At Long Last...The Cheapzuma!

(and there was much rejoicing)

Finally took some pics of the Cheapzuma. For those of you not following my every utterance with bated breath (and so far, that seems to be a club with universal membership, which is fine, I'm an introvert), the Cheapzuma is a a variant of the Podzuma, which is itself a hack of the Sonic Impact T-Amp 5066.

As you'll see in the photos, the Cheapzuma is a basic box, about 16" x 16" x 10". The height and width dimensions were pretty much dictated by the speakers, which have since ceased to be available through Parts Express. They were an OEM auto speaker for Ford, with decent stats, and the best part was they could be had for $5 apiece. Since I was making this to basically be a knock-around version of the Podzuma, I wasn't particularly worried about audiophile quality. All it had to do was throw out some sound on the cheap. Since they're automotive speakers, the crossovers were built in, so all I had to do was wire them to the outputs of the T-Amp board.

I originally started with a 12V supply provided by D-cell batteries, and the battery box design was predicated around that. The D-cells worked okay, but I really liked the rechargeable nature of the Podzuma, so I eventually added the charging circuit from the Podzuma specs and two slim 6V sealed lead-acid batteries wired in series.

The case is 1/2" MDF and basic nail/glue edge joinery. I did route 1/16" channels at all of the join lines (which is why the ruler shots show slightly less than 16" dimensions) to aid in sealing the box. Another "improvement" over the original Podzuma design was the access covers for the battery and electronics boxes. I routed 1/16" channels for the access plates (which are just the aluminum tops to basic Radio Shack project boxes (2x4x1 and 5x7x3, I think), and put in tee nuts so that the plates could be easily removed without chewing up the screwholes in the MDF (the routed corner reliefs, recessed panel mounts and tee nuts are techniques I'm using on the Podzuma rebox as well). For aesthetics, I rounded over the edges, added a gate handle from Home Depot to lug it around, and "painted" it with Plasti-Dip.

So really, for about $60 in parts originally, and about $25 in additional parts to convert from D-cells to rechargeable SLAs, I came it at about 1/3 the cost of the Podzuma build. No, it's not as loud, and it doesn't look as cool, but it does everything I need it to, so I'm calling it a success. Plus, it served as a testbed for really getting the most out of the $200+ in parts I have invested in the Podzuma build when I get around to finishing that rebox.

And now, for the photos:

The Cheapzuma in all its glory. Well, glory is a strong word, but it's functional, and I still like the X arrangement of the speakers (probably not the best arrangement from an audio point of view, but we're not going for subtle here).

A bit under 16" wide. Trivia: That chair is part of a dining room set that's exactly the same as the one used in Talladega Nights during the "favorite Jesus/on you like a spider-monkey" scene. It's from Rooms To Go.

A bit under 16" tall (I apologize for the blur). One of my biggest beefs with the original Podzuma plans was a complete lack of measurements for anything other than the overall height/width/length. The size and shape of the battery and electronics boxes were apparently left as an exercise to the builder. When I detail the Podzuma rebuild, you can bet I'll post complete dimensions.

10 inches deep. Note that the actual interior volume is less, because of the 1" recess of the baffle, and the battery and electronics boxes. Also, I retained the left/right separation of the original Podzuma with a vertical divider between the two pairs of speakers, so each side has its own (pretty much identically-sized) volume.

The back. As you can see, I use this a good bit, so the exposed spots are where the unit rubs against the luggage carrier I use to wheel it around to tournaments. That's the only downside about Plasti-Dip over MDF...the smoothness of the MDF doesn't give the Plasti-Dip much to hold onto.

The battery box, the series-wired SLAs and, in the upper right, the charging circuit.

The power/volume knob from the T-Amp, the power LED and the input jack.

Her Favorite Color Is Chrome

Like the song says, Toni Daytona's not your average pretty girl.

Now, I'm not the car geek in my family. Brother D gets that honor, hands down. He's a mechanic for a living, used to race stock cars, and I don't think his fingernails have been clean since about 1984 or so. But I like cars. I like fast cars. And I like women who like cars. Specifically, I like women who understand my yearning for specific cars...like a '69 Camaro, or the '09 Camaro. Owning both would rock, wouldn't it? The new Challenger is a little slice of alright too...I saw one in person at a local minor-league baseball game. Sweet.

L, who I've talked (obsessed) about here before is a car girl. Not in a Toni Daytona sense, so it's not like I could stop taking my car to professional mechanics if I married her, but she gets me. And she'd look sweet behind the wheel of a convertible muscle car, or snuggled up beside me while I drive.

And the dorky grin (best showcased in the last panel here) just proves that Brad is 100% with smit. So if she's just teasing him, it's gonna be a horrendous crash, Flash. I just hope his male ego isn't going to get in the way. It's cool that she knows a lot about high-performance cars, but if she turns out to know more than he does, he might start feeling emasculated, and that'll be trouble.

It's interesting how Evans has managed to, at least in me, turn Toni from a probably-shallow-trophy-girlfriend into a sympathetic character. It's also a little odd that if Brad and Toni don't work, I'm thinking it'll be Brad's fault. Weird. And kudos to Greg Evans for fleshing the characters out enough to make that possible.

