Moving EasyMaker Info to PeerbhaiRobotics.com

Hi All,

In the run-up to Maker Faire, I’ll be consolidating the EasyMaker information over at PeerbhaiRobotics.com.  I’ve found there’s too much spill-over between my personal blog and EasyMaker, and the people coming to this site now are no longer interested in me, but in EasyMaker.  I’ve been a programmer and a Program manager; I am an IT manager with training in Economics and a Maker; and I’m about to be a Law student — I’d like to focus this blog more on those topics.  At the same time,I find that the EasyMaker folks really want to know more about EasyMaker, and it makes more sense to separate the two.

Why the name Peerbhai Robotics?

1. EasyMaker.com is domain camped, and I refuse to ever pay campers money.  My personal belief is that camping is evil, and campers should never be rewarded.

2. Peerbhai Robotics is more generic — Peerbhai is my name, and EasyMaker is hopefully the first of many different robot projects.  We’ll see how that goes.

what happens next?

I’ll be consolidating info from many posts about EasyMaker into Pages on the PeerbhaiRobotics.com site.  I’m still figuring out the communications and business side of making something and getting it out to the public.  This is all new to me.  I will likely be deleting the posts about EasyMaker I’ve made in the past on this site.  PeerbhaiRobotics.com will be the site for all that info.  I hope to have forums and the like working over there, so that some form of community can be built up over there.  I’ve never done that before — so feel free to drop me a line with suggestions on how to do it well.

EasyMaker will continue to be open source.  I have no intention of making it a closed source project, ever.  I have been releasing my Alpha drawings, and I’ll continue to release updated drawings and the like.  You can always build an EasyMaker clone from the information I release, without ever buying anything from me.  I feel it’s important that people can fully self-source and self-create an EasyMaker anywhere in the world — I want to help people be inventors, artists, educators, and do what they want to do.  It’s also important to me that people be allowed to make derivatives.  I will keep this a non-commercial, attribution-required license.  I will have kits available at some point in time, and I will take Tips from people who want to support my continued work on EasyMaker.  Once Law School starts, I will have a very expensive thing to pay for ( Law school is going to eat money like it was chocolate.  Terrifying. )  I will very soon be out of funds to do R&D on EasyMaker if the community doesn’t support it.  Tips and Kits will be the only way I can do further development on EasyMaker.  I’ve got a large number of ideas brewing about what to enable EasyMaker to do.  From inkjet printing, oscillating tool cutting, 5-axis foam milling, lathing, Lithography,  etc…  I even have ideas to turn it into a Lawn mower, or  an automatic bartender  EasyMaker is the embodiment of a post I made a while ago on this blog — It’s a quality frame and control system, to which a large number of tools can be attached.  It changes how you can approach many design/robot problems, and in some way, turns them more into software problems.

Even now, some people view Fixed gantry mode and Moving gantry mode as essentially two different robots that happen to use all the same parts.  I like that!  It shows off the beauty of a design like EasyMaker — it allows people to change it into whatever they need for their inventions/art/education.  That’s my dream for it.  It makes it easy to make things, to learn new things, and most importantly, to have fun doing it!  There’s something magical about a machine where you change modes — you begin to think more broadly, and begin to wonder about what else you could do with it.

Anyway, thanks for reading.  See you at PeerbhaiRobotics.com!

–Imran

Just registered for law school!

Well, it’s official.  I just registered for my first law school class.  Now, comes the interesting part.

Law school is weird.  I’ve only seen the dog and pony show so far, met some other entering students.  A few random thoughts.

1. Law school itself seems very interesting.  The mock class started with a professor doing a hypothetical situation where the Anarchists revolt, and create a new Anarchy based society, then showing the question — how do neighbors resolve their problems without accidentally creating law?  It was truly awesome!

2. One thing that really struck me — law school students are *very* different than scientist/engineer type people I normally work with.  Scientists/engineers are mostly meritocratic — they believe in succeeding or failing on their accomplishments.  Law students are not at all so.  They believe in the two opposites of meritocracy — some believe that you should succeed and fail based on who you’re born to, and only your parents social position/social network is important.  Perhaps dynastic is the right word to describe them,  I’d say somewhere around 30-50% of Law students believe this.  Others believe that neither meritocracy nor dynasty are valid — but that material goods should be distributed based on need.  Fewer are like this — perhaps 10-20%.  So, law school is made up of Greeks( system, not nation) or hippies.  Geeks — scientists, engineers, technical people — are almost completely absent.

