Alcohol Sideburner Stove

I am the scoutmaster for our ward's scout troop. It's a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. I recently attended a new scout leader training in our area and when they were talking to use about cook stoves, someone mentioned building a very light weight backpacking stove out of a Pepsi can. They had one there and it looked very cool. It sounded like a fun project that the scouts could work on before we start into our summer camping season.

I have been getting excited about doing some backpacking this summer -- for both scouts and with my family. I went out and bought the Hiking Idaho book. It talks about quite a few places to go hiking in Idaho. Anyway ...

After I got home from that scout leader training I read up on these homemade backpacking stoves. I came across this site: Zen Stove. They have all kinds of information about alcohol stoves. After looking around for a bit I found this stove: Zen Alcohol Sideburner Stove. The pictures make the stove look awesome, the shiny chrome look really did me in. I decided to build one of these stoves rather than the pop can stove because it seems to be a lot higher quality than other stoves I've seen.

I followed the instructions on the Zen site and gathered all the parts and tools I needed. I pretty much had all that I needed for the tools, I just needed to get the cans it talks about. So I stayed up till around 1 am the first night using an SOS pad to scrub off all the coating of the cans to get them nice and shiny. I didn't get mine as shiny as in the article I posted, but I figure it's my first time so no big deal.

I followed all the instructions as described, except for the part about the jets on the stove. I don't have a Dremmel or the right sized needle that is described, so I just grabbed a needle from my wife's sewing kit and punched my holes. I think they are slightly too big because I get some fairly big jets.

Anyway, I got the whole thing done and was ready to put it together with the silicone. I put all the silicone on and went to put on the bottom and I couldn't get it on quite right. I bent the bottom of the stove a bit and ended up rubbing off a bit of the silicone, but finally got it in. I think I should have done the part about expanding and contracting the top and bottom pieces for longer, because my stove isn't sealed as well as it could be and I have a few leaks.

Anyway, I got it put together and tried it out tonight and it actually works! I was pretty happy about it. I'm going to build me another, hopefully this time I can get it sealed better so I don't get any holes. I really like it and plan on taking it backpacking this summer.

Here are some pics of it, enjoy!

Brand Yourself

I've been thinking lately about the overwhelming amount of knowledge there is (and added to everyday) related to me, my life, the software industry, politics, ect. It's obviously impossible to keep up with it all.

I was catching up on one of the blogs I try to read and came across this post: Your Personal Brand. Basically talking about the need to make yourself more marketable in a very saturated software industry, but will relate to other industries as well. The post I listed talked about doing "something" -- so I'm picking this blog as my "personal brand".

I am going to try to keep this blog updated with useful (I'm sure the definition of "useful" will evolve over time) posts. You'll probably see a lot of posts related to the software industry as that is where I focus 80% of my time.

So here's to branding myself -- cheers.

Here is another post along the same line as what I'm talking about: Pushing your skill set.

I Suck

I think about posting quite often, just never get around to it. I'm turning over a new leaf as of today ...