I'm building a streetable rock crawler out of a 78 F150 with a custom radius-arm suspension in the front. I needed to measure the deflection of the drag-link & track-bar as the front axle cycled up and down while changing a few variables: mounting locations, drag-link/track-bar angles, and drag-link/track-bar lengths. I used plain Javascript to display a graph, lines representing the drag-link and track-bar, enabled them to be clicked+dragged along with their mounting points and sizes.
With this visualization I was able to determine the best way to package this on the vehicle with the minimal amount of deflection to avoid bump-steer and death-wobble.
I suppose it would be useful to other people building radius-arm/link-suspensions that incorporate a track-bar but I haven't got around to hosting it any where.
That is really cool. I haven't built a rig like you, but I have it on my bucket list to build a fully dressed rock crawler out of a Mitsubishi Montero 2dr (also sold as a Dodge Raider in the states). It'll be leaf sprung to start, but using your method of going 4 link would be preferable to the "build and pray" method that most people seem to take.
I'm a mechanical engineer, so I'm always intrigued by visual calculations like this that exist outside the standard CAD/excel paradigm. Is there any particular reason you went this route for this application? Do you use a pre-built framework to enable rapid creation and iteration of the setup?
I went this route because I'm a software engineer that mostly works with Javascript and needed it fast. No framework but bounced a lot of the problems off of Chat GPT to help me figure out how to get it done. I also figured it would be more useful than a CAD model to non-technical folks if I made it available online.
The ones I participate in currently:
Off-road truck building (mostly rock crawling),
Metal fabrication (welding, tube bending, etc),
Weightlifting,
Surfing,
Built a pond in the backyard with bluegill and leopard frog.
I'm nearing 40 and in the past few years I've tried to focus more on "real world" activities (I've never lacked them, I just felt like gaming had less value). I've done well with this by spending time with my interests/pastimes; however, my work lately has been less stimulating. As a result, something has been missing.
Long story short, I realized I wasn't getting into a "flow-state" often enough and guess where you can get an easy fix of that? First-person shooters.. (for me anyway). I don't have 3+ hour-long sessions or anything, maybe just a round or two and it's like that first cup of coffee in the morning.
It's funny you speak of flow state here since for me reading up on MMORPG meta or any meta changes to any game is where I mostly focus on such that even before I launch a game I've been reading up on its mechanics and trying to understand it in an abstract way (the opposite of this for me is when I just play Stardew Valley since I just wanna fish or chat with the NPCs rather than figure out how to min-max my farm). The act of figuring out how a game works mechanically is just as fun as trying to play the game itself for me.
Why are you assuming the parent comment does not exercise? Or want to consume caffeine? Certainly those are worse long term than a 15 minute video game session.
Replacing even a small amount of your gaming time with consistent exercise goes so far.
Once you realize that you can actually achieve anything you set your mind to just by making a routine you will find yourself wanting to shift the time and effort going into games into real world success.
Thermapen food thermometer. Best purchase I've made since 2015. Cooking is less stressful, pour over coffee comes out perfectly, less food waste and/or dissatisfaction.
Black out curtains and block all other sources of light, sleep mask, ear plugs, and white noise (floor fan). It's silly but when I find my mind running I visualize myself putting that thought or idea on a shelf like it's a book.. this goes on maybe two or three more times and I'm OUT like a lightbulb on a switch.
As a 33 year-old, self-employed/self-taught web developer looking to become a more proficient programmer this interests me. I've been debating finishing up college to obtain my CS degree but it's only to fill the holes in my knowledge base rather than benefit from holding a degree. An arrangement much like a personal trainer at a gym could be an excellent model: identify areas to work on, come up with a plan, and check in.
Any suggestions on how an arrangement like that could work out for you, like weekly 1-hour online meetings for instance? Just trying to gather some generic opinions, aka "testing the market" :)
- An initial assessment of my needs, formulation of goals and a strategy to reach them.
- a weekly correspondence would be nice but could be as simple as as an email/report
- a monthly meeting/call/video session partnered with the weekly email/report would probably be crucial to ensure the 'student' was being held accountable for producing results.
As someone who is finally getting into Python development (via Django) after following tons of tutorials over several years: should I be using pew, virtualenvwrapper, or something else? This article is from 2015, how relevant is it today?
Most people I've met use virtualenvwrapper. It doesn't work on other shells like fish though. However, I'd simply focus on learning how virtualenv works, and use whatever tool to manage it as you feel like.
It doesn't matter much, it's all just sugar over virtualenvs (which are quite simple conceptually). Virtualenvwrapper has been around a long time and works pretty well.
More recent tools are Pipenv (which I've been using) and hatch - I don't think there is any One True Way since the days of virtualenvwrapper being the latest and shiniest.
If you want a really easy to use tool that doesn't require any understanding of virtualenvs, I'd look at Pipenv.
I use Autoenv. It has one ultimate advantage - you don't need to learn any new tools/commands or execute anything manually. Also it's totally up to your decision where do you want to have the virtualenv.
Just put a file `.env` with anything you want to execute automatically (eg. `source venv/bin/activate`) into your project directory, and that's it - it will run any time you'll `cd` or open a new shell there.
With this visualization I was able to determine the best way to package this on the vehicle with the minimal amount of deflection to avoid bump-steer and death-wobble.
I suppose it would be useful to other people building radius-arm/link-suspensions that incorporate a track-bar but I haven't got around to hosting it any where.