{"id":604,"date":"2015-12-27T16:18:33","date_gmt":"2015-12-27T23:18:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/b2.rayharwood.com\/?p=604"},"modified":"2016-01-23T06:44:21","modified_gmt":"2016-01-23T13:44:21","slug":"2015-projects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.rayharwood.com\/?p=604","title":{"rendered":"2015 Projects"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that 2016 is upon us, I decided I’d take a look at projects I worked on during 2015.\u00a0 Some of them were started in 2014 — and there’s the rub: most of the 2015 projects went unfinished, and have become de facto 2016 projects.\u00a0 Or not.\u00a0 Here’s there list of what\u00a0I worked on, with some links to other posts for more information.<\/p>\n

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No DST for AZ & Time Zone Report<\/h2>\n

\"Time<\/a><\/p>\n

The first week of January 2015 I discovered that Arizona State Representative Phil Lovas had filed a bill that would ADOPT Daylight Saving Time in Arizona.\u00a0\u00a0 Well, as I tell all my out of state friends who want to know why we don’t<\/strong> do DST, “We don’t need any more stinking daylight… we can’t wait for the sun to go down, so it’ll start to cool off!”\u00a0 So I launched the No DST for AZ effort, along with a web site<\/a>, and social media outlets on\u00a0Twitter and Facebook.<\/p>\n

Senator Lovas withdrew his bill in less than a week, saying that “opposition was overwhelming”, according to Alia Rau of the Arizona Republic.\u00a0 Yay me!<\/p>\n

But in the process, I learned that Arizona wasn’t the only state with legislation relating to Daylight Saving Time or changing Time Zones.\u00a0 So I decided I would continue in a more informative venture I called Time Zone Report, with a web site<\/a> and social media<\/a> outlets.\u00a0 Eventually 21 states had filed a total of 32 pieces of legislation relating to Daylight Saving Time, and 2016 is already underway with another 4 bills filed or pre-filed, and we’re not even past the first week of January!<\/p>\n

So follow me on Time Zone Report<\/a> to see what I’m up to the first of 2016.<\/p>\n

Up Close Imagery<\/h2>\n

\"Feather-10x\"<\/a>As many of you already know, my wife is a Histotech.\u00a0 For those of you that don’t know what\u00a0a histotech does, here’s what I tell people: “She works for hours so a pathologist can look at a slide of human tissue and say, ‘Nope, that’s not cancer’.”\u00a0 Histotechs\u00a0slice biopsy material to 4 microns then process it with special chemicals so that pathologists can more easily differentiate things in the tissue sample.<\/p>\n

Well, I’ve been very interested in her work, having helped her study through her Histotech course down at Pima Community College (before we were married).\u00a0 So for Christmas 2014 she got me a very nice microscope.\u00a0 I’ve been taking some samples along the way — not of human tissue, but mostly of things around the house and in the yard; oh yeah, there was some human blood! —\u00a0\u00a0and putting the images on another web site<\/a> of mine.\u00a0 There isn’t a lot there… it turns out that getting good pictures is harder than it looks.\u00a0 But that’s something I do now and then.<\/p>\n

Work table, general shop setup<\/h2>\n

I had done a little wood-working of sorts many years back, but somewhere along the way I gave away all my tools.\u00a0 So I’ve been acquiring some tools, as well as a nice work bench from Harbor Freight (one of the many advantages of living in Phoenix, as opposed to Arizona City).\u00a0 Now I’ve got a drill press, router, grinder, shop vac, Dremel, rotary polisher, air brush sprayer, and a host of small stuff.\u00a0 And accumulating more every month or so.<\/p>\n

Pen Holder, Ice Cream Bar Funnel<\/h2>\n

\"Funnel\"<\/a>Many of you have seen my 3D Printing Blog<\/a>, so you know I have done a good bit with my Lulzbot TAZ 4 3D printer.\u00a0 I’m especially proud of the two things I “invented on short notice”.<\/p>\n

One was a magnetic pen holder, born out of my frustration with having a magnet-backed note pad attached to the refrigerator for writing down grocery needs, but never being able to find a pen to write with!\u00a0 So one day I said, “I’m going to make a magnetic pen holder”.\u00a0 And I did!\u00a0 See the finished product on the 3D blog site here<\/a>, and also see them on Etsy <\/a>in my “Functional Tech<\/a>” shop!<\/p>\n

The other was a specialty funnel.\u00a0 My wife got some ice cream bar molds and while pouring the mixture into the molds, it was making a mess.\u00a0 I mentioned “what you need is a funnel to help you keep it in the opening when pouring”, and her reply was, “well get right on it then!”\u00a0 And I did!\u00a0 See the finished product also on the 3D blog site<\/a> and on Etsy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dragon animatronics or costume, and clay sculpting<\/h2>\n

