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?

  • Homebrew Mint Extract

    Homebrew Mint Extract

    I clearcut a stand of spearmint and turned it into three jars of what should become mint extract:

    Homebrew mint extract - start 2021-06-17
    Homebrew mint extract – start 2021-06-17

    The left jar has 3 ounces of mint mostly covered with 80 proof vodka and the other two jars each have 5 ounces submerged in 180 proof grain alcohol.

    Nine days later:

    Homebrew mint extract - 2021-06-26
    Homebrew mint extract – 2021-06-26

    The vodka is now on the right and shows a weird layering caused by the leaves extending above the light yellow liquid; I’ve been inverting the jars every few days. The grain alcohol looks more like the previous iteration, with uniformly decolored leaves in dark green liquid.

    A closer look:

    Homebrew mint extract - vodka vs grain alcohol - 2021-06-26
    Homebrew mint extract – vodka vs grain alcohol – 2021-06-26

    What’s happening in the vodka jar does not look like a nominal outcome …

  • Discrete LM3909: Green and Blue vs. Dead Alkalines

    Discrete LM3909: Green and Blue vs. Dead Alkalines

    These two discrete LM3909 circuits recently stopped blinking:

    LM3909 AA alkaline - Green and Blue
    LM3909 AA alkaline – Green and Blue

    The green LED (on the left) took six months to wear its pair of not-dead-yet AA alkalines from 2.7 V down to nearly zero.

    The blue LED in the radome took two months to go from 1.0 V (!) to nearly zero. It didn’t start very bright and went decidedly dim along the way, but the LM3909 circuitry still managed to jam a few microamps through the LED.

    In both cases, one of the cells was reverse-charged by a few hundred millivolts, although neither leaked.

    Both got another set of not-quite-dead AA cells and they’re back in action.

  • Bird Nest Material: Plastic String

    Bird Nest Material: Plastic String

    This nest appeared in a path near Mary’s Vassar Community Gardens plot:

    Bird Nest with plastic string - top
    Bird Nest with plastic string – top

    The bird obviously took advantage of modern technology, because it’s held together with generous loops of plastic string:

    Bird Nest with plastic string - bottom
    Bird Nest with plastic string – bottom

    We don’t know where it came from or how it got onto the path.

  • Snapping Turtle on the Move

    Snapping Turtle on the Move

    A snapping turtle headed toward the beaver pond on the Dutchess County Rail Trail:

    Snapping Turtle - DCRT - 2021-05-26
    Snapping Turtle – DCRT – 2021-05-26

    At this time of year and phase of the moon, she is most likely in search of a good spot for a nest and her clutch of eggs. Being an aquatic creature, she and her progeny surely benefit from Team Beaver’s engineering.

    Today I Learned: snappers are the New York State Official Reptile.

  • Bafang Programming Adapter: More Cable Colors

    Bafang Programming Adapter: More Cable Colors

    In the process of installing a Bafang BBS02 mid-drive motor on a friend’s diamond-frame bike, I discovered, once again, how little anybody cares about the colors inside cables:

    Bafang Display Extension Cable - internal colors
    Bafang Display Extension Cable – internal colors

    The cheerful rainbow on the right is the stub end of the Bafang display extension cable I built into the previous adapter.

    The new cable on the left seemed like it might match the canonical colors:

    Bafang BBS02 display cable pinout
    Bafang BBS02 display cable pinout

    It comes heartbreakingly close:

    Bafang Display Cable - extension colors
    Bafang Display Cable – extension colors

    Brown and Orange connect as the naive user might expect, which does reduce the likelihood of incinerating the motor controller / USB adapter / laptop by connecting the 48 V battery directly to the logic-level electronics.

    However, White wasn’t on the original menu, Green is now TXD, and Black has become, comfortingly, GND.

    Verily, it is written: Hell hath no fury like that of an unjustified assumption.

    This socket connector has a watertight shell making it extremely difficult to mate and unmate with the pin connector on the bike. Watertightness being unnecessary, a little razor-knife action seems in order:

    Bafang Display Extension Cable - shroud trimming
    Bafang Display Extension Cable – shroud trimming

    Visually, they’re both green-ish, but sometimes the Pixel camera accentuates any differences.

  • House Flipping

    Sometimes I get text messages:

    House Hunting Chat
    House Hunting Chat

    Bzzzz … click … NO CARRIER …

    I’m reasonably sure “Caroline” is really a property flipper, so we’re not in “her” target market.

    Should you be interested in moving into the Hudson Valley, we can probably make a mutually beneficial deal. Protip: use email.

    If only Android allowed whitelisting SMS message sources.

  • Nuthatch Threat Display

    Nuthatch Threat Display

    Mary spotted a White-breasted Nuthatch facing off against a red squirrel on the patio near the birdfeeder, wherein the nuthatch spread its wings to look as fearsome as possible. The squirrel seemed unfazed, perhaps because a bird the size of my thumb simply doesn’t pose much of a threat.

    A few minutes later, the nuthatch repeated the display from the feeder, starting with a hostile side-eye:

    Nuthatch threat side-eye
    Nuthatch threat side-eye

    Then he (we’re pretty sure) went into full-on threat mode:

    Nuthatch threat display
    Nuthatch threat display

    Nuthatches are perfectly happy hanging upside-down from any convenient perch, so it’s not quite as ungainly as it may seem. However, the threat bounced off the squirrel, which continued stuffing itself from seeds scattered by none other than the nuthatch.

    The nuthatch threat display seems identical to the nuthatch courtship display, so we may have been witnessing an offer for rishathra.

    Ya never know!

    Taken through two layers of 1955 window glass with the Pixel 3a zoomed all the way, then ruthlessly cropped.