3. My Geek friends who went to law school did terribly afterwards.  I’ve got a few friends with similar backgrounds who went to law school.  They all got jobs — eventually — and at very low pay.  But none of them did well.  They went to top schools.  But Law, as a profession, seems to reward a different type of person.

Needless to say —  Part of me wonders if this is wise?  A lot of my cohort talk about the same thing.  Is it smart to go into Law, when about 50% of people who become lawyers and up unemployed/underemployed/unhappy/quitting the field?

Well, the train is leaving the station.  The conductor is ringing the boarding bell.  I may end up in Hogwarts!  Or I may end up splatting into the wall…

Windows Mobile kills Nokia?

There’s an article over on Arstechnica that Nokia is in trouble.  It seems that Windows Mobile is killing the company.  Moody’s just downgraded Nokia’s debt to Baa3 — essentially Junk.

I’ve written reviews of Windows Mobile 7, and found it terrible.  The market agrees, with Windows Mobile phones having the highest return rate of any smartphone.  It’s such a shame.  I really want MS products to succeed!  MS needs to rescue Nokia.  If Nokia goes under, think of the Market signal this will send to other phone makers.  No one in their right mind will offer a flagship Windows Mobile phone.  Sure, they may take an android phone that they already sell and make a WinMo version of it — there’s no risk in that, even if it flops.  But no-one will make a flagship phone with WinMo on it.  No exclusive deals will be possible.  WinMo will be forced, by market forces, to third place — even if they make a great product!

Microsoft is running out of options here.  They can’t abandon Windows Mobile — Mobile is growing too fast, and is a serious threat to the PC.  Mobile is getting smarter, and is approaching the point where some portion of users are better served with Mobile devices than with PCs.  Henry Blodget, CEO of Business Insider, has a great series on this titled, “The future of Mobile”.

So, MS can’t abandon Windows Mobile — they can’t remove themselves from the market that might kill them.  Mobile, both in Phones and Tablets, is the closest thing to an existential threat to MS there has been in over a decade.  Even if it doesn’t threaten MS, it is one of the biggest potential growth areas.  There’s no way to back out of this without looking stupid.  Same thing in the AntiVirus space.  MS’s AV products make no market traction, and should be killed.  But won’t, since there’s no way to exit without sending a bad market signal.  So, MS is forced to keep investing, just to save face, in these two areas.

Since MS can’t exit these losing businesses, MS has to change how it plays.  But, I don’t know that MS can do it.  They can’t attract the quality of upper managers needed to fix their problems.  I’m not talking about replacing Balmer — he’s actually pretty good.  I’m talking General Managers and VPs.   Division-wide folks.  See, MS has a recruiting problem.  They recruit people who would be a good fit in Windows.

What do I mean by this?  Well, they recruit from companies like IBM, GE, Kraft, etc…  These are the fundamental “infinity” serieis managers — people from stable companies, who think in stable terms.  Sure, they may go off and buy a good company here and there, but those acquisition CEOs don’t become VPs — they become Product Unit Managers, or maybe General Managers at best, and get killed by the existing VPs as threats.

MS needs a different type of thinking to solve the problems in those spaces.  But I don’t think they’ll ever learn.  As long as Windows and Office generate enough cash, MS will never need to.  Luckily, MS is a good company with good revenues from many sources.  They don’t need to win in all spaces — for now.

 

Imran’s Azure Review

Hi All,

I’ve recently evaluated Azure cloud services.  I wanted to use these services for 2 different use cases:

1. Deploy a website written in ASP.NET
2. Deploy an existing Line of Business App.

Right off the bat, I was disappointed.  Microsoft has shot themselves in the foot with a terrible offering.  Here’s why Azure is a terrible offering:

