or of what we think to be a higher or lower class. The choice is significant because it demonstrates who we are and who we want to be. We cannot live in division and be any good.
So, to bring it full-circle, I am not idle on my plans. To be true, I am more active than I have been. I am sure much of it will not make sense right away, but it's a story, and it is a part of a larger design.
Stick around and let's see what happens.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Saturday, August 18, 2012
The Metric
I did a lot today.
I finally made progress at baking bread. I caught up with some friends and family that I have neglected in my drive for success. I rode my bike to the office and finally found out how far I can swim. Jericho and I have begun to share ideas and my muse has returned to sweeten my mind and renew my will.
The swimming is what I think you should hear about (everything else is either too personal or too private for a public blog), and it relates to the bread.
What I wanted to learn today was what I would do if I got into the Chicago Triathlon next weekend. The reality is: not much. I am not sure I would have made the cutoff. It turns out I can only swim about a sixteenth of a mile without stopping. I may be fast, but I doubt it. There was another athlete there who was training for this years' triathlon and he could swim the full distance. We talked a bit and he was encouraging and I learned from him. But mostly I learned what I couldn't do. More accurately: what I couldn't do yet.
Success is a strange thing. We could all define success at what we do, but we would all define it differently from one another. If pressed, all of these things would come down to a common reality: we can gauge our success only by a metric. When I make bread, I can only know how well I am doing by the quality of the loaf. In a race or competition, we have the clarity of a winner. I have never liked any metric which is arbitrary. In business we measure things by profit and revise it over time. I prefer the clarity of a competition.
What I learned today was that I am not a strong swimmer. But I also got a sense of what I will have to do to get stronger. I put in twenty miles on my bike and often reached speeds greater than twenty miles per hour. That is an indication that I can ride a bike, and pretty fast (I obey all the traffic laws so I stop at lights and signs and I weigh my bike down with supplies). I wasn't always fast, but I worked at it until I was. I am not done getting faster on my bike and I am not done getting faster in the water.
This is as much a life lesson as it is a lesson about design: we need to define the success of our work in order to know if we are improving. And then we must consider where we are and what we want to do. The Meers-Cat is in Rhode Island to run a half-marathon and he texted me to make jokes and so on, but he hit on a clear idea of what he wants. We both ran Chicago a few weeks ago and neither of us felt good about our performance. He wants to beat his best time and make up for doing poorly (according to his standard which is always improve his time).
Talking to Jericho, I got a sense of what he was after as well. It's nice because it is the same goal as mine: develop a winning boat. Don't worry too much about my other sports or goals: I intend to win a race, and for that I will develop a winning boat.
I finally made progress at baking bread. I caught up with some friends and family that I have neglected in my drive for success. I rode my bike to the office and finally found out how far I can swim. Jericho and I have begun to share ideas and my muse has returned to sweeten my mind and renew my will.
The swimming is what I think you should hear about (everything else is either too personal or too private for a public blog), and it relates to the bread.
What I wanted to learn today was what I would do if I got into the Chicago Triathlon next weekend. The reality is: not much. I am not sure I would have made the cutoff. It turns out I can only swim about a sixteenth of a mile without stopping. I may be fast, but I doubt it. There was another athlete there who was training for this years' triathlon and he could swim the full distance. We talked a bit and he was encouraging and I learned from him. But mostly I learned what I couldn't do. More accurately: what I couldn't do yet.
Success is a strange thing. We could all define success at what we do, but we would all define it differently from one another. If pressed, all of these things would come down to a common reality: we can gauge our success only by a metric. When I make bread, I can only know how well I am doing by the quality of the loaf. In a race or competition, we have the clarity of a winner. I have never liked any metric which is arbitrary. In business we measure things by profit and revise it over time. I prefer the clarity of a competition.
What I learned today was that I am not a strong swimmer. But I also got a sense of what I will have to do to get stronger. I put in twenty miles on my bike and often reached speeds greater than twenty miles per hour. That is an indication that I can ride a bike, and pretty fast (I obey all the traffic laws so I stop at lights and signs and I weigh my bike down with supplies). I wasn't always fast, but I worked at it until I was. I am not done getting faster on my bike and I am not done getting faster in the water.
