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| Tuesday, November 28, 2006 |
| Ata Lives |
Just in case you were wondering.
Mr Ata went back to work yesterday. On arrival, it became apparent that they had forgotten he was starting, and hadn't decided what they wanted him to do. So, he chose a dog-box - unwittingly selecting the one that a woman from interstate uses when she spends her one week out of six in Adelaide, thus relegating her to a smaller cubicle - and acquired a laptop - apparently the one that another woman was planning to swap for her existing laptop as her fan is noisy. So, having annoyed two new workmates in one day, and frustrated his old workmate by using his old access to log in to the system to start some documentation, he felt like his first day was successful.
Ata was expecting to work today, but then they didn't need her so she has an unexpected day off. Just as well, as there is a long list of Things to Do.
The home cinema project is almost complete - the electrician arrives Thursday to change the lights and install a dimmer switch, the airconditioner installer is also due Thursday, there is foam to stick to the windows, and - most importantly - the screen to be hung.
Now, we had thought the screen-hanging would be the least of our worries. After all, we built a riser platform - surely we can hang a screen! Mr Ata spent a good deal of time and research planning a pulley system, and two days in the roofspace carefully installing it.
Looking back, our first indication that this would not be easy should have been when the AV shop, the home theatre installer, and the screen manufacturing company all said that what we wanted had never been done before. Well, the screen people said that they had done one for a commercial installation, but never for home. Perhaps some explanation is warranted here.
We want to use the TV for TV, and the projector for movies & sport. So we need a screen that can be brought down over the TV, and raised again. Hang on, I hear you say, why not use a rolled-up pull-down screen? Well, my uninitiated friend, projector screens are fairly fragile. When repeatedly rolled up-and-down, they develop ripples. Motorised screens are just as bad as manually operated ones - in fact, the installer related a story where he once saw a screen ruined because a fly got rolled up in it. The fly-corpse caused a bump in the screen, which was repeated with each turn of the mechanism. So the screen, instead of being flat, had a series of little fly-shaped bumps in it the whole way down. Now, admittedly, most people may not be bothered by less-than-perfectly-flat screens. But motorised rolling-up screens cost in the vicinity of $2000 (compared to $600 for a framed wall-mounted screen), and the thought of having deceased insects ruin the perfect flatness of the screen does not sit well with Mr Ata - and lets not forget the inevitable ripples. So, we want a framed flat screen. Mr Ata's pulley system will hoist & lower the screen as required. It's only about a foot that it needs to go up & down. We were surprised when everyone told us that no-one installs them like that.
Back to the installing of the screen. The pulley system took a lot of fiddling, all done (much to Ata's relief) by Mr Ata. Now, it seems that the only task remaining is to hang the screen. Easy, right? The manufacturers supplied it with eyebolts in the top for us to hang it from. So, all we have to do is (a) fasten the hanging ropes to the eyebolts; (b) attach clips to the control-rope at the right lengths for raising & lowering; and (c) watch movies until our eyes bleed. Easy. Simple. Child's play.
We started doing this on Saturday. We continued on it Sunday and Monday evening. It is now Tuesday, and the frame still leans against the TV cabinet with ropes dangling forlornly from the ceiling. The screen is rolled up in it's box, destined to remain there until we can securely hang the frame. I did mention that screens are a bit fragile, right?
Part of the problem is that neither Ata nor Mr Ata can tie knots. I mean, sure, we can do up shoelaces and tie shopping bags shut. But Ata's most exotic knot is the reef knot, while Mr Ata ties something that he CALLS a reef knot, but doesn't really look like anything Ata's ever seen before. It was last night at about 9:00 that Ata said, look, I think we need to learn about knots. Hooray for Wikipedia! We used a sheet bend to secure the cord from the control pulley to a thicker rope more comfortable to pull on, and a buntline hitch to tie the clips to the control rope. Great. Making progress. A taut-line hitch was the knot Ata selected to tie the hanging-clips that will fasten to the eyebolts to the hanging cords. The premise here being that, once fastened, the taut-line hitch could be used to make small adjustments to the length of the hanging cords, thus allowing the frame to be perfectly levelled.
First problem: taut-line hitches are harder to tie than they look. Particularly when the printed pictures are not entirely clear.
Second problem: once tied, the taut-line hitch slides along the standing rope. That is, the knot slides up and down the main hanging cord to lengthen or shorten the overall length of the cord. While this SOUNDS like what we needed, we had forgotten to take into account the fact that if the knot is more than about an inch from the clip, it will foul in the pulley in the roof. Bugger. What we needed was a knot that would let us slide the CLIP up the rope, rather than the knot. Does such a thing even exist? Who knows. Back to the drawing board.
Tonight we will try again. This time, we will make the frame hang level at it's lowest point first, then tie the clips to the control cable at the heights required to get it up to the right place. Ata realises this sounds like the approach she should have taken the first time - and it is, in fact, the approach we attempted first. However, at that time we were tying the hanging cords directly to the eyebolts, and found it enormously difficult to adjust the length of these cords to get the frame to hang straight - hence we bought clips to tie to the cords which will then clip to the eyebolts. And tried for a sliding knot.
Oh well. Wish us luck. |
posted by Ata @ 9:15 am  |
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| 3 Comments: |
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Glad to hear Mr Ata had such a good start back at work.
And good luck with the home cinema installation!
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Yick! People should not mention deceased flies without prior warning. Fly-shaped bumps... eeeeesh. *shudders*
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are there no metal hooks to hang screens off?
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Glad to hear Mr Ata had such a good start back at work.
And good luck with the home cinema installation!