• I run Windows XP and Visual Studio 2010 at work, and  Win7/VS2010 at home.  I had to do the evaluation from home, since MS doesn’t support XP or Vista — 60% of their own market!  Even though all assemblies are .net components, meaning they are platform neutral.  MS requires this for access to IIS 7.  Thing is — ASP.NET has an IIS compatible web server built in.  It’s how you debug your ASP.NET code.  No need for IIS7 — just modify the existing ASP.NET server as needed for your emulator.  With this choice, someone at MS thought they’d drive more Windows sales.  Thing is — people aren’t going to upgrade OS in a corporate environment just to deploy a cloud application.  The cloud doesn’t drive OS sales, nor should it.
• It takes forever to install.  Installers are incomplete.  You can’t just run the MS Azure SDK installer and get everything you need to develop and deploy an Azure application.  You have to run the MS Platform installer — which is an installer that runs other installers.  It literally took me 2 days of running installers before Visual Studio was ready for Azure development/deployment testing.
• It’s management portal can’t do simple tasks.  Let’s say I want to instantiate an instance — one of the most basic cloud tasks ever.  I have to get keys for me, have to generate keys for Visual Studio, have to generate an RDP key.  After generating these keys, and installing them in my certificate store, I then have to go into Visual studio, create some nonsense project, then publish it — just to get an instance.  You know how it should be done?  How about a button on the management portal that says, “Create instance”?
• Instance setting changes made in the management portal aren’t persistent to the project.  I wanted to change the instance to Windows server 2008 R2 — the server I normally run the applications on.  So I did so.  My next deployment destroyed the change, and I was back on server 2008.
• You can only use VPN networks if you install a win7 only component.  This makes deployment of existing LOB apps impossible, as you couldn’t get all you clients to talk to you LOB server.  You can do this on Amazon’s cloud, on any platform.
• There are no APIs for configuring port forwarding.  Which means that your LOB apps that listen for work on a port cannot do so, as there is no way to configure the Fabric to allow this.
• The Fabric is expensive.  Fabric messages are restricted to 64k in size, and the per message charge is orders of magnitude higher than competing services, or then needed.

I have no idea how Microsoft intends to be taken seriously in the Cloud business.  This offering is just terrible.   Especially for LOB application deployment.

Risks of investing in early stage startups

Investing is always risky business.  Its entirely possible for an investor to lose money investing in early stage startups.  Here’s a quick overview of the risks:

1. Some studies show that up to 90% of new ventures will fail.
2. Investors are treated as, “Last in Line” in bankruptcy court, and holders of secured notes or other debt instruments will be given any liquidation funds gathered during the businesses shutdown ahead of any investor.  Investors will only be refunded partially if all other creditors are fully satisfied. In practice, a failed startup will not have enough in assets to satisfy all other creditors, so investors are very unlikely to recover any funds.
3. A failed startup can result in the loss of all assets ventured by the startup, and creditors of any sort are not likely to recover much of their investment should a startup fail.
4. Investors receive money as distributions from the business, often in the form of dividends.  The business may retain earnings, and not distribute earnings.  Hence, the investment may never yield a return, even in a successful business.
5. Investors in early stage businesses may not sell their investment on a stock exchange.  As a result, investors in this type of business may have poor liquidity, even if the underlying business is highly profitable.
6. If a business is very successful and undergoes a public offering, it is likely that the public offering will dilute the share value of the early stage investor significantly.  Offerings are dependent upon market conditions, and the market conditions at the time of the offering may not be favorable.  It is possible that an early stage investor will end up owning shares with a market value less than their purchase price.

Mass Effect 3 review

Hi All,
I’ve begun playing Mass Effect 3. I like it. It’s a bit like Halo, Brute Force, and Gears of War combined. It’s a lot like Mass Effet and Mass Effect 2. No real surprises. It has an interesting story so far, and lots of little side quests.

There are some awesome spots — I actually was impressed by an explosion in a game. And I’ve been gaming a long time. They did a great job making this explosion truly awesome, as in a “Wow” moment.

There are some awful spots. I keep getting stuck in walls. I have to reboot the system to get myself unstuck. At the end of one cutscene, I could no longer move, but still had camera control. So, it is glitchy.

Overall, I like the game. It’s not Batman good. It’s not Star Ocean good(that game has terrible character animations. Once you get over the creepy animations, it is a fantastic game — top 10 material ). It is Halo good. It is Mass Effect good. Solid 4 star RPG/Shooter hybrid. Well worth the time. The occasional “Awesome” moment in there can take your breath away, in an otherwise well paced game.