This is as much a life lesson as it is a lesson about design: we need to define the success of our work in order to know if we are improving. And then we must consider where we are and what we want to do. The Meers-Cat is in Rhode Island to run a half-marathon and he texted me to make jokes and so on, but he hit on a clear idea of what he wants. We both ran Chicago a few weeks ago and neither of us felt good about our performance. He wants to beat his best time and make up for doing poorly (according to his standard which is always improve his time).
Talking to Jericho, I got a sense of what he was after as well. It's nice because it is the same goal as mine: develop a winning boat. Don't worry too much about my other sports or goals: I intend to win a race, and for that I will develop a winning boat.
Another tale of the double cross
Double cross training.
I have written before about cross training and the importance of exercising the body as a part of keeping the mind sharp. Today I am off the the lake so that I can begin training for a triathlon. I will be attempting to swim a mile (not going to happen, probably, but I need a metric to gauge myself against) and will ride twenty miles. I hope to get in some running as well, though I am not sure what kind of distance I will get.
I ma doing this because I need to work things out in my head, but also because I need to be in shape (and while round might be a shape, it isn't the best for racing). I want to encourage all of you to get out there. You don't have to be crazy like I am with all the races and different sports, but the first step to feeling great is getting up and getting out. Treadmill, sidewalk, fresh air: run, swim, walk, bike: whatever you want to do, just do it actively.
Summer is at an end my friends, and soon we will be bundled up and looking back in fond remembrance of the warm days past. How shall we remember them? What will we think of as the snow flies and we have less sun?
It's up to us, and the decision is now.
Let's go.
I have written before about cross training and the importance of exercising the body as a part of keeping the mind sharp. Today I am off the the lake so that I can begin training for a triathlon. I will be attempting to swim a mile (not going to happen, probably, but I need a metric to gauge myself against) and will ride twenty miles. I hope to get in some running as well, though I am not sure what kind of distance I will get.
I ma doing this because I need to work things out in my head, but also because I need to be in shape (and while round might be a shape, it isn't the best for racing). I want to encourage all of you to get out there. You don't have to be crazy like I am with all the races and different sports, but the first step to feeling great is getting up and getting out. Treadmill, sidewalk, fresh air: run, swim, walk, bike: whatever you want to do, just do it actively.
Summer is at an end my friends, and soon we will be bundled up and looking back in fond remembrance of the warm days past. How shall we remember them? What will we think of as the snow flies and we have less sun?
It's up to us, and the decision is now.
Let's go.
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Some ideas
Since I last posted, I have begun to put together a really solid plan for the way forward. Part of this plan is to build a "foot" which I will be able to install on the old junk canoe (which needs a name, so I will take suggestions). That wil give me the ability to test the mechanical parts and refine them in a really controlled and scientific way. The hull, though, remains a problem.
So, as things go, the problem sort of solved itself.
I began to reread my books on canoe building (Canoecraft, Building a Strip Canoe, and the Stripper's Guide to Canoe Building) to make sure I was primed for the heavy naval literature I would be confronted with. And, as I had gotten these out, the internet was out due to a storm. The combination of no distraction, leftover beer, and a focused subject lead me to a clever solution. Sometimes these things just resolve themselves.
I was sort of dreaming about doing a couple strip canoes this winter and applying some of my own really interesting ideas to the construction when I hit on the idea of building a model. Then I started thinking about scale and so on, and this is what hit me: if I scaled a canoe I could put it in water (which is a constant) and get a scaled result of the info the plans would have provided. No big deal. But, what if I was to build quarter scale models of Fenrir? Wouldn't that tell me what the displacement with a given weight? Sounds reasonable.
I called my engineer Meers-Cat and asked him, and he couldn't think of a reason why it shouldn't work.
So, it sounds like I am going to build some scale models. Not only will I get a lot of data, but I will do it without the mathematical confusion. Also, it's really cheap to build little tiny boats (so the physical properties and the price are scaleable), which is good. I will still be building a canoe or two (or three) this winter, but all of it is going to start as models.
