The balloon we've chosen is a 500g sounding balloon.

Free Lift: 1700g

Payload: 1150g

Gross Lift: 3350g

Inflation Volume: 3.1m(cubic)

Inflation Diameter: 1.8m

Ascent Rate: 400m/min

Burst Altitude: 24.5km

Cost: $57

The stratospheric layer of the atmosphere is typically considered to be from 11km to 50km above sea level. Assuming the range calculations are correct, this should put our burst altitude almost half-way up through the stratosphere when it bursts.

It seems a relative of mine has a daughter with a budding talent in art. I received this image through the grape vine, and I'm sharing it with all of you.

Game Development Journal #4 - SafeHouse Z

I made some time to work on this over the weekend and made some significant progress. Specifically, I managed to coax the concept off of my Google doc and onto tangible pieces of paper that took the approximate shape of a really ugly play-testing set complete with various piles of colored paper (color coded because it was easier than printing card-backs), a "board" printed on tabloid paper decorated with colored boxes, and a few player pieces scavenged from a copy of Zombies!!!

By the conclusion of my play-testing, the neatly stacked card decks were completely mixed together as cards were moved, reorganized, shuffled, written on, re-purposed, etc, and the board had so much red ink on it that I may have done better to open a vein over it and call it done. I expect anyone who has tried to put together a first prototype will know what this all looks like; it's the first time I have done it myself.

In the end, it did what I wanted it to do. Once the pacing was hammered out, survival became other than impossible, yet unlikely and more difficult as players were turned into viral, flesh-eating meat puppets. Supplies in the safe-house dwindled and the accrued building strength dropped as the remaining survivors were not able to loot enough supplies to keep up. Out of all the games played on it throughout the morning, only once did one of the four "players" I had set up manage to survive long enough for rescue, and even then it was by the skin of his teeth.

The game plays fairly quick, and it's not very deep. It boils down to decisions based on what the house has and what does it need, and are there enough supplies to keep all of the installed equipment functioning? I think I have the location decks worked out to a happy ratio, so my next step is to re-build these and reprint everything with the design changes made this weekend. There are a number of tweaks I want to explore, such as reducing the unique items to just two in a given deck, and then it can simmer while I brain-storm inspirations to make the game deeper.

Special thanks to my wife for rocking the beer chicken and sweet potatoes, and generally being fucking incredible while I entertained myself.

Beer bratwurst and roasted corn with a back-yard au-jus!

A quick recipe for you, folks. I've been making brats on the grill like this for a little while, but wait until you read what we did with the corn the other day!

Ingredients
Your favorite bratwurst (5 or 6 for this recipe)
12-16 oz of your favorite dark beer
1 small onion, sliced
6 garlic cloves, minced
Ears of whole corn with husks (clean out the silk and season to taste)

Fire up your grill. Bank the coals to one side and let it all get nice and hot. (If you are using a propane grill, just light up half of your elements, or do what you need to create a "cool" spot.) While you wait, put the brats, beer, onion, and garlic into a grill-safe pan such as a loaf pan. Make sure it's tall enough to cover the sausages. Top it all off with a bit of water or stock until all the brats are just covered.

When the coals are ready, set the pan on the "cool" side of your grill. Take the brats out of the marinade with tongs and put them over the fire; don't poke them with a fork as you will let all the juices out as they cook! Cook them for 3-5 minutes on each side, or until they are browned, crispy, and ready to split. By this time, the marinate may be starting to boil just a bit from the radiant heat; this is fine. Put all the brats back into the pan and leave them to stew.

Meanwhile, toss the ears of corn over the fire to roast, turning occasionally. It is fine of the husk starts to char and blacken; it will keep the corn inside from doing the same, but you'll probably get some char near the tip of the ear. Cut it off later if you want, but it won't kill you. Once the corn is good and cooked, remove it from the fire. The pan of brats should be bubbling nicely; take it off the grill as well.


-<Caution!>-
That loaf pan will be hot, so use mitts or pot-holders, and put it on a heat-safe surface, but leave the brats in there.

Clean the husks off of the corn, cut them down to serving size, and serve immediately. The marinade that you cooked the brats in will stay nice and hot. I usually put this straight on the table and serve them right out of there.

Here's the kicker to the plate. Carefully dip your ear of corn in the marinade as well! You have a nice flavorful bath of beer, onions, garlic, and juice from the bratwurst. This makes an excellent back-yard au-jus that compliments the sweetness of the roasted corn! You can use this as a dip or drizzle over other grilled vegetables as well.

Quick note about the beer.
I recommend using more flavorful beers like dark ales or stout, just nothing too bitter. Avoid using domestic pilsners or "lite" beers; these just won't add anything to the flavor of the juice. I personally like to use a home-brewed milk stout or brown ale.

