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.
Who’d’a thunk it?
After six years, the anodizing on the Anker LC40 flashlights I repurposed as daytime running lights shows some radiation damage:
The bottom side looks pristine:
It turns out they were clamped in slightly different positions on our two bikes:
The side view shows a gentle color transition:
Apparently I had swapped the caps from the two lights when I noticed the fading after only the first year.
A garter snake has taken up residence under our garbage can and is startled when I wheel it away:
This week it was curled into a compact bundle:
The blue eyes indicate it’s in the process of shedding its skin, so next week we’ll have an even bigger and shinier guardian.
Shedding one’s skin apparently requires a great deal of thought, as it remained in that pose while I fetched Mary, then moved deliberately off into the leaf litter behind the can.
The small rodent population around here has definitely declined: garter snakes are murder on field mice and the hawks are taking out the chipmunks.
Go, snake, go!
Backstory: Mary leaves her gardening shoes on a low shelf outside the back door to reduce indoor chaff.
Yesterday I heard an utterly uncharacteristic shriek from the patio, followed by hysterical laughter:
The Garden Toad (or one of its relatives) decided her shoe was a perfect place to spend the day.
It seems there is nothing quite like sticking your foot in your shoe and having a toad underfoot.
I deposited the toad in the garden and encouraged it to find some bugs for lunch.
All parties emerged unscathed from the experience and seemed much happier with more interpersonal space.
Perhaps it is one of the cellular toad‘s descendants?
Update: It’s actually a tree frog and this is not the end of the story.
The SJCAM M50 camera gasket seems unable to cope with The New Normal weather conditions around here:
I think this was probably another case of diurnal pumping, given the exceedingly hot days and cool nights in late July.
Plenty of water condensed on the bottom of the battery compartment cover:
And inside the compartment around the AA cells:
Unlike the previous leak, the camera lens wasn’t involved, so I did not disassemble the case. I let the opened camera (without batteries) dry out in the hot hot sun for the rest of the day and it seemed fine by evening.
Keeping it out of full sunlight during the day definitely limits the locations I can use.
Early one morning, a skunk dashed toward the garden:
If you look very closely, you’ll see a mouse watching from the end of a 4 inch drainpipe stashed along the garden fence:
The skunk went exploring near the garden gate (off to the right) while the mouse continued watching the proceedings:
When the skunk returned, the mouse decided discretion was the better part of valor and vanished into the pipe:
With the skunk gone about its business, the mouse returned to its duty:
Just another night at the office, out in the back yard …
Wearing my FitBIt Charge 5 tracker in the shower without activating its Water Lock feature occasionally produces odd results, but the most recent mishap ventured deep into the peculiar:
Its complete lack of buttons makes the thing completely waterproof, but also means it cannot continue when the touch / swipe interface gets horribly confused.
The recovery process requires snapping it onto its USB charging cable, then pressing the nearly invisible button embedded in the USB connector shell three times, with one second between each press: click hippopotamus click hippopotamus click.
Then it restarts / reboots and eventually all is well again.
Perhaps I can now recall the magic incantation without digging through the online help again, because I am certainly not going to suddenly remember to do the Water Lock dance before showering.
Six sticky traps have been out in Mary’s Vassar Farm onion bed from mid-April through mid-July, collecting onion maggot flies, other flying insects, and a bunch of shredded leaf mulch. Having just replaced all the sticky sheets, these are the results so far:
Each image is the front and back of a single sticky sheet flipped over left-to-right; I did not keep track of the original trap locations.
If you need the original camera images to get enough pixels for itemizing the smaller dots, let me know.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 