A note on canoe building books and my library:
Canoecraft is a very nice book. It is beautiful and a great source for technique. However, there are no included plans, and that makes everything expensive. Building a Strip Canoe is a better budget buy. The technique is the same, and while it doesn't explain the theory of hulls and boats and their dynamics, and it uses photos instead of the beautiful drawings, it did include a bunch of plans. I good buy. The Stripper's Guide is a terrible book. It is ugly and incomplete, and is not terribly well written. However, it comes with plans and you can find a bunch of them used on Amazon.com. If you can be sure it has the plans and it is cheap enough, I would buy it, but I would not attempt to build a boat using that book.
Monday, August 6, 2012
The road that lies ahead
It's been a bit, and I have digested and processed and let everything crystalize. In short, I can tell you a few things.
Let's start with went wrong.
So far, you have picked up on a few things which lead to a DNF (those three insidious letters no racer wants to see). I didn't leave enough time. I wasted time in training before the build was done. I never tested the rig. I guessed too much. I didn't pay enough attention to the hull and that is ultimately what went wrong.
We could go on, and all of them would be correct in one way or another. But I can distill this down to one solid lesson: I'm a bad manager of time. Carnahan used to call me "psychotically optimistic," and I think he was right. I tend to think things will go fine and I don't allow for problems. I don't allow for anything. I have always been strong, and I can muscle through about anything to get it done. But that isn't racing, and it has made me sloppy.
Think of it like this:
A father talking to his son. The boy has brought home average grades again, and his father is sitting across the table from him.
"I know you are better than average. Why do you keep getting these grades?"
"I was late on some assignments..."
"If you don't learn to do the work it's going to bite you."
I'm that boy. I never learned to do things the right way. I let talent or will take me through, and I have always gotten by. And that is the problem: I get by, but I don't really excel. I'm a procrastinator with a really good work ethic and talent: I don't try and end up scraping by when I could win. I only ever cared about the challenge, but not the victory. And that has finally taken a bite out of me.
What went wrong is that I was trying to get by on my looks when I should have been winning. I did this, and I take the blame. But if I can take that, I can own it. I can decide not to do that again. Steinbeck hit it best in East of Eden with: you may (he was talking about man's ability to beat his own inner evil, but this is just that).
So, where does that leave us?
Well, dear reader, if you are sticking around we have got a story to tell. You see, I believe our lives are stories we write. Some people chose to let things flow and they are spectators when they could be the main characters. Some people make their lives tragic and never realize that as the author they could turn it around into a comeback story. I like the idea that my story is an adventure. The hero suffers his own choices, but rises from the ash to achieve glory. [NOTE: there is more to this, where I also believe people don't change and that they only come to realize who they really are, which seems like a contradiction but it isn't and I will only tell you that part if you ask- AVB]
There are next steps.
Taking stock of what we have is easy: a working mechanical set, and some really great insight into what we need to do. Also: a year to work it out. Don't discount the value of failure, it teaches us where we need to improve and helps us find what we don't know.
So, I got a canoe. It's fourteen feet of flat-bottomed, wide-beamed, broken fiberglass ugly... and it is in my living room. But it was free (I will tell that story next). Here is the plan.
I will fix the cracks and holes. Then, I will outfit it with the drive mechanisms. This will involve some adaptation, but it will also allow for some innovation. With that done, I can run and train with the mechanism. The process and the practice will tell me things, and those lessons will inform my next hull.
While that goes on, I will be learning to be an engineer where hulls are concerned. I want to know the math which I have never needed to know. Since I am not going to be the procrastinator anymore, I will have to learn the details. With that knowledge, and with what I know and can learn from the new canoe (Fenrir Mark Two), I will spend the winter developing a faster hull. In the spring, FM4 will be in the water (Mark 3 will be the refined mechanics in the salvaged hull). From there, I will have a few months to train, learn, and refine the two parts together.
So what do you say? Are you going to follow the story? This is the part in a bad eighties movie where there would be a montage, so you know I win at the end. But isn't watching part of the fun.
We've got some time, let's not waste it.
Let's start with went wrong.
