Thomas the Train Shipwreck Rails Troubleshooting Guide

My son got this really cool Thomas the Train TrackMaster Shipwreck Rails Set. The blue, battery powered Thomas the Tank engine train climbs a lightly supported track over three feet in the air before falling into a catch-wagon that spirals down a forty-five degree drop where it releases Thomas to continue safely on his way. Really, a genius little toy. It was really fun to watch and worked great at first, that is until he accidentally knocked it over a few times. Then the catch-wagon mechanism stopped working. Being the good dad and engineer that I am, I decided to crack open the toy to see what it looked inside. If I could figure out how the Shipwreck Rails set worked, I could try to fix it myself.

After removing the plastic mast from the base and unscrewing the thirteen screws, the mast popped open into two pieces. Unfortunately, the components inside all shifted so I wasn’t able to see exactly how it was put together before. I would have to figure it out myself with a little trial and error.




The main problem with why the Shipwreck Rails Set wasn’t working propoerly is as I thought - the rope that connects the catch-wagon to the spring had jumped the pulley at the top of the mast. All I had to do was put the string back through the pulley and then figure out exactly how the string looped over the top and bottom pulleys. Easier said than done.

I can’t find any instructions or manuals on the internet of how to fix the mast and strings so I created my own video to help other dads out. Check it out below:



I hope this guide has taught you potentially how to fix your Trackmaster shipwreck rails set. Buy your own set here. I can’t wait to see what future Thomas Trackmaster sets they come out with next.

My First Android Applications

I’ve recently completed and published my first Android applications! I’ve now made my own videos, blogs, websites, published books, and now created an app (what haven’t I done?). In reality though, these apps aren’t very complicated and it will be very interesting to see how well they are received and used. I wrote a short post on my CAD blog about Android Application Programming Basics.

My first app, which I programmed myself (and with lots of assistance from my brother), is essentially an index of roller coaster information including all of the interviews I’ve conducted over the years. Check it out for free here.

For fans of my Apartment Search Spreadsheet, my other new app is called Apartment Comparison. This app transforms my highly downloaded apartment search spreadsheet into an easy to use mobile app. I outsourced the main coding to a programmer in Singapore through oDesk.com and I got a logo and icons made from a designer using fiverr.com. I made some final tweaks to the code myself. Download Apartment Comparison from the Google Play store today.

I hope these apps are helpful and I would like to make back the $25 developer fee with the banner ads. As always, I welcome any and all feedback.

Give Yourself a Raise

If you follow this blog or know me personally then you’re probably aware I’ve been trying to make money off the internet in my spare time the past few years. I’ve enjoyed a lot of success recently, making over $3,000 the past two months. I want to help others have the same success I have had so I created a how to report I am giving away for FREE! The free ebook report is called “Give Yourself a Raise: How to create a residual income from the internet in your spare time.” The main topic of the book is how to create a website, blog, or ebook to earn extra income. It’s a lot easier to do then most people think. The hardest part is thinking of a good idea (and I give out a free idea in the book). I can honestly say one of the best decisions I've ever made is starting my own website. 

Making money online is easier than you think. Believe me - if I can do it, anyone can! But if it’s so easy why aren’t more people doing it? Because humans are inherently lazy. Not all of us, but generally speaking we like to find the easy way out. Those who don’t know much about the concept of making money online can open up their minds and take initiative to learn and understand it. The problem is that most people won’t even do that. It takes effort and most folks are lazy, except you of course because you are spending time reading this report when you could be eating potato chips slouched on your couch watching Honey Boo Boo reruns.


The FREE eBook Includes:
-why make money off the internet
-misconceptions about making money online
-writing blog posts for people and search engines
-monetizing your blog or website
-much more!

Download the Free report here or visit my new website http://www.need-a-raise.com

Coasters 101: Second Edition Launched

I recently launched the second edition of my book, Coasters 101: An Engineer's Guide to Roller Coaster Design. Changes to the book include interesting new content like:

• Evolution of the roller coaster
• Detailed description on launch systems
• A people powered coaster
• How a 4th dimension coaster works
• the modern vertical loop
• and much more!