I hear the ending sucks.  It doesn’t.  I’ve finished the game.  The ending is great.  It’s not “typical american”, feeling more like a Japanese or Italian movie ending.  It’s just not what people would expect in the US, but it is very good.  The story and characters are great.  I hate the cover/run control.  Using the same button for cover, running, and actions is terrible.  So many times when I’m trying to run or climb over an obstacle, to end taking “cover” when I don’t want to.  Or end up running when I mean to climb over.  However, you get used to it, and for all but the most intense firefights, you can adapt.

The game plays well, and is a lot of fun. Well worth the cost and time.  A solid game.

Thanks,

Imran Peerbhai

Review of ShapeOko and MakeSlide

Hi All,

I’ve been using MakerSlide for a while now, and I’ve gotten my ShapeOko working well enough that I finally feel comfortable in doing a review.  As with all things, some are good, some are bad, and I’ll do my  best to state all sides,

For MakerSlide — I both really like it and really dislike it. Here’s why I like it:

1. It’s cheap.  Cost is just fantastic for the rails.  Orders of magnitude!
2. It comes pre-cut to length ( a big deal ).  Having cut T-Slot myself, this is a huge timesaver.
3. It’s lightweight.  It makes for very portable devices/
4. It’s strong.  Boy howdy!  It’s probably stronger than a 2×4 or even a 2×6.
5. It works.  It really does.  You can make things quickly and easily with it.
6. DXF files are available — it’s easy to design with.  I literally draw up everything first now, then build.

Here’s what I don’t like:

1. Delrin wheels have poor axial load characteristics.  The wheels flex, allowing cantilevers to  shake, and allowing CNC mills to tip.  I hear rumors of a heavily anodized, steel wheel system in the works, which should make it good at CNC as well.
2. It needs adjustment after transporting in a vibration-prone environment ( aka a car’s trunk ).
3. It’s very hard to get.
4. Shipping can cost more than the material, depending on length.
5. Carriages cost a lot.  While the rail is cheap, the carriage plates are not.  $2.85/wheel.  $8.00/plate.  A single direction of motion = 8 + 3(rounding up from 2.85)*4 = $20.00.  If you include the plates and wheels, MakerSlide is not the cheapest linear motion solution.  LM12UU or SBR12 systems are much cheaper, especially if China sourced.  Not as easy to work with — MakerSlide is wonderful to work with — but cheaper.

For the most part, I’m at the point where I can’t be sure to recommend MakerSlide.  There are some use cases where it’s the bees knees!  Some where its not appropriate at all.  You need to examine your usage and determine for yourself if it is the right solution for you.

My ShapeOko review:
For the most part, the ShapeOko is a decent CNC mill.  Here’s what I like:

1. lightweight.  Using makerslide really kept weight down, and its easy to carry around.
2. Stiff.  It’s much stiffer than a Zen or something along those lines.  Slight modifications give you the ability to do steel, although slowly.
3. Expandable.  You can make it any size you need cheaply and easily.
4. Modifiable.  I’m using a Proxxon micromot as my spindle, and can do so thanks to how versatile the mill is.
5. It’s a very fast and easy build.  A “first timer” to CNC could have this built and working in a weekend or less.  A person who is handy with tools could have it up and running in a few hours.
6. Works with RAMPS at 12 volts.  This is big, as you can use the electronics from a 3d printer, and drive a Proxxon Micromot spindle live from RAMPS using #2 butt connectors and a 1k resistor on T0.  RAMPS is also very easy to source, so you don’t need to worry if there’s an outage of the recommended electronics.  RAMPS can also run @ 24 volts or higher if you want — you’re not restricted to 12 volts.  I recommend using the OSM N1728D63 motors instead of the SparkFun Lin engineering motors in the BOM.  The OSM motors can take more current, run cooler, are faster, more powerful, and have a second shaft for an encoder.  RAMPS has a lot of unused inputs — enough to put encoders on your motors and create a closed loop system.  Cost is nearly the same.  They’re 1.8 degree steppers, while the recommended steppers are 0.9 degree.  The Lin motors are more accurate.  However, I’ve found the Lin motors tend to stall out easier, and skip steps more often, at the same settings.  The Lin motors are quieter — the OSM motors are louder, but still quiet.  Whatever motors you use, use them everyplace.  It’s no fun to re-flash your arduino when switching between a RepRap and the ShapeOko. If you use the same motors, pulleys, belts, and limit switches on all your  bots, then you can keep the same software.

