We are currently experiencing a bit of a cold snap in Auckland and across the country in general to be accurate.
The workshop that I spend the better part of my days in is rather large and the air conditioning still hasn’t been installed so it closely resembles the cool store in the local bottle shop until about one o’clock in the afternoon. By three in the afternoon the temperature begins a rapid decline back towards perfect beer temp again.
Being that our primary business is the manufacture of battery charging system for industry there is no shortage of energy available in the form of batteries and surprise, surprise, chargers in my immediate vicinity.
That, coupled with the cold got me to thinking that some electric socks would be just the ticket for keeping my feet warm while sitting at my desk.
I figured they didn’t have to be too flashy as they would spend most of the day under my desk inside shoes with my jeans or overalls over the top.
So Monday night just gone I sat myself down on the floor in my lab at home and proceeded to weave some thin nichrome wire through a pair of long woolen footy socks I had selected for the job.
It was quite a lot more work than I had envisaged but eventually, after multiple foot stabbings I managed to get the wire fairly evenly distributed around the feet and half way up the leg section of both socks. I super glued a couple of ceramic connectors just below the top of the socks to connect my power wires to and was reasonably happy that by folding the top of the socks down over the connectors the whole shebang would stay in position so long as I didn’t decide to move around too much.
I had spent a few hours that day designing and building a simple adjustment device that by my best reckoning would give more than enough control over the elements now woven into the socks. I then wasted little time connecting this to a battery of a type I knew we had plenty of at work.
Eureka!
Success is mine
Or so it did at first appear...
Because I had to weave the element through the socks the nichrome wire came into direct contact with my skin in places and although I could have simply put the electric socks over the top of another pair of ordinary socks to overcome this problem I felt that in some ways that was inefficient and to some degree defeated the point of electric socks on the whole. I figured that I should be able to adjust the power into the elements to a point where the wire was not uncomfortable against my bare skin, yet still produced enough heat to be of benefit.
It was during that adjustment that things went horribly awry!
For no apparently good reason my controller decided that it would choose that very moment to lose all semblance of control and go from near minimum to flat out!
I gauge myself as a reasonably adept electronics engineer but for some reason when it comes to experiments I conduct upon myself I show a frightening lack of foresight or consideration for potential failure and the associated consequences.
If you feel so inclined see how long it takes you to completely remove a pair of reasonably snug fitting, long footy socks...
The flurry of activity that took place on the floor of my lab was dynamic to say the least!
The socks went from comfortably warm to suitable for the cremation of rhinoceros in the blink of a now watering eye. To further add to the ensuing chaos, my cat Walt had come into the lab while I was weaving the wire into the socks and settled himself on top of a pile of magazines in one corner and at my first bellow had levitated a good two feet from the ground, doubled in size and lit out for the door, legs peddling at the speed of light.
Alas, his escape was not to be so easily executed for as soon as his frantically scrabbling legs hit the ground they came into claw contact with the pile of magazines he had been sitting upon and they proceeded to shoot out from under him like so many cards dealt from the hand of an experienced croupier and in his effort to correct his lack of forward motion he misjudged the gap in the door and collided heavily with the door frame. The impact of the collision was enough to knock him backwards and off his feet – for a Pico second!
In almost the same movement he was back on his feet and headed in my direction.
The look in his eyes was unnerving to say the least and for a moment I felt a touch of panic, only for a moment mind because within the next, he was in my lap all 11 kilo’s of him.
Despite the pain in my feet I felt every claw.
Caught between my overwhelming desire to throw him from my lap and through the half open door and the need to get the twin induction furnace’s off of my feet, I failed abysmally at both.
Sure, Walt sailed through the door but not before managing to just barely hook a single claw under the tip of one of my nostrils and drag the other outstretched paw down my arm.
I hit the floor, writhing in agony, screaming a foul torrent of cuss words and tore at the socks that now had the similar feeling I would imagine you could expect if you were wearing wasp nests as shoes.
All of this occurred in a matter of seconds and the several seconds longer it took to remove the socks seemed to be drawn out by some strange bend in the time space continuum giving me ample time to not only receive multiple small burns on my feet but a fairly decent number to my fingers in to the bargain.
I ran through the bi-fold doors that separate my lab from the bathroom and turned the shower on my feet and hands and despite my panic was relieved to find that the damage was pretty minimal with only a couple of tiny burns around my heels and several more on the top of my feet and toes.
It was while I was still standing in the shower looking wistfully at my scorched thumbs that the socks caught fire.
Shit!
Shit, shit, shit!
Get the wet flannel - back into the lab.
Shit! Sore feet!
Damnit not woolen socks after all - wool and nylon mix
SHIT!
Smoke alarms gone off!
Fuck!
YES WALT - I want to be outside too!
Oh for fucks sake the nylons melted and stuck to the floor!
FML!
...so the socks have joined the homemade electrolysis machine in the junk pile and will not be revisited.
As I said to a friend; I really should have learned my lesson from the motorcycle heated handgrip exercise because that too was an exceptional catastrophe.
– It is also, another story...
Currently listening to:
Cold War Kids - We Used To Vacation.
