No problems Shawn. I am actually impressed by how you find enough time to keep up with all you do on the site. My hat is off to you.
   The design is new on the PVC part... well a few months new, so I do not know how it will last on extreme long term. I invented it to film what we are working on now, to be able to act opposite a puppet, and operate it while acting, and  operating camera etc, which in the end I did not have to use as my daughter helped me out on those shots. But it was based on a cloths peg, and I thought since they can make them with plastic springs which supposedly last a while, then the PVC should work. They will not snap, theoretically, as it is in a circle, and stress is evenly distributed. PVC does become brittle with ultraviolet rays...ie: sunlight, and in the building industry, they expect exterior piping to last 10 years, inside indefinitely. So I expect that being inside a puppet it will last a long time. The question for me is if the spring will lose spring strength over time. If you over-open the spring it can reduce its spring strength I noticed, but the pull string one is just as strong as the day I made it.I figure that unless you totally seal the thing into a puppet you can  easily  replace bits. Anyhow, I pick that it should last as long as the exterior of the puppet.
   The cable is standard...the string was what I did before affording the dollar to get a cable. I used a couple second hand (thrown out) ones from a local bike repair shop to test the method. The hand squeezer...made on the spot. Once again, cloths peg inspiration.
  Another little thing is that the circular spring takes less room that other spring things , as it  is  roughly the shape  of  most heads.

I watched this really quick the other day.  I need to watch it again.  I wish my mind worked this way!  Ingenious!

Here is a way to make a rod puppet.  it was made with strings but you could use the bike cable in place of the strings.


http://constructionofthecreative.blogspot.com/2011/12/rod-puppet-no-visible-strings.html

I was able to view the PTO image in IE, Firefox, and Safari. I downloaded it, it had a .DIMG file format. (you might try telling your browser to set quicktime as the default reader for that mime-type. After downloading it, I directly changed the file-type to .tif. P&S won't let me upload a .tif file, so I converted it to a .png file, and here it is.

I am new here and I havent made a puppet in years. I do love the idea of the shoulder puppet, I have given some thought to cable controllers. I was thinking of using the remote from an automobile side view mirror, The head could replace the mirror and the joystick would give you great motion control.