We went a couple of times to the Phoenix Renaissance Fair, and somewhere along the way I got the idea to create an animatronic dragon to go along with my wizard outfit.\u00a0 While I did manage to learn something about animatronics and do a little 3D printing of some working parts, that was about as far as I got, though I did manage to do a little clay sculpting<\/a> in the process.\u00a0 See a collection of a few things here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Another interesting option that came up was to create a full dragon costume to wear.\u00a0 I found a guy that has a mold of a wearable dragon head<\/a>, and he indicated he’d make me a cast of it for a reasonable price.\u00a0 But unfortunately the timing hasn’t worked out — yet.<\/p>\n

Tower Lights & Christmas Tree<\/h2>\n

\"TowerLight<\/a>There’s a restaurant about a mile from our house called Rustler’s Rooste.\u00a0 It’s quite an interesting place, with a rustic cowboy theme, down to the bull-pen just outside the entrance.\u00a0 One of the striking features there is the lights strung along the guy wires up to the radio tower that sits atop the building.\u00a0 These lights are visible from I-10 as you pass between the Baseline Road exit and the Guadalupe Road overpass.\u00a0 Sometime during the summer I got to thinking about how much electricity must cost to run these lights, since they’re on from dusk til dawn.<\/p>\n

So I got in contact with Tom, the general manager, and showed him a small LED light strip demo that I had put together — in a small plastic case.\u00a0 “I was wondering how much the electricity costs to keep those exterior lights lit, and how much you might save if you replaced them with LEDs.”\u00a0 Tom’s reply was, “I’m not so much interested in the cost savings between what we have now and LEDs, but how much extra customer pull we’d have if we had an exterior light show outside every evening.”\u00a0 One of the other office staff mentioned that having color controlled lights in their “barn” would also attract customers.\u00a0 (The Barn is a large seating area where hundreds of people can be accommodated, with a stage and dance floor.)<\/p>\n

I ended up expanding my one-box demo with a 10 foot tower demo.\u00a0 See a blurb about the setup in my back yard<\/a>, and the “dark demo<\/a>” I did in the back yard (see the YouTube video<\/a> too).<\/p>\n

This worked well, and I was able to modify the light sequences for Halloween and Christmas.\u00a0 For Christmas we anchored the top of the “tree” about midway up the palm tree in our front yard, and it looked a lot like a lit Christmas tree.\u00a0 Unfortunately I didn’t have the foresight to take any video!<\/p>\n

Plans for 2016 include being able to have multiple LED strings communicate with a “master controller” wirelessly, and then being able to choreograph light shows between multiple systems.<\/p>\n

Plant stand<\/h2>\n

\"Plant<\/a>Two projects now that I actually finished.\u00a0 The first was a three-tiered plant stand I made for the back yard.\u00a0 I found a plan for one in a magazine and said, “I could do that!”\u00a0 And I did!\u00a0 I posted some pictures on Facebook — at least I think I did, but Facebook won’t show them to me now.\u00a0 I’ll dig up some pics and post them here later.<\/p>\n

Leather hair tie<\/h2>\n

\"Butterfly\"<\/a>I mentioned above that I’d started to do a little leather work.\u00a0 One of the things I really wanted to do was to make a hair bow for my wife’s birthday.\u00a0 And I did!\u00a0 It was pretty nice, for a “first real piece of leather work”.<\/p>\n

Ebid assistant & Little Book That Beat the Market<\/h2>\n

I had written some software back in 2014 for a gentleman who I contacted online about doing some programming.\u00a0 He had posted on an eBay developer’s forum asking if someone could write some specialty software for him.\u00a0 I finally got that completed,<\/p>\n

CGRPR, Cassie Gannis Racing, Mike Harmon Racing<\/h2>\n

Mid-2014 I had some social media contact with a young Phoenix-based race car driver, Cassie Gannis.\u00a0 Early 2015 I cranked up a small public relations website<\/a> to help her out a bit.\u00a0 Things got pretty exciting later in the year when she was going to be racing at the Phoenix International Raceway in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series in a Mike Harmon truck.\u00a0 Well, things didn’t quite work out the way everyone planned them (it’s a really long story involving some unsavory characters), but I at least got to meet some nice people along the way.<\/p>\n

Plans for 2016: help out where I can, hoping to help find Cassie some major sponsorship for this year.\u00a0 I’ll also be helping Mike Harmon out a bit with some administrative assistance.\u00a0 Also, I’ll be taking an online course in Sports Management, so maybe I can learn a bit of how to be more helpful to the teams.<\/p>\n

Frame Holder, 3D printed & Cast<\/h2>\n

My wife and her mother had an idea to create some framed pictures for her mother’s sisters, and along with that idea there was a question about whether or not I could build a table-top frame holder for them.\u00a0 I ended up designing and 3D printing<\/a> one for each frame, and while they looked pretty nice, I had an idea to try to cast the frame holders with clear resin.\u00a0 While that idea didn’t quite come together in time, it did spawn an idea for an adjustable frame holder that would be a combination of wood and cast resin.\u00a0 That’s a project for 2016.<\/p>\n

Etsy shop<\/h2>\n

Halloween, several folks in our neighborhood got together and had one common table for handing out candy, and during a lull in the action one of our neighbors mentioned she had a shop on Etsy where she was selling antiques that she acquired from local garage sales.\u00a0 I had thought about selling my magnetic pen holder and ice cream bar funnel on Amazon, but when I looked into it, the whole operation just seemed overwhelmingly complex for the simple stuff I was hoping to do.\u00a0 But our neighbor assured me that Etsy was extremely simple.<\/p>\n