Here’s what  I don’t like:

1. Tipping is a problem.  This may be a function of my machine, as I had to modify it to fix some shipping/handling issues.
2. Speed is a problem.  I’m torn on this one.  The machine is capable of very high speeds.  293 IPM, 7,500 mmPM@ 12 volts, and even faster at higher voltage.  But the tipping means you can’t go very fast or very deep, lest you run into lash problems.  I’ve found a good speed for wood to be 6 mm/s. At 8 mm/s, I notice tipping.  Edward has it moving very fast while milling without tipping issues.
3. Lots of space lost to the carriage plates.  By default, the beams are about 14-” long, but only 7″ of that is usable.  The carriage plates are about 7″ long.
4. Weight.  The carriage plates on mine weigh about a pound ( 450-480 grams ).  In comparison, a 15″ long 1/2″ thick steel rod weighs about 380 grams.  For milling, this is not a big deal, and I think this will be addressed very soon.  for printing, it may be a killer.  One problem is that all three carriage plates are part of the gantry, as are the motors — making the gantry very heavy.  Inertial mass is a problem, and I don’t think the machine can function as a 3d printer @ 12 volts.  I think it might work @ 24 volts.  You’ll need to add a an 18 ohm high wattage resistor to all hot parts, otherwise no changes are needed.  I’m still creating the test case, so I can’t answer this question for a little while longer.
5. The workpiece is not supported on the machine.  This makes the machine “lift off” or slide around, unless you clamp it down.
6. Software issues.  I use Marlin, and have found positional accuracy bugs in some cases ( Many large, fast,  Z motions ahead of a single Large, fast X motion, will cause the X position to be substantially off, even though the steppers are unloaded ).  You may want to stick with GRBL and modify the pin-out for RAMPS.  This is not a ShapeOko bug — their recommended stack will work fine.  It is very easy to work around this issue — use smaller Z motions.  Printing uses very small Z motions, so it should not be a problem for printing.  It is not a problem for skeinforge generated G-Code, as that uses small Z motions.  It is a big issue for hand-written GCode used in milling.  You’ll have to really test/modify your hand-written  GCode to compensate for the bug.

Overall, I’m a fan of the ShapeOko, although there are some issues, especially in my use case.  I want it more for printing than CNC milling, and I no longer think it is possible.  Someone else may get it working, though.  The machine may be capable — I’m not sure.   The other problems can be solved or worked around, and it does make a decent mill.   I still like the machine, and I still recommend it.  Just be aware that you’ll need to spend some time adjusting the wheels, clamping things, you may need to have lower feed rates, and making it a 3d printer may be impossible.  People are still working on these problems, and its entirely possible that changes under way right now will solve all the issues.  My ShapeOko is an older design and has experimental components.  A modern, stock ShapeOko may perform significantly differently.

Thanks,

Imran Peerbhai

SkeinForge, Marlin for CNC Work

Hi All,

So I’ve built a ShapeOko.  Now, I’m figuring out how to use it.  I like to draw in OpenSCAD, and then I use Marlin/SkeinForge as my control software, and I run OS X ( Macintosh ).  This causes a few problems.

1. There’s few G-Code generators that work on Mac.

2. SkeingForge seems to default its F speed as IPM( which makes sense — that’s a common convention ), but Marlin interprets it as mmPM( which is 25.4 times slower ), which is common in 3d printing.  This means motions are too slow to be useful ( barely even visible ).  This is easily fixed by removing the G-Code header, which homes and sets to mm.  The default unit in Marlin is very happy with skeinforge once you make this change.

3. SkeinForge generates negative G-Code.  As in, move negative units, assuming 0,0,0 is the center of the machine.  The problem with this is that Marlin assumes 0,0,0 to be the lower left corner.  So, nothing can move more negative than this value.

In other words — this scenario doesn’t work without changes.  But, I’ve mostly figured it out.

1. Chop layer thickness = 0.16

2. Drill margins, top and bottom = 3.175 ( for 1/8 inch endmill )

3. Feed rate = 6.0 mm./s, max Z drill rate = 0.1 mm/s, travel feed = 16.0 mm/s ( 124 would be max speed of the bot @ 12 volts.  About 293 IPM )

4. Multiply X, Y to center.  I use X = 80, Y = 100.

This will come very close.  You’ll need to open the GCode file and remove the homing commands and the M108 code.  Replace M101 and M103 with M104 S210.0.  In theory, M103 should be replaced with M104 S0.0, but Marlin is meant for printing, so it executes this code at the wrong time on the motion path.  I would add G1 X160 Y160 Z25 to the  the end of the GCode file — this will move the toolhead out of the way, and turn it off.