Like Stroking on Nail Polish or Slipping Into Nylons...

Toni Daytona could give me driving lessons any day of the week.

It wasn't until today's strip that I felt a great need to imagine a voice for Toni...now, I'm obsessed...I'm thinking something close to that Kate Walsh commercial for Cadillac where she's extolling the virtues of nav systems and sapele wood accents...maybe just a shade higher pitch.

Rowwwwrrrr.

Fat People, Unclench Already...

Okay, so I'm like weeks late to the party, but I finally took Daughter to see WALL-E last night. If any of the 12 of you who read this haven't seen it, just skip this post. I don't think I'm going to give away anything, but really, the plot isn't why you go see this film.

ObOMG: The graphics are freaking amazing! The tracking shots as WALL-E is racing back and forth from his home are gorgeous, and the sheer amount of STUFF going on in each frame is ridiculous.

ObApple: EVE is what you get when you let Apple design a robot.

Alright, now to the bee in my bonnet. I've had people tell me this is a very political movie. I've also read blogs and "open letters" from fat people who think the movie is targeting them as the butt of the joke. (Full disclosure: I'm fat. I weigh 340 lb on a 6'1" frame, and even though a lot of is muscle, a lot of it isn't. I could lose about 100 lb.)

So, in a future 800 or so years from now, the Earth is totally polluted. Oh, by the way, apparently, Earth was also pretty much taken over by one retail chain (Buy-N-Large), and American culture is 100% dominant, at least aboard the Axiom. It should be noted that the Axiom is just one of many space-going habitats that mankind has escaped Earth in, so maybe the NorAm-centric nature is because the Axiom launched from America (apparently, New York City). Buy-N-Large has long since managed to pervade every aspect of human life, even before the space arks take off. This only gets worse on the Buy-N-Large-owned arks, where robots do EVERYTHING for humans, and every aspect of life is pretty much dictated by the ubiquitous electronic signage throughout the ship. As you might imagine, a human race which doesn't have to work for anything, doesn't. As 700 years pass, people become sedentary and fat, tooling around on their hover-chairs, catered to by robots, and avoiding pretty much everything but consuming. Ironically, the ads for the space-arks (one of which is conveniently still operating on Earth after 700+ years) depicted a very active shipboard lifestyle, with the hoverchairs originally meant to enable the less-physically-able to enjoy shipboard activities.

(Note: I have some personal experience here. Everyone knows the Wii is this wonderful little machine that lets you get up off the couch and be active while you play video games. Well, my friends and I have managed to discover how to use the Wii Remotes from the safety and comfort of the couch. We can play a full 9 holes of Wii Sports golf with the only energy expended being the occasional flick of the wrist. But I do stand up to play Guitar Hero.)

Yes, the haplessness of the Axiomites is played for laughs, but I didn't get the sense it was out of mean-spiritedness. I think everyone can agree that a life that sedentary is NOT healthy, by any definition of the word. If you happen to be fat right now, and you're living a life that sedentary, then maybe you can take offense to the movie. But if you do even the smallest things for yourself, THIS MOVIE WAS NOT ABOUT YOU. It's only when the introduction of WALL-E (and the discoveries he unwittingly makes) adds a little chaos to the ship that a handful of these sheeple start thinking for themselves. And once these people shake off the stupor induced by having their every whim instantly catered to, they start becoming human again. The man and the woman who get "woken up" by WALL-E find one another, and begin what appears to be a romance. Never once are we given the idea that these fat, sedentary people are ugly or unworthy of love, they're simply blind to the possibility. (Now, this does raise the question of where the babies in the nursery have been coming from, but being a Disney flick, all the "love" is pure, platonic, and at the hand-holding, spark-generating level.)

Another minor nit. In the movie, the Earth is covered with trash, near-Earth space is littered with what appears to be millions of satellites, and apparently the whole planet became uninhabitable. The amount of trash seems far out of proportion to the amount of raw material that the Earth can produce. Yes, yes, I understand, hyperbole. What I don't understand is if the human race of the movie can produce enough space arks to evacuate the entire planet (all 6 billion or so, unless there's been an unmentioned apocalypse sometime before the exodus), why can't they just load up a bunch of these arks with garbage and pilot them into the sun? Apparently, resources other than arable land are not lacking in this version of Earth. Each of the arks has the ability to sustain the lives of thousands of people for hundreds of years, not to mention the resources required to build the arks, and the resources represented by all that trash.

Litter bad. Recycling good. Sedentary bad. Exercise good. Retail bad. Farming good. Love is universal. Holding hands is the nec plus ultra of love, at least for robots. Dancing is double-super-plus-good, particularly when unencumbered by gravity. And little white Apple robots (hmmm...Eve tempted Adam with an apple...), when not being watched by supervisor robots, will indulge in egrgious wastes of power just to do a little supersonic jetting over a trashed landscape before getting to work. Oh, and a robot that can appreciate "Hello, Dolly!" and fall in love with a little white iBot can be surprisingly practical when it comes to the demise of its fellow WALL-Es (dead comrades = spare parts). Interesting set of lessons, if you choose to view it as a movie with lessons, but I chose to be awed by the spectacle, and touched by the love stories.

Your own mileage may vary.