So far, you have picked up on a few things which lead to a DNF (those three insidious letters no racer wants to see). I didn't leave enough time. I wasted time in training before the build was done. I never tested the rig. I guessed too much. I didn't pay enough attention to the hull and that is ultimately what went wrong.
We could go on, and all of them would be correct in one way or another. But I can distill this down to one solid lesson: I'm a bad manager of time. Carnahan used to call me "psychotically optimistic," and I think he was right. I tend to think things will go fine and I don't allow for problems. I don't allow for anything. I have always been strong, and I can muscle through about anything to get it done. But that isn't racing, and it has made me sloppy.
Think of it like this:
A father talking to his son. The boy has brought home average grades again, and his father is sitting across the table from him.
"I know you are better than average. Why do you keep getting these grades?"
"I was late on some assignments..."
"If you don't learn to do the work it's going to bite you."
I'm that boy. I never learned to do things the right way. I let talent or will take me through, and I have always gotten by. And that is the problem: I get by, but I don't really excel. I'm a procrastinator with a really good work ethic and talent: I don't try and end up scraping by when I could win. I only ever cared about the challenge, but not the victory. And that has finally taken a bite out of me.
What went wrong is that I was trying to get by on my looks when I should have been winning. I did this, and I take the blame. But if I can take that, I can own it. I can decide not to do that again. Steinbeck hit it best in East of Eden with: you may (he was talking about man's ability to beat his own inner evil, but this is just that).
So, where does that leave us?
Well, dear reader, if you are sticking around we have got a story to tell. You see, I believe our lives are stories we write. Some people chose to let things flow and they are spectators when they could be the main characters. Some people make their lives tragic and never realize that as the author they could turn it around into a comeback story. I like the idea that my story is an adventure. The hero suffers his own choices, but rises from the ash to achieve glory. [NOTE: there is more to this, where I also believe people don't change and that they only come to realize who they really are, which seems like a contradiction but it isn't and I will only tell you that part if you ask- AVB]
There are next steps.
Taking stock of what we have is easy: a working mechanical set, and some really great insight into what we need to do. Also: a year to work it out. Don't discount the value of failure, it teaches us where we need to improve and helps us find what we don't know.
So, I got a canoe. It's fourteen feet of flat-bottomed, wide-beamed, broken fiberglass ugly... and it is in my living room. But it was free (I will tell that story next). Here is the plan.
I will fix the cracks and holes. Then, I will outfit it with the drive mechanisms. This will involve some adaptation, but it will also allow for some innovation. With that done, I can run and train with the mechanism. The process and the practice will tell me things, and those lessons will inform my next hull.
While that goes on, I will be learning to be an engineer where hulls are concerned. I want to know the math which I have never needed to know. Since I am not going to be the procrastinator anymore, I will have to learn the details. With that knowledge, and with what I know and can learn from the new canoe (Fenrir Mark Two), I will spend the winter developing a faster hull. In the spring, FM4 will be in the water (Mark 3 will be the refined mechanics in the salvaged hull). From there, I will have a few months to train, learn, and refine the two parts together.
So what do you say? Are you going to follow the story? This is the part in a bad eighties movie where there would be a montage, so you know I win at the end. But isn't watching part of the fun.
We've got some time, let's not waste it.
Personal Message
Hey everyone. I have a new story and some stuff to share, but before I do, I want to try and get in touch with the Hydro Junkies. I want to hear what happened and I want to talk about what is in the future for them. I don't know how to get a hold of you, so if you contact me here or PM me on the rivermiles.com forum, I will get back to you. I know your aversion to electronic communication, so shoot me a number and I will give you a call.
Hope to hear from you soon. We got some boats to build.
Hope to hear from you soon. We got some boats to build.
Friday, August 3, 2012
metaphorically speaking
Found this picture online today and thought it was a fitting metaphor for how I feel about life.
I have begun to work on the second version of Fenrir (called Fenrir: Mark 2). I am going to modify an old junk hull and outfit it with my mechanisms to test them. Also, this will inform my next hull design (F:M 3). Stay tuned. With luck I will get a test in the next few weeks, but I will keep you posted on how the build goes.
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