We have also taken left-over au-jus and used it as a stock in soups, and I recommend stir fry, casseroles, or steamed vegetables. Anything that can use a kick of hearty flavor!

Give it a try and let me now what you cooked up, and what you did with the leftovers!

(I plan to do this again early this week, so I'll follow up with some delicious photos!)

[Stratos Burst] Camera Testing

As I type the camera is perched atop my computer quietly snapping photos of my beautiful mug every two minutes. I plan to let this run until I leave the office today or the batteries run out, whichever comes first.

From this test I hope to gather two pieces of information. First, how long the camera will last on a fresh set of batteries. I'm doing this first test on a set of standard alkaline AA's. The lithium batteries are too expensive to go burning up willy-nilly! But this should give me a ballpark figure under standard operating conditions. (i.e. room temperature, NOT an increase of ambient cosmic rays, etc.) Also, figuring the average image size that will help me calculate how much resolution I should be shooting for when balanced against available memory so I can plan to fill as much of that memory as possible in the time-span I expect to have on the batteries.

This means at X resolution per image, I will be using Y megabytes of memory. If I expect the batteries to last Z minutes, I can divide my total memory to see how many pictures I can fit in, and set an appropriate interval in minutes and seconds.

Make sense? Yeah, thought so.

So I have minimized the power drain. I have set the camera to no-flash as I plan to launch on a sunny day, and that teeny light won't do much good when you're shooting that sexy curve of the earth! I have also turned off all display options such as the picture preview, display stamps, ect. I cannot seem to find a setting that will allow me to simply turn off the LCD screen to save power. I can dial down the usage by setting it to turn off after 10 seconds. I  am looking into a secondary script, LCD backlight, that will allow me to turn the back-lighting off which is probably the most power-hungry part of the display.

Edit: Well that sucked. It ran for maybe two hours before the batteries gave out. That was shooting at intervals of two minutes. I have a secondary intervalometer script that will let me turn off the backlight after the first few shots. Hopefully that will save a bunch of power. I may have to space out my intervals a bit too.

More after I load that script and pop in a fresh pair of batteries.

Game Development Journal #3 - SafeHouse Z

I have been messing with a game design that initially proposed to have players who failed in their objective become active forces against the remaining players; a concept that I am told is difficult to implement and has since been stripped from that particular game draft. But I wasn't done with the idea itself and I wanted to find a way to use it in a game of my own, so here it comes.

You and your fellow survivors must build and maintain a safe-house in the center of a city rapidly succumbing to the rising zombie infection. Scout various locations throughout the city to find tools of survival and building materials to strengthen your stronghold. But watch out! Zed's lurk everywhere, and if you accrue too much of an infection, you will join the hoard as it attempts to break the safe-house!


One area of the board represents the safe-house, and all of the space that you have for tools and equipment. An inner track records it's overall strength. The surrounding zones represent various locations to scavenge materials. Along the outer edge of the board runs a progression track that represents the gross strength of the city's hoard of Zeds, and the effect they have upon the dwindling resources.

The game is played in two alternating phases. During the survivor phase, each player either scouts a location for supplies, indicated by placing their token at that site and draws a card (or cards), or performs an action such as building or remodeling the safe-house, installing equipment (such as a power generator), or hunting Zeds. Any unvisited locations continue to burn cards indicating loss to the Zeds or other survivors. Seeded throughout the decks are infection cards that indicate an unlucky encounter with the undead, as well as antiviral serum to battle infections.

Once all the actions have been performed, night falls and the zombies take their turn. The hoard gets stronger as the track advances. If ever the Zeds become stronger than the safe-house, the house is compromised and everyone inside gains infection.

When a survivor gains too much infection they join the hoard, but do not leave the game! During the zombie phase, the track advances faster for each turned player. They also continue to pull cards from the resources, flipping them around to the Zed specific actions such as draining additional resources or even damaging areas of the safe-house. Additionally, each turned player can place their token at one of the salvage sites. During the next survivor phase, a player may still visit that location for resources, but they will assuredly gain infection for their trouble.

If the remaining survivors can last until the hoard reaches the end of its track, they will be rescued from the city and the swarming Zeds. Between the dwindling and already scarce supplies, and the rising zombie threat, will they be able to hold out?

[Stratos Burst] More Hardware

The Antenna

This last weekend I acquired a couple of old broken wireless routers that I pillaged the antennas from. I will eventually put my hands on an adapter harness that will plug the antenna into the phone going into the payload to give it an extended area of reception during retrieval.

Cost: Free (Thanks, Dan!)


I still need to test the camera as well as start putting together the container for the payload. I also have a supply of kite string in my closet that should serve as cord and shroud lines for the parachute.