Saw this at the local Jo-Anne Fabric and got it on sale:
Kinda classes up the joint, doesn’t it?
Yes, it’s really Duck Tape …
Category: Oddities
Who’d’a thunk it?
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Specialty Duct Tape
Penguin Duck Tape – detail 
Penguin Duck Tape – ready for action -
Harvestman Colloquium
For some reason known only to them, one of our kitchen windows attracted a congregation of harvestmen for several mornings in a row:
Harvestmen on window screen A trio appeared on the end of a honeysuckle tendril that’s making its way up a pillar supporting the roof over the patio:
Harvestmen on honeysuckle It certainly appears they’re deep in discussion…
They’re harmless and they’re outside, so we let them be!
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USB Wire Color Code: Nobody Will Ever Notice
A USB cable carries the analog mic and earbud audio for our bike helmets; the connectors are cheap, durable, and separate easily. I cut a 2 m “USB extender” cable (which, according to the USB guidelines, isn’t supposed to exist) near the A male connector, then wire that part to the helmet and the A female part to the GPS+voice board.
The latest USB extender cable included a surprise:
USB cable with yellow wire According to Wikipedia, there’s a standard color code for the wiring inside USB cables and yellow isn’t in the list. For this manufacturer, it seems that yellow is the new red.
In previous USB extenders the red / black wires were a slightly larger gauge than the green / white data pair, but in this cable they’re not. That might matter if one expected the cable to carry, oh, let’s say an amp of battery charging current.
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Primo Comet Aneurysm: Teardown
So, as you might expect, I couldn’t let the aneurysm on that tire get away without a closer look: had to haul the poor thing out of the trash and dissect it. Here’s what it looked like on the bike:
Primo Comet Aneurysm – inflated The outer rubber has disintegrated and is pulling away from the Kevlar belt underneath, but it’s still holding air!
Cutting that section out of the tire and flattening it makes things look almost normal:
Primo Comet Aneurysm – flattened Peeling the rubber off the carcass reveals that the body cords have either broken or ripped loose under the belt:
Primo Comet Aneurysm – peeled There was no external damage over that part of the tire and I was wrong about a gash in the Kevlar belt. However, the ends of the belt overlap just above and to the right of my thumb, so perhaps there’s a manufacturing flaw in there somewhere.
Now it’s in the trash!
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Could This Be A Hacked Router?
Found this interesting SSID on a drive up Albany way:
Hacked router SSID I wonder how long it’s been like that? If the router’s owner doesn’t use WiFi, then it could last forever.
Rule of Thumb: Disabling admin access from the router’s WiFi port is just good practice…
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Trouser Hangers: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
So I finally looked at why one of the trouser hangers made a nasty gritty noise. Turns out that, no suprise, when you rub steel against steel long enough, it wears away:
Trouser hanger – abraded steel Another hanger had a huge roller that worked wonderfully well:
Trouser hanger – elaborate roller That one was obviously over-engineered, but a simple roller also works well:
Trouser hanger – simple roller They cheapnified this one just a bit too much, because it’s not quite a roller any more:
Trouser hanger – ineffective roller A bit of rummaging turned up enough hangers with working rollers, so it’s all good now…
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Hot Air Balloon Launch
The local Chamber of Commerce sponsors a hot-air balloon weekend that always seems to attract terrible weather; we got to see one of the launches at a nearby park on a hot afternoon before the storms.
The crew cold-inflates the balloon with a roaring gasoline-powered blower:
Balloon – cold inflation Way over there on the left, almost out of sight, one of the ground crew tethers the top of the balloon:
Balloon – anchoring the top When it’s mostly inflated, they fire the burners for the hot inflation:
Balloon – hot inflation And then the magic happens:
Balloon – liftoff The Montgolfier Brothers would be proud:
Balloon – up and away These are all hand-held with the Canon SX230HS at looong telephoto, with a bit of cropping & tweaking. They’re the usual low-res blog pix, but the originals aren’t much less gritty… the camera you have is better than the camera you don’t: we were out and about on other errands.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 