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?

Sabin Polio Vaccine Event

A clipping from the Harrisburg Evening News, probably in 1962, shows more enthusiasm for vaccines than we have today:

Sabin Vaccine Doses – 1962

It emerged from a fat folder of space exploration articles / maps / booklets / clippings with dates from 1959 through 1962, when I would have been around nine years old. Most likely somebody older collected everything and gave the box to me a few years later. The other side had a hagiographic article about John Glenn, explaining why this side is minus a few paragraphs.

From everything I read about Long Covid, I don’t want to give Short Covid even a little bite at my apple. In particular, fast-forwarding through a decade of neural degeneration isn’t going to put me closer to my Happy Place.

The bonus “Volunteer Fireman Convicted of Arson” article could come from any decade.

2022-11-14
Armistice Day

A letter from my father to the mother of a comrade:

Letter to Mrs Harry Shope – 25 May 1945 – Envelope

Letter to Mrs Harry Shope – 25 May 1945 – pg 1

Letter to Mrs Harry Shope – 25 May 1945 – pg 2

Letter to Mrs Harry Shope – 25 May 1945 – pg 3

Letter to Mrs Harry Shope – 25 May 1945 – pg 4

Letter to Mrs Harry Shope – 25 May 1945 – pg 5

Letter to Mrs Harry Shope – 25 May 1945 – pg 6

May they rest in peace …

2022-11-11
Humana Email Unsubscribe FAIL: Redux

Around this time last year, Humana was spamming me with emails sporting a misconfigured unsubscribe link, so that I could not get myself off their mailing list.

This year, they have the unsubscribe link set up properly, except …

Humana email unsubscribe rejection

Apparently my email address was good enough to get their junk email to me, but it’s not good enough for them to stop sending junk.

I was pretty sure this was deliberate last year. Now, I’m certain.

And they want me to trust them?

You can’t make this stuff up.

2022-10-24
First Year Diary

Another layer of the memorabilia box produced my mother’s 1953 diary, with the first entry in my father’s hand:

Diary – March 18 1953

With the benefit of hindsight, some entries stand out:

Diary – May 2 1953

These were certainly not fresh from the garden:

Diary – May 8 1953

Perhaps reaching this stage required some persuasion:

Diary – June 30 1953

This required me to be outdoors:

Diary – July 2 1953

Mom’s case of “strep throat” required three penicillin injections to knock it down:

Diary – July 22 1953

I get up a little earlier and go to bed a little later nowadays, but I see absolutely nothing wrong with any of this:

Diary – August 27 1953

My eyesight was much better back then:

Diary – September 29 1953

Definitely an omen:

Diary – December 8 1953

My parents ran a restaurant out of the house:

Nisleys Restaurant sign

As you might expect, the diary tapers off after the first year.

2022-10-19
Vintage Wakamoto Digestive Tablets

Sorting out a box of memorabilia produced a dusty bottle full of crumbled brown pills:

Vintage Wakamoto Digestive Tablets

The English part of the label:

Indication: Adequate and optimal treatment for gastrointestinal disorders, malnutrition, neurasthenia, tuberculosis, bere-beri, etc. It improves the appetite and promotes health

Dose: 4-8 tablets[,] 3 times a day
WAKAMOTO-HOMPO
EIYOTO-IKUJINO-KAI, CO., LTD.
SHIBA-PARK, TOKYO

My father spent several years on an all-expenses-paid trip to the South Pacific between 1943 and 1945. I have no idea what relation that bottle might have to his adventures, but the English text suggests it’s not a souvenir of those times.

Somewhat surprisingly, Wakamoto is still in business:

Strong Wakamoto Tablets – Amazon

I’m sure it’s good for what ails you …

2022-10-14
Outdoor Sign Wiring

A dentist’s office has been a-building for what seems entirely too long, but the outdoor sign finally went up. Being that type of guy, I had to take a closer look at how they wired up the LEDs:

Outdoor sign LED wiring

That’s exactly as half-assed as it looks: unprotected PVC wires emerging from raw holes drilled into the backplate and burrowing into unsealed laser-cut acrylic loosely seated behind the white character boxes.

Everything you see is gonna be full of bugs in no time!

I’ve done similar botch jobs, but generally for my own use …

2022-10-13
Vintage Acrylic Unwarping

Half a year ago, a stash of vintage acrylic sheets emerged from the Outer Darkness into the Shop Light:

Acrylic Stockpile

That big yellowed sheet is 9 mm = 3/8 inch thick, with an inch of warp, entirely enough to keep it out of the laser cutter.

So I cleared some floor space and loaded the sheet with a collection of scrap steel sufficient to bend it the other way:

Acrylic sheet unwarping

The main weight comes from a perfectly sized snippet of railroad rail, topped off with steel disks, angle iron, and a rugged scissors jack

The sheet didn’t touch the floor, so the weight kept stress on the plastic and it gradually flowed the other way:

Mostly unwarped acrylic sheet

The center remains 5 mm higher than the edges and, given that cold-flowing is at best an exponential process, I recently declared victory and added it to the stockpile. I’ll gnaw off small pieces for any given project, so the remaining warp won’t matter.

The rule of thumb says a CO₂ laser cutters needs 10 W per millimeter of acrylic, so my 60 W laser will be somewhat underpowered. Two or three passes should suffice and, for sure, nobody will kvetch about edge quality.

2022-10-06