Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.
We were at a college graduation at a Prestigious University and this was one strap among many holding up the Big Tent over the assembled students & parents.
Pop quiz: how many safety problems can you count?
Let’s see…
Frayed strap sewn to loop
Strap passed around hook without thimble
Knotted strap
Broken hook safety latch spring
General corrosion
To their credit, each perimeter pole had two straps and each strap had its own three-stake ground plate. I didn’t inspect the whole tent, but this looked like the only dodgy strap along the side I was standing at.
Note: the graduate wasn’t our daughter, so we didn’t stay for the ceremony. We gabbed it up with all the assembled relations, then split before the speechifying started. Everybody survived.
This pair of halogen outdoor spotlights has been in place for at least a decade; they don’t see much use, so the filaments haven’t burned out in all that time.
A lens fell off a few days ago, at which point I realized that it was the second lens to fall off; where the first one got to, I cannot say. I suspect they’ve never been turned on in the rain, as a single drop of water on a halogen capsule would shatter it like, uh, glass.
The right-hand bulb was evidently the first to fail, as it’s full of toasted spider silk, seed husks, and bug carapaces. The reflector aluminization doesn’t like exposure to the Great Outdoors, although it’s in surprisingly good shape for the mistreatment it’s seen.
I installed a pair of ordinary fused-glass spotlights from Ol’ Gene’s stash that Came With The House; they’ve been in the basement at least as long as those halogens have been on the side of the house. I suppose he put the good spots up there and kept the plain ones in reserve.
Maybe the “new” spots will last for another decade?
Maybe that stogie wasn’t lit, but I’m exceedingly glad I wasn’t close enough to be sure!
You may need to click on the picture to get the joke; I was high up on a gravel bank, but probably still within the blast zone.
My pocket camera was set to mandatory flash from whatever I’d been doing the last time I used it. The piddly little xenon tube even lit up the retroreflective tape on the semitrailer about 200 feet away across the highway.
My buddy Eks just replaced his host-water furnce with a high-efficiency unit.
Can you tell that Eks is an engineer?
The plumber used one of those fancy pipe-compression tools that mashes the mating parts together with an O-ring for sealing. Faster and safer than sweating the joints together, but I want to fast-forward two or three decades to check out the durability.
An engineer’s furnace plumbing
Copper compression joints
As he put it, “You may be able to get a better furnace installation, but you probably can’t pay any more for it…”
A friend dropped off a dead eMachines Celeron for my next recycling trip. Peering inside, what do my wondering eyes behold but a nasty case of Capacitor Plague!
Herewith, some pix of the victims within the box. Note the bulging tops ready to blow along the pressure-relief grooves, the distinct tilt caused by the bulging bottom plug, and the right-hand cap near the power supply on countdown for launch!
Found this hole in the plate glass window of a church.
The conchoidal fracture pattern is characteristic of a bullet impact at more-or-less right angles to the pane. I suppose, based on the very small entry hole and no damage to the opposite wall, that it was something like a BB gun at close range, rather than a 0.22-cal handgun or rifle far away.
Somehow, you just know the lunkheads doing this sort of thing have never repaired a window themselves… when you’re a constructor, you just don’t go around destroying things.
But maybe that attitude marks me as a fuddy-duddy.
In case you were wondering what goes on backstage at an event like that, here’s the truth: I play with dolls…
The Granny Doll was part of the Assistive Robotics contest: the robot had to locate a dish of food and carry it from a refrigerator to a table. She acted as an obstacle in the middle of the room; I had just finished duct-taping the stand to her rump in preparation for the practice runs on Saturday.
As it turned out, her overcoat consisted of cloth that rendered her invisible to the robots: the poor dear got run over, smacked aside, and pushed around.
Next year the scoring system will include Elder Abuse penalty points!
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 