I'm also working on getting the book published in more formats in order to make it available to as many people as possible. Here's the list where you can find it:

ebook pdf (through clickbank)................$7.99
Kindle Edition.........................................$9.99 
Nook.....................................................$9.99 (coming December 8th) 
Paperback...........................................$11.99

$1000 per Month

Learn how to make a residual income from the internet in your free time.If you’re not making any money off the internet – why not? You very well could be. It’s extremely easy to make some extra cash. Through my own experiences, I’m going to show you how to make a residual (and hopefully somewhat passive) income from the internet including:

• The secret to making money online
• 7 easy steps to building and monetizing your own website
• Optimize your site for search engines
• Internet marketing lingo
• Tools and resources

Do you want to learn how to earn 1000 a month? Do you want to know what is passive income? Download my free report and I’ll tell you ways to earn passive income and give you some of the best passive income ideas I’ve used to earn over a $1000 per month all in my free time!

Content Creation

I've been a content creation machine this week. I created a ton of content for my blogs and websites since coming back from a week of vacation in California. In the past week I have updated multiple websites, wrote numerous blog posts, conducted an interview, published over 100 vacation pictures to Facebook, and am editing three video segments from the trip. I thought I would use a post here to summarize all my recent content creation with links to all. Ok, here it goes. 


Blogs

I recently interviewed a zoo interpreter and photographer. I wrote up a review of the Monterey Bay Aquarium and uploaded a video of it to YouTube. I added an 2012 NFL helmet schedule to my Excel Spreadsheets Help blog downloads page. I explained part of the process of writing my roller coaster design book on Amusement Authority.


Mini-sites

I recently started a new online money making experiment which I’ve decided to share with you today. I’ve built four mini-sites to test out my idea to see how it works. People are always going for release dates for movies, book, and video games. If you can get traffic you can make money online. Thus, I have created a few sites based on possible future sequels for some of my favorite movies and video games. Looking for the Uncharted 4 release date? How about the Avengers 2 release date? Modern Warfare 4 release date. RollerCoaster Tycoon 4 release date.


Web Properties

I updated my recreational therapy exam site with a few new pages of great content.
My Apartment Search Spreadsheet website is up and running. My CATIA Macros tutorial site is humming along quite nicely.

Emails

I got some interesting email this week, from looking for quotes for a magazine to a casting call for a Food Network show, it's been quite the interesting week.

June Updates

A couple of quick updates from my blogosphere this past weekend.

I created a 2012 NBA Mock Draft spreadsheet and uploaded it to my Excel Spreadsheets Help blog. Check it out and download the mock draft creator for free from my Google docs site.

I posted an in-depth article about the Snow White's Scary Adventure ride which was recently retired from Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom. I found a good video of the ride and an over rendering of the layout.

We went to the Columbus Zoo this morning to check out the new exhibit. Embedded below is my video of Stingray Bay.

How to create more income streams for yourself

 Residual Income

If you’re not making any money off the internet – why not? You very well could be. It’s extremely easy to make something. It’s a lot harder to entirely make a living off of the internet. But having a residual income stream is always a great idea, especially if it's also a mostly passive income stream.

Recently, a friend emailed me, “I have done very limited amounts of html coding so yeah, building a website, buying a domain and web hosting all seems so daunting.  It's hard to make that initial plunge.”

Yes, it is hard but unless you’re planning on doing something completely custom, starting a web site isn’t that hard. I register my domains with NameCheap. I use Wordpress for my CMS – content managementsystem- automatically installed through Host Gator, my hosting service. Then I bought the Socrates theme so there’s no html involved other than copying and pasting my Google Adsense code. The most confusing part for me was pointing the domain name to my hosting service. Luckily, there are plenty of YouTube videos to walk you through all that.I build all my websites myself but I do use oDesk to outsource some of the content creation and writing. I do my own marketing too but most of it is automated – RSS feed automatically posts toFacebook which automatically sends to Twitter. There’s an app for everything!

Currently, I have a couple blogs where the main source of income is ads and one niche web site selling an ebook. Last month I made about $1,150. Not a millionaire yet but it will pay my rent and a few bills. I’m currently working on creating two other niche sites. The best way to mm online is by selling a product – whether it’s physical or digital makes no difference (though you can probably make more with digital due to no manufacturing costs.

Coming up with a good idea, especially one with little or no competition is probably the hardest part of the whole process so if you have one then you’re well on your way to success!

How to Insert the Degree Symbol in Microsoft Excel

My latest "How To" video captures how you insert the degree sign or other symbols into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.