Sheryl Crow - Detours
The workshop that I spend the better part of my days in is rather large and the air conditioning still hasn’t been installed so it closely resembles the cool store in the local bottle shop until about one o’clock in the afternoon. By three in the afternoon the temperature begins a rapid decline back towards perfect beer temp again.
Being that our primary business is the manufacture of battery charging system for industry there is no shortage of energy available in the form of batteries and surprise, surprise, chargers in my immediate vicinity.
That, coupled with the cold got me to thinking that some electric socks would be just the ticket for keeping my feet warm while sitting at my desk.
I figured they didn’t have to be too flashy as they would spend most of the day under my desk inside shoes with my jeans or overalls over the top.
So Monday night just gone I sat myself down on the floor in my lab at home and proceeded to weave some thin nichrome wire through a pair of long woolen footy socks I had selected for the job.
It was quite a lot more work than I had envisaged but eventually, after multiple foot stabbings I managed to get the wire fairly evenly distributed around the feet and half way up the leg section of both socks. I super glued a couple of ceramic connectors just below the top of the socks to connect my power wires to and was reasonably happy that by folding the top of the socks down over the connectors the whole shebang would stay in position so long as I didn’t decide to move around too much.
I had spent a few hours that day designing and building a simple adjustment device that by my best reckoning would give more than enough control over the elements now woven into the socks. I then wasted little time connecting this to a battery of a type I knew we had plenty of at work.
Eureka!
Success is mine
Or so it did at first appear...
Because I had to weave the element through the socks the nichrome wire came into direct contact with my skin in places and although I could have simply put the electric socks over the top of another pair of ordinary socks to overcome this problem I felt that in some ways that was inefficient and to some degree defeated the point of electric socks on the whole. I figured that I should be able to adjust the power into the elements to a point where the wire was not uncomfortable against my bare skin, yet still produced enough heat to be of benefit.
It was during that adjustment that things went horribly awry!
For no apparently good reason my controller decided that it would choose that very moment to lose all semblance of control and go from near minimum to flat out!
I gauge myself as a reasonably adept electronics engineer but for some reason when it comes to experiments I conduct upon myself I show a frightening lack of foresight or consideration for potential failure and the associated consequences.
If you feel so inclined see how long it takes you to completely remove a pair of reasonably snug fitting, long footy socks...
The flurry of activity that took place on the floor of my lab was dynamic to say the least!
The socks went from comfortably warm to suitable for the cremation of rhinoceros in the blink of a now watering eye. To further add to the ensuing chaos, my cat Walt had come into the lab while I was weaving the wire into the socks and settled himself on top of a pile of magazines in one corner and at my first bellow had levitated a good two feet from the ground, doubled in size and lit out for the door, legs peddling at the speed of light.
Alas, his escape was not to be so easily executed for as soon as his frantically scrabbling legs hit the ground they came into claw contact with the pile of magazines he had been sitting upon and they proceeded to shoot out from under him like so many cards dealt from the hand of an experienced croupier and in his effort to correct his lack of forward motion he misjudged the gap in the door and collided heavily with the door frame. The impact of the collision was enough to knock him backwards and off his feet – for a Pico second!
In almost the same movement he was back on his feet and headed in my direction.
The look in his eyes was unnerving to say the least and for a moment I felt a touch of panic, only for a moment mind because within the next, he was in my lap all 11 kilo’s of him.
Despite the pain in my feet I felt every claw.
Caught between my overwhelming desire to throw him from my lap and through the half open door and the need to get the twin induction furnace’s off of my feet, I failed abysmally at both.
Sure, Walt sailed through the door but not before managing to just barely hook a single claw under the tip of one of my nostrils and drag the other outstretched paw down my arm.
I hit the floor, writhing in agony, screaming a foul torrent of cuss words and tore at the socks that now had the similar feeling I would imagine you could expect if you were wearing wasp nests as shoes.
All of this occurred in a matter of seconds and the several seconds longer it took to remove the socks seemed to be drawn out by some strange bend in the time space continuum giving me ample time to not only receive multiple small burns on my feet but a fairly decent number to my fingers in to the bargain.
I ran through the bi-fold doors that separate my lab from the bathroom and turned the shower on my feet and hands and despite my panic was relieved to find that the damage was pretty minimal with only a couple of tiny burns around my heels and several more on the top of my feet and toes.
It was while I was still standing in the shower looking wistfully at my scorched thumbs that the socks caught fire.
Shit!
Shit, shit, shit!
Get the wet flannel - back into the lab.
Shit! Sore feet!
Damnit not woolen socks after all - wool and nylon mix
SHIT!
Smoke alarms gone off!
Fuck!
YES WALT - I want to be outside too!
Oh for fucks sake the nylons melted and stuck to the floor!
FML!
...so the socks have joined the homemade electrolysis machine in the junk pile and will not be revisited.
As I said to a friend; I really should have learned my lesson from the motorcycle heated handgrip exercise because that too was an exceptional catastrophe.
– It is also, another story...
Currently listening to:
Cold War Kids - We Used To Vacation.
Sheryl Crow - Detours
