Art, Graphics, Woodworking, Science, Space, Technology

Space Shuttle Challenger mural at my high school

February 17, 2007 kleucht 4 Comments

When I was a student at Deer Creek Mackinaw (Dee-Mack) High School in Mackinaw, Illinois (1984 thru 1988) I was really into anything that was even remotely related to art. I loved drafting classes and all of the different art classes too. Our art teacher, Mrs. Schultz, organized some of the best art students there and had them paint a few organized and approved murals around the school. I was allowed to paint a Space Shuttle mural upstairs on the big 2-story wall just outside the library. I was also into space, and I had some NASA photos and mission patches and I basically just painted a collage of some of the items in that material. I dedicated the mural to the crew of the Challenger mission that was lost during their launch on January 28th, 1986. This large mural was a big project for a high school student … and I never actually technically finished the mural. I had intended to paint land masses on the earth, but never got around to it. I took these photos in the summer of 2002, so the mural was at least there for 14 years. I think they had to paint over it a few years ago, though.

Kurt

Health, Home, Property, Safety

Replacement of window sill on block exterior wall

February 17, 2007 kleucht 3 Comments

A few years ago on my 15 year old concrete block house, one of my exterior window sills started cracking severely and eventually started falling off in large chunks. We had new windows installed, and that work basically did the old broken window sill in for good. I decided to try to form a new concrete window sill on my own. You can see in the photo below that the missing window sill and the broken pieces on the ground after I had ripped off all the loose pieces.

In the photo below, you can clearly see the rebar showing throughout the length of the fractured concrete surface. I guess that rebar didn’t help the sill stay in one piece. It actually helped break it apart once the crack had formed in the area of the rebar.

I got the surface really clean and free of dust and concrete pieces. Then I painted on concrete adhesive that I bought at my local home improvement store. I’ve never used this stuff before, so I don’t know how well it works. As you can see from the photo below, I then mounted some wood strips that were about a half an inch thick to the wall with tapcon screws. These wood strips would become the bottom and side surfaces for my concrete sill mold.

Then I screwed a 1×6 plank that I had laying around to the wood strips. I mounted the top of the plank at the same height that I wanted the top of the new window sill to end up being. I then mixed up some concrete and poured it into the mold. I made sure that the top surface of the new sill slanted down and away from the house. Otherwise, water would pool instead of running off. The photo below shows the mold filled with concrete and curing with plastic around it.

The new sill is perfect. Eventually I got the house painted and the photo below shows the final painted product.

Kurt

Leucht Family Headlines

1st Annual Light the Way 5K Run/Walk

January 21, 2007 kleucht Leave a comment

Yesterday morning our family took part in the 1st Annual Gilchrist Educational Foundation (GEF) Light the Way 5K Run/Walk at our church. We walked. And even though we were pushing strollers with the boys for all 5 kilometers, we did not cross the finish line last … we crossed it third to last. 🙂

Official race results are here at Running Zone (link no longer works). We finished with an official time of 51 minutes and 13 seconds.

Kurt

Art, Graphics, Woodworking, Miscellaneous

Photo-chop contest submittal — Woot Contest 98: When Titans Woot!

January 14, 2007 kleucht 2 Comments

I’ve always had both an artistic bent and a computer bent, so computer graphics have always been sort of a hobby of mine. I can remember writing programs to light up individual pixels on the green display of my Apple IIe computer when I was a teenager. I remember drawing out a Garfield cat onto graph paper first, then mapping out all the pixel X and Y locations on the graph paper to type into my computer program. Ahhhh, those were the good ole days. 🙂

I’ve been a Woot (woot.com, what is Woot) customer since May of 2006, buying cheap electronics here and there whenever I saw Woot offering something that I really needed. When I subscribed to the Woot RSS feeds (so I wouldn’t forget to check the daily sale) I noticed that they were holding weekly Photo-chopping contests there. And they were actually giving away monetary prizes too, or at least monetary credit for purchases on Woot! I’ve got a little bit of Photo-chopping experience, so I started keeping my eyes open for a contest theme that I would enjoy working on. Then Woot Contest 98 caught my eye.

The Challenge: Alter an existing comic-book cover so that it’s named after and features a product we’ve sold on Woot.

This was definitely down my alley. I searched the Woot blog for a product that would work good in a comic book cover. I saw the Navman portable GPS navigation system and immediately thought that I could turn either Spiderman or Superman into Navman.

Navman portable GPS navigation system

I searched the Internet for comic book covers of Spiderman or Superman. I found a good Superman source comic book cover here: http://www.tgfa.org/ … /Superman_349_Cover.jpg

Superman Comic Book Cover .

Source comic book cover

Then I started chopping! I used lots and lots of image layers to get all of my changes into the image. Layering also gives you lots of flexibility and allows you to fine tune things later without a lot of work. Here is my final contest submittal:

My contest submittal .

My contest submittal

Woot Contest 98 Results. I didn’t receive a monetary prize, but I was very honored to have won the “Champions’ Championship Champion” award. After inquiring what the heck that award was about, I was told that it is voted on solely by previous contest top 3 prize winners. So I’m actually quite honored to have received this nod and respect from the previous contest winners on my very first entry. That felt pretty good, and gave me the confidence to enter more contests. Also, my entry came in 5th in the Viewer’s Choice award, which was pretty cool!

Kurt

Art, Graphics, Woodworking, Health, Home, Property, Safety

Safety tip: Nail gun accident!

January 14, 2007 kleucht 1 Comment

Power nail guns are quite dangerous, and even though they have a pretty good safety trigger, they are not accident-proof. One of the many ways you can get shot with a nail gun is for the gun to be too close to the edge of the board that is triggering it and for the nail to miss the board completely.

Over the holidays, someone that I personally know (whom I’m not going to identify, because they’re embarrassed enough as it is) accidentally shot a 10d nail into their arm near the wrist. The nail hit the bone and it actually bent the nail a little bit. Thankfully, the bone was not chipped or hurt in any way and this person made a quick recovery with only a slight bruising of their pride.

.
Photo of nail lodged in arm.
This photo was taken by a cell phone camera
on the way to the emergency room.

Photos of x-rays from hospital.

No bone damage was found.

So please be careful with power nailers. A good safety precaution is to never put any part of your body anywhere near inline with the shooting path of a nail gun. Not even if there’s construction lumber in between!

Kurt