 

I’ll have to make a couple of changes to Marlin.  M101 and M103 should execute M104 commands.  The various shut-down commands should be executed via timer thread.  M84 should call kill().  But the changes are minor.  I think I can make them compatible with printing, so that the same code will do both printing and milling.

Thanks,
Imran

My ShapeOko lives!

Hi All,

I got my ShapeOko working, and now am off to get G-Code generation working.  I have only gotten as far as drilling a small hole in wood with it.  It definitely works as a CNC mill.  It may or may not work as a 3d printer.  Still have to test it.  Max F in marlin is 7450 — about 293 IPM.  RepRaps can do closer to 400 IPM.  I could get the motion speed with higher voltage, but then the extruder may not work as I want, and the 12v router would be fried.  I think adding a six-ohm high-current resistor in serial to the extruder would work to easily allow me to run 24v.  I may be able to make a daughter-board to allow for running at 24+ volts, and keep a 12V feed for the router using a voltage regulator.

Or I can try changing the physics of the machine.  The limit is either mass or motors.  The Lin engineering motors don’t seem to be as fast as the OSM motors on my RepRap.  I’ll have to run some experiments to find out.

Anyway, thanks for reading!

 

Random things

Hi All,

Some random things for today.

I got into Law School! I’ll be starting this summer. It’s a very scary time for me.
I’m not sure I want to be a lawyer. I may or may not be good at it. I also am worried about the things lawyers do. I want to be an ethical lawyer.  Yet the money is in things like family law, criminal law, and patents.  All things that are rife with legal abuse.

I’ve post-poned easy-rap.  I did get it printing, and it is an easy build.  But it has issues — and it’s  not better/easier than the Quantumn ORD bot, MakiBox, or ultimaker.  I don’t see it being a viable long-term competitor.  I want my bot to have some sort of key difference that makes it a better choice than what already exists.  But what already exists is getting very good.

I’ve built a ShapeOko.  This is a CNC mill.  I don’t have the electronics working yet, though. Just Frame complete at this time.  I like it, and I’m working on a proxxon adapter and a Wade’s adapter.   I want to see if I can get it to print.  I think it’s possible, but the inertial mass of the gantry is really high.  I think too high for printing — I have to test it and find out.

I’ve ordered a MakiBox.  This is a 3d printer, but portable.  It uses m4 rods, is fully enclosed, and a very low thermal inertia extruder.  It’s still under design right now, but I think it’ll be a great compliment to my prusa.  I hope the Prusa will go away, replaced by the MakiBox and the ShapeOko.  I don’t like the Prusa, even though it now works very well.  Too big, too heavy, and too much work getting/keeping it working.  I want a more reliable system.

I’ve designed and placed a part on Thingiverse.  It’s a simple spool holder clip.  Just screw it to 80/20, add in a 608 bearing and appropriate washers, and viola.  I’ve printed it and am using it now to hold my spool in place.  This clip also can be used to mount two pieces of t-slot rail together.

I’m working on a new linear bearing system.  It’s like MakerSlide, but easier to ship, and needs cheaper bearings.  It comes in one length, and you either put multiple together for longer rails, or you cut it for shorter rails.  It cuts with a dremel or hacksaw.  When I finish my CNC mill, it’s one of the first things I plan on milling.

I’m learning Haskell.  This is so I can play with Implicitcad.  I already use SCAD for my drawings, and love it.  Open source, programmable, C-like syntax.  But it’s missing too many language concepts.  I really think SCAD should be more like C++.  I like the idea of saying something like:
Thing.width = 100;
Thing.length = 200;
if ( Thing.Equals(Thing2) ) …

Of course, Haskell is completely the opposite of C++.  But that makes it cool to me, as it may be a better though model for CAD work.

I found this article on how to make ring-tones.  Random, but I want a perm-a-link…

Law school has me worried about money.  I’m looking for some part-time consulting gigs.  If you know of any, please send them my way!

Thanks, and keep your stick on the ice.

–Imran