Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
Forty-three percent of 2006 college-bound seniors reported grade averages of A+, A, or A-. Ten years ago, the figure was 36 percent, and in 1987, the first year these data were collected in the same manner, the figure was 27 percent. This year’s average grade point average was 3.33, compared with an average GPA of 3.21 in 1996 and 3.07 in 1987.
Were we-uns really all that dumb back in the day or is something else going on here?
So a while back we were in Providence, walking up the hill in search of breakfast protein (ended up at McD, but that’s another story) and saw in the three windows across the second floor of a tidy brick building:
Adult Sex Education
Call [number]
I sez to my wife, I sez “Hey, we could…” and she sez “No way!” and that’s the end of that.
Then I find this editorial in their local paper (affectionately known as the ProJo, honest):
Providence Mayor David Cicilline is having difficulty cracking down on what some call the world’s oldest profession because state law, incredibly, makes prostitution legal in Rhode Island, as long as it takes place indoors. Only streetwalkers, their pimps, and their customers who flag them down outdoors may be charged.
Gosh, I guess it’s a good thing we didn’t call that number for some pointers…
Microscope Eyepiece Adapter PartsMount and CameraCamera on Microscope Eyepiece
This worked out surprisingly well…
The project was to mount my pocket camera on the stereo zoom microscope, so I can take decent pix of small stuff.
The entrance pupil of the camera is about the same size as that of a human eyeball: focus at infinity, tune for best picture, and you’re set. Best of all, no microscope mods other than a wrap of tape around the eyepiece to prevent scratching.
My heap disgorged two tubes that were exactly the right diameter and length with finished ends (evidently stubs left over from a previous lathe project), so all I had to do was turn the adapter ring between them. The heap even had a slightly-too-long 1/4-20 thumbscrew with a boss below the thread. Ya gotta have stuff!
I set the ‘scope up with the eyepiece exactly vertical, put the tubes on the eyepiece, screwed the T-bracket to the camera, squooshed a J-B Weld epoxy putty turd between the T and the tube, then boresighted the camera to the ‘scope axis by centering the light on the LCD. Shazam: nearly perfect alignment with no fussy machining. I added two machine screws through the blob: I don’t trust the camera to an epoxy-PVC joint.
The smallest field looks like 2 mm, so the resolution is about 2 mm/2400 = 800 nm, which I don’t believe for an instant. Maybe a micron or three, at best, limited far more by the camera than the ‘scope. Widest is >15 mm, a more reasonable and still unbelievable 6 microns. The lens just ain’t that good.
The eggs are from our stick insect, with a millimeter scale.
Stick Insect Eggs – 1 mm scale
[Update: This post seems to pop up in response to searches for stick insect eggs. One of my rather more interesting pictures is there.]
So the oven made a weird whooshing noise every now & again, but nothing we could pin down or duplicate to debug. Then it sort of stopped heating, even though the ignitor was glowing, and the kitchen smelled of unburned propane and hot plastic.
Emergency stop, shut off the gas valve, finish the chili and cornbread in the ‘waver and toaster oven, let ‘er cool down, dig out the repair parts manual from the file cabinet.
Dismantled the oven and found a weird encrustation on the burner tube. I wasn’t sure if the tube was supposed to have a dingus that meters the ignition gas at some known rate, but scratching at the lump made it look as though the tube simply burned through and corroded. The size of that hole would certainly make the gas whoosh a bit.
Note the soot lines. The heat shield over the tube had a soot smudge, too, which I think caused the “plastic” smell.
The replacement part from Sears is $80. It’s $50 from RepairClinic.comand they throw in the ignitor module that’s $70 from Sears. Judging from their picture the burner tube has three little holes that blow gas over the ignitor, no metal dingus. You can see the holes in the second picture.
So a new burner tube (and ignitor, which I’ll zip-tie to the back of the oven) is on order.
Update: of course the new ignitor doesn’t fit on the old tube, nor does the old ignitor fit on the new tube. And the connectors are completely different. Had to dig some ceramic wire nuts out of the parts stash; I knew I’d been saving them for some good reason.
Saw this one in the Wal-Mart parking lot. Doncha think the rusty drums provide an understated touch of elegance to the overall effect?
Yup, it’s a Plymouth Voyager…
On the way back I witnessed a tricked-out sporty black BMW with low-profile tires doing a slo-mo U-turn on Rt 9 with a dead-flat, rolling-off-the-rim, right front tire. I figure he was heading for the Mobil a few hundred feet back on the corner, but the requisite three left turns would be good for, oh, 800 bucks worth of tire & rim damage.
On the other paw, stopping & jacking & re-tiring in the middle of Rt 9 wouldn’t work well, either.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 