So (as I mentioned above) I now have an Etsy shop<\/a>.\u00a0 Copies of my book, “I Hate My Damn Job<\/a>!”, are also available there.<\/p>\n

Software to learn: Animation Master, Pixel Gravity, Mix Master<\/h2>\n

I acquired a few software packages throughout the year.\u00a0 Most fun among them is Animation Master<\/a>, which is a 3D animation tool.\u00a0 Think Pixar and ILM, but on a scale even I could handle!<\/p>\n

Pixel Gravity<\/a> does simulations of planets and orbits.\u00a0 It was only $10, but kind of cool the way you can change parameters and see how it affects orbits, for example.\u00a0 I got interested in this software because of the book\/screenplay I’m looking into writing.<\/p>\n

MixCraft<\/a> does audio.\u00a0 More than audio, it interfaces to MIDI (the interface for electronic pianos — which I have 3 of!), and lets you arrange sounds easily for music.<\/p>\n

Guest Impression: meet & greet facilitator at meetings & parties<\/h2>\n

I saw a post on Elance (a site for freelancers of all types) asking for someone to make software to help “mix it up” at a big party they were having.\u00a0 The idea was to give each guest a short list of a few other guests to meet and share “recollection\/thoughts” via a mobile app or web site.\u00a0 Then the party host would collect these comments off of the master site and then use the information in what I can only assume would be a “global roast” of all the guests.<\/p>\n

I thought this might be an interesting concept to explore.\u00a0 But who has the time?!\u00a0 Still, it would be an interesting party idea… and maybe a moneymaker?<\/p>\n

Carondelet consulting<\/h2>\n

Since retiring in January 2014 I’ve had the occasional call from folks back at Carondelet Health Network about a couple of the systems that I wrote.\u00a0 If you follow Carondelet or healthcare in Tucson at all, you’re probably aware that the parent corporation of Carondelet, now called simply “Ascension” (previously “Ascension Health”), has spun off the Carondelet system to a partnership of Tenet, Dignity Health (formerly Catholic Healthcare West), and with some continued involvement of Ascension.\u00a0 Tenet is taking the lead apparently on whipping Carondelet into profitability, and if you’ve followed Tenet at all, you may have heard their reputation for being very bottom-line oriented.<\/p>\n

All this has led my former workmates to make some apparently substantial changes to the Daily Labor Cost Tool, or DLCT, which has been in place for several years to track, well, daily labor costs.\u00a0 More of a workload\/cost tool, it reports labor data (both hours, staff, and dollars) per patient, by department.<\/p>\n

So I was contacted back before Thanksgiving to participate in a conference call, to get an idea of what needed to be done.\u00a0 Ultimately they decided they’d like me to do the work, but they can’t just hire me directly — there’s a whole process to be followed, which includes getting the Carondelet (and perhaps now called Tenet) legal department to sign off on it.<\/p>\n

It’s now the first week of January 2016 as I write this, and I’m still waiting for the “OK” to proceed.\u00a0 So I guess this will go into the 2016 bucket.<\/p>\n

Small EHR for Michigan based urgent care telemedicine<\/h2>\n

From way back in my University Medical Center days — oh wait, it’s not UMC any more, it’s Banner University Medical Center Tucson — I have maintained a friendship and occasional working relationship with a lady who is a subject matter expert in medical coding and billing.<\/p>\n

In late 2015, she was approached by a small group of\u00a0physicians with interest in telemedicine for post-urgent care follow-up. Turns out they have developed what sounds like a robust telemedicine application which does audio, video, and interfaces to home health care devices (blood pressure, glucometer, weight scale, etc.)\u2026. but they\u2019re in need of some additional software to satisfy a variety of additional requirements. I’ve developed some questions… and this little project\u00a0will move to the 2016 list!<\/p>\n

Book (fiction!), possibly a movie script<\/h2>\n

It’s amazing to me sometimes where my brain goes.\u00a0 Take the following three tidbits:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. We watched the 3-part, 6-hour mini-series “Childhood’s End” based on an Arthur C. Clarke novel.<\/li>\n
  2. I’ve been monitoring legislation about Daylight Saving Time and Time Zone changes.<\/li>\n
  3. I read something about “tidal locking”, where the gravitational pull of Earth and our moon is actually responsible for the slowing down of Earth’s rotation.\u00a0 Yeah, it’s a very slight slowing, but it’s what is responsible for the “leap seconds<\/a>” being inserted into our highly-accurate clock systems.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Mix them around in my head a bit, and then out pops this thought:\u00a0 I should write a book about some sort of near-Earth astronomical event that causes the Earth’s “day” to stretch — to something more than say 25 hours.\u00a0 In doing some research, I found a book called The Age of Miracle<\/a> that has such a story line, but told from the viewpoint of a young teenage girl and her family.\u00a0 I want to explore the political and technical wrangling that would occur, including such things as:<\/p>\n