The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

Category: Oddities

Who’d’a thunk it?

Amazon Unit Pricing: Go Ask Alexa

I long ago learned to never trust Amazon’s unit pricing (or, for that matter, their recommendations), so this came as no surprise:

Amazon unit pricing – hose per ounce

OK, you generally don’t buy hoses “by the ounce”, but “per fluid ounce” may not mean what you think it means:

Amazon unit pricing – cups per ounce

Pricing items individually should be simple, if you know what a single item is:

Amazon unit pricing – batteries per each

Even knowing the number of items and the overall price isn’t enough for Amazon to get it right:

Amazon unit pricing – just plain wrong

Amazon now has a “shopping assistant”, so I asked Alexa why the unit prices were incorrect. After some back-and-forth providing details Alexa should have known from the context, this seemingly plausible sequence of words emerged:

Amazon unit pricing – ask Alexa

Amazon apparently stopped commingling knockoff crap with brand-name products under the same SKU earlier this year, a change driven by major brands refusing to have anything to do with Amazon’s “supply chain”, but the probability of my one-by-one reports producing any discernible improvement seems low.

2026-06-15
Bamboo Bee Tunnel Nests: In Use!

Just over a month after mounting bamboo bee tunnel nest bundles here & there around the house & yard, they have occupants!

One of the bundles of small (a few mm ID) stalks on the kitchen window:

Bee Tunnel Nest – small A

Another bundle of small stalks on a window a dozen feet away:

Bee Tunnel Nest – small B

A bundle of medium (five to ten mm ID) stalks lashed to a downspout:

Bee Tunnel Nest – medium

Unlike the mud dauber wasps decorating our previous house, these little bees dart in and out without announcing their presence: we’ve never seen them at work.

Assuming a single bee works on each bundle, she apparently starts with the lowest stalk and moves upward after filling & capping it.

Larger bees have yet to discover the bundles of larger stalks out on the trees, but … so far, so good!

2026-06-05
Laser-Engraved Food
Having been nerd-sniped again, I had to try this:

Laser-toasted bread – engraving

It turned out reasonably well:

Laser-toasted bread

That’s at 100 mm/s and 40% of a 60 W CO₂ laser. Although the exhaust fumes smelled pretty good, the bread tasted burned rather than toasted.

Undaunted, I tried another sandwich layer:

Laser-engraved food – provolone – direct light

The patterns become more obvious in oblique light:

Laser-engraved food – provolone – angled light

Settings, all with 0.3 mm line interval:
- Top: 100 mm/s @ 40%
- Middle left: 100 mm/s @ 20%
- Middle right: 200 mm/s @ 20%
- Bottom: 200 mm/s @ 12.5%
It’s good stinky provolone, so its taste remained undamaged by the experience.

Laser engraving apparently works really well on hot dogs and their buns, but I am not going there …
2026-06-01
Walkway Over the Hudson: Camera LEDs

Under the plausible assumption the security / surveillance cameras along the Walkway Over the Hudson aren’t the cheapest junk available from a randomly named Amazon seller, this came as a surprise during a recent Walkway At Night stroll:

Walkway Over the Hudson – camera LEDs

The IR LEDs emit just enough red light to be dimly visible to the human eye, but appear much brighter to a silicon detector. I think the long gap at the bottom right is a sensor of some sort, so the array of 18 LEDs has two deaders, one near death, and six more fading away.

The necklace lights on the Mid-Hudson Bridge are once again in good repair:

Mid-Hudson Bridge – 2026-04-24

They were showing fixed white light, rather than a moving color display, but it’s still a nice effect.

2026-04-27
Ubiquitous Surveillance vs. Electric Field Strength

A pair of cameras overlook the intersection of Rt 376 with Zack’s Way from inverted-J mounts (I don’t know the formal name) atop the steel poles supporting the traffic signals:

Traffic Cam – Rt 376 at Zacks Way – north

The inverted-J on the south side started equally high, but has been lowered as far as possible, with the camera just below the top of the pole:

Traffic Cam – Rt 376 at Zacks Way – south

My guess: the higher position put the (electrically grounded) mount inside the keep-out zone around the 115 kV power line conductor passing exactly over the pole:

Traffic Cam – Rt 376 at Zacks Way – south – detail

I’m sure lowering the mount came after an interesting discussion, but I’ll never know the rest of the story.

2026-04-07
Sickly Skunk

Skunks are generally crespecular animals, so seeing this critter in broad daylight was unusual:

Sickly Skunk

That’s taken through two layers of half-century old glass, for obvious reasons.

What may not be obvious: that skunk was not behaving at all like the ones in our previous sightings. It had unkempt fur, staggered around the house twice while twitching uncontrollably, slumping face-down, and falling on its side. I am not qualified to diagnose animal diseases, but rabies seems likely.

It eventually staggered off and, we hope, died quietly in a very secluded spot.

The Town of Poughkeepsie’s Animal Control officer now specializes in dog problems across several towns, with “all other animals” handled by the county’s Department of Health.

2026-04-01
Tax Season: 2026 Edition

Having recently filed our income taxes, this email came as a mild surprise:

IRS Audit email

The From field seemed a bit sketchy, but, hey, maybe the IRS subcontracted their email vendor after having lost much of their staff in the name of efficiency.

The attached PDF document seemed scant:

IRS Audit document

Yeah, I’m definitely clicking that link …

2026-03-20