Zanta

Your math is off by a couple orders of magnitude :)

Two considerations when installing permanent hardware:

1 - You're drilling a hole in a rock. It's a small action, but it can't be undone. Can you justify forever altering part of a beautiful natural landscape to support your ambition? Keep in mind that the outdoors community in general has a leave-no-trace ethic.

2 - Every piece of permanent hardware makes the route safer and logistically and psychologically easier (to a certain extent). There's an argument that just because YOU want/need a bolt at a particular point on a route, there's no guarantee that someone stronger/tougher/better-equipped couldn't come along and forgo that bolt. What right do you have to bring the challenge down to your level? Perhaps the most extreme example of this was Cesare Maestri hauling a gigantic compressor powered drill up Cerro Torre and drilling a line of bolts all the way to the top [1]. Reinhold Messner called this 'the murder of the impossible.'

There's a forever-ongoing debate in the climbing community on these subjects, trying to determine what good 'style' is. Part of that discussion is determining the appropriate circumstances for installing permanent hardware. Personally I'm happy to clip bolts when they're needed, but I can understand the perspective of those who don't like em.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerro_Torre

Looks like you're missing a link. Could you provide it please?

My default browser remained the same, but I had the same experience with Edge and the Windows Store being pinned to the taskbar. I don't like the feeling of not being in control of my own machine.

I got a good laugh out of his bio line 'After leaving traditional high school to compete on the international ski racing circuit...,' trying to throw off a genius-playboy-athlete vibe.

His FIS profile has him as a 100 point skier (1). I was a 100 point skier, and I sucked ass, miles away from any reasonable standard of international competition.

(1) http://data.fis-ski.com/dynamic/athlete-biography.html?secto...

Thanks for the clarification, I read it backwards first and did a double take.

Suburbs of Toronto for me and several of my friends from my time at UBC. A lot of us were transplants from across the country, tried to hack it professionally in Vancouver before eventually being driven elsewhere by job and housing prospects.

I agree. The initial messaging is to spark some sense of play and to screen for robots/crazy people. After that's established there's really not much to be gained by further messaging.

You're radically overestimating how much teachers are paid. I lectured at a Canadian university and was paid $7k per semester long course with about 100 students. I could maybe handle 2 courses per semester (after some time to get my lectures dialed in), which works out to $42k/year for an engineer with a graduate degree.

If anyone is QQing to the bank it's not your lecturer.

I used BigBlueSaw for making frames and parts for some robots I built for fun. They fill a nice gap in that they serve hobbyists but can work with materials and sizes that support beefy, industrial style designs. Conventional machine shops won't give me the time of day due to small quantities and non-recurring orders.

Anyhow, I went home last night and knocked together a little cutting template for some hobby leatherworking I do. At $30 CAD shipped, it's hard to resist trying it out. If I'm happy with the result I'll share the site and template on some leatherworking forums - those guys are always looking for easy ways to build templates. Good luck with your launch.

I've used BigBlueSaw as well as some local makerspaces for my waterjet and lasercut needs in the past, and I've been happy with their services. Where does your business fit within that marketplace? Is your advantage pure cost (which I'm impressed with by the way, a $12 shipped part is ridiculous)

I'm a mechatronics designer at a robotics startup. It's a junior 'jack-of-all-trades' position: mechanical design, testing and automation, and hardware troubleshooting. I'm still pretty new but I like the project and I like the variety of work.

Typical tree planting terrain is one of the least robotics-friendly environments imaginable. Logs, brush, loose sticks and rocks, swamp, sand, hills, you name it.

Here's a photo of a planting site I took during one of my planting contracts a few years back: http://i.imgur.com/tITCW03.jpg

It is often possible for logging companies to prepare the land better (clearing out slash, sometimes scarifying the land), but the expense here is really substantial. Currently the most effective technological tree planting solution is aerial seeding.

Fun fact: that shop is in Dan's basement. He has a beautiful home in Vancouver and has built into the basement a better machine shop than any at UBC. It's a playground.

I'm pleased to see how much instructional content is available for fledgling prototypers. I got into the field after reading Shane Colton's [http://scolton.blogspot.ca/] and Charles Guan's [http://www.etotheipiplusone.net/], build reports.

In a similar vein to the post material, Dan Gelbart's youtube course on rapid prototyping is invaluable: https://www.youtube.com/user/dgelbart/videos